At the same time, von Manstein ordered Gruppe Kreysing to break out of Millerovo. Amazingly, the German Gebirgsjägers succeeded in escaping past the 18th Tank Corps and reached German lines near Voroshilovgrad. By 18 January, Armee-Abteilung Fretter-Pico was tucked in behind the Donetsk, protecting Hollidt’s left flank.
Amazingly, Gruppe Hollidt and Armee-Abteilung Fretter-Pico were able to halt Vatutin’s advance on the Donetsk and hold this line until 9 February. Although Vatutin managed to gain a bridgehead across the Donetsk in Fretter-Pico’s sector, he was stymied against Hollidt and forced to shift to the defence in this sector. Indeed, Soviet offensive pressure slacked off so much by late January that Hollidt was able to hold his sector on the Donetsk with just six depleted infantry divisions, enabling the 6.Panzer-Division to briefly pull back and refit. By 30 January, Raus’ Panzer-Division was back up to 64 operational tanks. Likewise, much of Popov’s 5TA was pulled back to refit, contributing to an operational pause for both sides in this sector. Yet Vatutin was ready to gamble that von Manstein had no further reserves and he had decided to shift his offensive toward von Manstein’s weak left flank on the northern Donets around Starobelsk. On 29 January, the Southwest Front began Operation Skachok (Gallop) with the intent of crossing the Donets and then swinging south into the rear of Heeresgruppe Don. It was a very bold plan, but Vatutin failed to maintain fixing attacks against Gruppe Hollidt, which allowed Hollidt to transfer the 7.Panzer-Division to deal with the crisis on his left flank. Soon thereafter, von Manstein pulled the remnants of Hoth’s PzAOK 4 back to reinforce Gruppe Hollidt, while he hurriedly transferred Mackensen’s PzAOK 1 to the northwest to counter Operation Gallop. As the situation in the west grew more critical, Hollidt was finally allowed to retreat from the Donets on 9 February and Rostov was abandoned on 13–14 February. Gruppe Hollidt then fell back to the Mius River, where it established a solid front for the rest of the winter.
The delaying actions fought by Gruppe Hollidt and Armee-Abteilung Fretter-Pico in January 1943 contributed greatly to the stabilization of the German southern front along the Donets after the disaster at Stalingrad and prevented 4.Panzerarmee and Heeresgruppe A from being isolated south of the Don. As von Manstein noted in his memoirs, Gruppe Hollidt’s defence ‘could never have been maintained had not our Panzer-Divisionen time and again shown up at danger spots at just the right moment.’{29} Nevertheless, the German defensive victory did not come cheaply. During January, Gruppe Hollidt suffered 14,909 casualties, including 4,808 dead or missing. During this period, the 6. and 11.Panzer-Divisionen lost a total of 89 tanks ‘totalausfalle’ (destroyed) and received 92 replacement tanks. At least nine of these replacement tanks were not new-build models but older, short-barrelled Pz III or Pz IV models from repair shops. On the Soviet side, Vatutin kept Popov’s 5 TA at the front too long and his armour reserves were spent, which led to the culmination of his offensive before reaching Rostov or cutting off Heeresgruppe A’s retreat. However, von Manstein opted to abandon Rostov in order to transfer armour to save his crumbling left flank, providing a consolation prize for Vatutin.
Destruction of the 2nd Hungarian Army, 12–29 January 1943
Before Vatutin could crush Heeresgruppe Don with Operation Gallop, the Stavka wanted to deal a fatal blow to Heeresgruppe B in the Voronezh sector in order to open the doorway to Kharkov. If both the Donbas and Kharkov could be liberated before the end of winter, the Red Army would have greatly weakened the Wehrmacht’s hold on the eastern Ukraine. Following the winning formula employed during Operation Uranus against the Romanians, the Stavka decided to make a maximum effort against the Hungarian 2nd Army and the remnants of the Italian 8th Army.
General Gustav Jány’s Hungarian 2nd Army held a 186km-wide sector along the Don, south of Voronezh. Jány commanded the III, IV and VII Army Corps, with a total of eight light infantry divisions. Although General-polkovnik Filipp I. Golikov’s Voronezh Front held a bridgehead across the Don in the Hungarian sector at Uryv, the Hungarian troops had occupied this sector for five months and were fairly well dug in. In open terrain, the Hungarian infantry divisions would have been at a major disadvantage against Soviet armour, since they were still equipped with 37mm and 47mm anti-tank guns and their division-level artillery was obsolescent. Nevertheless, Generaloberst Maximilian Freiherr von Weichs, commander of Heeresgruppe B, believed that with proper support the Hungarian 2nd Army could hold its own; he assigned two Luftwaffe Flak battalions to support the Hungarian IV Corps in the critical Uryv sector. Von Weichs also placed Generalkommando z.b.V. Cramer in Jany’s sector to act as a reserve, but under German command. Cramer’s force included two German infantry divisions and the Hungarian 1st Armoured Division. Altogether, the Hungarian 2nd Army was supported by about 100 Axis tanks and 40 assault guns, in the following units:
• The Hungarian 1st Armoured Division, under Brigadier General Ferenc Horváth, had the 30th Armoured Regiment with two tank battalions consisting of 50–60 operational Pz 38(t) light tanks and up to 20 older Pz IV medium tanks with short 7.5cm howitzers. In addition, Horváth’s division had a company of Toldi light tanks, a company of Csaba armoured cars and a battalion of Nimrod 40mm self-propelled AA guns that could also serve in the anti-tank role. By East Front 1943 standards, the Hungarian 1st Armoured Division was fragile, but it did have the structure of a combined arms team in its attached motorized artillery, infantry, engineers and AA which increased its overall combat value.
• In autumn 1942, Panzer-Verband 700 had been formed from a Panzer-Abteilung staff from 14.Panzer-Division and three Panzer-Kompanien from the 22.Panzer-Division, consisting of a total of 27 rather worn-out Pz 38(t) light tanks.{30}
• Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 190, commanded by Major Gerhard Peitz, was attached to Gruppe Cramer.
• Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 242 had just been organized in Germany in November 1942, but one Batterie was sent to Tunisia and the other two went to Heeresgruppe B. The two assault gun batteries were just unloading at Ostrogoshsk on 12 January when Soviet offensive was beginning and the battalion was hurriedly dispatched to support the Hungarian IV Corps.
South of the Hungarian 2nd Army, the remnants of the Italian 8th Army continued to hold a sector along the Don. The three-division Italian Alpine Corps was still relatively intact, plus one other division, but the 8th Army had no organic armour and negligible artillery and anti-tank capabilities. Von Weichs positioned General der Artillerie Martin Wendel’s XXIV Panzerkorps to protect the Italians’ right flank, even though this formation consisted of just the incomplete 27.Panzer-Division (this Panzer-Division had never fully formed and now consisted of just eight operational Pz III/Pz IV medium tanks and a regimental-size mixed arms Kampfgruppe) and a single German infantry division. In addition, the 19.Panzer-Division and Sturmgeschutz-Abteilungen 201 and 209 were deployed in the Italian sector, with 30–40 tanks and 50 or more assault guns. The area between Kantemirovka and Starobelsk was the most dangerous, since the Red Army was across the Don here in force and the seam between the Italian 8th Army and Armee-Abteilung Fretter-Pico was full of gaps.