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Articles categorized | historical oddities
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By 1942, the Soviets had foiled German attempts to cut off communications in southern Russia on the Volga, lifted the siege of Stalingrad, captured the German 6th Army, and launched a series of counteroffensives. The Soviet Southern Front was facing the old enemy, the German Army Group South, and these two units could be described as a pinpoint to Mai Mang, the Soviet Southern Front had been beaten by the German Army Group South twice before, and now they vowed to teach the Germans a lesson in the Battle of Rostov-on-Don, revenge for 1941 and 1942!
First, the counterattack begins!
But it was late January, the weather had not yet completely warmed up, and the ice had not yet completely melted, so it took a long time for the Soviets to assemble all the offensive forces, such as the Soviet Southern Front, which participated in the offensive in southern Ukraine, which took nearly a week to prepare for battle.
At that time, the task of the Soviet Southern Front was to attack the west bank of the Don River, drive the Germans out of Rostov, and consolidate the bridgehead. Due to the enemy on the southern front of the Soviet Army, the German Army had 10 divisions, nearly half of which were mechanized troops. So the Soviet High Command transferred some cavalry units of the North Caucasus Front to the Southern Front, and the 8th Air Force on the Assyrian Front also provided air support to the Southern Front.
Although Zhukov believed that Malinovsky, as vatutin's younger brother, was absolutely capable of accomplishing this heavy task. But Zhukov estimated that the first phase of the battlefield was 180 kilometers wide, and it might take at least two months for the Southern Front to complete its combat mission. During the campaign, the Germans were likely to destroy the transportation hubs along the route, while the Soviets could wait 4 to 6 months before launching the second phase of the campaign, so the goal of this phase was to ensure the success of the initial campaign.
2. Prelude to the Battle of Donbass
On 5 February, when the Soviet Southern Front was ready for battle, General Malinowski ordered the Fifth Assault Army to take on the task of supporting the entire right flank of the Front, and it was necessary to firmly contain the Germans and avoid the Germans from adopting the tactic of two flanks. After all, Malinovsky was also an expert in pincer movements, and the precedent of the second army being destroyed twice at the same time was in front of him, and Malinowski did not want his brothers to die in vain.
Hitler was not completely in a state of madness at this time, he ordered the German army to shrink as much as possible, and the troops gradually retreated to the "Panther Line". At the same time, they laid huge minefields in the direction of a possible Soviet attack, drove Soviet civilians to the West, and destroyed all the industrial equipment and resources they could not take with them.
The Soviets discovered the German intentions, and the Soviets launched a full-scale offensive on the southern front on 7 February. After 30 minutes of artillery preparation, the troops plunged into battle. To the surprise of the Soviets, the Germans launched a counterattack at the same time as the Soviets attacked, all the Soviet offensive forces were attacked by the Germans, only the 40th Guards Infantry Division was attacked 6 times that day, but the Soviets still advanced slowly and steadily.
Three days later, the Nazi front command ordered the repression to cease and ordered the troops to withdraw from the south bank of the lower Don and instead defend Rostov, Novycherkask and Konstantinovsk, waiting for the opportunity to counterattack and carry out a pincer offensive against the Soviet troops crossing the river, repeating the victory of the 1942 annihilation of the Soviet Second Assault Army.
But General Malinowski had anticipated the Germans' intentions, and he ordered the Fifth Commando to suspend operations and make every effort to ensure the security of the flanks of the battlefield. At this time, the 5th Commando Army did have a logistical disconnect, insufficient ammunition and fuel, artillery and armored troops were disconnected due to the speed of the attack, and Malinowski's order saved not only the 5th Commando Army, but also the entire Southern Front.
The fighting continued until 11 February, when the mechanized forces of the German Army Group South found that the Soviets had left no gaps for flanking strikes, and the 5th Commando entered defensive positions on the road to Shahti, intending to lure the Germans to attack. Over the next few days, the two sides continued their skirmishes to test each other's intentions, but a few days later the Soviets launched a surprise attack, with the 40th Guards Rifle Division, the 258th Infantry Division, and the 315th Infantry Division bypassing the German minefield and attacking northwest of Shahti.
Surprisingly, the Germans did not launch a large-scale counterattack, but quickly retreated after several tentative partial counterattacks failed, which frustrated Malinowski's plan to encircle. (In fact, Zhukov did not ask Malinowski to fight a war of annihilation, but simply drove the Germans away) About a week later, the support and artillery of the Assault Fifth Army finally followed, but the Germans also returned to their defensive positions, and the two sides continued to fight like a tug-of-war.
Iii. The duel between two southern "legions"
By the time the 5th Assault Army and the Germans pulled the saw, the Soviet 2nd Guards Army had established a bridgehead nearly 80 km wide in the lower Don Ande and liberated Novocherkask on 13 February, but the Germans were still stubbornly resisting, trying to buy time for friendly forces retreating in the direction of Shahti.
Just before the Soviets attacked Simkelcaster, the Soviet 51st Army and the 3rd Sentinel Mechanized Corps achieved a tactical victory southeast of Rostov. They killed all the way to less than 20 km from Rostov. A few days later, they cut off the railway line behind Rostov, cut off the transport road used by the Germans to send troops to Rostov, and the red-eyed German front command repeatedly issued counter-orders asking the German armored forces to try to lift the Soviet encirclement of Rostov.
On the same day as the liberation of Novocherkask, the Germans in Rostov began to break through. After receiving the report on the 14th, General Malinowski immediately ordered a full-scale attack on Rostov, while launching a pincer offensive against the retreating Germans, eliminating the Germans here, avoiding their retreat to the rear, and increasing the difficulty of the second phase of the campaign.
The Soviet 28th Army entered Rostov that night, but the attack was blocked by German reinforcements, so most of the German Rostov cluster escaped from the encirclement.
The Germans invested a lot of money to save the Rostov Group, and they even used armored trains and mechanized troops to stop the Soviet offensive, which also led to the Soviets sealing the encirclement within four days, but they were also captured by the small Germans, and the German Rostov Group had already run most of the way.
In order to continue to pursue and eliminate the retreating Germans, Malinowski used all mobile troops at his disposal, including Cossack cavalry from the North Caucasus, who eliminated many small German blocking forces in the pursuit, but never destroyed the main German Rostov group.
The German Rostov swarm left both sides of the Don and redeployed on the Mius River, where they fought the Soviets for nearly a month. Because the Germans bombed the Rostov railway station and railway before retreating, the Soviet logistics could not be unloaded in Rostov, and eventually the Soviets were burdened by logistics and had to suspend the attack and wait for the railway to be repaired. As Zhukov predicted, the Soviets could only complete the first phase of the offensive, which would not wait until late 1943.
epilogue
The Soviets believed that they had successfully defeated the German Army Group South in a battle launched in 1943, laying the foundation for victory at the Battle of Nandonetsk six months later. But in fact, the Soviet army did not achieve the goal of encircling the right wing of Army Group South, so until Marshal Zhukov and Marshal Timoshenko jointly broke through the Dnieper River, the Soviet army did not have a great advantage in the Ukrainian battlefield.
Resources:
Battle of Donbass with the Soviet Southern Front
1943: Battle of Donbass
The Great Patriotic War
The task of the historian is to distinguish between the real and the false, the certain and the uncertain, and the suspicious and the unacceptable. - Goethe (German)