THIS MONTH IN HISTORY KHARKOV

FEBRUARY 1943

The Third Battle of Kharkov was a series of battles on the Eastern Front of World War II, undertaken by the German Army Group South against the Red Army, around the city of Kharkov between 19 February and 15 March 1943. Under Field Marshal Erich von Manstein they launched a Kharkov counterstrike (known to the Germans as the Donets Campaign) using the fresh II SS Panzer Corps and two panzer armies. It resulted in around 80,000 Soviet and 4,500 German losses. It is sometimes described as the last time the German army won anything on the eastern front in WWII.