Whilst the 6th Army’s retreat considerably shortened the line that Kleist now had to hold, Manstein’s stretched between Vinnitsa and Rovno; furthermore, there had been heavy losses in the fighting at Korsun’, Nikopol’, and Krivoy-Rog, with the Panzer divisions in particular being reduced to an average of about 30 tanks, about 20 per cent of their normal strength.
Of 152 Pzkw IV and V tanks.
According to the calculations of Army Group "South”, January and February had been expensive months for the enemy, who had lost 25,353 prisoners, 3,928 tanks, and 3,536 guns; but as Manstein rightly points out in his memoirs:
"These figures only served to show the enormous resources at the Red Army’s command. The Russians were no longer merely hurling in infantrymen-the drop in the number of prisoners to the amount of arms captured or destroyed showed either that they had been able to save men by sacrificing arms and equipment, or that they had suffered enormous losses in manpower.”
At Rastenburg, the Germans were counting upon the combined effects of these losses and of the thaw to slow down, then halt, the Russian advance. The staff sections of Army Group "South” were much less optimistic: the Russians still had 50 to 100 tanks per tank corps, making a total of 1,500 against less than 400 for the Germans. Secondly, radio Intelligence showed that between Rovno and Mozyr’ another front, the 1st Belorussian Front (commanded by General Rokossovsky) was coming into being.
Faced with this information, Manstein reformed as best he could to reinforce his 4th Panzerarmee, which barred the enemy’s advance towards Tarnopol’ and Chernovtsy. Thus Generals Wohler and Hube were forced to give up five Panzer divisions to Raus, who also received three infantry divisions from O. K.H.
World History
