Balck hoped it would continue to hold until his panzer division’s deployment was complete.
Since the Soviets’ priority was to break German resistance at Stalingrad first, the Chir front line had managed to hold thus far. However, the entire 60-kilometer front line had only one lone field gun and one mobile field howitzer.
With the help of construction battalions and rapid response forces, the Romanians had managed to cobble together a new front line along the Chir River. Balck, driving forward with his operations officer, Major Kienitz, met his old friend, Colonel Walther Wenck, who was serving as Romanian 3d Army’s German chief of staff. On the night of December 1, 11th Panzer Division was alerted to move immediately to support the crumbling Romanian 3d Army just north of XLVIII Panzer Corps. Balck therefore expected the Soviets to continue attacking positions held by Germany’s allies along the middle Don to the north to draw off German reserves assembling for Manstein’s counterattack. Balck wanted to get a better appreciation for the broader situation, yet Tippelskirch’s assessment of the Italians wasn’t encouraging. That evening, Balck met General of Infantry Kurt von Tippelskirch, the German overseer of Italian 8th Army, deployed just north of the boundary between Army Group Don and Army Group B. Along the Chir River, a weak front manned by quick reaction forces had been able to hold the line because the bulk of Soviet forces were tied down at Stalingrad. The battlefield situation had somewhat stabilized. On November 27, Balck and his division staff were at Manstein’s Army Group Don headquarters. Stalingrad was some 70 miles northeast, on the Volga River’s western bank. (See What Next, General? in the November 2012 issue of ACG.) At that time, XLVIII Panzer Corps was deployed south of the Chir River, near its confluence with the Don at Nizhna Chirskaya. Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, commander of the newly formed German Army Group Don, planned to relieve 6th Army with an attack from the south by General Hermann Hoth’s 4th Panzer Army, supported on its left by XLVIII Panzer Corps, which Balck’s 11th Panzer Division was moving to join.
The Soviet offensive had broken through Romanian 4th Army south of the Don, and on November 21 Soviet forces completed the encirclement of German 6th Army, besieging it in Stalingrad. It will cost us dearly.” The “fleeing allies” to which he was referring were the shaky divisions of Germany’s Italian, Romanian and Hungarian allies on the Eastern Front. When German army Major General Hermann Balck read that, he knew what it meant – he and his command, 11th Panzer Division, were the “countermeasures.” Balck also knew what he faced, writing in his journal, “There is one thing we must be clear about: obscure conditions, Russian breakthroughs, uncontrollably fleeing allies, and the division arriving piecemeal. The various Wehrmacht Reports at the time mentioned that countermeasures were being initiated. In late November 1942, Soviet forces broke through the front- line positions held by Germany’s World War II allies at the Great Bend of the Don River in south Russia. On World War II’s brutal Eastern Front, a German general fought one of history’s greatest divisional battles. A Study in Command: General Balck’s Chir River Battles, 1942 | Historynet Close