Compared to the stripped-down divisions left holding the defensive front, the German southern attack forces that assembled for Operation Blau seemed sleek and powerful. However, this appearance was deceiving. The divisions assigned to Army Group South (later divided into Army Groups A and B) suffered from many deficiencies that compromised their offensive and defensive capabilities.

In May 1942, most of the infantry divisions in Army Group South stood at about 50 percent strength. Although brought nearly up to strength over the next six weeks, the southern divisions had little time or opportunity to assimilate their new troops. Only one-third of the infantry divisions committed to the upcoming attack could be taken out of the line in early spring for rehabilitation; the remaining divisions stayed in their old winter defensive positions and tried to train and integrate their replacements even as they fought desultory defensive battles against minor Russian attacks. As a result, the general training standards in the southern assault forces were far below those of the 1939-41 German armies. Losses in officers, NCOs, and technical personnel during the 1941 winter battles had further sapped the combat abilities of the German forces. In fact, many German units now regretted the use of artillerymen, signalers, and other specialists as infantry during the winter months since they were so hard to replace. Moreover, even after strip-ping vehicles and equipment from the northern forces, Army Group South's divisions lacked their full complement of motor transport. According to a General Staff study in late May, the spearhead forces (those divisions that would actually lead the attacks toward Stalingrad and the Caucasus) would embark with only 80 percent of their vehicles, and the follow-on infantry divisions and supply columns would be slowed by shortages of both horses and vehicles. For all of the ruthless economies inflicted on their poorer relatives to the north, Army Groups A and B would therefore be more clumsy, be less mobile, and have less logistical staying power than the German armies that had launched Barbarossa a year before.

Army Group B had two distinct missions in Operation Blau: first, to carve its way eastward along the southern bank of the Don River some 300 miles to Stalingrad, and second, to post a defensive screen along its northern flank as it went, protecting its own rear and the further unfolding of Army Group A's attack to the south. Though not the decisive thrust (Army Group A would actually push into the Caucasus toward the strategic oil fields), Army Group B's mission was crucial to German success.
Army Group B's far-flung tasks could not be accomplished with the German divisions at hand. Consequently, the most critical jobs were given to the more powerful German armies, and the less-demanding tasks were allotted to a polyglot of allied contingents. The Sixth Army and the Fourth Panzer Army were to attack toward Stalingrad, while the veteran Second Army was to seize Voronezh and then form the link between Army Group Center's defensive front and Army Group B's flank pickets. The job of covering the long flank in between was handed to allied armies of lesser fighting value.
In the spring of 1942, Hitler prevailed on the Reich's military partners to provide additional combat forces to augment the German armies. Romania, Hungary, and Italy all reluctantly consented to deploy additional forces on the Eastern Front, though they each insisted that their contingents fight under their own army headquarters rather than as separate divisions in German corps and armies. By early August, thirty-six allied divisions were committed in the southern portion of the front, roughly 40 percent of the total number of Axis divisions in that region. Even though German liaison staffs were assigned to these forces, the combat effectiveness of the allied armies was generally poor. so By relegating the allied forces to purely defensive missions along the German flanks, the German High Command figured to minimize the demands placed on these forces while still conserving Wehrmacht divisions for crucial combat roles.

Through early summer, the forces posted along Army Group B's northern flank had little difficulty in fending off Soviet assaults. A Second Army afteraction report on 21 July 1942, following the defeat of Soviet counterattacks near Voronezh, was particularly reassuring. Written at the request of the General Staff's Training Branch in Berlin and circulated throughout the German Army's higher echelons, this report allayed lingering fears caused by the Red Army's winter successes in 1941?42. "Russian infantry in the attack is even worse than before," the report began. "Much massing, greater vulnerability to artillery and mortar fire and to flanking maneuver. Scarcely any more night attacks. This report brightened the prospects for successful defense along Army Group B's northern flank.

Despite this reassurance, Army Group B's left wing remained vulnerable. Hitler's own interest in this potential weakness began in early spring when he ordered that the Second Army be reinforced with several hundred antitank guns as an additional guarantee against the collapse of Blau's northern shield. In anticipation of its defensive operations, Second Army also had been assigned numerous engineer detachments, labor units, and Organization Todt work parties for general construction and fortification. After its successful attack on Voronezh in early July, Second Army attempted to fortify its portion of the exposed flank using these assets throughout the remainder of the summer.

To the east beyond Second Army, however, the Don flank was held by troops of the Hungarian Second Army, the Italian Eighth Army, and the Romanian Third Army. Other Romanian formations, temporarily under the command of Fourth Panzer Army, held the open flank south of Stalingrad. As expected, these forces proved to be mediocre in combat, leading German commanders to be even more uneasy about this long, exposed sector. By September, General Maximilian von Weichs, the commander of Army Group B, regarded his northern flank to be he so endangered that he ordered special German "intervention units" (Eingreifgruppen) rotated into reserve behind both the German- and allied-held portions of his left wing.

The use of intervention units was not new to German defensive doctrine. In fact, the Elastic Defense doctrine of 1917 and 1918 had required that intervention divisions be used to reinforce deliberate counterattacks against particularly stubborn enemy penetrations. In 1942, however, the role of these intervention units went beyond counterattack. They could also provide advance reinforcement?"corsetting"?to threatened sectors since, according to Weichs' explanation, the Russians "seldom were able to conceal preparations for attack." Thus, the intervention units could support faltering allied contingents, hopefully steeling their resistance until additional help could arrive.

In October, General Zeitzier, the new chief of the Army General Staff, began to echo Weichs' concerns. In a lengthy presentation to Hitler, Zeitzier argued that the allied lines between Voronezh and Stalingrad constituted "the most perilous sector of the Eastern Front," a situation that posed "an enormous danger which must be eliminated." Although Hitler made sympathetic noises, he refused to accept Zeitzier's conclusions and ordered no major changes to German deployments or missions.

Even though the Fuhrer rejected Zeitzier's recommendation that German forces withdraw from Stalingrad, he did authorize minor actions to help shore up the allied armies. One of these measures was the interspersing of additional German units (primarily antitank battalions) among the allied divisions. In accordance with Hitler's published defensive instructions, if the allied units were overrun, these few German units were to "stand fast and limit the enemy's penetration or breakthrough. By holding out in this way, they should create more favorable conditions for our counterattack." Another protective measure was the repositioning of a combined German-Romanian panzer corps behind the Romanian Third Army. This unit, the XLVIII Panzer Corps, consisted of only an untried Romanian armored division and a battle-worn, poorly equipped German panzer division. Weak as it was, this corps was not placed under the control of the Romanians or even Weichs. Rather, it was designated as a special Fuhrer Reserve under the personal direction of Hitler and therefore could not be committed to combat without first obtaining his release." Finally, from October onward, German signal teams were placed throughout the allied armies so the German High Command could independently monitor the day-to-day performance of those forces without having to rely on reports from the allies themselves. These and other measures were not executed without some friction, however: the Italians, for example, huffily rejected German suggestions for improving their defensive positions.

The allied units were not the only soft spots on the defensive flank. By autumn, several newly raised German divisions, hastily consigned to Army Group B in June in order to flesh out its order of battle, were also causing some concern. For example, barely days before its preliminary June attack on Voronezh to secure the German flank, Second Army had received six brand-new German divisions. Though game enough in their initial attacks, these units quickly began to unravel due Tu poor training and inexperienced leadership. In one case, the 385th Infantry Division reportedly suffered "unnecessarily high losses" including half of its company commanders and five of six battalion commanders in just six weeks, due to deficient training. This fiery baptism ruined these divisions for later defensive use. The loss of so many personnel in such a short period of time left permanent scars, traumatizing the divisions before time and battle experience could produce new leaders and heal the units' psychological wounds. Second Army assessed the situation on I October 1942 and informed Army Group B that these once-new divisions were no longer fully reliable even for limited defensive purposes and that heavy defensive fighting might well stampede them. Unless they could be pulled out of the line for rest and rehabilitation, these divisions, which accounted for nearly half of Second Army's total infantry strength, could only be trusted in the defense of small, quiet sectors.

The German southern offensive thus trusted its long northern flank to a conglomeration of listless allied and battle-weary German units. Like the forces farther north on the defensive front of Army Groups Center and North, these armies were stretched taut, manning thin lines with few reserves beyond insubstantial local forces. Barely strong enough to hold small probing attacks at bay during the summer and early fall, these armies lacked the strength to meet a major Russian offensive without substantial reinforcement.

Shielded by this doubtful defensive umbrella, Operation Blau made good initial progress. In fierce house-to-house fighting, General Friedrich Paulus' Sixth Army gnawed its way into Stalingrad, the projected eastern terminus of Army Group B's defensive barrier. Despite nagging shortages of fuel and other supplies, as well as Hitler's confused switching of forces and missions, Army Group A had cleared Rostov and penetrated the northern reaches of the Caucasus Mountains by late August.

At this point, the German campaign lost whatever coherence it might have possessed earlier. Forgetting that Army Group B's mission was but secondary to that of the advance toward the oil fields, Hitler became obsessed with capturing Stalingrad. Ordering not only Sixth Army but even the cream of Fourth Panzer Army into the city, Hitler committed the German forces to a prolonged battle of attrition for control of Stalingrad's rubbled streets and factories. By late autumn, Operation Blau had degenerated into a test of military manhood between Hitler and Stalin on the Volga.

Whatever the outcome of the battle for possession of Stalingrad, by October it was clear that another winter defensive campaign was imminent. As described earlier, Hitler's Operations Order I ordered winter defensive preparations on all parts of the front, though in that same directive he bade the Stalingrad fighting continue. Yet even the Sixth Army in and around Stalingrad began to take preliminary steps for a winter defense. After discussions with Sixth Army staff members, an Army High Command liaison officer dispatched a memorandum to Berlin in mid-October assessing the feasibility of fortifying a miniature "east wall" on the Volga steppes and recommending the transfer of additional engineer units to Paulus' command for that purpose.

The German defensive arrangements along the Don River held together only until 19 November, when a Red Army offensive flattened the Romanian Third Army northwest of Stalingrad and knifed southward toward the rear of the German Sixth and Fourth Panzer Armies.

A day later, another Soviet attack burst through the Romanian lines south of Stalingrad. On 23 November, these pincers met near Kalach, severing Sixth Army's land supply routes. The collapse of the Axis defenses along the Don River and the encirclement of Sixth Army transformed the situation of the southern front, casting the Wehrmacht forces there into a desperate struggle for their very survival.

The ensuing winter defensive battles in southern Russia can be divided into three separate phases. In the first phase, lasting from 19 November until 23 December 1942, the Germans scrambled to hold an advanced defensive line near the confluence of the Don and Chir Rivers from which they could support relief operations toward Stalingrad. Once the attacks to relieve Sixth Army were irretrievably repulsed, the focus of German defensive efforts shifted. During the second phase, lasting from the last week of December 1942 to mid-February 1943, German divisions fought to block another huge Soviet envelopment, this one aimed at the rear of the entire German southern wing near Rostov. Finally, from mid-February until the spring thaw, the third phase of the winter battles saw the restabilization of the front south of Kursk.

German defensive operations differed in each phase, and these differences reflected variations in the mission, the strength and composition of German forces, and the actions of the enemy. In no case, however, were these chaotic defensive actions conducted along doctrinal lines. Instead, from the initial collapse of the Romanian armies in November 1942 to the stabilization of the front in March 1943, German defensive operations were once again almost completely extemporaneous.

The first phase of fighting focused on the fate of the beleaguered German Sixth Army in Stalingrad. Ordered to stand fast and repeatedly assured by Hitler that Sixth Army would be relieved, General Paulus swiftly put his forces into a giant hedgehog defensive posture.

Establishing an effective defensive perimeter at Stalingrad was doubly difficult due to a desperate shortage of infantrymen (the bulk of whom had fallen in the earlier street fighting) and the lack of prepared positions. On the eastern face of the Stalingrad pocket, German troops continued to occupy the defensive positions built up during previous fighting for the city. However, the southern and western portions of the perimeter lay almost completely on shelterless steppes, and the hasty defenses there never amounted to more than a few bunkers and shallow connecting trenches. (Because the steppes were almost treeless, no lumber was available for building fires for heat or for constructing covered defensive positions.) Significantly, the subsequent Soviet attacks to liquidate the surrounded Sixth Army came almost exclusively from the south and west against the least well-established portions of the German defenses. On 23 November, well-built positions to the north of Stalingrad were rashly abandoned without orders by the German LI Corps commander, General Walter von Seydlitz-Kurzbach, who had hoped thereby to provoke an immediate breakout order from Paulus. This hasty action sacrificed the 94th Infantry Division, which was overrun and annihilated by Red Army forces during the movement to the rear, and also gave up virtually the only well-constructed defensive positions within the Stalingrad Kessel.

Sixth Army had difficulty in defending itself because of insufficient resources. Lack of fuel prevented the use of Paulus' three panzer and three motorized divisions as mobile reserves. Hoarding its meager fuel supplies for a possible breakout attempt, Sixth Army wound up employing most of its tanks and assault guns in static roles. Likewise, shortages of artillery ammunition and fortification materials hindered the German defense. The Luftwaffe's heroic attempts to airlift supplies into Stalingrad were hopelessly inadequate: since daily deliveries never exceeded consumption, the overall supply problem grew steadily worse in all areas. In some ways, the aerial resupply effort was counterproductive. Scores of medium bombers were diverted from ground support and interdiction missions to serve as additional cargo carriers, a move that emptied the skies of much-needed German combat air power at an extremely critical period.

For both tactical and logistical reasons, then, what the Nazi press dramatically called "Fortress Stalingrad" was, in reality, no fortress at all. Surrounded by no less than seven Soviet armies, Sixth Army was marooned on poor defensive ground without adequate forces, prepared positions, or stockpiles of essential supplies. Forbidden by Hitler to cut its way out of the encirclement, Sixth Army's eventual destruction was a foregone conclusion unless a relief attack could reestablish contact.

In response to this crisis, Hitler created Army Group Don under Field Marshal von Manstein on 20 November. Manstein was to restore order on the shattered southern front and, even more important in the short term, to direct a relief offensive to save Sixth Army. To accomplish this, Hitler promised Manstein six fresh infantry divisions, four panzer divisions, a Luftwaffe field division, and various other contingents.

Sixth Army's temporary aerial supply and eventual relief required the Germans to hold a forward defensive line along the Chir River, where the most advanced positions were only about forty miles from the Stalingrad perimeter. This line also covered the main departure airfields for the airlift and could serve as an excellent jumping-off point for a counterattack to link up with Sixth Army.

While Manstein worked out his plan for a relief attack, the Chir River line was held by whatever forces could be scraped together. Initially, these forces consisted of mixed combat units swept aside by the Russian offensive, alarm units called out from various support units, service troops, rear area security forces, convalescents, and casual personnel on leave. All these were formed into ad hoc battle groups and plugged into an improvised strongpoint defense along the Chir "like pieces of mosaic."

That this rabble managed to hold the Chir line?and even some bridgeheads on the eastern bank?was due as much to Soviet indifference as to German improvisation. Through early December, the Soviet High Command was content to tighten its coils around Stalingrad and made little effort to exploit the German disarray farther west. In so doing, the Soviets were avoiding their great strategic mistake of the previous winter, when Stalin's failure to concentrate forces on major objectives frittered away excellent opportunities to no decisive gain.

In mid-December, however, the fighting on the Chir front accelerated, with both sides committing substantial forces to this crucial area. On 12 December, Manstein began his relief attack toward Stalingrad. Intending to pin down German forces and to prevent reinforcement of the rescue effort, Soviet forces hurled themselves against the Chir line at several points. Meanwhile, the Germans reinforced the ragtag elements along the Chir with fresh units, most notably the reconstituted XLVIII Panzer Corps (11th Panzer Division, 336th Infantry Division, and 7th Luftwaffe Field Division). These mid-December defensive battles demonstrated both the capabilities and the limitations of German defenders during this phase.

The XLVIII Panzer Corps intended to hold its sector of the Chir front with two infantry divisions forward and a panzer division in reserve. The 336th Division was an excellent, full-strength unit that had recently arrived on the Russian Front from occupation duty in France. Even though reinforced somewhat with Luftwaffe flak and ground combat units, the division could only man its wide front by putting all its assets forward, holding only a handful of infantry, engineers, and mobile flak guns in reserve. Even so, the 336th Division formed "the pivot and shield" of the German defense. The 7th Luftwaffe Field Division, though well equipped and fully manned, was poorly trained and lacked leaders experienced in ground combat. Behind the infantry, General Hermann Back's 11th Panzer Division, which had recently been transferred from Army Group Center after fighting in several tough defensive battles, assembled for duty as a mobile counterattack force. Although its infantry strength was fairly high, it (like other weakened divisions from the northern defensive front) had only a single battalion of Panzer Mark IVs in its entire tank regiment.

On 7 December, even as the Germans were still settling into position, Soviet tank forces penetrated the left flank of the 336th Division. The Germans had not yet had time to lay mines or erect antitank obstacles, and their few Paks could not be used effectively. (Though relatively flat, the steppes were crisscrossed by deep ravines that provided excellent covered approaches into the German positions.) Facilitated by the weakness of the German antiarmor defenses, Russian tanks forced their way through the thin infantry defenses, overran part of the division's artillery, and thrust some fifteen kilometers into the division rear. In a three-day running battle, the 11th Panzer Division carved up this Russian tank force with repeated counter-attacks against its flanks and rear. Despite the heady successes enjoyed by Baick's panzers and mechanized infantry (reports claimed seventy-five destroyed Russian tanks), the fighting was not all one-sided. For example, between 7 and 10 December, Russian tanks overran one infantry battalion of the 336th Division three different times.

Even tougher fighting followed. Beginning on II December, fresh Russian attacks charged against the Chir front, forcing several local penetrations. Though eventually broken by counterattacks and the fire of the 336th Division's artillery, these Soviet probes threatened to erode the German defenders by-attrition. In one case, a German battle group holding a bridgehead south of the Don-Chir confluence lost 18 officers and 750 men in ten days of combat. Breakthroughs in the 336th Division's front between 13 and 15 December produced an extremely confused situation, with groups of enemy and friendly troops finally so intermixed that German artillery could not be used effectively for fear of firing on its own forces. Moreover, Soviet tanks again broke through as far as the German artillery positions, overrunning some guns and knocking out others by direct fire. By nightfall on 15 December, the situation of the 336th Division had become so grave that, according to one staff officer, the division's continued survival depended "exclusively on outside help."

Again, the 11th Panzer Division saved the German position on the Chir. Harkening to desperate appeals from the 336th Division for additional antitank support, the 11th diverted three of its precious tanks to buttress the flagging infantry, while the balance of the German armor hammered the Soviet flanks. By 22 December, the Chir front was quiet as both sides slumped into exhaustion.

The battles on the Chir River had been a masterpiece of tactical improvisation by the Germans. Although regular combat troops were gradually brought into the fighting through reinforcement, the initial German defense had been conducted almost entirely by hastily organized contingents of service troops. While the performance of these units in no way matched that of regular combat veterans, their gritty stand fully vindicated the German Army's policies of training, organizing, and exercising rear-echelon alarm units on a regular basis.

Doctrinally, the committed German infantry forces in the XLVIII Panzer Corps' sector lacked the manpower and local reserves to conduct a competent defense in depth. Additionally, the German defense was throttled by Hitler's standing orders against tactical retreat, leaving the forward divisions little choice but to hold on to their initial positions even when penetrated or over-run. Short of antitank weapons, the German infantry forces were almost powerless against the Soviet armor. Had it not been for the availability of the 11th Panzer Division as a "fire brigade" counterattack force, the German defenders would almost certainly have been doomed to eventual annihilation in their positions clustered along the Chir.

The deft counterattacks by 11th Panzer Division repeatedly exploited speed, surprise, and shock action to destroy or scatter numerically superior Soviet forces. The generally open terrain provided a nearly ideal battlefield for mobile warfare, and the tank-versus-tank engagements almost resembled clashes in the North African desert more than they did other battles in Russia.

The Germans used simple command and control measures to conduct this fluid combat. According to General Baick's postwar accounts, command within the 11th Panzer Division was exercised almost entirely by daily verbal orders, amended as necessary on the spot by the division commander at critical points in the fighting. Liaison between the panzer units and the forward infantry divisions also was managed largely on a face-to-face basis. These casual arrangements were made possible in part by the rather simple coordination procedures that developed during the Chir fighting. The positions of the forward German infantry were well known and, due to Hitler's insistence, seldom changed. The broad sectors and relatively low force densities on both sides tended to leave units conveniently spaced. Baick's well-trained and experienced forces seldom operated in more than two or three maneuver elements. General Baick was thus able to truncate normal staff procedures largely because there were very few moving parts in the German machine, and even those were comfortably separated. However, the rude German control methods sacrificed many of the benefits of synchronization and close coordination. By General Baick's own admission, for example, little effort was made to integrate indirect fire with the German maneuver forces.

The German defensive efforts benefited from other favorable circumstances. The Soviet attacks on the Chir front were not conducted in overwhelming strength and were intended primarily as diversions to pin down German forces and to prevent reinforcement of the Stalingrad relief expedition. Also, the Russian assaults were piecemealed in time and space. Instead of a single, powerful attack in one sector, the Red Army forces jabbed at the Chir line for nearly two weeks with several smaller blows. As a result, the Germans were able to make the most of their limited armored reserves. Equally beneficial was the poor Soviet combined arms coordination in these battles. The Russian attacks were conducted mainly by tank forces, and the Soviet infantry played only a minor accompanying role. Therefore, the Germans concentrated their panzers solely on the destruction of the enemy armor and paid scarcely any attention to the enemy riflemen. This also greatly magnified German combat power, placing a premium on the superior tactical skill of the German tank crews while allowing the weaker German infantry to remain huddled in dugouts. Furthermore, the Red Army artillery remained amazingly silent throughout the battles, which left the Russian tank forces to fight without the benefit of suppressive fires. Soviet air power likewise was ineffective.

The German defensive successes on the Chir River were victories of a limited sort. First, despite their tactical virtuosity, even the German panzers were unable to wrest the operational initiative from the Soviets. Throughout the December actions, the Germans were compelled to respond to the uncoordinated Red Army blows by fighting a series of attritional engagements. The Russians retained complete freedom of maneuver and, in all likelihood, could have crushed the German resistance if they had been more skillful in massing or in coordinating their efforts. Second, even though the Germans inflicted serious losses on their enemies, they also suffered substantial casualties of their own. The hapless 7th Luftwaffe Field Division disintegrated during the Chir battles, and by mid-January, its ragged remnants had been amalgamated into other formations. The 11th Panzer Division, whose bold exploits saved the Chir position on several occasions, saw its combat power diminished by half from the beginning of December. Third, though driving back Soviet attacks, neither the 11th Panzer Division nor the balance of the XLVIII Panzer Corps was able to hold the ground that it won by counterattack. To defend terrain required infantry, and neither the panzer formations nor the overextended German infantry divisions had sufficient riflemen to conduct a positional defense. Conversely, German tanks performed best in fluid combat and were notably less successful when trying to drive Red Army troops from their consolidated positions. For example, the Soviets managed to hold a few well-entrenched bridgeheads on the western bank of the Don-Chir line despite repeated German armored attacks.

Although rebuffed by the skill and steadfastness of the German defenders, the Soviet attacks against the Chir River line succeeded in preventing reinforcement of Manstein's relief attack on Stalingrad. Under Manstein's concept, the XLVIII Panzer Corps was to have joined those elements of Fourth Panzer Army (LVII Panzer Corps) making the main relief attempt from farther south. However, as already seen, the XLVIII Panzer Corps had struggled just to stave off its own destruction and never entered into the offensive effort. Without that support and without even the full reinforcements that Hitler had originally promised, the German drive to open a corridor to Sixth Army had to be abandoned after 23 December. From that time on, the defensive battles in the south entered a new phase, with German defensive efforts shifting to the containment of a new major Soviet offensive attempt to sever the entire Axis southern wing.

The new Russian offensive began by scattering the Italian Eighth Army, which was still in position on the northern Don. Driving southward toward Rostov, the Soviets aimed at cutting the communications of both Army Group Don and Army Group A. Also, this attack directly enveloped the German defensive line on the Chir, making the German position there untenable. This not only spoiled all prospects for a renewed attack to free Sixth Army, but it also resulted in the eventual loss of the forward airfields supplying Paulus' encircled divisions.

In contrast to the earlier jabs against the Chir line, the new Russian advance swept forward on a broad front, brushing aside the counterattacks of the weak 27th Panzer Division (earlier posted behind the Italians as a stiffener) as if they were bee stings. Clearly, the sleight-of-hand defensive tactics used by the Germans so successfully on the Chir River were not sufficient to cope with this new threat.

Two major problems hampered German attempts to forge an effective defensive response to the ripening crisis. The first problem was the lack of fresh combat forces. The best units in the German Army, groomed in the spring of 1942 to carry out Operation Blau, were now either wintering uselessly in the Caucasus (Army Group A) or else withering away at Stalingrad or in vain attempts to relieve it (Sixth Army and Fourth Panzer Army). The various impromptu commands set up to defend the Chir and lower Don were barely adequate for that task alone and stood little chance in a set-piece battle against the massive new Soviet onslaught.

In addition, reinforcements could be shifted from other parts of the front only with difficulty. The drained units of Army Groups Center and North had been stripped of assets months earlier to provide resources for the Blau offensive and were hard-pressed to resist the Soviet attacks drumming against their own positions. Therefore, local commanders from the northern defensive front, who saw only their own pressing problems, opposed attempts to siphon reserves away from them. Only at the highest command levels could the assembly and transfer of reserves be accomplished fairly and effectively. In this case, however, the smooth redistribution of forces by Hitler and the Army High Command was handicapped by complex variations in the status and structure of German units.

By this point in the war, most German divisions had major discrepancies between their paper organization and their actual structure. This was due partly to unredeemed combat losses, partly to the German Army's de facto policy of propagating organizational peculiarities by constantly changing the divisional structure of newly forming units, and partly to the stripping of resources from some divisions for assignment elsewhere. Some frontline units, for example, had little or no motorized transport, substituting instead horse-drawn wagons or even bicycles for logistical and tactical mobility. Others were short their full complement of artillery or else had entire battalions fitted out exclusively with captured guns. Other divisions lacked reconnaissance units or even full infantry regiments that had been detached for antipartisan duties.

In addition to organizational oddities, German divisions also differed greatly in combat readiness due to fluctuations in their morale, training, replacement status, combat experience, fatigue, and quality of junior leadership. These eccentricities made centralized management of German forces extremely difficult, since nearly every division deviated in some way from its normal status. Since Hitler and the Army General Staff were not always aware of these organizational peculiarities, some confusion ensued when corps and army commanders, ordered to release divisions for emergency use elsewhere on the front, sometimes forwarded units that were unsuited for the particular missions for which they had been requested. In December 1942, the Army High Command initiated a new reporting system to correct this situation, requiring corps and army commanders to submit secret subjective evaluations of their divisions' combat worthiness on a regular basis. (Frontline commanders found it to be in their own interest to be as candid as possible in these assessments, since a frank statement of liabilities was considered to be some protection from having to feed additional forces into the "Stalingrad oven.") Such inventories made the paper management of the threadbare German resources more efficient, but the fundamental lack of adequate combat forces to cover the expanding Eastern Front crisis remained unresolved.

The second problem shackling German operations was the Germans' own Byzantine command arrangement. Afield in the southern portion of the Eastern Front were three autonomous army groups (Army Groups A, B, and Don). No single commander or headquarters coordinated the efforts of these army groups save for the Fuhrer himself. From his East Prussian headquarters, Hitler continued to render his own dubious brand of command guidance. Inspired by the success of his stand-fast methods the previous winter, the Fuhrer now balked at ordering the timely withdrawal and reassembly of the far-flung German armies, even truculently resisting the transfer of divisions from the lightly engaged Army Group A to the mortally beset Army Group Don. Hitler's opening response to the new Soviet offensive against the rear of the German southern wing was to decree a succession of meaningless halt lines, ordering the overmatched German forces to hold position after position "to the last man."

Field Marshal von Manstein, whose Army Group Don was to halt the Soviet offensive, confronted both of these major problems head-on. In a series of teletype messages to Hitler, Manstein pleaded for the release of several divisions from the idle Army Group A in the Caucasus in order to put some starch into the German defense. Though relenting too late to assist the relief attack on Stalingrad, Hitler at last ordered a few divisions and then finally all of First Panzer Army to move from Army Group A to Manstein's control."

Manstein also pressed Hitler about command authority. In late December, Hitler offered to place Army Group A under Manstein's operational control. However, this consolidation of authority was not consummated because, as Manstein later explained, Hitler "was unwilling to accept my conditions" that there be no "possibility of interference by Hitler or of Army Group A's invoking . . . decisions in opposition to my own." Less than two weeks later, furious that Hitler was still insisting on a no-retreat policy and forcing him to beg permission for each tactical withdrawal, Manstein presented the Fuhrer with an ultimatum. On 5 January, Manstein sent a message to the chief of the Army General Staff for Hitler's consideration: "Should . . . this headquarters continue to be tied down to the same extent as hitherto, I cannot see that any useful purpose will be served by my continuing as commander of Don Army Group. In the circumstances, it would appear more appropriate to replace me. . . ."^ Hitler chose to ignore Manstein's ultimatum, but he did at last concede a singular (though temporary) degree of autonomy and flexibility to Manstein for the conduct of defensive operations. Although Hitler's draconian stand-fast policy remained officially in effect, Manstein was allowed freedom of maneuver by means of a face-saving charade: instead of asking permission, Manstein would simply inform the Army High Command of Army Group Don's intention to take certain actions unless specifically countermanded, and Hitler by his silence would consent without actually abandoning his hold-to-the-last-man scruples.

As a result of this arrangement, Manstein conducted operations from early January until mid-February largely unfettered either by Hitler's customary interference or the rigid no-retreat dictum. No other German commander was allowed to enjoy these two privileges on such a large scale for the remainder of the war. As a consequence of this independence, German defensive operations during the second phase of the southern winter battles evinced a measure of flexibility, economy, and fluid maneuver unsurpassed on the Russian Front during the entire war.

While these command arrangements were being ironed out, the operational situation continued to deteriorate. Still more Soviet attacks had routed the Hungarians and the Italians, completing the disintegration of the entire original flank defensive line along the Don River east of Voronezh. By late January, hardly any organized Axis resistance remained between the surviving units of Army Group B (Second Army) at Voronezh and the hard-pressed forces for Army Group Don along the lower Don and Donets Rivers. The German Sixth Army, now in its death throes at Stalingrad, ironically provided one source of hope: the longer Paulus' troops could hold out, the longer they would continue to tie down the powerful Russian armies encircling them, thereby delaying the reinforcement of the widening Soviet attacks farther to the west.

Manstein's overall concept of operations was to combine the withdrawal of First Panzer Army units from the Caucasus with the establishment of a defensive screen facing northward against the onrushing Soviets. One by one, the First Panzer Army divisions were pulled through the Rostov bottleneck and redeployed to the northwest, extending the makeshift German defensive line ever westward. The Soviets could still outflank this line by extending the arc of their advance to the west and, in fact, did so even while maintaining frontal pressure along the Donets. Each of these wider envelopments, however, delayed the final decision and allowed Manstein to leapfrog more units into position. Moreover, the farther the Soviets shifted their forces to the west, the more tenuous the Russian supply lines became."

This operation was exceedingly delicate. Any major Soviet breakthrough or uncontested envelopment could cut through to the rail ganglia on which both Army Groups A and Don depended for their supplies. Army Group Don thus had to accomplish three tasks simultaneously: slow the Soviet frontal advance, shift units from east to west to parry Soviet envelopments, and preserve its forces by allowing timely withdrawals to prevent encirclement or annihilation.

These tasks had to be performed under several tactical handicaps. First, even with the gradual reinforcement by First Panzer Army, Manstein's forces remained generally inferior to those of the enemy. Discounting the late arrivals, most of the divisions of Army Group Don were extremely battle worn, having been in continuous combat for over two months. Too, the preponderance of the German forces were less mobile than the Soviet tank and mechanized forces opposing them, a factor that weighed heavily against Manstein's hopes of exploiting the Germans' superiority in fluid operations.

Second, many of Manstein's forces were grouped together under impromptu command arrangements. The German order of battle included several nonstandard control headquarters identified simply by their commanders' names, such as Army Detachment Hollidt, Group Mieth, and Battle Group Adam. Even many of the divisions assigned to the various headquarters lacked normal internal cohesion. For example, by January 1942, the 17th Panzer Division was conducting defensive operations with an attached infantry regiment (156th Infantry Regiment), which possessed neither the training nor the vehicles to allow it to cooperate smoothly with the division's tanks and organic Panzergrenadiers.

Similarly, in mid-January, two infantry divisions within Army Detachment Hollidt contained substantial attachments from two shattered Luftwaffe field divisions, while one so-called division (403d Security Division) was actually a division headquarters controlling several thousand troops whose furloughs had been abruptly canceled." These ad hoc forces generally lacked the precision that comes from habitual association and common experience, and this internal friction was magnified by the rapidly changing combat conditions confronting Army Group Don. Moreover, none of the improvised groupings were structured for sustained combat; therefore, they lacked the technical and support assets that normally would have serviced such large units.
Third, though relatively fresh and well organized, the First Panzer Army divisions arriving from the Caucasus came with their own special problems. In Manstein's words, these forces suffered from the "hardening up process which inevitably sets in whenever mobile operations degenerate into static warfare." Their relatively inactive sojourn in the Caucasus from September to January had caused these "troops and formation staffs [to] lose the knack of quickly adapting themselves to the changes of situation which daily occur in a war of movement." The first symptom of this stagnation was the snail-like pace of the Caucasian disengagement. Having accumulated "weapons, equipment and stores of all kinds.. . which one feels unable to do without for the rest of the war," the divisions of First Panzer Army invariably requested "a long period of grace in which to prepare for the evacuation." When finally committed to combat along the Donets, these forces maneuvered lethargically at first, their earlier snap and elan dulled by the routine of prolonged positional warfare.

Finally, the Germans were plagued by the enormous mobility differential between their own infantry and panzer forces. In previous campaigns, this problem had been most evident in offensive operations, as during Barbarossa when the swift panzers had outrun their infantry support. In southern Russia in January and February of 1943, this disparity proved equally disruptive in defensive operations, vastly increasing the difficulty of orchestrating German maneuver.

Since the bulk of the German combat power consisted of infantry, of necessity the German defensive tactics were built on the less-mobile infantry forces. The infantrymen, their numbers frequently including engineers, flak units, and various alarm units, were disposed in forward defensive lines. ^ Because of their standards of training. The training of tank crews never ceased, even in combat. In the 17th Panzer Division it was the practice to hold a critique after each engagement, in which successes and failures were discussed, just as after peacetime exercises." Equally important was the aggressiveness, imagination, and flexibility of the German leaders. Commenting on the operations of its improvised mobile rear guard, the 294th Division's after-action report explained that "the choice of a leader [was] especially important" since such units "[were] not led according to field manuals or even according to any fixed scheme."

Despite its aggressiveness and skillful use of mobile forces, Manstein's defense of the German southern wing was not a mobile defense in the classic sense. Army Group Don's forces could not be insensitive to the loss of territory, since to have done so would have endangered the vital rail lines leading through Rostov. Furthermore, the bulk of Manstein's formations were relatively immobile and could only be used in a succession of static defenses. Although playing an important role, the German panzer and motorized forces operated principally as intervention forces in support of the pedestrian infantry.

The German defensive method was thus actually a potpourri of tactical techniques. What set these battles apart from others was Manstein's style of control. What Manstein did?and what Hitler, as a rule, did not?was to provide firm operational guidance to his subordinates and then to allow those commanders to use their forces and the terrain to maximum advantage. The hard-pressed infantry forces, often composed of hastily assembled patchwork units without any real unit training, were best employed in static defenses from prepared positions. Mobile panzer and motorized bands delivered sharp counterattacks to help sustain the infantry defenses and, occasionally, kept the enemy off-balance with preemptive spoiling attacks. If the infantry's main positions became engulfed, the panzers and mechanized infantry helped the slower forces to disengage. The mobile formations also fought delaying actions while subsequent main positions were being organized. Major defensive lines were designated well in advance, allowing units to make deliberate plans for their withdrawals. (This practice alone added considerable coherence to German operations. Hitler usually procrastinated about allowing retreats until, when finally ordered, the withdrawals had to be done pell-mell to avoid encirclement.) For example, in fighting its way back from the Chir to the Donets in January, a distance of roughly 100 miles, Army Detachment Hollidt occupied no less than nine intermediate defensive lines. Its movement from the Donets to the Mius in February followed the same pattern.

In contrast to preferred German defensive methods, these battles were fought almost entirely without tactical depth. Indeed, the fluidity of the battles in southern Russia stemmed, in large measure, from the German inability to absorb the Soviet attacks within successive defensive zones. Lacking the forces to establish a deeply echelon defense, the Germans instead combined maneuver?including both lightning attack and withdrawal?with stubborn positional defense to give artificial depth to the battlefield. In this way, the Germans were able to brake major Soviet attacks, preventing catastrophic breakthroughs while still preserving the integrity and freedom of action of their own forces.

As with the XLVIII Panzer Corps' December battles on the Chir River, these tactics?like the traditional Elastic Defense?were essentially attritional. Russian attacks were contained or worn down one by one, and even though German units occasionally seized the tactical initiative by some aggressive riposte, the operational initiative remained with the Soviets. However often single German panzer divisions sallied in preemptive spoiling attacks, the Red Army's major maneuver units were never in danger of sudden annihilation.

This situation existed because the scarcity of German forces and the great distances in southern Russia kept German units dispersed. In blocking the Soviets' relentless broad-front advance, the Germans operated completely from hand to mouth and were therefore unable to engineer any operational massing of their own. Significantly, from the time of the cancellation in late December of the three-division Stalingrad relief attack until the conclusion of the winter battles' second phase in late February, all the German panzer divisions on the southern front were employed piecemeal to relieve local emergencies. No two panzer divisions ever combined their meager assets to make a concerted blow. For instance, Army Detachment Hollidt, which in mid-January fielded four panzer divisions, retained only one division under its own control and assigned the other three to its individual subordinate commands for "fire brigade" use in support of their infantry divisions. While effective in stemming local Russian attacks, this task organization made it impossible to concentrate powerful mobile forces for larger-scale operations.

Manstein appreciated this fact and, from mid-February, began laying the groundwork for a different employment of the German armor. The fresh SS Panzer Corps, just off-loading near Kharkov with two crack Waffen SS panzer divisions, together with other reinforcements formed the nucleus of an operational masse de manoeuvre. Convinced that casualties, mechanical breakdowns, and lengthening supply lines must have taken their toll of the Russians, Manstein foresaw an opportunity to seize the operational initiative with a counteroffensive of his own. Manstein's target was the Soviet armored spearheads, then still careening southwestward between Kharkov and Stalino.

The third phase of the winter campaign saw the restabilization of the southern front. The centerpiece of this phase was a strong German counterstroke by five panzer divisions against the Soviet flank south of Kharkov. Manstein's 22 February riposte completely surprised the Russians and, within days, had shattered the Soviet First Guards Army as well as several independent armored groups. As trophies, the Germans counted 615 destroyed enemy tanks and over 1,000 captured guns. The haul in prisoners, however, was disappointingly low: as always, the infantry-poor German panzer formations were unable to seal off the battlefield, and thousands of Soviet troops casually marched out of the German trap.

Despite its success, Hitler took little satisfaction in Manstein's Kharkov counteroffensive. As Hitler had admitted in his Fuhrer Defense Order of September 1942, his defensive ideas were of a pre-1917 vintage. Consequently, Hitler's own preference, first and last, was for a rigid no-retreat defense. He had been uncomfortable enough with Manstein's parry-and-thrust tactics in January and early February, but for all of its tactical dash, that style of defense had still been operationally conservative and had remained focused on denying the Russians access to certain critical areas. What rankled Hitler most was the purposeful relinquishing of terrain on an operational scale. When Manstein continued to give up ground?even after the Soviet drive showed signs of stalling on its own?while building up his reserve striking force, Hitler's nervousness increased. In the end, Manstein barely saved his counteroffensive plan from Hitler's shrill demands that the new reserves be thrown into battle piecemeal to prevent further territorial losses. And yet this very stratagem finally provided the basis for Manstein's counteroffensive, as the Russian advance eventually overextended itself and lay vulnerable to the hoarded German reserves. Hitler prized the holding of ground even over the annihilation of sizable enemy forces, however spectacular.

Bought breathing space by Manstein's successful counteroffensive near Kharkov, the other tattered German forces managed to patch together a continuous defensive line on the southern front. Army Detachment Hollidt, withdrawing by bounds from the Donets, moved into Army Group South's old defensive lines on the Mius River. Except for a series of salients north of Kharkov, the German southern armies in late March held again nearly the same positions from which the Blau offensive had begun the previous spring.

This line could easily have been forced at almost any point prior to the spring thaw at the end of March 1943. For example, the XXIV Panzer Corps?which, in fact, had no panzer units whatsoever?held the extreme southern portion of the German line with one infantry and two patchwork security divisions. These forces, whose sector ran for nearly 125 kilometers (including a stretch of Azov coastline), amounted to only fourteen understrength infantry battalions. A XXIV Panzer Corps after-action report noted that the two security divisions' organization, cohesion, and weaponry were so uneven that little could be expected from them. Fortunately, these units occupied old defensive works along most of their front and also were able to retrain and rehabilitate their forces due to the lack of renewed offensive action by the tired Soviets.

The German Kharkov counteroffensive and the tenuous restabilization of the southern front ended the winter campaign's third phase. As the crisis subsided, Manstein's independence from Hitler's close control also evaporated. Hitler's patience with Manstein had actually begun to wane in early February. Then, alarmed by the enormous swatches of territory being surrendered by Manstein's forces, Hitler reasserted his personal authority over Army Group Don on 12 February 1943 with Operations Order 4, which ordered Manstein to reestablish a solid, stand-fast front on the Mius-Donets line. In fact, only Manstein's promise to Hitler to recover much of the lost ground with the Kharkov counterstroke, together with the awkwardness of switching field commanders in the midst of such a confusing battle, probably saved Manstein from being relieved.

With the dissipation of Manstein's autonomy came a reassertion of all Hitler's defensive nostrums, and the fragile German defenses taking shape along the southern front reflected this. Once again, the standard defensive guidance became "no retreat; hold to the last man!".

General Walther Nehring, supervising the improvement of his XXIV Panzer Corps positions, displayed the uncomfortable blend of traditional defense and Hitlerian caveat that had become doctrinal practice. In an 18 March 1943 defensive order to his units, Nehring directed the improvement of positions in depth, the careful coordination of artillery fire support, and the siting of clusters of antitank weapons behind the main positions in perfect accord with the Elastic Defense system in Truppenfiihrung. However, Nehring's instructions also ordered compliance with Hitler's benumbing provisos: "Penetrating enemy elements are instantly to be thrown back by immediate counterattack and the HKL [main line of resistance] regained. Evasive maneuver before the enemy or evacuation of a position without my [Nehring's] special order is forbidden."

German defensive practice therefore had gained little from the lessons of the previous year. Despite the strained battles on the northern defensive front, the disaster at Stalingrad, the desperate fights between the Volga and the Mius Rivers, and finally Manstein's brilliant operational riposte at Kharkov, the German armies on the Eastern Front looked forward to future defensive fighting still handicapped by Hitler's rigid constraints. Even so, German Army units continued to review their own tactical methods and to suggest modifications to defensive doctrine within the limits established by the Fuhrer's guidance.