Realizing that more help was needed to stem the advancing tide, Hitler had ordered five fresh infantry divisions in a new 51st Korps under Von Seydlitz to the scene, and Manstein used them as a blocking force to stop the enemy outliers from advancing further, and slowly roll them back. In the meantime, he began throwing his mobile divisions against the main enemy attack, which had pushed down through Oboyan and was aimed right at him. There at a small hamlet called Prokorovka, Germany’s new heavy tank brigades would lead the assault in what would become a smaller version of the much greater Battle of Kursk that was fought later in the old history.
Yet his divisions had taken some time to be relieved from the Wolf’s Head position, and get onto trains leading into Belgorod, so they were arriving piecemeal. He kept jogging left, hoping to find the flank of the enemy advance while the situation was still fluid, but these moves only pulled in more Soviet units freed up as the 42nd Korps was overcome. Soon a great bulge was formed in the front, the Kursk Bulge, and whether by happenstance or fate, many of the units now assembling near Belgorod were the very same troops that had made an ill fated attack there in one recording of the history in 1943.
Kuntze would be captured with his men and go into a long cold life in a Soviet prison camp. By the time Manstein’s forces even got close to Oboyan, the 42nd Korps had virtually ceased to exist. On April Fool’s Day the Spring thaw would finally set in, making the ground soft and boggy. Both sides knew it would only get worse over the next few weeks, and so the fighting was more aimed at staking out a good line on either side, and positioning forces in favorable locations for renewed offensive operations after the ground firmed up again.
Even though it had come late, the Soviet Winter offensive had achieved remarkable gains. The massive pocket they had formed by breaking through to their own beleaguered troops around Kirov was now holding most every unit that had participated in the drive on Moscow. There were 7th, 9th and 53rd Infantry Korps, the SS Poletzei Division, all of Guderian’s old 2nd Panzer Armee, (now commanded by Model), and all of 3rd Panzer Armee under Hoth. Another six divisions and scattered units from other broken formations were in a much smaller pocket about 100 kilometers from the city of Kirov, and now the action was focused on German efforts to re-establish a line of communications to troops further south and west.
To this end, Model ordered Reinhard to take the two Panzer Divisions he had been laboring to bring up to strength, the new 24th and the veteran 6th, along with 36th Motorized Division. They were to move southwest and mount a breakout operation to reach that smaller pocket, which had no viable supply source.
“We cannot simply throw those divisions away,” said the fiery Model. “Infantry is worth its weight in gold these days. In places, those divisions are manning the line with headquarters companies and bridging battalions! We simply have to get through. Moscow is now serving as a supply hub. All the Army stores are there, and along the major roads in reserve depots. The engineers have even found a good number of small machine shops in the city that can be put to good use. We’ll use them for vehicle repair shops. But your job is to get through to that infantry. Then we can truck in supplies. Beyond that, this operation will be a preliminary move to reestablish communications with Armee Group Center.”
Now it was down to this, small thrusts to open supply corridors, mop up rear area pockets, and plug holes to tidy up the new front lines that had formed. After the long misery in the frozen winter, the mud returned again, imposing a forced halt to most major operations. The troops were exhausted on both sides, supplies low, everything sinking into a morass of boggy ground. Reinhard’s attack ran right into the veteran 91st Siberian Rifle Division, part of the 24th Siberian Army that had fought hard to link up with outside forces earlier. The action was in densely wooded terrain, with a single road that the Siberians stubbornly defended over two days of hard fighting.
This was going to be Germany’s war from that moment on. The Soviets had finally tasted blood. In spite of losing most of Moscow, they had not only surprised their enemy with the strength and scope of their attack, but they had recovered vast segments of lost territory, destroyed ten German divisions, pocketed another 50, and threatened or cut the two vital communications lines the Wehrmacht had used in their Autumn offensive. The line through Orel, Mtsensk, Tula and on to Serpukhov was now completely in Soviet hands. The line from Moscow through Mozhaisk to Vyazma and on to Smolensk had been completely overrun between those last two cities. The Germans managed to hold Smolensk, but were heavily pressed from the eastern quadrant of that city. Further west, they were still fighting to clear the road back through Orsha that led to Minsk.
Even with Sergei Kirov’s government operating from a farm house hundreds of miles north of Moscow, they had held the Soviet State together, and Georgie Zhukov had managed to do what he had long planned and promised—what had been foretold to Kirov in the scorched pages of the “the Material” burned in the old Red Archives. The mighty Wehrmacht had finally been stopped. If Germany would lose this war, this is where historians would say it had happened, where the sweeping tide of the German war machine had finally crested around the stolid rock of Moscow. The turning point in the long bitter war had finally been reached—the Soviet Winter offensive of 1941-42.
Now both sides would count their dead, mark the staggering losses, with over a million men dead for the Germans, and twice that number fallen for the Soviets. Hitler would think back on those early days of 1941 when Raeder was urging him to go all out and smash the British in the Middle East, and come to regret that he had not heeded that advice. For now a strong new enemy had come to stand with the British, and the Western Front was already simmering up with plans for operations to turn the tide there as well. What ten or twelve divisions might have done in early 1941, would now be on the shoulders of over 250 divisions in Russia.
Yet something had happened in the restless waters off Africa in the middle Atlantic. It was a little drama compared to the hundreds of thousands of men struggling in the winter with their machines, and dying in that terrible cold. It was just three ships at sea engaged in a long anticipated battle after a frenetic chase. Close at hand, a fourth ship wallowed to one side, stricken and burning, the last hours of the auxiliary tanker Ermland. The submarine Trident had seen to her fate, but the Germans had come raging back in reprisal.
Marco Ritter could scarcely believe his eyes when he saw what Hans Rudel had just done. He dropped his small 250 KG bomb right on his target, but then gave the enemy both his fuel tanks as well! Rudel’s plane came up out of that dive, his wings wagging with defiance. Below him, the lead British ship had sustained that bomb hit well enough, but Rudel had poured 300 liters of aviation fuel on the small fire, and it ignited with short lived fury, though it looked much worse than it actually was. The second fuel tank narrowly missed the enemy ship, but it was amazing that the first had even struck home.
“My god Hans!” said Ritter over his short range radio. “That was certainly dramatic, but now how in the world will you get to Africa?”
“I won’t get to Africa,” said Rudel in his ear. “If I can’t land back on the Goeben, I’ll bail out and they can fish me out of the water. I’ve a good two hours fuel now. This weather could break by then.”