It was then the rearguard's turn to move out, and soon the two infantry divisions were being bombarded from the blocking position that had hampered Wiking's escape attempt. They, too, broke and ran for the Gniloy Tikich. The few kilometres to the river were soon littered with abandoned trucks, cars, wagons, artillery pieces and tanks, as well as the bodies of 15,000 dead Germans. Among them was their commander, Stemmermann, who died when a tank shell ripped into the wagon he was travelling in.

Throughout the night and into the morning, the pathetic survivors of the pocket staggered past the men of the 1st Panzer and Leibstandarte Divisions. The hardened panzer troops were shocked at the poor morale of the survivors. They started to talk about "Kessel shock" - a penetrating fear of capture by the Soviets that overrode normal discipline and led to the breakdown of unit cohesion in time of crisis.

The 1st Panzer Division held its bridgehead open for two more days, though only some 30,000 men found their way to German lines. The Wiking Division was shattered, and was now reduced to less than half of its established strength. Only 600 troops out of the Walloon Brigade's 2000 men escaped. The survivors were soon shipped away from the front, and III Panzer Corps pulled back to establish a defence line ready to repel the inevitable next Soviet offensive.

The Kamenets Podolsk Pocket

As usual, the Russians massed huge breakthrough forces close to their chosen pressure points. Whole divisions of artillery blasted the German lines for days, and then several hundred T-34s were launched forward to drive over the ruins. The targets were two weak infantry corps, which soon folded when the Soviet attacks went in on 4 and 5 March 1944. In a matter of days Zhukov's tank corps covered more than 160km (100 miles), and most of Manstein's army group - 22 divisions - found itself cut off in a huge Kessel or pocket centred around the town of Kamenets Podolsk. The cut-off troops included the cream of the Wehrmacht's panzer divisions, as well as both the Leibstandarte and Das Reich Divisions. Command of the trapped troops fell to the First Panzer Army's commander, Colonel-General Hans Hube. The one-armed tank commander had actually served under Paulus at Stalingrad, and he would soon put into practice some of the lessons he had learnt in that Kessel battle. Just before Stalingrad fell, Hitler ordered Hube to be evacuated because he had earmarked him for rapid promotion.

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