Attention now turned to tidying up the new frontline, where dozens of small German detachments had been cut off. On 11 April, the Hohenstaufen Division was ordered to spearhead the rescue of 4000 Germans trapped in Ternopol. The operation was far from a success. On the first day the division got stuck in another quagmire, and then ran into heavy Soviet resistance. The attack got moving again, though, and pushed to within 8km (5 miles) of the trapped troops. This time the Soviet ring held. The garrison attempted to break out but was massacred in the process. Only 53 men made it through to the Waffen-SS lines.

A front in tatters

The desperate state of the Eastern Front meant that even the remnants of the Wiking Division were mustered to fight in support of the rescue effort. Many soldiers still did not even have personal small arms after losing them in the Korsun/Cherkassy Pocket. Fortunately, the division had just been augmented by a fresh armoured regiment with 79 Panthers, which had been forming in Germany since December 1943. The division was committed to an operation to relieve the cut-off town of Kowel on the Ukrainian-Polish border, which had been surrounded by a Soviet spearhead since mid-March. Gille's men finally relieved the garrison on 6 April. It was a victory of sorts, but the division had suffered many casualties, not just killed but also wounded, which meant the loss of veterans to hospitals and dressing stations.

On the southern wing of Army Group South, the Totenkopf Division was fighting a desperate rearguard battle around Kirovograd as the Eighth Army fell back to the River Dniester. For most of April, it retreated into Romania and on several occasions had to fight desperate actions to avoid being trapped in pockets.

By May 1944, the Ukraine, which the Führer had been desperate to hold no matter what the cost, had been cleared of German forces, and within a few days the Crimea had also fallen. A succession of massive Soviet offensives had literally smashed their way through Manstein's Army Group South

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