Northeast of Tirgu Fromos, the Soviet 27th Army attacked the right flank of Füsilier-Regiment Großdeutschland and a regiment from the 46.Infanterie-Division with three rifle divisions. Bogdanov supported the attack with about 120 AFV, including 16 JS-2s from the 6th Separate Heavy Tank Regiment. This attack achieved some success, penetrating over 5km into the German line, which caused Bogdanov to commit Dubovoi’s 16 TC to exploit the perceived gap. Before noon, the JS-2s drove into the town of Facuti and began to engage German artillery and headquarters troops. This was a tense moment for von Manteuffel, whose own armour was fully engaged at this point. However, von Edelsheim committed both his Kampfgruppen, which attacked into Dubovoi’s exposed flank with about 40 tanks and assault guns. Two of Dubovoi’s brigades were shot-up, losing perhaps 40 tanks, and the rest of the corps was routed. Amazingly, Kirchner’s LVII Panzerkorps had repulsed Konev’s offensive and inflicted heavy losses upon the 2 TA and 5 GTA, amounting to about 150–200 tanks and self-propelled guns.{37} Out of about 36 tanks engaged, Großdeutschland lost six tanks destroyed and eight damaged.
Konev refused to accept that Kirchner’s defence around Tirgu Fromos was still solid and decided to renew the attack on 3 May. Massing his remaining armour, infantry and artillery, Konev tried to bash his way through Kirchner’s lines on a narrower front, but the 8.8cm flak guns from Großdeutschland inflicted a ‘tank slaughter’ upon Rotmistrov and sharp counter-attacks by the Großdeutschland, 24.Panzer-Division and Kampfgruppe Beiermeier from Totenkopf repulsed every Soviet attack. After two days of combat, Konev had fewer than 200 AFVs still operational, but he tried again on 4 May; this final surge only resulted in more needless casualties and left’s Konev’s exhausted and depleted forces over-extended. He decided to shift to the defence and pulled Rotmistrov’s 5 GTA back to refit. Bogdanov’s 2 TA was reduced to just 35 tanks and 12 self-propelled guns.{38} Sensing the weakness of Konev’s front-line units, Kirchner mounted two combined-arms counter-attacks with infantry, panzers and some air support on 7 May, which caught the Soviet 7 GA and 27 Army flat-footed. Both Großdeutschland and 24.Panzer-Division were able to recover some key terrain and inflict painful losses on Konev’s forces. Following this success, both sides shifted to the defence in northern Romania.
However, the Stavka had hoped that Malinovsky’s 3rd Ukrainian Front could mount an offensive across the Dniester from its small Tashlyk bridgehead and set the stage for a push toward Kishinev. Rather than used the depleted units already in the bridgehead, Malinovsky opted to bring up his relatively fresh 8th Guards Army (8 GA) and 5th Shock Army to take their places. It is always dangerous conducting a relief in place under the gaze of an alert enemy and the German 6.Armee (AOK 6), now under General der Artillerie Maximilian de Angelis, spotted what Malinovsky was attempting to do and decided to pre-empt it. General der Panzertruppen Otto von Knobelsdorff formed an assault group based around his XXXX Panzerkorps, comprised of the 3., 13. and 14.Panzer-Divisionen, two assault gun brigades and two infantry divisions. On the morning of 10 May, von Knobelsdorff attacked with all three Panzer-Divisionen on line after an artillery preparation and rapidly penetrated the Soviet perimeter of their bridgehead. General-leytenant Vasily I. Chuikov, hero of Stalingrad, commanded the 8 GA in the bridgehead, but his units were not ready to repel an attack by over 100 German tanks and assault guns. Chuikov had only 10 tanks in the bridgehead and his artillery was very short of ammunition. The Germans struck while Chuikov’s divisions were still moving into the bridgehead and they were shattered. In three days of heavy fighting, von Knobelsdorff’s Panzers greatly reduced the Soviet bridgehead and inflicted up to 30,000 casualties upon Chuikov’s veteran 8 GA; thousands of Soviet soldiers were taken prisoner.{39}
Malinovsky attempted to reduce the pressure on Chuikov’s battered 8 GA by ordering the 5th Shock Army to mount a supporting attack across the Dniester, but von Knobelsdorff’s assault troops handily defeated this effort and inflicted 20,000 more Soviet casualties. With both Konev’s and Malinovsky’s fronts defeated, the Stavka had no choice but to postpone a major push into Romania until the summer months. Not only did Heeresgruppe Südukraine conduct a very successful defence, but Wöhler’s AOK 8 even continued local attacks in June to disrupt Konev’s forces north of Jassy. For the Red Army, once again the danger of continuing offensives with badly depleted forces was made evident, which played to the German strength of striking back at over-extended Soviet spearheads. It was also a very poor idea to use valuable tank armies in the infantry support role. For the Germans, the victory in defending the Dniester in April-May demonstrated the value of a mobile defence and was one of the last occasions where Panzer-Divisionen achieved a significant operational-level success.
Operation Bagration and its Aftermath, 22 June–31 August 1944
Contrary to popular Eastern Front historiography, the Stavka did not ignore Heeresgruppe Mitte during the winter of 1943–44 and mounted several major attacks against the Vitebsk salient held by 3.Panzerarmee (PzAOK 3) and against 4.Armee (AOK 4) at Orsha. Despite some tense moments, Heeresgruppe Mitte’s central defences held, even if both flanks were increasingly vulnerable. Nevertheless, Heeresgruppe Mitte still suffered over 128,000 casualties between January and mid-June 1944, including 36,000 dead or missing. The drain of constant casualties and the influx of partly-trained replacements led to a stark reduction in the quality of many of the divisions in Heeresgruppe Mitte. Half of the infantry units were at 50 per cent strength or less, but each was expected to hold 20km or more of the front. Under Generalfeldmarschall Ernst Busch, Heeresgruppe Mitte settled into a Stellungskrieg (positional warfare) mindset and focused on building up impregnable defences. Each German division established minefields and obstacles to their front and alternate defence lines to their rear. The cities of Bobruisk, Mogilev, Orsha and Vitebsk were converted into strong defensive hedgehogs, intended to act as obstacles to any Soviet advance. The terrain in this area, replete with marshlands and forests, favoured the defence and made the large-scale use of armour seem improbable. Due to Soviet advances in the Ukraine, Heeresgruppe Mitte now held a large salient, centred around Minsk, which offered the theoretical advantage of using the ‘central position’ tactic which had worked well in the defence of previous salient, such as Rzhev. However in order for the tactic to work, the defender had to have mobile reserves.
In May 1944, Model began requesting that the OKH transfer him additional armoured formations in order to mount a counter-offensive to recover ground east of L’vov. In reality, Model simply wanted additional armoured reserves to deal with the next round of Soviet offensives and he was able to convince Hitler and the OKH that Heeresgruppe Nordukraine was likely to receive the enemy’s main blow, rather than Heeresgruppe Mitte. Eventually, Hitler authorized the transfer of the LVI Panzerkorps (4. and 5.Panzer-Divisionen, s.Pz.abt.505 and Sturmgeschütz-Brigade 237) from Heeresgruppe Mitte to Heeresgruppe Nordukraine on 29 May, which effectively deprived the former of its primary armoured reserves. Instead, Heeresgruppe Mitte was left with only a single Panzer-Division in operational reserve – Generalleutnant Mortimer von Kessel’s 20.Panzer-Division, which had a single Panzer-Abteilung with 71 Pz IVs. In addition, Heeresgruppe Mitte had s.Pz.Abt.501, with 20 operational Tigers.