The Eastern Front Week by Week

Eastern Front #33 Back to Königsberg

Last time we spoke about Stalin’s General Offensive. Stalin, buoyed by early Moscow-area and Rostov successes, ordered a broad encirclement strategy across multiple fronts; Center, North, Leningrad, and Ukraine, aiming to drain German reserves before spring. Zhukov warned that concentrated reserves and heavy tank support were essential, but Stalin and Stavka pushed a wide-front offensive, overestimating Red Army strength while underestimating logistics and fuel shortages. The result was a cascade of rushed operations, poor coordination, and insufficient artillery support, tempered by pockets of resilience at lower levels. On the German side, logistical strain, winter conditions, the Luftwaffe’s varied effectiveness, and stiff Soviet pressure forced ad hoc German withdrawals and rearguard acts. Brutal fighting broke out around Lake Ilmen, Volkhov, and the Bryansk corridor, with dramatic German political-military frictions and punitive measures for commanders who disobeyed or failed. 

This episode is Back to Königsberg

Well hello there, welcome to the Eastern Front week by week podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

 

The Soviet Army had launched relentless attacks across the USSR against Army Group North and Army Group Center. Both groups had been driven into crisis, with breaches opening up at multiple points along their lines. Soviet formations continued to press deep behind German lines. Army Group Center faced a serious threat of encirclement, while Manstein conducted attacks in Crimea. 

After their three-day rest, the Volkhov Front had restarted their offensive on the 13th. This time, they fought with better organization and artillery support, although ammunition remained in short supply. Despite these improvements, the offensive still faced the challenge of being directed through roadless, snow-covered frozen swampland. This further strained the already stretched logistics, causing extreme shortages of all supplies. Moreover, Meretskov once again failed to concentrate strength against single points, instead dispersing his efforts over a wide area. With the offensive not meeting expectations, Meretskov continually begged for further reinforcements throughout the entire week. On the 19th january STAVKA sent 3,000 PPSh submachine guns (my favorite gun from Call of duty world at war) and 300 antitank rifles and released 9 ski battalions and an aerosleigh transport battalion to his control.

The 2nd Shock Army moved to attack the junction of the 126th and 215th Infantry Divisions. The 126th had only recently arrived from France and was still acclimating to the harsh winter conditions. As the Soviet assault struck, they began to panic, allowing the 2nd Shock Army to push into the German defensive line. Yet the main strongpoints west of the Volkhov and Tigoda rivers withstood the assault. The flanking 4th and 52nd Armies achieved even less, and both units shifted to a defensive posture by the 15th. After regrouping, Klykov launched another assault on the 17th. With the support of over 1,500 sorties from the VVS, the 2nd Shock Army managed to pierce the first layer of German defenses and advanced up to 10 kilometers. Yet many vital German strongpoints remained standing, hindered by the same failures as before. David Glantz “poor command, control, and coordination, the dispersed nature of the assaults, and deteriorating weather conditions, and heavy losses.” 

The Leningrad Front’s 54th Army also attacked alongside the Volkhov Front starting on the 13th. Fediuninsky repeated Meretskov’s mistake by dispersing his offensive along the entire 30-kilometer frontline rather than concentrating efforts on a single point. Despite undermining his own offensive, they managed to capture Pogostye by the 17th, confronting a heavily reinforced 269th Infantry Division. This small gain, however, did not suffice to breach the German defensive lines. The remainder of the Leningrad Front stayed relatively quiet, with only a few minor attacks mounted from Leningrad and Oranienbaum. This allowed Leeb to pull sizable detachments from three divisions on the siege lines to reinforce the divisions engaging the Volkhov Front. The Luftwaffe and SS also dispatched detachments to this sector.

This setback prompted Stalin to strip the 54th Army of its right flank to expand Sukhomlin’s 8th Army. Both formations were ordered to smash the German defenses around Lodva. Afterwards, the 8th Army was to advance westward until it united with the 55th Army at Tosno. The 54th Army was still to advance to the southwest, join with the 2nd Shock Army at Liuban, and then destroy the encircled Germans. Both armies failed to gain any meaningful ground during the week. Their only benefit had been to tie down German forces in the north.

As soon as the Volkhov Front had restarted its offensive, Halder immediately noted the increased pressure on Army Group North, which were already struggling with the fighting around Staraya Russa. He also recorded that Leeb wanted to withdraw, but Hitler denied permission. Halder War Diary January 13th "The southern wing of AGp. North came under heavy pressure today as the result of an attack against 123d Division by elements of four divisions across the frozen lakes. Von Leeb is at once thinking of withdrawing. Fuehrer disapproves." Halder reasoned that a withdrawal would create a massive gap between Army Group North and Army Group Center. This forced Leeb to issue an ultimatum on the 15th: either he would be relieved, or he would be granted permission to retreat south of Lake Ilmen. “Leeb asked either that he be relieved or that he be allowed to order the retreat [south of Lake Il'men'] while he still had some room for maneuver." Halder “Put all of the powers of the General Staff in motion . . . and extirpate this mania for operation. The army group has a clear mission to hold and the highest command will assume all the risk." Two days later, Hitler removed Leeb on grounds of health and replaced him with Küchler. Leeb’s chief of staff was also replaced.

By the 11th, the 188th Rifle Division reached the outskirts of Staraya Russa. This move severed the only road supplying the 2nd Corps at Demiansk. They were followed by two more rifle divisions, all preparing to assault the vital town. Inside Staraya Russa stood about 6,500 Germans defending a 31-kilometer perimeter. One third were hastily armed construction or Luftwaffe personnel. The remainder came from the 18th Motorised Division and reconnaissance troops from the SS Totenkopf. Although infantry was lacking, the garrison was relatively well supplied, with 28 large-caliber artillery pieces and mortars alongside four 88mm Flak guns. However, the city’s defenses were organized to the east, north, and west; only the southern sector was held by support troops.

From the 12th, Morozov attempted to exploit the situation by attempting to envelop the city with three ski battalions and a rifle regiment. On the 13th they attacked the unguarded southwestern sector of Staraya Russa. Two battalions managed to cut the main road to Shimsk and the railway line. Erdemannsdorff mounted a desperate counterattack with artillerymen and rear-area troops. This destroyed the two battalions that had entered the city but could not dislodge the troops encircling it. With the railway severed, the garrison was now entirely dependent on Luftflotte 1 for aerial resupply. Following the failure of the flanking attack, Morozov brought up artillery to shell the garrison into submission. Meanwhile, the 10th Army Corps threw every possible formation into the line to contain the Soviet advance. This included the SS police battalions normally reserved for rear-line security. Hasen also began planning a counterattack, using the slowly arriving battalions from the 81st Infantry Division.

This week, the 34th Army launched its attack on the 290th Division. Its strongpoints were too widely spread to mutually support one another, allowing easy infiltration between them. Rapidly, their supply lines were cut and then picked off one by one. Once the breach in the line grew large enough, they sent the 202nd Rifle Division to cut the Lychkovo railway line. The 290th Infantry Division was now trapped between both the 11th and 34th Armies. At the same time, the 3rd Army finally managed to concentrate enough forces to make advances led by the 257th and 31st Rifle Divisions. These divisions pushed into the rear of the 123rd Infantry Division, slowly forcing it to abandon its strongpoints to avoid encirclement. This allowed the Army to press toward Kholm and compelled General Rauch to reorganize his line to cover this penetration. At Kholm, a makeshift force of infantry and SS police units was being formed. The first elements of the 218th Infantry Division arriving were rushed by truck toward Kholm, accompanied by large stocks of supplies. The rest of the division, with an attached artillery regiment, would be sent as soon as more transport became available.

Meanwhile, the 4th Shock Army pressed on toward Toropets. Roughly halfway from Peno, the 60,000-strong shock army met a 3,800-strong blocking detachment from the German 189th Infantry Regiment, dug in near Okhvat to buy time for reinforcements. On the 13th, the 249th Rifle Division, with a tank battalion, attacked the Germans but could seize only part of the village. In response, Eremenko deployed his ski troopers to bypass the German regiment. By the 14th, the Germans were surrounded. They attempted a breakout on the 15th. Only 160 men would return to German lines at Toropets, but they had delayed Eremenko for several vital days.

At the start of the week, Vyzama stood only 120 km south of Konev’s forces and 85 km from the nearest of Zhukov’s troops. If this gap were closed, the bulk of four German armies could be trapped inside a giant pocket. All the army commanders could see the danger, yet the German High Command still seemed blind to it. Kübler lamented, “The leadership has allowed the operational breakthrough to happen, reacting to none of the reports … We are behaving like the Russians, remaining stationary and allowing ourselves to be encircled.” Others, like Heinrici, were becoming near resigned to their impending defeat. 11th january letter home to his wife “Everything has come true exactly as I told my superiors. They have declined all suggestions out of fear of the highest authority. If it is Kluge or Kübler (our new army commander), they are all afraid of the highest authority. And he himself leads according to platitudes such as “no Napoleonic retreat”; he leaves the flanks open and gives the enemy all the time in the world to march around us and to attack from behind. One hopes that new divisions will be brought up. But they are coming so slowly and in such small numbers, it is simply not good enough to get us out. Thus, the Russian is going to win his first battle of annihilation against us. However, it is hard to accept this fate when it is so obvious that the reason for this development is due to the stubbornness of our leaders. There would have been measures to turn things around, if they had decided to disengage three weeks ago, fourteen days ago, even five or six days ago. We have made suggestions often enough. But the new army high commander refused them all, and haggles over whether or not to give up twenty of the 1,200 conquered kilometers. And yet it is completely irrelevant where in Russia we are”. 

Yet Hitler could not bring himself to admit that a retreat was needed. In his view, any retreat equaled defeat, a logic that conflicted with the immense distances and strategic depth of the USSR. He remained convinced that reinforcements would arrive to counter the threatened sectors, drawn from quieter parts of the front and from formations arriving from France and Germany. Even Halder was beginning to grow frustrated with the vacillation.  14th January “The Führer realizes the necessity of pulling back, but makes no decision. This kind of leadership can only lead to the annihilation of the army”. On the 10th, Hitler announced he wanted to speak with Kluge personally. A snowstorm delayed their meeting to the 11th. Kluge, however, left empty handed, with Hitler only allowing the retreats that had already caused Hoepner to be fired the previous week. Hitler had wanted to discuss any other topic; when pressed, he stated that every day and every hour the withdrawal was delayed was a gain for the Wehrmacht. There would be no coordinated retreat to the Königsberg line, despite Kluge's urgent wishes.

STAVKA demanded Konev capture Rzhev by the 11th, and no later than the 12th, even if it meant the destruction of the city. “Seize control of Rzhev on January 11 or in no case later than January 12 … The Stavka recommends for this purpose the use of all available artillery, mortar and aviation in the area to hammer the city of Rzhev, not stopping short of serious destruction of the city.” The German garrison holding Rzhev had carved a massive salient into the Soviet breakthrough. The 29th Army tried to envelop the city from the west, reinforced by divisions taken from the 39th Army. Wave after wave was hurled at the German defenders. One company from the 183rd Rifle Division was reduced to just six men. Despite these desperate attacks, the Germans maintained their hold on the city.

Simultaneously, the 39th Army was ordered to press on to Sychevka, led by the 9th Cavalry Corps. There, it was hoped to capture the German stockpiles and sever the Vyazma-Sychevka-Rzhev rail line that supplied the 9th Army in a second focus. Sychevka was reached on the 15th. The forces managed to secure the rail station, but the German defenders still held control of the town itself. Building on the success of the 4th Shock Army, the 22nd Army attacked on the 15th and made rapid gains of up to 120 km. The weak 11th Cavalry Corps had been ordered to exploit the breach created by the 39th Army and sever the German supply lines to Viazma. It was hoped they would unite there with Belov’s Cavalry Corps, which was approaching through the gap near Kaluga.

Strauss also fervently desired a withdrawal, as his army found itself double-enveloped. A report to OKH “The Fourth Army, Fourth Panzer Army, Third Panzer Army and Ninth Army are double-enveloped. The absolutely last opportunity to prevent their destruction is to take them into the Gzhatsk-Volga position [the Königsberg Line] which may free enough strength to eliminate the northern arm of the envelopment west of Rzhev.” He had been forced to strip the 1st Panzer Division from Reinhardt and rush it to Sychevka to block the eastward flank of the 9-km-wide Soviet breach in his lines. Yet Strauss had nothing to prevent the Soviet advance south toward Vyazma. The advancing Soviet cavalry had already compelled Strauss to move his headquarters from Sychevka to Vyazma. By the 13th, he was pleading with Kluge to permit a withdrawal, but OKH ignored his reports.

Strauss wanted to focus the isolated 23rd Corps on a counterattack to seal the breach in his line. On the 15th, however, Kluge bypassed Strauss and ordered the corps to withdraw 16 km while maintaining its stretch of the line. This was likely intended as a demonstration of no confidence in Strauss. After Kluge refused to modify the order, Strauss demanded sick leave in protest. By the 16th, this request was accepted by Kluge. Walter Model was promoted, bypassing the seniority of 15 officers in the Army Group. Model only made a quick stop at 9th Army HQ on the 16th due to being ordered to Kluge’s HQ and then Wolf’s lair. There Model snubbed meeting Strauss, only meeting Blaurock and chief of staff Hans Krebs to discuss plans.   Strauss - “Model agreed in a general manner to the plans of the army and proceeded to Army Group Centre, and to Hitler, without bothering to call upon me.” Model immediately demanded plans to close the gap between the 23rd Corps and the rest of the 9th Army for the following week, and he pressed for the 1st Panzer to be far more aggressive. In an active defense role from the 17th, they exploited the Soviet lack of heavy weaponry to reclaim several villages. The SS Das Reich division was also transferred to the Rzhev area to assist the planned counterattack, but the redeployment proceeded slowly.

It would take until the 12th for Ruoff and Röttiger to reach the 4th Panzer Army HQ, leaving them without a commander or chief of staff for three days. Yet Hoepner’s fated withdrawal had saved the Panzer Army from the same pressure bearing down on the 4th Army. The withdrawal of the 20th and 7th Corps shortened the Army’s front. Model would also have liked to withdraw across the River Ugra (Rusa) due to the time required to move his vehicles, but Kluge refused. Only Ruoff’s old 5th Corps was in real danger from Soviet assaults as it struggled to maintain the connection with the 3rd Panzer Army. If they broke, every single army in Army Group Center would face at least one open flank. That looming danger had also caused Ruoff’s delay. On the same day Ruoff left the 5th Corps, it was transferred to Reinhardt’s Panzer Army. Reinhardt would also receive the 27th Corps from the 9th Army. However, much of the 1st Panzer Division was attached directly to the 9th Army. It was hoped that by making Reinhardt directly responsible for these formations, he would act to prevent their collapse. He still demanded more fuel to save the 5th Corps, which Strauss promised to airlift. Despite this, Reinhardt pressed for permission to withdraw due to the encirclement threat, but the request was refused.

While both Panzer Armies could handle the majority of Soviet infantry-led assaults, occasional tank-led attacks supported by higher-quality infantry nearly always created major problems. For example, an assault on the 13th would overrun Model’s defenses at Bolvasovo, Kur’ianovo, and Il’inskoe. The newly shaped charge “red-head” rounds had improved German anti-tank capabilities. However, their large-scale rollout was still slow, and not all formations possessed them in sufficient quantities. Thus many formations remained reliant on artillery or Flak 88s for anti-tank duties. Furthermore, both formations’ lines were rather leaky, with Soviet ski troops constantly bypassing the dispersed strongpoints that comprised the German defenses. On the 14th, Reinhardt again requested permission to withdraw. When Strauss refused, Reinhardt threatened to issue the order himself. Reinhardt diary entry. “Has nobody the courage [to act] before it is too late?” However, Hoepner’s example of restraint prevented such action. Instead, Hoepner contacted Kluge, who managed to placate him for the time being.

Between the 4th Panzer Army and the 4th Army there lay a 15 km gap through which the Soviets had breached. The northern lynchpin of the 4th Army’s defensive line was Medyn. The Soviets attacked the town every day. By the 12th, Kübler was convinced the town had to be abandoned. However, if it fell, the Soviets would have free rein to reach Yukhnov and encircle the 4th Army at the “Schanja position.” In that area, the remnants of 4th Corps were packed into a 40 by 32 km zone. A fifth corps stretched along a 64 km porous frontline west of Yukhnov, defending the road supplying the Army. Yet supply to the Army was being frustrated by a battalion of Soviet paratroopers that had landed the previous week. After failing to secure their initial objective and without reinforcement, they raided German supply lines and demolished bridges as they steadily worked to rejoin Soviet lines and link up with the 43rd Army. All of this gave Kluge the leverage to persuade a reluctant Hitler of the need to withdraw from Medyn. He used this as cover to withdraw the entire 4th Army from the bulge. Movement, however, could only be conducted at night, as during the day they remained under constant Soviet assault. This constraint slowed progress to a crawl. The 4th Army advanced only 5 to 10 km per day, but with each passing day their position grew stronger as the line shortened and formations became more concentrated.

On the 15th, Hitler finally yielded to the pressure and approved Kluge’s withdrawal back to the Königsberg line.  Hitler’s Order “Since it has not been possible to close the gaps to the north of Medyn and to the west of Rzhev, I grant the request of the Commander-in-Chief of Army Group Centre to withdraw the front of the Fourth Army, the Third and Fourth Panzer Armies to the line east of Yukhnov—east of Gzhatsk—east of Zubtsov [eighteen kilometers southeast of Rzhev]. The resistance line should be placed so that the Yukhnov-Gzhatsk-Zubtsov road, serving as a link behind the front, remains out of reach of enemy weapons … It is the first time in this war that I have given the order to withdraw a larger section of the front. I expect that this retreat will be completed in a manner that is worthy of the German Army. The troops’ feeling of superiority over the enemy and their fanatical will to do him the greatest possible damage must also prevail during the retreat ”.

Some formations would need to retreat as much as 75 km, but once completed Army Group Center’s front would be about 100 km shorter. Hitler continued to make demands—for example, that the breakthrough west of Rzhev be closed and that Suchinitschi be relieved. He also insisted that the retreat be conducted in a way that “the troops’ feeling of superiority over the enemy and their fanatical will to do him the greatest possible damage must also prevail during the retreat.” In a similar vein, on the 17th Halder issued an Ostheer-wide order calling for a cessation of what he described as an excessive worship of numbers by staff officers, which he regarded as an insult to the fighting spirit of the soldiers. ““It is not acceptable that a command should succumb to an obsession with figures, which only emphasizes the large number of units on the enemy’s side and the present decline of fighting power on our side… “Then there will be an end to the situation—which is quite unacceptable to the German general staff, when time and again the fighting spirit and toughness of our troops have put to shame the worried number-worshippers in the staffs.” Kluge was only too happy to accept these demands without argument. Now he faced the Soviets rather than his own high command. Yet Ruoff and Reinhardt remained forbidden from withdrawing until Kluge gave permission. A free-for-all retreat would have doomed the 4th Army and the 3rd Panzer Army. Reinhardt chafed at the restriction until Kluge warned that any disobedience would not be tolerated. The 4th Army bore the greatest distance to travel and the greatest danger. Its withdrawal to Königsberg began immediately, all under constant Soviet attack.

To the south, both the 2nd Army and the 2nd Panzer Army had fully stabilized their lines, expanding a 240 km front. All their major formations had survived, though at heavy material cost. They had also managed to hold onto the important cities of Briansk, Oryol, and Kursk. Morale was beginning to recover from its dive during the retreat. Unknown German soldier “Well, the most terrible, worst and most exhaustive days now seem to be behind us, and we have stopped in a village and arranged so-called winter quarters … The front line has come to a halt and in the spring it is back on the road and forward again! To the final victory!” The panzer and motorised divisions continuously conducted small raids on the Soviet forces, preventing any major Soviet buildup against the river-line defenses.

Hitler’s lifting of the Halt order did not apply to the Armies. The 53rd Corps stood bulging south of Belev, with four weakened divisions and a small battlegroup from the 3rd Panzer Division facing constant attacks from seven Soviet divisions. Weikersthal was convinced his corps was on the verge of breaking by the 15th, but not only was he denied relief, Hitler insisted that no movement of the corps or its divisions could occur without approval from a higher command. This internal drama served as a distraction from the buildup of the relief force for the embattled garrison at Suchinitschi. The 24th Corps was assembling a collection of battlegroups and other elements drawn from all the divisions of the Panzer Army. The 19th Corps was considered the earliest feasible start date for an offensive.

The 4,000 German troops isolated at Sukhinichi had only intermittent radio contact with the outside world. They managed to resist the relatively passive siege being conducted by the Soviet 10th Army, which believed it had all the time in the world. In addition, the Soviet 50th Army, which was primarily focused on capturing Yukhnov, operated in the sector. Meanwhile, Group Belov concentrated on penetrating deep behind German lines and had reached the Warsaw highway by the end of the week. Schmidt’s preparations for an offensive were hampered by a sharp upturn in partisan activity in his rear areas. A substantial number of Red Army soldiers remained at large from the Battle of Bryansk, coalescing into partisan bands. These groups were now receiving supplies from Soviet air drops and even managing to link up with advanced detachments of Soviet units. Road movement was exceptionally slow due to heavy snowfall, routinely taking more than 9 hours to cover 8 km. On the 15th, the 2nd Army was transferred to the command of Army Group South to ease some of Kluge’s burden. The sole exception was the 35th Corps, which remained attached to the 2nd Panzer Army. On the same day, Maximilian von Weichs recovered from his illness and resumed duty as commander of the 2nd Army. This left Schmidt to concentrate his attention solely on the 2nd Panzer Army and the widening gap between him and the 4th Army.

On the 17th, the 17th Corps of the 6th Army attempted an offensive toward Prokhorovo to secure a link with the 2nd Army. However, the 2nd Army could not launch a concurrent attack, limiting the effectiveness of this push. As a result, Soviet 40th, 21st, and 38th Armies were free to press their offensive toward Kharkiv, though their attacks met strong resistance from the well-entrenched German 2nd and 6th Armies. On January 13th, Reichenau suffered a stroke. Kleist was initially chosen as a stand-in replacement, but the next day he was replaced by Hoth. That same day, Hitler recalled Field Marshal Bock to become commander of Army Group South. It would not be until the 20th that Bock assumed command, as he had been on furlough in the Austrian mountains after recovering from intestinal issues. Bock would also attend Reichenau's funeral alongside Rundsteadt who had been asked to represent Hitler. Hitler also wanted to have publicity photos with Bock to help oppose the growing concern about the recent exodus of generals from the Eastern Front. At the end of the week, Marshal Timoshenko prepared for an offensive with the Southern Front’s 57th, 9th, and 37th Armies, alongside the 1st and 5th Cavalry Corps. The Southwestern Front’s 6th Army and 6th Cavalry Corps were also slated to take part in the planned operation. These forces were to strike the boundary between the German 6th and 17th Armies near Izyum, where the Red Army had maintained a small bridgehead across the Donets River.

At Kerch, Manstein had assembled enough troops by the 13th to begin planning an offensive against Feodosiya. Four divisions under the 30th Corps were to spearhead the assault, while the 42nd Corps would pin down the 51st Army. A Special Staff Crimea was formed to coordinate Luftwaffe assets in the theatre. Manstein’s offensive commenced on the 15th with artillery and aerial bombardment of the 236th Rifle Division’s positions. The Soviets were caught by surprise, and their forward positions were rapidly overrun by the 46th Infantry Division. The Romanian 8th Cavalry Brigade conducted several fainting attacks on the remainder of the 51st Army. This led the Soviets to believe Vladislavovka was the objective of the operation. Feodosiya was left poorly protected. On the 16th, the 170th Infantry Division joined the assault, with the 32nd Infantry joining that evening. A Soviet tank-led counterattack was halted by the few StuG III assault guns attached to the 30th Corps.

Kozlov decided to use the remaining reserves of the 44th Army and the remaining Black Sea Fleet for another landing at Sudak. The assault was successful and scattered the small Romanian garrison. They entrenched themselves and did little thereafter. Manstein again simply ignored this flank, sending only a few blocking detachments. On the 17th, the 132nd Infantry Division would attack Feodosiya directly. The assault trapped a large portion of the 44th Army; some units managed to evacuate, but 5,300 were captured. The commander of the annihilated 236th Rifle Division escaped only to be convicted by a Soviet Military Tribunal and executed, charged “for the loss of control of the division.”

I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.

Stalin pushed multi-front encirclement against Army Groups Center, North, Leningrad, and Ukraine, betting on reserves and heavy tank action, but logistics and fuel shortages hampered coordination. Stalin insisted on wide front attacks, while Hitler’s reluctance to withdraw, and a growing frantic struggle around Staraya Russa, Rzhev, Medyn, and Yukhnov as German lines gradually shortened under Soviet pressure.

Eastern Front #32 Stalin’s General offensive: Reinforcing Failure

Last time we spoke about Hitler stealing his Armies trains. The year trudged in with a cruel frost as the Eastern Front lurched into a new phase. Zhukov’s Soviet offensives pressed the German lines around Kaluga, Volokolamsk, and Kalinin, not with elegant strategy but with tenacious, grinding persistence. Across the German rear, Hitler’s halting edicts and internecine debates with generals sowed hesitancy, while Kluge’s cautious withdrawals offered few clear strategic answers. Yet within the chaos, a stubborn, almost improvised discipline, Auftragstaktik at the lower levels, kept pockets of cohesion, even as higher echelons floundered. Trains became lifelines and, at times, liabilities: routes clogged by civilian control, fuel dwindling, and spare parts vanishing. The front oscillated between sieges, counterattacks, and painstaking withdrawals along the central and northern sectors, as both sides endured frostbite and morale drains. 

This episode is Stalin’s General offensive: Reinforcing Failure

Well hello there, welcome to the Eastern Front week by week podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

 

Stalin on January 5th, 1942 “The Germans are in disarray as a result of their defeat at Moscow, they are badly fitted out for the winter. This is the most favourable moment for the transition to a general offensive”

Stavka planned once again to encircle and destroy Army Group Center with attacks launched from the North-Western, Kalinin, Western, and Bryansk Fronts. Simultaneously, the Leningrad, North-Western, and Volkhov Fronts, supported by the Baltic Fleet, were tasked with encircling and destroying Army Group North. In Ukraine, the Southwestern and Southern Fronts were directed to liberate Donbas, while the Caucasus Front would reconquer Crimea. Zhukov and Voznesenskii raised objections, arguing that the Red Army should concentrate its resources to smash Army Group Center rather than spreading strength and resources across the entire USSR. Zhukov “On the Western axis, where there is the most favourable set of conditions and [where] the enemy has not yet succeeded in re-establishing the combat efficiency of his units, we must continue offensive operations, but for successful offensive operations it is essential to reinforce our forces with men, equipment and to build up reserves, above all tank units, without which we can have no basis for anticipating particular success. As for offensive operations by our forces at Leningrad and on the South-Western axis, then it must be pointed out that our troops face formidable enemy defences. Without powerful artillery for support they will not be able to break through the enemy positions, they will be ground down and will suffer heavy, not to say unjustifiable losses. I am all for reinforcing the Western Front and mounting the most powerful offensive operations there.” 

However, these objections were quickly dismissed by Stalin. In fact, Stavka had already issued directives for this offensive before that meeting began. Stalin’s detachment from frontline realities meant that the partial victories at Rostov, Tikhvin, and Moscow had led him to believe that Ostheer was on the brink of collapse. He planned to drain German manpower reserves during the winter and to raise new Soviet forces in the interior. Stalin’s 10 January directive  “Our task is to deny the Germans this breathing space, to drive them to the west without a halt, to force them to expend their reserves before spring, when we will have new and large reserves, and the Germans will have no large reserves, and to thus secure complete defeat of the Hitlerite forces in the year 1942”. Stahel later claimed that the Red Army had only 600 heavy tanks and 800 medium tanks still functional. Rather than concentrating these diminished assets in a single sector, the plan called for dispersal across the USSR. Stalin’s isolation from actual conditions caused him to overestimate the Red Army’s capabilities, attributing potential offensive failures to artillery coordination gaps rather than to broader weaknesses within the officer corps. “Often we send the infantry into an attack against the enemy’s defense line without artillery, without any artillery support whatsoever, and after that we complain that the infantry won’t go against an enemy who has dug in and is defending himself. It is clear, however, that such an “offensive” cannot yield the desired effect. It is not an offensive but a crime—a crime against the Motherland and against the troops which are forced to suffer senseless losses”. This detachment from reality was a direct consequence of the purges. No one wished to relay bad news up the chain of command. As a result, reports were sanitized and exaggerated by the time they reached Stavka and Stalin, while orders were followed blindly to avoid taking responsibility for failures.

While Meretskov’s Volkhov Front had been engaged in the Tikhvin Offensive, STAVKA had been planning a far larger and far more ambitious offensive in tandem with the Leningrad and Northwestern Fronts. Soviet planning documents believed these Fronts to hold one and a half times as many soldiers as the opposing German forces. Despite the numerous problems and delays facing the combatant Front, Stalin insisted that these problems be ignored and that the rigid timetable be followed. Meretskov, however, also appears to bear partial responsibility for the rushed push, as referenced in a later conversation with STAVKA. Meretskov’s 10th January phone conversation with Stalin and Vasilevsky: "The Russians have a saying: 'Haste makes waste.' With you it is happening exactly like this. Without properly preparing the offensive, you were in a haste to launch it and wasted time. If you remember, I proposed to postpone the offensive until Sokolov's army is ready. You refused and now are reaping the fruits of your haste."

The Leningrad Front had led the offensive initially. On the 4th, the 54th Army once again pushed against Kashira and the surrounding villages, managing to gain only 5 kilometers after two days of fighting. Then the 12th Panzer Division arrived and counterattacked, driving Fediunin-sky’s army back to its starting positions. The attack had been so weak that German sources barely paid attention to it. Halder’s War Diary was exceedingly dismissive.  Halder’s War Diary.  “North. Continued enemy attacks, but nothing on a major scale.”  On the 6th, the Volkhov Front launched an attack despite still concentrating its forces. It would not be until the 12th that all infantry and artillery elements of the Front completed their deployments. Infantry moved forward without adequate support, and reserves were frequently not in position to capitalize on any initial gains. The rush also caused fuel and ammunition shortages to plague the offensive. Worse still, their attacks repeatedly collided with German strongpoints, headbutting them over and over without decisive breakthroughs. Their main offensive began on the 6th and 7th. The 59th Army attempted to expand the Volkhov bridgeheads. Wave after wave of poorly supported infantry futilely attacked, yielding no gains. The 59th Army’s official history. “The regiments of the army's first-echelon divisions rose up to attack in the morning after short artillery barrages. Deep snow hindered the advance, and the subunits managed to cross the Volkhov River, whose width reached up to 400 meters, on the ice, and were immediately exposed to enemy flanking fire. The enemy met the attackers with intense fire from large-caliber machine guns from pillboxes located along the forward edge and from all of types of rifle weapons. Artillery and mortars fired from the depths. Wounded and dead began appearing in the combat ranks. However, despite the enemy's strong resistance, separate subunits managed to overcome the river and dig in on the Volkhov River's western bank. The battle lasted many hours. The soldiers rose up to attack time and time again but, after encountering destructive fires, were forced back. At nightfall, in many sectors the attacking units withdrew to their jumpingoff positions.” Yet Meretskov’s report to STAVKA was more optimistic, claiming heavy enemy losses. It does admit, however, that the 2nd Shock Army was about to launch an assault without fuel, food, artillery, or air support, among other shortages.

Unsurprisingly, the 2nd Shock Army’s attack on the 7th proved disastrous, suffering 3,000 casualties in just the first 30 minutes of their assault. Stalin, however, pushed both armies onward until the 9th, after which the attacks collapsed from exhaustion and confusion. Meretskov managed to secure a three-day halt from STAVKA on the 10th. This development prompted Stalin to dispatch Mekhlis to “supervise” Meretskov. There, Mekhlis uncovered several deficiencies, such as missing artillery pieces and spare parts, and issued orders to address the problems. Another issue that became apparent was the evident incompetence of Sokolov, who was replaced by Klykov. However, Mekhlis would soon gain a reputation as a harbinger of military disaster.

STAVKA had recognized that the area south of Lake Ilmen was very lightly held, and believed this presented an opportunity to sever the link between Army Group Center and Army Group North. OKH had already realized the danger and had moved both the 81st Infantry Division and the 18th Motorised Division into this sector. Nevertheless, the defense remained light, with most of the frontline consisting of small outposts and the occasional strongpoint. Half-strength regiments were manning the frontline, a posture that doctrine would have assigned to a full-strength division. Kurochkin’s Northwestern Front opened their offensive on the 7th, synchronized with the Volkhov Front’s main thrust. Unlike their counterparts, they achieved success. The German commander doubted that the Soviets could move large formations across the frozen lake and also assumed the Luftwaffe would smash such efforts. Catching the Germans completely by surprise, the 11th Army advanced 7 km on the first day and reached up to 50 km by the 9th. The Germans had only defended the coastline of Lake Ilmen, which had now frozen solid, as well as the surrounding marshland. Ski troops were employed to bypass German strongpoints and sever German logistics. General Hasan, commanding, rushed the depleted 18th Motorised and a small detachment from the SS Totenkopf to Staraya Russa to hold the vital transport hub. The appearance of KV tanks crushed the outpost line of the 10th Corps, which had only anti-tank rifles that proved utterly ineffective. The lack of effective anti-tank weapons would contribute to the collapse of the German blocking line and force a retreat to Parfino, where Flak 88s were being rushed forward.

On the 10th, the 34th Army slipped forces into the outpost line of the increasingly distracted 290th Infantry Division. After encircling and destroying these German garrisons, they pushed the 202 Rifle Division forward to cut the Lychkovo railway line. The 290th Infantry Division was now trapped between the 11th and 34th Armies. Similarly, the 2nd Corps was surprised by the 3rd Shock Army. Its outposts had been too thinly spread to detect the Soviets until they came under attack. Yet the 3rd Shock Army’s logistical situation remained poor, and they failed to rapidly concentrate against the German strongpoints, which managed to repel the initial assaults. On the 9th, Eremenko’s 4th Shock Army surprised the SS reconnaissance cavalry at Peno, which held out only for a single day before retreating. This earned the SS much derision from Army personnel holding out in similarly or worse conditions along this front. On the 7th of January, the Chief of the Finnish General Staff visited OKH. There he formed the opinion that “General Halder was over-tired and depressed.” If true, this would suggest that OKH’s disregard for frontline realities and its comparatively harmonious relationship with Hitler partially stemmed from a reduced capacity for conflict due to fatigue and depression. Yet there are no other accounts presenting Halder in this light, so Halder could also have been merely extremely overoptimistic, fully aligned with the Nazi will.

While Hitler had subordinated the 3rd Panzer Army to Strauss’s 9th Army last week, Reinhardt persisted in the same obstructive pattern as before. He refused to expand his frontline to free up formations needed to seal the breach in 9th Army’s line. Instead, he demanded control of the 6th Panzer Division in return for complying with this order. Reinhardt also insisted that the 5th Army Corps fall under his direct command rather than under Strauss’s. He complained to Army Group Center’s headquarters and to Heusinger at OKH. By the 5th, Reinhardt still had not complied with Strauss’s order, and Kluge called him directly, even threatening a court-martial if disobedience continued. The 86th Infantry was finally released to act as a reserve for the 9th Army. For the entire week, Reinhardt’s front saw only infrequent small-scale actions as the Soviets concentrated on their push toward Rzhev.

German soldiers had learned to keep their weapons in warm shelters until fighting began to prevent the oil in their weapons from freezing. Some scraped and polished away traces of lubrication, believing this was more reliable than the cold’s effects. Others experimented with alternative mixtures, such as petroleum jelly, which froze at a lower temperature. Some even reportedly doused their weapons in gasoline and set them on fire to heat them before battle. To protect themselves, soldiers lacking winter clothing often used newspapers and propaganda leaflets as insulation.

Fortifications were created with explosives, as the ground was too cold to dig effectively. When large quantities of explosives were unavailable, hand grenades were used, though this was slow and dangerous. Werner Adamczyk “scrambling to the ground and hoping the explosion would not hurt us.”  … “A flat hole was created in the hard ground, allowing us to repeat the procedure over and over again, until we hit below the frost line to softer ground. Once this point was reached, everybody jumped in to dig deeper and deeper, until there was enough room to build a bunker.” A bunker could be constructed within two days or faster, depending on the amount and type of explosives, and there was no enemy contact during the build. Where existing peasant houses remained, these were converted instead, because their stoves helped keep the ground from freezing. However, trenches were impossible to dig, making it unfeasible to connect bunkers and foxholes. In settlements, walls of ice were constructed between buildings to funnel attackers into open kill zones. Stahel Retreat from Moscow. “The ice walls were a simple construction, starting with bundles of sticks or fence palings, covered by blankets or a poncho and soaked with water and snow until they were thick enough to stop a bullet.” When possible, trees were felled to create barriers to channel enemy tanks onto minefields. The Germans also exploited the heavy snow to limit movement, guiding Soviet attacks toward strong points with limited flanking opportunities. The snow also helped dampen the impact of the ever-increasing Soviet artillery, which significantly outnumbered German guns.  Hans Roth“The enemy’s artillery is revving up; we are lucky to have such deep snow, for on the rock-hard frozen ground, the effects of the detonations are so much stronger.”

The VVS maintained its advantage over the Luftwaffe during the first month of the winter offensive. In the first 35 days, the VVS logged 7,210 sorties against Army Group Center, focusing on withdrawing columns, command posts, and supply lines. Horses were often a prime target. They were large and hard to hide while also being vital for German logistics.   Hans von Luck “Before long, the narrow roads were choked with cadavers of horses and broken-down vehicles.” One major strike, on the 31st at Oryol, detonated two trains full of fuel; both trains were utterly destroyed, along with nearby trains full of food. German reports consistently complained about the material impact of these frequent air strikes, as well as the lack of fighter protection or flak coverage. Otto Bense“It was a real war of nerves. The planes that came over at night were the worst. They kept on circling overhead, all night long. The Russians left us German soldiers nervous wrecks—for some it was so bad that they went mad.“ However, the VVS proved unfocused, with its effort spread along the entire frontline, which limited its overall effect.

The Luftwaffe was not inactive, but had to concentrate on the most vital sectors, namely the 9th and 4th Armies in January. Richthofen insisted his planes be deployed en masse rather than piecemeal. Despite being outnumbered, the Luftwaffe held the advantage in dogfights, shooting down 119 Soviet aircraft for 33 losses between December 15 and December 30. Hitler had also demanded that the Luftwaffe engage in strategic bombing missions under War Directive 39. “The task of the Airforce is to prevent the rehabilitation of the Russian forces by attacking, as far as possible, equipment and training centers, particularly Leningrad, Moscow, Rybinsk, Gorki, Voronezh, Rostov, Stalingrad, Krasnodar, etc. It is particularly important to harass, day by day, those enemy lines of communication which enable him to exist and by which he threatens our own front.” This directive reinforced the 8th Air Corps at the expense of bomber training programs, stripping over 100 planes from them. Such short-term thinking was evident as all bombers were directed to fly low-level bombing missions even when they were not designed for such tasks. Transport planes remained extremely busy keeping isolated units supplied. Richthofen also ordered all spare ground crew and pilots organized into combat teams and sent to the frontlines. - Hans- Ulrich Rudel “Our staff company commander, gets together a fighting party drawn from our ground personnel and those of the nearest units, and holds the airfield … For two successive days it is attacked by cavalry units and ski battalions. Then the situation becomes critical and we drop our bombs close to the perimeter of our airfield. The Soviet losses are heavy. Then Kresken, one-time athlete, assumes the offensive with his combat group. We hover above him with our aircraft, shooting and bombing down all opposition to his counter-attack … Our Luftwaffe soldiers at the beginning of the war certainly never saw themselves being used in this way” He further ordered all anti-aircraft guns rushed to the most critical frontline sectors. Deprived of support, many divisions were left to defend airspace on their own. The 2nd Panzer Division even decreed that everyone must fire at low-flying aircraft, with the warning: “Whoever does not shoot will be punished.”

Hitler had given Hoepner a poisoned chalice with the Maloiaroslavets breach between the 20th and 7th Army Corps. Hoepner had some reserve formations, but redeploying them south would take time, and supplying them for this move would require a major effort. Many of the Army’s Panzer divisions could only be used for local defense due to the near absence of fuel. As a result, the movement was not completed until the 6th. By then Kübler’s flank had been forced back, widening the breach to 29 km. Soviet divisions had begun swinging northward to flank Materna’s Corps. With their redeployment, Hoepner covertly began planning a major withdrawal of his entire Panzer Army and sought permission to retreat his flank to forestall the Soviet flanking movement. Kluge, however, refused and instead insisted Hoepner attack south. If successful, the maneuver could envelop all Soviet forces that had penetrated the gap.

However, by the 8th, this offensive had still not succeeded, while Soviet forces had severed the last open road supply to 20th Corps. Hoepner told Kluge that his corps would “go to the Devil” if not allowed to retreat. Kluge contacted Halder for permission. Rather than wait for a response, Hoepner ordered the corps to retreat soon after speaking with Kluge. Hoepner. “Field marshal, I have a duty that stands higher than my duty to you or my duty to the Führer. That is the duty entrusted to me by the troops”. He did not inform anyone in advance, hoping permission would arrive to conceal his disobedience. Kluge learned of it only from the evening report. When Hoepner remained intransigent in the ensuing phone call to Kluge, Kluge did not defend him in his report to Hitler. Hitler flew into a rage, demanding Hoepner be replaced and expelled from the Army in disgrace—with loss of pay, pension, and the right to wear a uniform. Legally, this was beyond Hitler’s formal power to demand. Kluge attempted to curb the punishment’s extremity and even threatened resignation if it were carried out, but Hitler’s fury could not be tempered. Schlabrendorff (Tresckow’s adjutant at Army Group Center)“When Kluge insisted that he was seriously considering not carrying out the order and instead resigning from his command, Hitler retorted sharply that nothing could make him change his mind, and that he would transfer command of Army Group Center to someone else if it became Necessary.” Kluge initially only told Hoepner that he had been replaced by 5th Army Corps’ commander Ruoff, saving the news of the punishment for a private conversation to spare Hoepner public indignity. Hoepner returned to Germany and attempted to challenge his expulsion through legal avenues, but he was arrested and executed in 1944 for his involvement in a plot against Hitler.

Kübler would meet with Kluge and Schmüdtt on the 5th, seeking operational freedom to conduct minor withdrawals. Kübler “If one voluntarily goes back a few kilometers, one takes everything with him; if the enemy breaks through and one must hurry back, everything remains.” However, he insisted the front as a whole could be maintained only if he received adequate replacements and supplies. Schmüdtt claimed 9,000 trucks were already en route to the East, but this was met with skepticism. Even the good news of divisions arriving from France was muted by reports that they lacked winter gear and uniforms. Afterwards, Kluge privately reassured Kübler that the Army would not be sacrificed or wasted; in fact, parts of the 4th Army would be allowed an unauthorized withdrawal. “As the former commander of the Fourth Army, I will see how they can be helped. If this is not possible, a big decision will have to be taken. I have now, by my own decision, withdrawn the left wing of the Fourth Army and it will be difficult to justify this to the high command.”Kluge was relying on his growing reputation with OKH and OKW. While he had requested countless withdrawals, he had not been seen to disobey any explicit refusals, nor had Kluge been seen tolerating disobedience from subordinates. Thus this January 6 withdrawal attracted no attention from OKH. Kluge would then suggest to OKH that further withdrawals could shorten the frontline and free up more reserves.

Schmüdtt then visited the HQ of the 4th Army on the 7th. The Army’s chief of staff was ordered to spare him no detail. Simultaneously, Kluge phoned Hitler for hours, followed by a lengthy conversation with Halder. Both sought to persuade them to permit a retreat before the 4th Army was encircled by the two breaches in its line. While Yukhnov and Medyn remained in German hands, they were only about 50 km apart and deep in the rear of the 4th Army’s main body. Both towns were also the primary roads required for any withdrawal. Hitler refused permission to withdraw on the 8th. Instead, he ordered strong groups be sent to Yukhnov and Medyn “to form pivots.” After these positions were secured, a withdrawal would be considered. By then, even the staff officers of Kirchner’s Panzer Corps were fighting on the line, an engagement that had killed the corps’ intelligence officer and Luftwaffe liaison. When Kluge failed to sway Hitler, an enraged Kübler demanded that Hitler’s order be changed within the next five minutes. Kübler and his chief of Staff, Bernuth, had already threatened ““if the order does not come, we will fight our way back without orders.” earlier that day. Forty-five minutes later, Kluge ultimately won permission to withdraw the 4th Army. Yet, although they had finally been granted an option to save themselves, they still faced the challenge of escaping.

Heinrici’s Corps was trying to recover from its ordeal, but it remained under constant pressure from Soviet attacks. Supplies and ammunition were in short supply, and he was already seeking to withdraw his 43rd Corps further; Kübler refused. “He [Kübler] has been sent here as a strong man; now he should impress upon the high command our opinion, in light of all the circumstances, or declare that he would rather take over a corps again.” On the 5th, Heinrici confronted his commander and asked whether his men should fight like the Soviets, who had held their positions blindly while already surrounded and doomed. Kluge was sympathetic to Heinrici’s plight but could not act on their behalf.

To the south, the 216th Infantry Division had thrown itself into the line at Suchinitschi. They were alone in the midst of a 90 km breach in the German front. The first 4,000 men arrived on the 4th and were almost immediately enveloped by Soviet forces. They managed to repel several assaults, but by day’s end they were signaling that they were completely encircled and cut off from supply. Hitler insisted they hold to the last, even likening their stand to the Alcázar in the Spanish Civil War. Their only hope lay in an offensive from Stumme’s reinforced 40th Panzer Corps, or whatever forces could be scavenged from the 2nd Panzer Army. Yet Stumme’s corps was himself struggling to defend Yukhnov, where Kübler’s command post was being evacuated. On top of that, Schmidt’s cobbled-together battlegroup assault collapsed as fresh Soviet forces poured into the breach. By the 6th, they reported only a few days’ worth of ammo and food remaining and pleaded to be allowed to withdraw. On the 7th, Schmidt ordered the 24th Army Corps to join the 4th and 19th Panzer Divisions in a major relief effort for the trapped defenders at Suchinitschi. They would be reinforced by the newly arrived 208th Infantry Division. German intelligence estimated that they faced five Soviet cavalry divisions and five to seven rifle divisions.

Schmidt had been able to pull these resources northward thanks to the solid positions of the 2nd Panzer Army along the Oka and Zusha rivers. As last week, the Bryansk Front maintained a steady cadence of attacks, but they did not unduly trouble the German defenders. In fact, the Germans along this sector often mocked the Soviet assaults. Wilhelm Prüller dairy entry 1st January. “During the past days—quite often in the nights too—the Russians attacked, but were beaten back. They advanced in such a silly way that the whole thing looked more like a demonstration than an attack. They would stop on the incline, apparently to rest, and made a wonderful target for our artillery. And after a few shots they would disappear over the brow of the hill again, running like stuck pigs”  They frequently launched small raids of their own against Soviet positions, such as the 29th Motorised attacking the villages of Butyrki and Shalamovo on the 6th with small attack groups. After capturing each village, the Germans would seize equipment and supplies, then destroy shelters and fortifications before rapidly retreating to German lines to avoid counterattacks. Unknown German soldier. “In front of us, in the direction of the enemy, is a desert zone many kilometers deep, all the villages are burnt down, the inhabitants are driven eastwards, we have taken those fit for military service as prisoners!—Unspeakably great misery all round!”  That looting helped offset the Germans’ appalling logistical system, while the raids’ disruption kept the Soviet forces opposing them weakened and off balance.

In December, Timosheko approached STAVKA with plans for a broad front January offensive, but requested half a million reinforcements and 15 full tank brigades. Those demands were impossible to fulfil, forcing the plans to be scaled down. The operation began on January 1 with attacks toward Kursk and Oboyan, spearheaded by the 40th and 21st Armies. Initial gains were followed by a counterattack from the 3rd Panzer Division last week. This fierce mobile fighting, conducted away from shelter, produced heavy frostbite casualties on both sides and persisted until January 8. German intelligence theorized that the Soviets were shifting attention toward the gap between the 2nd and 4th Armies to the north. As pressure on the front eased, Schmidt’s forces took revenge with multiple raids on unsuspecting Soviet positions. On January 5, the 38th Army was committed to an attack on Belgorod, though Maslov’s cautious approach squandered the element of surprise. Hans Roth dairy 8th January“The surprise of the sleeping Russians is one hundred percent successful. Most of them do not even get the chance to get up. Without mercy everything and everybody is gunned down or clubbed to death on their sleeping cots. The whole nightmare lasts about a half hour. Strelekaja [the village] burns down to the ground, in every hut there are twenty to thirty dead Russians; the houses become places of cremation.” 

While Strauss’s army was the strongest advocate for recruiting Hilfswillige, he was not alone in seeking extra manpower sources. In January, several attempts were made to form a Russian counter-government. Otto Bräutigam proposed establishing a parallel government to resemble a Vichy-style regime in the USSR. Likewise, Professor Theodor Oberländer approached Hitler with the idea of a Ukrainian puppet government. Hitler rejected both proposals, his ideological hatred outrunning any practical need for manpower from the occupied territories. Hitler to Oberländer“You don’t know what you are talking about. Russia is our Africa, and the Russians are our n****rs.” Nonetheless, Hitler did authorize the use of Soviet POWs as slave labor in Germany. By the end of 1941, roughly 308,000 Soviet POWs had already been forced to work in Germany. In addition, 3.5 million workers were brought from conquered territories into the German labor pool. Even this was not enough, and Fritz Sauckel demanded another 380,000 agricultural workers and 247,000 industrial workers from the USSR’s captured lands. Polish and Soviet workers endured horrific conditions, with constant corporal punishment, abuse, and malnutrition. 14 year old Olga Selezniova’s letter home. “It would be better to die than to be here … We were sold … as if we were slaves”.  As this week began, a mass week-long collection drive organized by Goebbels concluded. In total, the German public donated over 67 million items to supply winter equipment for the Ostheer. The donations ranged from ladies’ scarves to jackets with golden buttons and fastenings. For the vast majority of German civilians, this campaign marked their first clear indication of a crisis unfolding in the East.  Arvid Fredborg, the Swedish journalist in Berlin observing the impact Goebbels’s speech had on the public.  “Fell like a bombshell among the public” … “was it not reasonable to expect winter at the beginning of December” Some soldiers mocked the effort, saying it would be Easter before any of the supplies reached the front.

Due to the front’s split, the 2nd Army fell under Army Group South. Hitler ordered transfers from the First Panzer Army to the Kharkiv area, anticipating a major Soviet assault. Reichenau, however, preferred moving these forces further north to bolster the 2nd Army. He also argued for keeping the mobile divisions off the line where possible, to restore their strength and keep them in reserve. To this Sodenstem remarked: "At present there are no motorized units capable of movement with First Armd. Army. Tactical mobility can be expected only after arrival of new vehicles and rehabilitation”.

"Following the earlier amphibious successes at Crimea, Soviet planners concluded that further operations would stretch Manstein's forces to the breaking point. One landing was mounted at Yevpatoriya on the 4th, but this time the coastal garrison was prepared and effectively contested the assault. Although the naval infantry secured the town by day’s end, the blocking positions pinned them in. A race then began to reinforce the troops around Yevpatoriya. Admiral Oktyabrsky dispatched additional naval infantry backed by the destroyer Smyshlyonyi, but violent storms prevented this force from reaching the harbor until the 7th. By then a regiment from the 72nd Infantry Division had arrived and destroyed the Soviet infantry in the town. Of the 800-plus Soviets, only four sailors managed to return to Soviet lines at Sevastopol; one additional sailor swam out into the icy water and was recovered by a Soviet patrol boat. German troops subsequently carried out reprisals on the town’s civilians, accusing them of aiding the Soviet troops."

Another landing took place on the 5th at Sudak, though the Germans merely deployed a single company to contain it. They treated the operation as a nuisance, but Kozlov read it as a sign of weakness. Mainstein ordered Sponeck replaced for disobeying orders last week, appointing Mattenklott in his place. The 132nd Infantry Division was sent to reinforce the 42nd Corps, joining the previously deployed 170th Division. The Romanian 18th Infantry Division was dispatched as an additional reinforcement. Due to a shortage of security troops, Manstein sought and received permission to raise security forces from the local Tartar population. The Soviet 51st Army began arriving at the Parpach Narrows by the 5th, but they took no offensive action against the opposing 46th Infantry Division. Lvov moved extremely slowly, and it wasn’t until the 12th that he managed to deploy two of his four rifle divisions on this front. There, they joined the 23,000-strong 44th Army. Neither Soviet formation used this time to entrench; instead, slow preparations proceeded for their own offensive.

I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.

Stalin, overestimating capabilities and underestimating logistics, pushed a broad, rapid push, while Stavka ignored frontline realities. Zhukov urged concentrated reserves and heavy tank reinforcement, but decisions favored wide-front offensives, draining scarce resources. Early Soviet gains came through bold assaults on the Volkhov, Kalinin, and Leningrad axes, aided by poor German logistics, winter adaptations, and Luftwaffe constraints. Yet repeated Soviet attacks suffered from fuel, artillery, and coordination gaps, leading to costly, grinding advances and high casualties on both sides.

Eastern Front #31 Hitler steals the Army’ Trains

Last time we spoke about the beginning of 1942. The Red Army pushed against Army Group Center, with Zhukov pressing to push the front back toward pre-Typhoon positions and threatening encirclements around Kaluga, Volokolamsk, and Kalinin. Soviet offensives, however, were hampered by chaotic officer training, rapid but ill-coordinated replacements, and severe winter shortages in equipment, fuel, and winter clothing, which undermined combat efficiency and morale. On the German side, there were intense internecine frictions at the highest levels: Hitler’s halt orders, Guderian’s resistance, and Kluge’s cautious attempts to withdraw where necessary. Autonomy at lower echelons, embodied in Auftragstaktik, allowed some flexible withdrawals behind the front to avoid total collapse, but high-level indecision and miscommunications contributed to disjointed German defense and intermittent retreats. 

This episode is Hitler steals the Army’ Trains

Well hello there, welcome to the Eastern Front week by week podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

As 1941 draws to a close, the Soviet Tikhvin counteroffensive has finally ground to a halt, exhausted from the relentless fighting. Meanwhile, STAVKA shifts its focus to attempts to encircle and destroy Army Group Centre, pressing for decisive gains even as the front line buckles under pressure. They’re hammered by crises from every side as the German defenses hold, while the officer corps sometimes resembles an amateur drama troupe under the stress. The only major German offensive on the horizon faces an additional threat from new Soviet amphibious operations around Crimea. 

Since the start of the invasion, Germany has suffered 621,308 wounded, 173,722 dead, 35,873 missing and this represents  25.96% of the Eastern Army which is about 3.2 million. Soviet casualty figures are notoriously hard to pin down and remain highly contested. In Colossus Reborn, historian David Glantz puts total Soviet casualties for 1941 at 566,852 combat deaths, 235,339 noncombat dead, 2,335,482 MIA and POW. 1,256,421 wounded in action. 66,169 sick. And lastly 13,557 cases of frostbite. Other historians argue the total could be significantly higher, by several million. Civilian losses in 1941 for the USSR are unknown, but estimates suggest they were extremely heavy. Despite these staggering losses, both Stalin and Hitler remained convinced that victory would come in 1942. STAVKA’s optimism and its tolerance for high Soviet casualties were bolstered, in part, by Soviet reports that absurdly claimed 300,000 German soldiers had been killed between 06 December 1941 and 15 January 1942. The December offensives pushed the German line back across the USSR, but they failed to capitalize on any single breakthrough. Now, the Germans have reformed their front, and the push must begin again. Instead of concentrating at one focal point, the burden of the next Soviet offensives is spread across the entire Ostheer, extending the strain and the risk for the German defense. General Nikolai Khlebnikov in his memoir. “Theoretically, in principle, everyone agreed that what would provide for the success of the offensive was decisive superiority over the enemy on the decisive sector of the front. However, in practice … this axiom of military theory was certainly not adhered to in all instances. It hence often happened, that a well thought out deep thrust turned into a series of frontal attacks which only “expelled” the enemy, rather than resulting in his encirclement and destruction”. 

Throughout this week, Meretskov’s Volkhov Front continued to attack in an effort to expand their bridgeheads across the Volkhov River, but the efforts met with little success. By 03 January, those bridgeheads were halted due to exhaustion and mounting fatigue. The Soviets also faced a looming logistical crisis, and Stalin’s exhortations could not push them any further. Any additional offensives would have to wait. On the positive side, they had managed to drive the Germans back to their pre-Tikhvin offensive starting points, with the exception of the villages around Kirishi. On the downside, Soviet hopes to encircle and destroy the German offensive force had failed miserably. As this unfolded, the Northwestern Front slowly prepared for its own offensive operations between Lake Ilmen and Selizharovo, and toward Velikie Luki. The plan was to capture Demiansk and Staraya Russa, then sever Army Group North’s withdrawal routes. This operation was expected to be conducted in cooperation with the Volkhov Front’s next offensive.

In Leningrad, food supplies continued to dwindle inside the city, even as the flow of sustenance via the Road of Life showed some improvement. The situation reached a low point in early January, with stockpiles down to two days of food and only 217,000 tons of fuel remaining. 980 tons of flour, 2.9 tons of barley, 815 tons of soybeans, 11 tons of malt, 427.7 tons of slab fat, and 1.1 tons of bran. Frantic efforts were directed at pushing the Road of Life even further. It would not be until 18 January that the ice roads would be able to meet all of the mandated norms for the Leningrad Front. During this period, the ice roads faced increasing air attacks and small infantry raids from Finnish and German forces. As a result, the Leningrad Front was compelled to allocate substantial rifle units and naval infantry, alongside heavy anti-aircraft emplacements, to safeguard Leningrad’s lifeline. The PVO Protivovozdushnoy oborony fielded 200 mid-caliber antiaircraft guns, 50 small caliber guns, 100 antiaircraft machine guns, and 100 searchlights to defend against enemy aircraft.

Logistical problems also plagued Germany. On 15 December, the Chief of Wehrmacht Transport, Rudolf Gercke, reported that the Ostheer required 300 trains per day to stay fully supplied. However, shortages of coal, personnel, and other shortfalls meant that only 122 trains could be sent per day by 17 December. That figure was grossly inflated: in reality, only 53 trains were sent each day. 1,643 trains arrived through the entirety of December (58 less than November) fpr the Ostheer. Back in November Army Group Center required 31 trains for basic subsistence but only received 16. By the end of December, Hitler would notice the stark discrepancy between promised trains and actual supply deliveries, prompted by adjutants who had visited the front. In response, all rail operations were transferred to the Reich Ministry of Transport. As a result, the Army lost control of its own supply apparatus, handing it over to civilian administrations running the occupied territories. Under the OKH, rail traffic control was chaotic at best and, at times, trains vanished as local authorities hijacked them. The wounded froze to death on stalled hospital trains, and stockpiles were raided by divisions already low on supplies. Spare parts for repairing tanks and trucks were fiercely contested, and occasionally fighting erupted between teams dispatched by different divisions. This lack of spare parts is also a large reason why so few captured soviet tanks were put into commission. Most of them needed repairs to be useful but repairing the masses of broken German vehicles took priority. 

There was also a massive shortage of trucks and the fuel to move even that small number of vehicles. While each Army was estimated to need up to 3,000 tons of supplies per day, the 2nd Panzer Army was averaging only 360 tons daily, with all other armies in similar plights. This situation was worsened by trucks often being hijacked by divisions and sent back to Germany for supplies. In one notable instance, the 19th Panzer Division sent a truck all the way back to Spandau, Berlin, to bring back utterly vital equipment, sausage production machinery. Despite these supply problems, copious amounts of alcohol appeared for soldiers not on the frontline as a bitter but festive release to celebrate the New Year. Alcohol provided one of the few escapes from the horrors of the Eastern Front for many on both sides. Alcohol and drug abuse would rise in the Wehrmacht following Operation Barbarossa. 1800 would die of alcohol or drug abuse between 1939-1944. Three quarters were from denatured alcohol poisoning and 95.9% were after the invasion started. Soviets and Germans also unleashed massive artillery barrages on each other, which included flare rounds to mark the start of 1942. Diary of Franz Leiprecht “The whole section of front began a hellish shooting. Flares of all colors brightened the sky. Yes, our guns even sent a few New Year’s greetings to the enemy.”

On the 28th, the Germans deployed a new shell type for the first time. With these, a Panzer IV managed to knock out two T-34 tanks at a range of 1 km with a single shell each. General Kluge had repeatedly begged for the newly developed hollow-charge warheads to be released, and it had taken until the 22nd for Halder and Hitler to be worn down. Kluge had effectively given Halder an ultimatum, insisting that unless these warheads were issued, his infantry would have no choice but to retreat from Soviet tank attacks. These shells helped alleviate the tank-panic phenomena that had plagued the German infantry in December, as confidence in their anti-tank capabilities slowly recovered.

This week, both Panzer Groups endured frequent attacks, though their sector remained relatively quiet compared with their flanking Armies. Their positions were well defended, protected by the Lama and Rusa Rivers. Any breakthrough was met with rapid counterattacks and crushed. Both formations had been in place long enough to improve their positions, such as installing heating in the dugouts. Despite these small gains, the Panzer Groups were bleeding men, equipment, and supplies. Hoepner letter home to his wife 1st January “The troops are screaming for replacements, munitions and fuel.” Food, in particular, remained a pressing concern as rations needed to be increased to offset the cold. Reinhardt stated he needed an increase in his men’s fat ration to seventy-five grams a day as well as two warm meals and half a loaf of bread each. In isolation he was correct, in context this was impossible with the logistical situation which was not able to sustain even the normal ration amounts. In fact, 80% of the 46th Panzer Corps were without food and were urgently requesting Luftwaffe air drops of rations. Attempts to clear snow from the roads often proved fruitless due to heavy snowfall. Diary of Otto Will - a soldier in the 5th Panzer Division  “ We can shovel as much as we want; the road cannot be cleared. We work like crazy and still progress only gradually. Throughout the whole day, we are working without break in this weather”.

Kluge wanted to pull troops away from the secure Panzer Groups to help rescue the crises emerging in the 9th and 4th Armies. This move fostered a perception among Hoepner and Reinhardt that Kluge posed a greater threat to them than the Soviets. Both commanders believed themselves in extraordinarily weak positions. Hoepner letter home to his wife on 1st January “When, with all manner of chicanery, I have made a reserve, the army group takes it away to fill a hole of the neighbors. They can or must always withdraw, while I am supposed to hold.” They remained potentially traumatized by the extreme material losses of their winter retreats and were determined to avoid a repeat. Each refused to consider the wider situation outside his own sector.  Reinhardt’s letter home to his wife 31st December.“Both sides cause us worry [Strauss and Hoepner]. We are always standing between two fires, whether we should take the last shirt off our back to help, whether it really is so bad at our neighbors, or whether we should remain hard, so that we ourselves are not placed in danger. In addition, we are pressed from above, we should obviously help because apparently there is unexpected confidence in the panzer troops. You can just imagine how stressful this game of nerves is. We can always only tell our commanders that we are not guilty of this disquiet and have to hope that, with the help of God, everything will be well.” Ultimately, Kluge was forced to bargain with Reinhardt to secure at least a single battalion with a few tanks to aid the collapsing 9th Army on the 31st, with Reinhardt demanding their return by the latest on 2 January. Kluge, a field marshall commanding 6 Armies and on paper 1.7 million soldiers, was forced to reason with Reinhardt “that help is in your own interest [and] absolutely necessary, even if only a battalion with a few tanks”.

This self-centered selfishness extended to sabotaging Kluge’s attempts to withdraw the 9th and 4th Armies. Both commanders were desperate to maintain their river defenses, which withdrawing the two infantry armies would have required them to abandon. They bypassed Kluge to report directly to Halder their apparent fuel shortages, claiming they would only be able to engage with their carbines. Reinhardt “If Panzer Group 3 should have to withdraw, I’ll only come with the carbines on the shoulder.”Rather than facing punishment for breaching the chain of command, both were rewarded. Hoepner was promoted to Colonel General, and Panzer Groups 3 and 4 were redesignated as Panzer Armies on 1 January. Their pettiness extended even to each other, as Reinhardt pressed Hoepner to return the 10 tanks loaned to support the 106th Infantry Division. Hoepner argued that the tanks could not be returned until the 5th of January at the earliest.

Strauss’ 9th Army would suffer through a baffling sequence of events this week. Last week, Kluge had granted permission for the 6th and 23rd Corps to withdraw, starting on the evening of the 27th. However, it would not be until the 29th that Kluge finally spoke with Hitler about the 9th Army’s precarious situation. Hitler claimed that the two Panzer Groups on the 9th Army’s eastern flank did not have the fuel to withdraw alongside them, and thus he outright rejected Strauss’ request to withdraw to the Königsberg line. He then presented a report from Richthofen, commander of the 8th Air Corps, claiming that aerial intelligence contradicted the 9th Army’s reports. Richthofen asserted that many villages the 9th Army said they had lost were still in German hands, and that the Soviets were in full retreat after several German counterattacks. The report also apparently disputed the existence of Soviet cavalry totally raiding German supply lines, and concluded by noting that the 6th Corps commander was very nervous.

This comedy of a report led Hitler to conclude the problem was one of will and to demand the immediate replacement of Förster, despite Kluge’s protests. It grew even more insane when Richthofen was deemed the best man for the job. Richthofen thus became commander of the 6th Army Corps alongside his role as commander of the 8th Air Corps, but he lasted only three days before being replaced by Bieler on 2 January. Strangely, Richthofen never interfered with Wehrmacht affairs again. It should be noted that Halder should have served as the link between the troops and Hitler, but he had long since abdicated those responsibilities. Halder’s Diary “very difficult crisis at Ninth Army, where apparently the leadership temporarily lost their nerve.”. This left it to Kluge to fight every political battle on behalf of the troops. OKW was becoming more like OKH, transforming into Hitler’s mouthpiece rather than representing Army interests. This is underscored by Hermann Balck, who claimed in his memoirs that the Halt Order was the greatest clemency to the front-line troops. “I pleaded with Hitler not to withdraw under any circumstances … This was a crisis that could not be solved operationally … The demand to hold under such conditions might sound brutal, but in reality it was the greatest clemency”.

This insanity left Strauss lamenting, “we will fight to the last, but I am convinced it is senseless.” While Strauss was willing to fight to the death, his subordinates were not. His corps and divisional level commanders were ready to withdraw under pressure rather than remain in place. Orders of 129th infantry division commander Stephan Rittau “Fight with maneuver! Inflict losses on the enemy, if necessary, abandon a few strongly attacked villages. Avoid costly counterattacks which are not absolutely necessary! Allow enemy to accumulate! Enemy also lacks sufficient reserves.“ Unfettered, Kluge pressed Hitler for several hours on the 30th and 31st to allow the 9th Army to retreat. Kluge had also tried to speak with Halder, who refused to pass the information on to Hitler. Halder to Kluge to justify his inaction. “the Führer will never agree to a withdrawal to a predetermined line”. Kluge was unimpressed with Halder’s vacillation. “must demand, that Colonel-General Strauss relocate, so that a catastrophe does not result on the Staritsa front … You cannot see how the people look!… If, as I have proposed for a long time, we had relocated earlier, this would have been planned and done in full order. Now this cannot be guaranteed with stricken divisions that are incessantly attacked. We are falling back, whether we want to or not!”While Halder hid behind inaction, Richthofen’s corps was shattered on the 31st and retreated without any authorization. 

Kluge sought freedom to maneuver and proposed an elastic defense, arguing that Hitler must trust him to function effectively. Kluge  “I ask for freedom of maneuver. You must trust me that what I do is right. Otherwise I cannot function. We do not only want what is the best for Germany, but also for you.“ Hitler and Halder flatly refused. When Kluge informed Hitler that Strauss was retreating, Hitler raged and ordered the 9th Army to defend in place. In response, Kluge seized on ambiguous wording in one of Hitler’s orders to justify some freedom of movement for the beleaguered 9th Army. Hitler “It is impossible to initiate an operational movement without the approval of the high command. The troops will have to stop right where they are.” He argued that their retreats could be explained by enemy pressure, while insisting to Strauss that any movements must be local to avoid detection by Halder and Hitler. “to give permission freely, in the area of a division, to conduct fighting withdrawals.”Yet not all corps commanders shared that caution.

Gablenz openly informed the 9th Army’s chief of staff that his corps would not stop until they reached the Königsberg Line, despite Hitler’s prohibitions. Even Richthofen now admitted Hitler’s order was impossible and accepted the need for a fighting retreat. This caused Kluge’s ploy to fail on the 2nd, but his reputation meant Hitler believed the deception originated with OKH. Halder’s Diary “The withdrawal of the Ninth Army, against the will of the supreme commander, occasioned irate scenes at this morning’s conference. The OKH is charged with having introduced parliamentary procedures in the army and lacking firm leadership. These statements, which are completely untenable criticisms, take up time and undermine fruitful cooperation.” However, Hitler demanded that the 9th Army’s current position be held to the last man, no matter what. “until the last man, without consideration for breakdowns in command at the front, without consideration for holes in the front, without consideration for responding to dangers, without consideration for supply difficulties”.Kluge was forced to act against Gablenz, who refused to accept this order. If he continued to retreat while the other corps held, a corps-sized breach in the German lines would open and disaster would follow. After Kluge’s ultimatum, Gablenz resigned and was replaced by the compliant Joachim Witthöft on the 2nd. Kluge’s ultimatum. “I just want to tell you the following: It is the clear will of the Führer that no step backwards be taken. If you want to take the consequences for doing so, please report it. I ask only one thing: When you go, your chief of staff must accept the order to hold in the present line.” That day, the 6th Corps lost contact with both neighboring corps as the Soviets broke through. Counterattacks managed to restore the link to the 27th Corps. The newly arriving SS Cavalry Corps was ordered to counterattack the other breakthrough, but they would not arrive until the 7th. The week ended with Soviets flooding through the breach and threatening the important city of Rzhev. In response to this crisis, Hitler subordinated Reinhardt to Strauss.

Kübler had arrived from the relative calm of the 39th Mountain Corps along the Mius river to a calamity facing the 4th Army. An operational breakthrough to the south, which OKH was deliberately hiding from Hitler, had already prompted Kübler to covertly withdraw the wings of the 4th Army last week. Soviet attacks struck the entire front and threatened a fresh breakthrough at Borovsk on the 30th. Kübler reported, “the divisions can no longer hold. I have never had such an urgent report from the troops.” Yet if Kluge wished to withdraw his line, he also needed it to hold periodically. He sought to show that withdrawals were forced by Soviet action to avoid being fired like Guderian. He found himself trapped in a give-and-take between the needs of frontline commanders and the politics of high command. Thus Kübler was informed that he must hold for the time being. “In these positions we cannot capitulate so quickly.”

Kluge did attempt to request withdrawal permission for Kübler, but he was met by an angry Hitler who exaggerated that the retreats would “go right back to the Polish border. Every retreat requires loss. If this withdrawal only ends at our border, we will have no more matériel and without matériel everything is lost”. Hitler then insisted that, because he endured ten-day artillery barrages in the First World War, German soldiers would simply have to endure their current conditions. This conveniently ignored that it was never -30 degrees Celsius in France, among other details. Kluge could only relay Lieutenant General Hell’s comment: “The commanding general has insisted that if one ordered the 15th Division to hold, the troops would cease to do so as a result of excessive exhaustion.” Hitler’s only retort was, “If that is the case, then it means the end of the German army.”

An hour later, Hitler called Kluge back but remained obstinate. The 15th Division and the 4th Army were ordered to stay in place, yet the 98th Infantry continued its retreat despite multiple orders from multiple levels of command. As a result, its commander, Schroeck, was replaced on the 31st. On the 2nd, the frontline was breached between the 57th and 2nd Corps, a gap that rapidly widened to 18 kilometers. Even Halder, in his diary, conceded that it was unlikely to be sealed. Meanwhile, Hitler wasted time asking irrelevant questions of Kluge, such as how many machineguns were in action at Maloiaroslavets’ cemetery. When the inquiry traced down to the relevant battalion and back up. HITLER: Herr Feldmarschall, how many machine guns are currently in action at the cemetery in Maloiaroslavets? KLUGE: I’ll have someone find out right away.…..KLUGE: Mein Führer, there are four machine guns in action at the Maloiaroslavets cemetery. HITLER: Herr Feldmarschall, see to it that there are at least six machine guns assigned there. Hitler demanded that the answer, initially four machines, be increased to six. Maloiaroslavets was liberated by the Soviets on the same day. After another request to withdraw, Hitler questioned Kübler and Kluge’s courage to make hard decisions, then ordered reserves found from other formations. He then assigned the front sector to Hoepner’s Panzer Army to punish Kübler’s perceived inability to handle the situation. This left Kübler with five corps that were being encircled from both the north and the south.

The 19th Panzer Division counterattacked the Soviet breakthrough between the 43rd and 13th Army Corps on the 28th, restoring contact between the two corps and preventing the threatened encirclement of the 43rd. Yet small groups of Soviets still remained behind the German lines. An 80-kilometer gap persisted between Kaluga and Schmidt’s forces. In that space, Soviets began air-dropping small teams behind the German lines, joining roving bands of cavalry harassing German supply routes.

Despite reestablishing contact with the 4th Army, Heinrici prepared to abandon Kaluga. Kaluga, however, was too important to relinquish without permission. Kluge argued with Hitler that Yukhnov and Suchinitschi were vital transportation hubs that could only be defended if Kaluga was sacrificed. The former two locations were already under threat from fast-moving Soviet forces. The 2nd Panzer and the 4th Army depended on these locations for their supply lines. Hitler initially balked at sacrificing too much equipment during 43rd Corps’s retreat. In the end, he recognized that if the Corps remained at Kaluga, they would be totally lost, leaving the supply routes undefended. Their retreat was authorized late on the 29th.

Heinrici’s retreat moved through contested terrain as infantry leapfrogged from village to village, seeking shelter from the cold and Soviet fire. Small bands of retreating German troops were encircled by roving Soviet forces in a chaotic intermingling. Some would be rescued; others would not. By the time they rallied at their new positions, ammunition had become so scarce that soldiers not on the front line were forced to surrender all but their last clip to keep the frontline firing. Kluge had compelled Hoepner to send the 40th Panzer Corps south to reinforce the limp of the 4th Army. The 19th and 10th Panzer Divisions, along with the 10th Motorised Division, were reinforced by an eclectic mix of supply troops and military police. This force was to launch a major offensive to destroy the Soviet penetration. In addition, the newly arriving 216th Division was ordered to Suchinitschi, right in the middle of the 90-kilometer breach in the German lines. Both forces were due to arrive next week.

Schmidt's Armies spent the week fortifying their new positions along the Oka and Zusha river lines as replacements arrived. Eberbach even suggested recruiting Soviet POWs and arming them with captured equipment, but the proposal was not adopted despite the desperate manpower shortage. The recruitment of Hilfswillige (Hiwis) or Auxiliary volunteers was already becoming increasingly widespread even if unofficially due to Hitler’s ban on any recruitment of Slavs into the Ostheer. They worked jobs such as translators, drivers, medics, horse grooms, cooks, servants, and guards. The practice of arming them however was not as accepted with only small groups active usually as police forces. In his diary Goebbels blamed the manpower shortages at the front and domestically on the Germans “who have brought too few children into the world and now must pay dearly.”Soviet attacks remained frequent, but many were halted by German static positions. Those assaults that found any success were rapidly countered and destroyed by small mobile battlegroups. Soviet losses were disproportionately high.

Guderian’s removal meant the 2nd Panzer Army could no longer ignore the Soviet offensive to its north. Its river-line positions provided a strong defensive stance, allowing German forces to withstand the Bryansk Front’s frontal attacks. When a Soviet thrust appeared dangerous, the German defenders briefly retreated to let the Soviets cross the river bank. Shortly after, reserve forces counterattacked the surprised Soviets and restored the frontline. Captured equipment was often used to replace losses from the earlier retreat. For example, on the 1st, the 4th Panzer Division logged in their war diary over 1,000 enemy killed and 139 prisoners of war, while suffering only 74 casualties in a major counterattack. Raids and spoiling attacks were also frequently launched to disrupt Soviet formations. Unknown German soldier’s diary entry. “In front of us, in the direction of the enemy, is a desert zone many kilometers deep, all the villages are burnt down, the inhabitants are driven eastwards, we have taken those fit for military service as prisoners!—Unspeakably great misery all round!” These factors enabled the Panzer Army to begin sending formations north to counter the northern threat.

Meanwhile, the 2nd Army’s line stretched about 200 km, leaving divisions often without firm contact with their neighbors, though Kursk and Oryol served as supply hubs behind both flanks. A Soviet tank offensive forced a limited withdrawal of the 48th Panzer Corps on January 1st. The 9th Panzer Division could muster only four serviceable tanks in support of the 16th Motorised, necessitating the stronger 3rd Panzer Division being sent south to aid in securing contact with Schmidt’s forces for Army Group South. By the third day of fighting, the battles had become desperate, with mobile engagements breaking out across open terrain. The cold sparked a massive frostbite outbreak among the 16th Motorised, the nearby 299th Infantry Division, and the attacking Soviets, with one regiment reporting 80% of its soldiers suffering frostbite. Leonid Rabichev, Red Army Officer.  “I saw a horrifying sight. An enormous space stretching to the horizon was filled with our tanks and German tanks. In between them there were thousands of sitting, standing or crawling Russians and Germans frozen solid. Some of them were leaning against each other, others hugging each other. Some propping themselves with a rifle, others holding a sub-machine gun … It was terrible to think of the wounded, both ours and Germans, freezing to death. The front had advanced and they had forgotten to bury these men”.

The Soviets continued their relatively ineffective probes against Army Group South. German intelligence detected a large Soviet buildup between Lisichansk and Kupyansk, signaling an imminent large-scale offensive toward the Dnieper. In response, Hitler reminded Army Group soldiers to take the Halt Order literally and seriously. He also ordered preparations to repulse a major attack on Kharkiv, and instructed the Army Group to be ready for a potential popular uprising. On January 1st, Friedrich Paulus was appointed General of the Panzer Troops and assigned to the 6th Army to replace Reichenau who was now commanding Army Group South. Last week, Tolbunkhin’s plan dumped frozen and poorly supplied troops across the Kerch Peninsula. They failed to expand their bridgeheads as planned, but nonetheless drew in German and Romanian forces. Landings at Capes Zyuk and Khroni were crushed by the evening of the 28th, and the remaining landings were contained by thin covering forces. Also on that day, the second stage of Tolbunkhin’s plan commenced as the winter storms abated.

Two cruisers and eight destroyers brought the 44th Army ashore at Fedosia early on the 29th. Last week’s landings had drawn away the infantry regiment defending the port, leaving only two artillery battalions and 800 engineers. The defenders were taken by surprise, and the Luftwaffe arrived too late to contest the landings. By the end of the day, large parts of three Rifle divisions had landed with remarkable speed. The Romanian 4th Mountain Brigade was ordered to form blocking positions around the port, while the 8th Cavalry Brigade was ordered to hurry back. Sponeck requested permission for his corps to retreat to the Parpach Narrows, but Mainstein refused. Instead, he promised to send a group from the 73rd Infantry Division and the entire 170th Division. Hitler also promised that 50 tanks would be sent to restore the situation.

In a maneuver that seemed to be a German officer’s tradition, Sponeck cut communications with Mainstein and withdrew anyway. The 46th Division forced marched 75 km west. To buy time, the Romanians were ordered to attack the Soviet landing at Feodosia on the 30th, but the assault proceeded without air or artillery support and was easily repulsed, with the Soviets counterattacking afterward. The 46th Division’s route was cut off at Vladislavovka on the 31st. After failing to defeat the Soviet roadblock, the division detoured cross-country through the remaining six-mile gap between the Soviet positions and the coastline, all while contending with heavy harassment from Soviet paratroopers.

By January 1st, the 42nd Army Corps had reformed a defensive line 12 miles west of Feodosiya, aligned with the first of Mainstein’s reinforcements. Kerch had been liberated as the 51st Army landed safely and began expanding from its bridgeheads. However, the three Rifle divisions of the 44th Army were too dispersed to threaten the 42nd Corps’ line until reinforced by four divisions from the 51st Army. That waiting allowed the Germans to regain the initiative, and worse, Soviet forces failed to entrench themselves as the Caucasus Front commander believed the Germans too weak to counterattack. This delay interrupted Manstein’s offensive on Sevastopol. On the 28th, Manstein had concentrated his remaining infantry and launched a surprisingly successful offensive, capturing a large portion of the Mekenzievy Mountain sector. The arrival of the fresh 386th Rifle and 3rd Guards Divisions, along with news of the Feodosiya landings, would bring this offensive to a halt.

Several assaults against a position the Germans dubbed Fort Stalin failed under heavy artillery fire. Afterwards, German forces withdrew from their more advanced positions to straighten their line in preparation for counterattacks. In the December assault on Sevastopol, German and Romanian forces incurred 9,856 casualties, leaving many divisions combat-ineffective. During the same period, Petrov’s Coastal Army suffered an estimated 17,000 casualties.

I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.

German planners, pressing to hold off the advancing Soviets, watched as Zhukov’s forces pressed relentlessly on Army Group Center, threatening to erase the gains of earlier campaigns. The Soviets, meanwhile, contended with rear-area disarray and frostbitten civilians, yet exploited every opportunity to stretch German lines. As the fronts cooled, both sides learned anew the brutal calculus of attrition, logistics, and the hard math of cover and collapse.

Eastern Front #30 Kluge’s Ultimatum, Guderian goes rogue

Last time we spoke about the end of the first year of the eastern front. The Red Army pressed on Army Group Center, while Meretskov’s Volkhov Front prepared a Leningrad breakout despite crippled supply lines. In Leningrad, famine worsened; cannibalism surfaced and NKVD records show arrests, even as the Kirov Tank Factory kept producing tanks. The Baltic/Sevastopol fronts saw stubborn resistance: the Soviet submarine fleet, though hampered by ice and poor training, managed limited successes; five transports, a submarine, and two tankers sunk by year’s end. Army Group North protected the Leningrad corridor against repeated Soviet attempts to sever it, while Meretskov’s 4th and 54th Armies attempted operations west and south of Lake Ladoga to relieve the siege. In Army Group Center, Hitler’s retreats were banned, but local withdrawals continued, fueling a leadership crisis as Zhukov exploited gaps and the 1st Guards Cavalry Corps disrupted Kaluga and Sukhinichi. Guderian’s retreat sparked relief demands and Guderian’s removal. On the southern and Crimean fronts, Sevastopol withstood heavy pressure; Kerch and Feodosia saw mixed Soviet landings and German counterattacks, with Petrov’s defense holding deep into late December. 

This episode is Kluge’s Ultimatum, Guderian goes rogue 

Well hello there, welcome to the Eastern Front week by week podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

 

The early successes of the Soviet winter offensives gave STAVKA a surge of confidence and a growing sense that the war might tilt decisively in their favor. Yet these gains also created friction at the very top of the German high command, where worry and uncertainty began to ripple through the ranks. With the battlefield opening up and the prospect of a sweeping Soviet victory on the horizon, Soviet forces found themselves pressed into a brutal, grinding struggle—what many historians describe as a meatgrinder, as they pressed to push the German invaders back and potentially destroy them. The scale of the effort was immense, and the cost in men and materiel rose quickly as the fighting intensified. Hitler faced a high-stakes decision, weighing whether to back a rapid counterstroke under the seasoned general Hans von Kluge or to lean into the more aggressive, rapid-moving approach associated with Heinz Guderian. The choice would signal not only a tactical shift but a broader strategic direction for the German war effort in the east.

The massive losses of 1941, followed by a rapid and extensive buildup of replacement formations, placed enormous strain on the Soviet officer corps. In an effort to accelerate commissions, the requirements were drastically lowered: six years of general education and no criminal record were deemed sufficient for a lieutenant’s bar. As a result, a large majority of junior officers lacked formal military education or professional skills. Lieutenant-General Filipp Ivanovich Golikov, 10th Army, in Feb 1942 - [His Headquarters staff were] “poorly selected and of low competence. Moreover the poor tactical capabilities of forces led to many mistakes in combat: to frontal assaults, sluggish action, inadequate provision of fire-support when advancing, to inadequacies in co-operation and also to unnecessary losses. The army operated without a fully prepared rear, without regular deliveries of munitions, fuel and provisions. Divisional and army level horse-drawn transports fell behind.” Compounding the problem was the brutal pace of casualties. With so many officers killed or wounded before they could gain on‑the‑job experience, the Red Army often learned through trial and error under intense pressure rather than through thorough, prepared instruction. Personal autonomy within the Red Army was also severely restricted. A telling example: one officer attempted to delay an offensive by a single day, only to discover how little leeway there was for independent decision‑making within the command structure. Taken together, these factors help explain many of the officer corps’ failures that historians have highlighted. They also shed light on why Soviet propaganda tended to spotlight the most senior leaders, like Georgy Zhukov, who would soon become a symbol of unqualified success in the public imagination of the USSR, even as the deeper realities on the ground were more complex and contested.

The mass recruitment and rapid buildup also strained Soviet logistics. Not only was heavy equipment in short supply, but shortages of essential winter gear and field kitchens began to appear as the campaign wore on. These logistical gaps further limited the effectiveness of Soviet troops in the brutal winter conditions, compounding the already severe challenges on the front. Stahel recalled “The Western Front’s initial request for 340,000 sets of winter clothing was met in full, but a subsequent request on October 29 for a further 558,000 sets fell woefully short and meant that even elite guards units were sometimes inadequately clothed.” 

This week, Stalin sent a series of caustic messages to the newly formed Volkhov Front for failing to achieve the rapid and dramatic gains he demanded. STAVKA had expected the Volkhov Front to seize its jumping-off points and complete its force concentrations for the next stage of the offensive by the 26th. Spurred on by this pressure, the 4th and 52nd Armies pushed to the riverline between Kirishi and Novgorod and began expanding bridgeheads across the river by the 27th. Yet Ivanov’s 4th Army fell short of securing its objective at Tigoda station, leaving that target incomplete. At the same time, the 54th Army continued fruitless assaults on Kirishi and the surrounding villages throughout the week, yielding no gains. To strengthen the defense, Leeb reinforced the Volkhov strongpoint with the 291st and 269th divisions from Leningrad, converting the town into the linchpin of the Volkhov defensive line. Beyond German resistance, adverse weather further hampered Soviet troop movements. Acknowledging the realities on the ground, the next phase of the offensive was postponed until early January and would be launched in a staggered sequence rather than a single, sweeping push.

On Christmas Day, Leeb sought to frame the events as a German victory in an address to his troops. “In the battles on and to the east of the Volkhov—as well as in the withdrawal of the front into a secure winter position behind the Volkhov — you have again met the highest requirements of defensive power and of physical resiliency in fulfilling the mission. The enemy arrives at the Volkhov empty-handed. Since 22 June and up to 20 December, Army Group North has taken 438,950 prisoners and captured or destroyed 3,847 tanks and 4,590 guns. We reverendy bow our heads to those who have given their lives. TheHomeland thanks us for having protected it and counts on us in the future. We shall justify this trust. The New Year will find us ready to repel all enemy breakthrough efforts until the Fuehrer calls on us again to resume the attack”.

Yet, as had become common with German claims of success since the invasion began, the casualty tallies told a different story. The Tikhvin offensive failed to achieve its operational and strategic aims. The plan called for encircling the 54th Army, linking up with Finnish forces at the Sver river, and cutting off supplies to Leningrad. None of these objectives were completed. Historian David Glantz estimates that the Soviets suffered about 190,000 casualties across the Tikhvin offensive, the counterattacks, and the broader operations around Leningrad, drawn from a force of roughly 300,000 troops deployed since October. By contrast, the Germans employed around 180,000 soldiers in the same sector, incurring approximately 45,000 casualties.

Across the frontline, many German officers used their Christmas addresses to persuade their men that the invasion of the USSR was a holy crusade, hoping to reinvigorate the troops with a renewed sense of purpose. By contrast, the Soviets treated Christmas as an opportunity to strike at German morale. One stark example was a so-called “Christmas card,” depicting a snowy landscape dominated by crosses with German helmets hanging on them, captioned simply “Living space in the east.” Halder hosted two massive Christmas parties on December 24, hosting his closest associates and enjoying a rare moment of festive cheer while the rest of the Wehrmacht endured a harsh winter as Soviet offensives raged along the front. Both sides seized any chance to disrupt the other’s calendar, turning holidays into elements of psychological and operational warfare. While Halder luxuriated at Mauerwald, the Ostheer faced empty stomachs or the daily reality of combat conditions.

Despite the optimism in his speech, Leeb doubted his army’s ability to withstand a renewed major attack given the lack of reinforcements. The frozen swamps had stretched his frontline, and he lacked the troops to cover the exposed stretches. The withdrawn 8th and 12th Panzer divisions were forced to devote three battalions each to rear-area security, leaving only the 20th Motorised Division as a true reserve. Leeb feared a Soviet assault would strike the boundary between the 16th and 18th Armies, and this manpower shortage compelled him to order the 225th division airlifted from Liepāja port to speed its redeployment. As December drew to a close, Lake Ladoga’s ice thickened again to about one meter, with a snow cover of roughly 30 centimeters. This thick ice could bear the weight of KV tanks as well as supply trucks, a crucial factor for movement across the lake. Coupled with ongoing organizational reforms, these conditions contributed to a notable uptick in supply flow: about 700 tons on the 22nd and roughly 800 tons by the 23rd. This was significant, marking the first time the Road of Life managed to deliver more than the city’s daily consumption rate under the brutal rationing that characterized Leningrad’s siege.

This would mark a turning point in the siege era, signaling the first real opportunity to increase rations since September. Bread rations were adjusted: workers and engineers would receive 350 grams of bread, while employees, dependents, and children were limited to 200 grams. Despite these adjustments, famine and disease continued to ravage the civilian population as many basic food needs remained unmet. In an effort to relieve some of the suffering, the Leningrad Front released 300 tons of food stockpiled in Kronshtadt and other nearby forts for distribution to civilians. Soldiers themselves also stepped forward, voluntarily reducing their own rations to conserve resources for the starving population. Even with these measures, December deaths totaled around 50,000. Clearly, more work was needed to increase throughput along the Road of Life in order to sustain the city.

Traditionally, Hitler’s Halt Order on the 18th is cited as having saved Army Group Center. This interpretation was widely promoted by Nazi propaganda and early histories of the Eastern Front. In the moment, halt and hold decisions did provide strategic clarity at a time when few were willing to assume responsibility for a decisive move. Moving forward could have meant a longer retreat, which seemed disastrous to many commanders, while fighting in place appeared to offer a defensible alternative. The short, incremental withdrawals that did occur were devastating for the units involved: vast quantities of equipment were abandoned, and troops endured extreme strain from marching, exposure to the cold, and exhaustion. Yet the halt orders were often too restrictive, preventing necessary movement or delaying it when urgency demanded action. Even at the company level, commanders technically needed Hitler’s personal permission to advance or retreat. In practice, obtaining Hitler’s approval could take hours or days, even as crises mounted toward a breaking point.

While the Nazis believed they were destined to triumph and had indoctrinated a large portion of the officer corps, the Wehrmacht operated under Auftragstaktik. Manstein Lost Victories post war.“This brings me to the factor which probably did more than anything else to determine the character of Hitler’s leadership—his overestimation of the power of the will. This will, as he saw it, had only to be translated into faith down to the youngest private soldier for the correctness of his decisions to be confirmed and the success of his orders ensured … Such a belief inevitably makes a man impervious to reason and leads him to think that his own will can operate even beyond the limits of hard reality—whether these consist in the presence of far superior enemy forces, in the conditions of space and time, or merely in the fact that the enemy also happens to have a will of his own”

This philosophy entrusted subordinates with the initiative to achieve the mission, rather than rigidly following orders from above. - Stahel summarizing mission based tactics/Auftragstaktik “If the mission (the intention of the order) was endangered or an unanticipated opportunity arose, but authorization from higher command was impossible owing to time pressure or communication difficulties, then the officer on the spot was empowered to act—even against his orders—to achieve the mission” In practice, many German officers interpreted this autonomy as a mandate to keep their formations alive rather than to hold ground at all costs, and some acted without communicating in what they claimed were time-pressured circumstances. An informal form of elastic defense emerged: formations would withdraw without explicit permission to avoid needless losses, only to be restored later through timely counterattacks. The vast scale and static nature of the strategic maps at Hitler’s HQ meant he rarely, if ever, saw these on-the-ground movements, remaining unaware of how battles were evolving in real time.

Recent studies have found that disobedience and independent action were widespread across Army Group Center, though most of the officers involved were junior enough to keep these events hidden from Hitler. In many cases, divisional or even corps-level officers covertly assisted these efforts. There are numerous diary entries documenting retreats that were never authorized by high command. For instance, the war diary of 46th Panzer Corps notes the 5th Panzer abandoning the villages of Lyzlovo and Kuz’minskoe, only for these positions to be recaptured later that same afternoon in a counterattack with heavy enemy losses. This autonomy helped mitigate the worst implications of Hitler’s orders.

Last week, the Soviets had managed to push the Germans away from Moscow and now pursued an ambitious objective: encircling and destroying Army Group Center. Pravada had wanted “proof” of Soviet victory so staged a shot of Germans retreating with POWs marching through the snow and wind created by airplane propellers. At a minimum, Zhukov aimed to force the German forces back to their pre-Typhoon positions. Zhukov’s second phase began on the 18th, though in some sectors the attacks were delayed. By the 22nd, Soviet efforts were hammering at every segment of the German line, probing for weak points. Across the front, Strauss’s 9th Army was in a cautious, deliberate retreat toward Staritsa, losing only a few kilometers each day to preserve frontline cohesion. Yet Staritsa was little more than a map point, lacking terrain features favorable to defenders. Strauss sought permission from Kluge to continue retreating all the way to Rzhev, where the Volga offered natural protection. But the 9th Army appeared to be the most secure sector of Army Group Center, and Hitler had already deemed a retreat to the Königsberg Line through Rzhev a waste of equipment. Kluge, reluctant to invest time and effort in pleading Strauss’s case, left the army defending Staritsa. Complicating matters, the Kalinin Front had been reinforced by Stalin, and the 9th Army had no mobile reserves to draw upon.

Casualties rapidly mounted as the 9th Army continued its withdrawal. By the 25th, even Halder began to fear that the army was starting to crumble from its losses. Bolstered by the misleading reports from Foreign Armies East, Strauss clung to the hope that the Kalinin Front would run out of manpower before his own forces did. Yet Konev faced strict orders to attack and paid little heed to his army’s distress. Day after day, attacks were poured into the grind of battle. His commander’s terse reply was: “You will attack at once. If not, I’m afraid your health will suffer.” The extreme cold forced fighting to focus on villages and their shelters, while the stretches of ground between them were held only lightly by reconnaissance units. By the 26th, the 6th Army Corps had exhausted its reserves and urgently requested permission to withdraw. Strauss refused, citing Hitler’s order. Kluge supported the decision but added a caveat to the order. “only when the VI A.C. threatens to be smashed, is withdrawal (but not to a great degree) in order.”  On the 27th, both the 6th and 23rd Corps again requested an immediate withdrawal, which was granted for the evening of the 28th. 9th Army’s War diary for the 27th “For the first time, under the power of events beyond human control, the difficult decision was taken to withdraw the Staritsa Line at certain points, which was to have been held under all circumstances according to the Führer’s order. Without this, the front, in view of the evergrowing enemy pressure, would rupture. Then the connection would be broken, leadership and influence on the individual units would be eliminated, and a rapid dissolution of the army would be the inevitable consequence. However, in these fateful hours the [Ninth] army command feels the great responsibility of saving the army from its otherwise certain destruction.”

To the East, Reinhardt remained focused on his own sector, paying little heed to the wider frontline. He had already ignored Hoepner’s orders to cover a broader stretch of the line. Hoepner would later accuse Reinhardt of falsifying reports from neighboring units’ retreats to justify his own unauthorized withdrawals. On the 21st, Reinhardt refused orders to send the 2nd Panzer to aid the 5th Corps at Voloklansk. After several hours of debate with Hoepner, Reinhardt reluctantly agreed to dispatch a single panzer battalion from the 6th Panzer. Reinhardt to a Staff officer complaining about even this concession.  “what is the point of us holding if the right [flank] breaks” 

Both Panzer Groups remained under the 4th Army, but Kübler had not yet arrived from Ukraine to replace Kluge as its commander. As a result, Kluge endured ongoing friction from the Panzer commanders. In the end, Kluge returned both Panzer Groups to Army Group control, and temporarily designated Reinhardt as commander of the 4th Army, with Panzer Group Three to be merged with the 5th Army Corps. Reinhardt, however, managed to delay his departure long enough to derail this plan. Stumme of the 40th Panzer Corps became the temporary commander of the 4th Army instead. Reinhardt’s diary entry on the 24th “12 o’clock, decision that I can stay. Thank God.”  Kübler finally arrived on the 26th. The 4th Army’s Chief of Staff, Blumentritt, was replaced the next day by Colonel Bernuth. Kübler came into prominence by writing a falsified report of Uman encirclement in which he glorified his own role as a Corp commander. He then covertly sent it to Hitler’s headquarters and other high offices.  

The Grosstransportraum simply lacked the fuel and trucks needed to deliver the munitions required for intensive defensive battles. Despite the heightened consumption, train deliveries declined only in December, worsening the supply strain. After days of relentless fighting, the 5th Army Corps was forced to surrender Volokolamsk and then Ivanoskoe by the 24th due to ammunition shortages. Neither withdrawal had received permission, and Ruoff did not receive any rebuke. Once again, Reinhardt refused to assist Ruoff despite orders from Hoepner, only being pressured into sending a single battalion more in reinforcement. On the 26th, a major assault breached the lines of the 106th Infantry Division, which had been reduced to about 300 combat-effective troops. Reinforcement was limited to 10 tanks from the 6th Panzer Division, sent only on the condition they would be returned afterward. By the 28th, the 5th Corps managed to rally and counterattack, retaking the heights west of Ivanovskoe and encircling several Soviet formations. Ruoff benefited from secure flanks and the proximity of mobile divisions. Throughout the week, multiple small Soviet breakthroughs occurred, but these were quickly counterattacked and crushed by the mobile forces.

Kluge’s former 4th Army had been the only formation not to undertake a major retreat by the time of the renewed Soviet offensive. This left them protruding as a bulge in the front line when Hitler’s Halt Order was issued. Their front ran along the Nara River, fortified with bunkers and trenches. Yet Guderian’s negligence created a crisis to the south, where the Soviets had split the 43rd and 24th Army Corps. Guderian repeatedly refused to act, even with both corps under his command. With Guderian abrogating his responsibility, the 43rd Corps was transferred to the 4th Army. Despite Hitler explicitly denying permission, Kluge granted Heinrici limited autonomy to maneuver his corps away from the Soviets. Heinrici’s letter to his wife December 22.“I am again standing at the high point of Russian pressure. Basically, we are already fully encircled. Yesterday the situation was hopeless. We were anticipating our end in the encirclement. At the very last minute, Kluge gave permission to withdraw again. That prolonged our existence a little bit longer.” We know of this withdrawal only from Heinrici’s letter home to his wife; there are no other records of it.

As we can see, Kluge was not inclined to blindly hold the frontline, opting for small retreats where necessary to avoid endangering neighboring formations. While we only have documented evidence of the 43rd Corps withdrawal, it remains possible that Kluge issued additional covert orders to retreat, though no records survive to confirm it.The withdrawal of the 43rd Corps came just in time, as a new Soviet attack on the 22nd broke through to their north, leaving the corps exposed on both flanks, at risk of encirclement, and cut off from the rest of the 4th Army. This also left the 13th Corps with an exposed southern flank and put the entire 4th Army at risk of being rolled up from the south. Kluge pleaded to be allowed a substantial withdrawal, but Halder did not heed his pleas. Halder’s diary 23rd December. “Kluge judges this situation as operationally very serious, I see it less operationally and more tactically very uncomfortable.” Eventually, Hitler was worn down and granted Kluge permission to withdraw if needed. Consequently, the 13th Corps pulled back to the north while the 43rd Corps fell back toward Kaluga. To reinforce the line, Kluge also pulled the 19th Panzer Division out of the front and redirected it south to counter the Soviet breakthrough, though that counterattack would not reach the front until the 28th.

This, however, weakened the 57th Panzer Corps, whose frontline collapsed on the 27th. The 98th Infantry Division began to disintegrate under Soviet pressure, though it managed a fighting retreat. “The division reports that the individual leaders and the troops lost their nerves, even the word ‘panic’ is used” 98th division’s report to Corp Hq. With no reserves to plug the gaps, Kluge pressed for permission to withdraw further, either the entire Army’s flank or the whole Army. 

Army Group Center’s war diary recorded the conversation. “[HALDER:] I dare not tell the Führer that I have received reports that eighty percent of a battalion froze to death during the retreat. The Führer would reply that these casualties would not have occurred if positions had been held. [KLUGE:] The men are not freezing to death because they are on the march, but because they are standing outside and fighting outside and have no positions. Is the army command staff hiding the fact that we are dealing with an operational breakthrough here? Has the army command any other ideas? [HALDER:] The right wing of the Fourth Army should be withdrawn and mobile elements pitted against the enemy. [KLUGE:] I have no more mobile forces!… An operational breakthrough must be expected … Whether the Führer likes it or not he will have to order a retreat. If supplies cannot be delivered, things will soon collapse….  The Führer will have to come down from cloud-cuckoo-land and have his feet set firmly on the ground. Halder blocked him, effectively stonewalling any withdrawal. In the absence of explicit authorization, a coordinated withdrawal began on the Army’s right wing, while a more limited withdrawal started on the left wing, involving only a few kilometers. There is no surviving paper trail indicating who authorized these movements, but the timing and coordination suggest it was Kluge.

In the void south of the 4th Army, the Soviets surged toward the vital supply hub at Kaluga and enveloped the 43rd Corps. On the 21st, the Soviets reached Kaluga, and their initial assault was barely repulsed by the city garrison. However, German forces panicked during the attack, and several trains carrying supplies, including Christmas presents, were destroyed to prevent capture. While the first assault was repelled, the encirclement of Kaluga seemed only a matter of time unless a means could be found to close the breach in the German lines. The threat was intensified by rampaging Soviet cavalry. Although assaults on well-defended positions often ended in disaster, the cavalry maintained mobility even in deep snow and operated with a relatively limited logistical footprint. Soviet cavalry formations would increasingly disrupt German supply routes behind the front lines.

On the day Guderian reached the Wolf’s Lair, Kluge covertly moved a regiment from each division behind the Oka River, more than 70 km to the west, where a new defensive line was being prepared. This act was not only open defiance of Hitler, it would also leave a massive void in the German front, threatening both Army Groups Center and South. Outraged, Kluge informed Halder, who then briefed Hitler on the matter. Kluge “Guderian’s conception is so pessimistic, one must assume that he has lost his nerve.”Guderian had hoped to present a fait accompli, his retreat, but this was not tolerated. It is remarkable that Hitler spent several hours trying to secure Guderian’s obedience despite the insubordination. By the end of the day, Hitler believed he had won Guderian’s obedience, if not full agreement. GUDERIAN:] Then this means taking up positional warfare in an unsuitable terrain … If such tactics are adopted we shall during the course of this coming winter, sacrifice the lives of our officers, our non-commissioned officers and of the men suitable to replace them, and this sacrifice will have been not only useless but also irreparable. [HITLER:] Do you think Frederick the Great’s grenadiers were anxious to die?…[GUDERIAN:] The intentions I have heard expressed will lead to losses that are utterly disproportionate to the results that will be achieved …[HITLER:] But you are seeing events at too close a range. You have been too deeply impressed by the suffering of the soldiers. You feel too much pity for them.

Meanwhile, Schmidt faced a Soviet breakthrough. Kluge sought to pull the 48th Panzer Corps back behind the river and abandon Livny to free forces for a counterattack, but Hitler refused. Halder informed Kluge that they could only retreat to the Tim River if “that the rearward line is so prepared that a successful infantry defense can be guaranteed”The 9th Panzer Division nonetheless managed a counterattack between the 20th and 22nd. The series of actions temporarily stabilized the situation and restored German lines. By this point, Guderian had returned to his headquarters and reiterated Hitler’s orders to the complaints of his officers. The 2nd Army was instructed not to surrender any more ground, though Schmidt protested. “Rigidly conducted, however, the order leads to very great dangers. We have the thinnest front, reserves are absent. The Russian is superior. He is close to his good railway network. He can move operationally and tactically and thus form points of concentration. These circumstances must lead to break-ins and breakthroughs. Breakthroughs can only be rectified by counterattack … [If] one has no forces to counterattack, then local relocation mixed with counterthrusts must be used to restore the situation.”

On the 22nd, a Soviet offensive broke the lines of the 296th Division. When permission to withdraw was denied, Guderian nonetheless withdrew. The following day, he ordered his entire Army Group to retreat to the Oka River, ignoring Kluge’s counter-orders. On the 24th, Kluge contacted elements of Guderian’s forces and quickly confirmed that the withdrawals were continuing, and that Guderian had repeatedly misrepresented their positions. Although this could have been an opportunity to remove Guderian, Kluge described the retreats as being “under the compulsion of circumstances,” which was arguably true to some extent. Having just covered for Guderian, Kluge expected loyalty in return. Guderian was ordered to close the gap between Belev and Kaluga and to strengthen his left flank. His response was extremely hostile and culminated in a demand to be removed from command or placed before a military tribunal. Army Group Center’s war Diary “ Colonel-Gen. Guderian replies that he does not have the slightest hope that anything will be changed due to the unending interference and the intended measures in the overall situation … He then asks for removal from his post because, according to him, the measures which were ordered would not change the overall situation. He had no objection if one was to bring him before a military tribunal” On the 25th, the conflict flared again as Kluge learned of the 47th Panzer Corps’ unauthorised withdrawal from Chern. Guderian’s initial response was simple ““In these unusual circumstances I lead my army in a manner I can justify to my conscience”In response, Kluge presented Halder with an ultimatum: “either he or I must go.”“I have the greatest respect for Colonel-General Guderian and he is a fantastic commander, but he does not obey. In this situation, I can only transmit and execute the Führer’s orders if I can rely on my army commanders” Kluge to Halder.  “I am basically entirely on Guderian’s side, one cannot simply let himself be slaughtered, but he must obey and keep me oriented. Guderian again requested relief from command. Hitler dismissed him on the same day, and Schmidt then took command of the small Army Group. Schmidt, however, continued in the same pattern, repeatedly withdrawing without Kluge’s permission until his group reached the Oka River. There they fortified themselves and began repairing worn-down equipment.

With the 2nd Army pushed back so far, Army Group South transferred the majority of the 168th Division and some of the 62nd Division to the 2nd Army to shore up its boundary with 6th Army. On the 25th, Soviet attacks began hitting the northern wing of the 1st Panzer Army. Additional Soviet offensives were launched toward Kursk and Kharkiv. None of these efforts achieved significant gains. Both Germany and the USSR remained focused on other sectors of the front, preventing major operations in this area. At Sevastopol, the assault by the 22nd Division was halted by the arrival of the 79th Naval Brigade, which had forced marched north to reach the breach. This allowed the 8th Naval Infantry Brigade and the 95th Rifle Division to withdraw from the Mamaschi salient to the Belbek Valley on the 22nd. The well-trained and equipped 345th Division would arrive later in the week. These reinforcements, along with relentless shelling from the Battleship Parizhskaya Kommuna and its naval group, blunted the German attacks. The only noticeable Axis success occurred to the south, where the 170th Infantry Division alongside the Romanian 1st Mountain Brigade finally captured and held Chapel Hill after several days of a seesaw battle. This had been a key position for Soviet Defensive Sector II, but the Germans were not able to exploit their success.

Hansen ordered the attacking forces reorganized on the 23rd for a renewed assault at the end of the week. Manstein, however, pressed for an all-out attack on the 25th, believing the Soviet defenders were about to crack. The plan failed when the main effort struck a fresh defense instead of the expected weak point, encountering troops from the 345th Rifle Division. Manstein halted these attacks the same day, but pushed for a more focused offensive against the Mekenzievy Mountain positions. By this time, the Soviets had received over 26,000 reinforcements, while the German divisions had received none. Early morning on the 26th, the 51st Army returned to Crimea. About 5,000 men landed in the first wave of amphibious operations around Kerch. Tolbukhin had wanted to showcase his initiative and devised an overcomplicated naval landing plan. As a result, the initial assault consisted of multiple small landings north and south of Kerch. The plan depended heavily on fire support from the VVS and the Black Sea Fleet to keep these small groups alive. Storms forced two landings to be cancelled. In addition, a shortage of landing craft forced the use of whaleboats to transport men and equipment to shore, leading to numerous drownings and cases of hypothermia in the rough seas. This left five disjointed beachheads with frozen, lightly equipped, exhausted troops unable to coordinate effectively. The plan assumed they would eventually connect up, but instead they dug in and awaited a German counterattack. Furthermore, one landing had been opposed and quickly contained by a small German force. All this left Manstein believing that the 46th Infantry Division could handle the Soviet attack alone. The Reichenau concluded that the 46th plus two Romanian brigades were insufficient to withstand a major Soviet offensive, so he sent a single regiment from the 73rd Infantry Division to bolster the defenses. He also ordered the port facilities at Kerch destroyed if the defenders were forced to retreat. And on December 22, the Arcadia Conference began, with the United States ultimately agreeing to a Germany First strategy.

I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.

Despite initial winter gains and rising STAVKA confidence, Soviet logistics, leadership inexperience, and grinding attrition challenged sustained advantage. German command salvaged some stability through halting withdrawals, but internal frictions, Hitler’s demands, Guderian’s resistance, and Kluge’s cautious improvisation, undermined cohesion and exposed vulnerabilities. The siege of Leningrad and the siege dynamics around Kaluga, Volokolamsk, and Kalinin highlighted a war of endurance more than decisive victories.

Eastern Front #29 New Year, New Offensives

Last time we spoke about the end of the first year of the eastern front. The Red Army pressed on Army Group Center, while Meretskov’s Volkhov Front prepared a Leningrad breakout despite crippled supply lines. In Leningrad, famine worsened; cannibalism surfaced and NKVD records show arrests, even as the Kirov Tank Factory kept producing tanks. The Baltic/Sevastopol fronts saw stubborn resistance: the Soviet submarine fleet, though hampered by ice and poor training, managed limited successes; five transports, a submarine, and two tankers sunk by year’s end. Army Group North protected the Leningrad corridor against repeated Soviet attempts to sever it, while Meretskov’s 4th and 54th Armies attempted operations west and south of Lake Ladoga to relieve the siege. In Army Group Center, Hitler’s retreats were banned, but local withdrawals continued, fueling a leadership crisis as Zhukov exploited gaps and the 1st Guards Cavalry Corps disrupted Kaluga and Sukhinichi. Guderian’s retreat sparked relief demands and Guderian’s removal. On the southern and Crimean fronts, Sevastopol withstood heavy pressure; Kerch and Feodosia saw mixed Soviet landings and German counterattacks, with Petrov’s defense holding deep into late December. Overall, December 1941 ended with Soviet momentum, strained German logistics, and a desperate balance as winter intensified.

This episode is New Year, New Offensives

Well hello there, welcome to the Eastern Front week by week podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

 

January 1st arrived with a nation in flux. After 193 days of campaigning, a remarkable turn of events had unfolded: a shocking invasion pushed the Wehrmacht toward the gates of Moscow, and the closing weeks of 1941 saw the Red Army mounting a determined counteroffensive. Stalin had managed to keep the communist state intact against overwhelming odds, while his generals scrambled to reorganize both army and industry on the fly, improvising plans as new realities emerged on every front. By December, with German forces only kilometers from the Kremlin, the Red Army had carefully marshaled its resources and prepared to strike back. The invaders found themselves facing a reeling front and signs of growing disarray, and there was a rising sense that the long, grinding struggle might tilt in favor of the Soviets. Yet the Germans managed to hold the line. Despite being defeated in detail in several engagements, they reorganized around a new set of defensive positions and steadied their posture for the year ahead, ready to resist the anticipated Soviet push and to exploit any moment of weakness in the enemy’s momentum.

 

In Army Group North, what would come to be known as the Lyuban Offensive had been in the planning stages since the third week of December. The original start date was set for December 25, but delays in preparations pushed it back to after the new year. Meretskov was nominally in command of the offensive’s main effort with the Volkhov Front, yet Stalin had dispatched a coordinator from the Stavka to oversee the operation. This was Commissar Mekhlis, a figure infamous for his ruthless reputation and a readiness to discipline anyone he believed might be disobeying orders in spirit as well as in letter. According Khrushchev “He had a particularly strong influence over Stalin ... I had once been on very good terms with him ... But by the time he took over as chief of the Political Directorate I considered him a nitwit, and I was appalled that someone like him could enjoy Stalin's unbounded confidence. Mekhlis's influence did the army and the country no good.” 

 

He was certainly a colorful character. From 6 September 1940 to June 1941, he served as People’s Commissar of State Control (Goskontrolya). During the 1939–40 war with Finland, Mekhlis was sent to the front to report to Stalin on why the Red Army was being driven back by the Finns. He attributed the defeats to treachery and had Alexei Vinogradov, Vinogradov’s chief of staff, and the chief of the political department shot in front of the troops.  In June 1941, Mekhlis was reassigned to his former post as head of the Main Political Administration and as deputy People’s Commissar of Defense. He was with Stalin on the day the Germans invaded the USSR, marking the start of Operation Barbarossa. Mekhlis received the rank of army commissar of the 1st rank, equivalent to General of the Red Army. In 1942 he acted as the Stavka’s representative, serving with the high command. As part of the effort to find someone to blame for the Red Army’s disastrous setbacks in 1941, Mekhlis ordered the artillery commander on the North Western Front, Vasily Sofronovich Goncharov, to be shot at the front headquarters on 11 September 1941. Goncharov was posthumously exonerated in 2002.

 

Mekhlis personally encouraged the killing of German prisoners of war, contributing to the Feodosia massacre. Later on in March 1942, Mekhlis was dispatched to organize the defense of the Kerch peninsula on the Crimean Front, where he clashed with General Dmitry Timofeyevich Kozlov. In May 1942 the Red Army was driven out of Crimea by a numerically smaller German force. In his report to Stalin, Mekhlis attempted to shift blame onto Kozlov, but received a scathing telegram in response “Crimean front, t. Mekhlis: Your code message #254 (I) received. Your position of a detached observer who is not accountable for the events at the Crimean Front is puzzling. Your position may sound convenient, but it positively stinks. At the Crimean Front, you are not an outside observer, but the responsible representative of Stavka, who is accountable for every success and failure that takes place at the Front, and who is required to correct, right there and then, any mistake made by the commanding officers. You, along with the commanding officers, will answer for failing to reinforce the left flank of the Front. If, as you say, "everything seemed to indicate that the opponent would begin an advance first thing in the morning", and you still hadn't done everything needed to repel their attack instead limiting your involvement merely to passive criticism, then you are squarely to blame. It seems that you still have not figured out that we sent you to the Crimean Front not as a government auditor but as a responsible representative of Stavka. You demand that Kozlov be replaced, that even Hindenburg would be an improvement. Yet you know full well that Soviet reserves do not have anyone named Hindenburg. The situation in Crimea is not difficult to grasp, and you should be able to take care of it on your own. Had you committed your front line aviation and used it against the opponent's tanks and infantry, the opponent would not have been able to break through our defenses and their tanks would not have rolled through it. You do not need to be a 'Hindenburg' to grasp such a simple thing after two months at the Crimean Front. Stalin”. So yeah he was a pretty bad guy. Back to our story, Mekhlis wasted no time in tightening the screws, ensuring that maximum effort was directed toward getting the field forces assembled and fully prepared for the offensive. His involvement signaled a shift toward tighter central control and intensified pressure to press the initiative despite the logistical and strategic challenges that had slowed preparations.

 

After days of delay, the first attack began on January 4th near Kirishi. The 1st Infantry Corps managed to hold the line, and soon the 12th Panzer Division arrived to counterattack. The 12th Panzer Division had been withdrawn from the line for a little under two weeks of refitting in Estonia. That short lull proved fruitful: the division’s repair depots managed to bring roughly seventy tanks back into service. Reconstituted and ready, the unit was then sent back into the line to act as a mobile reserve, poised to respond to changing battlefield conditions. The Soviet 4th Army was pushed back to its starting positions. By the end of the day, Meretskov had pleaded with Stalin for a three-day pause, but the request was rejected. Stalin had become convinced that the Wehrmacht was little more than a shell, and that the only thing preventing its destruction was a failure of will on the part of his commanders. In this, he was echoing the mistakes of Hitler from a few weeks earlier. Hitler remained confident that victory would come from sufficient willpower alone. Commanders were judged not on battlefield performance, but on whether their resolve satisfied Hitler’s mania for unwavering obedience. In a striking psychological mirror, Stalin proved similar in the war’s early years. One way historians summarize the Eastern Front is to say that Hitler trusted his Generals less and less, pulling ever more control into his own hands, while Stalin sought to rely on his commanders more, gradually delegating authority even as he tightened political oversight. If the Soviet Union was to win on the battlefield, more flexibility needed to be granted to the field commanders.

 

Things were going so badly for Germany, a large commotion about adopting chemical warfare heated up. The difficulties on the eastern front, together with rising nervousness within the Ministry for Armaments and Munitions and other leading industrialists’ doubts about Germany’s war prospects, gave gas-warfare advocates their first real opportunity to promote their ideas. This was not the war’s first mention of gas as an offensive or defensive agent, but Germany’s continued rapid success had kept the debate on the margins. Hitler insisted on a gas capability should Germany be attacked first, but he showed little serious interest in its offensive use. At the outset of Barbarossa, fears persisted that a gas war might ensue. The British intercepted reports that the Germans planned to use gas in the east and threatened retaliation if they did. Simultaneously, Goebbels sought to calm fears of a Soviet gas attack by promising swift retaliation. A pamphlet instructed German troops to expect poison-gas and bacterial attacks in combat with the Red Army. Germany’s battlefield successes, however, sustained the hope of final victory over the Soviet Union and sidelined discussions of gas warfare.

 

In the second half of 1941, as German armaments production deepened its crisis, lobbyists for gas warfare failed to defend their programs from cuts. In early December, Hitler received a report on new nerve gases—Trilon 83 (Tabun) and Trilon 46 (Sarin), the latter six times more deadly. The main gas production facility at Dyhernfurth, with a capacity of 1,000 tons per month, could reach full production by spring 1942. The report concluded: “Neither captured documents nor other intelligence sources indicate that the enemy will use these or similar gases with the same effects. This means that Germany is clearly superior in gas warfare, and this superiority must be maintained.” Hitler agreed. He would not initiate a gas war, but he insisted that German capabilities and superiority be maintained at whatever cost. This stance imposed another burden on Germany’s overstrained war economy, yet it also encouraged those in the chemical industry and armaments agencies who continued to advocate an offensive gas option, especially on the eastern front. On 7 January 1942, Halder noted in his diary: “Colonel [Hermann] Ochsner is trying to talk me into a gas war against the Russians.” These advances were rejected by the German high command, not from timidity about chemical killing agents but from genuine fear of Allied reprisals. After all, the experimental killing of Jews with gas was already progressing, 1,200 Jews were killed at a clinic in Bernburg on 25 November 1941. Strategic weapons and German planning were important to the wider war, but they bore little immediate relevance to Army Group Centre’s soldiers. Importantly, no decision had been made to halt the offensive, so the advance had to continue despite bleak prospects. As Hellmuth Stieff wrote: “We have launched this attack largely with infantry regiments and can give them little tank protection. Our high command has urged us forward with an almost unreal sense of optimism. I instinctively feel this cannot work. We have assembled everyone we can find, even bringing up security detachments and putting them in the front line. These men are unsuited to intense combat, and when their commanders were killed in the first hour of the offensive, the rest refused to continue. They have been driven forward only because our artillery units threatened to open fire on them.”

 

 In January 1941, that lesson remained unlearned. Against Meretskov’s objections, the Lyuban Offensive pressed on. The 59th Army was thrown into the fighting, closely followed by the 2nd Shock Army. The German infantry resisted with a well-organized defense that spanned multiple lines of trenches, bunkers, barbed wire, and mines. The 59th Army attacked on January 6, crossing the Volkhov River in an attempt to seize and expand bridgeheads for the follow-on assault by the 2nd Shock Army. By the end of the day, the 59th Army had managed to push three divisions across the river. On January 7, the 2nd Shock Army was committed to the battle, tasked with taking Posadnikov Ostov, a small village west of Kirishi. The troops trudged through swampy terrain, conducting uncoordinated and unsupported assaults in a grueling struggle. For their efforts, three thousand men died in the first half hour; more perished as the day wore on.

 

As the first week drew to a close, it became clear that the Soviets had sacrificed thousands of lives for little tangible gain. There was still no sign that the lines held by the 18th or the 16th Army were anywhere near breaking point, though the pressure on those sectors remained severe. The German infantry, for their part, endured their own hardships. The swampy, frozen forests along the Baltic coast offered a brutal siege: lice were pervasive, food was scarce, and rations—ranging from rifle ammunition to clean clothing, were tightly controlled. Frostbite remained a persistent threat, and the few vehicles of Army Group North labored under shortages of lubricants and fuel, limiting mobility and tempo across the front. The first week of the year for Army Group Center was far from easy.

 

Ever prone to prevarication when faced with a decision, von Kluge was now nearing the point of forcing one. In a long and diffuse telephone conversation, he told Halder, that the time had come to consider whether it was necessary to pull back his army group’s entire front. Lateral movement, von Kluge added, had become impossible, so reinforcing a highly threatened sector from a less-threatened area was not feasible. The army group’s sector was completely snowed in. Generaloberst Hans-Georg Reinhardt had tried to take command of the 4th Army before Kübler arrived, but could not move south from his current command, the 3rd Panzer Army, by road, air, or even by sled. The area’s roads were being buried by drifts as quickly as they were cleared. The troops could not obtain food, and without food they could not fight. If the Soviets struck at his lines of communication, he could not move troops quickly enough to counter it. Von Kluge told Halder that Hitler now had to emerge from his “castle in the clouds” and plant both feet on the ground. Halder replied with Hitler’s standard refrain against retreat, namely that once started, retreat was very hard to halt. Von Kluge finally admitted that he had not reached any firm conclusion about the depth of the retreat he was advocating and would have to think it over.

 

In the early hours of January, Kluge endured a raging tirade from Hitler, who demanded that he hold the line while forbidding any withdrawal. For days, Kluge had pressed for permission to pull back the suffering 9th Army, but the Führer remained obstinate. The morning of the first proved tortuous for the Army Group Center commander: after enraging the dictator by reporting that Schmidt was retreating without orders, Kluge finally conceded defeat. Before dawn, he telephoned Schmidt to communicate the setback, a moment that underscored how even a field marshal could do little to sway the Bohemian Corporal’s will. Meanwhile, the Soviet 39th and 29th Armies continued to hammer at the 9th Army, as Hitler extolled willpower and a sense of purpose, casting himself and his commanders as the saviors of the situation. By January 2nd, Halder was writing that the front of the 9th Army had been breached in front of Staritsa. Kluge once more went to Hitler, a familiar pattern in which leadership attempts to influence decisions met with stubborn resistance. Halder noted this exchange in his diary, capturing the tension between strategic pressure from above and the limits of those beneath: “In view of  these situations; Field Marshal von Kluge demands withdrawal also of the adjoining sections. Very stormy discussions with the fuehrer who persists in his own views. So, the front will remain where it is, regardless of consequences”. The 9th Army retreated without permission, pulling back to Rzhev as the week drew to a close. There were no recalls, no courts-martial in this instance. The Soviets moved in, and the Germans dug deeper, bracing for what would soon become known as the Meat Grinder of Rzhev, the brutal, grinding battle that would unfold at the heart of Army Group Center’s sector.

 

On the opposite sector, Zhukov also wrestled with the obstinacy of his dictator. Stalin could not—or would not, grasp that the Wehrmacht was not hollowed out; in fact, German defenses were capable and resilient. These actions allowed the Soviets to absorb greater casualties while the Germans shortened their lines, rebuilt, and prepared for renewed operations. More than anything, December’s outcomes exposed overextension and a failure to rest and refit the troops, a predicament that Kalinin’s and Bryansk’s fronts would soon exploit with renewed vigor. Yet the Wehrmacht’s shortened front lines brought them closer to their supply depots, and while the rail advance progressed slowly, it did advance. Vehicles, freed from constant offensive pressure, could be repaired and replenished. Stalin, however, sought a complete encirclement of Army Group Center and reinforced the Kalinin and Bryansk Fronts accordingly. Zhukov opposed this, arguing that the Red Army’s offensive strength should be concentrated for a more modest push aimed at driving the invaders back behind Smolensk. Like Kluge, Zhukov accepted a degree of defeat early in the year.

 

The offensive was scheduled for January 10, with the days leading up to it devoted to preparation and coordination. The late December attacks lingered into the new year, continuing to drain life from both sides. The 9th Army remained hard pressed in the north, while the 2nd Army in the south bore the heaviest burden. The southern flank of Army Group was anchored before Kursk, where the 299th Infantry Division held firm against bitter winds and savage assaults. To its north stood the 16th Motorized Infantry Division under Lieutenant General Henrici. The Red Army wasted no time pressing Henrici’s lines on the morning of the first, bringing with them roughly thirty tanks of various types, among the largest concentrations of armor that would be assembled for the winter. Yet both sides suffered from armor shortages, and the little that existed was often spread thin across small-scale engagements like this. Pushing back a German division remained a crucial objective, but the failure of the Stavka and OKH to concentrate their armor ensured that no wide breakthrough was possible.

 

On January 2, Schmidt reacted to the deteriorating situation by sending the 3rd Panzer Division south to bolster Heinrici. In the fighting that day and the following, German units recaptured a substantial portion of equipment that the Red Army had pressed into service after the setback at Typhoon. This captured equipment ranged from radios, binoculars, and machine guns to trucks and anti-tank guns. The breadth of gear the Soviets pressed into service underscored their ingenuity in making do with whatever was at hand, even as it underscored the ongoing supply difficulties that persisted into this phase of the war. Throughout the week, the seesaw battle persisted. By January 7, the Germans were barely clinging to their positions, and serious discussions began about a possible withdrawal. Yet January 7 also marked the last day of the Soviet offensive in the south, and the Germans hoped this week would prove to be the winter’s final breath of fury. They would soon be proved wrong, for intelligence reports indicated that the Red Army was repositioning for an offensive to the north.

 

Between the 2nd Panzer Army and the 4th Army, an enormous gap lingered from Guderian’s hasty retreat. The Red Army could have exploited it, were it not for a lack of armor and the vast distances involved. Nevertheless, infantry and cavalry hammered at the 4th Army’s southern flank. General Kübler had been appointed in December and had only just arrived, still assessing his situation when it became clear he would need help to close the breach. Kluge pressed Hoepner to release the 30th Panzer Corps for this mission, under General of Panzer Stumme. They were reinforced with the first contingents of the 216th Infantry Division, arriving from France and assigned to hold the town of Suchinitschi, positioned in the middle of the gap between the two formations. It was a dangerous assignment for fresh German troops who were about to learn the difference between occupation duties in the Loire region and the Oka river basin. The infantry arrived on January 4.

 

They were encircled that same day by a mass of attackers, and Stumme proved unable to help. His forces were compelled to defend Yukhnov and the 4th Army command post there, while to the south Schmidt offered little relief. Kübler warned Kluge that the 216th could not hold Suchinitschi for long, and that their scarce supplies must support a fighting withdrawal. Hitler intervened, insisting Suchinitschi be held to the last man. The men of the 216th were not permitted to retreat, and the 50th Army ensured the outpost remained unreachable. By week’s end, Schmidt was attempting to assemble a relief force, but time dragged on and reserves were nonexistent. Every man redirected from the defense had to be covered by the comrades to his left and right, thinning the German lines with alarming speed. So far, the Soviets had largely failed to breach the Wehrmacht’s forward positions; they had pushed back the lines, but aside from the Suchinitschi gap, there were no decisive breakthroughs. The danger was that German defenses would become so stretched that the Red Army’s limitations, rifle and machine-gun fire notwithstanding, might be overwhelmed by sheer pressure, even without concentrated armor. The persistence of wasteful frontal assaults continued even as Stalin, Zhukov, and the rest of the Stavka ordered them to stop, a pattern that reflects the political atmosphere built during the purges. Inexperienced and frightened commanders often sent hundreds, or even thousands, of men into attacks that proved costly and largely useless, a phenomenon some scholars attribute to a climate of distrust and risk aversion fostered by the regime. Many officers felt compelled to demonstrate loyalty or boldness within the confines of rigid directives, fearing that any deviation toward “clever” tactics would be interpreted as anti-communist intellectualism. The result was repeated, high-casualty engagements where manpower faced fortified positions, producing heavy losses without corresponding strategic gains. Interpretations vary, with historians weighing the influence of strategic constraints and political oversight against operational friction between the Stavka and field commanders.

 

In Army Group South, the week remained relatively quiet. The 6th Army closed up the last penetrations from the prior week, and the 1st Panzer Army held the line against light enemy pressure. In Crimea, the 11th Army found itself facing a two-front predicament. Manstein bore intense pressure as his second attempt to seize Sevastopol had stalled, while Soviet forces had landed substantial troops at Kerch. The situation deteriorated even before the new year’s first dawn: a battalion of Soviet paratroopers dropped behind the German lines, striking the rear of the 46th Infantry Division, sowing havoc and confusion. Sponeck grew increasingly nervous as two Soviet armies continued to come ashore at separate beachheads, and his efforts to counter the northern threat led to a loss of confidence. In the turmoil, Manstein had Sponeck relieved and cashiered, with charges of retreat without authorization levied by the Nazi state. The sentence, death, later commuted to a prison term, highlighted the stark, inequitable justice that rank-and-file soldiers often perceived. The episode underscored a broader sense of absurdity within the Heer, as leadership and accountability collided in a war that spared none. To complicate matters further, Army Group South’s commander, Field Marshal Reichenau, issued an official declaration that the 46th Infantry was “forfeit of all soldierly honor,” suspending all promotions and awards within the division until further notice.

 

In the middle of the week, the Red Navy launched a landing at Yevpatoriya, meant as a raid that could be expanded into a diversionary operation to split the 11th Army. A reinforced Marine battalion set out from Sevastopol near midnight on the fourth, arriving offshore in the port’s early hours of the fifth. Manstein had warned all coastal forces to be on high alert after the Kerch debacle, and the Germans quickly spotted the approaching ships as spotlights swept the harbor. The Marines were caught in the crossfire of the ensuing landing; machine guns and light mortars shredded the assault, and for a time chaos reigned as casualties mounted under the stars. German observers directed artillery fire onto the pier, piling on the losses. Amid the deterioration, a Marine lieutenant rallied a small force to strike at the Crimea Hotel, a key German command center for the defense. By zero-five hundred, the hotel lay in Soviet hands, but securing it only intensified disaster when the flotilla’s command ship ran aground on a sandbar after taking hits from German artillery, prompting the rest of the flotilla to flee as dawn broke. The VVS failed to provide cover, and the Luftwaffe was expected to arrive soon. The Marines spent the day trying to extend their foothold, but progress was hampered by a lack of heavy weapons and heavy casualties from the landing. German defenses remained stubborn, with reinforcements en route, while the Soviets could not land additional troops during the fifth night due to a severe storm that prevented small-boat landings. The invading force included 10.5 cm howitzers, flamethrowers, and an infantry regiment. By the morning of the sixth, only about 120 of the original 740 Marines remained, and a breakout attempt ended in heavy fighting, with most killed and a handful captured; six sailors survived, one swimming out to sea and being rescued, while the rest struggled to return to Sevastopol.

 

The Kerch offensive was progressing slowly. Under Major General Pervushin, the 44th Army at Feodosiya had surprised the Germans and pushed them back, but he chose to hold the line and wait for Lieutenant General Lvov’s 51st Army to arrive from Kerch so the two could advance together and crush the defenders. Facing them were the German 42nd Infantry Corps and the Romanian Mountain Corps, reinforced by arrivals from Manstein’s main force at Sevastopol. The 30th Infantry Corps brought in the 132nd and 170th Infantry Divisions, while Manstein dispatched the last of his armor support, at least half a dozen StuG IIIs and two battalions from the 72nd Infantry Division. The Romanians contributed the 18th Infantry Division to bolster the 42nd Infantry Corps. 

 

The Trans-Caucasus Front remained responsible for the forces after the landing, with Lieutenant General Koslov on the scene. He sought to properly prepare his troops and pressed to build them up for a large, unified strike across the Kerch narrows to destroy the 11th Army. Yet his assessment betrayed several mistakes; he did not fully grasp who he was facing. Manstein was many things, but passive he was not. He would not sit idle or overanalyze numbers before attacking. The Soviets had granted him a measure of time, and he used it to good advantage. The Germans were well dug in and had prepared plans to strike the Soviets as soon as feasible. It would not occur that week, but Manstein was by no means idle with the extra time.

 

I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.

The Lyuban Offensive near the Volkhov faces brutal attrition and stalemate, hampered by supply issues, harsh conditions, and political micromanagement by Mekhlis. In the north, German defenses shorten lines but face costly Soviet assaults; in the south and Crimea, pockets of fighting persist around Sevastopol, Kerch, and the Caucasus. Overall, German momentum wanes, Soviet momentum grows, and winter survival shapes strategic choices. 

Eastern Front #28 The End of the First Year

Last time we spoke about the continued Soviet counteroffensive. The Red Army, under Zhukov and Rokossovsky, resisted heavy German pressure toward Moscow and Rostov, while STAVKA reshuffled commands to sustain pressure and tie down Army Group Center. A new Volkhov Front under Meretskov was instructed to break through the western Volkhov river line and encircle German forces around Leningrad. In Leningrad, the siege deepened as famine worsened. Food rationing collapsed to near starvation, cannibalism emerged in extreme cases, and NKVD records documented thousands of cannibalism arrests, though mass murder for ration cards remained more common. Despite dire logistics, the city’s Kirov Tank Factory continued producing; about 490 tanks rolled out by December, bolstering defenses. On the German side, Guderian’s forces withdrew under pressure, with navigable lines contracting and leadership friction escalating. In Sevastopol, Manstein intensified the siege even as Kerch landings loomed for a broader Soviet counter-offensive. 

This episode is The End of the First Year

Well hello there, welcome to the Eastern Front week by week podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

 

As the new year approached, the Wehrmacht and the Red Army were locked in brutal combat from the Arctic Circle to the shores of the Black Sea. Millions had already perished in the fighting, and there was no indication of an end in sight. Moscow had been spared from conquest for the year, and the Nazi War Machine had been pushed back onto the defensive. As winter deepened, Stalin’s advisors worked feverishly to assemble plans for the next phase of operations, schemes they hoped would liberate the rest of their beleaguered country. In the meantime, the Red Army continued to press men and materiel against German defenses, hoping for a breakthrough that would end the war. Zhukov and his comrades were not the only enemies the Germans had to contend with. They also faced the increasingly irrational demands of their Führer. And the worsening winter weather continued to take its toll, causing casualties and limiting operations. Both sides were affected by the harsh weather, but many German units remained poorly equipped with cold-weather gear and suffered accordingly. Frostbite cases were recorded for tracking, even as the OKH excluded medical casualties from their accounting. Nevertheless, estimates suggested that as many as 130,000 men became frostbite cases during the December fighting, with varying degrees of severity.

 

For Army Group North, the paramount issue was keeping Leningrad encircled. To achieve this, Shisselburg had to be held. It formed the end of what was known as the Shisselburg Corridor. The town sat at the mouth of the Neva where it flows into Lake Ladoga. Even at the height of the German advance beyond the Volkhov River, the corridor had never been more than about thirty kilometers wide. The Soviet 54th Army had been battered and driven back, but it managed to hold the southern shore of Lake Ladoga. This prevented the Germans from gaining anything more than a precarious foothold on the lake. Nevertheless, the Germans had demonstrated their defensive skill throughout November and December in the area, fending off several small-scale attacks and two large-scale offensives designed to break the corridor. The last week of the year saw both sides nursing their wounds after the Volkhov–Tikhvin offensive, which had pushed the Germans back behind the Volkhov River. The Germans were still pulling forces back to their lines behind the river.

 

Through Christmas Day, the situation remained relatively quiet. It wasn’t until 28 December that the Germans learned of the Volkhov Front’s existence. Meretskov had been ordered to begin his counter-offensive to liberate Leningrad on Christmas Day. Despite reinforcements, he knew the operation would be a disaster without more time to prepare. His field armies had suffered terribly in the Tikhvin–Volkhov operations. The least he could do was press with the Stavka for additional time to rest and refit. He attempted this, but was quickly overruled. Only in the moments before he was to start his attack was he able to convince them of the need for more time. Stalin’s representative was Colonel General Voronov. He went to inspect the readiness of the Volkhov Front. He was shocked by what he found: many guns lacked sights, limbers, or radios for battery control. The poor state of the rail lines east of Tikhvin contributed, with much of the equipment stranded mid-shipment. Voronov reported this to Stalin, skillfully shielding Meretskov from blame. The new Volkhov Front had not been given enough time to assemble a proper supply apparatus, and this was part of the fault. Additionally, the occupation meant that many rail lines lay partly in German-controlled areas, rendering them unusable. Stalin, up to that point, had tended to treat every numbered field unit as fully operational, with all its equipment and personnel. He often failed to recognize that units required time to stand up; men and material did not pre-exist in the places where armies and divisions were formed. In Meretskov’s case, Stalin accepted reality. He granted an extension, but warned that no further delays would be tolerated. The new attack date was set for 4 January 1942. Meanwhile, local units tried another attack west of the Neva into the German lines at Shisselburg. These attacks failed, but the pressure nearly broke Army Group North. Casualties were high, and the under-strength infantry divisions bore the brunt of the beating. 

 

Unlike the First World War, the German rear areas were never sanctuaries of rest and refit. Einsatzgruppe A reported as early as August that rail lines behind German lines were being attacked nearly every night. They urgently needed reinforcements to cope with the partisan threat, and by winter they had received them. The OKH was keenly aware that if the railroads could not be kept safe, the armies in the field could not be supplied or fed. Even with operable rail lines, there was a struggle to keep up with the demands of the front-line forces. There was not enough rolling stock or engines to move supplies to the army properly. For Army Group North, one of the best ways to alleviate this shortage was sea transport along the Baltic coast. Beyond supplying forces around Leningrad, there was the vital task of shipping raw materials from Sweden and Norway to Germany. The Soviet Red Banner Baltic Fleet had to be kept bottled up. The fleet was not in a position to contest the Kriegsmarine in a full-scale battle, but any engagement would risk reducing German strength needed to keep the Allied fleet out of the Baltic. The Germans and Finns had mined the Gulf of Finland from Helsinki to Tallinn. This kept the Red Banner Fleet from venturing out in large numbers. However, it could not prevent Soviet submarines from conducting anti-shipping patrols. 

 

The Soviet Submarine Arm had been particularly well developed before the war; at the outbreak, it boasted the largest submarine fleet in the world. Yet the Red Navy had played a secondary role to the VVS and the Red Army. It had not received the necessary training, and some of its equipment was in poor shape. As covered in the prelude to this series, the Navy had settled on a doctrine for its use. The Jeune d’Ecole school of thought favored light ships doing commerce raiding, but this doctrine had not been fully developed before the war. Soviet sailors had to learn on the job, just as their counterparts in the Army and Air Force were doing.

 

It wasn’t until late autumn 1941 that the Soviet submarines of the Red Banner Fleet had the chance to prove themselves. As winter closed in, large portions of the sea froze and ice became a serious operational hazard. Still, successes were possible. By the end of the year, Red Banner submarines had sunk five transports, one submarine, and two fuel tankers. This wasn’t overwhelming, but every ship lost represented a heavy burden on Germany’s limited shipbuilding capacity. These limited successes encouraged the Red Navy’s leadership. On 18 December, the submarine K-21 sailed out of Kronstadt behind an ice breaker. K-21 was an example of the K-class cruiser submarines. 

 

These were massive boats for their time, displacing about 2,600 tons when submerged. By comparison, a German Type IXC displaced about 1,178 tons when submerged. This contrast illustrated an early tendency within the Soviet navy toward larger submarines with extra room and spare displacement. The K class had an overall length at nearly 100 meters with a beam measuring 7.4 meters and a draught running down 4.5 meters. They were powered from a diesel-electric arrangement in which the diesel engines provided 8400 horsepower for surface running and the electric motors ran around 2400 horsepower for undersea travel. This gave them an impressive range of 14,000 nautical miles and the double hull design was tested to depths of 230 feet. She typically carried a crew of 67 men including 10 officers. They were armed with 2 100mm deck guns, 2 45mm anti aircraft guns, a few naval mines and two pair torpedo tubes facing the stern and a further 2 torpedo launchers were fitted externally to face the stern. The K-21 aimed to break out and conduct an unprecedented five-month anti-shipping patrol in the southern Baltic. However, K-21 was damaged en route when a stray piece of ice struck the submarine’s superstructure. The ambitious mission was halted before it could begin, and K-21 had to turn back. The Soviet Navy’s submarines would never have a decisive effect on German shipping in the Baltic, though not for a lack of effort. It was these efforts that cost the Soviet Navy twenty-seven submarines before the end of 1941. Inexperience among sailors and officers consistently contributed to this high rate of loss.

 

For Army Group Center, a period of relative clarity emerged once Hitler had issued his orders to halt the retreats. Yet withdrawals continued under the cover of local command decisions about the best positions for their units, and senior commanders implicitly sanctioned these moves by shielding them from higher levels of command. Hitler remained unaware of these actions, and the Army as a whole tended to operate under the belief that what he did not know could not hurt him. This aligned with the traditions of the modern German Army, which encouraged small-unit leaders to act independently to achieve the mission’s objectives. Despite these unauthorized retreats, Hitler’s order had been firm, and the corps and army commanders were given the excuse they needed to establish a line of resistance. Bock had been relieved of command because of illness, and in the final days he had been unable to exercise effective control over Army Group Center. With Kluge now in charge, Halder and Hitler expected him to turn things around.

 

The northern flank was in poor shape after the eviction of the 9th Army from Kalinin. Conditions were so dire that its commander, Colonel General Strauss, flew to Kluge’s headquarters for a meeting on the twenty-second. He pressed to pull his army back to Rzhev, but this was unacceptable to both Kluge and Hitler. Strauss was ordered to hold the line at Staritsa. The Kalinin Front would continue its attacks, and Strauss would have to endure without armor support, the panzers too busy defending their own lines. Konev continued to pour manpower into relatively small engagements, turning them into life-or-death struggles that the 9th Army struggled to contain. They had no reinforcements and were denied any chance to retreat. The result was countless skirmishes that drained hundreds, and eventually thousands, of lives from the rolls. The 9th Army paid dearly for Hitler’s refusal to countenance large-scale retreats. Strauss and Kluge pressed for permission to withdraw through the end of the month. The commander of 8th Fliegerkorps, General Richthofen, actively influenced the denial. He fed Hitler reports that countered those from the 9th Army, arguing that his reconnaissance found no enemy concentrations matching Strauss’s reports. Richthofen sought to maneuver into Hitler’s inner circle by feeding him information that aligned with Hitler’s preconceived notions. Hitler, for his part, was not only inclined to underestimate the situation on the ground but also deeply distrusted the Army leadership at this stage. Richthofen skillfully exploited both traits. In a twist of fate, he was granted a Corps command within the 9th Army before the year’s end. The assignment was short-lived, but the aristocrat did not leave humbled by the experience.

 

The best that Strauss could muster came on the last day of the year. Kluge berated and cajoled Reinhardt into sending a single battalion of panzers north. This Kampfgruppe consisted of only a few tanks and some ragtag infantry with limited mobility. It offered little help. Throughout the week, the 9th Army was forced to retreat or risk total destruction. Konev knew the 9th Army was on its last legs, and he was egged on by Stalin’s insistence on continued assault. Had he paused to concentrate his forces, he might have achieved a decisive breakthrough of the German lines. But the Stavka could not see this, believing that unrelenting pressure was the only path to victory. Reinhardt did not have much to spare and faced his own problems. He had only just managed to escape the Klin bulge with his panzer army intact, and if that is being frank, perhaps not entirely intact. Almost every division was rendered combat ineffective. They struggled to conduct even limited defensive operations, and everything was done on a shoestring budget. As he attempted to hold his lines, he continually had to adjust them to maintain contact with the retreating 9th Army. Hoepner’s 4th Panzer Army was in better shape than Reinhardt’s. He had not been caught in as exposed a position and had been able to pull his units back in good order. Things were quiet on his front lines during the last week of the month. The Stavka’s resources were then redirected to exploit the gains they had made with the 9th Army to the north, as well as to pressure the southern flank of Army Group Center.

 

The 4th Army remained under Kluge’s command, balancing his responsibilities for the army with those of Army Group Center. After pushing back the extended wings of the Panzer armies, Zhukov turned his attention to the 4th Army. German infantry lined the main east-west highway into Moscow, creating a bulge in the Army Group Center front. The northern wing, comprising the 3rd and 4th Panzer Armies and the 9th Army, had pulled back, while the 2nd Army and 2nd Panzer were in a full-blown crisis as well. Unlike the northern wing, Guderian was in complete disorder; cavalry had wrought havoc among his formations, and Zhukov was prepared to exploit the gap between the right wing of the 4th Army and the left of the 2nd Panzer Army. During the week, General Blumentritt assumed command of the 4th Army. He had previously served as Kluge’s Chief of Staff in that army and now faced corps commanders who were shaken by Zhukov’s hammering of the right flank. This was a nerve-wracking period for many men and officers. Blumentritt was said to have spent more time visiting troops at the front than in his headquarters, and at least one fellow officer reported that his nerves were completely shot, with some hoping for relief through death. On the twenty-sixth, a new commanding officer arrived. General of Infantry Kuebler had been appointed on the nineteenth, but his arrival had been delayed.

 

The attack against the 4th Army intensified in the last days of the third week, yet the German positions held firm along the Nara River. The only notable weakness lay with General of Infantry Heinrici’s 43rd Infantry Corps, which formed the army’s southeastern flank and had been flailing since Guderian broke contact. The gap had already been exploited by the 1st Guards Cavalry the previous week, and Soviet forces were pressing it again with renewed momentum. The Red Army moved quickly and efficiently. On 21 December, the General Staff was not even aware of a penetration south of Kaluga. Meanwhile, the 50th Army stormed into the gap, with the 1st Guards Cavalry leading the way and the 10th Army not far behind. Heinrici faced the real danger of encirclement and appealed to Kluge and Blumentritt for permission to retreat. After a harrowing delay, permission was granted, late on 23 December. Heinrici was allowed to pull back to Kaluga, though this was insufficient, unknown to the Germans at the time. Kluge then pulled the 19th Panzer Division from the northern line and redirected it south, the only substantial counter to the Soviet penetrations available. To the left of the 43rd Infantry, the 13th Infantry Corps fought a desperate, attritional battle against attacks from the 43rd and 49th Armies. By the morning of 27 December, it was clear they could not hold. They attempted to retreat in good order, but losses were heavy regardless. The 49th Army penetrated south of the 13th Corps, and once Heinrici became aware of this, he understood that holding Kaluga would be impossible without substantial support. On 29 December, he received permission to abandon the city. The year ended with continued attacks as the Soviets pressed their advantage.

 

The gap between the 2nd Panzer and the 4th Army was being exploited primarily by the 1st Guards Cavalry Corps, again rampaging across the front. The cavalry provided the Red Army with a level of tactical mobility that the pre-war German forces had largely destroyed earlier in Minsk, Smolensk, and Kyiv. They fought mainly as dismounted infantry, using their horses to gain better positioning and to break off engagements that were turning unfavorably. Yet the cavalry’s nature meant they often fought without heavy weapons and outside the supporting reach of better-equipped forces, resulting in extraordinarily high casualties. As the 1st Guards Cavalry Corps advanced with speed, Guderian’s forces were rapidly pushed back. The panzer commander requested permission to withdraw to avoid further losses, but the request was denied. The 1st Guards Cavalry crossed the Oka River early in the week, and the Germans were unaware until Guderian pulled back behind the river without permission. This retreat was discovered on the 25th, provoking outrage from Halder, Kluge, and Hitler. Kluge requested Guderian’s relief, and Hitler assented. Hitler summoned Guderian back to the Wolfsschanze in East Prussia on 20 December and relieved him of command on 25 December 1941. In this engagement, the cavalry corps reportedly subdued and repelled the previously formidable 2nd Panzer Group, once led by the pioneer of modern armored warfare, sweeping across the Russian steppe. This period is often cited as one of the Soviet Union’s notable achievements in the campaign. As the leadership crisis within Army Group Center continued, the 1st Guards Cavalry pressed toward Sukhinichi. Sukhinichi was a crucial rail junction and a key node between Kaluga and Bryansk. The OKH, near panic, designated the Oka Gap as the highest priority on the entire front. With the 9th Army falling back in the north, the danger of a full encirclement of Army Group Center loomed as more than a theoretical concern for Stalin’s strategists. On either the 28th or 29th, the 8th Airborne Brigade parachuted behind the German lines. Their objective was to rendezvous with the cavalry, but the landing was chaotic, poorly supported, and familiarly costly.  Many paratroopers were lost, separated from the main force, and they would not link up with the 1st Guards Cavalry until the first week of January.

 

2nd Army entered the week of the 22nd still perched in a precarious position, resembling the situation they faced in mid-December. Over the week, Red Army units managed several penetrations, and the German lines could only be patched late on the 29th. From Rzhev in the north to Kursk in the south, the Wehrmacht was being pushed back. The Red Army, while not yet the equal of the German military in skill, benefited from German exhaustion, poor positioning, and a lack of reserves. Many infantry formations had not enjoyed a rest period since the invasion began—roughly 193 days of continuous warfare. In the balance, numbers on both sides had converged to something close to parity, though this felt unsettling to the German side. Until the year’s end, they clung to the idea that the Soviet forces were on their last legs. Halder attempted to bolster the resolve of field commanders, but his words clashed with the frontline soldiers’ hard-won experience. Army Group Center had been driven into a difficult struggle in December. They were not destroyed, but they were suffering and stretched to their limits.

 

In Army Group South, conditions were not as dire as on other sectors. The relative stability stemmed from how the autumn offensives had been conducted by the three main army groups. Army Group South had largely aimed to reach the Donbas, rather than push deeper eastward. The 1st Panzer Army overreached in its attempt to seize Rostov, a singular miscalculation, while the 17th and 6th Armies had remained largely in place for several weeks, allowing them to build stronger defensive positions and to improve their logistics. Their sustained posture enabled better supply management than Army Groups Center and North had managed. The continuous pressure from the front without immediate relief, however, dragged the South's forces further from established supply bases. The 17th Army faced attacks on its northern flank, with the 4th Corps acting as the connecting link to the 6th Army. They endured several assaults before it appeared the Soviets might be running out of steam. Then, on the 25th, the Southwestern Front shifted its focus and attacked the southern flank of the 17th Army, where the Italians connected with Kleist’s Panzer Army. Although there were some local breakthroughs, the shortened front allowed mobile reserves to counter-attack and restore the lines before the end of the month.

 

In Crimea, the situation grew more dramatic as the Sevastopol assault intensified under Lieutenant General Hansen’s 54th Infantry Corps. He had spent the third week hammering Petrov’s defenses. A brief pause on the 21st was followed by a renewed push on the 22nd, when Hansen sent the 22nd Infantry Division into Sector Four again. This time they breached defenses, brushing aside the exhausted 241st and 773rd Rifle Regiments and advancing nearly a mile. Mamashay had to be abandoned, and Coastal Battery Number 10 was destroyed to deny its use to the Germans. The landside flank of the defense also pulled back. The Germans were making significant progress, and Petrov felt he was hanging on by a thread. There was nowhere to retreat to, and his men had little to hold onto. The German pounding continued, driving them toward collapse. Petrov pressed the Stavka for more aid. Before the end of the 22nd, the 388th Rifle Division had already been shattered by an attack from the 32nd Infantry Division. Hansen, satisfied with his gains, ordered the 23rd to be used for regrouping and rest for the men.

 

Petrov’s relief at the pause on the morning of 23 December was short-lived. Vice Admiral Oktyabrsky arrived in port with a five-ship convoy that delivered the complete 345th Rifle Division. The division brought a full complement of artillery, radios, and trucks, exactly what the defenders needed. In addition, the ships offloaded the 81st Tank Battalion, delivering sixty T-26 light tanks to bolster the defense. The extent of the aid delivered to Sevastopol underscored Stalin and the Stavka’s determination to hold the city. Petrov proved himself a capable commander and clearly wielded significant influence in the highest levels of power. Unaware of the arrival, the Germans planned to renew the assault. Manstein and Hansen granted themselves one more day of regrouping before recommitting to the attack on 25 December. They were stunned to encounter fresh troops from the 345th Rifle Division where only shell-shocked, battle-worn remnants of the 388th Rifle Division had stood a mere forty-eight hours earlier. The 4th sector line had been rebuilt along the Bel’bek River, and to Hansen’s dismay, the line now appeared virtually impenetrable. Nothing the 22nd Infantry could throw at the Soviets broke through. As the 22nd Infantry pressed forward again and again, they came under the fire of Coastal Battery Number 30, which boasted two twin mounts of 30.5 cm guns and began hammering the German infantry.

 

As Hansen’s corps continued to grind down in front of Sevastopol, fresh information reached Manstein from his other formations. Lieutenant General Sponeck’s 42nd Infantry Corps had been holding the Kerch Peninsula, and on the morning of the 26th he reported a Soviet amphibious landing at Kerch. Manstein dismissed it as little more than a raid. This reaction stood in sharp contrast to Stavka’s intent. They were landing substantial forces at Kerch and expected Manstein to recognize the gravity of the threat. If Sponeck were overwhelmed, the danger to the Kerch defences would compel Manstein to divert from Sevastopol. Yet he did not yield to the alarm. He dismissed the threat and, on the morning of the 28th, unleashed everything he had at Sevastopol again. On the soviet side, their Group 2 disembarked at Cape Khroni to the northeast of Kerch. The assembly included gunboat Don, transports Krasny Flot and Pyenay, a tugboat, two motor barges with three T-26 light tanks and a few artillery pieces, and 16 fishing trawlers. Whaleboats substituted for landing craft, making landings tediously slow and causing drownings of men and equipment. By 0630 hours on 26 December, 697 men from the 2nd Battalion, 160th Rifle Regiment, had landed at Cape Khroni, with many drowned or incapacitated by hypothermia. Another rifle battalion followed later that day with a platoon of T-26s and light artillery. At Cape Zyuk, 290 troops landed in six hours, though a few vessels foundered on the rocky beach. At Cape Tarhan only 18 of Group 3’s 1,000-man landing force reached the beach due to a lack of whaleboats. West of Khroni, in Bulganak Bay, the Azov flotilla landed 1,452 men, three T-26 tanks, two 76mm howitzers, and two 45mm anti-tank guns. Two more landings at Kazantip Point and Yenikale were aborted due to stormy weather. By noon, the Red Army held five beachheads north of Kerch with about 3,000 lightly armed men ashore. German resistance was initially light, but by 1050 hours He 111 bombers and Ju 87 Stuka dive bombers began attacking the Soviet landing forces. The cargo ship Voroshilov at Tarhan was bombed and sunk with 450 troops aboard. A vessel carrying 100 men from Group 2 was sunk off Cape Zyuk. Lacking radios, the lightly armed Soviet formations north of Kerch crept inland only about a kilometer and dug in, waiting for reinforcements that were delayed by three days due to bad winter weather and never arrived.

 

The 302nd Mountain Rifle Division landed at Kamysh Burun and faced fierce German resistance. Two German battalions from Colonel Ernst Maisel’s 42nd Infantry Regiment held high ground and halted the first wave. The 2nd Battalion of the 42nd Regiment devastated a Soviet landing at Eltigen. A Soviet naval infantry company at Stary Karantin was annihilated by Major Karl Kraft’s 1st Battalion/42nd Infantry. The second wave landed at 0700 hours and was repelled as well. Soviet troops seized Kamysh Burun docks, enabling a foothold by afternoon. The Luftwaffe sank several ships offshore; only 2,175 of 5,200 men of Kamysh Burun’s landing force got ashore. Lieutenant General Kurt Himer, aware of the landings by 0610 hours, sought to determine the main Soviet effort amid dispersed forces. He ordered the destruction of the Khroni force with Colonel Friedrich Schmidt’s 72nd Infantry Regiment but lacked the troops to counter Bulganak Bay and Cape Zyuk. He improvised by moving a headquarters company, 3rd Battalion/97th Infantry, and an artillery battery to Cape Zyuk. By midnight, IR 97 had its first and third battalions and two artillery batteries in position for a counterattack the next day. At 1350 hours on 26 December, IR 72 learned of a captured Soviet officer’s briefing that the plan called for 25,000 troops at Kerch. Himer then brought up 2nd Battalion/IR 97 from Feodosia to crush the Zyuk force, with IR 97’s full strength. IR 42 would hold Kamysh Burun until northern Soviet forces were eliminated. A mixed alarm unit would counter Bulganak Bay, and Army Corps commander Sponeck sought permission to use the Romanian 8th Cavalry Brigade to reinforce Himer.

 

The counterattack on Zyuk began at 1300 hours on 27 December due to muddy roads. Soviet naval infantry at Zyuk and Khroni fought back with three T-26 tanks and several infantry companies. A 3.7 cm Pak 36 knocked out all three Soviet tanks. German bombers supported the infantry and drove the Soviet forces back, with the main assault held until the next day. The 79th Marine Brigade had stood firm, but was forced to fall back. The 345th Rifle Division was outflanked along the Bel’bek, with some of Hansen’s troops reaching the approaches to Coastal Battery Number 30. The tide appeared to turn against the defenders once more. Reinforcements arrived at nearly the same pace as losses, draining the pool at the front. The Soviet position collapsed under air bombardment, and by 1200 hours the Germans had reached the shore. Many Soviet troops fought on waist-deep in water; by evening, hundreds were captured or killed, and IR 97 suffered minimal casualties in its two days of action against the beachhead at Cape Zyuk. Khroni’s Soviet beachhead was also eliminated by IR 72 on 28 December, leaving only Bulganak Bay’s force and the Kamysh Burun beachhead. Himer’s division took 1,700 prisoners, with only the 1,000-strong Soviet force at Bulganak Bay remaining, along with Kamysh Burun and scattered inland pockets of resistance.

 

At 0350 hours on 29 December, Soviet destroyers Shaumyan and Zhelezniakov appeared at Feodosia, firing star shells for illumination and following up with a 13-minute barrage on the German defenses. Four MO-class small guard ships carrying 60 naval infantry secured the harbor mole, led by Lieutenant Arkady F. Aydinov. The naval infantry captured two 3.7 cm Pak anti-tank guns and signaled the all-clear with green flares for the follow-up forces. The German II./AR 54 gunners engaged the patrol boats without scoring a hit. Beginning at 0426 hours, Shaumyan landed a company of naval infantry inside the harbor in 20 minutes. Zhelezniakov and Nyezamozhnik landed additional reinforcements soon after. Shaumyan itself was later damaged by German artillery fire. At 0500 hours, the Soviet cruiser Krasnyi Kavkaz began unloading 1,853 soldiers from the 633rd Rifle Regiment of the 157th Rifle Division at the mole. The Germans concentrated all fire on the cruiser, hitting it 17 times and setting its No. 2 gun turret on fire. Krasnyi Kavkaz replied with its 180 mm batteries, landed its troops in three hours, and then departed the harbor. The Luftwaffe arrived over Feodosia, sinking a minesweeper and a patrol boat in the morning, but it failed to halt the main landing. By 0730, the Soviets were in control of the port and began landing artillery and vehicles. They fought their way through the town, and by 1000 hours the German forces had fled after a brief engagement. In a rapid operation, the Soviets landed 4,500 troops in the morning, with parts of three divisions ashore by day’s end. Sponeck immediately ordered the Romanian 8th Cavalry Brigade and the 4th Mountain Brigade to fortify the Soviet bridgehead at Feodosia. He pressed for permission from 11th Army commander General der Infanterie Erich von Manstein to withdraw the 46th Infantry Division from Kerch to avert encirclement, but Manstein refused. Instead, he ordered Sponeck to throw the enemy back into the sea with reinforcement from Gruppe Hitzfeld of the 73rd Infantry Division and the entire 170th Infantry Division, aimed at crushing the Soviet landing force at Feodosia. Sponeck then disobeyed orders, cut contact with 11th Army headquarters, and at 0830 hours on 29 December ordered the 46th Infantry Division to retreat west from Kerch to avoid encirclement. This decision was highly controversial: German forces at Feodosia were insufficient to stop further Soviet gains, while 20,000 Romanian troops were in the vicinity and strong German reinforcements were en route. Two Romanian brigades launched a counterattack on 30 December but were largely defeated due to inadequate air and artillery support. Fighting at Sevastopol persisted through the 30th and 31st. Only then did Manstein realize that victory was unattainable and ordered a halt to further attempts. The 11th Army had now twice tried to seize the city and failed on both occasions. Against all odds, Petrov held the defenders’ line.

 

I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.

Zhukov and Rokossovsky press against Army Group Center; Meretskov’s Volkhov Front prepares a Leningrad breakout, though supply issues and rail disruptions hinder progress. The Red Navy, though hampered by ice and limited ships, sinks a few transports as Soviet submarines suffer heavy losses but gain morale. In the north, Hitler’s strategic inertia and German command chaos undermine defense around Kalinin and Staritsa, while Soviet cavalry strikes threaten the Oka Gap. Sevastopol endures under Petrov, reinforced by new Soviet divisions and ships, as Manstein’s siege stalls.

Eastern Front #27 Pushing the Germans Back

Last time we spoke about the First Great Victory of the Red Army. German forces pushed toward Moscow and Rostov despite severe logistics: scarce trains, fuel, winter gear, and brutal Rasputitsa conditions. The Red Army, under Zhukov and Rokossovsky, resisted with fortified defenses, minefields, and deliberate countermeasures while STAVKA reshuffles command to keep pressure on the invaders and tie down their forces. A minor Soviet opening near Tikhvin stretched German lines; however, reinforcements and stubborn defense around key routes prevent a decisive breakthrough. In the north, German advances slow through forests and swamps, with mounting attrition from Soviet counterattacks and persistent Luftwaffe absence. Tank shortages and exhaustion plagued German units, prompting the emergence of improvised Tank Crew Battalions and a shift in operational risk. On the Soviet side, the Road of Life to Leningrad expanded with multiple convoys delivering supplies and a second road completed by late November, raising throughput to about 128 tons daily. By month’s end, German forces faced catastrophic attrition and growing talk of retreat, whereas STAVKA gained patience and prepared for revenge.

This episode is Pushing the Germans Back

Well hello there, welcome to the Eastern Front week by week podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

 

What had started as a desperate attempt to push the Germans back from the gates of Moscow has become a full-throated effort to destroy Army Group Center. Ejecting the invaders had become Stalin’s priority. In his blind optimism, Stalin had evaluated the Wehrmacht as a spent force in the wake of Operation Typhoon’s failures. This week would prove that hypothesis false. Meanwhile, Hitler reshuffled his generals. Once-celebrated Wehrmacht heroes fell from grace as younger officers rose to take their places. In Army Group North, the German situation stabilized after the retreats from Tikhvin and Volkhov. Yet the Soviets planned to press their gains. The new Volkhov Front, under Meretskov, was reinforced from Stavka’s reserve. It was worth remembering that, when mentioning unit transfers, we were talking about movements of tens of thousands of men, sometimes hundreds of miles. These changes did not happen instantly. On the Eastern Front, they often took days or weeks to complete. There were occasions when all that was needed was a change at the top, and those adjustments could be made relatively quickly. The 26th Army, under Lieutenant General Sokolov, and the 59th Army, under Major General Galanin, were transferred to Meretskov’s command. They did not arrive in time for the planned offensive, but they provided the Volkhov Front with a solid backing force for future operations if needed. The orders for the planned offensive were signed on 17 December. Shaposhnikov’s order stated: Signed Stalin, Shaposhnikov “The Volkhov Front consisting of the 4th, 59th, 2nd Shock, and 52nd Armies will launch a general offensive to smash the enemy defending along the western bank of the Volkhov river and reach the Liuban-Cholovo station front with your armies main forces by the end of [left blank]. Subsequently, attacking to the northwest, encircle the enemy defending around Leningrad,  destroy and capture him in cooperation with the Leningrad Front, and, if the enemy resists, capture or destroy him”.

 

At the same time that order went out, Stavka also decided on a major expansion of the offensive across the northern sector. The Northwestern Front was instructed to conduct a companion offensive against Novgorod, Dno, and Demiansk. In addition, the Leningrad Front was ordered to mount supporting attacks with the forces they had on hand to assist the Volkhov Front in exploitation. Meretskov would have to break through the Volkhov River line before any of this assistance could be effective. The initial goals were Kirishi and Gruzino. Army Group North was conducting a careful withdrawal and had been preparing positions along the river line. The Germans were being reinforced locally as well. Leeb transferred infantry divisions from the Leningrad line to the Volkhov area as quickly as possible, while avoiding a serious weakening of his position around the Soviet city.

 

The order for the continued offensive effectively commanded the advance to continue with the new Volkhov Front. By the 17th, the first lines still had not reached the river. It would take the entire third week for the initial units to close in, and Meretskov’s main force would not be in place until the end of the month. Stalin was furious at these delays, and no doubt especially aggravated because he believed the Wehrmacht to be weak. What he did not know was that the Germans were quickly becoming defensive experts. A continuing strength of the Wehrmacht in the early months of the war was the adaptability of small units. Regiments and battalions could shift to defensive operations with relative ease. The German soldier remained a well-trained and capable professional at this stage. Since ancient times, professional infantry had mastered two things: digging and marching. Defensive operations required digging in quantities that were hard to imagine without firsthand experience. The Germans were adept diggers and were well equipped to do so.

 

Despite the skill of German infantry in defensive operations, there was still no plan for how to counter the Red Army’s onslaught. Armies that had withdrawn typically did so without a coordinated plan from high commands, and the results were chaotic. Even after Tikhvin, when Army Group North coordinated the retreat, large quantities of equipment were left behind. This would prove a significant hindrance to German defensive operations in the coming weeks. Nazi industry could not fully replace the lost equipment in the near term. Some used this as an excuse for Hitler to delay wide-scale retreats. Many officers argued that the soldiers’ continued existence depended not on artillery, but on the ability to pull back from impending encirclement. These debates were treated as a straw man to justify Hitler’s ongoing reshaping of OKH and OKW into his personal fiefdoms. Throughout the Second World War, the German military and bureaucratic functions grew increasingly beholden to Hitler’s personal command. This dependency not only deepened Nazification but also hamstrung mid-level commanders and managers, who realized little could be done without his personal involvement. Decisions were delayed while awaiting his approval. Hitler had taken the position of Commander in Chief of the Heer after Brauchitsch’s relief, Brauchitsch having been little more than a meek observer in any event. Brauchitsch’s relief occurred on 19 December. More shuffling would follow.

 

Inside the city of Leningrad, famine continued to claim lives. The Road of Life across Lake Ladoga carried food and supplies, but the needs far outpaced the capacity. Rations had been reduced on September 2, to daily bread allowances of 600 grams for manual workers, 400 grams for state employees, and 300 grams for children and other dependents. After heavy German bombing in August, September, and October 1941, all main food warehouses were destroyed or burned in massive fires, wiping out large stores of grain, flour, sugar, and other foods. In one instance, melted sugar leaked through warehouse floors into the surrounding soil, and desperate citizens dug up the frozen earth to extract the sugar, which appeared for sale in the Haymarket to housewives who attempted to melt the earth to separate the sugar or to others who mixed the earth with flour. The fires persisted across the city for months as the Luftwaffe bombed Leningrad repeatedly with incendiary and high-explosive devices during 1941–1943. In the siege’s early days, people consumed leftovers from “commercial” restaurants, which used up to 12% of the city’s fats and up to 10% of its meat; soon, all restaurants closed, and rationing became the only lifeline, rendering money obsolete. 

 

The shelling and starvation, especially in the first winter, caused appalling casualties, and at least nine staff members of Nikolai I. Vavilov’s seedbank died of starvation while protecting some 200,000 seed items for future generations. On September 12, 1941, provisions for army and civilians were projected to last as follows: grain and flour thirty-five days, groats and pasta thirty-one days, meat and livestock thirty-three days, fats forty-five days, and sugar and confectionery sixty days. On the same day, a further reduction was announced: workers would receive 500 grams of bread daily, employees and children 300 grams, and dependents 250 grams; rations for meat and groats were reduced further, but supplies of sugar, confectionery, and fats were temporarily increased. Emergency rations existed for the army and the Baltic Fleet, but these were insufficient and depleted within weeks. Lake Ladoga’s flotilla, ill-equipped for war, suffered heavy losses from bombing, and several barges carrying grain were sunk in September 1941 and later recovered. Grain was delivered to Leningrad at night and used for bread baking; when reserves of malt flour ran low, substitutes such as cellulose and cotton cake were employed, and oats intended for horses were repurposed for human consumption while horses were fed wood leaves. Upon discovering 2,000 tons of mutton guts at the seaport, a meat galantine was produced from them, and with meat scarce, galantine and even stinking calf skins were used, memories of which stayed with survivors for years. 

 

During the siege’s first year, there were five food reductions: two in September 1941, one in October, and two in November, the latter lowering daily consumption to 250 grams for manual workers and 125 grams for other civilians. Starvation led to the consumption of zoo animals and household pets; wallpaper paste, made from potato starch, was boiled into soup, and old leathers were eaten. Extreme hunger drove some to cannibalism, with reports beginning in the winter of 1941–42 as food sources dwindled, though incidents remained comparatively rare. In November 1941, meat patties made from minced human flesh appeared in the Haymarket, leading to a ban on ground-meat sales, and many bodies brought to city cemeteries were found missing parts. By 1942, starvation-level rationing was alleviated somewhat by the emergence of vegetable gardens covering most open ground in the city.

NKVD records on the subject of cannibalism were not published until 2004; until then, most evidence about cannibalism was anecdotal. Anna Reid notes that for most people at the time, cannibalism was “a matter of second-hand horror stories rather than direct personal experience.” Indicative of Leningraders’ fears, police would often threaten uncooperative suspects with imprisonment in a cell with cannibals. Dimitri Lazarev, a diarist during the siege’s worst moments, recalls his daughter and niece reciting a terrifying nursery rhyme adapted from a pre-war song: 

 

Sung to the tune of Mary Had A Little Lamb

 

A dystrophic walked along

With a dull look

In a basket he carried a corpse's arse.

I'm having human flesh for lunch,

This piece will do!

Ugh, hungry sorrow!

And for supper, clearly

I'll need a little baby.

I'll take the neighbours',

Steal him out of his cradle.

 

NKVD files show the first use of human flesh as food on 13 December 1941, with nine cases; a report ten days later tallies thirteen cases ranging from a mother smothering her eighteen-month-old child to feed her older children, to a plumber killing his wife to feed his sons and nieces. By December 1942, the NKVD had arrested 2,105 cannibals, categorized as corpse-eating and person-eating. The latter were usually executed, while those who fed on corpses were sent to prison. The Soviet Criminal Code had no explicit cannibalism provision, so convictions proceeded under Article 59–3, “special category banditry.” Instances of person-eating were markedly rarer than corpse-eating; of the 300 people arrested in April 1942 for cannibalism, only 44 were murderers. Demographics showed that 64 percent were female, 44 percent unemployed, 90 percent illiterate or with only basic education, 15 percent rooted inhabitants, and merely 2 percent with prior criminal records. Cannibals tended to come from the city’s peripheral districts and were often unsupported women with dependent children and no prior convictions, factors that conferred a degree of clemency in proceedings. Given the scale of mass starvation, cannibalism remained relatively rare. By contrast, murder for ration cards was far more common; in the first six months of 1942, Leningrad recorded 1,216 such murders, even as the city endured mortality rates as high as about 100,000 people per month. Lisa Kirschenbaum observes that “rates of cannibalism provided an opportunity for emphasizing that the majority of Leningraders managed to maintain their cultural norms in the most unimaginable circumstances.”

Feeding the city competed with defending it in the siege’s logistics. Inbound trucks delivered ammunition, heating fuel, and raw materials for reconstruction. Yet many of the city’s factories pressed on with production. The most notable was the Kirov Tank Factory. There were moments when the factories could not operate, as electricity, raw materials, and fuel ran short. The buildings endured constant artillery and aerial bombardment. Despite these obstacles, production persisted. Amazingly, Leningrad’s factories not only supplied the city’s defenders but also supported other sectors of the front. Both air and land routes across Lake Ladoga ferried ammunition and small arms to the wider Soviet Union. These supplies proved critical in the defense of Moscow. Through December, at least 490 tanks rolled off Leningrad’s production lines, with most heading directly to the city’s front lines. Most of the production at the Kirov Plant had focused on KV-1 tanks, though some KV-2s were produced as well. While these models suffered from serious mobility and reliability issues on the march, they proved to be excellent in the defense of the city.

 

Around Moscow, the retreat of Army Group Center continued. Hoepner had taken command of the remnants of Reinhardt’s 3rd Panzer Army. He ordered all subordinate units to counter-attack any further Soviet penetrations immediately, and to allow retreats only at the last possible moment. By the 18th, the panzers had pulled back to a coherent line roughly 100 kilometers west of their furthest advance. This shortened Army Group Center’s front and allowed for better concentration of the available troops. Yet this was no guarantee of defensive success. The Red Army pressed on, throwing men and tanks at the Nazi forces. On the 18th, three divisions were attacked and broke through. The 11th Panzer Division managed to push the Soviets back, but only after an incredibly hard fight. The division was so exhausted that its commander reported it as combat-ineffective. The 255th Infantry and the 20th Panzer Division also suffered Soviet breakthroughs along their fronts and struggled to repel the tanks. The Germans were in awe that the Red Army could sustain an offensive of this scale, and that nearly every assault was backed by tanks. It wasn’t just the numbers of tanks that surprised the Wehrmacht, but the Soviets’ ability to fight in coordination. The Red Army was learning. The Germans now faced large-scale combined-arms assaults for the first time in Army Group Center. Communist division and corps leaders still had much to learn about coordination and reconnaissance, but they were improving day by day.

 

The retreat of the Panzers was hampered by the weather, though the cold was not unseasonably severe, the troops were utterly unprepared for operations in such conditions. In the third week of December, temperatures dropped even further, and at minus forty degrees Celsius the invaders struggled, many still in ragged summer uniforms. As they pulled back, they burned villages and seized every item of clothing they could find to stave off the cold. The dead, German and Soviet alike, were plundered for coats, boots, and anything else that might help someone survive the freezing weather. The few remaining working trucks and half-tracks had oil that froze, radiators that burst, and grease that seized in the bearings, leaving little artillery to be moved with the retreat. On the18th of December, Bock was relieved of command. Halder’s diary makes it clear that Bock had been in poor health for days before the relief. He was replaced by Kluge, who assumed command of the 4th Army in a dual-hat role. It wasn’t only the Panzers that struggled. The German 9th Army found it hard to hold the line as the Kalinin Front pressed the attacks. On 16 December, the city of Kalinin fell to the Soviets. For Colonel General Strauss, the problem was that there was nowhere obvious to fall back to. The terrain behind him offered no natural lines like rivers, and Army Group had not prepared any defensive works to anchor a retreat. Ordered to hold the line by Hitler, Strauss gradually ceded ground and moved westward in an effort to stabilize the front.

 

Due east of Moscow, Kluge’s 4th Army was in worse condition. As Hoepner pulled his men back, he opened up gaps that the Soviets poured into. By the end of the second week of December, the 9th Infantry Corps had been trying to withdraw from its advance alongside Hoepner’s panzers. The 2nd Guards Cavalry Corps harassed this movement and actively blocked it. The battles continued into the third week of the month, with the 78th Infantry Division at the core of the attacks. In the middle of the month, Dovator learned that the 78th Infantry was acting as a Vanguard for a column including the 9th Corps’ supply units, headquarters troops, and artillery. He immediately set about planning an ambush for this column. The 78th’s units assigned to the vanguard abandoned their posts and fled west toward Ruza. This happened on the 15th, after reconnaissance elements spotted Dovator’s men moving into position. He allowed them to escape, concentrating his energy on surrounding the column. By the end of the day, his trap was in place. Early on the 16th, the 22nd Tank Brigade attacked the head of the column just west of the small village of Safonika. To the east, in the Germans’ rear, the 20th Cavalry Division struck. The 4th Guards Cavalry screened to the west of the assault to prevent any escape. The result was a total slaughter. Over the course of the day, the Germans resisted at first but panicked when they realized they were completely surrounded. Even the 78th Infantry, which had tried to escape, ran into the cordon established by the 4th Guards Cavalry. The support troops in the column were butchered, but the 78th Infantry managed to escape with heavy losses. They managed to call in Luftwaffe support, driving the cavalry back from finishing the job. When the Germans reached Ruza, they reported to higher command that they had lost every vehicle in the division, all of its towed artillery, six StuGs, and around two hundred men killed or missing.

 

In the wake of the earlier success, Dovator did not celebrate. He turned his men westward and pursued the 78th Infantry Division all the way to Ruza. On the 19th, he caught up with the Germans. The 252nd Infantry Regiment acted as the divisional rearguard about twelve kilometers northwest of Ruza. As the 2nd Guards Cavalry arrived on the 19th, Dovator assessed the situation. The Germans had anchored their lines on the west bank of the frozen Ruza River. He promptly dispatched the 20th Cavalry Division to attack across the river and encircle the defenders. As the cavalry charged, they were met with devastating machine-gun and mortar fire, and the two regiments of the division were pinned down, unable to retreat or advance. Dovator decided to shift his focus north in a relief effort and personally led the assault. He was cut down in front of his men. The 20th Cavalry managed to withdraw, but only at a heavy cost in lives and ammunition. The 78th Division appeared to gain a new lease on life as the now-leaderless 2nd Guards Cavalry Corps attempted to reorganize. The rest of the 4th Army struggled to pull back in good order, but they managed to avoid a complete mauling like that endured by the 9th Corps. To the south, Guderian faced pressure. He had been defeated in detail during the second week and was not able to extract his nearly broken 2nd Panzer Army. It was largely Guderian’s fault that the 4th Army under Kluge was forced to contend with the possibility of encirclement on its right flank while retreating. Guderian had left a gap between the 24th Panzer and the 43rd Panzer Corps northwest of Tula.

 

In any event, he had been trying to pull his panzer army back since the middle of the second week. His men were harassed by Soviet ski units, just as his comrades to the north around the Volkhov River faced pressure. The 1st Guards Cavalry Corps operated in the area and had previously caused serious issues for the 47th Panzer Corps’ withdrawal earlier in the month. As Guderian solidified his lines, their effectiveness diminished. Cavalry, since the dawn of warfare, had been best used as an exploitation force, with rare exceptions for heavy cavalry. The Red Army understood this, and although they equipped the Cavalry Corps with some armor, they were not intended to break through well-defended, organized lines. As Guderian pulled his men back, the vehicles and tanks stored in division and corps depots awaiting repair had to be destroyed, since they could not be towed back. This further increased the losses within the Panzer units and effectively paralyzed the Panzer Army for offensive action for weeks.

 

On December 12th, the 2nd Army was subordinated to Guderian. He began calling this arrangement Army Group Guderian, but it was nothing more than an expediency. The 2nd Army teetered in acute danger, with two entire divisions now trapped behind the Soviet advance. Schmidt was humbled, after days earlier disobeying orders to halt and pressing on far into the wilderness. His reckless personal mission of conquest was costing his army dearly as the Red Army’s winter counter-offensive pressed hard. The 134th and 45th Infantry Divisions found themselves surrounded. On the 15th they were told there would be no help forthcoming, and they would have to fight their way out of the encirclement on their own. Not even air support could be guaranteed in light of the Luftwaffe’s overextension.

 

Guderian did spare some troops to help patch the lines, ironically even as he argued with Kluge about the hole in his own lines near Tula. On the 17th, the 34th Infantry Corps reached Livny and established defensive lines. The 48th Infantry Corps halted about sixty kilometers east of Kursk to maintain a straight line with the 34th Infantry to the north. Kursk marked the dividing line between Army Groups North and South, and the 6th Army’s 29th Corps held the line to the south. This remained largely in the hands of the overstretched 299th Infantry Division under Major General Moser. Guderian had been unable to hold anything near the Don River and had continued retreating. Now, with most of his men on the Stalinogorsk-Shat-Upa line, he was forced to retreat again. The situation was intensely confused as commanders withdrew on their own authority, only to be countermanded by the next higher officer, who then argued with Guderian about how far to pull back. Guderian bypassed the chain of command and tried to plead his case directly with Hitler, but this too failed. On the 18th, Hitler issued an order that no further withdrawals would be considered. Colonel Günther Blumentritt, chief of staff of the 4th Army  “Hitler believed that he personally could ward off the catastrophe which was impending before Moscow, and it must be stated quite frankly that he did in fact succeed in doing so. His fanatical order that the troops must hold fast regardless in every position, and in the most impossible circumstances, was undoubtedly correct.”The only situations that might warrant consideration were if infantry had been brought up behind the would-be retreating forces. This effectively ruled out any chance, as there was no reserve anywhere in the Wehrmacht and certainly no substantial reserves in the eastern Army Groups. Bock, assessed the situation on his most perilous sectors and concluded in his diary that “units will possibly pull back without orders.” The same day Guderian wrote privately to his wife: “The people from the OKH and OKW, who have never seen the front, have no idea of these conditions; they merely wire impossible orders and reject all requests and submissions. The feeling of not being understood and being helplessly at the mercy of the circumstances is simply nerve-wracking.”

 

Halder was scraping the proverbial barrel for replacements. He arranged for the NCO school to be temporarily shut down to provide no more than fourteen hundred men. This was a drastic move for little gain. Professional armies had depended on a steady supply of well-trained and disciplined Noncommissioned Officers for centuries. Now, after less than six months of operations, the Germans were willing to degrade that supply for a single regiment’s worth of men. Little else can be said to emphasize how desperate the manpower situation was becoming for the Wehrmacht. In Army Group South, Kleist managed to steady his situation as December entered its third week. The 6th Army in the north faced no immediate pressure, as the forces in that region had been concentrating on the 2nd Army and Guderian. The 17th Army was under pressure but had not been seriously threatened by the Soviets yet. Overall, the southern sector of the front remained quiet during this week. The Red Army was attempting to prepare for a second, more ambitious phase of their winter counter-offensive. The Germans did not suspect this, instead believing that the Red Army had worn itself out. Halder shifted to winter- and spring-planning, focusing on supply and industry details rather than preparing a defense against a renewed winter attack.

 

In the Crimea, Manstein’s 11th Army remained poised for another assault on Sevastopol. He had directed most of his forces toward the siege, yet he could not ignore the Kerch peninsula or the rest of the peninsula. He did not abandon the area, but what was available stood at the edge: the 46th Infantry Division, the Romanian 8th Cavalry, and the Romanian 4th Mountain Brigade. In the second week of the month, the Trans-Caucasian Front had been ordered to prepare for a landing at Kerch. Major General Tolbukhin served as the chief of staff for that front and was tasked with planning the operation. In a rare situation for Red Army planners in 1941, he had plenty of everything he needed—shipping, naval support, air support, and manpower. What he lacked were experienced commanders capable of executing such a highly complex plan. The operation called for five transport groups to land at five different beaches simultaneously, with naval and air support dedicated to each beach. Even this intricate opening phase was only the beginning. After the Germans responded to the landings, Tolbukhin intended to land another group at Feodosiya in the German rear. The forces involved would include two infantry armies, the Black Sea Fleet, and the independent VVS command for the region. The Red Army had little experience in coordinating these large-scale joint operations across services. Still, preparations for the assault continued throughout the week.

 

At Sevastopol, Manstein scheduled the 17th as the start of his second assault on the city. Petrov had not anticipated another assault before year’s end and was caught off guard when German artillery opened fire with a full-scale bombardment at 06:00 on the morning of the 17th. The guns were supported by Stukas and medium bombers. The attack was spearheaded by elements from four infantry divisions and portions of the Romanian 1st Mountain Brigade. The German infantry had devised a set of tactics to breach barbed wire and bunkers, reminiscent of stormtrooper methods from the First World War. First, buddy teams of pioneers would rush the wire and throw smoke grenades to conceal the subsequent pioneers who would bring Bangalore torpedoes to breach the wire. They would then be followed by grenadiers who hurled up to a dozen grenades into the breach. Only after all of this would the actual assault groups push through the wire. The approach was slow, but it kept German casualties down and secured the trench lines more reliably.

 

Over the next few days, the Coastal Army was slowly pushed back. See-saw fighting occurred at a few critical positions, but the Germans and their Romanian allies made steady progress. On the twentieth, a fresh rifle division was dispatched to reinforce Sevastopol from the Trans-Caucasian Front. This division would not arrive within the week, but the impending arrival gave the defenders hope. They were also told of the incoming Kerch landings and were told to hold out until the end of the month. The Stavka believed that operation would overwhelm the German occupiers and force Manstein to pull back from Sevastopol. Until then, Petrov’s Sector Four defenses on the city’s northern side faced the real danger of collapse. On the night of the twentieth, reinforcements finally arrived in the form of the 79th Marine Brigade with three thousand five hundred men, bringing with them ammunition and supplies. In addition, two cruisers and four destroyers arrived and began providing much-needed naval gunfire support. As December’s third week came to a close, both sides fighting Sevastopol were exhausted. Yet the Soviets were the ones receiving reinforcements, and they enjoyed the advantage of strong defenses. Only time would tell whether the Kerch landing would force Manstein to abandon the siege, but there remained a glimmer of hope for the defenders.

 

I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.

Stalin’s leadership shake-ups and Stavka’s front-shifts unlock renewed Soviet offensives, notably on the Volkhov and around Leningrad, while German adaptability in defense complicates Soviet plans. The siege of Leningrad deepens amid famine, with drastic rationing and cannibalism reports; yet production continues at the Kirov Plant, supplying tanks for the defense. In the south, Guderian’s withdrawals tighten the German lines, while Sevastopol endures a renewed German assault. Kerch landings loom as the Red Army plans a second winter counter-offensive.

Eastern Front #26 First Great Victory of the Red Army

Last time we spoke about the beginning of the battle of Moscow. German offensives toward Moscow and Rostov press on despite severe logistical strains: scarce trains, fuel, and winter clothing; heavy snow and Rasputitsa slow movements; and a growing strain on supply lines. The Red Army, led by Zhukov and Rokossovsky, resists with fortified defenses, minefields, and deliberate countermeasures, while STAVKA reshuffles commanders and maintains pressure to keep German forces tied down. By mid-November the Soviets begin exploiting a minor opening near Tikhvin, stretching German lines, but German reinforcements and the stubborn defense around key corridors prevent a decisive breakthrough. In Moscow’s vicinity, German plans for a rapid encirclement confront entrenched Soviet defenses and fuel shortages that limit panzer operations. Guderian’s group faces fuel and supply constraints, with tanks often immobilized, while Soviet counterattack planning intensifies, including a major southern push planned by Timoshenko to threaten Rostov and seize strategic rail links. Meanwhile, the Road of Life over Lake Ladoga begins to sustain Leningrad, and Allied materiel reaches Soviet hands, complicating the German strategic picture. 

This episode is the First Great Victory of the Red Army

Well hello there, welcome to the Eastern Front week by week podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

The flanking armies defending Moscow crumpled as the Battle of Moscow began, and the Panzer commanders smelled blood in the water as they surged forward with renewed momentum. Meanwhile, Leeb found himself increasingly embattled as Red Army forces smashed into his overextended salient at Tikhvin. To the south, Kleist faced a poisoned chalice in Rostov, his now overextended Panzer Army coming under attack from multiple directions.  On 25 November, Group Boeckmann was finally halted in its northward drive, six kilometers short of Volkhov and just short of the Voibokalo area. On 26 November, the Soviets counterattacked with the 3rd Guards Rifle Division, the 310th, and the 311th Rifle Divisions, joined by the 6th Naval Rifle Brigade, and these units slammed into the German 21st Infantry Division. Over the next few days, the Soviets thrust the Germans back several kilometers, but their momentum began to wane. As a result, Halder ordered Leeb to abandon the Volkhov push and reinforce the drive toward Volkliovstroi. Halder 19th diary entry "In AGp. North it is becoming increasingly obvious that the attack on Shum [location unknown but presumably between Volkhov and the Svir River] has miscarried. The main effort by von Boeckmann's group must be shifted against Volkliovstroi [near Voibokalo Station]. An order to this effect is issued. At the same time, Fediuninsky received the 80th Rifle Division transferred from the Leningrad Front, and along with this unit he was ordered to form a new Shock Group to drive the Germans back from Voibokalo Station.

For the entirety of this week, all three Shock Groups of the 4th Army continued their assaults, keeping the Germans around Tikhvin in a state of perpetual crisis but making little headway against stubborn resistance. The 52nd Army likewise pressed its pursuit of the 126th Division back toward the Volga, where a new German defensive line along the river halted the advance. Attacks aimed at the Sinyavino corridor persisted, characterized by ongoing, small, and largely futile probes against the German positions. These efforts achieved nothing substantial beyond pinning additional German troops and inflicting disproportionate casualties. These attacks were part of the ongoing Second Sinyavino offensive, active since October. Commander Shevaldin, dismissed for failures, was reassigned to lead the Arkhangelsk military district.

The first truck convoy crossed the Road of Life and reached Leningrad on 23 November 1941. The very next day, a second convoy arrived, carrying 19 tons of supplies. The road endured constant assaults from brutal weather, which required ongoing engineering work to maintain and widen it. To increase throughput, a second road had already been started on 18 November; it was completed on 28 November and stretched 28 kilometers from Kokkorevo to Kobona. As the ice thickened, an increasing number of routes were surveyed and constructed to expand the Road of Life. By the end of November, daily supply throughput stood at 128 tons, a figure that alleviated the worst famine but fell far short of meeting the food shortage’s scale. To ease demands on supplies, women, children, and the wounded were evacuated on the return journey, echoing the civilian evacuations when river barges operated before the ice formed. By the end of winter 514,000 people would be evacuated from Leningrad. 

In Arkhangelsk, the 59th Army formed from Ural and Siberian recruits under Galanin, trained primarily for defense. Likewise, the 2nd Shock Army, raised in the Volga district from southern men unaccustomed to northern winters, suffered under Sokolov’s inept leadership, who dismissed problems with the refrain. Apparently they would carry their skis even when marching over deep snow as they were so unfamiliar with them. This obviously negates any benefits of being issued with them while just serving to increase the weight they would carry.  "This is Stalin's order, we should fulfill it.frontline commanders, such as Hoepner, began to believe their offensive would fall short of its". With the Battle of Moscow already underway, on 23 November Bock met with Halder and Brauchitsch to press the gap between the OKH map room and reality. He argued against overestimating division strengths, calling the offensive the army’s “11th hour.” All divisions were overstretched, suffering heavy officer losses, and enduring the brutal cold. More German soldiers were now being treated for sickness than from wounds due to the Cold. Even this was brushed away by Halder as the ratio of 1:1.4 wounded to sick was better than WW1’s 1:4. Some companies had been reduced to 20 or 30 men. Yet neither Halder nor Brauchitsch appeared receptive to his concerns. Bock’s Diary “Brauchitsch, like Halder, nevertheless advocated a continuation of the panzer army’s attack, even at the risk that it might be pulled back later. Both stressed once again that the important thing was to inflict as much damage as possible on the enemy. When I said to Halder that I am doing what I can, he replied. ‘Yes, we are very pleased about that”.

Halder would later admit that Germany would never again muster a force equal to what it had at the start of Operation Barbarossa. The war in the east, he suggested, would likely become one of endurance. Yet this insight was undercut by the continued insistence that attacks would proceed to secure favorable ground for the next offensive immediately afterward. Halder also admitted that it would be impossible to secure 100% of the USSR due to its size or its endless manpower. This train of thought however was not continued to its logical conclusion by any general at the meeting… In Halder’s view, the goals of that offensive included achieving a link-up with the Finnish forces at Lake Ladoga, encircling Moscow, and advancing to capture the Don and Oka regions, as well as Maykop. Notably, there was little consideration given to the state of German industry or access to raw materials, factors that would prove vital in sustaining a war of endurance.

However, several frontline commanders, such as Hoepner, began to believe their offensive would fall short of its goal. Morale among the soldiers was collapsing as more and more tried to avoid going to the front, offering excuses like accompanying the wounded back to the rear lines. The losses of junior officers and NCOs hindered any attempts to reverse this decline in enthusiasm. For many, reaching Moscow had shifted from a strategic aim to a promise of warmth and safety. Despondency also grew over the lack of mail from home for periods up to six weeks. The cold had improved the distribution of post which only improved by the end of November. By the very end of November it took on average 3 weeks for a letter from Germany to reach a soldier at the front line. The censorship office would have a nightmare when the postal service recovered, due to the flood of letters bearing the soldiers’ suffering. Yet that very outpouring in their letters home would help stabilize many German soldiers’ mental state.

Hitler was increasingly unsettled about the offensive’s prospects, yet too frightened to repeat the perceived WWI Marne mistake by backing off at such a critical moment.  A comment by Bock to Hitler  “the last battalion that can be thrown in will be decisive”. The last reserves had to be committed, and the attack pressed home with iron will to force a win. He grew irritable at the looming possibility of failure and began lashing out at anyone he saw as a scapegoat. Unable to accept blame, he browbeat those around him into submission, and a culture emerged in which everyone began agreeing with whatever he said, or else they faced removal or public disgrace. They even coached newcomers on what to say. Meanwhile, Jodl and Keitel from OKH started filtering bad news before it reached Hitler, while Halder and Brauchitsch habitually ignored what did reach them. Hitler’s mood would be worsened by news of successes of Operation Crusader relieving Tobruk along with his minister for armaments and munitions. Again for those interested over at my podcast Echoes of War we did a 10 part series on the entire north africa campaign and it surprisingly effected the Eastern Front. 

To the north of Moscow, Reinhardt and Hoepner continued their drive forward. The pace of the advance remained slow through the dense forests and swampland that dominated the terrain, forcing constant head-on engagements with little opportunity for flanking maneuvers. Hoepner averaged 4km a day since the start of the offensive. Reinhardt would average 6km a day. German troops lamented how effectively Soviet forces could camouflage themselves and their defenses in these conditions, and small ambushes were frequent. Soviet troops fought with increasing fanatical resolve, and a rising number of counterattacks were launched against the Panzer spearheads, inflicting further losses on the advancing formations. An example was Martjuschino. This village was captured on the 24th with 500 soviets found dead and only 150 of its defenders surrenderedFlak 88 guns in an anti-tank role had severely depleted many divisions’ air defence. VVS attacks were near constant while the Luftwaffe was effectively absent from the sector. The 6th Panzer Division reported being strafed every 15 minutes on the 27th, while the 7th Panzer Division reported 18 separate large air attacks in a single day. The need for Flak 88s in an anti-tank role had severely depleted many divisions’ air-defense capabilities.

As a result of the attrition, the 6th Panzer Division had only 13 functional tanks left by the 26th, down from an initial 100. Similarly, the 7th Panzer had begun the offensive with 120 tanks, but by the 25th it reported only 40 functional tanks. The 56th Panzer Corps had lost 160 tanks in 10 days at the spearhead of Panzer Group 3. Exact figures for Panzer Group 4 were not known, but were also believed to be heavily depleted. The tank shortage and the weakness of the infantry led to the creation of Tank Crew Battalions, which were badly equipped and not trained for the tasks, resulting in extreme casualties for these formations. One company of 160 was formed mid November. By January only 18 were left. Most losses were from frostbite as they lacked the skills to survive in winter as an infantryman rather than being able to sleep in the relative warmth of their tank. Also their black uniforms were not the best camouflage in the white snow of winter. In parallel, the Wehrmacht scavenged manpower from rear-area formations and even from the Luftwaffe to replace front-line losses degrading the Army's overall capabilities by losing rear-area specialists and leaving a pool of poor-quality frontline infantry who suffered disproportionate casualties. Baron Von Richthofen diary entry about sending pilots and aircraft maintenance crews into the frontline as infantry.“People will enjoy the opportunity to have a go again at the enemy, from 150m with a rifle”. In the same pattern of degradation, most of the motorised infantry had long since been reduced to advancing on foot due to a lack of trucks and fuel.

Still, both Panzer Groups pressed forward. Klin fell to the 7th Panzer Division on the 23rd, while the 2nd Panzer Division captured Solnechnogorsk. Afterward, Rokossovsky was finally allowed to retreat to a new line from the south of Solnechnogorsk to Istra, where his 16th Army would link up with the 5th Army. A scratch force comprising engineers, anti-aircraft gunners, and reserves from other sectors of the Front was thrown into the line to cover Rokossovsky’s withdrawal. A platoon from every single division across the Western Front had been withdrawn from their commands in order to help create this force and to bolster the depleted 16th Army. Meanwhile, the 30th Army was forced northward, creating a 45 km breach between the two Soviet Armies into which Reinhardt surged. By the 26th, terrain opened up for Schaal’s 51st Panzer Corps, which aimed to sever the Volga-Moscow canal. It had been originally thought to it was an obstacle to the encirclement of Moscow. Now bock thought it a vital flank protection for Reinhardt’s Panzer Group as it turned towards Moscow. On the 28th, they reached the canal’s western bank at Iakhroma and secured a crossing, placing Reinhardt now only 35 km from Moscow. Reinhardt begged to be allowed to continue east, but Bock insisted he turn toward Moscow. As had become the habit for Panzer commanders, Bock’s orders were ignored, as Reinhardt privately issued orders for the following week to attack eastward over the canal.

Hopner, meanwhile, maintained the pressure against Rokossovsky in a direct push toward the capital. This advance was much slower, with constant frontal attacks against prepared positions. Istra fell to the SS Das Reich on the 26th, leaving the Germans 35 km from the outskirts of Moscow and 50 km from Red Square. However, the town had required several days of bloody fighting to secure, and after the final Soviet soldier had been driven out, thousands of explosives detonated over the course of several days. 1,100 mines and 250kg of high explosives had been removed by German engineers. Even in victory, the German soldiers were denied shelter from the cold by the Soviets. On the 28th, the advanced elements of the Das Reich claimed to reach a village 15 km from Moscow and managed to fire artillery at one of the suburbs. Countless historians and enthusiasts pointed to Skorzeny’s claim as apparent proof that the Germans were close to capturing Moscow and thus magically winning the entire war. This viewpoint overlooks the tens of thousands of uncommitted Red Army soldiers garrisoning the city and ignores the fact that Moscow had been turned into a fortress over several months. Reaching the suburbs was by no means equivalent to capturing or holding the Soviet capital, and it also ignores the ten uncommitted Soviet Armies waiting in reserve.

Otto Skorzeny’s memoir admitted that their offensive had come to an end, with the 10th Panzer Division reduced to only 20 tanks while his own division had lost most of its artillery due to a lack of tractors to move the guns. By the 28th 11th Panzer had 15 tanks, 10th Panzer 20 tanks, 5th Panzer had 70 tanks. The 20th was down to 54 tanks.  In total, both Panzer Groups ended November with only 235 tanks, fewer than several of the individual Panzer divisions at the start of Barbarossa. Bock would call Halder to inform him that the offensive was likely near its end and would have to be called off within a matter of days if the Soviets did not collapse. Bock believed any further attacks would be a “soulless frontal clash with an enemy who it seems commands inexhaustible reserves of men and material; it must not come to a second Verdun”. As the Panzers ran out of steam, their commanders repeatedly pressured Kluge to commit his extremely weak left wing into the offensive. OKH and Bock were also making their impatience with his caution known. Eventually, he would succumb to the pressure and order an attack on December 1 unless forbidden from doing so. No serious thought was given to the possibility of a Soviet counteroffensive by any senior German general at this point.

As the Germans were worn down assaulting layer after layer of defenses, five Soviet Armies were ordered to form up along the Volga in the last week of November. Three were positioned behind Moscow, the 10th Army along the Oka River, and the 61st Army was sent to protect the flank of the South Western Front. The Germans remained blissfully unaware of their existence. STAVKA grew increasingly ruthless. As early as the 17th, Stalin had ordered a concentrated effort to destroy all possible shelter available to the Germans, regardless of the civilian suffering this policy would cause. The VVS and artillery were to barrage any settlement in the proscribed zone while ski troops and partisans infiltrated behind lines to destroy buildings they could reach. By the 29th, over 400 villages had been razed. One German soldier described the character of the fighting at the time as such:“operations themselves often centred around groups of houses, the possession of which was the main object of the fight. The winners could move into the shelters against the deadly cold, the losers would have to run back to undisputed shelters”.

On the 23rd, the already fluctuating Guderian reported to Bock that he could reach his initial objectives, though he admitted a alarming reduction in strength across all his divisions. Across the entire Panzer Army, each company averaged only 35 to 40 men, and only about one third of its artillery was functional. There were just 37 tanks available across all four panzer divisions. Direct firing from Soviet flak guns had taken a heavy toll on the German tanks, compounded by adverse weather conditions. There was concern about Guderian’s lengthening southern flank, but Bock decided that the 2nd Army would simply extend its lines northward. This meant seven weak infantry divisions would be stretched over 350 km of the frontline between the 2nd Panzer Division and the immobile northern wing of Army Group South. Bock admitted in his diary that this arrangement could not hold in the long run, but believed it was worth the risk to enable Guderian’s offensive to succeed. Bock’s Diary“If the [Second Panzer] army really does reach the Oka [River] between Ryazan and Kolomna, it will be left hanging there in an exposed position – unless this drive also causes the enemy to withdraw in front of Fourth Army. All that is available to cover the Second Panzer Army’s southern flank are the forces of the Second Army, meaning seven quite weak divisions manning about 350 km of front – the distance to the immovably fixed northern wing of Army Group South. All this won’t work in the long run. But as long as there is a chance that the enemy in front of Fourth Army might give ground in the face of Second Panzerby the 49th and 50th Armies repeatedly struck Guderian’s panzer forces Army’s attack, Guderian’s drive must be continued, even if the panzer army might be pulled back again after reaching the Oka and after thoroughly destroying the railroad between Ryazan and Kolomna”. Bock and Guderian sought approval for the plan from Halder, who approved it. Halder warned that they would not be able to withstand any counterattack, but did not believe one was likely to occur.

Guderian changed his mind again on the 24th and sent his liaison officer to OKH to request that his offensive be called off. When nothing changed, Guderian absolved himself of any responsibility and blindly followed his orders. This new pessimism came even as Mikhaylov was captured by the 10th Motorised Division. Eberbach’s group had also forced their way through Soviet lines and was making substantial progress. Despite realizing that Soviet troops were massing along all sides of this salient, Eberbach ignored the danger and blithely charged forward. On the 27th, he slammed into the 10th Army near Kashira. After the ensuing battle, not only was his offensive halted, but his forces were forced to retreat all the way back to Mordves.

The 1st Guards Cavalry Corps had led the Soviet counterattack at Kashira under its commander, Belov, an effort that revived Soviet pre-war doctrines of a cavalry-mechanised group for deep and lasting penetrations of enemy lines. Eberbach’s forces had been so dispersed that Belov managed to infiltrate several squadrons behind the German lines before the attack even began. His offensive on the 27th was a complete success, while further counterattacks by the 49th and 50th Armies struck Guderian’s panzer forces repeatedly. On the same day, the encirclement of Stalinogorsk was shattered as the thinly stretched 29th Motorised Division suffered heavy losses. They had faced only the 239th Siberian Rifle Division, which had abandoned all its heavy equipment and vehicles in a desperate charge to break free. These twin defeats and the ensuing casualties on the 27th would lead Bock to label the day a Black Day for the 2nd Panzer Army. The 43rd Army had attempted to encircle Tula from the city’s northwest, but the offensive barely left its starting position in the face of strong Soviet resistance. Rather than admitting fault, Guderian rapidly blamed Kluge’s inaction for these failures. He demanded that Bock force Kluge to attack; otherwise, he argued, he would be forced to cancel his Tula operations. He also pressed for reinforcements from Kluge’s army. Bock refused both demands. Kluge was rapidly becoming a scapegoat.

While this drama outside Moscow unfolded, the offensive mounted by the Southern Front last week continued. Building on their earlier success, several rifle divisions, two cavalry divisions, and two tank brigades struck the SS Wiking and Slovak Motorised Division on the 27th. The 14th Army corps managed to avoid collapse but was steadily pushed back under the pressure. This left the 3rd Panzer Corps perilously exposed at the end of a long narrowing salient that threatened to be cut off. The 3rd Panzer Corps itself was also under heavy pressure, as the 13th Panzer had been pulled north from Rostov to aid the embattled 60th Motorised Division. This left the SS Leibstandarte to defend Rostov alone, though it had long since fallen to below two-thirds strength. The opposing 56th Army temporarily forced its way across the frozen Don River on the 25th before a counterattack sealed the breach in the line. Every day brought a fresh assault on the beleaguered SS troops in Rostov, who were not strong enough to endure prolonged urban fighting once the Soviets managed to cross the ice. Kleist had originally planned to move to the Tuzlov River on the 21st to contract his defensive line and free up troops for those worst-off sectors. This had not been sufficient to relieve the mounting pressure across his entire Army. By the 28th, it was clear to Kleist that he could not hold Rostov, as the pressure was too great. His Panzer divisions averaged only 12 to 24 operational tanks, and his infantry companies averaged around 50 men each. Meanwhile, 21 Soviet divisions were confronting the 3rd Panzer Corps around Rostov.

Thus, without waiting for authorization from higher command, Kleist ordered Mackenson to evacuate Rostov. The Panzer Army was to fall back to more defensible terrain along a shorter line. Despite what many sources claim, on the 28th Hitler had agreed with Rundstedt that it was Kleist’s responsibility to decide whether to retreat. Hitler had to explain to Halder that the situation did not require Rostov to be held at all costs and that there was not enough help to sustain the current German positions. The familiar friction between Hitler and Rundstedt would center on where exactly the retreat would stop, but that breakdown in relations would occur next week. Moving at a pace of 25 km per day, the retreat matched the tempo of the early Barbarossa days. On the 29th, Kleist informed Army Group South that he would fall back to Krym and the Mokryy Chaltyr river, and Rundstedt approved this plan. He would reach that line on the same day. By then, at a cost of 158,577 dead and missing since 28 September, the Southern Front had finally managed to halt the seemingly inexorable advance of Army Group South.

There had simply been no reserves to plug the breaches forming in Kleist's lines. Halder and the staff of Army Group South pressured Reichenau to attack with his 6th Army toward Kupyansk, but Reichenau refused, arguing that any offensive with his depleted and exhausted divisions was irresponsible and that the army lacked the supplies for offensive action. He even traveled to Army Group headquarters on the 27th to persuade Rundstedt not to order such an attack. His offer to attack Chuguev with two divisions was little more than a concession to Halder’s demands. Frustrated by the army's inaction, Halder demanded an investigation into the Army General Staff to determine any possible shortcomings. Halder believed himself and the chiefs of staffs at the Army Groups to be the central pillars maintaining the entire German War effort.

This investigation concluded that such a withdrawal had been inevitable. The General Staff had realised the situation was not tenable but agreed that an offensive solution was possible… if there were several more infantry divisions and a motorised Corp was available. The Panzer Army’s tanks were nearly immobilized due to a lack of maintenance and fuel, and starving horses mostly supplied the Army Group. There was also a desperate need for reinforcements and more mobile divisions, which were not being provided. Yet the concept of restraint appeared unknown to the General Staff, with one proposed solution being to encircle the entire Caucasus with the 11th Army to eliminate Soviet forces. In the end, even Halder was forced to admit that the Army Group did not have the strength or mobility to conduct an offensive.

Manstein’s hopes of an offensive on Sevastopol were foiled this week when plummeting temperatures ruined four of the five trains supplying his 9th Army. With such reduced capacity, it would take weeks before he could stockpile enough resources to mount an assault. With the 42nd Corps doing nothing, on the 23rd Heusinger suggested releasing the entire corps to the 1st Panzer Army. Sodenstern opposed this only if it was officially announced that the Kerch crossing was abandoned. Manstein bitterly opposed any and all suggestions of losing forces, insisting that he needed every division for the siege of Sevastopol. This sort of selfishness would characterize Manstein's career. He constantly would strip other sections of the line and horde resources to achieve his own goals at the expense of everyone else.  In the end, only the 73rd Division was withdrawn from the 11th Army. The 42nd Corps would be left to guard the coastline of Crimea alongside the Romanian divisions attached to his Army. We ended the week with Zhukov deciding on the 29th that the time had come to begin final preparations for a massive counterattack across the breadth of the USSR. Stalin- “Are you sure that the enemy has reached a critical point and is in no position to bring some new large force into action?” Zhukov ”The enemy has been bled white. If we don’t eliminate them now the enemy can later reinforce his troops in the area of Moscow with large reserves at the expense of his north and south groupings”. Some of the 10 armies formed as a strategic reserve had already been committed, but the bulk remained in reserve. Town after town had fallen, and plea after plea for reinforcements was either ignored or met with only the bare minimum response. All of this was in preparation for vengeance. STAVKA’s nerve had held through months of disaster, buoyed by Zhukov’s confidence. By December start, 44 trained and well-equipped divisions would be ready in reserve, while another 31 had already been sent to the frontlines. There were no German reserves left.

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By month’s end, Soviet novas mass along the Volga while five armies prepare a broad counterattack; the Road of Life transports supplies to Leningrad. German forces suffer catastrophic attrition: tanks, crews, and equipment are squandered, prompting talks of retreat from Rostov and a potential end to major offensives. STAVKA wins patience, planning revenge.