By David M. Glantz, Jonathan M. House
Translation: Zhao Wei Zhao Guoxing
In 1943, throughout September, both sides were racing towards the Dnieper, and the Germans destroyed everything in the way of the Red Army's advance. However, this organized act of destruction only further degraded the military discipline of its ordinary soldiers—burning everything in sight clearly showed that all hopes of victory were gone, and the additional tasks created under the scorched earth policy further exhausted the German infantry. Vautin, commander of the Voronezh Front, urged his troops to step up their advance, saying: "They are burning bread, and to stop this we must attack." ”
The Germans were convinced that the Size of the Soviet Army in pursuit was enormous. But in reality, the Soviets had been weakened in previous battles, and because they had stretched their ranks long on dusty roads, it was difficult to resupply and maintain them — but these weakened mobile units continued to pursue. For example, the 5th Guards Tank Army, with 500 tanks, had only 50 tanks left to fight after the end of the Belgorod-Kharkov Campaign, and Rothmistrov concentrated the remaining tanks in three detachments and let radio transceivers move around to simulate the rest of the army group, in this way to deceive the German radio intelligence group.
On 19–23 September 1943, Vatutin's vanguard tank and infantry detachments arrived on the Dnieper River from the north and south of Kiev. Despite the lack of bridge-building equipment, the Soviets temporarily established 40 bridgeheads between 19 and 26 September, mostly south of Kiev. One of them looked extremely valuable: during the pursuit, 2 tank corps of the 3rd Guards Tank Army of Rebalko, supported by an independent cavalry corps, served as the vanguard of the Voronezh Front. The infantry of the three armies captured a landing field at The Great Buklin south of Kiev, but needed reinforcements to continue the offensive. The High Command had long anticipated that the situation would reach this point, and in early September ordered several airborne troops to resume parachuting training. The 1st, 3rd, and 5th Airborne Brigades, after a year and a half of ground troops, were finally temporarily reorganized into 1 Corps and transferred to Vatutin to develop victory. Two of the brigades are scheduled to skydive near Grand Buchlin from the evening of September 24 to the early morning of September 25.
Unfortunately for these Soviets, the desperate pursuit of the Dnieper was beyond the capabilities of the General Staff Reconnaissance Bureau, and they were unable to provide timely information on the deployment of German forces. At the same time, Vatutin did not know that the German army had 5 divisions - 2 panzer divisions, 2 infantry divisions and 1 motorized infantry division - were advancing to the landing area where they were scheduled to land, and the vanguard of the 19th Panzer Division had even arrived long ago. The ending was tragic, with well-trained Soviet paratroopers too dispersed after landing, encountering unexpected German defenders, who eventually suffered numerous casualties. This defeat even led to Stalin's lifelong deference to large-scale airborne campaigns. Subsequently, in October the Voronezh Front of Vatutin launched several attacks on the Germans trying to eliminate the Soviet landing sites on both the north and south sides of Kiev, but all of them ended in disastrous defeats (discussed in more detail later).
However, victories elsewhere completely swept away the haze of defeat on both the north and the south sides of Kiev. On 15 October, while the race against the Dnieper was still underway, Rokossovsky's Central Front cut open the German Dnieper Line at Gomel, taking a favorable position for the next advance to southern Belarus; further south, Tolbukhin's Southern Front smashed the Leopard line of Army Group South on 11 October, heading for the Dnieper, eventually isolating the 17th Army in Crimea.
Battlefield situation map: Summer and autumn war situation, June-December 1943
The german success of the defense along the Dnieper in late September and October allowed Guderian to rebuild several panzer divisions, but this did not change the overall balance of power. The Germans firmly suppressed the Soviet landing fields of the Great Buklin and Lyutezh (Voronezh Front) on the north and south sides of Kiev, as well as the landing fields of the Steppe Front south of Kremmenchug; they also had bridgeheads on the east bank opposite Nikopol. However, in mid-October the Voronezh Front succeeded in expanding a small landing field in a swamp north of Kiev, near the village of Lyutezh, where the overly extended German army did not deploy much force to control due to the impassable terrain. The Voronezh Front, renamed the Ukrainian 1st Front on 20 October, was trying to exploit the German omission. 42 However, to do so, it is necessary to break the convention that vehicles should not move in swampy terrain.
Initially, on 11 October, Vatutin ordered Lieutenant General Andrei Grigorievich Kravchenko's 5th Guards Tank Corps to reinforce the Lyutezh landing field. The latter required lateral maneuvers and crossing several rivers before rendezvousing with the infantry guarding the small landing field. The ministry was in a hurry and used a more dangerous method, that is, to seal the T-34 as much as possible, and then rush through the rapids at full speed at full horsepower to finally reach its destination. Commander Kravchenko simply mentioned in his report that "the vast majority" of vehicles had successfully crossed the river by this means, but there was no doubt that many tanks and crews had sunk into the muddy water. Although by mid-October the Germans had successfully blocked Kravchenko's assault under the city of Kiev, the Soviet landing field had also been expanded, which gave Vatutin a new opportunity.
In late October, Vatutin quietly transferred the entire 3rd Guards Tank Army of Rebalko and a large number of infantry and artillery into the crowded landing field. On 3 November, the 38th Army of the 1st Ukrainian Front and Rebalko's Tank Army suddenly emerged from the landing field, crushing the startled German defenders. Three days later, Vatutin's forces retake Kiev. Soon, his front established an important strategic foothold on the other side of the Dnieper River, on Ukrainian soil.
Vatutin's forces are continuing to use this victory to amplify their gains. The 3rd Guards Tank Army marched through Fastov straight for Kazatin and into the German rear, followed by The 38th Army of General Kirill Semyonovich Moskalenko, while the 1st Guards Cavalry Army and the 60th Army accelerated west to capture Zhytomyr and threaten Korosken. Manstein quickly returned the favor, intending to repeat the victory he had won south of Kharkov in February, when he annihilated the main force of the three Soviet army groups. He drew the 48th and 24th Panzer Corps from the Great Buchlin area to annihilate the Soviet front, then drove the enemy back to the Dnieper. However, at this time and another time, the anti-armor ability of the Soviet infantry was no longer what it used to be, and with tanks and self-propelled guns as the backing, the Germans who wanted to fight back had to pay a terrible toll when passing through them. However, on 10 November, the 48th Panzer Army blocked the 3rd Guards Tank Army near Fastorf. As in Bogodhuv three months earlier, German tanks cut off and ate several of Rebalko's vanguards, but Manstein was still powerless to retake Fastov.
Frustrated, Manstein turned the 48th Panzer Corps to the west, trying to capture and repel Vatutin's right flank. He triumphed again, but in the blink of an eye, it was taken away. Zhytomyr was reportedly guarded by a group of drunken cavalry of the 1st Guards Cavalry Corps, who had just discovered the wine stored by the 4th Panzer Army; the unit was defeated, but the Soviet infantry, armored troops, and anti-tank units that came later once again blocked the Germans near Brusilov. Between late November and early December, Manstein moved the 48th Panzer Army onto vatukin's right flank twice. Each German offensive was initially successful, but was quickly thwarted.
On 19 December, Manstein made one last attempt to destroy the dangerous Soviet landing field. In a fierce battle along the Korosken-Kiev railway, he surrounded and annihilated a Soviet army, which he thought was four armies. In fact, the Germans were attacking only a camouflage unit deployed here by the Soviets, whose task was to cover the powerful strike force they had assembled in the brusilov region to the far south. While Manstein was staring at the nearby Krosten which he thought was about to be won, his armored forces once again came to a standstill after achieving some unworthy results. The next day, Christmas day 1943, all his optimism was dashed with the sudden soviet onslaught near Brusilov. The 1st Tank Army and the 1st Guards Army advanced west from Kiev, tearing a large hole in the German line and marking the beginning of the next winter war of the Soviet Army.
Further south, Konev's 2nd Ukrainian Front, spearheaded by Rotmistrov's 5th Guards Tank Army, continued to expand the Krivorug landing field and further undermined the German Dnieper line. With winter approaching in November and December, the German SS and Panzers launched a series of local counterattacks, barely containing the expansion of the landing field. The Soviets made several unsuccessful attempts to clear the German bridgehead of Nikopol; these battles at least effectively distracted German commanders from the dangerous situation further north along the Dnieper.
While Vatutin and Konev were still engaged in the exciting so-called "Battle of the Dnieper" in the south, an equally important but not so smooth Soviet offensive was also underway against Army Group Center. In late September, the headquarters of the Soviet High Command ordered the liberation of Belarus. In early October, Yelemenko's Kalinin Front (renamed the 1st Baltic Front on 20 October) captured the key city of Nevel through a surprise attack, cutting off Army Group Center from Army Group North and threatening Vitebsk from the north. Shortly thereafter, Rokossovsky's Belorussian Front (renamed from the Central Front on 20 October) launched the Battle of Gomel-Lecchitsa and entered southern Belarus. At the same time, Sokolovsky's Western Front was repeatedly storming the German lines of Orsha and Mogilev south of Vitebsk. The initial victory led the Headquarters of the High Command to order the Baltic Front, The Western Front, and the Belorussian Front to launch a centripetal assault in early November with the goal of capturing Minsk and eastern Belarus; by mid-November, this ambitious offensive had to fail in the face of strong and clever German defenses and deteriorating weather.
As the situation in Belarus stabilized and the Soviets should remain trapped at the Dnieper landing field, the Germans stopped fighting in the winter and were confident that there would be a period of calm – but the Soviets would never let them be so comfortable.
This article is excerpted from "The Collision of Giants: A New History of the Soviet-German War"