was the first time in the war Malinovsky had commanded a unit that was near full strength in both troops and equipment. In September and October 1942, he went on the offensive. His territorial gains were marginal, but he denied the Germans an opportunity to encircle Stalingrad from the north, and, slowed down, they decided to push into the city. Later that month, Stavka dispatched Malinovsky to the Voronezh Front as its deputy commander; in December 1942, he was sent back to Stalingrad. There the Red Army achieved its greatest success to that point in the war: on 22 November the Red Army fronts encircled the German Sixth Army. The German Army Group Don, commanded by Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, gathered its Panzer troops in the town of Kotelnikovo west of Stalingrad and launched a desperate counterattack to save the Sixth Army. Malinovsky led the powerful Soviet Second Guards Army against Hoth. In vicious fighting he forced the Germans to retreat, breached deeply echeloned and well-prepared German defenses, and destroyed the Kotelnikovo army grouping. It was the first World War II large-scale clash of armor to be lost by Germany. Malinovsky's victory sealed the fate of 250,000 German and other Axis Powers soldiers trapped in the Stalingrad pocket. Stalin promoted Malinovsky to colonel general, and awarded him with the highest Soviet decoration for outstanding generalship — the Order of Suvorov of the 1st degree. In February 1943, Malinovsky resumed his command of Southern Front, and in less than two weeks he expelled Manstein from Rostov-on-Don, opening the road to Ukraine to the Red Army. In March 1943, Stalin elevated him to rank of Army General and gave him command of Southwestern Front, tasked to drive German troops away from the industrially rich Donbas. Through a sudden attack in mid-October, Malinovsky managed to surprise a large German force in the region's key city of Zaporizhia and captured it. The campaign split German forces in the South and isolated German forces in Crimea from the rest of the German Eastern Front. On 20 October, the Southwestern Front was renamed 3rd Ukrainian Front. From December 1943 to April 1944, Malinovsky smashed the German Army Group South, and liberated much of the southern Ukraine, including Kherson, Mykolaiv and his home city of Odessa. By that time, according to Khrushchev's opinion, Stalin grew much more confident of Malinovsky's loyalty. Romania and Hungary In May