Advance to the Dnepr, 24 August–6 November 1943
After the fall of Kharkov, any thoughts that the front might stabilize again vanished as the Soviets began a series of multi-front attacks against Heeresgruppe Süd from the Sea of Azov up to the Sumy sector. For two weeks, von Manstein tried to hold with his much-depleted forces but he was astonished by the Red Army’s ability to quickly replenish its own combat units and resume the offensive, almost without let up. Mladshiy Leytenant Yuri M. Polyanovski, a tank platoon leader in the 24th Guards Tank Brigade of 5 GMC, was one of the Soviet junior tank officers at the tip of this spear. Polyanovski had already survived having his first T-34 knocked out by enemy fire at Kharkov and was provided with a replacement tank a few days after the city’s liberation. Once outfitted with new tanks and crews, the 24 GTB moved out southward:
At dawn on 2 September, our three tanks were sent out to conduct a reconnaissance in force – that’s the military term for it, but in reality to get killed. The Germans opened fire and we fired back… I had to look into the periscope and bend toward the gun sight, and it was when I was looking through the sight that we got hit. The round pierced the turret above my head. It didn’t hit me, but slivers of armour struck my head, tore my helmet and damaged my skull. I fell on the tarpaulin covering the ammo. After that a fire started, since the next thing to get hit was the engine compartment. Much later I found out that the loader’s head was smashed…{172}
Not only did Vatutin and Konev continue to push south and west from Kharkov with the intention of taking the German supply base at Poltava next, but the Southwest Front attacked PzAOK 1 in the Donbas and the Southern Front renewed its attacks on AOK 6 on the Mius. Malinovsky’s Southwest Front had already gained a small bridgehead across the Northern Donets 8km south of Izyum between 17–27 July and on 16 August the 6th, 12th and 8th Guards Armies began to try and break out of the bridgehead. Von Mackensen’s PzAOK 1 had deployed the 23.Panzer-Division, 16.Panzergrenadier-Division and Sturmgeschütz-Abteilungen 203 and 282 to seal off the bridgehead. Malinovsky initially committed six rifle divisions and three tank brigades to break the German ring, then eventually fed the 1 GMC and 23 TC into the fight. The Soviets mounted a series of powerful tank-infantry attacks but only succeeded in pushing the German cordon back a few kilometres. Between 17–23 August, von Vormann’s 23.Panzer-Division claimed to have knocked out 302 enemy tanks, but suffered 1,817 casualties (including 482 dead or missing). In particular, PzAOK 1 was running out of infantry and von Vormann was forced to borrow infantry from other units to reinforce his badly-depleted Panzergrenadiers.{173}
Although Malinovsky’s attacks were held, Hollidt’s AOK 6 had much more difficulty in stopping Tolbukhin’s second attack across the Mius. After the departure of the Waffen-SS divisions for Kharkov, Hollidt lacked the forces to rebuild a solid front or reserves to prevent an enemy breakthrough. On 19 August the 2nd Guards Army attacked across the Mius near the boundary of the XVII and XXIX Armeekorps and quickly gained ground. Hollidt only had Generalleutnant Hellmut von der Chevallerie’s 13.Panzer-Division in reserve and it arrived piecemeal and too late to prevent a major breach in the front line. By 22 August, General-major Trofim I. Tanaschishin’s 4 GMC was across the river and pushing west, while the Germans were unable to seal the breach. Von Manstein tried to shuffle his limited armoured reserves around to keep the front from breaking, but virtually every sector now faced crisis. In order to reduce the threat to Stalino, he sent the 9. and 17.Panzer-Divisionen, but again they arrived too late to save the front. The 2nd Guards Army completely broke open the German HKL east of Stalino with the 13th Guards Rifle Corps, then conducted a textbook exploitation with the 2 GMC, 4 GMC and 4th Guards Cavalry Corps; by 29 August the Soviet armour and cavalry was pivoting southward to envelope General der Artillerie Erich Brandenberger’s XXIX Armeekorps (compromised of 13.Panzer-Division, the 17., 111. and 336.Infanterie-Divisionen, Luftwaffen Feld-Division 15 and Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 243) at Taganrog. The next day, Soviet tanks reached the Sea of Azov, isolating the German corps. It was only due to the quick thinking of von der Chevallerie, who quickly organized a breakout effort spearheaded by his 13. Panzer-Division, that the XXIX Armeekorps survived. After a day of fighting, the XXIX Armeekorps fought its way out of the Taganrog pocket to reach the rest of AOK 6. However, Brandenberger’s XXIX Armeekorps had lost a great deal of personnel and equipment in the breakout and Hollidt was unable to restore his frontline.
Although von Manstein had been able to limit the advance of Vatutin’s and Konev’s forces, he had no real reserves left to save AOK 6’s crumbling front and this situation quickly snowballed out of control. In an effort to create a new, shorter line, Hollidt pulled his XXX Armeekorps back and deployed the 17.Panzer-Division to hold Stalino on 2 September, but Tolbukhin increased the scale of his offensive and began attacking along the entire front of AOK 6. Within a few days, both the XXIX and XXX Armeekorps were forced to yield more ground and the dam burst on 6 September; Slavyansk and Kramatorsk were liberated by the 1st Guards Army and PzAOK 1’s front was split wide open. Even worse, Tolbukhin’s forces linked up with Malinovsky’s bridgehead near Izyum, which now expanded rapidly. In order to prevent the loss of Stalino, von Manstein decided to commit one of his newly-arrived Panther battalions, Major Fritz Fechner’s II./Pz.Rgt. 23, to restore the situation. Committed piecemeal as it arrived by train, Fechner’s battalion managed to delay the loss of Stalino for a few days but once again, the Panther’s experienced serious mechanical problems and at least half were non-operational within two days.{174} Despite the arrival of the Panthers, Stalino was liberated on 8 September.
During early September, von Manstein implored Hitler to authorize a retreat to the Dnepr, but the Führer still believed that Heeresgruppe Süd would stop the Soviet offensives, as they had in the past. Yet Tolbukhin had achieved a major breakthrough north of Stalino at Krasnoarmiis’k and General-leytenant Ivan N. Russiyanov’s 1st Guard Mechanized Corps (1 GMC) and General-leytenant Efim G. Pushkin’s 23rd Tank Corps were pushing rapidly west toward the Dnepr River at Dnepropetrovsk against negligible resistance. By 8 September, the vanguards of these two Soviet corps were approaching Pavlograd and were within 40km of the Dnepr. Von Manstein directed von Mackensen and Hollidt to make one last effort to cut off Tolbukhin’s spearheads and seal the breach in their front by means of a pincer attack. Vormann’s 23.Panzer-Division and the 16.Panzergrenadier-Division, which were subordinate to XXXX Panzerkorps, were reoriented to attack southward into Russiyanov’s exposed flank, while Fechner’s remaining Panthers (about 30 out of the original 96) were reinforced with some infantry and artillery into a combined-arms Kampfgruppe to attack Pushkin’s flank. Vormann’s division began the counter-attack on the morning of 9 September and slammed into the 266th Rifle Division at Slov’yanka; Tolbukhin had pushed some infantry units forward to hold open the breach, but they had yet to establish a strong defence. Vormann’s panzers were able to overrun and destroy this isolated Soviet rifle division and then began pushing south. It took Kampfgruppe Fechner longer to reorient and they did not join the attack until 11 September, but Fechner’s Panthers sliced into the flank of the 23 TC. On 12 September, Fechner’s Panthers linked-up with the 16.Panzergrenadier-Division, thereby isolating the 1 GMC and 23 TC near Pavlograd. Fechner established a blocking position on the main road with three Panthers and a platoon of pioniers, which indicates the paucity of German combat power at this point. Eight Soviet tanks which approached the roadblock were knocked out. Hollidt and von Mackensen had succeeded in closing the breach in the front with a pincer attack and inflicting a sharp tactical defeat on Tolbukhin’s advance guard, but the results were all for naught.