The Southern Russian front isn’t retreating, it’s a full-blown rout. Things are still stable in the North, but there are no reserves left in the South, having been used up at Kursk, or diverted to Italy.
The Romanian and Hungarian Armies have been ARGELY destroyed, although some severely understrength Romanian Units are still fighting in Crimea. I read in an article that at one point in October, the entire southern front could muster just 33 tanks of all types, against the thousands of advancing Soviet tanks.
Though the Soviets are almost beyond their logistics right now, the only effective German organization in the entire south at this point is 4th Panzer, operating around Kiev, and the units trapped in Crimea.
Ever since the Germans called off Citadelle, the Soviets have been on the attack in southern Ukraine. For most of July and August, the German southern armies fought hard and gave ground grudgingly. The Soviet press releases like to boast of the German “body counts” but never mention their own losses. By western standards, those losses have been staggering. The Wehrmacht is quite adept at killing Soviet soldiers. But Stalin has developed a core of brutal generals who don’t care about casualties so long as they can preserve their army in being.
How are they doing this? There is a reason the Soviet press accounts like to trumpet how they have liberated “inhabited localities” and trumpet how they freed civilians from the Germans who would have shipped them to the west. If those “liberated inhabitants” are men between 15 and 45, they are getting a scrap of uniform, a weapon, at best a few days’ “training,” some vodka and then sent to the front to extract their revenge on the fascist invaders. Yes, they are motivated to kill Germans. But they aren’t very good at it and are dying by the hundreds of thousands. So long as the Red Army keeps going to the west, those men will be replaced by the next score of “populated places” to be liberated. Thus, like the Krell monster in “Forbidden Planet,” the Red Army is being continuously destroyed only to continuously renew itself at the same time.
So even if the Germans are killing way more men than they are losing, the Soviets are replacing their losses. The Germans cannot. Now in the 5th consecutive month of ceaseless, bitter combat, the Wehrmacht has been ground down and reduced to a gutted, burned out husk. Hitler thinks the Soviets will have to stop sometime, but all those trucks that we’ve given them are being put to good use. The Red Army won’t let up for several more months, and the Germans aren’t going to get any meaningful respite.