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Authors: John Erickson
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gear by the unscheduled movement of trains and transports to comrade Vatutin’s left wing. Comrade Rokossovskii requests that the opening of operations be changed to plus four. I have personally checked all calculations.
All this impels a request for you to authorize commencement of Koltso at plus four. [VIZ , 1962 (5), p. 81.]
Stalin telephoned at once to find out what Voronov meant by ‘plus four’. The rebuke was stinging when it came:
You’ll sit it out so long down there that the Germans will take you [Voronov] and Rokossovskii prisoner. You don’t think about what can be done, only about what can’t be done. We need to be finished as quickly as possible there and you deliberately hold things up. [ Ibid.]
Grudgingly Stalin gave Voronov ‘plus four’. Koltso was now to open on 10 January.
Faced with the problem of relating requisite strength to maximum speed, there was some justification for Stalin’s fierce impatience with Voronov. During the last ten days of December 1942 the Stavka had worked feverishly to finish the planning for the massive counter-offensive designed to roll over the German southern wing to engulf Army Groups A, Don and B. At the northern end of the Soviet–German front, the Leningrad and Volkhov Front command received confirmation of orders despatched on 8 December to proceed with the de-blockading of Leningrad. The freeing of Leningrad, the destruction of Sixth Army at Stalingrad, a Soviet offensive into the eastern Donbas, an attack in the direction of Kursk and Kharkov, and the trapping of Army Group A in the Caucasus would signal the general expulsion of German forces from Soviet territory, and the destruction of the entire southern wing of the German army would offer a decisive strategic success. At the end of 1942 the Soviet command reckoned that twenty-five per cent of German strength on the southern wing had been eliminated: Sixth Army, one of the most powerful in the Wehrmacht , was encircled and the force sent out to its relief defeated; Fourth Panzer had been severely mauled; 3rd and 4th Rumanian Armies had been battered to pieces; and 8th Italian Army for all practical purposes shattered. With the distance between inner and outer encirclement now some sixty-five miles, Paulus and his men were doomed. The Soviet outer encirclement ran from Novaya Kalitva in the north (Voronezh Front) through Millerovo, west of Tormosin and east of Zimovniki. The time had come for a concerted attack on the three German army groups in the south.
In the early hours of 22 December, Golikov, commander of the Voronezh Front, attended a Stavka session which discussed the operational plans for a second strike on the middle reaches of the Don, aimed this time at the 2nd Hungarian Army and the remnants of 8th Italian Army. This attack would clear enemy forces from the Ostrogorzhsk–Kamenka–Rossosh area (between Kantemirovka and Voronezh), an indispensable prelude to developing a Soviet offensive in the direction of Kursk and Kharkov. The South-Western Front would at the same time attack in the direction of Voroshilovgrad. Golikov’s new offensive would bring his forces into the south-western sector of the Voronezh oblast between the Don and the Oskol, the shortest route to Kursk and Kharkov, and a key railway network. In Stalin’s plans to liberate the Kharkov industrial region, the Donbas and the northern Caucasus, the rail links had a key role to play; both the Voronezh and South-Western Fronts were severely restricted by lack of rail facilities. (The storming of Stalingrad would also reopen direct rail links with the north Caucasus.) Golikov’s orders were precise enough: to attack on his centre and on his left, to eliminate enemy forces between Voronezh and Kantemirovka, and to seize the Liskaya–Kantemirovka rail link (upon which both the Voronezh and South-Western Fronts could then be based for future offensive operations aimed at Kharkov and the Donbas). To secure Voronezh Front
All this impels a request for you to authorize commencement of Koltso at plus four. [VIZ , 1962 (5), p. 81.]
Stalin telephoned at once to find out what Voronov meant by ‘plus four’. The rebuke was stinging when it came:
You’ll sit it out so long down there that the Germans will take you [Voronov] and Rokossovskii prisoner. You don’t think about what can be done, only about what can’t be done. We need to be finished as quickly as possible there and you deliberately hold things up. [ Ibid.]
Grudgingly Stalin gave Voronov ‘plus four’. Koltso was now to open on 10 January.
Faced with the problem of relating requisite strength to maximum speed, there was some justification for Stalin’s fierce impatience with Voronov. During the last ten days of December 1942 the Stavka had worked feverishly to finish the planning for the massive counter-offensive designed to roll over the German southern wing to engulf Army Groups A, Don and B. At the northern end of the Soviet–German front, the Leningrad and Volkhov Front command received confirmation of orders despatched on 8 December to proceed with the de-blockading of Leningrad. The freeing of Leningrad, the destruction of Sixth Army at Stalingrad, a Soviet offensive into the eastern Donbas, an attack in the direction of Kursk and Kharkov, and the trapping of Army Group A in the Caucasus would signal the general expulsion of German forces from Soviet territory, and the destruction of the entire southern wing of the German army would offer a decisive strategic success. At the end of 1942 the Soviet command reckoned that twenty-five per cent of German strength on the southern wing had been eliminated: Sixth Army, one of the most powerful in the Wehrmacht , was encircled and the force sent out to its relief defeated; Fourth Panzer had been severely mauled; 3rd and 4th Rumanian Armies had been battered to pieces; and 8th Italian Army for all practical purposes shattered. With the distance between inner and outer encirclement now some sixty-five miles, Paulus and his men were doomed. The Soviet outer encirclement ran from Novaya Kalitva in the north (Voronezh Front) through Millerovo, west of Tormosin and east of Zimovniki. The time had come for a concerted attack on the three German army groups in the south.
In the early hours of 22 December, Golikov, commander of the Voronezh Front, attended a Stavka session which discussed the operational plans for a second strike on the middle reaches of the Don, aimed this time at the 2nd Hungarian Army and the remnants of 8th Italian Army. This attack would clear enemy forces from the Ostrogorzhsk–Kamenka–Rossosh area (between Kantemirovka and Voronezh), an indispensable prelude to developing a Soviet offensive in the direction of Kursk and Kharkov. The South-Western Front would at the same time attack in the direction of Voroshilovgrad. Golikov’s new offensive would bring his forces into the south-western sector of the Voronezh oblast between the Don and the Oskol, the shortest route to Kursk and Kharkov, and a key railway network. In Stalin’s plans to liberate the Kharkov industrial region, the Donbas and the northern Caucasus, the rail links had a key role to play; both the Voronezh and South-Western Fronts were severely restricted by lack of rail facilities. (The storming of Stalingrad would also reopen direct rail links with the north Caucasus.) Golikov’s orders were precise enough: to attack on his centre and on his left, to eliminate enemy forces between Voronezh and Kantemirovka, and to seize the Liskaya–Kantemirovka rail link (upon which both the Voronezh and South-Western Fronts could then be based for future offensive operations aimed at Kharkov and the Donbas). To secure Voronezh Front
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