In a tense conference on 31 July, Hausser insisted that his men could finish the job. The commander of the Der Führer Regiment, SS-Obersturmbannführer Sylvester Stadler, was produced to convince the field marshal that his fresh troops could turn the tide. His enthusiasm swayed Manstein into allowing the offensive to continue for a "few more days". Radical new tactics were now to be used to prevent a repeat of the past two days' slaughter.

Stadler was allowed to spend the rest of the day making a thorough reconnaissance of the sector south of Stepanovka. At 04:00 hours on 1 August, the two unblooded battalions were launched forward to seize the high ground below the town, with Das Reich's panzer kampfgruppe in support.

A storm of steel

Simultaneously, 600 German guns and Nebelwerfers launched a massive barrage along the entire length of the Russian frontline. Hundreds of anti-tank gun pits and infantry bunkers that had been pinpointed during the previous two days' battles were targeted during the barrage. In the sector to be assaulted by Stadler's troops, the Nebelwerfers laid a huge smokescreen to cover their dash across open ground. The tactics worked, and within a few minutes the Waffen-SS men were over the enemy's barbed wire, throwing grenades into their trenches and bunkers. A couple of hours of fierce hand-to-hand fighting followed as Stadler and his men swept into the Russian strongpoint. Defeated, the Soviet infantry retreated down the hill, leaving Stadler with control of the summit. He barely had time to admire the superb view of the battlefield, though, when a massive Soviet artillery fire mission landed on the position, forcing his panzergrenadiers to take cover in the old Russian trenches. Stadler's small command team dived under an abandoned T-34 tank. Disaster then struck, when a Soviet shell destroyed all his radios. German artillery observers on nearby hills had no idea that the Waffen-SS had taken the hill, and decided to join in the battle, blasting the strongpoint with their own fire. Only the firing of a signal flare brought this madness to an end. Now a human-wave attack by Soviet infantry, backed by T-34s, started to move up the hill. A few assault guns appeared, and they knocked out the Russian tanks that had survived the carnage and pressed home their attack.

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