At 04:00 he sent in the first waves of riflemen from 61st and 66th Rifle Corps. They had scouted out a weak point in the German line where the 530th Regiment of the German 299th Infantry Division had only just arrived, with no supporting units on either side for over five kilometers. 4th Mech and 7th Tank Corps were right behind them, ready to surge against the line at a point some 30 kilometers west of the Don.
Zhukov’s plan was to launch a series of attacks against that flank, like successive hammer blows all along the line. This first attack was Gerasimenko’s 21st Army, now heavily reinforced with the addition of two more mobile corps, the 1st Guard Tank, and 25th Tank Corps. Next up the line on their right were the 3rd and 4th Shock Armies in the Serafimovich bridgehead, with the 2nd Shock Army further west near Veshenskaya. This was the main attack, where Zhukov hoped the combined mass of all three armies would overwhelm the German infantry screen and punch through for rapid movement to the south.
Next came Lukin’s 58th Army, which was to put in a pinning attack near Kazanskaya. Then, at Boguchar, Cherivichenko would throw his 9th Army against the line, hoping to reach Kantirmirovka and cut the rail line south into Millerovo. Even as far away as Rossosh, over 200 miles from that opening attack near the Don, all the units were to at least begin a masking barrage of artillery, hoping to convince the Germans that a big push was imminent there as well.
The last force of note in his larders was the powerful 2nd Guards Army on the line at Chernvanka, about 60 kilometers north of Valuki. That was another key rail hub for the Germans, and though he did not think this single army could go that distance alone, he told it to try. The threat itself would be likely to pull in German reserves that might otherwise move east. Then, for good measure, he ordered a counterattack at Kursk to contest the Germans there. If nothing else, it would put a new headline in the papers, both east and west.
All along the line the Soviet artillery roared. Tanks surged forward followed by the motorized infantry regiments. The cavalry divisions thundered after them, sabers drawn and gleaming in the summer sun. Ponderous rifle divisions followed, wave after wave of Soviet infantry swarming around the German regiments of the line, which were now in a fight for their lives.
A frantic radio call came in from General Kempf to Steiner at his headquarters near Oblivskaya. He was with the last of his Korps units, minus the two Panzer Divisions, and he was moving southwest, ordered to follow the SS with its supporting infantry divisions.
“Steiner! Do you realize what’s happening? My column is 60 kilometers south of the Don front, and a Soviet motorcycle regiment just came up on our rear. They are behind us!”
Steiner was shocked. The infantry shield screening all those Soviet bridgeheads had been pierced south of Veshenskaya, and the Russians had sent the 17th Tank Corps and 5th Cavalry Corps right on through.
“Where are your panzers?”
“11th and 23rd are still south of Boguchar, but Balck radioed and told me a goddamned tank brigade just came up on his position 35 kilometers south of the city. There’s a big attack there as well.”
“Damn!” Steiner swore, his forehead red with anger. Then he realized the danger that thrust represented.
“They want Kantirmirovka. If they take that, it cuts the rail line into Millerovo, and there goes the last of my supplies. You must stop them there. Turn your entire column around and get back up there. I don’t need your infantry here now. The 42nd Korps arrived two days ago. Just hold that rail hub. Understand?”
“Alright, but you had better look to your north flank. Hansen called to report the 54th Korps is under attack there—all along the line. This is a big offensive.”
“It can’t be that big,” said Steiner dismissively. “It’s probably nothing more than a spoiling attack to take the pressure off our push for the Volga. You’ll see.”
“Well what about those troops behind my column?”
“Go around them! Just protect that railhead.”
Kempf heard the line go dead, and threw down the radio handset in disgust. He reached for his gloves, pulling them on slowly. “Go around them, he tells me. I’ve got bridging equipment, Nebelwerfers and artillery regiments, a mortar battalion, and my lead division is already well to the east. I’ve only the 57th Infantry Division here, but go around them we will.”
He quickly found a staff Leutnant. “Get everything turned around. We move back to Kantirmirovka at once.”
The tank unit that had the misfortune of running right up on the 11th Panzer Division as it did was the Soviet 10th Brigade. There, another man was pulling on his leather gloves, one Hermann Balck, one of Germany’s most able panzer leaders. Wounded seven times in the first war, Balck had survived to join the Inspectorate of Motorized Troops before the war. He rode with Guderian in France, spearheading the crossing of the Meuse, then fought well in Russia with his fighting 11th. He would later be noted for his incredible defense against the Soviet 5th Tank Army along the River Chir during the winter counterattack that encircled Paulus and his 6th Army, killing over 1000 Soviet tanks in the defense, and basically stopping the entire Army. In fact, no other German division ever matched the 11th panzer when it came to confirmed enemy tank kills. Now here was a summer counterattack, most unexpected, and it aimed to do the very same thing to Steiner’s SS Korps that the winter attack had done to Paulus.
“What in God’s name is that?” Balck squinted through his field glasses, pointing at the oncoming Russian tanks. Then his mind raced to the only possible conclusion. His division was laagered 40 kilometers south of Boguchar, and if those were Soviet tanks, it meant they had broken through the 4th Infantry Korps line there, at least in one place. Yet knowing the German infantry well, he realized that they would have pulled in their flanks if hit with a really big attack, and adopted a defensive formation known as the hedgehog.
“Hauptmann,” he ordered. “Kill those tanks!”
With that order Balck would begin an odyssey of brilliant defensive maneuvers that would live up to the division moniker of Gespensterdivision—the Ghost Division, one of the most effective Panzer Divisions of the war. The division insignia often bore the image of a ghost, and now that spirit would begin haunting the Soviets like a demon from hell.
Part III
The Ghost Division
“Out of every one hundred men, ten shouldn't even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back.”
― Heraclitus
Chapter 7
It had come from nowhere, appearing behind British infantry in France, shocking them with the speed of its movement, and the determination of its troops. It was there that the division first was given the nom du guerre of the ‘Ghost Division,’ renowned for its valor, skill in battle, and yet also for the honorable way in which it fought. Prisoners were always treated fairly, enemy officers respected, cease fires honored to allow removal of wounded men on the field. Patton would later exclaim that the 11th Panzer was “the fairest and bravest” of all the German divisions he had encountered in the war.
Its commander had a quicksilver mind for maneuver in battle, that one man in every hundred with the warrior’s soul, and complete mastery of the art of violence that became the energy of war. He was a dynamic and active defender, yet also fierce in the attack. In Fedorov’s history, Hermann Balck had been one of the very few men to receive the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds, joining Erwin Rommel in that honor. Born to a military family in Prussia, his father was highly decorated, and a master of strategy and tactics, rising to the Imperial General Staff.
Like father, like son. Now he was about to step out from behind his father’s shadow and fight what would later be noted as one of the most brilliant tactical defenses ever conducted. It was Balck who first suggested to Guderian that tanks should always fight in mixed battlegroups with supporting infantry and other weapons. In effect,
he was the originator of the concept of the German Kampfgruppe, and he put that doctrine to use immediately He organized a counterattack with his 15th Panzer Regiment, a unit that had just been fitted out with a good number of the newest Panther V tanks in one battalion. The remainder were Pz IV-F2s, but they were bolstered by 18 of the heavier Lions that had already gained a fearsome reputation wherever they appeared on the front.
Balck took companies of Panzergrenadiers, mated them with platoons of armor, added in mobile flak guns and SPGs, and sent them off to battle, He held one regiment of his infantry in hand, forming a defensive front, and then studded it with his AT guns. Then he sent the Kampfgruppen sweeping out on his flanks. One built on the fast moving recon battalion would seek out the line of enemy advance, relay the information by radio, and then the KGs would swoop in like vultures. Just as the Russians stopped to engage one such attack, another fast moving KG would suddenly appear on its flank or rear. The Ghosts were out in force that day, steel grey specters haunting the steppes.
Learning that a Soviet Cavalry division was following these enemy tanks south, he shifted his Panzergrenadier regiment west, assigned it several SPG batteries, and told it to drive the remaining horsemen back. Then, knowing he was now the center of the defensive line, and his right flank was hanging on thin air, he quickly organized several Kampfgruppen. One was formed from his pioneer battalion reinforced with several companies of AA guns. He would use it as a quick holding force on one flank.
In that hour, the highly trained men of Balck’s division moved like a well-oiled machine. It was going to be very bad luck for the Soviet attack emerging from the Boguchar Bridgehead, and to make matters worse, the 23rd Panzer Division was close by, as was a new brigade of heavier tanks, the 102nd, which was at Martovka, about 30 kilometers southwest of Kantirmirovka. That unit had 28 Lions, two dozen Panthers and another 50 lighter tanks, the IV-F2s and the fast new Leopard medium recon tanks. Between the three formations, Balck would have command of well over 250 tanks. In fact, in this one small segment of the vast battle line that stretched for hundreds of miles in either direction, Balck commanded a force with greater striking power than Feldmarshall Erwin Rommel had in his Afrika Korps at that moment.
That was a clear lesson on just how impoverished Rommel’s forces had been in North Africa, and at the same time how massive the Russian front was by comparison. The Soviets were going to throw a force twice the size of the British 8th Army in Africa at Balck, and it would be all in a day’s work for him to dismantle those divisions, one by one. Yet, as strong and capable as it was, Balck’s division could not be everywhere. To his immediate left and right, the Armies attacking on either side of his defense also created battles that doubled and even tripled the size of a typical engagement fought by Rommel.
The most serious penetration was 120 miles east of Balck’s position, the main attack staged by Zhukov that had achieved a spectacular breakthrough. Kempf’s column had barely slipped by its leading elements as it hastened west again at Steiner’s urging, and not really knowing just how bad the breakthrough was, Steiner ordered the Wiking SS Division north immediately, sending them towards a small hamlet called Perelazovsky. The division had been re-supplying on the Chir, and now it trucked north with its three motorized infantry regiments, arriving to fill a 15-kilometer-wide hole in the line between the 46th Infantry on the left, and the 50th Division on the right—and that was not even the main breakthrough zone.
Steiner’s appraisal of this action as nothing more than a spoiling attack was gravely wrong. The nearest German division to the west of the 46th was over 30 kilometers away, defending just southwest of Veshenskaya. It was therefore a combination of insufficient reconnaissance and pure hubris that led Steiner to continue with his battle in the Kalach Bridgehead, where both Grossdeutschland Division and the Brandenburgers were still locked in a death grip with Chiukov’s Volga Guard Rifle Corps. He was also busy supervising the opening of a new pontoon bridge south of the main bridge at Kalach, where he sent the 102nd Infantry Division across to pressure that flank. They would cross and storm directly into the teeth of the newly arriving 18th Tank Corps, another surprise delivered by Georgie Zhukov.
General Felix Steiner had once commanded the 5th SS, and when he moved up to Korps level, his shoes were filled by the very capable Otto Gille, a man who was destined to become the most highly decorated SS officer of the war. Gille was a hard fighting realist leading hard fighting men, yet when he arrived at the position Steiner had ordered him to take, he was shocked to see that the line there was already outflanked to the west.
The Soviet 5th Cavalry and 17th Tank Corps went right through that gap in the front, and raced south, completely unopposed. By the morning of the 24th, a disgruntled supply clerk was awakened by the sound of rumbling vehicles. It was most likely a column coming in for fuel or parts or some other bothersome request, and well before breakfast. He got up from his cot, stuck his head out of his field tent, and was amazed to find the column pulling into his small forward depot in a village north of Morozovsk was composed of Russian tanks.
Gille could see what was happening all around him. Fast moving enemy cavalry were already 30 kilometers to his southwest, and the 46th Infantry Division was now entirely swamped by the pressing mass of Russian infantry. To make matters worse, he found his troops arriving in the middle of a big attack through the gap in the line his division was filling. No less than four Rifle Divisions, two of them Guards units, were joined by a cavalry division for this push, and The Wikings were all that barred the way.
Those odds were not really as steep as they sounded, for each of Gille’s three Motorized Regiments, Nordland, Germania and Westland, had the fighting power of a full Russian Rifle Division. So it was really more like five to three in that face off, but the units already behind him were of some concern. He got on the radio to Steiner at once.
“Herr General,” he said. “We have plugged the dike, but the water has already spilled through. We’ve spotted enemy cavalry well south and west of our position. I’m sending the recon battalion to slow them down.”
“That’s the least of my problems now,” said Steiner, the frustration evident in his hard voice. “The Russians are already approaching Morozovsk!”
“My God! You can’t allow them to take that. If they cut that road, then your entire force is cut off.”
“Not entirely,” said Steiner with just an edge of sarcasm in his voice. “We have a bridge at Tormosin where we can always move in with Volkov’s boys south of the Don. Very well, I pulled the Totenkopf Division from Tormosin last night. They need rest and have very little in the way of supplies and ammunition, but I will send them to Morozovsk.”
“Do you still want me to stand my ground here? There’s another big attack coming in right now.”
“Hold as long as practical. Can you make contact with 46th Infantry?”
“They are well to our west.”
“Well try to fold back your flank there, and yes, stand your ground. This is much bigger than I realized. If we can’t stop it soon, we’ll lose the bridgehead at Kalach, and I will not want to be the man who reports that to OKW and the Führer.”
The next call went all the way to Eric Manstein at Armeegruppe South HQ in Kharkov. It was Steiner, laying out the situation in no uncertain terms, a massive Soviet attack all along his northern flank, the infantry buckling, but holding, enemy penetration and fast moving columns sweeping to interdict any road or rail they could find. When Manstein learned that his reserve 48th Panzer Korps was already heavily engaged, he knew things were quite serious. He needed another strong mobile force to plan a counter move, but the only existing formation in the entire army was von Wietersheim’s 14th Panzer Korps, well west of Kharkov. It was on good rail lines, and rolling stock was at hand. The only complication was that he would now need OKW approval to use that Korps, which meant he had to confer with Hitler and Halder.
Manstein knew that there was also a big offensive unde
rway in the center. That force was held where it was to be a central reserve, and von Rundstedt would want it to further his drive east. If he merely sent a telegram requesting the panzers, he knew Halder would likely refuse. He had to go in person, and so he rushed to the nearest airport and got aboard a fast He-111.
Hitler had wanted to get closer to the front, and had taken his personal train, Führersonderzug Brandenburg, to move from the Wolfsschanze in Rastenburg to HQ Werewolf in Vinnytsia, Ukraine. That HQ was well named, for he had been in high spirits, until the news of what was happening fell upon him like cold moonlight, and a terrible transformation ensued. Suddenly, all the progress made over the last few weeks counted for naught. The fact that von Rundstedt’s thrust had been stopped, and now hearing that Manstein’s attack was faltering and under heavy counterattack, enraged him. Steiner had been his unfailing sword. He had pierced the last river barrier before Volgograd, but now that sword was stuck in the hard steel wall of the Volga Guard Rifles.
Then in walked Manstein, his cheeks red with the cold night air. He found Hitler leaning sullenly over the map table, a noticeable twitch in his right arm. Without even looking at him, Hitler spoke: “Why are you not at the front? What are you doing here?”
It was the first time he had snapped at Manstein that way, and Halder, who had come along when the Führer moved, tried very hard to restrain a smile. Yet Manstein remained cool, ignoring Halder, and focusing his attention on Hitler. He simply walked slowly up to the map table, removed his gloves and set them down, and then leaned in beside Hitler, who was eyeing him with sidelong glances as he did so.
Tigers East (Kirov Series Book 25) Page 6