The Road to Berlin (27 page)

Zhukov aimed the offensive at the junction of Fourth
Panzer
and
Abteilung Kempf;
Vatutin would press Fourth
Panzer
westwards, attacking towards Bogodukhov, and Koniev would push
Abteilung Kempf
away in his southerly drive. Zhukov rejected a proposal from Moskalenko at 40th Army to slant the main attack; the Voronezh Front would strike straight into Fourth
Panzer
. The artillery preparation would have to be carefully planned and not ‘the routine stuff’ about which Zhukov had already protested vigorously during the planning of the attack on the Orel bulge—the artillery would provide supporting fire through a ‘fire wall’ reaching 1,500 metres, the whole depth of the first German defence line. Air operations were planned to engage fifty-five per cent of the sorties planned against enemy troops in the battle zone, each tank army being assigned up to one corps of ground-attack planes (with appropriate fighter cover, though this was not always forthcoming). What was not adequately provided for, as subsequent events showed, was battlefield interdiction; only ten per cent of the planned sorties covered air action against the movement of enemy reserves.

On 1 August Zhukov held the pre-attack review of plans and preparations, the last phase to check on the readiness of the fronts and the grasp by army commanders of their assignments. Throughout the discussions, the greatest care and most intense scrutiny was lavished on the plans to commit the tank armies,
about their role on the first day of offensive operations. Soviet experience in introducing powerful mobile formations into breakthrough operations of this type was at this time not only limited but also barren of real results; the gains from committing three tank armies—4th, 3rd and 2nd—into the battle for the Orel bulge had been extremely disappointing. This time Zhukov and his armoured commanders meant to get it right. The Red Army at Kursk had shown that it could stop massed tank attacks supported by aircraft, if not in their tracks then at least by pulling them up short; now there was a premium on Soviet expertise in mobile warfare, for though the
Panzertruppen
had been savaged at Kursk they were by no means done. Zhukov now concentrated armour against the northern flank of Army Group South and intended to use it in order to slice very deeply into the whole German southern wing.

Tolbukhin and Malinovskii had also received revised orders to prepare offensive operations, timed for mid-August and aimed at the liberation of the Donbas: the South-Western Front was to reach Zaporozhe, the Southern Front to strike through the northern Tauride on to the lower reaches of the Dnieper and the approaches to the Crimea, thus erasing First
Panzer
and Sixth Army across the Donets–Mius Front. As Tolbukhin reminded his senior officers, twice they had failed to break the Mius Front, but this third time they must succeed: there was no other way for them through the Donbas. The first stage of the operation would take them to Taganrog; the front would then swing north-west to liberate Stalino and to co-operate with the left flank of Malinovskii’s front in destroying German forces in the Artemovka–Krasnyi Luch–Gorlovka area, after which the Southern Front would swing south-west and south to the Dnieper reaches.

During the night of 3 August, Voronezh and Steppe Front assault formations moved up to their start lines. At 0500 hours on 3 August, Soviet artillery fired the first five-minute barrage; after that there was silence until 0535 hours when the guns began firing at selected targets. One hour later exactly, all the artillery and mortars of the assault armies opened fire and at 0745 hours every
Katyusha
launched its rocket salvoes, at which the gunfire pounded over the foremost German defences, while Soviet aircraft carried out their first attacks on German positions and reserves. When the guns laid down their ‘fire lanes’ at 0800 hours, the infantry and tanks moved forward into the attack. Within three hours Chistyakov’s 6th Guards and Zhadov’s 5th Guards assault units were through the main German positions; Rotmistrov’s great worry—how quickly Zhadov’s men could break in—was dissolved. Precisely at 1100 hours, Zhukov loosed 1st and 5th Guards Tanks Armies; at 1130 hours, 49th Tank Brigade. Ten minutes later, 200th Tank Brigade of Katukov’s 1st Tank had overhauled Zhadov’s riflemen and the full weight of 1st Tank Army burst after them. By 1 pm Rotmistrov’s 18th and 29th Tank Corps were also driving on at full speed. On the Steppe Front, 53rd Army and 48th Corps, for all the destruction wrought by the artillery fire, were caught up in some heavy fighting, and though Soviet troops drove some nine miles into the German defences, the pace was slackening.
Koniev made ready to deploy the 1st Mechanized Corps in 53rd Army area.

During the morning of 5 August, as further north Soviet troops cleared Orel of German rearguards, Koniev’s Steppe Front closed in on Belgorod: 69th Army moved in from the north, units of 7th Guards forced the northern Donets south of Belgorod, while 1st Mechanized Corps raced to the west past Belgorod to cut the road and rail links leading to Kharkov. The German garrison was encircled by noon; the furious street fighting that cleared the town left over 3,000 German dead in the ruins of Belgorod. Now Koniev could strike for Kharkov, though intelligence reported the presence of
SS Das Reich, Totenkopf, Wiking
and 3rd
Panzer
Divisions which had been moved back from the Izyum–Barvenkovo area:
SS Gross Deutschland
was moving into the Kharkov area from Orel. (Manstein had urgently requested the return of III
Panzer
Corps with its
SS
formations and 3rd
Panzer
Division from the Donets area and also the armour earlier moved up to Army Group Centre.) Vatutin’s Voronezh Front attack had meanwhile struck deep into the German positions; as Koniev’s men stormed Belgorod, the two tank armies were moving on to the south-west, their penetration already thirty miles deep. To widen the breach, Marshal Zhukov ordered Moskalenko and Trofimenko with 40th and 27th Armies to attack on a fifteen-mile front. This thrust from the north cut in for some eight miles, providing a right pincer arm and threatening to trap three German infantry and two
Panzer
divisions between Soviet rifle and tank armies at Borisovka. A 25-mile gap had been opened between Fourth
Panzer
and
Abteilung Kempf
(soon to become the Eighth Army). With 27th Army driving on Graivorona and Katukov closing from the south-west, the German divisions had to pull out fast down the one road to Golovchino open to them. As the German columns took to the road, German fighters carried out a series of mock dive-bombing attacks on their own men in an effort to mislead Russian forward observation that these were Red Army units under
Luftwaffe
attack. The ruse failed and Lt.-Gen. Varentsov, Voronezh Front artillery commander, ordered Trofimenko to bring all his artillery to bear on the columns; in the artillery fire, supplemented by Soviet air attacks, about fifty tanks were knocked out and Lt.-Gen. Schmidt, commander of 19th
Panzer
, was killed. To head off the German columns, 13th Guards Rifle Division rushed up a tank-supported battalion to Golovchino; twenty-four hours later the German units were hammered to death as 6th Guards drove into Borisovka and 13th Guards Division drew up to fight it out at Golovchino.

By 8 August Fourth
Panzer
and
Abteilung Kempf had
been thrust almost forty miles apart. Vatutin’s right wing pushed on to the south-west: Koniev’s formations were moving towards the outer defences of Kharkov. To augment this assault, Koniev acquired Lt.-Gen. Gagen’s 57th Army (South-Western Front) and Rotmistrov’s 5th Guards Tank Army, which operated within the area of Lt.-Gen. Managarov’s 53rd Army moving on Kharkov from the north-west; 53rd and 5th Guards Tank Army would outflank Kharkov from the north-west, 57th Army from the south-east, with 69th and 7th Guards Army coming straight on
to the German perimeter from the north-east. Koniev issued the formal attack directive on 10 August, on which morning Vatutin received
Stavka
orders instructing him to effect the isolation of Kharkov by cutting the road and rail links with Poltava, Krasnograd and Lozovaya; Katukov would therefore swing on to Balki and Rotmistrov’s units would aim for Merefa.

On the morning of 11 August, driving south from Bogodukhov, 1st Guards Brigade (1st Tank Army) cut the Kharkov–Poltava railway line. At this stage Fourth
Panzer
pressure on Katukov’s and Chistyakov’s western flank was steadily increasing; German counter-attacks were aimed at Bogodukhov and came from the south and south-east, while to the north-west, at Akhtyrka, German armour in some strength was assembling for another attack on Bogodukhov. South-east of Bogodukhov, on a line from Kadnista to Aleksandrovka,
SS
tank troops were aiming for the other flank of 1st Tank Army and for Zhadov’s 5th Guards. To counter, this, Vatutin moved up two corps from Rotmistrov’s tank army. The German attempt to chop off the Soviet spearheads failed for all the heavy fighting of 12–13 August. The main threat, however, still loomed at Akhtyrka; Vatutin now proposed to attack the flank and rear of the German forces by using 38th, 40th and 47th Armies, 2nd, 10th Tank Corps and 3rd Guards Mechanized Corps driving westwards, and 27th Army to advance to the south of Akhtyrka. When 47th and 27th Armies linked up, the German divisions in the Akhtyrka area would be encircled.

Koniev was meanwhile fighting the fourth and final battle of Kharkov, the city Hitler had determined to hold to the end. After 19 August Managarov’s 53rd was clear of the dense woods west and northwest of the city outskirts; Rotmistrov’s tank army, now down to about 150 tanks, held off German tank counter-attacks, while Gagen’s 57th got round to the south and right-flank units of 69th Army moved in from the west and north-west. During the afternoon of 22 August Soviet air reconnaissance reported small columns of German vehicles pulling out of Kharkov to the south-west. In the evening reconnaissance troops signalled larger withdrawals, with fires raging in the city and dumps being blown up. The escape route along the road and railway line to the south-west was covered by the guns and mortars of 53rd and 5th Guards Tank Armies as well as being under air attack. Koniev’s dilemma—whether to bottle the enemy up in the city or trap him while withdrawing—was resolved for him. Kharkov would be stormed at night. By dawn on 23 August two Soviet divisions, 183rd and 89th Guards, had reached the city centre; 89th Guards hoisted its red banner over the
Gosprom
building and by 11 am the city was clear of German troops. At noon Kharkov was officially liberated.

Towards the end of August the Red Army’s summer offensive, mounted on a vast front running from Velikie Luki in the north to the shores of the Black Sea, now roared into top gear. On the western axis, facing the Soviet Kalinin, Western and Bryansk Fronts, Army Group Centre fielded three armies (Third
Panzer
, Fourth and Ninth Armies) with fifty-five divisions and one brigade on
the south-western axis, opposite the Central, Voronezh, Steppe, South-Western and Southern Fronts, Army Group Centre deployed 35th Corps (Ninth Army) and Second Army, while Army Group South had Fourth
Panzer
, Eighth Army, First
Panzer
and Sixth Army, in all some sixty-eight divisions. On the Taman peninsula and in the Crimea was Seventeenth Army (and the Crimea operational group), a force of twenty-one divisions. Of the 226 German divisions and eleven brigades on the Eastern Front, 157 divisions and one brigade were on the Velikie Luki–Black Sea line with only insignificant reserves. Yet for all the numerical superiority suggested by the mass of Soviet divisions on the order-of-battle tables, these formations and units, especially in the south-west, had taken a tremendous hammering in the past seven weeks. The strongest Soviet tank army on 25 August was the 2nd with 265 tanks and
SP
guns, with Katukov’s down to 162 tanks and Rotmistrov’s reduced to 153. At the beginning of September, even though they were badly needed on the battle-fronts, the tank armies and individual tank corps had to be brought into reserve to rearm and refit. The Red Army had also just about consumed all the stocks of fuel and ammunition built up on the eve of the Kursk battles. Although in July–August the fronts received 26,619,000 shells and mines, they had fired off no less than 42,105,000 rounds and the dumps were running low. Nor could the railways, for all their fantastic shuttles and rapid short-hauls, cope with the traffic needed to shift supplies; traffic fell off disastrously in the area adjacent to the front where German wrecking and systematic demolition not only severed but actually tore the rail and the sleepers into little pieces.

Stalin’s immediate objective was to hurl the Soviet armies to the Dnieper on a broad front. This would recover the important industrial regions of the Donbas and the eastern Ukraine breadlands; Soviet troops were to advance westwards before the German command could in any way ‘stabilize’ the situation. (Hitler on 11 August had decided in principle for the
Ostwall
, the fortified barrier running from Kerch, along the Molochnaya and Dnieper rivers, along the upper reaches of the great barrier of the Dnieper on to Gomel and east of Orsha; here the German armies in the east would rest their backs, holding the western Ukraine and Belorussia secure for the
Reich.)
To operate on the ‘south-western axis’, where Stalin intended that the main blow should presently fall, the Soviet command had assembled and was maintaining, in spite of the severe logistical strains, a sizable force: 2,633,000 men on five fronts (Central, Voronezh, Steppe, South-Western and Southern), 51,200 guns and mortars, 2,400 tanks and assault guns supported by 2,850 aircraft—superior to the German forces, reckoned at one million men and 2,000 tanks, but not overwhelmingly so. The breakdown in supplies delayed the unrolling of the offensive—Rokossovskii’s was postponed for a week—but the armies of the south-west were to be driven with all speed to the Dnieper. In his correspondence with his allies, Stalin displayed a note of caution (9 August), but he hid the most gigantic plans behind this facade. Now he began to lay on all the trappings of his being the
generalissimo
—‘I am obliged
to be with the troops’; he must visit this or that sector of the front ‘more often than usual’; and a little later, in discussing his participation in a Big Three meeting, the date of the
rendez-vous
must depend on ‘the situation on the Soviet-German Front’, where ‘more than 500 divisions are engaged on both sides’ and where ‘the supervision of the Supreme Command of the USSR is required almost daily’. For a man who scarcely visited any front or any unit, and whose regulation of his command was minute, strict and all-pervading, the word ‘almost’ was a master-stroke in its disingenuousness.