Zhukov suspected Steiner was moving to counterattack somewhere, but when the news came that the SS had engaged on a wide front, he was not surprised. If they had concentrated, he thought, they would have surely penetrated the outer defense of our bridgehead, but it would have been like driving a sword into mud. The reinforcements I have sent will surely stop them, and then where does Manstein go? Yet he could not help but be impressed with what Steiner’s troops had done.
The Germans had moved 150 kilometers in 2 days, the men catching any sleep they could get during that marathon march. Pausing to engage 3rd Guards Army in a sharp six-hour battle before rolling out this broad front attack. It was a move akin to Rommel’s mad dashes across the Libyan desert in 1942. The General shook his head, determined to put a stop to this enemy counterattack. His own steel chariots were not far off, concentrating at Taranovka about 25 kilometers to the north. Once that concentration was complete, he would be holding a ball of steel that he could fling in any direction, and that decision would determine the outcome of this battle.
Zhukov walked slowly to the nearest signalman. “Notify General Trefimenko of 4th Guards. Tell him his Army is being compressed from two sides, and he should pull back to shorten his line immediately. I want no encirclements.”
Zhukov had fast moving mobile units as well, and by nightfall on the 5th of June, 2nd Guards Mech reached and passed through Taranovka in the center of his bridgehead. The Germans had shocked him by marching completely around the massive bulging bridgehead, effecting a linkup with 57th Corps, and now they were attacking towards that same town.
Kuliev’s Cavalry shattered against the cold steel of those German tanks, now a disorganized mass that was merely a physical obstacle, and not much of a fighting force. The Germans had been punching through 1st Motor Rifle Corps, but the tough Siberians were counterattacking. Combat took time, he thought, and 25 kilometers is not far for a mechanized force to go. Soon he would be mounting a charge of another kind, not with horsemen and sabres, but with swift moving iron steeds, and wave after wave of tanks.
The 3rd SS Totenkopf hit the line like an iron bolt. Its main attack would fall on the 3rd Guard Tank Corps. On its left, Grossdeutschland would surge against the tank brigades of 1st Guards Army, relentless in the attack. Steiner was coming through. The Germans drove through the hamlets of Kofano and Medvedovka, buildings on fire, smoke everywhere. By nightfall they had secured both and pushed another three kilometers, finally taking a brief pause to bring up ammunition to the forward units. There could be no stopping for darkness. Manstein knew he had to ask his men to fight all night again after their long march, and Steiner’s hardened veterans were fully prepared to do so.
But on the German left, Sepp Dietrich had to report he could make no further progress. “I’m fighting the entire 1st Guard Tank Army! They must have 500 tanks here. It’s all I can do to hold the line now.”
Manstein took the report with the grim realization that his enemy was now simply too strong to sweep off the field as he had done in the past. His men were tired, the battalions worn down, though the armor was holding up well and the reliability of the Lions was superb.
We’ve pushed them back ten or fifteen kilometers, he thought, but they will not run this time. They simply straighten their lines and reform to the rear. Luftwaffe recon flights show several motorized columns coming south towards Taranovka, so they are also moving units from the Kharkov front to try and stop us…. And they will.
They’re going to stop Steiner, and I have nothing else to throw at them. If they do this, it still leaves the road to Poltava very lightly defended. I will have to pull Das Reich out of the city and send it that direction now. Dietrich is covering the road to Krasnograd, but how much longer can he hold?
He realized, with a sinking feeling, that his thoughts were now turning to the defense, the image of a grand counterblow to delight Efendi now slowly dissipating like smoke in his mind.
We have hurt them, but they will not give way. They fought for this bridgehead, and now they are going to keep it. The darker implication was now quite apparent to him—the line of the Donets had now been fatally compromised. It was still solid at the base. Hollidt was still well forward of the river between the Oskol and Andreyevka, but the Donets now belonged to the Soviets from that city all the way north to Belgorod.
Kirchner could not take that bridge, but even if he had done so, it would not matter. They have more than adequate supply from the depots they built when they tried to envelop Kharkov from the south. I might have continued this mad dash around the bulge of their bridgehead, and even taken the bridge at Andreyevka, but then what? We would have left four armies on our flank, undefeated, and if I had crossed the river, I would have to drive another 25 kilometers to pose any serious threat to their communications and supplies. And these columns now approaching Taranovka would be converging southeast of Zimyev instead. We just do not have the strength to do what must be done.
I have been chasing a black cat in a dark room with this maneuver. Now I fear there is no cat…. I must look to the ground between the Donets and Dnieper, for when this battle ends, their next move will try our defense there, either on the road to Poltava, or to Krasnograd.
Those were roads sure to command the attention of generals and fighting men on either side, but not this night. Tonight, there was another road, and one of much greater importance, not for any battle that would be fought along its winding way, but for the silence that would settle over it that night.
“Speidel,” he said, calling his Chief of Staff.
“Sir?”
“Dietrich has been stopped. What is the situation with Grossdeutschland?”
“They are still pushing northeast, very near the road to Taranovka.”
“Well, I do not think they can get there on their own,” said Manstein with a shrug as he eyed the location on the map. There was nothing special about the town, other than the fact that a road and rail line met there, kissed briefly, and then ran off on their disparate ways. It was not the beating heart of the northern Ukraine, like the slate grey city of Kharkov that the Russians had been so keen to grasp. No, it was an outlier, one of many small towns in the orbit of that great metropolis. It was a road less traveled….
It was not chosen by Zhukov and his planners when they started their offensive. It just happened to be the center point in the region where the Soviets had achieved their greatest penetration into the German defensive front, and that fact alone made it important, as is any still point at the center of a circle, silently regarding the distant perimeter, and anchoring its radius as it expanded outward.
It became important when Kuznetsov chose it as a good place to begin setting up a supply depot. And it became even more important; endowed with a special, yet unspoken significance, when it first entered Manstein’s mind as a target of his counteroffensive. Now it would claim one more laurel, not for the fighting that took place there, for that night it sat in relative calm under the cold, unfeeling sky. No, instead it would join the much more prominent city of Kursk that spring, as a place the Germans could not reach. ‘The Road to Taranovka,’ had become a road to nowhere, and a realization in Manstein’s mind that this war was now a lost cause.
Lost victories, he thought grimly. Twenty kilometers from our line to that place, a distance I could walk on a night like this. But we cannot go there. I cannot take it, and that means much.
“Tell Hörnlein he is to disengage, swing to his left and support Dietrich. We must deal with their 1st Guard Tank Army. There is still a gap that can take them all the way to Poltava, and that is the force they will use to exploit it. I want to hurt them.”