* The final surrender at Stalingrad did not put a stop to the fighting in the region. The Germans were off-balance and had to be pressed. Most importantly, German Army Group A was way out on a limb in the Caucasus, and if the Red Army moved fast they could cut off the Germans and bag the lot of them, just as they had bagged 6th Army at Stalingrad.
Alexander Werth observed Red soldiers on the move through the dark and frost, the path lit by a string of bonfires along the road:
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Such was the endless procession coming out of Stalingrad; lorries, and horse sleighs and guns, and covered wagons, and even camels pulling sleighs -- several of them stepping sedately through the deep snow as if it were sand. Every conceivable means of transport was being used. Thousands of soldiers were marching, or rather walking in large irregular crowds, to the west, through this cold deadly night. But they were cheerful and strangely happy, and they kept shouting about Stalingrad and the job they had done.
Army Group A's Kleist was perfectly aware that his head was in a noose that was going to cinch lethally tight around his neck at any moment. The Red Army was ten times closer to Rostov, his escape hatch out of the region, than he was. He wanted to withdraw immediately, but the order came back from Hitler: Stand your ground.
Kleist knew it was a death sentence, but Hitler quickly came around to the realization that any course of action other than withdrawal was completely mad. The next day Kleist received orders to pull out and bring everything he could carry with him. He didn't need to be told twice. When the Red Army reconquered Rostov (again!) on 14 February 1943, Army Group A was already out of their reach. Hitler was so relieved that he made Kleist a field marshal, in essence rewarding him for conducting a retreat. Obviously, circumstances were now looking much different to the Fuehrer than they had a year or two earlier.
By this time, the Soviet drive west was bogging down as troops outran their supply lines and German resistance solidified. In any case, the German excursion into the Caucasus was over, and they
wouldn't be back there again. It was the German high-tide mark in the East.
* In the meantime, the Red Army had launched yet another offensive on the northern flank of the Axis lines, retaking the town of Kursk on 8 February and then grabbing Kharkov back from the Germans on 16 February. The city had been depopulated by the war, reduced from its prewar population of 900,000 to about 300,000. Large numbers of its citizens had fled, tens of thousands had died of deprivation or been murdered by the Germans, and about 120,000 young people had been carted off to Germany in slavery.
The recapture of Kharkov was another bright moment for the Red Army, but the celebration was short-lived. Within days, the Germans performed a counterattack of their own, Manstein's Army Group South (as Army Group B had become in the meantime) driving back on Kharkov. The assault was spearheaded by the 2nd SS Panzer Corps, consisting of the "Das Reich", "Leibstandarte
(Bodyguard) Adolf Hitler", and "Totenkopf (Death's Head)" divisions under the command of Lieutenant General Paul Hausser.
Hausser had lost an eye and a chunk of his jaw during the fighting in the USSR in 1941, giving him something of the appearance of an old chewed-up alley cat. He was just as combative, and his men were all dedicated SS troops, an elite, totally dedicated to Naziism and Adolf Hitler. The Fuehrer was not happy with Hausser at the moment, since the general had been ordered to stand and fight to the last man in Kharkov. Hausser didn't see the point of it and broke out on his own initiative. The 2nd SS was still on the run when Papa Hoth, Hausser's commander, ordered the counterattack on 19 February. Hausser, now able to fight a battle of maneuver, turned on the Soviet Sixth Army, and with the help of the 48th Panzer Corps gave the overextended Soviets a brutal beating, inflicting tens of thousands of casualties and destroying hundreds of Red tanks for minimal losses of his own.
Hausser's panzers arrived at the outskirts of Kharkov on 9 March. He had been ordered to simply surround the city, but was allowed to make a "reconnaissance" into it if he thought it best. Taking a liberal interpretation of the meaning of "reconnaissance", he sent the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler division into the center of the town while the Das Reich and Totenkopf divisions performed the encirclement, joining hands on 15 March. By this time, Soviet troops in the city had been almost completely crushed. The SS troops were merciless, charging into a hospital to shoot the wounded in their beds, then torching the building.
The Red Army had proven at Stalingrad that they could beat the Germans; at Kharkov the Germans had proven that they should not be underestimated. The Soviets took the hint, and in fact it was the last major defeat they would ever suffer at German hands.
* Fighting lingered on for the moment in the Kuban region around the Taman Peninsula, the eastern gate to the Sea of Azov across from the Kerch Peninsula on the Crimea. Red Army forces had landed on the Taman in early February to pose a threat to the German rear, but the Germans had kept them bottled up, and in mid-April they launched a massive counterattack to push the Soviets back into the sea. The Germans were halted and the Red Army performed a counter-counteroffensive that didn't do much better. The fighting finally fizzled out in early May.
The ground force action in the Kuban was inconclusive, but it was a major Soviet victory in another respect: the Red Air Force finally achieved air superiority over the Germans on a level playing field. Soviet pilots flying Yak-1s, the Bell P-39, and other fighters managed to take the measure of German pilots in their Messerschmitts, with a dozen or more VVS pilots claiming ten or more kills of German aircraft. A Ukrainian pilot, Lieutenant Dmitri Glinka, was the star of the show, claiming 21 kills, while Alexander Pokryshkin, who had been a leader in trying to encourage the VVS to adopt more modern fighter tactics, scored 20.
Both flew P-39s, a type that was not generally liked back in America because it had poor high-altitude performance and some handling problems. It was, however, sturdy and heavily armed, and in the hands of a Red pilot that knew how to use it, dangerous to the enemy at low altitudes. VVS pilots liked it greatly, calling it the "Little Shaver". Soviet aircraft were undergoing an evolution at the time as well, with the good Yakovlev Yak-1 being developed into the better Yak-3 and the "heavy" Yak-9, and the despicable LaGG-3 "flying coffin" undergoing a makeover with a new, more powerful engine to become the formidable Lavochkin La-5, which would lead to the improved La-7.
The Germans would no more prove to be a pushover in the air than they were on the ground, but the days when the Luftwaffe regarded fighting the Red Air Force as "infanticide" were over, and as Soviet aircraft improved in quantity and quality the balance would tip steadily against the Germans in the air.