At the onset, the weakness of this operation was already apparent Army Group South could reach either objective given its resources, but not both. But Hitler was adamant, and dismissed the commanders of Army Groups A and B as well as his Chief of Staff when they argued otherwise. As a result, the Germans overextended their lines, and filled the gaps with largely inefficient allied divisions. It was these allied divisions that the Soviets targeted when they began to advance north and south of Stalingrad.
The growing crisis in Army Group B was compounded by Hitlers refusal to withdraw the besieging German forces in Stalingrad as the vise of the two Soviet thrusts began to close in on the city. When it finally closed, Hitler issued two orders one was for the German air forcehe Luftwaffeto begin to airlift needed supplies to the German soldiers, and the other for a relief operation to be led by General Erich von Manstein, the architect for the push to the Ardennes in 1940, leading to the conquest of France.
The encirclement of the brunt of German forces in Stalingrad, however, also opened up the rest of the German lines to Soviet penetration. While Manstein began to organize his forces for Operation Winter Storm, the Soviets were preparing for an overarching operation, dubbed Operation Saturn, to advance as far as Rostov north of the Sea of Asov and cut off Army Group A, then in the Caucasus. Instead they improvised for the German counterattack, and limited their objectives towards the capture of the important railroad that ran along the city of Millerovo and the airfields of Tatinskaya and Morosovsk, where the Luftwaffe airlifted supplies to the defenders at Stalingrad. While the Soviet push was initially successful and captured Millerovo, to the south German resistance had stiffened along the perimeter of the Donets.
Further operations to the north of Army Group B opened a new opportunity for the Soviets. Although the German positions had solidified across the Donets, their forces were largely overextended and could not cover all the possible ground in their perimeter. Soviet general N. F. Vatutin proposed to drive Soviet forces south through the gaps in the German lines, and advance to 100 miles west of Rostov, effectively cutting off the two main bodies of the German Army Group B. This offensive, called Operation Gallop, was approved along with another Soviet thrust called Operation Star, aimed towards the industrial city of Kharkov.
Operation Gallop met with mixed success, and in the end could not extend its advance but for a few hundred miles. The Soviets were tied up in towns where the Germans stood firm, and had to devote resources and men against counterattacks against their positions. Because of this, the Soviet High Command instead put more pressure on Operation Star, and its drive west to Kharkov. There, the Soviets had crossed the Donets and broken through the German lines, threatening to reach the Dnepr River and effectively cut off the main line of communications between the two main German bodies of Army Group B. Hitler, however, was more concerned with the importance of holding the city of Kharkov and for a time tied up most of his forces there, including the two Waffen-SS armies of Das Reich and Leibstandarte, which Manstein was planning to use for his counter-attack. It was only the timely decision of the Waffen-SS commander, Paul Hausser, to defy Hitlers orders and withdraw from Kharkov that saved the two SS divisions for use by General Manstein.
The Soviet advance, meanwhile, was riddled with weaknesses. The Soviet High Command pressured the Soviet forces to continue to press forward, despite overextending their lines. As a result, while their forward tank battalions made remarkable progress, they left behind the brunt of their infantry regiments, and exposing their supply and communication lines. Because of this, the advance continued to bog down, e.g. Mobile Army Popov during Operation Gallop continually had to stop to take a defensive line because the tanks would run out of fuel and would have to wait for supplies hundreds of miles away. Eventually Mobile Army Popov was encircled and destroyed by elements of the 1st Panzer Army, as it staggered ahead in its advance.
Manstein saw his chance. He positioned his main counter-attack forceWaffen-SS Liebstandarte, Waffen-SS Das Reich and Waffen-SS Totenkopfin Krasnograd, at the southern flank of the Soviet force in Kharkov while he reinforced the armies to the west of the Soviet force and holding the line against the continuing enemy advance. Then, the SS corps began to drive northward through the Soviet southern flank, often catching the enemy by surprise as the latter resumed their southward push. The Germans employed old blitzkrieg tacticsStuka planes screeched down to provide ground support while tanks and infantry made quick work of their enemy.
The Soviet High Command was still largely convinced that the Germans were already broken and could not launch a successful counterattack, and as a consequence the growing crisis brewing in the southern flank was largely ignored. Accordingly, they proceeded to add more pressure to their drive west, by reinforcing their divisions with forces relieved from operations in Stalingrad after the German Sixth Army there had surrendered. But Mansteins northward thrust was gaining steam, and the Soviet advance was faltering. When finally the enemy belatedly shifted forces to contain the northward advance, their armies were too exhausted and stretched too thin to offer any effective counterattack.
The order was now given to proceed north towards Kharkov. Proceeding from their jump-off point in Pavlograd, the SS Panzer Corps raced north, magnetized by, as Manstein relates, a need to lay the recaptured city at the Fuhrers feet. Eventually, however, a fierce battle was waged in the heart of the city, as German forces repulsed strong Russian counterattacks around Kharkov. By March 14, Kharkov had been taken, and a further push towards Belgorod took care of the remnants of the Soviet offensive. With the lines stabilizing and the spring muddying roads and making any further campaigning impossible to conduct, the counter-offensive finally came to a halt.
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