Back and Forth Fighting (August 15-16, 1943)

A T-34 76mm (top) and a T-70 tank at the same scale. The Russian made about 35,000 of this model T-34 during World War Two (and a little over 40,000 or so of the late-war 85mm version - over 75,000 altogether) and about 8,200 T-70's.

[Read Part One] [Read Part Two]  [Read Part Three] [Read Part Four]

The German counterattack had just peaked and broken against Soviet depth like a wave hitting a seawall. You had three elite panzer divisions, the best the Wehrmacht could field, delivering their most concentrated blow since Kursk. And it wasn't enough.

After a day of heavy fighting, the German armored groups paused to reassess the situation. Although they had inflicted substantial losses on the Russians, they had gained little ground. This is where the Battle of Bogodukhov turned into something else entirely. Not the sweeping maneuver warfare both sides had planned for, but what David Glantz would later accurately call "swirling series of battles" that reduced both combatant forces to exhaustion.

The numbers tell you everything you need to know about the intensity. The 1st Tank Army had started August 11 with 268 tanks and self-propelled guns. By August 15, that number had fallen to about 100 tanks. Das Reich, which had begun the battle with roughly 70 tanks, was down to barely 50 tanks and assault guns still running. Totenkopf, starting with about 60 tanks, was in similar straits. These weren't just statistics on a map. They represented the slowly grinding away of armored strength that had taken months to build and could not be quickly replaced.

The corridor from Okhrimovka down through Malyi Prokhody wasn't tank country in the classical sense. Rolling fields, yes, but broken up by copses of trees, sunken roads perfect for ambushes, and small villages that could anchor a defense or hide a flanking force. Every farmhouse became a pillbox. Every grove of trees concealed a Stug. Every shallow depression in the ground might hide a T-34 waiting for the perfect flank shot.

By now in the war, the German infantry was greatly understrength, often lacking artillery support, and already in rear-echelon reconstitution mode before being pulled into sudden frontline duty. Commanders on the ground were fighting a confused retrograde action, defending spots that had only hours earlier been behind the line. They were good at it, because they were Germans in 1943 and still among the best soldiers in the world. But they were improvising with pieces of units, not fighting with the kind of coordinated strength that had made the Wehrmacht so terrifying two years earlier.

August 15 brought that kind of fighting. At dawn, despite little rest in a month of continuous fighting, Das Reich and Totenkopf struck hard at the relatively fresh 6th Guards Army units, slashing through 6th Tank Corps communications lines deep in the Soviet rear. Although the Soviet 2nd Air Army aircraft battered the German tank columns, 6th Guards Army's defenses collapsed under the coordinated assault.

German rescue crews patched up some damaged tanks and kept the German losses to a minimum. Panzers that had previous been immobilized but not destroyed were brought back to the front with their crews rapidly during these days.

Totenkopf and Das Reich resumed their attempts to reach Bogodukhov that morning. At first, the newly arrived infantry of Sixth Guards Army proved to be brittle and the German armor made rapid progress, particularly in overcoming the Russians who had repeatedly attacked the reconnaissance battalion of Totenkopf in the preceding days. For the battered SS companies that had fought in the Merchik sector for the previous few days, the advance provided a welcome respite and a boost to morale.

But resistance stiffened steadily as the day continued. This was the pattern now. Initial German success, followed by Soviet reinforcement, followed by stalemate. Two of Chistiakov's divisions were badly mauled as they fought their way back to the safety of the Merchik in the face of the SS attack. The mixed force of Russian tanks and infantry in Vysokopolye was overwhelmed, but the German advance couldn't be sustained.

Totenkopf had been forced to commit virtually everything available for the attack, and Das Reich had barely 50 tanks and assault guns still running. Nevertheless, several groups of Russian infantry and many of the tanks of VI Tank Corps were encircled during these final pushes. They were destroyed.

Let's talk numbers, because the tactical mathematics of this fight are both incredible and tragic. The Germans were still achieving impressive kill ratios, but each success cost them at least some irreplaceable assets, despite the best efforts of rescue crews. Every tank lost was gone forever. Every experienced crew that got killed was irreplaceable. Years of experience tank fighting the Russians was gone with the death of each German crew. New crews would have to learn quickly. The Soviets, meanwhile, were learning the lesson they had paid for so dearly since 1941. Tanks alone couldn't do everything. But tanks with infantry, with engineers, with artillery that could actually communicate and coordinate? That was something different.

Zhukov, of course, didn’t let this fact keep him from massing overwhelming ratios against the Germans. These offensives were massive. Meanwhile, Soviet infantry had started moving in alongside armor, which allowed combined-arms pressure to finally start unseating these German holdouts. Fresh rifle divisions were arriving to catch up with the tank spearheads, providing the kind of support that could hold ground once it was taken.

The fighting continued on August 16, and remarkably, the Germans pulled off one final tactical success. Totenkopf and Das Reich made a renewed push that smashed into the flank of the 6th Tank Corps and recaptured Vysokopolye once again. General Breith, commander of III Panzer Corps, believed that this attack destroyed Katukov's spearhead formations, as well as parts of two rifle divisions.

Here was German tactical excellence in its purest form. Even exhausted, even outnumbered, even fighting with the last fumes in their tanks, they could still coordinate an attack that devastated Soviet formations. But by this point both sides were operating on fumes, and tactical success couldn't mask strategic reality.

The composition of the losses tells its own story. Soviet casualties were heavily weighted toward lighter vehicles. T-70s died by the dozen, often in probing actions or when caught without support. SU-76s were knocked out trying to provide fire support in terrain that favored the defender. T-34s were lost to well-placed German ambushes or minefields. But the core of Soviet armored strength remained intact, and more importantly, it was being constantly replenished and kept attacking.

The German Panzer VI "Tiger" and Panzer III to the same scale as the Soviet Tanks above.  So all are comparable.  The Germans made about 5,800 Pz IIIs during the war versus only about 1,350 Tigers.

German losses were almost entirely in their main battle tanks. Panzer IIIs, IVs and Stug IIIs, the backbone of their armored formations, destroyed in defensive actions or lost during withdrawal under artillery fire. These weren't vehicles they could replace quickly or easily. Each one represented months of production, weeks of training, and combat experience that couldn't be purchased at any price.

The human element in all this is both inspiring and heartbreaking. You had German tank crews who had been fighting almost continuously since Kursk started on July 5. Six weeks of constant action, always outnumbered, always under pressure, but still performing with the kind of tactical excellence that made other armies study German methods for decades after the war ended.

Soviet crews were learning on the job in a different way. They were part of a military machine that was finally hitting its stride, but many of them were replacements, new conscripts, men thrown into the meat grinder of armored warfare with minimal training. They died in large numbers, but they kept coming. And slowly, gradually, the survivors were becoming as good as anyone else on the battlefield.

The tactical picture by the end of August 16 shows German panzer divisions were below half-strength in many cases. The German attacks had succeeded in halting the long advance of 1st Tank and 5th Guards Tank Armies. Moreover, the Germans had seriously reduced the capability of those armies to have a major impact on future operations. In the six-day struggle, Soviet forces had been driven back 20 kilometers toward Bogodukhov.

While they had fought the Soviet tank armies into a short retreat, their position at Kharkov had worsened. Soon they would face new threats to the northeast around Trostyanets. The Soviets controlled Bogodukhov and were using it as a forward supply and staging base. They had secured the rail line and were bringing up fresh ammunition, fuel, and replacement vehicles in American-made Studebaker trucks. Their artillery was being repositioned for the next phase of operations.

Germans were still demonstrating superior tactical competence even as they lost the strategic initiative permanently. They were getting better kill ratios than they had achieved since 1941 in some cases. Their use of terrain, their coordination between armor and infantry, their ability to maximize the effectiveness of limited resources, all of this was textbook excellence.

But excellence in a losing cause has its own particular tragedy. Totenkopf crews knocked out five or six Soviet tanks for every one they lost and still did not understand that they were fighting a battle they had already lost before it started. Das Reich's mobile defense was brilliant but ultimately, as the coming weeks would show, it was just a more elegant way of losing ground.

By the end of August 16, fighting slackened in the Bogodukhov and Kharkov sectors as both sides tried to catch their breath and reorganize. The remaining Soviet units encircled by the SS were either destroyed or managed to slip away to the north. Totenkopf was ordered to drive towards the north, but ammunition shortages and the high casualty rate in its formations made such progress almost impossible.

Combat in the immediate vicinity of Bogodukhov had ended, the best indicator of how bloody these past few days had been. The world had rarely seen such enormous tank battles. The swirling series of battles had reduced the combatant forces to mutual exhaustion. German units had been unable to penetrate the Soviet defenses, destroy overall coherence of the front, or threaten Soviet forces advancing on Kharkov. The Germans could kill a lot of tanks with remarkable skill but that could only delay the inevitable. This wasn’t 1941 or even in March 1943. Something had changed.

Both sides knew what this meant and it was as shocking to the German command as it was inspiring to the Soviets. The Russians would not let up. This forced a war of attrition on the Ukrainian steppe. The side that replaces its losses the fastest would eventually win, regardless of how many battles it loses along the way. The Germans kicked ass in 1941 and most of 1942. They kicked ass in March 1943 and they thought they were going to kick it again at Bogodukhov. But this wasn't about tactical brilliance anymore. It was about who could sustain the effort longer, and by August 16, 1943, that question had a clear answer. Though Manstein and the rest of German command didn’t think of defeat, they knew the dynamic had shifted and they had to get it back.

That never happened.

As night fell on August 16, only one side could afford to be exhausted. The Germans had fought brilliantly and lost. The Soviets had taken enormous casualties and gained everything they needed. Tomorrow would bring more of the same, but with each passing hour, the balance shifted further toward an outcome that had been determined not by tactical competence but by strategic depth.

The scale was finally tipping. The implications would echo differently all the way to Berlin and Moscow. This is an amazing part of World War Two that hardly anyone in America even knows about. We are in the thick of my favorite part of World War Two and maybe all of military history. Known or not, the Bogodukhov region is an exceptional moment in military history.

(to be continued)