Waffen-SS: Fight for the Western Ukraine, 1943

Background

By the third year of the war on the Eastern Front, Soviet military production was running in high gear, turning out more than 20,000 tanks and heavy assault guns in 1943 alone. This mass of materiel, combined with German losses at Kursk, made the Wehrmacht extremely vulnerable in the East. This was highlighted in November 1943, when the Red Army launched an offensive in the Ukraine.

Target Kiev

In early November 1943 the Soviet High Command launched a massive offensive to seize Kiev, the Ukrainian capital. The Red Army pushed across the Dnieper and threatened to open a breach between the Wehrmacht's Army Group South and its neighbour to the north, Army Group Centre. The brunt of the attack fell on the 11 infantry divisions of the German Fourth Panzer Army. When 20 Russian infantry divisions, backed by four tank and one cavalry corps, rolled forward, the German VII Corps was lucky to get out of Kiev without being surrounded and wiped out. Two weak army panzer divisions failed even to dent the Soviet armoured juggernaut as it rolled westwards for 112km (70 miles), capturing the key railway junctions of Fastov and Zhitomir. More than 1000 Soviet tanks were loose behind German lines, and they threatened to turn south and roll up all of Field Marshal Erich von Manstein's army group.

Mainstein's panzer reserve

Hitler had already released the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, as the premier Waffen-SS armoured formation was now titled, from its occupation duties in Italy for service on the Eastern Front, when the Soviet offensive burst around Kiev. The Leibstandarte, with its powerful panzer regiment equipped with 95 Panther, 96 Panzer IV and 27 Tiger I tanks, would provide the heavy armoured punch for the counteroffensive being planned by Manstein. Two army panzer divisions, the veteran 1st Panzer and the newly formed 25th Panzer, would support the attack. The 1st Panzer boasted 95 Panzer IVs and 76 Panthers, while the 25th Panzer had 93 Panzer IVs and an attached heavy tank battalion armed with 25 Tiger Is. Going into action alongside this force were elements of three other weak panzer divisions: the Waffen-SS Das Reich Division with 22 Panzer IVs, 6 Panzer IIIs and 10 Tigers, and two army divisions - the 7th and 19th Panzer - with 40 tanks between them.

To lead the attack, Manstein appointed the veteran army panzer commander General Hermann Balck. His XXXXVIII Panzer Corps in theory would have almost 500 tanks available for the operation, but they would take several weeks to assemble and ready for action.

Manstein musters his forces

The terrain west of Kiev was very different from the open steppes to the east, with huge forests stretching for kilometres across the countryside. Small Ukrainian towns sat on most of the road junctions and around a number of strategic bridges. Throughout November 1943, temperatures were hovering just above freezing, which meant sudden thaws and rain turned most roads and fields into thick mud quagmires that sucked in even tracked vehicles. The arrival of freezing winter weather was keenly anticipated by all Eastern Front tank commanders, because it would enable rapid movement off roads across the frozen ground.

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