The Road to Berlin (26 page)

Col.-Gen. Popov telephoned Stalin at noon on 20 July to report that Rybalko was practically stalled and suffering heavy losses in tanks. The
Stavka
agreed to turn Rybalko’s tanks north-east and that evening they broke out to the Orel–Mtsensk
highway, managing in company with 3rd Army troops to get to the river Oka, but 3rd Guards tanks did not manage to rush a crossing. While Gorbatov’s 3rd Army prepared to force the Oka, Rybalko was again shunted back by the
Stavka
to the south-west. In the early hours of 22 July Stalin telephoned Popov, but the Front commander was not in his
HQ
; the Bryansk Front chief of staff Sandalov took the call, noting each word down in his notebook. Stalin made no bones about it: ‘Why has Rybalko not yet taken Stanovoi-Kolodez? Tell the commander that I am not pleased with the handling of the tank army.’ Within fifteen minutes Stalin had traced Popov, who straightway dictated fresh orders to Rybalko:
‘Khozyain
[the boss] has ordered capture of Stanovoi-Kolodez 22.7. Once again I require you to commit I.P. Korchagin [mechanized corps] through Mokhovoe on Stanovoi-Kolodez, to mount combined attack with M.I. Zinkovich [12th Tank Corps] to destroy enemy holding out there.
Popov
. 1.20 22.7’ Both Popov and Sandalov knew that they were throwing Rybalko’s tanks against a well-fortified line which it would be folly to rush. But there was no going against a direct order from Stalin, and this was a direct order. After a few bloody days bereft of any success, Rybalko’s tank formations had to be pulled out of the line into reserve and were finally sent to Rokossovskii’s front.

During the night of 20 July Marshals Zhukov and Vasilevskii had examined the situation on the front circling Orel; in the north, 11th Guards had cut its way forty miles through the German defences; to the east the Bryansk Front was making a frontal attack, with Rokossovskii’s divisions coming in from the south-west, an additional drive strengthened when Romanenko’s units attacked towards Zmievka on the morning of 21 July. The partisan attacks on German rail communications, the Bryansk–Huro Mikhailovskii line especially (linking German forces at Orel and in the Belgorod–Kharkov area), were meant as definite co-ordination with the military operations; an enormous intensification of partisan activity against German lines of communication in late July—the Russians record 10,000 separate demolitions of track—was a major effort (save for the Yelnaya Dorogobuzh area, where the partisans had been flattened as an effective force). Where the Soviet command knew it could not call on more than token activity, the Soviet air force was called in for interdiction duties. The
relsovaya voina
, ‘the war on the rail track’, had been carefully planned as part of the Soviet break-out after the end of the defensive fighting at Kursk: the Central Staff of the Partisan Movement had issued specific orders (Directive No. 006 of 17 July) which assigned particular partisan detachments to the destruction of set sections of track (with details of how much track was to be blown), the entire operation to be set in motion on a given signal from the Central Staff. The main operational aim was to pin Second
Panzer
and Ninth Army well forward in the Orel bulge, to maroon them by destroying their rearward links. The
relsovaya voina
was nothing less than a full-scale partisan offensive launched in the German rear in direct and immediate support of Red Army front-line operations. To ensure success, large quantities of explosives were flown in to the partisans before their
assault on the rail links began. But for all the mass-mining and the demolitions, the railway lines upon which the
Ostheer
depended were not completely severed. The partisan effort may have been widespread but it was also dispersed, and in spite of the original orders of the Central Staff about a sustained ‘follow-through’, this failed to materialize. Thousands of charges did go off, but too many exploded against less vital secondary lines and the few massive demolitions on the trunk routes failed to close them.

While the partisan offensive continued well into August, the Soviet pincers dug deeper into the bulge. After 20 July, however, the four
Panzer
divisions rushed into the Orel bulge succeeded in blocking the several Soviet moves. The Germans dug in their tanks and hid their assault guns in the high wheatfields. Lt.-Gen. Badanov’s 4th Tank Army had now closed up with Bagramyan, but on explicit
Stavka
orders it was to be used in the Bolkhov fighting and not drive into the German rear through Khotinets. Badanov had more than 500 brand-new tanks with his army. Bagramyan was furious at the
Stavka
orders; he was also none too pleased with Badanov, whose earlier success in the Donbas had—according to Bagramyan—‘completely gone to his head’. Bagramyan warned that this kind of breakthrough operation was not easy and that the tank-men should have some rapid training. Badanov hotly contested this and emphasized that his tank army could break through anything. Sokolovskii came out on Badanov’s side and at 1100 hours on 26 July two of Badanov’s corps (11th Tank and 6th Guards Mechanized) put in a ragged attack towards Bolkhov. For the next few hours, under the very gaze of Bagramyan and Badanov, both corps were heavily battered by the concealed German tanks and assault guns; the next day the 30th Volunteer Urals Tank Corps pushed in with a fierce attack, but the tank army covered only about one mile in all. The German units now began pulling out of the Bolkhov pocket and Belov’s 61st Army moved up; Bagramyan, Fedyuninskii, Badanov and Kryukov (with his ‘operational group’) now came under the direct command of Popov, who moved his forward
HQ
to Mtsensk and now set the 3rd and 63rd Armies in motion right up against Orel. At dawn on 5 August, after slogging through the German defences and crossing the Oka, the main body of these two armies closed on Orel, which was already being cleared of German troops.

While fighting in the Orel bulge drained German strength away from the Kursk salient towards the north, to the south a powerful Soviet attack on the ‘Mius Front’, launched by the Southern Front, opened on 17 July. Fedor Ivanovich Tolbukhin, promoted colonel-general in April 1943, had that same month returned on
Stavka
orders from the North-Western Front, where he had been involved in the Demyansk operations, to a Front command in the south. The constant postings depressed Tolbukhin, but he was reassured by his new assignment to a full Front command. At Southern Front
HQ
in Novoshakhtinsk he took over from Malinovskii, who went to the South-Western Front. Tolbukhin had a considerable force at his disposal—five infantry armies (twenty-eight rifle divisions),
an air army, two mechanized corps, three tank brigades and a cavalry corps: Zakharov’s 51st Army on the right, Tsvetayev’s 5th Shock Army to its left, Gerasimenko’s 28th Army at the centre, Khomenko’s 44th on the left flank and Kreizer’s 2nd Guards Army as second echelon. Kryukin commanded the 8th Air Army. A few days after the opening of the German attack on Kursk, Tolbukhin received orders to prepare an attack on the heavily fortified German ‘Mius line’, to strike for the river Krunka and thence to Stalino. The German defences on the Mius ran for some twenty-five miles and were manned by the Sixth Army, a new Sixth raised from
Armee-Abteilung Hollidt
to replace the Sixth Army which had perished at Stalingrad. Tolbukhin planned to break the German defences with 5th Shock and 28th Armies operating on a twelve-mile sector, with 2nd Guards ready to exploit the initial successes.

Once Tolbukhin’s units had forced the Mius, German armour began to move to the southern wing of Army Group South, first to contain the Soviet bridgehead and then at the end of July to put in a formidable counter-blow with four
Panzer
divisions, a
Panzer Grenadier
division and two infantry divisions. On the evening of 1 August, after reporting on the situation to the
Stavka
, Tolbukhin—much downcast at what he considered his own considerable failure—ordered his front to pull back to their old positions. Stalin, however, was far from displeased; Marshal Vasilevskii arrived at Tolbukhin’s
HQ
to inform the Front commander that the Southern Front attacks had fulfilled their role perfectly—the German command could not move divisions up to Kursk and had even brought armour down from the north to bolster up the Donbas, first-class divisions which would have made their presence felt on the ‘Belgorod–Kharkov axis’. For all this reassurance, Tolbukhin knew that he had blundered, principally by introducing 2nd Guards too early and with too much of a rush.

While
Panzer
units moved to the southern wing of Army Group South, Soviet troops—much to the astonishment of the German command—had already struck on the northern wing. Manstein and his staff had thought the Soviet formations in the southern part of the Kursk salient too badly mauled to leap into a counter-blow. On 16 July, Fourth
Panzer
and
Abteilung Kempf
, screened by powerful rearguards, had begun to pull back to their original positions. Vatutin ordered 6th Guards and 1st Tank Army to push down the Oboyan–Belgorod motorway. The
Stavka
had issued orders on 16 July for Koniev’s Steppe Front to become fully operational and at 2300 hours on 18 July the rump of what ten days before had been a massive strategic reserve but was now reduced to three fresh armies (53rd, 47th and 4th Guards) and two battered armies (7th Guards and 69th) handed over from the Voronezh Front moved up with Vatutin’s men. Within five days both Koniev and Vatutin were drawing up to the lines from which Army Group South had jumped off against Kursk on 5 July; here the two Soviet fronts halted until 3 August, when an enormous Soviet attack unrolled against the Belgorod–Kharkov
place d’armes
, the significance of which was not lost on either the German or Soviet commands. By Soviet reckoning there were
eighteen German divisions (including four
Panzer)
, or some 300,000 men with 600 tanks and more than 3,000 guns, to hold positions that had been ringed with defence lines. Kharkov was covered with seven lines of defences to the north, three to the east. As Koniev reported, the significance of Kharkov for the whole German defence in the eastern Ukraine and the presence of strong armoured forces made a bitter struggle inevitable. Belgorod was also heavily protected by defence lines, the suburbs fortified with timbered fire-points and the bigger buildings fitted out as strong points.

By 24 July the bulk of the Voronezh and Steppe Fronts had clustered to the north of Belgorod. At this juncture the Soviet command waited to see if a German counter-attack would eventually materialize; Malinovskii had attacked across the Donets south-east of Izyum, digging into First
Panzer
area, while Tolbukhin was already trying to break away from the Mius, but after a week neither Soviet attack had made much progress. Nevertheless, German armour was moving
into
the Donbas and not, as the Soviet commanders first feared, out of it. And there was the frantic labour to supply the forthcoming Soviet offensive. Koniev had no rear organization at all, a shortcoming corrected on the evening of 18 July when Stalin ordered Khrulev to set up ‘the necessary rear organizations’ in the Steppe Front. The Bryansk Front was stripped of four full artillery divisions to build up artillery strength in the south; enough ammunition for twelve to fiteen days of continuous operations, food supplies for a week and fuel for ten to twelve days was stockpiled with the Voronezh and Steppe Fronts. Day by day, Soviet tank strength crept up, making good the losses incurred during
Citadel
at a rate far surpassing the calculations of the German command; but tanks and crews had to be scraped up from every corner. Katukov’s 1st Tank (recommended for distinction as a ‘Guards army’) had lost half its tanks and many of its crews by 25 July, yet Vatutin warned Katukov that the
Stavka
ordered not a single reinforcement—‘not a man, not a machine’. For more tanks, Katukov had to rely on battlefield salvage and workshop repair; for more crews, on the field hospitals and the rear hospitals (the latter the most likely reservoir, for tank crews had only a small proportion of lightly wounded). In the evacuation hospitals tank-men were kept in one group because their wounds usually required special treatment, but their tags—the
kartochka peredovo rayona
, the transit tag on wounded—did not identify their function, driver-mechanic, turret-gunner or crew commanders. Slowly the crews were re-assembled.

At the end of July, German radio intercepts and air reconnaissance detected signs of a major Soviet build-up, and on 2 August Army Group South signalled its expectation of an immediate Soviet offensive west of Belgorod and south-east of Kharkov, the latter thrust to pin German forces in the city and also to prise open the way to the Dnieper. The final decision to proceed with ‘the Belgorod–Kharkov operation’ had actually been taken by Stalin on 22 June 1943, as the Voronezh and Steppe Fronts drew up to the original line of 5 July and as the northern wing of Army Group South was now bereft of six
Panzer
divisions
and an infantry division. Marshal Zhukov had the management of this major offensive operation, a great deal of which bore a typical Zhukov ‘look’. The operations would be mounted across a very large front, with a rapid breakthrough aimed in considerable depth and to be accomplished by powerful assault groupings: the two tank armies (1st and 5th Guards) were concentrated in the area of 5th Guards Army and would operate in dense formation of up to 70 tanks to the kilometre; the artillery was similarly concentrated to bring up to 230 guns to the kilometre on the axes of the main attacks. Zhukov ruled out any protracted regrouping; the Voronezh and Steppe Fronts would attack with their flanks mixed, striking from north and north-west of Belgorod in a south-westerly direction to outflank Kharkov from the west. For this operation, 6th Guards, 5th Guards, 53rd Armies and 48th Rifle Corps of 69th Army would deploy on a line running from the village of Gertsovka up to the northern Donets (to the east of Gostishchevo): 1st and 5th Guards Tank Armies would be ready to exploit the success of this shock force. To the right, 40th and 27th Armies would produce a supporting attack in the direction of Akhtyrka. On Koniev’s Steppe Front, Shumilov’s 7th Guards operating with 69th Army would encircle the German forces at Belgorod, then attack along the eastern bank of the northern Donets and reach Kharkov. The recapture of Kharkov involved three fronts, Voronezh, Steppe and South-Western. Vatutin was to outflank the city from the west and cut off the main body of German troops, Koniev would attack Kharkov from the north and as Koniev approached the city Malinovskii on the South-Western Front would unleash the 57th Army in a westerly attack towards Merefa to outflank Kharkov from the south.