John Schettler - Thor's Anvil

General Balck raised the collar on his trench coat against the wind, tightening the fit of his gloves. Winter again, he thought. Another enemy offensive, and another crisis. We rule the summer, but when General Winter arrives, he is a most formidable foe. Well, my division is rested, lean and trim; ready for another fight. But this does not look like the dance I was hoping to attend. Steiner has thrown the SS right into the teeth of this enemy advance, and right between the two arms of the bear. We should have folded the line back south of Belgorod and the upper Donets, massing Steiner at Kharkov. Then they would have to come over another 100 kilometers, and supply themselves the whole way. That’s when we hit them.

Yes, it would mean leaving Model well behind enemy lines, for a time, but he had a stout heart, and can hold ground like no one else in the army. But Manstein doesn’t want to lose that army. Being so close at hand, I can see why he turned Steiner loose. Now we see what those troops are really made of. Yet things are quite different this time, are they not? We chased them half way to perdition in the summer, and now I have been racing from one crisis point to another since mid-October.

That same day a new Soviet Army was identified on the front, the 3rd Guards. It had been building up at Tambov for the last six months, built from the burned out remnants of divisions that had fought and died in the struggle against Operation Barbarossa. The men that remained were veterans three times over, and formed the hard kernel of each new division. It followed the line of attack of the northern pincer, but reaching Kursk, it suddenly turned east towards Stary Oskol. The Bear had a fish by the tail, and it wanted to take another good bite. Unfortunately, Model’s 2nd Panzerarmee was that fish. That army, with five or six fresh rifle divisions, was enough to punch through. Model was now completely cut off, and those crucial three days that might have saved his army had slipped away.

The Grossdeutschland Division was attacking to the left of the rail line in the corridor, and the Brandenburgers were to the right. Like a pair of heavy linesmen, they were grinding their way forward, and slowly pushing the enemy back. What they needed now was a good halfback to break through and race on up that line to Stary Oskol. There, Model, being no fool, had massed all his mobile divisions in an effort to break out.

That halfback was Hermann Balck.

It was not the sort of attack he preferred to make, a desperate fourth down and two. He would much rather have his division on open ground, for broken field running was his specialty. That said, he had two strong divisions on his flanks, and so Balck formed up his shock groups, leading with Hauser’s Recon Battalion backed by the 15th Panzer Regiment, and then following up with his Panzergrenadiers. They would smash right into the 55th Guard Rifle Division, with the 17th Guard Tank Brigade on its left.

On the other side of the attack, Model had not sat idle. He had six infantry divisions east of the Don, but three were south of Voronezh, holding useless ground. His orders were to hold the city, and that he did, with three divisions, but those other three crossed the Don and moved west on the night of 29 December, and took up better defensive positions on the southern belly of the fish shaped pocket in which he found himself. This freed up his 24th Panzer Korps and allowed him to move 17th and 18th Panzer Divisions to join the units he already had fighting at Stary Oskol.

The relief attack was coming right up the road and rail line towards that town, and he massed whatever he could to make a breakout attempt as the sound of their guns drew ever nearer. In a strange way, the entire action resembled the relief attempt that had actually been mounted by Hoth to try and save Paulus, the original Operation Winter Storm. That had been eventually halted on the Myskova river by the arrival of Malinovski’s powerful 2nd Guards Army. Here, it was the 3rd Guards Army under General Dmitri Lelyushenko trying to bar the way.

Just before midnight, when all those troops would have much rather been pleasantly drunk in the arms of a woman, Balck’s intrepid division punched through and opened a hole. Behind him came the Fusilier Regiment of the Grossdeutschland Division, surging into the gap. And on the other side, they met a kampfgruppe of troops from Model’s army, jubilantly joining hands as the clock tolled out the coming of the new year. Whether they could hold that thin corridor remained undecided at that point, but they at least got through.

Manstein got the news right at midnight, pleased and proud that his troops had pushed through, but realizing the herculean task that now lay ahead. To secure that corridor, he now had to push back both those great arms of the bear trying to strangle it with the claws of their armored formations. 1st and 2nd SS were still pushing, on the left, and 3rd and 5th SS were pushing on the right, along the line of the Oskol River. Both enemy pincers had been stopped, and even pushed back in places, but for how long?

Even if they succeeded, he still had no permission to withdraw Model’s troops, there they would sit, with the the neck of that supply corridor the subject of constant enemy counterattacks. All they had accomplished, and with the best divisions in the German army, was to get back again the same dilemma Manstein had gone to OKW to try and solve. He was still enraged at Hitler’s stupidity and obstinate mindset. Steiner’s superb SS Korps would now be tied down here indefinitely. It was madness. What was he to tell Model now—sit there, like the nine panzer divisions were now sitting on the Northern Front?

Madness. There were now 15 infantry divisions, including two Luftwaffe field divisions, 3rd, 4th, 17th, and 18th Panzers, and the 10th and 29th Motorized Divisions in that pocket. That was a force on the same scale as the losses sustained at Stalingrad in Fedorov’s history.

He had to take some decisive action, and now again considered the desperate option of conspiring with Rundstedt and Model to simply do what was necessary, orders or no orders. They would certainly all lose their jobs, if not their heads, but he also had one more option—resignation. Yet if not even that could move Hitler, Manstein would then forfeit any further control or influence over the battles that surely lay ahead. His duty to the army itself weighed heavily in that decision. After having drafted his threat, he summarily tore it to pieces, shaking his head.

That night, as a column of vital supplies was pushed through the embattled corridor for Model, Steiner reported that he had stopped the northern pincer and stabilized that sector of the front. The line of the Oskol was also solid. The sour grapes that Manstein could pick would now rest in that report to OKW.

‘Front stabilized,’ he cabled. ‘Supply corridor reestablished to Model necessitates continued deployment of the Army’s best mobile divisions to hold it open, unless a force of at least 6 to eight infantry divisions is sent to relieve those troops. The threat to Kharkov has been put off for the moment, though a further push for Kursk against strong enemy reserves in that sector seems impractical. Redeployment of 2nd Panzerarmee through the corridor to bring it safely within the German front near Prokhorovka would also allow Steiner to redeploy and reorganize for a new counterattack aimed at recovering lost ground. Should Model be forced to remain in place, Steiner must as well, and no further offensive action can be contemplated until the matter is resolved, nor will Steiner’s SS be able to refit in time to participate in Operation Untergang . Model’s present position remains precarious, unless a strong force could be mustered east of Bryansk and Kirov to again drive on Voronezh and threaten to encircle the enemy forces in the Kursk sector. Otherwise, 2nd Panzerarmee will remain a useless liability that will continue to require a heavy commitment by both the army and Luftwaffe to keep it in supply.’