In the middle of the month, the Stavka [N. of T.:high command of the Soviet Armed Forces] continued operations by ordering the rest of its forces to launch a general offensive along the entire front from Leningrad to the Black Sea. As an integral part of this ambitious strategy, the high command of the Red Army Southwest Directorate, which commanded the South and Southwest fronts, was given a mandate to attack and destroy the forces of the Heeresgruppe Süd (“Army Group South”) in the strategic regions of Kharkov and Donbas. In contradiction to its original goals, this operation has since been dubbed the Barvénkovo-Lozovaya offensive , because the taking of these two populations marked its maximum extent.
The Stavka he had every reason to mount a major offensive in southern Russia in mid-January. Late in November 1941, three weeks before the Germans stopped in Moscow, the armies of the Southern Front had attacked the 1st er Panzerarmee immediately after he captured the city of Rostov and before he could take advantage of his victory to march south into the Caucasus, stopping him in his tracks and forcing him to abandon Rostov and retreat west to new defensive positions on the Mius River where, in early December, the front stabilized. Then the Heeresgruppe Süd Still owner of the Donbas coal region, he planned a new advance on Rostov in the spring and besieged Soviet troops in Sevastopol, on the Crimean peninsula. However, in Moscow, the Soviet victory it was going to upset German plans abruptly.
The Barvénkovo-Lozovaya Offensive
On December 19, 1941, Marshal S. K. Timoshenko , Commander-in-Chief of the South-Western Directorate, asked the Stavka to approve his plan to defeat the Heeresgruppe Süd and push across the Dnieper River, but only authorized a less ambitious effort to destroy German forces in Donbas and capture Kharkov.
During the first phase of the offensive (7-8 days), the main attack would be carried out by the 57th and 37th armies of the Southern Front, against the defenses of the 17th Armee along the Donets River from Izium to beyond Slaviansk to the south, then continue west for 75-80 km and take Lozovaya and Barvénkovo. Simultaneously, the 12th Army was to launch a secondary attack against the right wing of the 17th Armee with the purpose of conquering Artemovsk. In the second phase (15-16 days), the two armies, led by the 5th and 1st Cavalry Corps, would advance towards Pavlograd and then turn south into the rear of the 17th Armee and the 1. st Panzerarmee , cut off their communications, reach the north coast of the Sea of Azov and encircle and destroy both forces in conjunction with the 12th, 18th, and 56th Armies. In parallel, the bulk of the forces of the 57th and 37th armies were to cross the Dnieper River between Dniepropetrovsk and Zaporozhe, while the 9th Reserve Army was to reinforce the main shock group whenever and wherever necessary.
At the same time, the 38th and 6th Armies of the Southwestern Front were also to attack west across theDonets River , the first against the defenses of the 6th Armee north and south of Kharkiv; and the second against the defenses of the 17thArmee north of Izium, to then move west 15-35 km and conquer the areas of Chuguyev, Zmiev and Alexeyevskoye (7-8 days). After that, both armies, the first led by the VI Cavalry Corps, were to encircle and destroy the 6thArmee andliberate Kharkov by pincer movements from the north and south, while also protecting the right flank of the Southern Front.
To defend the sector between Belgorod and Kharkiv, and further south along the Donets and Mius rivers to Taganrog, in the Sea of Azov, the Heeresgruppe Süd deployed the 6th and 17th Armee , and the 1. st Panzerarmee . The third of these armies included the Italian Expeditionary Corps, consisting of three divisions, and a Slovak light motorized division; as well as the 13th, 14th and 16th Panzer divisions and the 60th Motorized Divisions, SS Wiking and SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler (LAH) all of them framed in the III and XIV motorized bodies. These fast units were either defending the Mius River line or resting and re-equipping after heavy and costly fighting in November and December in the Rostov region.
The defensive line of the Heeresgruppe Süd she was too bare. Although his lines on the Mius and around Kharkiv were strong, the shortage of forces it forced him to employ a defense based on fortified positions in the sectors of the 298th, 68th, 257th and 295th Infantry Divisions, which guarded the Donets River from Balakleya to the Slaviansk region to the south. These units, as well as the 294th Infantry Division of the 6th Armee defending north-east of Kharkov, they occupied fronts of between 25 and 30 km, more than twice as long as in 1941, a weakness that the Soviets took into account when choosing their main sectors of attack.
As for the strength of the opposing forces, Soviet sources state that the 6th, 38th, 57th, 37th, 12th and 9th th armies totaled 361,690 men, including 204,000 front-line soldiers, with a “superiority 1.5 to 2 vs. 1 in infantry, outright superiority in cavalry, and considerable in tanks, aircraft, and artillery” (147,500 men for 6th, 57th, 37th, and 12th Armies alone , according to recently declassified sources). This means that each German division was facing between four and six infantry and cavalry divisions and two or three Soviet tank brigades.
To aggravate this weakness, on the eve of the offensive the command and control of the Heeresgruppe Süd he was in confusion. On January 16, two days before the start, his commander, Field Marshal Walter von Reichenau, had suffered a stroke, prompting Hitler to ask Fedor von Bock , who was on medical leave after resigning from the command of the Heeresgruppe Mitte in mid-December, for him to take over command. Bock complied and arrived at his new headquarters in Poltava on the 19th. General Hermann Hoth, Provisional Commander of the 17th Armee was there. , who informed him of the bad news:the day before, Red Army forces had penetrated his army's defenses to the north and south of Izium and were now advancing unchecked in his rear. Lacking any reserves and knowing it would take a few weeks for reinforcements from the west to arrive, the news could not have been worse.
The Penetration, January 18-21
Despite delays caused by bad weather conditions , the offensive began at 0500 hours on 18 January with a simultaneous attack by (from north to south) 38th and 6th Armies of the Southwestern Front and the 57th, 37th and 12th Armies of the Southern Front, which made spectacular gains in some sectors but none in others. North of Izium, the 337th, 411th, and 393rd Rifle Divisions overwhelmed the 298th Infantry Division—whose right wing was being surrounded by the 270th Rifle Division at Izium—and advanced on the west across the frozen Donets River, progressing between 10 and 28 km in four days and establishing abridgehead necessary for the VI Cavalry Corps to begin its exploitation. Hemmed in by their many fortified posts, the defenders either retreated west or perished. However, this success was marred by complete failure, both on the 6th Army's right wing, where German air attacks and stiff resistance from the 6th Armee<'s 44th Infantry Division /em> in the fortified position of Balakleya they thwarted the attacks of the 253rd Rifle Division, whose advance was limited to a single kilometer at a cost of 32 dead and 161 wounded, as in the sector of the 38th Army, east of Kharkiv , against the 297th and 294th infantry divisions.
The 57th Army's attacks south of Izium replicated the experience of the 6th Army in the north. Although the 341st, 351st and 255th Rifle Divisions crushed the 68th Infantry Division and the left wing of the 257th, both from the 17th Armee , advancing as far west as 14 miles in four days, the Army's Left Wing 335th and 333rd Divisions only progressed 2 to 7 miles before becoming locked in heavy fighting with elements of the 257th Division at the north of Slavyansk.
Further south, the 96th, 99th, and 230th rifle divisions, two tank brigades (92 tanks), and a cavalry division of the 37th Army, attacked the 295th and 76th Infantry Divisions east of Slaviansk, but only advanced 10–20 km in four days before being stopped by the many fortified positions there. The same fate befell the 12th Army, whose 176th, 15th, and 4th Rifle Divisions and 71st Rifle Brigade of the NKVD failed even to make a dent in the 9th Division's defenses. Infantry and the 97th and 101st Jäger east of Dzerzhinsk.
Despite temperatures as low as - 25th and from a layer of snow between 45 and 60 cm thick, late on the 21st, the 6th and 57th armies managed toopen a breach 70 km wide by 30 km deep in the German defenses that separated the 6th and 17th Armee without the necessary reserves to seal the gap. Their only consolation was that they still held the pockets of resistance at Balakleya and Slaviansk, rapidly reinforced, and soon began mustering troops to hold off the Soviet salient.
The exploitation, from January 22 to 31
Timoshenko began his exploitation phase on January 22, throwing his three cavalry corps into combat. From 22 to 24 January, the 411th, 393rd, and 270th Rifle Divisions advanced west about 30 km; The three divisions of the VI Cavalry Corps passed through the 411th Division on 23 January, cut the Kharkov-Lozovaya rail line early on the 24th, and later that day encountered the 411th Division. Friedrich in Alexeyevskoye, where two days of intense fighting took place until his conquest. On the right wing of the 6th Army, the 253rd and 337th Rifle Divisions continued to engage in sterile fighting around Balakleya.
Further south, the 57th Army front increased in length from 58 to 114 km. The 341st, 351st Rifle Divisions advanced up to 26 km to the west and southwest, while the 255th and 349th made much less progress due to encountering fresh German forces regrouping in defensive positions west of Sláviansk. On the left wing, the 335th and 333rd Rifle Divisions fought in vain to liquidate the German position at Slaviansk. The consequence was that the army saw its force density significantly reduced during the exploitation phase.
On the 24th, Timoshenko ordered the V Cavalry Corps to concentrate south of Barvénkovo and join the I Cavalry Corps, which he sent to position itself east of the former . To complete this mosaic, late on the 24th Timoshenko ordered the 9th Army to concentrate on the Krasnyi Liman region and prepare to attack Slaviansk from the north.
Meanwhile, the Germans redoubled their efforts to restore a front that could thwart any further Soviet advance west of the Donets River. The 6th Armee reinforced Leonhardt Group at Balakleya, Friedrich Group fortified the Bereka area south of Kharkov to block VI Cavalry Corps, Renz Group rallied the battered remnants of the 298th Infantry Division at Lozovaya, and forces Romanian security and troops protected the approaches to Dniepropetrovsk. And most importantly, a relentless stream of reinforcements circulated north from the left wing of the 17th Armee and the 1. st Panzerarmee to shore up defenses located in and west of Sláviansk.
Realizing that Timoshenko intended to encircle this last enclave from the west with his cavalry, the Heeresgruppe Süd commanded the 97th and 100th Jäger divisions to garrison the defenses west of Kramatorsk and Konstantinovka to block this advance. The resulting race between the two forces would definitively seal the fate of Sláviansk. On January 26, to make sure the Germans won it, Field Marshal Bock combined the 17thArmee and the 1. st Panzerarmee and placed both under the command of the latter's commander, Field Marshal Ewald von Kleist , which quickly generated the necessary forces to thwart the ambitious plan of Tymoshenko's engulfment.
The maneuver began on January 26, with the order to the three cavalry corps to encircle and take Balakleya and Sláviansk. The VI was to attack north through Bereka and then turn east to cut German lines of communication between Kharkov and Balakleya. This last locality was to be conquered by the 253rd and 337th Rifle Divisions, reinforced by the 343rd; while the 411th, 393rd and 270th continued with the exploitation. Although they progressed another 20 to 30 km to the west, beyond the Kharkov-Lozovaya railway line, and the 270th managed to take the latter location, the assault on Balakleya failed , as did the advance of the 6th Cavalry Corps. After losing 1,162 men and 734 horses in four days of fighting, the festering resistance Group Friedrich and the thirty-six-hour blizzard that left all roads impassable brought this force to an abrupt halt just short of Bereka.
The Balakleya-Chuguev offensive
Nor did the 5th and 1st Cavalry Corps, supported by the 57th Army, at Slaviansk. While the 341st Rifle Division defended the 6th Army's right flank, V Corps pushed south, in the early hours of 25/26 January, with the 351st Division protecting its left and I Corps and the 255th Rifle Division following behind. Later that day, V Corps received orders to head south on the 28th to seize the Krasnoarmeyskoye rail junction, 70 km southwest of Slaviansk, to block any attempt by the 1st er Panzerarmee to retreat to the west; as I Corps cavalry charged east towards Kramatorsk to envelop and destroy to the German forces defending Sláviansk and Artemovsk.
At dawn on the 28th, the two cavalry corps met German reinforcements heading north to intercept them, resulting in heavy fighting. I Corps and 255th Division engaged the Rupp Group of the 97th Jäger Division 14 to 25 km southwest of Slaviansk, while the V Corps and 351st Division grappled with the 100th Jäger in the area north-west of Krasnoarmeyskoye. Although the V Cavalry Corps resumed its advance on the 29th, a violent snowstorm and the arrival in the theater of operations of the Hube Group (14th and 16th Panzer divisions ), caused Grechko's advance to be halted while, further north, I Corps was held back by the 97th Jäger Division. . As a somewhat belated additional measure, Tymoshenko reinforced the 57th Army's assaults on Slaviansk with the 9th Army on 29 January; a useless gesture since by then the German defenses were impregnable.
Tymoshenko's offensive came to an end when extreme exhaustion, paralyzing cold and snow they froze the opposing forces in their positions. By the 31st the Soviet forces had suffered more than 40,000 casualties, including 11,000 dead; and although the losses on the German side were significantly less, the offensive severely damaged three of Bock's infantry divisions and inflicted serious losses on a few more, so the command had no choice but to employ Romanian and Hungarian troops. /P>
Despite forming an impressive salient with two armies deep within the German defences, the Soviet failed in the fulfillment of their missions because the almost defeated Germans clung fiercely to Balakleya and Slaviansk, which were also going to become a deadly threat if the Germans decided to exploit them as bases for a future counterattack, thus they would end up becoming inescapable targets of future Soviet offensive operations.
After the failed attempt to destroy the Heeresgruppe Süd in January, Timoshenko looked for new ways to achieve this goal , but this time in phases. The first of these was to liquidate one of the two edge positions that were blocking the progression of his forces. Since Slaviansk was the more powerful of the two, he decided to first eliminate the fortified position at Balakleya and establish, while he did so, a bridgehead across the Donets River at Stary Saltov. Once achieved, he was to initiate exploitation from both bridgeheads, with the purpose of destroying the 6th Armee German during the spring. On February 27, he ordered the 38th and 6th Armies of the Southwestern Front to launch an offensive, on March 7, to encircle, defeat, and destroy German forces at Chuguyev and Balakleya, establish a bridgehead in the west bank of the Donets River northeast of Kharkov and, if possible, take this locality.
6th Army was to make the main attack , in a 20 km sector, north from the Barvénkovo-Lozovaya bridgehead, with four rifle divisions (343rd, 253rd, 337th and 411th) and three tank brigades (13th, 133rd and 5th Guards). The mission of the shock group was to break through the defenses of the 44th Infantry Division located south of the Donets River and west of Balakleya, cross the river, advance north to take Chuguyev and link up with the forces that would come advancing from the northeast. In reserve he kept the 47th Rifle Division, the 100th Independent Ski Battalion, and the 28th Cavalry Division. To the left of the 411th Division, the 393rd and 270th Rifle Divisions were to defend the southern sector of the Lozovaya region; and to the southeast the 6th, 1st, 2nd and 5th cavalry corps would act, also with the mission of keeping the Germans busy.
The 38th Army for his part, he was to attack west across the Donets River with a shock group consisting of the 1st Guards Rifle Division and the 227th, 226th and 124th Rifle Divisions to make their main attack, with the 81st Rifle Division and the 10th .th Tank Brigade in reserve. Their mission was to break through the 294th Infantry Division's defenses along the Donets River, establish a bridgehead on its western bank, and advance southwest halfway to Kharkiv, after which they would seize the area. from Chuguyev and would link up with the 6th Army. Once both forces united, they would attack Kharkov. The right flank of the attack would be protected by a motorized rifle brigade with the mission of advancing west to cut off the Oboyan-Belgorod highway.
The attack
The attack of the 6th Army began at 0500 hours on 7 March in a 33 km wide sector between Alexeyevskoye and 10 km west of Balakleya. The 343rd Rifle Division advanced 2 km and captured the fortified position of Noviy Cherkasskiy, the 253rd covered the same distance to reach the vicinity of the German fortified position of Chervony Donets on the south bank of the river, and the The 337th and 133rd Tank Brigades advanced 4-5 km, captured the Pyatigorsk fortified position and reached the outskirts of the fortifications at Chervony Shliaj and Melovaya, which could not be taken despite the fact that the 47th Rifle Division as reinforcement. On the left, although the supporting attack by the 411th Division and 5th Guards Tank Brigade faltered at Bereka in the face of Group Friedrich defences, one regiment managed to get around their left flank and reach the immediate vicinity of the Bolshoi Bishkin fortified position. Despite everything, at midnight on March 9, defensive positions of the 44th Infantry Division along the Donets River were stillholding their ground .
To break this deadlock, on March 10 Riabyshev moved the 47th Rifle Division to reinforce the attacks being made by the 343rd Division against the points crossing over the Donets south of Liman, and on the 11th he used the 28th Cavalry Division and the 100th Ski Battalion to reinforce the advance of the 47th and 343rd Divisions in their attempt to encircle the left flank of the Friedrich Group. After advancing some 6 km on the 11th and 12th, these forces were stopped at Cherkasskiy Bishkin by elements of the 44th Infantry Division protecting a crossing point south of Liman. On March 13 the Soviets repulsed a German counterattack from the Chervony Donets bridgehead, and the next day Riabyshev ordered the 411th and 343rd divisions to assault both the 44th Infantry Division's fortified position at Cherkasskiy Bishkin as the defenses of the Friedrich Group at Bolshoi Bishkin, as the 28th Cavalry Division and 100th Ski Division slipped through the gap between the two defensive positions to cut off communications of this with Kharkov. Cavalry troops and skiers advanced 15 km into the German rear during the night of 15/16 March, but were stopped where they were by a blocking force and the terrain, and did not intervene again until Riabyshev ordered, on 25 March , to stop, which they did on the 28th. Thus ended the 6th Army offensive.
North of Kharkiv, the 38 .th Army he also attacked at 0500 hours on 7 March, though he was immediately met by heavy enemy resistance. On the right, the 1st Guards Division and the 227th Rifle Division seized the southern outskirts of Staritsa and reached the outskirts of Varvarivka and Rubezhnoye, where they established a bridgehead 7 km wide by 7 km wide. deep in the last hours of the day. The 226th Rifles began their advance with only one regiment because the other two were still on the way and when they arrived they attacked head-on and in broad daylight, despite which one battalion managed to establish a small bridgehead on its western shore late in the day. However, neither this division nor the 124th managed to eliminate the two small German bridgeheads on the eastern bank and they would remain in their positions until late on 9 March, when their commanders reinvigorated their advance. The Germans took advantage of this delay by reinforcing their garrisons at Rubezhnoye, Verjniy Saltov, and Stary Saltov. On the left, the 300th Rifle Division advanced to the approaches to Bolshaya Babka and Peschanoye and a second bridgehead was established. to the north, on the outskirts of Verjniy Saltov.
In the final hours of March 7, Moskalenko ordered his forces to take Stary Saltov by encircling movement from the north and south, so that between 8 and 11 March, the 1st Guards and the 227th and 226th Rifle Divisions, with the newly arrived 10th Tank Brigade, captured Rubezhnoye and turned south to encircle Stary Saltov from the north and west. Simultaneously, the 124th Rifle Division, which had finally crossed the river on March 9, blockaded Bolshaya Babka and moved north to attack Stary Saltov from the south. The town was captured on the 12th, despite increasingly powerful counterattacks led by the vanguard elements of the newly arrived 3rd Panzer Division. . By this time, the 124th Rifle Division had finally captured Bolshaya Babka , reportedly inflicting considerable damage on the 294th Division regiment defending the position.
After the fall of Stary Saltov Moskalenko's forces tried to exploit his success and failed . After heading west towards Peschanoye, they were stopped on March 13 by the 3rd Panzer Division. , which together with the 294th Infantry Division establishednew defenses to the south that extended along the Ternovaya-Nepokrytaya-Zarozhnoye axis, where the 38th Army's offensive was halted.
The fight for the bridgehead lasted from March 14 to 25. During this period, the Southwestern Front reinforced the 38th Army with the 34th Motorized Rifle Brigade on the 14th, with the 169th Rifle Division and the 6th Guards Tank Brigade on the 15th and 16, with the full three divisions of the III Guards Cavalry Corps on the 25th, and with the 13th Guards Rifle Division on the 31st, plus the 5th Guards Artillery Regiment, from the 4. º Regiment of guard mortars and aircraft from two fighter regiments. For his part, Paulus reinforced the forces defending him with 3rd Panzer Division the entire 429th Regiment of the 168th Infantry Division, a combat group of the 230th Regiment of the 299th Infantry Division, and battalions belonging to the 79th and 62nd Infantry Divisions. Though the 6th Armee he failed to recapture Stary Saltov or eliminate the bridgehead, by the end of the month Staritsa, Varvarivka, Bairak, Kupevaja and Bolshaya Babka had returned to him. That left Moskalenko's army with a bridgehead 34 km wide and 5-8 km deep on the west bank of the Donets River. Despite its shallow depth, it still had room for two full armies to launch their offensive in mid-May.
As with the January offensive, the March offensive was a failure. The Russians simply eliminated the 6th Army attack from their historical relationships in the war; and if the 38th managed to appear in some history books of the Khrushchev period known as glasnost , was because the offensive managed to secure the bridgehead on the west bank of the Donets River, needed to trigger the May attack on Kharkov. Even so, this achievement remained forgotten by history until the late 1980s, when Russian historians finally began to unravel what had happened in Kharkov in May.
El olvido histórico de la ofensiva de marzo relega al anonimato su ferocidad y sus frustraciones. Aunque los rusos no han desclasificado las cifras de bajas, sus pérdidas debieron de ser aproximadamente la mitad de las que tuvieron en la ofensiva de enero.
En retrospectiva, las dos ofensivas de la Dirección del Suroeste de Timoshenko llevadas a cabo durante el invierno de 1942 demuestran que la debacle que experimentó en mayo no fue una anomalía sino que, más bien, ambas ponen de manifiesto, junto con la ofensiva de mayo, la firme determinación de Stalin de replicar en el sur de Rusia la derrota infligida al Heeresgruppe Mitte en Moscú, alzándose con una victoria similar sobre el Heeresgruppe Süd . No debe pues sorprender que Stalin y Timoshenko estuvieran resueltos a aprovecharse de lo conseguido en enero, aunque limitado, en marzo y mayo; no obstante, lo llamativo es que el Ejército Rojo no lograra explotar en mayo las claras lecciones aprendidas en enero y marzo.
Bibliography
- Bock, F. von (1996):The War Diary, 1939-1945 , Atglen, PA:Schiffer Military History.
- Moskalenko, K. S. (1967):Na iugo-zapadnom napralevnii [En dirección suroeste], Vol. 1. Moskvá:Nauka.
- Savynyi, M. (1943):Barvenkovo-Lozovaia operatsiia (18-31 ianvaria 1942 g.). Kratkii operativno-takticheskii ocherk [La operación Barvenkovo-Lozovaia (18-31 de enero de 1942). Un breve estudio táctico-operacional]. Moskvá:Voenizdat. Documento preparado por el Estado Mayor del Ejército Rojo y clasificado como secreto.