By July 12 the situation facing the Soviet armies in the Caucasus region was becoming increasingly grim under the impact of the German
Case Blue. Early that morning Stalin had the
STAVKA issue a directive that renamed
Southwestern Front as
Stalingrad Front and added the 1st, 5th and 7th Reserve Armies and the
21st Army to its composition. 62nd Army was directed to occupy a line west of the
Don River with
64th Army and other forces. 62nd Army was under command of Maj. Gen.
V. Ya. Kolpakchi and had six rifle divisions under command, including the 33rd Guards. German 6th Army was ordered to continue its eastward advance as soon as possible after July 17, but this was delayed by heavy rains; it was not until the 20th that
LI Army Corps' lead divisions were able to engage and defeat the forward elements of 62nd Army on the Tsutskan River. By late on the next day five of the Army's divisions were deployed uniformly south to north across the Great Bend of the Don from
Surovikino on the
Chir River to
Kletskaya on the Don. 33rd Guards was responsible for a sector 18 km wide roughly in the center of this line. On July 22 the
XIV Panzer Corps and
VIII Army Corps caught up and by the evening Kolpakchi reported that his divisions were engaging German tanks and infantry all along the line. The
3rd and
60th Motorized and
16th Panzer Divisions advanced rapidly the next day, tearing through 62nd Army's forward security belt and advancing 24–40 km, about halfway to the crossing points over the Don at Trekhostrovskaya and
Kalach. By this time the 6th Army commander, Army Gen.
F. Paulus, was planning to encircle 62nd Army west of the Don with his XIV Panzer and VIII Corps as a preliminary to an advance on Stalingrad. During this fighting Guards Jr. Sgt. Pyotr Osipovich Boloto, an anti-tank rifleman of the 84th Guards Rifle Regiment, led three of his men with two
PTRS rifles to a height between the 2nd and 3rd Battalions where a group of 30 German tanks were beginning to break through at the boundary. In the ensuing action the group knocked out 15 panzers, with Boloto himself accounting for eight, and the remainder withdrew. The news of this feat was soon broadcast and published around the USSR and a full-page photo of Boloto appeared on a motivational leaflet entitled "Learn to Fight With the Stalingraders!" On November 5 Boloto became the division's first
Hero of the Soviet Union.
Fighting in the Don Bend Paulus' two pincers made substantial advances on July 24. His two motorized divisions sliced through the
192nd Rifle Division on the Army's left wing and moved more than 50 km southeast to within 10 km of Kalach. 16th Panzer and the
113th Infantry Division penetrated the center of the line and forced Kolpakchi's forces back another 15 km towards the Don; 33rd Guards reported it was in battle with a group of 150 tanks. By the end of the day the division was loosely encircled on the high ground in the Maiorovskii region along with portions of the 192nd and
184th Rifle Divisions plus the 40th Tank Brigade and 644th Tank Battalion. At this critical moment XIV Panzer Corps had to slow its advance due to acute fuel shortages and stiff resistance north of Kalach. Col. K. A. Zhuravlyov, chief of 62nd Army's operations department, was flown in to take command of the encircled units. Kolpakchi began organizing counterattacks by most of the
13th Tank Corps to break through 16th Panzer while Zhuravlyov, who was out of communication with the rear, ordered his group to break out northward toward Kletskaya. Over the next two days the two German pincers fought hard to complete their encirclement against sharply increasing Soviet attacks. VIII Corps' 113th and
100th Jäger Divisions, supported by most of 16th Panzer's tanks, had to simultaneously contain two Soviet bridgeheads south of the Don, defeat and destroy Group Zhuravlyov, and fend off attempts to relieve the pocket. The overall position of 6th Army became more difficult as the new
1st and
4th Tank Armies entered the fray. Zhuravlyov's force remained hard pressed and late on July 27 Kolpakchi reported:By nightfall the tanks of 13th Tank Corps had driven a deep wedge through the forward defenses of 16th Panzer, despite being reduced to a strength of about 40 vehicles. At 1500 hours on July 28 the 13th Tanks linked up with 40th Tank Brigade and units of the 192nd and 184th Divisions. In desperation, Paulus ordered elements of VIII Corps to move southward both to block any attempt by Group Zhuravlyov to withdraw to the east and to relieve elements of 16th Panzer which were now encircled. A swirling and confused battle continued through the last days of the month. On July 29 Zhuravlyov ordered a breakout to the northeast to link up with 22nd Tank Corps which was reported to be advancing to the rescue. Burdened with 500 wounded and running out of fuel and ammunition, the Group followed the remnants of 13th Tanks in a two-day running battle, finally reaching 4th Tank Army's lines near Oskinskii and Verkhne-Golubaya late on July 31. The total force amounted to 5,000 men, 66 tanks and two artillery regiments. The next day the German forces reported destroying a similar number of tanks in the region and taking 2,000 prisoners. Colonel Zhuravlyov was seriously wounded in the escape, but survived. As of July 30 the 62nd Army reported that 33rd Guards had 5,613 men on its strength, which would suggest that only part of it had been in the pocket. The balance of the division (primarily the 91st Guards Rifle Regiment) remained in 62nd Army's Don bridgehead west of Kalach. From August 1–6 the German 6th Army was forced to stand motionless due to further shortages of fuel. Attacking southward on August 7 from the Maiorovskii region, 30 km northwest of Kalach, multiple battlegroups of 16th Panzer smashed through the defenses of 33rd Guards and
131st Rifle Divisions and reached the northern outskirts of the town by nightfall. The remaining units in the bridgehead fared no better from the tank and infantry onslaught and shortly after dark the
24th Panzer Division linked up with the 16th to complete its encirclement. 33rd Guards took over a defensive sector from units of the 181st Division along a line from Hill 189.9 to Hill 191.2 to Berezovyi. The next day the two panzer divisions began pressing the eastern face of the pocket back towards the west while divisions of the LI,
XI Army and
XXIV Panzer Corps drove in other sectors of the perimeter. A summary from the headquarters of 62nd Army noted that the current location of the division was unknown. On August 9 the 33rd Guards and 181st were located in the Plesistovskii-Dobrinka region and had been ordered to fight their way to Kalach. By 0400 hours the next morning they had reached to within 22–25 km northwest of this objective, but on August 11 the Army stated it had lost communications with four encircled divisions including 33rd Guards. 6th Army announced the completion of the battle the following day, along with the elimination of eight rifle divisions; Soviet documents indicate that roughly half of the encircled troops managed to escape east across the Don but as of August 20 this included just 48 men of the 91st Guards Regiment.
Defense of the City On August 15 Colonel Afanasyev was appointed to command of the 2nd formation of the
5th Airborne Corps and was replaced by Col.
Aleksandr Ivanovich Utvenko. This officer would be promoted to the rank of major general on October 14. In mid-August the division was brought back together in the reserves of the newly created
Southeastern Front for a much-needed refitting. When 6th Army began its dash for the Volga on August 21 the division was thrown in to help man defenses south of the corridor east of the
Rossoshka River. By August 24 it was defending the sector from Novo-Alekseevskii west to Dmitrievka with the
196th Rifle Division and four battalions of the 115th Fortified Region. At dawn on August 26 the LI Corps began a general assault against 62nd Army which drove back the 196th towards the Rossoshka, and in the last days of the month the remainder of the Army withdrew to that line as well. By September 3 only 62nd Army and about half of 64th Army were defending the approaches to the city proper. On the same date the division was ordered as follows: While this looked good on paper the division, along with the 196th and the 20th Motorized Rifle Brigade, were only shells of their former selves, with regiments numbered in the hundreds of men and battalions in the tens. The best the Army could do to help was to allocate the 38th Motorized Rifle Brigade as backup. The 6th and
4th Panzer Armies went over to the offensive that day and continued to advance on Stalingrad on September 4, forcing the remnants of the two Soviet divisions back southeastward toward Opytnaia Station and the wooded northern slopes of the Tsaritsa River valley. There they reinforced the defenses of the 42nd Rifle Brigade. During the next day the 33rd Guards was part of a force consisting of the
35th Guards and 131st Rifle Divisions that was holding its own against 24th Panzer. This tough defensive fighting came at a cost, and as of September 11 the division had been reduced to just 864 men, which was not the worst case in 62nd Army. The next day it was pulled from the front line for refitting, but before the end of the month it was withdrawn east of the Volga where it was assigned to the 1st Reserve Army in the Reserve of the Supreme High Command. On October 22 the
STAVKA reestablished Southwestern Front and the next day formed the new
1st Guards Army from 4th Reserve Army and 2nd Guards Army from 1st Reserve Army. The Army formed up in the
Tambov region and was to be combat ready by November 25. 33rd Guards was assigned to
1st Guards Rifle Corps with the
24th Guards and
98th Rifle Divisions. The division would remain in this Corps until early 1944. 2nd Guards was earmarked for assignment to either
Western Front or
Don Front, but circumstances would decree otherwise.
Operation Winter Storm Operation Uranus, the Soviet offensive to encircle the German forces at Stalingrad, began on November 19, and the encirclement was completed on November 23. In response the German High Command formed Army Group Don with the goal of relieving the trapped armies. Operation Winter Storm was launched on December 12 from the area of
Kotelnikovo and made large gains on the first day. Alarmed by this development, the
STAVKA ordered the 2nd Guards Army to force-march to the region southwest of Stalingrad to counter this offensive. By now the 33rd Guards had been substantially rebuilt with a young cadre; 95 percent of its personnel were Russians or Ukrainians from the year groups 1922–1928. On November 29 Lt. Gen.
R. Ya. Malinovskii had been appointed to command the Army; 2nd Guards was a large army by Soviet standards with more than 122,000 men, 2,325 guns and 469 tanks. Moving all of this took time and the bulk of these forces didn't arrive at the front until December 18 although 1st Guards Corps had disembarked some distance to the north five days earlier. The Army proceeded to take up defensive positions behind the Myshkova River, although by this time the German counteroffensive had largely been fought to a standstill. The strategic position had also been altered when Southwestern and
Voronezh Fronts launched
Operation Little Saturn on December 16 which soon had Army Group Don and the other Axis forces in the Caucasus region scrambling to save themselves.
Tormosin Offensive Planning for an operation to push back Army Group Don began even before 2nd Guards had fully reached the front. By December 24 the Army Group commander, Field Marshal
E. von Manstein, had transferred the
6th Panzer Division west of the Don, leaving his
LVII Panzer Corps with little to oppose a Soviet advance on Kotelnikovo. In order to fill the gap between the Little Saturn and Kotelnikovo drives, the
STAVKA issued orders to
5th Shock and
5th Tank Army to begin an offensive westward across the Don and Chir rivers in the direction of
Tormosin; this was reinforced by roughly half of the forces of 2nd Guards, which would join in 5th Shock's attack on December 29. The immediate objective was to encircle and destroy Corps Mieth, consisting of the
336th and
384th Infantry Divisions and assorted smaller commands under command of Army Gen.
F. Mieth as part of 4th Panzer Army. The main forces of 2nd Guards Army had already thrust south across the
Askay River with its right flank, including 1st Guards Corps, beginning to march across the Don. On the first day of the offensive the 33rd Guards forced a crossing just north of Verkhne-Kurmoiarskii, assisted by light tanks of the
2nd Guards Mechanized Corps. These formed the leading units of an operational group led by Maj. Gen.
Ya. G. Kreizer, the Army's deputy commander, which also had the
4th Cavalry Corps and the
300th and
387th Rifle Divisions under command. During the afternoon the division advanced on Chapurin and Aginov. Over that night the 2nd Guards Army was transferred to the new Southern Front; the 333rd Guards would remain in this Front (renamed 4th Ukrainian on October 20, 1943) until May 1944. Late in the evening of December 31 the 2nd Guards Mechanized liberated Tormosin although due to a communications error this news did not appear in the
STAVKA summary until January 2, 1943:By now the German Group Bassenge was retreating westward to the
Tsimla River to link up with
11th Panzer Division while the 384th and the right wing of 336th Infantry were also withdrawing in the same direction. These moves brought the Tormosin offensive to an end. ==Drive on Rostov==