Soviet Skachok and Zvezda Operations: Early February 1943 (I)

Soviet T-34 tank in Stalingrad Oblast east of Ukrainian Donbas

SS-Sturmbannführer Joachim Peiper with fellow officers

SS-Panzergrenadier-Division Leibstandarte SS

By any reckoning, the strategic situation facing the German Army was dire. To their opponents it appeared that the entire southern wing of the Eastern Front was about to collapse, or already in such a state. Not unnaturally in this context, optimism mounted on the Soviet side. In attempting to exploit as much momentum as possible, the Soviet high command approved two plans for operations. The first, codenamed Operation Skachok, sought to liberate the eastern Ukrainian Donbas region and drive German forces across the Dnieper River. The second, codenamed Operation Zvezda, aimed at liberating Kharkov. Soviet numerical superiority was guaranteed in both operations. During the initial defensive fighting in the first week of February 1943, Paul Hausser's élite SS-Panzergrenadiers held the line firm while a host of retreating Romanian, Italian, Hungarian and fragmented German units streamed westwards past them. As Waffen-SS troops fanned out across the winter wasteland, they had a series of vicious encounters with the advance guard of the Soviet 17th Guards Corps. Intermingled with the Soviet troops were retreating columns of the hard-pressed German 298th and 320th Infantry Divisions, who had marched across the steppe to seek safety in the west. In a couple of cases, Waffen-SS reconnaissance troops mounted raids to rescue recently captured infantrymen, racing into Soviet positions on their motorcycles and raking them with machine-gun fire. Credit: military historian Major-General Mungo Melvin and author Tim Ripley. Top image: Soviet T-34 tank named 'Motherland' ploughs through the snow after the battle of Stalingrad in Feb. 1943. Photo by Jewish-Uzbek Izvestia war correspondent Georgy Zelma Zelmanovich. SU stock photos. Middle image: SS-Sturmbannführer Joachim Peiper in conversation with fellow Leibstandarte officers SS-Hauptsturmführer Paul Guhl and SS-Hauptsturmführer Georg Bormann of SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 2 in early 1943. Credit: Bekors. U.S. National Archives. Bottom image: battle-hardened men of the Swabian WWI tank veteran Sepp Dietrich's much feared Leibstandarte SS amid a house-to-house raid searching for Soviet soldiers. Photo taken in eastern Ukraine in early 1943. Credit: Olga Shirnina. c. Bundesarchiv.