battles of Kharkov

Kharkov, battles of (1942-3). Kharkov, in the Ukraine, had fallen to the Germans relatively easily at the end of 1941, and became one of the ‘hedgehogs’ in which the Germans held fast during the winter. In May 1942 Soviet forces in the Izyum salient to the south-east and Volchansk to the east launched a concentric attack to recapture the city, but Gehlen, the new chief of Fremde Heere Ost, the German intelligence organization, predicted it, and it was defeated.

In February 1943, after the battle of Stalingrad, the Red Army's Voronezh and South-West Fronts (army groups) launched an offensive to destroy the main forces of the German Army Group B, and recaptured Kharkov as a bonus on 16 February. Manstein, commanding the German Army Group South, immediately launched a counter-offensive. On 7 March Fourth Panzer Army attacked north-east towards Kharkov, aiming, once again, not so much to capture the city as to destroy the Soviet forces there. Golikov's Voronezh Front and Vatutin's South-West fought the ‘Kharkov defensive operation’, but lost the city on 14 March and were pushed back 93 miles (150 km). Manstein's attack is a classical example of a defender counter-attacking ‘on the backhand’, first letting his enemy's attack swing past him to its culminating point, and then striking back.

— Christopher Bellamy