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The Globe At War |
This Month in History: March 1944 |
March 1944 - Hube's Pocket - Page Two However, the 1st Panzer Army, led masterfully by Generaloberst Hans-Valentin Hube, would successfully fight free. The Germans, led by Hube and Manstein, would use surprise, timely decision making and flexible organization to extricate the 1st Panzer Army from what initially seemed to be an impossible situation. First, Hube, having already sent many headquarters and other such personnel to safety when he had the chance, organized the remaining combat troops into two huge columns moving in parallel with assault guns and infantry in the vanguard and the panzers guarding the rear. Most importantly, under Manstine's orders, Hube's pocket retreated west into Poland, not south into Romania as Zhukov and Konev expected given a southern move offered easier terrain for the Germans to negotiate. In addition, Hube also had support from outside the pocket; in the form of the II SS Panzer Corps, which included the 9th and 10th SS Panzer Divisions and 100th Jager and 367th Infantry Divisions. On the other side of the ledger, and from the beginning of the pocket's formation, the overall Soviet effort to eliminate 1st Panzer Army faltered badly. In the critical early days, as Hube's force began moving west, Zhukov and Konev mistakenly continued to bolster the pocket's southern flank believing that would be the direction of the main breakout and relief attempt - a belief abetted by successful German deception efforts. In addition, the ring around 1st Panzer Army was far from secure and took several days to tighten up. Moreover, the Soviet tank army's holding important sections of the encirclement had been horribly denuded in strength after a full month on the offensive and in taking tremendous losses against German tank crews and anti-tank weapons. This left many of the most important Soviet blocking armies vulnerable when the relatively fresh II SS Panzer Corps began to hammer eastward into them from outside the pocket. That said, Hube faced considerable difficulties if for no other reasons than those posed by a lack of fuel and poor weather; the first days of the escape faced heavy snow followed by thaws producing a muddy mess of roads and exacerbating his losses in vehicles. Nevertheless, in an operation studied to this day and lasting nearly two weeks, 1st Panzer Army, while being partially resupplied by the Luftwaffe, moved west over 100 miles to reach safety on April 6th when its advance elements linked up with the II SS Panzer Corps. Though Hitler sacked Manstein, perhaps his best operational level commander, and though 1st Panzer Army only was able to bring out minimal amounts of heavy equipment Hube had lost only 6,000 men. Thus, 1st Panzer Army was able to move into the reformed German defensive lines as a coherent force; albeit one desperately in need of rest and re-equipping. Previous Page by Steven Douglas Mercatante Map Courtesy of: Department of History, United States Military Academy Return to This Month in History Main Page |