Case Seydlitz (1 November – 31 December)
On 1 November, the withdrawal in southern Ukraine commenced. Four infantry divisions, already prepared to abandon their entrenched positions, silently moved to the rear and then commenced a march north towards the mobile divisions. During the day, the Red Army did not interfere apparently unaware of what was happening. Their air force, up to now conducting daily bombing raids behind our lines, was caught completely off guard. Several squadrons, unescorted, flew across the lines towards their intended targets. They were pounced upon by several of our own light jet fighter wings, shooting down 40 bombers and forcing the rest to retire. This put an end to the Soviet daily attacks upon industrial targets.
The final two infantry divisions retiring towards the panzer armies,
while Soviet forces pour through the gap left in their wake.
After three days, the two whole sections of the frontline had been abandoned leaving a huge undefended gap in the line. The Soviets began to push forward. For the next several days, the various commanding officers of the panzer armies awaited their moment. Reconnaissance photos showed a stream of tank, halftrack, and truck columns steadily moving west. As the days wore on, Red Army skirmishes engaged our own troops as they took up position opposite our own and the Hungarians reported the Soviets had reached the Dnieper. On 11 November, it was argued enough time had passed, the trap was sprung.
The attack begins.
Insert: Panthers roll forward during the initial stages of the assault.
Six hundred tanks, comprising the main effort, were unleashed upon the Soviet southwest of Stalino. Several hundred more tanks, a secondary assault to pin down Red Army units, were thrust upon the Soviets further to the west. As the panzers and panzergrenadiers moved forward, the Red Air Force launched a massive effort to halt the attack. Hundreds of low-level close support planes and medium bombers attempted to strike our advancing troops. The Luftwaffe launched an immediate rebuff. The Red Air Force attacks were broken up and they were kept from interfering with the battlefield. By the end of the day, the first victory had been secured. Without air cover and having not established defensive positions due to their recent arrival, the Red Army forward units were simply overrun.
Over the coming days, 600 jet fighters (the rest having been dispersed along the frontline to provide support outside the main battle zone, and to intercept any Soviet aerial redeployments or attacks) secured control of the air, scoring over 650 victories in the process. The Red Air Force, in this sector, had been crippled and played no further role in the battle. However, pilots reported unidentified rockets in flight. No explosions were reported on the ground, but from the descriptions given it appeared the Soviet Union had technologically caught up in the development of ballistic missiles. It was proposed, rather than having caught up, that one of the limited number of V-2 rockets fired at Leningrad in June 1945 had landed intact and moved out of the city before the end of the 1941-45 war. Other theories suggested a sharing of technology between the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, and a similar event of the British salvaging an intact A-10 rocket fired in June 1946 on London or Liverpool.
While the original plan had envisioned a strike directly to the south, circumstances and opportunity had pushed the advance towards Taganrog. On the 22nd, the outskirts of the city were reached and after a four day battle it was taken. On 26 November, Case Seydlitz had succeeded in cutting off a number of Soviet divisions. Initial estimates suggested at least twenty Red Army formations had been cut off, but it was hoped there was more. When the report of the capture of Taganrog filtered back to command, the first, second, and third Panzer armies were unleashed.
For the next nine days, these three armies overwhelmed and smashed the Soviet formations facing them. Resistance within the pocket looked on the verge of collapse. By this point though, the weather had taken a turn for the worst and began to impede progress. Outside of the pocket, the Red Army had desperately attempted to relieve their comrades. The 4th Panzer Army and the 6th SS Panzer Army conducted a masterful defense, ensuring the Soviets were unable to breakthrough. However, Taganrog was retaken by the Soviets. Its loss did not bring about a linkup with the pocket, due to its shrinking size and moving further west. As Taganrog fell, the United Nations launched an attack on Arras. Over 2,500 RAF fighters were reported in the air over the battle supporting an estimated 1,000 bombers. The heavy jet interceptor wings attempted to interfere, but had little luck. Fifty planes were lost against an unknown number of Allied ones. The west, it appeared, were doing their best to aid what they believed was a massive Soviet breakthrough.
Taganrog: once again in German hands, but not for long.
A curious event was recorded, anti-communist partisans were reported to have risen up between the Don bed,
to far for our forces to support. Intercepted Soviet radio chatter suggested that this was a short lived uprising.
Insert: tanks moving forward during the fighting.
While the Soviets had retaken Taganrog, the 4th and 6th SS Panzer armies ensured they advanced no further. Over the course of December, the remaining three panzer armies slowly pushed south as the temperature fell and snow covered the ground impeding the advance. The Red Army attempted to flee west, but were halted by a lone static division blocking the road to the Crimea.This single outnumbered and outgunned unit held off the lead Red Army's mechanized units allowing our panzers to catch up. By Christmas Day, the pocket had been split in two and the final fighting began. On 28 December, the Soviets at Vesele – the location of one of the two pockets – surrendered and within hours the final pocket surrendered. Close to 64,000 men were taken prisoner.
The main Soviet pocket, prior to its disintegration into two.
While the operation had taken longer than excepted, it had resulted in the destruction of twenty Soviet divisions and three corps headquarters. Red Army casualties in the pocket, confirmed through captured documents taken from the various captured headquarters, amounted to 36,789 killed and 63,802 captured. A further 85,000 Soviet soldiers were missing in action, overrun by the initial rapid advances of the panzers. Total casualties, inside and outside the pocket, totaled 155,000 men killed or missing and 63,802 captured. The victory represented the destruction of an estimated four per cent of the total strength of the Red Army, or around seven per cent of what was believed to be their frontline strength on the Eastern Front. Our own losses had amounted to 37,717 men.
The fighting had covered the withdrawal of several divisions to their new positions west of the Dnieper, but the main withdrawal had yet been ordered. It was discussed at now expanding Case Seydlitz, while some mobile troops would be left to cover the line the main force would be used to lure the Red Army into additional traps while covering the withdrawal of troops. Battles around the bulge to the east of Moscow, around the 'von Rundstedt Line' and near Kharkov were envisioned. It had been argued amongst the panzer commanders that more time should have been allowed to this first successful stage of the operation, to lure more than just twenty divisions to their doom. Several factors invalidated these arguments. Had more time been allotted to allowing Soviet forces move through the gap, this would have given those Red Army units facing the panzer armies more time to dig-in resulting in fiercer opposition. Likewise, more time would have resulted in potentially more opposition to face and thus ran the risk of not achieving any success due to the onset of winter. Finally, captured Soviet generals had informed OKH (post-battle) that Soviet reinforcements were arriving in the sector on average of one division per day, any further delay beyond 11 November would have only brought about a possible smaller reward than what was achieved.
Regardless of the various arguments and debates, the Western Front asserted its strategic influence. On 29 December, the United Nations launched an attack on Boulogne. Thus far, all reserves in the area had been fed into the fighting at Arras leaving no nearby reinforcements to support the line at Boulogne. OKW reserve, based in northwest Germany to deter UN landings, and troops from Italy were immediately dispatched with the hope that they arrived in time to halt a breakthrough. It was clear that this meager force would only be able to do so much, and that additional reinforcements were desperately needed. The First Panzer Army was ordered back to France and on New Year’s Eve, the order for Case Büffel Bewegung was given.
