It is February 1943. The Soviet winter offensive is two months old. The German Sixth Army has surrendered at Stalingrad, but the Soviet attacks against the German front in southern Russia continue. Stalin smells victory and pushes his mechanized spearheads onward, westward, toward the Dnieper. But Field Marshal Erich Von Manstein, commander of Army Group Don, is about to unleash his famed "backhand blow," a well planned and executed counteroffensive that will catch the Soviets off balance and bring their winter offensive to a halt in a dramatic turnabout known by the Germans as "the miracle on the Donets." As part of the first stage of this counteroffensive, The SS Panzer Corps strikes south, in the direction of Pavlograd, in an effort to link up with the 48th Panzer Corps driving northward and to pinch off the lead elements of the Soviet Sixth Army. On the morning of 19 February, a kampfgruppe of the battle-hardened 2d SS Panzergrenadier Division--Das Reich--pushes south and finds the right flank of the advancing Soviet Sixth Army.