Soviet Winter Counter-Offensive: Operation Little Saturn

Soviet winter counteroffensive December 12 1942 – February 18 1943

Soviet Ilyushin Il-2 or Sturmovik attack bomber in 1943

Red Army charge during the Soviet winter counteroffensive in 1943

The Soviet winter offensive of 1942 struck the Germans in the southern sector of the Eastern Front like a hammer blow, destroying a number of Romanian, Hungarian and Italian divisions, as well as the remnants of the German 6th Army at Stalingrad. Soviet forces began the final phase of their offensive on January 14 1943 with a massive attack on the overstretched Axis armies dug-in along the River Don. By the start of 1943, the Wehrmacht was around 470,000 men below full strength on the Eastern Front. The Soviets were driving deep into German lines. Their hope was to destroy the southern wing of the German army while it was still reeling from its defeat at Stalingrad. There were large gaps in the German lines and a quick advance here could turn the tide of the war. The stakes were enormous. If the Soviets were the first to reach the Dnieper bridges, they could trap Generalfeldmarschall Erich von Manstein's entire force east of the great river. The Germans had lost an army at Stalingrad. Now they were threatened with a super-Stalingrad of the entire German southern wing. The battered Axis divisions were driven back towards the Dnieper, and the Soviet 3rd Guards Tank Army were moving south to cut off Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm List's troops retreating from the Caucasus through Rostov. The SS-Panzergrenadier-Division Wiking had to race north in an orderly but terrible winter retreat to avoid being cut off. All seemed lost, as the newly formed SS-Panzerkorps took the field in the depths of the Soviet winter. Generaloberst Hermann Hoth's 4.Panzerarmee and SS-Obergruppenführer Paul Hausser's SS-Panzerkorps caught the Soviets by surprise from all directions and vaporized them. German casualties in these opening days were minimal. The Soviets, however, lost nearly all their tanks, and many men. Credit: British military historian Gordon Williamson and American military historian Robert M. Citino. Middle image: Soviet Ilyushin Il-2 ground-attack aircraft pictured in 1943. Credit: Georgiy Stanislavskiy. Bottom image: Soviets on the offensive in 1943. Photo by Kremlin photographer Dmitry Baltermants. SU stock photos. Photos in the Public domain.