Sixth Army's Flanks Outside Stalingrad: The Romanian Third Army and the "Bridgeheads"

In a previous series of articles I examined the state of play on the German Sixth Army's flanks outside of Stalingrad during the Axis assault on the city. In this follow-up article I would like to take a look at the Romanian Third Army's positions opposite the "bridgeheads" that would prove so crucial in the eventual success of the Soviet Southwestern Front's portion of the Red Army's November 19, 1942 counter-offensive. First, let's examine the formation of these bridgeheads over the Don River and why they were so important.

Between July 6th and October 24, 1942 the Red Army launched approximately a dozen major counterstokes against Army Group B's flanks outside of Stalingrad (including those counterattacks launched against the German Second Army in the Voronezh region beginning just prior to the official split in Army Group South into Army Groups A and B). By the way, when I say "major counterstrokes" I mean exactly that - the overwhelming majority of these efforts involved as many as two or three entire Soviet armies flinging themselves against what typically amounted to the forces of a single German corps. In some cases Soviet numerical superiority reached truly outlandish proportions in terms of manpower, number of armored vehicles involved, and the like. In spite of such massive quantitative advtanges every single one of these Soviet counteroffensives failed. The Germans defeated some of these counterattacks with such catastrophic results for Soviet forces and with such massive losses as to cause entire Soviet armies to be temporarily disbanded or folded into other units.

Ironically, these failures resulted even as Stavka attempted to grapple with German operational and tactical superiority by greatly circumscribing its own goals for many of these counterstrokes. For instance, the Soviet attacks against Sixth Army's flanks were universally conducted on a shallow basis. In this way it was thought they would have a greater chance of success regardless of Soviet weaknesses in command and control, logistics, and other such issues. Moreover, it was not unreasonable for Stavka to think that three or four combined-arms armies massed against a single German corps would attain success. But in every case they failed - or, almost every case.

As it turned out, the Red Army managed to find success in two instances not listed above, with both occurring late in August while the German Sixth Army was still driving on Stalingrad and the outer extremes of the Axis flanks outside the city were still being settled. The first of these occurred following the Italian Eighth Army's August 15th assumption of the German Sixth Army's XI Army Corps sector of the front along the Don River near Serafimovich northwest of Stalingrad. There, on August 20th the Soviet 21st and 63rd Armies crossed the Don and pushed south, driving the Italian forces from what should have been dominating defensive positions along the heights of the Don's southern bank. The Soviet armies managed to continually expand this bridgehead until the Axis defenses finally gelled around it by August 28th. Notably, and much like the Soviet counter-offensive southeast of Stalingrad along the Volga later in September and then in October against the German Fourth Panzer Army - where Soviet success had been won it had done so against defensive fronts held by Germany's inadequately equipped allies. In the case of the Soviet 57th and 64th Army's offensives against Fourth Panzer Army in the Kuporosnoe region (in September and October respectively) the only Soviet gains of any signnificance were registered against Romanian forces; that is before the larger counteroffensive collapsed upon the arrival of German reserves that restored the Axis defensive front.

But let's get back to the action in August and northwest of Stalingrad. While the Soviet 21st and 63rd armies were carving out their bridgehead over the Don near Serafimovich against the Italian Eighth Army, additional Soviet forces were accomplishing something else of significance. That's because, along the Don River further east of Serafimovich and in the Kletskaia region, the Soviet 1st Guards Army pulled off a feat that no other Soviet army managed to accomplish in the blizzard of failed Soviet counterstrokes characterizing their attempts to stop Army Group B's advance between July and October of 1942. On August 22, 1942 the Soviet 1st Guards Army hit the German Sixth Army's XI Corps in its defenses on the southern bank of the Don and drove the German forces as far as six miles south of the Don. Only there did the XI Corps stop the 1st Guards Army's push.

The danger posed by these two bridgeheads over the Don was clear to all in the Axis command. Yet, nothing was done about it. Now, one can rightly argue that the contemporaneous German led offensives in Stalingrad and on the road to Grozny in Army Group A's sector were far more important and all resources should have been directed to those two drives. But the Germans had the resources available to marshal reserves capable of clearing these bridgeheads. Instead, they didn't even try. Accordingly, while reinforcements flowed to the other German Army Groups in central and northern Russia, and to Rommel's Panzerarmee at El Alamein, virtually nothing was sent to Army Group B. Meanwhile, the Soviet Southwestern Front was getting support for its role in the massive November counteroffensive (codenamed "Uranus" and which would seal the German Sixth Army's fate) via Stavka's decision to assemble additional armies in the region to lead Uranus and leverage the opportunity afforded by these two bridgeheads (not least of which being the Soviet 5th Tank Army re-assembling in the region during the fall of 1942).

Then, during the first ten days of October the Romanian Third Army took over the defensive positions along the Serafimovich bridgehead and the western part of the Kletskaia bridgehead. This gave the bridgeheads even greater significant as they were not only located on the distant flanks outside Stalingrad (and thus far from the teeth of the Sixth Army's defensive front outside the city) but they were being largely defended by non-German troops. And it quickly became apparent those Romanian troops lacked the resources to truly contain a potential Soviet offensive launched from either bridgehead. This is for a number of reasons.

First, we need to look to the geography of the area the Romanians were attempting to defend. The biggest problem was that compared to the original Axis defensive front, high astride the dominant southern bank of the Don River held by the Italian Eighth Army earlier in August, the Romanians were holding decidedly inferior terrain. Perhaps the worst problem was that the Romanian Third Army had been chopped up by a series of north-south running ridgelines that reached as far as twelve miles south of the Don and thus well into the Romanian lines. What's more, the majority of the area's streams and creeks also ran from the south to the north - where they emptied into the Don. This further comparmentalized the Romanian defensive options. Worse yet, the combination of these ridgelines and waterways provided ample cover for the Soviet Southwestern Front to mass forces in the two bridgeheads largely free from the view of Romanian observers. Finally, in contrast to the Soviet commanders who could leverage these numerous obstacles to provide several avenues of protected advance into the depth of the Romanian defensive positions, the Romanian forces were largely holding thinly held positions on the treeless, open steppe.

Second, is the composition of the Romanian Third Army itself. Led by General Petre Dumitrescu, the Romanian Third Army featured four army corps, each with two divisions. Moreover, these divisions only had seven battalions in each - meaning that each Romanian division hardly came close to packing the punch of a German infantry division of the day, no less a motorized or panzer division. On top of that, the Romanian Third Army had been given responsibility for a roughly 100 mile front that tracked mostly along the Don River minus where forced south of the river by the Soviet bridgeheads. This meant that each division needed to defend an average frontage of twelve miles that was well beyond what was otherwise feasible. In reserve at six and fifteen miles behind the front respectively were the Romanian 15th Infantry Division and 7th Cavarly Division.

The Third Army's headquarters sat roughly 85 miles south of the Don River at Morozovsk. The Romanian HQ directly controlled a number of combat elements. This included the tiny core of Third Army's anti-tank forces - three motorized anti-tank companies with a dozen 47mm guns in each. Overall, the Third Army was woefully deficient in anti-tank weaponry - each infantry division had on average only a dozen 37mm or 47mm anti-tank guns organized into a single company as well as six German provided 75mm anti-tank guns (60 total in the entire army). This represented only a fraction of such strength found in comparable German divisions. Although the Romanian Third Army ostensibly had 155,000 men, only 100,000 of these men were in the combat arms within its ten divisions and attached artillery and engineer elements. For that matter, Romanian artillery units had no anti-tank ammunition and the Romanian engineers only had about a sixth of the anti-tank mines they had demanded.On top of that, the engineers had not received adequate materials for constructing obstacles and deeply echeloned defensive positions. Overall, the Romanian Third Army was hardly in a strong defensive position strung out as it was on the open steppe with deficient anti-tank means against the Soviet Southwestern Front in opposition.

Furthermore, the issues posed by the Soviet bridgeheads greatly complicated Dumitrescu's efforts to create a durable defensive front. The Soviet Southwestern Front's bridgeheads at Kletskaia and Serafimovich were large enough to push the Romanian forces as much as 18 miles south of the Don River (unlike in the Italian sector to the northwest of the Romanians where Mussolini's troops were largely able to take advantage of the Don River as a strong defensive barrier). To his credit, Dumitrescu repeatedly hounded Army Group B headquarters and from there Hitler and OKH regarding doing something about eliminating the Soviet bridgeheads - as he couldn't hope to hold his positions against a tank heavy Soviet assault without at a minimum holding defensive lines along the Don itself.

The best Dumitrescu could get in response was the German decision to assign the XXXXVIII Panzer Corps to serve as a reserve behind the Romanian Third Army. On paper such an imposing sounding force should have been plenty to counter a Soviet armored spearhead. As usual however, reality hardly matched up with paper strength. The XXXXVIII Panzer Corps consisted of its headquarters, led by Lieutenant General Ferdinand Heim, and which on November 10, 1942 had been transferred from Fourth Panzer Army to behind the Romanian front. From there, the XXXXVIII Panzer Corps had been assigned the 14th and 22nd Panzer Divisions as well as the Romanian 1st Armored Division. Had Heim's forces been completely concentrated, rested, and equipped there is a strong chance that the eventual Soviet counter-offensive would not have achieved its eventual success.

Instead, the 14th Panzer Division's forces failed to include most of its infantry. Furthermore, though it had 55 tanks on hand, only around 38-39 of them were operational on the eve of Uranus. Likewise, the 22nd Panzer Division had also been denuded of much of its punch. It's pioneer battalion was fighting in Stalingrad, and an entire panzer-grenadier regiment was fighting with the German Second Army near Voronezh. As for its panzer elements, it was only able to marshal 42 tanks on November 18th and deploy a mere 24 of those as fully operational. In turn, though the Romanian 1st Armored Division had 108 tanks on hand, 87 of these were Panzer 38(t) models hardly ready to stand up to Soviet T-34 and KV series tanks.

On top of all of that OKH was consistently underestimating or even missing what was going on opposite the Romanian Third Army's sector. For instance, German military intelligence (Fremde Heere Ost or Foreign Armies East - FHO) didn't even detect the presence of the Soviet 5th Tank Army as it moved into the bridgeheads in the weeks and days leading up to the onset of Operation Uranus. This in spite of both German aerial reconnaissance and the Romanian Third Army itself reporting much larger than usual levels of traffic behind the Soviet held side of the Don River and moving into the bridgeheads themselves. Nevertheless, by November 3rd Army Group B headquarters was coming around to the idea that the Red Army was up to something. However, every time Colonel Reinhard Gehlen (head of FHO) did report that an attack may be coming, he undercut his own assessments as to timing, strength, and weight of such an offensive. Nevertheless, as early as November 12th, or one full week prior to Uranus, both Paulus and Weichs (the latter commanding Army Group B) were sufficiently concerned as to search for internal means of assembling stronger reserves. But with OKH's neglectful approach to sending reinforcements to Army Group B throughout the late summer and fall of 1942 (in contrast Stavka had sent over a third of its 327,239 available personnel replacements to the fronts in the Stalingrad region during October and November 1942) and the demands of the massive attritional battle within Stalingrad there wasn't anything of substance left in the army group, no less the German Sixth Army.

To be fair, the Germans had turned aside pretty much everything the Red Army had thrown at them since Operation Blue had begun. However, their axis allies had not. And this is not meant to be an indictment of Romanian fighting ability, many of their soldiers (pictured here) would fight hard. It's just that the Romanian Third Army was nowhere near as well equipped, trained, or led as its peers in the German Sixth Army. Moreover, the Romanian Third Army occupied perhaps the worst defensive positions of any of Army Group B's forces guarding Stalingrad's flanks and yet they would be the focus of the strongest Soviet forces assembled to participate in Operation Uranus. Ironically, had the Germans even acted with a bit more urgency in bolstering Army Group B's flanks it may have been enough to have made Uranus, in spite of all the prep work and planning that went into it, far less consequential than it would become. But once again the Germans would prove adept at proving to be their own worst enemy against a Soviet foe increasing in capability just fast enough to take advantage of German mistakes.