The Kamenets-Podolsky Pocket 1944 : Encirclement of Hube’s 1st Panzer Army

A detailed exploration of a critical month-long battle, which set the stage for German strategic-level defeats on both the Eastern and Western fronts. In February 1944, 1st Panzer Army (under Generaloberst Hube) played a major role in the relief operation that saved part of the German forces trapped in the Korsun Pocket. However, the losses suffered in that effort left Hube’s forces materially weakened, exhausted and with vulnerable flanks. Unexpectedly, Zhukov’s 1st Ukrainian Front and Konev’s 2nd Ukrainian Front attacked on 4 March, conducting a huge pincer operation against 1st Panzer Army. Within three weeks, Hube’s 200,000-strong army was isolated, with its back to the Dniester River. The destruction of Hube’s army would doubtless precipitate a rapid German collapse on the Eastern Front – two months before the Allied invasion of France. In this work, Eastern Front expert Robert Forczyk presents a superbly illustrated examination of the initial Soviet encirclement operation, Hube’s full-scale breakout operation to save his army, and the relief operation by 2nd SS-Panzer Corps (redeployed from the West) in April 1944. Although Hube’s army managed to escape Zhukov’s trap, it lost most of its equipment and was no longer fully combat capable. The German Army in the East had been seriously weakened, and the amount of German armour deployed in the West to counter any Allied landings in France had simultaneously been reduced.