COUNTERPOINT TO STALINGRAD. Operation Mars (November-December 1942)

Legacy

Zhukov conducted Operation Mars in characteristic fashion. The Soviet assaults were massive and unsparing in manpower and material. Discounting the harsh terrain and weather conditions, he relied on pressure across the entire front and simple maneuver by his powerful mechanized corps and tank corps to achieve victory. Neither did. Skillful German tactical defense by relatively small but tenacious combat groups, which exploited terrain and man-made obstacles to maximum, bottled up attacking Soviet mobile forces before they reached key objectives in the German operational rear area. In the process the Germans inflicted maximum Soviet casualties by separating attacking Soviet infantry from their supporting mobile forces. Avoiding panic and holding only where necessary, the German command slowly assembled the reserves necessary to counterattack and achieve victory. Nevertheless, German victory was a "close thing." While causing catastrophic Soviet casualties, the German divisions themselves were fought to a frazzle. It was no coincidence that several months later Model asked for and received permission to abandon the Rzhev salient. He and his army could ill afford another such victory.

Operation Mars cost the Red Army nearly half a million men killed, wounded, or captured. Individual Soviet combat units were decimated in the operation. The Soviet 20th Army lost 58,524 men out of its original strength of over 114,000 men⁷². General Solomatin's 1st Mechanized Corps lost 8,100 of its 12,000 men and all of its 220 tanks, and the accompanying 6th Stalin Rifle Corps lost over 20,000 of its 30,000 men⁷³. At lower levels the cost was even higher. The 8th Guards Rifle Corp's 26th Guards Rifle Division emerged from combat with 500 of its over 7,000 combat infantrymen intact, while the 4,500 man 148th and 150th Rifle Brigades had only 27 and 110 "fighters," respectively, available at the end of the operation⁷⁴.

Soviet tank losses, correctly estimated by the Germans as around 1,700, were equally staggering, in as much as they exceeded the total number of tanks the Soviets initially committed in Operation Uranus at Stalingrad⁷⁵. In Western armies losses such as these would have prompted the removal of senior commanders, if not worse. In the Red Army it did not, for when all was said and done, Zhukov fought, and the Red Army needed fighters.

Although far less severe than those of the Soviets, the Germans too suffered grievous losses in the operation, losses which they could ill afford given their smaller manpower pool and the catastrophe befalling them at Stalingrad. For example, the 1st Panzer Division suffered 1,793 casualties, and the 5th Panzer 1,640, while losses in the infantry divisions (the 78th, 246th, 86th, 110th, and 206th) along the Soviet main attack axes were even greater⁷⁶. The overall Soviet casualty toll, however, was at least 10-fold greater that the total German loss of around 40,000 men.

Zhukov said little about the defeat on his memoirs, and what he did say was grossly distorted. He mentioned only the December operation, and, without revealing its code name, he called it simply a diversion for the Operation Uranus. Among the many thousands of Soviet memoirs and unit histories, only a handful mention the operation, and these do so without revealing its full scope. Even formerly classified accounts avoid covering the operation in its entirety. Archival materials, however, do cover the operation in greater detail, but only in selective sectors.

In assessing blame for the failure, none of the few available Soviet accounts mention the role of key commanders such as Zhukov or Konev. For example, General Getman, commander of the 6th Tank Corps, who was ill in November and did not participate in the attack, wrote:

The offensive was conducted against fortified positions occupied by enemy tank forces and in swampy-forested terrain in complex and unfavorable weather conditions. These and other conditions favored the enemy. We lacked the required coordination with the infantry and reliable artillery and aviation support. The organized suppression of enemy strong points was inadequate, especially his antitank means by artillery fire and aviation strikes. This led to the tank brigades suffering great losses⁷⁷.

Other formerly classified Soviet sources and archival materials candidly critiqued the problems, and German reports echoed those critiques. A 15 December German Ninth Army report judged that the Russian operation had sustained a heavy defeat and "bled itself out," adding:

The enemy leadership, which demonstrated skill and adaptability in the preparation and initial implementation of the offensive,.. once again displayed its old weaknesses as the operation progressed. Indeed, the enemy has learned much, but he has again shown himself to be unable to exploit critical unfavorable situations. The picture repeats itself when operations, which began with great intent and local successes, degenerated into senseless, wild hammering at fixed front-line positions once they encounter initial heavy losses and unforeseen situations. This incomprehensible phenomenon appears again and again. But, even in extremis, the Russian is never logical; he falls back on his natural instinct, and the nature of the Russian is to use mass, steamroller tactics, and adherence to given objectives without regard to changing situations⁷⁸.

The manner in which Operation Mars was fought and the carnage the operation produced has few parallels in the later war years. In its grisly form, its closest peer was the famous Soviet frontal assault on the Zeelow Heights during the April 1945 Berlin operation. Not coincidentally, it too was orchestrated by Zhukov. Unlike the case in 1942, however, the victorious conclusion of the Berlin operation required no alteration of the historical record to preserve Soviet pride or commanders' reputations.

The legacy of Operation Mars was silence. Stalin and history mandated that Vasilevsky's feat at Stalingrad remained unblemished by the Rzhev failure. Stalin recognized Zhukov's greatest quality - that he fought - and, at this stage of the war and later, Stalin needed fighters. Therefore, Zhukov's reputation remained intact. Stalin and Soviet history mandated that he shares credit with Vasilevsky for the Stalingrad victory. Zhukov gained a measure of revenge over German Army Group Center at Kursk in summer 1943 and in Byelorussia in summer 1944. Ironically, however, it would be Vasilevsky who, as key Stavka planner, would play an instrumental role in finally crushing that German Army Group in East Prussia in January 1945. Such is the fickleness of history.

Soviet military history ignored other notable Soviet defeats during the later war years. Among those notable operations, which, like Mars, endured obscurity and silence, were the failed Soviet Central Front offensive of February-March 1943 in the region west of Kursk, the abortive Soviet Byelorussian offensive of fall 1943, and futile Soviet attempts to invade Rumania in May 1944 and East Prussia in fall 1944. This silence was possible because each of these defeats occurred at the end of a major Soviet strategic advance, when victorious context masked the failure to vanquished Germans and history alike and shrouded the events in a cloak of anonymity, which has endured for more than fifty years. That cloak is finally being lifted.1. The only exception to this victorious mosaic was von Manstein's famous February-March 1943 counterstroke in the Donbass and Kharkov regions, which ended the Soviet's post-Stalingrad westward march and which set the stage for the Battle of Kursk.