Rybalko’s attached infantry units made three separate attempts on 4–6 February to cross the river, which was less than 50 metres wide at this spot, but each attempt was repulsed by intense German fire. Nor were Waffen-SS junior leaders like Meyer content to fight a static defensive battle, and instead he crossed the Donets and ambushed a Soviet column, inflicting an estimated 250 casualties before returning to the German-held side of the river.{47} Similarly, the Das Reich also opted for an active defence. Once the SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment Der Führer and the I./SS-Panzer-Regiment 2 arrived at the front, they were committed to a major counter-attack into the right flank of Rybalko’s 3TA on the morning of 5 February.{48} The Luftwaffe even managed to provide a few Stuka sorties to support the attack. Just after dawn, a Kampfgruppe from Der Führer and at least two companies of tanks attacked southward into the Soviet 48th Guards Rifle Division near Velikiy Burluk and caught it by surprise, advancing 10km. Rybalko was forced to detach the 179th Tank Brigade to deal with this enemy action, which distracted him from crossing the Donets. A second SS-Kampfgruppe, supported by 2./SS-Panzer-Regiment 2, pushed eastward toward the village of Olkhovatka. Rottenführer Ernst Barkmann, commanding a Pz III tank, was involved in the attack. Here, the Das Reich’s lack of recent mechanized combat experience was evident in the lack of reconnaissance prior to contact with the enemy. The overconfident SS-tankers rolled toward the town in a frontal assault, straight into a well-prepared anti-tank defence that shot them to pieces; about 13–14 tanks were knocked out. Barkmann’s Pz III was one of three that made it into the village and they encountered close-quarter combat:
At full speed the Panzer raced toward the village. ‘Watch out! Molotov Cocktails! Bottles filled with gasoline burst on the nose of the Panzer. Burning gasoline ran downward… Then the commander saw the flash from a muzzle and recognized a Pak behind a house corner. Opposite, the enemy Pak commander spotted the Panzer, which had closed in to about 30 meters. He brought the Pak around to destroy it. Barkmann saw the blank ring of the muzzle swing toward him. They were still some ten meters apart. ‘Run over the Pak!’ The engine howled. At the moment when the Panzer rammed the gun and pushed its barrel down, the shot roared. Two seconds too late! The shell hit the ground below the Panzer without effect.{49}
After securing the village, Barkmann’s Panzer was sent back to the assembly area to escort recovery vehicles to come and retrieve the damaged tanks, but was not able to return until after sunset. Driving back in the dark, through deep snow and with limited visibility, Barkmann’s Panzer became stuck in a drift. By the time that two FAMO recovery tracks found Barkmann’s tank at sunrise, Soviet infantrymen were closing in on his position and a 76.2mm anti-tank had been brought up to engage the immobilized tank. The Soviet anti-tank gunners were quite good, first destroying one FAMO and then shooting up Barkmann’s tank; he managed to escape on foot.
Frustrated by his inability to just push across the Northern Donets, on 7 February Rybalko sent Sokolov’s 6th Guards Cavalry Corps (6GCC), reinforced with the 201st Tank Brigade, to cross the Donets River further down at Andreyevka where the 6th Army had already secured a bridgehead and to sweep around to the south to cut the main German rail line heading into Kharkov. However, this cavalry raid was spotted and the Germans dispatched a Kampfgruppe from Das Reich that drove it off. Rybalko’s 3TA was effectively blocked and his timetable for taking Kharkov ruined. Instead, Rybalko began preparing for a deliberate assault crossing of the Donets and had to hope that Golikov’s other armies were doing better in their sectors. To the north, Kazakov’s 69th Army was slowly pushing back the Großdeutschland Division, but it was Moskalenko’s 40th Army, bearing down on Belgorod, that provided the means to unhinge the German defence on the Northern Donets. Although Moskalenko did not have a lot of tanks, he used them well, forming small mobile strike groups based upon the 116th and 192nd Tank Brigades. Korps z.b.V. Cramer only had the 168.Infanterie-Division defending Belgorod, which was easily bypassed by Moskalenko’s armour. Alarmed by the sudden appearance of Soviet armour near Belgorod, Cramer directed Großdeutschland to send its reconnaissance battalion and two motorized infantry battalions, along with five Pz IV tanks and two StuG IIIs, to reinforce the Belgorod sector, but it was too late. During the night of 7–8 February, Moskalenko’s troops fought their way into Belgorod, which threatened to envelop the entire German front north of Kharkov.
Combined with the loss of Belgorod, Kazakov’s 69th Army continued to push against Großdeutschland and Das Reich. On 8 February, Das Reich made another attack against Soviet forces near Velikiy Burluk, but once again failed to conduct adequate pre-battle reconnaissance and eight tanks were destroyed by anti-tank gun fire. For the first time, the Das Reich committed a few of its newly-arrived Tiger tanks, but the company commander SS-Hauptsturmführer Rolf Grader was killed in the opening action. After this, both Großdeutschland and Das Reich were obliged to withdraw across the Donets on 9 February.
By 10 February, the Großdeutschland was protecting the northern approaches to Kharkov, while Das Reich and LSSAH were defending the eastern approaches to the city. Hausser’s SS-Panzerkorps was still incomplete, since Totenkopf had not yet arrived. On the night of 9–10 February, Rybalko’s 3TA began its deliberate crossing of the Donets with infantry seizing small bridgeheads. On the morning of 10 February, elements of Koptsov’s 15th Tank Corps crossed and seized Pechenegi while General-major Mitrofan I. Zinkovich’s 12th Tank Corps did the same at Chuguyev. German resistance at the river’s edge was light, since the bulk of LSSAH had pulled back into a tighter perimeter closer to the city. The original concept for Operation Star was that Rybalko’s 3TA would envelop Kharkov by manoeuvre, rather than attempting to storm into the city with a frontal assault, but this was now abandoned. On 11 February, Rybalko’s two tank corps, supported by four rifle divisions, began attacking westward straight toward the city. Slow, grinding progress was achieved, but Rybalko’s tanks were being regularly picked off by Panzerjägers and StuG IIIs – this was not how a tank army was supposed to be employed. The Das Reich had established a strong defensive position at Rogan, east of the city, which could not easily be stormed without significant artillery preparation, but Rybalko’s tankers only had limited air and artillery support.
Meanwhile, Sokolov’s 6GCC continued to try and sweep around to the south of Kharkov and Hausser decided to conduct a major counter-attack to remove this threat to his line of communications. A covering force known as the Deckungsgruppe was left to hold off Rybalko, while an assault formation known as Angriffsgruppe Dietrich was assembled under the LSSAH’s commander SS-Obergruppenführer Sepp Dietrich consisting of three subordinate Kampfgruppen. Kampfgruppe Meyer had the LSSAH’s reconnaissance battalion, Sturmbannführer Max Wünsche’s I./SS-Pz Rgt. 1; Kampfgruppe Kumm consisted of two battalions from the SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment Der Führer and two companies from II./SS-Pz. Rgt. 1; Kampfgruppe Witt consisted of one infantry battalion from LSSAH, plus engineers, the Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung and artillery.{50} In addition, LSSAH committed five of its Tigers to the operation. This was a very large force, including half of Hausser’s available armour and a good portion of his infantry and artillery, leaving the defence of Kharkov short-handed. However, Hausser figured that he would be able to crush Sokolov in a couple of days and then return his forces to defend Kharkov before Rybalko could overcome the blocking position at Rogan. In order to achieve decisive results in warfare one has to accept risk, but that decision has to be based upon sober analysis, which in this case was lacking. The Germans did not have a lot of respect for Soviet cavalry, which heretofore had not been equipped with heavy weapons. However, Sokolov’s 6GCC was quite well equipped, since Rybalko had dispatched it to serve as a mobile group and in addition to its three cavalry divisions, had Polkovnik Ivan T. Afinogenovich’s 201st Tank Brigade (equipped with 25–30 Matilda and Valentine tanks), a multiple rocket launcher battalion, an anti-tank regiment with 76.2mm ZiS-3 guns and an anti-tank battalion with 45mm guns.