GERMAN MORTARS in Direct Line of Sight and in the Open
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“Now, when the Red Army, developing the successes of the winter campaign, has inflicted a mighty blow on the German troops in the summer, it is possible to consider as finally dead and buried the fairy tale that the Red Army is incapable of conducting a successful offensive in summer. The past year has shown that the Red Army can advance in summer just as well as in winter.” Josef Stalin, 6th November 1943 On the 2nd of February 1943 91,000 German soldiers surrendered at Stalingrad. A few thousand others ignored their orders and fought on for a few days despite no hope of survival. On the 8th of February Kursk was liberated, followed by Kharkov just over a week later. Disaster followed disaster as Army Group South reeled back under Soviet blows. That the German Eagle still had its talons was proved at the end of February when General von Manstein launched a counter‐attack which culminated in the recapture of Kharkov in mid‐ March and the destruction of 52 Soviet Divisions before the offensive was ended by the Spring thaw. Impressive as Manstein’s counter‐attack had been it was, in truth, to be the final successful German offensive in the East. Its success against an over‐extended Red Army was to provide Hitler with false hope that the loss of Stalingrad and the success of the Soviet forces over the winter was simply a repetition of their achievements in the winter of 1941. When summer came it would again present the Germans with fresh victories against the Soviets who, the Fuhrer reasoned, must be nearing the end of their manpower reserves. Such optimism, wildly optimistic as it now appears, led to the planning for a new great battle of encirclement: the battle for the Kursk salient. In one final Blitzkrieg the Germans would cut off and annihilate the best Soviet forces before shifting to the defensive in the East and turning their attentions to the threat posed by the western Allies. Launched on 5th of July 1943 Unternehmen Zitadelle, Operation Citadel, was doomed to failure from the outset. Delays in assembling the armoured forces needed had allowed the Soviets time to prepare their defences. What was more, the newly liberated areas had provided the Red Army with a fresh intake of conscripts who were now incorporated into the ranks of a force which had learnt some harsh lessons to become significantly more tactically competent than the Soviet forces met in 1941. To make matters worse Luftwaffe losses suffered in the Mediterranean meant that the Red Air Force now had numerical superiority if not absolute control of the skies. Within a fortnight, it was clear that the German offensive had failed and the Soviets unleashed planned counter‐attacks to the north and south of the salient with significant success. Finally the initiative in the East had passed to the Soviets; it would remain with them until the end of the war. Kursk proved that the Germans, given the right equipment and manpower, could still do what the Germans did best. However, it highlighted their failure to do anything but conform to their rigid principles and the Soviet command’s increasing ability to read just how they would react. Vpered Na Berlin Page 2 ©TooFatLardies 2013 From Kursk onwards the German High Command was constantly attempting to prop up the Eastern Front, utilising small, elite mobile forces to plug gaps and pinch off Soviet advances. Whilst local successes remained possible, the fact was they every major Soviet offensive would gain large swathes of territory, all of which yielded fresh male civilians who could be impressed into Red Army ranks. Kharkov was liberated for the last time in August 1943, along with the industrial and highly fertile Donets Basin and Hitler determined to hold the line of the Dnieper River. However, even this proved impossible, as no defences had been prepared and Soviet forces established bridgeheads across the river almost immediately. In November Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine fell to the Red Army. The year of 1944 opened with more Soviet advances and vicious fighting in the Baltic States, which was to continue throughout the summer with significant numbers of Baltic formations raised by the Germans fighting with their own independence agenda. In the south, further advances were made in the Ukraine, with Odessa and Sevastopol being liberated in April and May respectively, and with them the whole of the Crimea was brought back under Soviet control. The most impressive and important Soviet offensive of 1944 was Operation Bagration. Soviet intelligence had identified that, expecting the next offensive to be in the South, Hitler had stripped Army Group Centre of much of its artillery and armour. Launched on the 22nd of July, 120 Soviet Divisions tore through the German positions and advanced into Latvia, Lithuania and Poland; one of the first successful examples of the application of the Soviet concept of Deep Battle. The breadth of their offensive left the Germans unable to identify the main objective of the operation and therefore at a loss how or where to respond. Indeed, the Germans were now suffering losses of large numbers of men taken prisoners, as their forces were encircled in the same fashion as Soviet forces had been three years earlier. Roughly a quarter of the German servicemen on the Eastern Front were killed or captured during Bagration. It was now the Soviets who were teaching the lessons. As if to reinforce the hopelessness of Germany’s position, the end of Bagration coincided with the collapse in Normandy and the overthrow of the Romanian government in Bucharest. Finland had signed a peace treaty with the Soviet Union in September, after the fall of northern Estonia left Helsinki itself exposed to Soviet amphibious landings, and Bulgaria had left the Axis earlier in the month. By the end of the year Budapest was besieged, and already German civilians in East Prussia had experienced the horror and brutality that was to feature so prominently in the Russian advance into Germany in 1945. Warsaw fell in January despite Stalin’s cynical delays. Budapest fell in February, by which time Russian forces were carving their way through northern Germany along the Baltic up to the Elbe River. Everywhere the Germans resisted fiercely, often inspired by the columns of civilian refugees who were attempting to flee westwards, but no coherent defensive front could be maintained. At numerous points, such as in Konigsberg and Kurland, German troops fought on, surrounded, their continued resistance serving to tie down Soviet forces. Vpered Na Berlin Page 3 ©TooFatLardies 2013 On the 16th of April of 1945 the Red Army assaulted the Seelow heights and the Oder river, the final defensive lines before Berlin. For three days the battle raged, but ultimately the Soviet victory was unavoidable as one million men faced just over 100,000 Germans. Within days of their breakthrough the Soviets encircled Berlin itself and, over the period of three weeks, fought their way into the very heart of the Reich. The suicide of Hitler and the fall of Berlin to Stalin’s forces was the final death spasm of a Germany which had been dying by inches since the failure of Kursk in Summer 1943. Soviet losses of 6,000,000 men in combat and over 3,000,000 as Prisoners of War, combined with Axis losses of over 5,000,000 men and a further million in Soviet prison camps, testify to the bitterness of the fighting on the Eastern Front where two equally reprehensible totalitarian regimes fought to the bitter end. This supplement is designed to allow you to refight the battles of 1943 to 1945 on the Eastern Front, from the fall of Stalingrad to the ruins of Berlin. The forces listed within present a far wider range of options than previous embodiments of the rules, with far more options for armoured forces than before. We have focussed on the main protagonists in the conflict; the Soviet Union, Germany, Finland, Romania and Hungary, but also looking at the irregular Partisan forces and their German and local opponents in Russia and Yugoslavia. The lists have been compiled using a broad range of sources but, as with all such projects, can only represent a snap‐shot of some of the forces that were involved in the conflict. Organisational structures changed with use and with the development of new weapons and equipment, and they were also subject to more pragmatic modification within front‐line units. Undoubtedly the gamer will find variations on themes that differ from those presented here. We are very happy to see that happen. I Ain’t Been Shot Mum is a flexible enough system to allow you to field any variations that you wish in order to represent specific units in action. What is included here may be considered a starting point for your own research. If you find that a Regimental history suggests a differing structure for a battle you wish to refight then do use that rather than the general “official” variations here within. Vpered Na Berlin Page 4 ©TooFatLardies 2013 2 Introduction 59 Hungarian Forces 5 Contents 60 Puskás Század 6 Using this Handbook 62 Felderitö Század 63 Heygi Század 8 German Forces 64 Huszár Század 9 Grenadier Kompanie 65 Gépkocsizόlovesz Század 11 Volksgrenadier Kompanie 67 Harckocsi Század 13 Kavalerie Schwadron 68 Páncélos Felderitö Század 14 Panzer Kompanie 69 Rating Your Hungarian Forces 15 Panzergrenadier Gepanzerte 70 Hungarian Armoury Kompanie 71 Hungarian Weapon Rules 16 Panzer Grenadier Kompanie 73 17 Aufklarungs Kompanie Finnish Forces 18 Panzerspah Kompanie 74 Jalkaväkikomppania 19 Fielding German AFVs 76 Jääkärikomppania