Chir River Battles
Dec 4-22 1942

Chir River: 4 - 22 December 1942

by Russel H.S. Stolfi


The headquarters of the 48th Panzer Corps and the divisions under its command began to arrive in the Chir salient on 4 December 1942.

Relationship of the Chir River Battles to the Stalingrad Pocket - less than 20 miles from Group Adam to the 6th Army.

Manstein set the German 336th Infantry Division, commanded by Major General Walter Lucht, under the operational control of the panzer corps and this steady, veteran Saxon unit completed its deployment close to the Chir River by 6 December in the face of mounting Soviet pressure against the stopgap alarm units already in position.

Amazingly, as the German infantry division went into position, it found a German bridgehead at Verkne Chirskaya and on ground nearby at the confluence of the Chir and Don Rivers on the Stalingrad side of the Chir. Colonel Adam, Colonel General Freidrich Paulus's adjutant, had scraped together rear area troops beginning on 19 November 1942, and kept them fighting there in a truly heroic hedgehog barely 20 miles from the closest lines of his commander's encircled army. [20]

Lucht set the right flank of the 336th Infantry Division just north of Nizhne Chirskaya at Lissinski on the west bank of the Chir opposite Adam's hedgehog on the east bank. He then directed his three infantry regiments up against the Soviet forces already across the lower reaches of the river along an area some 25 miles to the northeast, reaching from Nizhne Chirskaya to Nizhne Kalinovski. The Germans had to hold the physical position on the lower Chir in order to relieve the 6th Army, and Knobelsdorff s directions to Lucht to hold every inch of ground included immediate local counterattacks to prevent the Soviet from making territorial gains.

As the 336th Infantry Division completed its move into position on 6 December 1942, elements of the 11th Panzer Division advanced closely behind into the same area. The panzer division had the mission to cross the Don near Nizhne Chirskaya and support the planned relief of the Stalingrad pocket by the 4th Panzer Army lying immediately to the south. Lieutenant General Hermann Balck, commander of the panzer division, began to reconnoiter assembly positions for his regiments on 7 December 1942 and found himself immediately in a crisis as the Soviets launched a major offensive.

The Soviets attacked on 7 December 1942 in reaction to growing strategic fears about the German forces building up with 4th Panzer Army across the Don and south of the 48th Panzer Corps. The Soviets recognized the German buildup as the preliminaries before a relief thrust into the Stalingrad pocket. To secure their victory over the encircled 6th Army, the Soviets boldly and effectively had begun to mass the remainder of their great strategic reserve under Operation Saturn to drive through the Italian 8th Army to the Sea of Azov and trap the German forces in Army Group Don and Army Group A in an optimistic attempt to end the war in 1943.

As the Germans "massed" for the relief of Stalingrad early in December 1942, the Soviet High Command was forced to shift forces to the Southwestern Front (partly opposite 48th Panzer Corps), the Stalingrad Front, and Don Front to ensure the encirclement of the 6th Army and to interfere directly with the German 48th and 57th Panzer Corps deploying for the relief drive. The pressure that built up against 48th Panzer Corps between 4-6 December and the ensuing attack was part of the Soviet action to maintain the encirclement of 6th Army, while simultaneously concentrating opposite the Italian 8th Army for the breakthrough toward Rostov.

The Soviets attacked the German force with the breakthrough 5th Tank Army, which had been one of two operational armies that had just encircled the 6th Army from the north. The 5th Tank Army had advanced from Betonskaya through the Rumanian 3rd Army to Kalach and the Chir in the period 19-23 November 1942. [21]

Aeriel view of battle between Germand and Soviet tanks.

The tank army had stood quietly along and just west of the Chir from 24 November-4 December 1942, recovering from its previous exertion and screening the Soviet lines of encirclement around Stalingrad from the west. By 4 December 1942, the Soviet Southwestern Front, however, had ordered it to break upthe German front on the Chir and to interfere with any German relief attempt based on the German salient there.

Under the unforgiving eye of impetuous, tough, Lieutenant General N.F. Vatutin, the front commander, General Romanenko launched the 5th Tank Army against the lower Chir hoping that, with a moderately strong effort from part of his force, he could smash straight through the center of the opposing lightly armed German emergency units in position since 23 November. Romanenko made his big attack on 7 December 1942 and immediately found himself engaged with two elite German divisions.

The battles that developed were ones between a hybrid German panzer corps and a strong Soviet tank army. The panzer corps had a strong panzer division, a strong horse-drawn infantry division, and, after several days, a moderate-sized, tactically inept Luftwaffe field division.

Figure 1 illustrates the organization and size of the German unit and estimates the strength of the 48th Panzer Corps at approximately 32,500 men in its divisions at the beginning on December 1942.

At the same time the 11th Panzer Division probably had a total of approximately 75 tanks. The division of course would never employ that number of tanks in an engagement because a significant percentage would always be down for repair, and, as the combat developed, manywould be destroyed or damaged in battle.

Figure 2 illustrates the organization and size of the 5th Tank Army and estimates its strength at approximately 85,000 men in its corps, divisions, and brigades at the beginning of December. This Soviet tank army had at least four large formations with tanks, including an independent tank brigade and one tank, mechanized, and guard cavalry corps. There were probably 280 tanks available on the eve of the battles and the Soviets fed in significant numbers of new tanks during the fighting. [22]

Unlike the Germans, the Soviets throughout the war penny- packeted huge numbers of tanks into regiments and brigades assigned to infantry divisions to provide greater impetus to the infantry advance. From 1939-1941, the Germans kept their tanks concentrated exclusively in the panzer divisions (and short-lived light divisions of 1939). As the Germans began to reorganize their relatively small number of motorized rifle divisions in November 1942 into the famed panzergrenadier divisions, they included a single panzer battalion in the new organizations. [23]

The Germans otherwise provided few tanks, mostly captured foreign material, to infantry formations engaged in rear area security, in counter-partisan operations, and in a few other unusual circumstances. German infantry divisions, accordingly, fought in the Eastern Campaign with no tanks under their operational control, while commonly facing Soviet infantry divisions advancing with attached, independent tank regiments and brigades. However they were organized, the Soviet forces clearly outmatched the Germans in numbers of men and weapons, but the style of the opposing commanders, and particularly the sense of superiority among the Germans, would tell heavily in the Chir battles as it had in 1941.

Arriving at the command post of the 336th Infantry Division at Verchne Solonovski, Balck found that the Soviet 1st Tank Corps, 5th Tank Army, was already across the Chir and had broken through the left flank of the infantry division and thrust approximately 12 miles west of the Chir to Sovkhoz 79 (State Farm 79).

Balck innovatively set up his command post alongside that of Lucht and not far from the headquarters of the panzer corps. This violation of (healthy) tactical convention paid great dividends because the Germans reduced their reaction time to the multiple crises. The technique also was typical of the innovative style of the self confident German commanders. The situation on 7 December 1942 is illustrated in detail on Map 1.

Map 1: 7 December (slow: 91K)

Knobelsdorff had challenging subordinate unit commanders to direct in Balck and Lucht. The latter faced immediate operational disaster and wanted Balck and his mobile forces to attack the Soviet 1 st Tank Corps frontally from the southwest -the direction from which the panzer division was arriving from Rostov. Balck refused to attack with his armor from that direction, because, in his technical judgment as the tank commander, that the terrain was unsuitable for the advance of armor.

Even more importantly, Balck pointed out that a frontal attack (the Soviet tank corps had originally been heading southwest) along a single axis would merely push the Soviets back in and amongst the rear of the 336th Infantry Division. The Soviet lst Tank Corps had reached a government farming complex (Sovkhoz 79), Balck decided to destroy it there, so Knobelsdorff "simply" assigned the 11th Panzer Division the mission of annihilating the powerful Soviet formation. The engagement around Sovkhoz 79 set the model for the rest of the battles on the Chir River -- Lucht coolly kept the infantry shield in position along the river, Balck ruthlessly concentrated the entire panzer division against the single strongest threat, and Knobelsdorff kept the missions decisive and free of detail.

Gifted Commander: Balck

Knobelsdorff had a gifted commander in Balck. The panzer leader had a unique quality of seeing the decisive action required at the next higher level of command and taking that action to master crisis around him. With or without directives and with unparalleled self-confidence, Balck tended to unleash himself as a panzer division commander on the panzer corps' opponent. In an interview with the author in Asperg, West Germany, Balck described his reputation in the German army in the following terms: "My commanders began to use the expression when I was on the scene that 'it's just old Balck again. Let him do whatever he wants to do.'" [24]

He went on to elaborate that when he was a battalion commander he had somewhat retarded regimental commanders and took the actions he felt necessary within the framework of the (to him) obviously discernible general mission. He went on to explain that he was driven by the same spirit of action with virtually all of his superiors in his military career.

Curiously enough when queried by the author on how he reacted to his own subordinates operating in the same spirit, he wagged his finger ominously and stated: "It didn't work that way." [25]

Chir River Battles Dec 4-22 1942

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