Tigers East (Kirov Series Book 25)

by John Schettler

  “I have moved five armies, including three Shock Armies, into a large series of bridgeheads south of the Don. They have reached their assigned positions, and now we are trucking in the supplies and fuel necessary to sustain an offensive. The Germans are trying to screen that flank with infantry.”

  “Rumanians?”

  “No, German troops, but they have not been able to cover that entire front yet. In fact, I could attack tomorrow and raise a good bit of hell there.”

  “No,” said Kirov. “We wait as you suggested earlier. Wait until we have the supplies to do more than raise a little hell. When we go, it will be with all of Satan’s wrath. In fact, if the Germans do cross the Don west of Volgograd, then everything they send there could be easily pocketed if our counterattack is strong enough to reach the river behind them. So we wait. When you can tell me you are strong enough, then I will turn those armies loose, but not before. How long will that take?”

  “That will depend,” said Zhukov, hedging his bets. “This is not the only battle we will fight before this year ends. Their Army Group Center is going to push east soon. The plan was to send our reserve tank corps south into those bridgeheads over the Don, but I may have to send many west to stop von Rundstedt, Hoth and Model. The Germans spent a good deal of time to refit their mobile divisions, and they have new tanks. One is a real monster—the Tiger, and something tells me they will soon be on the prowl. The Tigers are coming east, Mister General Secretary, and soon.”

  * * *

  While Manstein drove deep into the Don Basin, the offensive launched by Armeegruppe Center began to gather real momentum. It had taken many months to extricate all the panzers from the front lines, moving them into rear areas to refuel and repair damaged equipment. Supplies finally arrived from Germany, with replacements, and most importantly of all, with fresh tanks. The divisions were getting more of the series I Lions, the 55-L, and in a very few units, a faster medium tank, the Panther V, was being introduced. With it came a fearsome looking heavy tank, the Tiger, and it mounted the dread 88mm main gun. Germany’s answer to the increasing numbers of Soviet T-34s was bigger tanks, with heavier armor and good long range hitting power.

  Generalfeldmarshall Gerd von Rundstedt commanded Armeegruppe Center, an aristocratic Prussian with a long family history in military service. He was to have commanded Armeegruppe South, but when that went to Manstein, he moved north. Hitler had a mind to relieve him after the disastrous Soviet Winter counterattack, but Manstein prevailed upon him to keep the stolid von Rundstedt in command. He would have two very able subordinates, General Walther Model leading 2nd Panzerarmee, and General Hoth leading the smaller 3rd Panzerarmee.

  The divisions sorted themselves out, becoming a leaner force when four divisions were withdrawn by Guderian and Halder for deployment to the West. All were hard fighting divisions, the 2nd, 6th, 7th and 16th Panzer Divisions, and their absence would be keenly felt. All their equipment was left in the field, and that allowed the remaining units to refit more quickly. When the troops arrived in Germany, they would get all new equipment, and then take up positions in France.

  Now Rundstedt looked east. The Soviet line ran from Moscow to just east of Serpukhov, then down to Tula, which they had taken at great cost the previous winter. 5th Army held there, and then 43rd Army under Sobbenikiov ran along the main road and rail line south towards Mtensk and Orel. That was the same road Guderian had clawed his way up the previous November, and the Russians had fought hard to maintain control of that vital communications corridor. 7th Army under Meretskov now held the line from Plavsk down past Gorbachevko and Orel, and then they moved in the17th Siberians under Paturov. He was tasked with securing the tentative Soviet hold on Orel, but it was not to be, at least not that summer.

  Von Rundstedt was planning a major offensive, and to prepare the way he sent 18th, 22nd, and 24th Panzer Divisions storming into Orel before the Soviets could consolidate there. This forced the 7th Army back, which prompted Zhukov to send in his war heroes, the Siberians. One of Karpov’s armies was already south of Orel, the fighting 24th. They had held out in the Kirov Pocket for many long months, then moved to Bryansk to hold that city against all comers until Zhukov ordered them to break out of the pocket and fight their way east to Orel. This they did, and now they were to be reinforced by the 17th Siberians, for this segment of the line screened the vital rail line east to Lipetsk. The 24th took the line about 30 kilometers east of Mtsensk, where it began licking its wounds and looking for supplies and equipment. The 17th came in on its left and southern flank, opposite the newly German occupied Orel.

  “This is where they are strongest,” said von Rundstedt, “and so this is exactly where we will hit them. “We will break through with 2nd Panzerarmee, open a hole between those two Siberian armies, and then send Hoth right on through with 3rd Panzerarmee. He will drive due east to Lipetsk.”

  That was the plan, and it was executed with traditional German ferocity in the attack. The 17th Siberians had barely had time to catch their breath after arriving on the trains, when suddenly they were faced with the mobile wrath of five massed German Panzer Divisions. Concentrated against the 17th Siberians, they punched through in a grueling two-day fight, whereupon Hoth ran through the hole in the line like a madman, his 57th Panzer Korps leading the Schwerpunkt through with 12th Panzer Division. On July 8th, the tip of Hoth’s spear was already 40 kilometers east of the breakthrough point where the battle was still raging. The Siberians had tried to plug the gap by sending in their one reserve unit, the 57th Motor Rifle Division, but it bought them only a brief stay.

  Hoth would drive that penetration 100 kilometers before the Soviets could react and bring in two reserve armies to try and staunch the deep wound in the front. His lead elements were nearing Yelets, covering half the distance to Lipetsk in three days before growing pressure on both the north and southern flanks of the penetration prompted him to stop. It was here that the wisdom of Sergei Kirov was most keenly seen. What Hoth needed now, more than anything, was good infantry to hold the flanks of his drive so he could keep the Panzer Divisions moving instead of having to fend off enemy counterattacks. But all that infantry was far to the west, fighting to reduce the Kirov Pocket and claim the city named for the Soviet head of state.

  Events would continue to develop rapidly over the next week. The Grossdeutschland Division Recon Battalion fought like demons to hold the narrow grip they had over the Don north of Kalach. They held off the entire Soviet 8th Armored Corps, a formation that perhaps had less striking power than its name suggested. Further south, 1st SS Division reached the lower Don, then turned the area over to German security regiments and moved northeast to rejoin the main attack on Volgograd.

  Then, on July 15, 1942, the SS 5th Panzergrenadier Regiment of the Totenkopf Division met a strange looking band of cavalry. The SS had been sent to see if a crossing point could be forced south of Tormosin that would allow an approach to Volgograd from the southwest. There, Ivan Volkov had mustered units at Kotelnikovo and sent them up to that very place. It was defended by a pair of Soviet Rifle Divisions that had been dug in there for nearly a month. Volkov’s troops merely watched them from their positions on the southern bank of the river… Until the Totenkopf Division arrived. Volkov’s men fished, swatted mosquitoes, lolled about on the banks of the river occasionally firing a mortar or artillery piece at the Soviets, and basically watching the German troops methodically reduce the defense to nothing over a three-day battle.

  Then the Argir Cavalry Regiment of Volkov’s Kuban Command swam their horses across the river to meet their new found ‘Allies’ for the first time in the war. The rag tag horsemen stared in awe when they saw the tough Germen Panzergrenadiers in their dark camo uniforms, MG-42s slung over their broad shoulders, and belts of ammunition dangling below their waist. The Germans did not quite know what to make of them. They looked much like all the other cavalrymen they had chewed up in their long year of war in Russia.

  It was an aw
kward and near silent meeting, until one of the Lieutenants in the Argir Cav simply clicked his heels together and stiffened his arm in the traditional Nazi salute. “Heil Hitler!” he shouted, “Heil Volkov!”

  This brought smiles and laughter from the Germans, and a burly SS Sergeant stepped forward, extending his hand. With that single handshake, the Germans had finally linked up with their ally deep within the heartland of Asia, the Orenburg Federation, and the war would never be the same after that.

  Chapter 6

  The strategic situation facing the Soviets at Volgograd was radically different from that in Fedorov’s history. The entire eastern bank of the Volga was a hostile shore, where despondent troops under the black flag of Orenburg huddled in heavy concrete bunkers studded with the cold steel of artillery and machineguns. The daily ritual was for both sides to exchange desultory artillery fire, but Volkov’s men had never been able to press a direct cross river assault against the city itself. In fact, Kirov’s troops had crossed years ago, occupying areas where the river swept in a wide bend near Beketova, and now they also sat in heavy fortified bunkers, waiting.

  Yet nothing could get down that river from the north in the way of barges for supply. The guns on the east bank were plentiful enough to close that waterway completely. Instead, the city relied on the rail lines coming in from the north, west, and south. Two of the three had already been cut, leaving only the north rail line open to feed in the vital stores of food, fuel, ammunition and replacement troops, if they could be found. If that rail line were to be cut, then the city would have to rely on its own internal production.

  The politically important city of Kirov had done this for over six months, the stony heart beating at the center of the Kirov Pocket. On July 19, that city finally fell, as the thick encircling bands of German infantry slowly closed on it like a steel vise. Sergei Kirov wept that night, not for the dint to his personal pride, but for the thousands of men who had fought there, enduring the whole winter, the rains and mud of spring, undaunted, until they were simply overcome by superior numbers and lack of supplies.

  The city itself was a gaunt, broken ruin, its buildings decapitated by artillery and bombing, the cold stone walls of the ruins scored black with the char of fire. Virtually anything that could be burned for heat and cooking had already been consumed. There wasn’t a dog left alive in the entire city, as all had been killed for food long ago, and not even the ubiquitous rats survived the hunger that sought them out in the last extreme. In many ways it was harder to take the news of the city’s demise than the burning of Moscow, and it was compounded when on that same day, the German 51st Infantry Korps stormed into Kursk.

  Further north, the Russians had taken hold of Hoth’s 3rd Panzer Army like a man wrestling with a mighty serpent. The 1st Shock Army under Konev had moved into reserve long ago, and it struck from the north, while Yeremenko’s 1st Red Banner Army came up from the south. He had not yet fully supplied his army, and felt he had been forced into combat before he was ready, but war was war. Now his army was strung out along the deep southern shoulder of Hoth’s advance, and the two armies had brought enough to the fight to slow and then stop the German drive.

  “We’ve stopped them,” said Zhukov, “but we haven’t the strength to do anything more. Pushing them back is out of the question. And now, with this news of the end of resistance in the Kirov Pocket, I fear the Germans will soon be bringing all the infantry they had there onto the line. I give us another month, but after that, something will break.”

  “What about all the troops we have on the Don?” asked Kirov. “Might we launch that offensive early?”

  “We might, but it would likely stall half way to our planned objective. Give me time and let me build those divisions up a bit more. I’m sending them everything I can get my hands on. Under the circumstances, I will have no troops left for the planned attack towards Kharkov this summer… They are all in the Kuban.”

  “Enough of that!” Kirov turned on him. “If they weren’t there, all the Germans facing them would be elsewhere.”

  “You mean the two divisions at Kerch in the Crimea? Those are the only German forces presently in contact with our armies in the Caucasus. Even Volkov has been content to simply sit on his line south of the Kuban and wait. They are completely ignoring that front, as I knew they would. There is plenty of time for that later. The Germans just linked up with Volkov south of Tormosin. That route isn’t practical for any real communications between the two sides, but it was a nice little symbolic victory for the folks back home.”

  “Yes,” said Kirov sullenly. “I’m sure the Führer was delighted, particularly since his Generals also handed him Kursk and Kirov today. Damn! It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. We should be stronger! Where are all our tank armies?”

  Berzin stepped forward, nudging Kirov’s elbow, for Kirov’s remarks were opening a door that Zhukov had never walked through. The knowledge of what had happened in this war once before was still a closely guarded secret. Even though the old “Red Archives” had been deliberately burned by Berzin in those last hectic moments in Moscow, he had managed to save one book. Over many long nights since that time, both he and Sergei Kirov had poured over it like two high priests over a bible, until the pages were worn at the edges with their heavy use. And they could recite passages from that book as if they were scripture: Stalingrad, Chapter 7, verses 10 through 15. But it wasn’t happening that way this time, and they both seemed powerless to force the lines of battle into the shape they once assumed.

  The Soviet Union was not producing anywhere near what it did in the old history. Oil was found in Siberia, but drilling was a slow and awkward process, delivery even slower. Factories had been relocated, but their output was sluggish. Now, to make matters even worse, the convoys had stopped coming to Murmansk and Archangelsk. PQ-17 had been slaughtered by the wolves of the Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe. The damage was so heavy that Britain cancelled the convoys for the foreseeable future. Kirov was promised that they would resume, and also promised that a Second Front would open soon, but not where he had hoped. It would come in North Africa, and not France—not this year or possibly even next year.

  Those were verses Kirov and Berzin could also read of in their bible. They knew of Operation Torch, but wondered if it could succeed this time around. And yet, that history, the foreknowledge of what might come, was as much a mockery as a balm to them in these hours. There they could read of victories that could not yet be grasped, of massive tank armies sweeping over the steppes, but they were nowhere to be found.

  At times Berzin marveled that Zhukov would conceive of the very same strategies and planned attacks that he had devised in the history. He was even calling them by the same names, operations named for the planets circling in their dark, cold orbits above—Mars, Uranus, Saturn. The plan that had been the undoing of the German attack on Stalingrad, Operation Uranus, was slowly taking shape now on the line of the northern Don. Yet there would be no southern pincer this time. All the ground that had been used to stage and build the armies in the south was now occupied by Volkov’s troops.

  Now Zhukov was calling his new version of the plan Operation Mars. His war gods were lining up on the Don, gathering their strength each day in the slow process of rebuilding and delivery, and he hoped to unleash them in one mighty blow that would reach all the way to the lower Don, destroying anything in his path.

  It was an agony of one kind for Kirov and Berzin to listen to him expound his plans. They could see what was done in the history, and see how it could not be done now, and that difference scalded their souls.

  “He’s calling it Mars this time,” said Berzin when Zhukov had left them. “That was the big operation he planned around Rzhev where our losses were so heavy they would not be officially acknowledged for years.”

  “Yes,” said Kirov, “the Rzhev Meat Grinder. It never happened, and thank god for that. Strange that he chose that name instead of Uranus as he did in the material. If we d
o launch the attack soon, let us hope it does not bear the curse of Zhukov’s old Operation Mars.”

  * * *

  On the 22nd of July, Zukov decided to act. The Germans already had a reinforced division over the Don at Kalach, but the local commander, Chiukov, had reacted by moving in some of his toughest infantry, the Volga Guards Rifle Corps. These hardened troops dug in and refused to move, in spite of every attack the Germans put against them.

  In truth, Steiner’s divisions were now at the end of a very long logistics chain. They had come over 200 miles from their first assembly point at Kantirmirovka, and over terrain that had very poor roads along the line of their advance. The only rail line that directly served their present position ran southwest along the Chir River, through Morozovsk to reach the Donets at Belaya Kalivta before continuing west into the big industrial mining hub of the Donets Basin. This line was torn to shreds, and could not be used. The Germans were still fighting to seize its vital hubs and connection points, all on the south bank of the Donets.

  Another line ran north to south, coming down from the German rail hub at Kantirmirovka through Millerovo where it split, with one line running southwest to Voroshilovgorad, and the second due south to Kamensk Shaktilinskiy on the Donets, and then into the basin again. So that meant Millerovo was now the closest rail hub the Germans would have in their effort to take Volgograd, and that was all of 150 miles behind the fighting.

  Fuel stocks were running low in Steiner’s Korps, and ammunition was at a premium, with some units down below 30% of standard issue. The one good thing that had happened was the arrival of fresh infantry, which did much to aid the SS in eliminating the two stubborn Soviet Mountain Divisions that had been defending the western bank of the crossing at Kalach. Those divisions were broken, and the Germans pushed across, only to run into Chiukov’s Volga Rifles. Then, with his front line units in the Don bridgeheads reporting they were now at 100% supply status, Zhukov decided to spring a surprise attack. It was a long time until the first snows of Winter, and he knew he could not simply sit there, particularly with all that was happening in the center of the line as the Germans drove on Lipetsk.