Eastern Front #51 Disaster at Donetz

Descripción

Last time we spoke about the second battle of Kharkiv. In Crimea, German armored thrusts move through difficult mud, creating a narrow escape corridor but eventually completing the encirclement of the Soviet 51st Army by reaching the Sea of Azov. Soviet attempts to counterattack fail because the 47th Army is too weak and lacks tank or artillery support, while communications to available artillery regiments are severed, leaving them idle. Soviet air coordination is also paralyzed by missing orders. The 51st Army surrenders, and many troops rout toward Kerch, where intense air attacks sink transport vessels and firebomb Kerch to hinder evacuation. As Soviet forces evacuate, a notable holdout forms in the Adzhimushkay Quarry, lasting 170 days despite shortages. Meanwhile, the Soviet offensive around Kharkiv initially breaks through German lines quickly and uses tank-heavy pressure. However, German counterattacks, air disruption, and, crucially, Soviet failure to commit reserves and mobile armor on time cause the breakthrough to stall. This episode is Disaster at Donetz Well hello there, welcome to the Eastern Front week by week podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. Last week Timoshenko launched his Southwestern Front into a daring offensive that had at first shaken the German 6th Army, creating deep breakthroughs that endangered the entire southern sector of the Eastern Front and possibly allowed the recapture of the key city of Kharkov. Now, this week, the German preparations to respond to Timoshenko—long in the planning and using carefully conserved reserves from Army Group South—were at last prepared to be released in a crushing counterstrike. In the far north, the occasional fighting in Finland and the Arctic theater once more started to quiet down, although this pause came at the high price of intensifying the already tense relations between Germany and its Finnish co-belligerent. Meanwhile, both Germany and the USSR kept up their urgent race against time and the elements to get ready for fresh large-scale battles around the vital axes of Moscow and Leningrad, where winter counteroffensives had left both sides exhausted but without resolution. In Finland, the 3rd Corps’ counterattack near Kestenga stayed hopelessly bogged down amid the lingering effects of the spring rasputitsa, the seasonal thaw that turned roads and fields into quagmires of knee-deep mud. Three Finnish regiments had tried a flanking movement against the solidly entrenched Soviet positions, but the impassable terrain made any outflanking impossible, forcing the Germans to commit their own units to expensive frontal assaults in an effort to break the Soviet lines head-on. This grinding combat continued until May 21st, when the Soviets finally began an orderly withdrawal under pressure. Following closely behind them, elements of the 3rd Corps succeeded in regaining most of their original lines by the 23rd. At that point, however, General Siilasvuo ordered an immediate stop to further advances, even though this went against orders from General Dietl and left German and Finnish forces short of occupying the most favorable local defensive terrain in the surrounding hills and forests. Deeply worried that issuing a public rebuke might push the Finns toward abandoning the partnership altogether, Dietl reluctantly let Siilasvuo’s orders remain in place. Privately, though, Dietl acted to limit Siilasvuo’s authority to pull troops from the frontline, hoping to keep tighter operational control over future actions. This relatively minor battle only served to further inflame the growing tensions between Finland and Germany that had been building since the previous autumn. Many German officers on the ground increasingly felt they were being forced to carry the bulk of the heavy lifting in what was supposed to be a joint partnership, with Finnish units often holding back from decisive engagements. The German liaison officer embedded with the 3rd Corps complained directly to Dietl that German troops had carried out virtually all of the intensive offensive operations within the corps since May 15th. Indeed, the Army of Lapland War Diary entry for May 23rd captured the broader German frustration in explicit terms: “In the course of the recent weeks the army has received the growing impression that the Commanding General, III Corps, either on his own initiative or on instructions from higher Finnish authorities, is avoiding all decisions that could involve Finnish troops in serious fighting.” This friction was symptomatic of a deeper and longstanding political reality: Finnish Commander-in-Chief Marshal Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim had never fully embraced Germany’s expansive strategic ambitions for the far north. As early as the autumn of 1941, he had made clear to his own government that Finland’s war aims remained strictly defensive and limited in scope. As Mannerheim later reflected candidly in his memoirs, Finland was “a co-belligerent, not an ally”—a subtle but vital distinction that the Germans found increasingly maddening and unsustainable as the grueling Arctic campaign dragged on without decisive progress. By May 22nd the ice covering Lake Ladoga had finally melted enough to restore full nautical navigation after the long winter freeze. The steamer Gidrotekhnik, towing several heavily laden barges, became the first vessel to complete the critical supply run from Kobona on the eastern shore to Osinovets on the western side, delivering desperately needed food, fuel, and ammunition directly into besieged Leningrad. In its wake, a growing flotilla of additional vessels rapidly began to follow, reopening the vital “Road of Life” naval route that would sustain the city through the coming months of renewed German pressure. Near Leningrad itself, the fighting flared up once again in the Lyuban salient as Soviet forces trapped there made a final, desperate bid for survival. After an entire week wasted in high-level debates over the precise details of their withdrawal plan, the encircled troops of the 2nd Shock Army finally attempted to escape their suffocating pocket. Yet instead of the orderly, phased withdrawal that Khozin and STAVKA had envisioned, the operation quickly devolved into chaotic and haphazard skirmishes across the swampy, forested terrain. The 2nd Shock Army had already suffered catastrophic losses, with 60 to 70 percent of its strength eroded by relentless combat, desertions, and the slow toll of starvation as food supplies dwindled to almost nothing. Command and control had collapsed to such an extent that entire Soviet formations began fragmenting into disorganized groups of survivors. Those units closest to the outer edges of the pocket surged eastward in a frantic bid to reach the safety of the Volkhov River, often abandoning equipment and wounded in the process. Nevertheless, enough organized elements of the army still held together to maintain a viable perimeter, enabling them to beat back several probing German attacks. These German probes had been launched precisely because of the rising tide of Soviet deserters, who painted a picture of an army on the brink of total collapse. The deserters also confirmed that a general withdrawal was underway, a suspicion reinforced when German observers spotted large-scale troop movements exiting the corridor on May 21st and 22nd. Radio traffic interruptions further convinced the Germans that General Vlasov was relocating his command post. Vlasov himself later painted a harrowing picture of his army’s plight in a radio message to Leningrad Front headquarters, reporting that his men were reduced to “eating tree bark and leather” while ammunition stocks hovered near exhaustion. Appeals for emergency food drops and reinforcements went largely unheeded, as the logistical nightmare far exceeded the limited capacity of Soviet aviation to deliver meaningful aid under heavy German fighter cover. Meanwhile, the parallel offensive by the neighboring 59th Army, intended to link up with and relieve the 2nd Shock Army, also ended in failure. Its divisions were woefully understrength, hampered by chronic shortages of artillery and tank support that left them unable to punch through determined German defenses. Compounding the problem, the narrow corridor formed a vulnerable junction between three separate Soviet armies that proved incapable of effective cooperation, with each headquarters operating in isolation and failing to synchronize efforts. On May 21st, STAVKA issued urgent demands for the 2nd Shock Army to break out, accompanied by sweeping new orders for the entire Leningrad Front. These were formally codified as Stavka VGK directive no. 170406, addressed to the Leningrad Front commander and outlining the missions and reorganization of the Volkhov Group of Forces. The 8th, 54th, and 52nd Armies were instructed to remain strictly on the defensive, while the Front as a whole was tasked with clearing the Kirishi and Gruzino regions by June 1st. The 2nd Shock Army itself was ordered to withdraw, simultaneously eliminating the dangerous Spasskaia Polist’ bulge in coordination with the 59th Army. Once these immediate objectives were secured, the Volkhov grouping was to transition fully to the defensive along the entire line from Lake Ladoga to Novgorod. As part of the broader restructuring, the Volkhov grouping would be split into two distinct commands: the 54th and 8th Armies would form the new Ladoga group, while the 4th, 59th, 52nd, and 2nd Shock Armies would continue as the Volkhov Group proper. This reorganization reflected STAVKA’s growing recognition that fragmented command structures had contributed heavily to the recent disasters. STAVKA went further, issuing detailed orders for the extensive improvement of fortifications held by the 54th, 8th, and 52nd Armies. It was deemed necessary to spell out even the most basic principles—such as constructing defenses in depth with mutually supporting lines of fire—because previous efforts had proven woefully inadequate. All positions were to be meticulously camouflaged, with special emphasis placed on defending population centers, key terrain features, and vital road junctions through dense networks of minefields and obstacles. Displaying an extraordinary degree of distrust in the local commanders’ competence, STAVKA explicitly required that minefield locations be carefully recorded on maps and reported upward. To bolster these efforts, heavy reinforcements were promised to begin arriving by mid-June, signaling Moscow’s determination to stabilize the northern theater before the Germans could renew their drive on Leningrad. Last week had seen the dramatic opening of Timoshenko’s Kharkov offensive, which achieved early successes with a 56-kilometer-wide and 25-kilometer-deep advance that briefly threatened to unhinge the German southern flank. However, the northern prong had already stalled due to the unexpectedly swift commitment of German reserves, far earlier than Soviet intelligence had anticipated. The 38th Army found itself under ferocious combined-arms assaults from panzer units and the Luftwaffe, ultimately driven back to the defensive river line near Velyka Babka. There, a brutal war of attrition unfolded, rapidly drawing in six of the eight available Soviet tank brigades in the sector and consuming precious reserves of fuel and ammunition. Meanwhile, the 28th Army had made painfully slow progress against a network of stubborn German village strongpoints, such as Ternova, which continued to be resupplied by Luftwaffe airdrops even after being bypassed. These localized fights had devoured a disproportionate share of the Southwestern Front’s logistical capacity and VVS air support, leaving the intended Mobile Group—meant to exploit any breakthroughs—idling uselessly some 20 kilometers behind the frontline, unable to capitalize on fleeting opportunities. This pattern of intense, seesaw fighting carried over into the current week, with both sides launching repeated attacks and counterattacks across the muddy terrain. On May 17th, for instance, a coordinated German push by elements of the 71st and 168th Infantry Divisions, backed by the 3rd and 23rd Panzer Divisions, overwhelmed the Soviet 244th Rifle Division, forcing it to retreat alongside the neighboring 168th. The action not only relieved the long-besieged garrison at Ternova but also compelled a minor withdrawal by the 38th Army to safeguard its exposed flank. German panzers attempted to exploit the breakthrough, only to be halted cold by the determined stand of the 13th Guards Division on the 38th Army’s wing. It was during this very engagement that the first Order of the Patriotic War 1st Class was awarded—to Artillery Captain Krikly, whose battalion was credited with destroying 34 enemy tanks and blunting the entire German assault. Krikly himself was gravely wounded, and the vast majority of his gunners became casualties, yet the 13th Guards Division as a whole claimed to have accounted for over 100 panzers across its defensive actions in the sector. Timely Soviet reinforcements eventually allowed the line to be stabilized between Pylna and Grafovka, prompting the 21st Army to be shifted onto the defensive. By the end of May 17th, only the 28th Army continued pressing the northern attack. That same evening, however, developments farther south forced Timoshenko to order both the 28th and 38th Armies back onto the offensive. The goal was to tie down the two German panzer divisions in the area and distract enemy reinforcements from the more critical southern sector. In reality, neither army possessed the strength to exert any meaningful influence on events unfolding to the south, highlighting the growing strain on Soviet command and resources. Meanwhile, Golikov’s Bryansk Front saw its own supporting offensive formally cancelled on May 17th. General Bodin personally delivered the new directives to headquarters: the 40th Army was to launch an immediate attack, backed by the full weight of the Front’s VVS air assets, in order to relieve pressure on Timoshenko’s hard-pressed forces. Yet the 40th Army was nowhere near ready, plagued by incomplete mobilization and supply shortages. Despite Golikov traveling personally to the army headquarters to accelerate preparations, the attack came too late to matter. Bagramian would later lament this missed opportunity in his postwar writings, noting that the Front’s formidable strength—ten rifle divisions, eleven rifle brigades, and more than 300 tanks—could have dramatically altered the course of the entire Kharkov battle had it been committed in time. Farther south, the Southern Shock Group had enjoyed greater initial success, carving out a penetration 40 kilometers deep across a 55-kilometer-wide front. Soviet spearheads reached the outskirts of Berestyn, and bridgeheads were secured across the Berestova River. These gains, however, had begun to exact a heavy toll on the assault formations, which had still not achieved the objectives originally projected for completion by May 15th. Ammunition shortages grew acute for the attackers, especially for Group Bobkin, which operated more than 190 kilometers from its nearest supply bases. By stark contrast, the German defenders—pushed back onto their own well-stocked depots around Berestyn—enjoyed virtually unlimited resupply. The second wave of Soviet forces remained uncommitted, held idle 20 to 42 kilometers behind the front, awaiting the elusive moment to exploit a breakthrough that never fully materialized. Soviet intelligence initially believed that all local German reserves had already been committed, but reconnaissance soon revealed columns of reinforcements rushing toward Kharkov from as far afield as Belgorod and even Rostov. The Germans could move these forces freely thanks to the relative passivity of neighboring Soviet fronts. In addition, Army Group South was hurriedly feeding various German police, security, and auxiliary formations—including Romanian and Hungarian units—directly into the frontline to plug gaps and buy time for the panzers. The German counteroffensive, launched by Kleist’s 1st Panzer Army as the southern pincer of Operation Fridericus, caught everyone by surprise. The Soviets had not anticipated any major enemy action from this direction, and somehow the 9th Army failed to detect the sudden arrival of three additional infantry divisions and an extra panzer division massed directly in front of its positions. For their part, the Germans had not expected the Soviet 9th Army to disintegrate so rapidly upon contact. Field Marshal von Bock had come close to cancelling Kleist’s offensive altogether, fearing phantom Soviet reserves west of the Donets River might trap the assault forces. Instead, Bock proposed an impractical alternative that would have required Kleist’s troops to somehow “teleport” across vast distances to threaten Dnipro and Poltava. Supported by both Kleist and Paulus, Hitler intervened decisively, overruling Bock and insisting that the original Fridericus plan be executed without deviation. In practice, the German assault forces steamrolled most of the Soviet defenders, though isolated pockets mounted stubborn resistance. The Barvinkove garrison initially repelled the first German attacks but was forced to surrender later that day once the town was fully encircled. The 5th Cavalry Corps succeeded in holding Dovhenke despite receiving no orders, while the 333rd and 51st Rifle Divisions managed to retain control of key Donets River crossings. By nightfall on May 17th, the 3rd Panzer Corps had advanced an impressive 24 kilometers, with the supporting infantry of the 16th Army covering 27 kilometers in the same period. In his memoirs, Bagramian would later complain bitterly about the Southern Front’s failures, describing Malinovskiy’s handling of reserves as “incomprehensible” and accusing the front of effectively handing the Germans an open flank on a silver platter. He wrote: “We had counted on the Southern Front to hold firm. Instead, within hours of Kleist’s blow, that flank had ceased to exist as a coherent defensive force.” Bagramian faulted Malinovskiy for squandering reserves earlier in unordered and unauthorized attacks—such as the recent fiasco against Mayaky—and for failing to entrench forces properly in anticipation of a German counterstroke. Those same reserves had been earmarked in Bagramian’s planning to repel any penetration of the 9th Army. Malinovskiy did manage to dispatch the 296th Rifle Division and 3rd Tank Brigade to shore up the Pisky-Radkivski crossing, and he officially transferred the battered 5th Cavalry Corps to the 9th Army, retroactively endorsing their earlier independent actions. Yet the sheer speed of the German advance quickly overwhelmed Soviet command structures. By the end of May 17th, Malinovskiy had lost contact with both the 9th Army headquarters and the committed reserves. Compounding the disaster, the 9th and 57th Armies had been deployed in a single, shallow defensive echelon only about four kilometers deep, with no meaningful divisional reserves held back. Fortification work had been neglected, leaving both armies dangerously exposed. Readiness levels remained low due to staff negligence, and the Southern Front’s VVS contributed almost nothing—managing just 62 sorties on May 17th against more than 2,000 flown by the Luftwaffe, which dominated the skies and hammered Soviet columns relentlessly. Because several high-profile figures from the Southwestern Front—including the future Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev—were directly involved, the precise details of the Soviet high command’s response remain clouded by postwar political disputes and attempted cover-ups. Contemporary evidence suggests, however, that both STAVKA and the Southwestern Direction commands initially viewed the German threat as manageable and easily containable through local reserves. Timoshenko directed the 23rd Tank Corps toward the 56th Army’s sector with orders to counterattack toward Barvinkove by May 18th. STAVKA released two rifle divisions and two tank brigades to reinforce the collapsing 9th Army, though these units would require three full days to reach the battlefield. Internal debates raged over whether the 6th Army should halt its own offensive to free up strength for a counterblow against Kleist, but Timoshenko and his staff remained confident they could contain the German thrust while pressing onward toward Kharkov. Consequently, on May 18th the Soviet Sixth Army pressed its attack forward. In several sectors, tanks achieved local breakthroughs, yet every penetration was swiftly sealed off by aggressive German counterattacks, leaving the frontline essentially unchanged from dawn. At the same time, the 9th Army continued its rapid collapse, with panic beginning to infect the neighboring 56th Army. Neither formation mounted a coherent defense, allowing German forces to reach the Donets River north of Izyum with alarming ease. In the years after the war, Khrushchev and Bagramyan would insist they had urged an immediate halt to the 6th Army’s offensive once Kleist’s threat became clear, claiming that Stalin, Vasilevskiy, and Timoshenko stubbornly refused to alter course. Khrushchev’s memoirs recount a personal telephone call to Stalin on May 18th in which he pleaded for cancellation, only to be told curtly, “The offensive must proceed. Timoshenko reports the situation is under control.” Khrushchev claimed he felt “sick with dread” upon hanging up. Vasilevskiy maintained that he too had tried to warn Stalin directly, receiving the reply, “Do not panic. Trust the Front commanders.” Yet Zhukov offered a sharply contradictory account in his own memoirs, Reminiscences and Reflections, asserting he had been present for the conversations and heard no such alarms from Khrushchev or Bagramyan. Archival records of contemporaneous reports and radio messages strongly support Zhukov’s version, suggesting the postwar claims were crafted largely to shield personal reputations after the disaster. Meanwhile, Bock and Kleist grew increasingly uneasy, worried they might be walking into a Soviet trap because of the puzzling absence of any meaningful enemy reaction. Their original intent had been merely to draw Soviet forces away from the beleaguered German 6th Army, yet the Soviets appeared to ignore the threat entirely. Bock confided to his diary on May 18th: “Kleist’s advance is proceeding almost too smoothly. The enemy does not react. I cannot escape the feeling that we are missing something—that reserves are being withheld and will fall upon us suddenly.” The next phase called for the 3rd Panzer Corps to wheel westward along the south bank of the Bereka River—a maneuver less immediately dangerous than the northern thrust the Soviets had already overlooked. Kleist therefore proposed a cautious crossing of the Bereka to preserve the option of a northward drive should the enemy continue to ignore the westward shift. On May 19th the 14th Panzer Division seized a small bridgehead at Petrovskoye, narrowing the Izyum neck to just 24 kilometers and denying the Soviets one of their few usable Donets crossings. Throughout May 19th, the German 8th Corps noted that Soviet attacks against its positions were growing steadily weaker and more disorganized. Luftwaffe reconnaissance flights reported large Soviet formations shifting southeastward, away from the 8th Corps. Acting on his own authority, Timoshenko finally ordered a full cessation of the offensive that evening. The German Sixth Army promptly reported: “The enemy’s offensive strength has cracked. The breakthrough to Kharkov is therewith prevented.” Timoshenko then redirected the 6th Army and Group Bobkin against Kleist’s forces and angrily demanded that Riabyshev destroy the Germans in his sector to free up units for the new crisis. Initial Soviet successes on May 20th were quickly erased by counterattacks from the two German panzer divisions. The newly arrived 88th Infantry Division captured portions of Murom, but the gain was not exploited because more promising opportunities beckoned elsewhere. On May 19th, both Bock and Hitler recognized the dramatic shift in momentum and agreed to press on to the original goal of Operation Fridericus: a complete encirclement. Kleist was ordered to race northward to link up with the 6th Army near Balakliia, trapping every Soviet unit inside the salient. Bock instructed the panzers to attack at once following his conversation with Hitler. The next Donets crossing at Protopopivka was to be seized “under all circumstances and as soon as in any way possible.” It fell early on May 20th, though the 14th Panzer Division was left holding only a narrow 13-kilometer-deep by 2-kilometer-wide corridor. The main body of the 3rd Panzer Corps, which had been pushing westward to crush the 57th Army as far west as possible, was forced to reverse course. German commanders harbored deep misgivings about the reliability of the Romanian divisions anchoring the western sector—misgivings heightened when one Romanian division commander abruptly took leave upon learning of the impending offensive. Consequently, the 3rd Panzer Corps executed a grueling night march to reinforce the vulnerable 14th Panzer bridgehead. Simultaneously, Bock pressed the cautious Paulus to launch a southward attack with the 3rd and 23rd Panzer Divisions as the northern arm of Fridericus. Paulus, ever methodical, required personal insistence from Bock before committing his armor. That night Bock recorded in his diary with palpable relief: “…tonight, I have given orders aimed at completely sealing off the Izyum bulge. Now everything will turn out well after all!” Over the following days the German panzers methodically ground forward through stubborn resistance. By May 23rd the 23rd and 16th Panzer Divisions linked up 16 kilometers west of Balakliia, establishing a 16-kilometer-wide barrier that severed the Soviet forces inside the salient from safety. The 6th and 57th Armies, together with Group Bobkin, were now fully encircled. All were critically short of fuel and ammunition after two weeks of nonstop combat. General Kostenko was rushed forward to assume overall command of the trapped Soviet troops in the Izyum pocket. The outcome was catastrophic. When Timoshenko attempted to explain the disaster to Stalin, he reportedly admitted that the speed of Kleist’s northward pivot had been “unexpected” and that the Southern Front’s collapse had rendered any organized response impossible. Stalin’s reaction, according to those present at Stavka, was one of icy fury. After a long, ominous silence following the encirclement report, he simply stated: “See to it that they break out. That is all.” The terse order concealed neither his rage nor any promise of mercy. To the south, General Kurochkin abandoned his 17-day offensive aimed at crushing the Ramushevo corridor on May 20th. The operation had achieved little beyond inflicting heavy losses on the attacking Soviet divisions and causing temporary supply disruptions to the German 2nd Corps around Demyansk. The frontline stabilized along the Lovat River. After-action reports cited the failure on inexperience in reducing large encircled forces, a persistent underestimation of German defensive capabilities, and repeated misreading of enemy intentions. They also highlighted the chronic Soviet failure to fortify junctions between cooperating armies—a vulnerability the Germans had exploited since the opening days of the war. With Soviet offensives in the north seemingly exhausted for the moment, the German 2nd Corps turned its attention to rebuilding its depleted ranks and stockpiles. It also focused on subduing the local civilian population and partisan bands, whose resistance had been inflamed by earlier Soviet paratrooper infiltrations. General Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt ordered the civilian population to harvest crops within the occupied salient for German use, while the 10th Corps pressed locals into forced labor to repair the Staraya Russa–Demyansk road and construct bunkers and shelters along the frontline. At the same time, the 16th Army directed the laying of a narrow-gauge railway from Staraya Russa toward the Pola River to improve logistics. Soviet artillery dominance over the narrow Ramushevo Corridor prevented its extension all the way to Demyansk. Group Zorn retained responsibility for defending the corridor itself, now under the command of General Knobelsdorff. Engineers worked feverishly to fortify positions across the entire 16th Army front; in front of the 123rd Infantry Division alone, more than 22,000 mines and 400 rolls of barbed wire were emplaced to create an impregnable defensive belt. Behind the lines of Army Group Center, Operation Hannover—the planned reduction of Soviet partisan forces and encircled units in the rear areas—was postponed once again by heavy rains that once more turned the ground into thick, impassable mud. Despite persistent rain clouds still blanketing the region on May 23rd, General Heinrici ordered the offensive to commence on the 24th anyway, determined not to forfeit the element of surprise. The delay had given the Abwehr time to attempt its own elaborate deception. Since late 1941 the German military intelligence service had been training turned Soviet prisoners of war as diversionist agents. Some 350 of these agents, organized as the Experimental Organization Center, were assigned to Army Group Center for Operation Hannover. They were infiltrated gradually into the operational area of General Belov’s cavalry corps with orders to assassinate Belov and his staff and sow confusion by issuing false orders and disinformation to Red Army units. The plan backfired spectacularly. One of the agents deserted back to the Soviet side, providing Belov with precise advanced warning of the German offensive. This intelligence allowed the majority of the diversionists to be hunted down and eliminated. Belov later recalled that the deserter’s information was startlingly detailed—he could name German assembly points and even the approximate date of the attack. “It was,” Belov wrote, “as if the Germans had sent us their operational orders by courier.” By May 21st Belov was fully aware that the Germans were forming into two assault groups. While subordinate commander Kazankin saw to it that his own formation dug in along the designated line, he neglected to secure the critical Ugra River crossing or coordinate a joint defense plan with Belov. This oversight occurred despite Kazankin’s forces having been officially subordinated to the newly created “Special Group of General Belov,” established by Zhukov on May 20th. The special group granted Belov unified command over his cavalry corps, airborne detachments, and all partisans operating in the region. A planned airlift to reinforce the grouping had also been organized, but poor staff work and organizational chaos hindered the effort despite sharp reprimands from Zhukov. Only 1,663 of the intended 9,000 reinforcements arrived, and only a tiny fraction of planned equipment deliveries materialized, leaving Belov’s forces critically understrength for the coming fight. It was also during this week that the first of the Germans’ super-heavy artillery pieces began arriving in the vicinity of Sevastopol, although even after delivery many would require weeks before becoming fully operational. The colossal Dora railway gun, for example, would need six weeks and its 2,000-man crew to assemble after its scheduled arrival on May 26th. General Erich von Manstein, the meticulous commander overseeing the siege artillery preparations for 11th Army, approached the task with characteristic thoroughness. In his postwar memoirs Lost Victories he emphasized that the reduction of Sevastopol demanded “the most careful coordination of all arms,” adding that he harbored no illusions about the difficulty: “The fortress was one of the strongest in the world. Its garrison was brave and its commanders determined. We could not afford a single mistake in the sequence of the attack.” Eventually more than twenty different calibers of artillery would be concentrated before Sevastopol, creating minor logistical bottlenecks. The Dora arrived with a mere 48 rounds, while the three Karl-Gerät mortars brought only 122 shells between them. Much of the actual German firepower would come instead from more reliable Czech-manufactured pieces—sixteen 30.5 cm mortars and sixteen 14.9 cm Škoda howitzers—precisely because abundant stocks of ammunition were available for these weapons. On May 19th the Sevastopol Defense Region received orders to complete its final defensive preparations in anticipation of an imminent German assault. Between January and May 1942, Soviet convoys had successfully delivered some 35,000 replacements while evacuating 9,000 wounded from Petrov’s Coastal Army. Petrov now commanded a force numbering between 106,000 and 188,000 men and women—106,000 representing combat-effective strength across eight full-strength divisions plus supporting brigades and regiments, while the higher figure included all rear-echelon and support personnel. The garrison possessed roughly 600 artillery pieces, though none matched the scale of the largest German siege guns. Thousands of civilians had already been evacuated from the city to reduce the burden on supplies. Meanwhile, the Crimean Front was officially disbanded, and the North Caucasus Theater was downgraded to Front status. It remained under Marshal Budenny, with explicit orders to safeguard Sevastopol at all costs and prevent any German or Romanian landing on the Taman Peninsula that might open a second front in the Caucasus. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals [http://www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals]. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. German panzers drive through weak Soviet defenses, supported by overwhelming Luftwaffe air power, while Soviet reserves are mishandled, poorly fortified, and too slow to arrive. Attempts to halt or redirect the offensive are tangled in command and political disputes, with later memoir conflicts over whether Stalin was warned in time. By late May, German forces seal the Izyum salient, encircling large Soviet formations including the 6th and 57th Armies and Group Bobkin. The trapped troops face catastrophic shortages and are ordered to break out.

Eastern Front #52 Operation Hannover

Last time we spoke about the disaster at Donetz. At the start of May 1942, Germany’s Operation Fridericus triggered a sudden counteroffensive from Kleist’s 1st Panzer Army toward Kharkov. The Soviets failed to detect the buildup and, when Kleist’s thrust hit, the 9th Army collapsed rapidly; reserves were poorly pre-positioned, fortifications were neglected, and the Southern Front’s air activity was negligible against Luftwaffe dominance. Soviet attempts to contain the breakthrough—through hurried tank corps moves and delayed redeployments—could not stop sealed penetrations or halt the German advance to key Donets crossings. Elsewhere, German plans to neutralize Soviet partisans (Operation Hannover) were disrupted by successful deception and intelligence leaks around Belov. Meanwhile, heavy siege artillery and Soviet preparations at Sevastopol signaled the next phase of the campaign. This episode is Operation Hanover Well hello there, welcome to the Eastern Front week by week podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. Last week’s success at Kestenga had come at the price of growing friction between Dietl and Siilasvuo. This tension arose because the latter had issued orders that lacked approval from Army Command, and the Germans had formed the impression that Finnish troops were showing reluctance to take part in intense combat. The combined German and Finnish losses at Kestenga reached 5,500, while those at Zapadnaya Litsa totaled 3,200. In exchange, the Finnish 3rd Corps asserted that it had caused 15,000 Soviet casualties. The Finns also maintained that Soviet losses in the rear areas were likewise substantial because of artillery barrages and air strikes. Meanwhile the Mountain Corps Norway reported that it had inflicted 8,000 Soviet deaths at Zapadnaya Litsa. These differences in casualty figures—whether accurate or inflated—nonetheless illustrated the brutal, grinding character of the fighting in the far north, where rugged terrain, thick taiga forests, and an almost complete lack of roads compelled both sides to fight for every frozen streambed and forest path at extremely close quarters. The disagreement persisted into the current week. Irritated by Dietl’s decision to restrict his authority, Siilasvuo directed the removal of every Finnish unit from the German zone of operations. He further insisted that all horses and carts previously loaned to the Germans be returned inside three days. Such a step would have stripped the Army of Lapland of any logistical capacity whatsoever. Dietl was therefore forced to plead with Siilasvuo in the spirit of comradeship-in-arms so that the Germans would not be abandoned in a difficult situation. The incident highlighted a persistent weakness in Axis coalition operations: Finnish officers, mindful of their nation’s separate war goals centered on reclaiming the lands lost in 1940, resented being placed under German operational control and were unwilling to accept heavy losses for aims they viewed as serving purely German interests. The Finnish 3rd Corps had remained subordinated to the Army of Lapland throughout the winter because Mannerheim had continued to show interest in restarting joint Finnish–German actions aimed at Murmansk. In addition, the German 5th and 7th Mountain Divisions, which had been scheduled to relieve the Kestenga sector, had been unable to reach Finland because winter ice had sealed the Finnish ports. Faced with this emergency, Dietl insisted that every German formation be made fully self-sufficient and independent of Finnish assistance as quickly as possible. He also urged the OKH to speed up the arrival of the 7th Mountain Division, part of which was still tied down with Army Group North. The deeper strategic difficulty was one that Germany had never managed to solve: the Murmansk railway kept delivering Allied supplies far into the Soviet heartland, and as long as the Finns refused to push south against it, the Army of Lapland simply lacked both the manpower and the logistical reach to cut the line on its own. Back on the 21st, Convoy PQ 16 had departed. Comprising 35 merchant ships, 4 cruisers, and 3 destroyers, it ranked among the largest convoys yet sent to the USSR. During the voyage it would also be reinforced by three additional Soviet destroyers. The lengthening daylight hours rendered submarine attacks too hazardous but favored the operations of naval bombers. On the 27th, 100 high-altitude Ju-88 bombers together with 8 He-111 torpedo bombers struck the convoy and succeeded in sinking only four vessels. Nevertheless, the attackers’ use of mixed altitudes had confused the defensive anti-aircraft fire and caused it to lose concentration. This same approach would be employed repeatedly over the following four days in a series of raids against the convoy. Altogether these air assaults sank 6 ships. One merchant vessel was lost to a German submarine, and another ship struck a Soviet mine upon reaching Murmansk. Moreover, many of the surviving merchant ships that made it into Soviet ports had sustained heavy damage. Despite these setbacks, the great majority of the convoy’s cargo arrived safely in Soviet harbors, proving that even under repeated Luftwaffe pressure the Arctic supply route stayed open. The tanks, aircraft, raw materials, and foodstuffs carried by PQ 16 and the convoys that followed were flowing straight into the Soviet war economy at a time when the Red Army was suffering enormous losses across several fronts at once. In parallel, Germany kept up its air offensive throughout May in an effort to disrupt the flow of supplies reaching Leningrad. On the 28th a large raid involving more than 100 aircraft targeted Kobona and Lednyovo. Yet only limited damage was caused, while ground-based flak batteries brought down 19 of the bombers. On the 29th another raid struck Osinevets but again produced only minor effects. Newly installed radars had helped Soviet fighters disrupt these attacks. After these disappointments, Luftwaffe focus shifted back to the frontline situation involving the Volkhov group of forces. The sole exception involved 15 Bf 109s that were detached from JG 54 and sent to the Finnish airfield at Petäjärvi. Their mission was to attack Soviet barge traffic on Lake Ladoga. Despite flying 104 sorties, however, they failed to sink even one vessel. The inability of these Bf 109s to produce results typified a wider Luftwaffe problem: fighter aircraft were ill-suited for anti-shipping strikes against scattered small craft operating near their own shore-based flak defenses, and the expanding Soviet radar network was steadily eroding the surprise on which such interdiction missions relied. Despite the German attempts, maritime traffic across Lake Ladoga continued to grow throughout the week as the ice disappeared. By the 28th the first convoy sailed from Novaia Ladoga to supply Leningrad. By December 1942 more than 200 ships would ply this supply route, transporting an estimated 779,586 tons of cargo. Half of that total would consist of foodstuffs. As Glantz records: “Of this cargo, 50 percent was foodstuffs, 15.4 percent coal, 16.7 percent lubricants, and 17.9 percent weaponry and other military cargoes. The foodstuffs primarily consisted of flour, grain, macaroni, butter, fat, meat, sugar, preserves, and chocolate. In addition, the city received 4,186 sheep and goats, 7,723 small cattle, 4,388 horses, 41,638 cubic meters of wood, 5,967 tons of various goods, and 1,300 tons of medical supplies.” Raw materials were also delivered to restart the military industry inside Leningrad. During the same period 310,000 combat replacements were shipped into the city, further transforming it into a fortress. At the same time 539,597 civilians and an additional 292,900 tons of factory equipment were evacuated from Leningrad. The opening of the lake route therefore marked a decisive change in Leningrad’s strategic situation. The city that had endured the most severe starvation of the winter—when daily rations had dropped to as little as 125 grams of bread for dependents—was gradually being reconnected to the rest of the Soviet war economy. The simultaneous evacuation of civilians and factory equipment alongside military resupply reflected a deliberate Soviet policy of adjusting Leningrad’s population to a level that could be fed and defended, while at the same time safeguarding the industrial capacity that had once made the city the second metropolis of the USSR. After all the indications of a Soviet withdrawal that had appeared the previous week, on May 24th Küchler informed Lindemann that it would be extremely unfortunate to allow the Russians to slip away. Consequently the 18th Army was ordered to launch an offensive to stop the 2nd Shock Army from escaping. Responsibility for the attack fell to the 1st and 38th Army Corps, which together fielded 5 infantry divisions, 1 motorized division, and the 2nd SS Infantry Brigade. The weather, however, had other plans. The ground was far too saturated to support an offensive. After observing still more troops leaving the pocket on the 25th, Lindemann asked the commander of the 38th Corps, Haenicke, whether he could launch an attack with a clear conscience on the 27th provided he received air support. Haenicke initially consented, but the weather deteriorated again before the conversion was even finished. Only on the 30th did the rain finally ease and the ground dry sufficiently to permit an assault, although conditions remained extremely muddy. The delay proved agonizing from the German viewpoint: every hour that elapsed allowed more Soviet troops and equipment to filter through the narrow corridor, and Küchler was sharply aware that his opportunity to close the pocket permanently was shrinking. The Volkhov swamplands, which had already swallowed men and vehicles all winter, now worked against the very encirclement operation that the Germans had spent months preparing to carry out. Despite the assault force suffering 30 percent casualties, the Erika route was cut that evening. During the night the two German corps linked up near the Erika lane, and by midday on the 31st they had established a firm cordon around the 2nd Shock Army with strong defenses oriented both east and west. As a result the 2nd Shock Army continued to starve inside its pocket and grew ever more dependent on eating the vegetation around them. In June, A. Baziuk wrote home: “We ate everything that could be eaten . . . [including] tree leaves and fir cones. We boiled old horse bones and gnawed on them. I say nothing about the bark—all the trees around us were stripped. Any insects, worms, and frogs were used as food. Birch sap was of great help, but, in the middle of May, it disappeared, and we suffered distressingly until the end of June.” Baziuk’s letter, along with others of its kind, conveyed the real character of the 2nd Shock Army’s suffering in a manner that operational maps and order-of-battle charts could never achieve. Vlasov’s army had entered the Volkhov swamps in January as a powerful offensive formation meant to relieve Leningrad. By late May it had been reduced to a band of starving men clinging to waterlogged forest clearings, no longer fighting for map objectives but simply struggling to remain alive long enough to be rescued. After nearly a year of internal political maneuvering, Lavrenti Beria had failed in his bid to obtain exclusive authority over the Partisans. On the 30th the Communist Party established a Central Headquarters of the Partisan Movement that reported directly to STAVKA. Ponomarenko was named its chief, and regional partisan headquarters would be formed beneath this central command. The directive also spelled out six primary missions for the partisans: disrupting enemy supply and communications infrastructure, destroying enemy equipment stored in warehouses or on airfields, raiding enemy rear installations such as headquarters, and furnishing the Red Army with reconnaissance data. Although the senior leaders remained Communist Party members, the move signaled a transition toward greater Red Army oversight of the partisan effort. Additional Red Army and NKVD personnel were sent behind German lines to expand recruitment and supervise operations. The establishment of the Central Headquarters amounted in many respects to a belated recognition of what the partisan movement had already shown on its own: that occupied Soviet territory was not passively submitting to German rule. The main task ahead would be to convert hundreds of scattered, locally organized groups into a unified strategic tool capable of inflicting real operational damage on the Wehrmacht’s rear services. Ponomarenko himself was a party official rather than a military professional, yet the directive’s stress on Red Army and NKVD liaison officers indicated that military competence, not political loyalty alone, would now shape the movement’s future course. Much like the German 16th Army, Kurochkin took advantage of the pause in combat to reorganize his units around Demyansk. The 27th Army was assigned to screen Staraya Russa, the 11th Army was positioned north of the Ramushevo Corridor, and the 1st Shock Army was placed to its south. The 34th and 53rd Armies continued to hold the ring around the Demyansk salient. STAVKA decided to grant the Northwestern Front time to restore its formations to full strength after months of exhausting combat. Its next major operation was provisionally scheduled for early July. By then the Front would have assembled more than 300,000 troops and would be strengthened by the 6th Air Army. The Demyansk pocket remained an unusual feature of the northern sector of the Eastern Front: a German force of roughly 100,000 men, isolated since February, that had refused to disintegrate despite Soviet pressure and was instead kept alive by a Luftwaffe airlift that placed heavy strain on German transport aircraft and established a risky precedent. Both sides had poured vast resources into the pocket—Germany to maintain it, the Soviet Union to eliminate it—without either side achieving a conclusive outcome. For STAVKA, the reduction of Demyansk before the summer campaigning season offered an appealing goal, yet the heavy cost of the winter fighting had made a fully prepared offensive impossible until the troops could be rested and brought back up to strength. On the 24th, planning began in the Western and Kalinin Fronts to resume their offensives against Army Group Center. Once again the focus would be Rzhev. Halder recorded in his diary on the 24th and 26th that Soviet forces were concentrating in growing numbers in the Belyi area and concluded that an offensive there was probably imminent. The Rzhev salient—a westward bulge in the German line—had preoccupied the Soviets ever since the winter counteroffensive. Soviet commanders had correctly calculated that eliminating the salient would shorten the front, free up substantial forces, and push German supply lines farther away from Moscow. What they could not fully anticipate was the determination with which German troops, especially those of Model’s 9th Army, had turned the interior of the salient into a dense web of mutually supporting strongpoints, anti-tank ditches, and meticulously registered artillery kill zones. Also on the 24th, beneath pouring dawn rain, German artillery signaled the beginning of Operation Hanover. Elements of six German divisions, supported by powerful Luftwaffe air cover, crashed into Kazankin’s Airborne Corps. The 6th Partisan Regiment at Vskhody was immediately overrun by the 19th Panzer Division, which also forced the 8th Cavalry Regiment backward. The Soviets did succeed, however, in destroying the bridge, thereby denying the Germans a crossing of the Ugra River at that point for several days. The Germans pushed northward to seize Selishche and Selibka in an effort to isolate the Airborne Corps from the Ugra River crossings. From the north the 197th Infantry Division marched five hours to reach Ugra station and the rail bridge spanning the river. The Germans had not anticipated capturing Ugra and Vskhody until the second day of the operation. Radio traffic believed to originate from Belov’s command post inside the emerging pocket appeared to show signs of panic. Only 16 km remained to close the ring completely. Kluge and Heinrici were already congratulating themselves and their soldiers on a brilliant success. Their confidence was understandable: on paper the operation had exceeded expectations, the Soviet forces seemed disorganized, and the encirclement looked only days from completion. What German intelligence had failed to appreciate was the extent to which Belov’s cavalry and Kazankin’s paratroopers had become seasoned survivors in the forests behind German lines, able to display a resilience and inventiveness that would frustrate German plans for weeks to come. All along the front line the airborne troops were pushed back. Zhabo’s 1st Partisan Regiment was compelled to fall back to a new position between Nadezhada and Kombain after losing 60 percent of its strength. This created a gap more than 10 km wide in the airborne defensive line and also drove the partisans away from the Airborne Corps. The 8th Brigade was assaulted at the town of Bol’shaia Myshenka by 3,000 German infantry and 20 tanks. After suffering 20 percent casualties the Soviet infantry were forced northwest in disorder. One company, however, was completely cut off and fought to the last man. During the day Belov had asked Zhukov for assistance from the 50th Army. He received only vague assurances that the Western Front would mount an offensive in early June. Therefore the sole remaining hope lay in withdrawing the Airborne Corps and linking the two groups together. Kazankin pulled back northwest during the night. His objective was the Ugra River crossing at Selibka so that he could join Belov. Yet the lead battalion of the 8th Brigade discovered a German company occupying the village that blocked the crossing. The Soviets possessed no proper bridging equipment for the 120-meter-wide river. Consequently the airborne troops had to use the dense forest for cover while they quietly reconnoitered the riverbank. Torrential rain had halted major German movements, even grounding their Storch reconnaissance aircraft. An improvised footbridge was also attempted using eight large pine trunks, but the structure repeatedly broke apart under the force of the river current. The Ugra, swollen by spring runoff, at that moment hindered the Germans as much as it hindered the Soviets—small comfort to exhausted paratroopers attempting to carry their wounded across a 120-meter torrent on makeshift pine-log rafts in the middle of the night. Then on the 26th six small boats were discovered on the Soviet side of the river at the ferry landing in Pishchevo. A thin telephone cable was rigged as a guide wire, and these boats were laboriously employed to ferry the airborne troops across during the 26th and 27th. The continuing foul weather fortunately prevented the Luftwaffe from interfering with the crossings. As a result it was not until the 27th that the Germans resumed their advance to seize the entire Ugra River line. Their forward elements did not link up until nightfall on the 27th because of repeated counterattacks mounted by Belov’s Cavalry Corps. The 6th Guard Regiment, supported by two T-26 tanks, had driven the Germans back across the Ugra at Vskhody. Meanwhile the 3rd and 7th Regiments had hurried to Sorokino to secure that river crossing. German artillery nevertheless managed to fire on the final battalion while it was still crossing. One company was unable to get across and chose to conceal itself in the swamplands to the southeast. There it would remain until July 15th, when it finally rejoined the 50th Army near Zaitseva Gora. The rear-guard company was also isolated. It fought its way out of the encirclement and returned to the Airborne Corps by the 29th. Back on the 26th Kazankin had ordered a withdrawal toward Podlipki through the woods near Selibka. Once regrouped there, the corps would push westward toward Pustoshka to link up with Belov. Official archival records noted his decision: “In light of the complete impossibility of penetrating in the direction of Fursovo, the corps commander decided: while exploiting the darkness on the night of 26–27 May to penetrate to the west between the villages of Selibka and Chashchi, enter the forest masses and subsequently withdraw in the direction of Pustoshka.” During the night of the 28th they succeeded in slipping past German strongpoints after dispersing a screen of security troops. By daybreak the corps was hidden in the forests around Selibka. The movement had been executed with such stealth that the German artillery barrage on the 28th fell on the camps abandoned the previous night rather than on the new position. By this stage Shmelev and Zhabo had also managed to bring the remnants of their partisan formations back into the Airborne Corps. It was here that Kazankin restored radio contact with both Belov and Zhukov and informed them of his situation. He also requested air support to protect his withdrawal. VVS airstrikes on the 29th enabled him to cross the Vskhody–Pustoshka road. It was during this period that a Major Bocharov betrayed the paratroopers and began supplying the Germans with information about the corps’ location. During the march Captain Smirnov, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 9th Brigade, was wounded and captured by the Germans because of the treachery of this former Major Bocharov, who subsequently provided the Germans with information about Kazankin’s plans. As 4th Airborne’s official history noted, “Undoubtedly, he provided the enemy with information about the parachutists, and, from that day, tanks, infantry, artillery, and aviation uninterruptedly struck the corps throughout its 300-kilometer path of withdrawal.” Smirnov became a POW but later escaped to join first Polish and then Belorussian partisans. The Bocharov betrayal represented a serious setback but not a fatal one: Kazankin’s corps had already shown an exceptional ability to evade capture, and the forest and swamp terrain that made movement so physically punishing also furnished concealment that partly neutralized the intelligence edge Bocharov had given the Germans. The 300-kilometre withdrawal that now confronted the corps would rank among the most punishing episodes of the entire Soviet experience behind German lines on the Eastern Front. During this period other German units had been attacking the 1st Guards Cavalry Corps from Dorogobuzh toward Vyazma, slowly forcing them southward. At this stage Belov’s forces consisted of the 1st Guards Cavalry Division, the 1st and 2nd Partisan Divisions, and seven tanks, including a heavy KV (model Klimenti Voroshilov) and a medium T-34. By the 28th Belov had stabilized his eastward front along the Ugra River. Halder recorded in his war diary that same day: “Fourth Army has closed the ring around the main body of Belov.” The following day both the 2nd Guards Cavalry Division and the 4th Airborne Corps had completed their reorganization and joined Belov’s forces. In addition the 23rd and 211th Airborne Brigades, totaling some 4,000 men, were ordered into the pocket to reinforce Belov. The 23rd Brigade arrived first, beginning on the 29th. For once the brigade landed accurately at its drop zone and brought supplies for six days. The decision to reinforce a force already surrounded behind enemy lines was a classically Stalinist gamble: instead of writing off Belov’s group as lost and preserving the airborne assets for future use, STAVKA poured additional manpower into the pocket in the hope that a large enough force could eventually break out. Whether this represented sound strategy or a refusal to accept reality remained open to debate. Only 2,000 Soviets were taken prisoner and 1,500 killed during Operation Hanover. Belov and the great majority of his troops escaped the German trap with more than 17,000 men, 18 light tanks, 1 T-34, and 1 KV tank. Although he had been driven farther from safety and had lost the most operationally valuable ground, a second phase of Operation Hanover would be required to eliminate this pocket behind German lines. For Kluge and Heinrici the outcome was a major disappointment. The operation had scored tactical victories—overrunning partisan regiments, capturing key river crossings, pushing Belov southward—but had fallen short of its central goal of destroying the Soviet force. The forests of Army Group Center’s rear had absorbed Belov’s cavalry just as they had absorbed everything else that ventured too far into them. On the 29th Army Group Center issued a top-secret directive to all its subordinate formations. Its opening sentence stated: “The OKH has ordered the earliest possible resumption of the attack on Moscow.” The document required that all subsequent communications concerning this operation be filed under the code name Kreml. In reality no such operational plan existed. It was a purely notional undertaking designed to mislead the Soviets. On paper it was a reworking of Operation Typhoon that assigned the same tasks to the two Panzer Armies of the Army Group. Security for the operation was deliberately kept tight, on the understanding that even the smallest leak would still reach Soviet ears. Operation Kreml was an ambitious exercise in strategic deception. German planners recognized that Soviet intelligence, despite being penetrated and disrupted, retained considerable capacity to gather information. By creating a detailed illusion of a renewed offensive against Moscow—complete with orders, unit assignments, and timetables—they hoped to pin Soviet reserves in place opposite Army Group Center while the real blow, Fall Blau, was prepared far to the south. The plan succeeded beyond all expectations: Soviet conviction that Germany’s main effort in 1942 would again be aimed at Moscow shaped their deployments and their interpretation of events in Ukraine throughout the spring and early summer. In Germany, Herbert Backe had been appointed acting minister of food and agriculture on May 22nd, replacing Richard Darré. Backe had originally championed the Hunger Plan in 1941, which had called for the deliberate starvation of 30 million Soviet civilians by seizing all available grain and cutting Soviet cities off from food supplies. The plan had effectively been dropped as unworkable late in 1941. Soviet civilians had not simply waited passively to starve, and the Wehrmacht had concluded that actively blockading food from urban areas would require far too many troops. Yet by that time millions had already perished from hunger, directly or indirectly, chiefly among minority groups and prisoners of war. Germany’s own food situation had deteriorated further by May 1942 because of poor harvests in 1940 and 1941 and the lack of imports from occupied territories. Grain reserves were almost exhausted. Rations for both civilians and the military had already been reduced in April amid widespread discontent. Germany was completely unable to feed the workers it had enslaved for its war economy. Göring had suggested that these workers could subsist on cat and horse meat. Backe performed the calculations and demonstrated that there were not enough cats to supply any meaningful quantity of meat. Moreover, horse meat was already being consumed by German civilians. The starving workers were so unproductive that the meager food they received was regarded by Backe as essentially wasted. Backe and Hitler therefore agreed—Hitler’s slogan being: “These consequences must be accepted, because before the German population starves in any way, others must . . . pay.” It was preferable to concentrate food on a small core of productive workers rather than distributing it to “useless eaters.” In addition there would be no further food shipments from the Reich to the Wehrmacht in the field. The Army was to obtain its own supplies locally without concern for the local population. Furthermore, Jews and all others the Nazis deemed undesirable were to be denied any rations whatsoever and removed from the food distribution system entirely. All other groups were to starve before the Germans did. Food was also to be imported into Germany from the General Government of Poland even though that territory could not feed its own population. Until then it had depended on food shipments from Germany simply to sustain its inhabitants. As Goebbels declared, Germany was digesting the occupied territories. The appointment of Backe—the architect of deliberate mass starvation as official policy—to oversee Germany’s food supply was not simply an administrative change. It marked the final institutionalization of the Nazi hierarchy of hunger: German civilians first, productive slave laborers a distant second, and all other subject peoples nowhere at all. The millions of Soviet prisoners of war who had already starved to death in German camps since 1941 were the most visible result of this logic, but the policy’s consequences extended to every corner of occupied Europe wherever German administrators decided who would eat and who would not. In Ukraine, Bock’s counterattack the previous week had encircled the 6th and 57th Armies together with Group Bobkin. Now, day and night, fragmented Soviet formations that were short of fuel and ammunition hurled themselves against the thin line held by 3rd Panzer Corps. One attack nearly reached Novopokrovske but ran out of momentum 6 km short of safety. Continuous Luftwaffe airstrikes helped shatter the Soviet assaults. This concentrated effort by the encircled Soviet forces against 3rd Panzer Corps was closely followed by advancing German formations. As a result, by the 26th the Soviet pocket had been compressed to only 16 km by 3 km, centered on the Bereka valley. From a hilltop near Lozovenka, Bock could survey most of the pocket. The scene that met his eyes represented one of the most total annihilations of a major Soviet force yet seen in the war: tens of thousands of men crammed into a strip of ground barely wider than the effective range of artillery, their vehicles immobilized for lack of fuel, their ammunition nearly gone, with no hope of relief from outside and the Luftwaffe overhead denying them rest even at night. The 17th Army noted in its war diary, with surprise, that no relief operation was attempted from outside the pocket. After the unsuccessful efforts of the 38th Army on the 23rd near Chepil, it was not until the 28th that they managed to organize a fresh attack using two tank brigades. This advance met a German offensive aimed at crushing the 38th Army’s bridge over the Donets near Zhukovka. The two operations essentially canceled each other out, although Moskalenko claimed that his actions had enabled 22,000 Soviets to escape the encirclement. To put it politely, this represents a mild exaggeration both of the number who escaped and of his own contribution to their escape. By the 28th the fighting had ended. Germany claimed to have captured 240,000 prisoners and seized 1,200 tanks and 2,600 artillery pieces. The Soviets officially recorded total losses of 266,927 men, 652 tanks, and 4,924 guns and mortars. Of these, 207,057 men were taken prisoner, 46,314 were sick or wounded, and only 13,556 were listed as dead. Glantz notes that modern estimates put the real total at 170,958 dead, missing, or captured, with an additional 106,232 wounded. Generals Kostenko, Bobkin, Podlas, and Gorodnyanskii all lay dead alongside thousands of their men. As devastating as this disaster was, it still did not equal the human losses suffered by Kozlov and Mekhlis in Crimea, although it did produce greater losses in modern tanks and other equipment. German losses were estimated at 20,000 men and 108 tanks. The Luftwaffe reported losing only 49 aircraft while claiming 615 Soviet planes destroyed. While Soviet records confirm heavy aviation losses during the Second Battle of Kharkov, the Luftwaffe’s claims were undoubtedly inflated. For his part in the battle General Paulus became a favorite of the German press and was awarded the Knight’s Cross. For the Soviet officer corps, Kharkov represented a catastrophe whose repercussions reached far beyond the immediate loss of ground and equipment. The destruction of Timoshenko’s offensive capability at the precise moment when German forces were beginning to mass for Fall Blau left the southern sector of the Soviet front dangerously exposed. The armies that would have to oppose Germany’s drive toward the Caucasus and the Volga had been largely consumed in a failed offensive launched on the basis of faulty intelligence and unwarranted optimism. On the 29th Timoshenko sent an assessment to Moscow warning that renewed German attacks against the South-Western Front could be expected within ten days. Thanks to Operation Kreml, both Timoshenko and STAVKA believed that Germany was about to launch a massive operation against Moscow, making everything happening in Ukraine secondary. Timoshenko was too frightened to approach Stalin directly, so he sent Khrushchev and Bagramyan to plead for reinforcements. Stalin proved less harsh than they had feared and dispatched 7 rifle divisions, 2 tank corps, and 4 tank brigades to bolster Timoshenko’s Front. According to Shtemenko, Stalin rebuked Timoshenko and Khrushchev with the words: “Battles must be won not with numbers but by skill. If you do not learn to direct your troops better, all the armaments the country can produce will not be enough for you.” Bagramyan, however, was made the immediate scapegoat for the disaster and demoted to chief of staff of the 28th Army. Further punishments would follow once more information became available. Stalin’s comment, harsh as it was, contained a genuine strategic truth: the Red Army’s repeated practice of hurling mass against well-prepared German defenses without the necessary coordination, deception, and combined-arms tactics required to exploit any breakthroughs was the fundamental reason for disasters such as Kharkov, just as surely as German operational skill contributed to them. The lesson would eventually be absorbed, but only after enormous sacrifice. This unexpected triumph at Kharkov generated a fresh surge of optimism inside the German high command. Hitler declared that the speed and scale of the victory allowed “favorable inferences to be drawn with respect to the entire enemy situation.” As a result it was no longer necessary to adhere strictly to the Blau timetable. Instead it was more urgent to strike quickly at any exposed Soviet formations while they were still reeling from the shock. Operation Wilhelm was to strike at the Vovchansk salient north of Kharkov. A new FRIDERICUS II offensive was also to be prepared in order to encircle and destroy the 9th and 38th Armies and then advance to the Oskol River line as a preliminary step for Fall Blau. The preparations for these two operations now made it possible to revive STOERFANG. Manstein was instructed to have his operation ready to begin by June 7th. Hitler also demanded that the 8th Air Corps be returned to Crimea before the fighting at Kharkov had even concluded. Not all of the air units would return, however, because of disagreements over how much air support would be required for the other planned operations. The sequence of planned operations—Wilhelm, FRIDERICUS II, then STOERFANG, then Blau—reflected Germany’s characteristic method of linking tactical successes together to set the stage for a larger strategic offensive. It was a technique that had worked brilliantly in 1941, but it rested on the assumption that the Red Army would continue to collapse under successive blows rather than absorbing them and regenerating. On the 25th, efforts to evacuate civilians and non-combat personnel from Sevastopol were intensified in a final attempt to ease the food burden on the garrison. In addition, Petrov and Oktyabrsky’s forces had for months been shortchanged logistically by Kozlov, who had diverted nearly all supplies to his own units. With Kozlov now removed from the picture, an effort was made to revive the garrison. The Black Sea Fleet military council requested 15,000 replacements, 50 new Yak-1 fighters, additional fuel for the 3rd Special Aviation Group to sustain a high sortie rate, and three times the previous allocation of ammunition for the Sevastopol Defensive Region. Petrov further asked for 10,000 rifles and 1,500 light machine guns to rearm his inadequately equipped troops. On the 28th a supply convoy delivered 3,017 replacements—all survivors of the Kerch campaign, most of whom had only recently returned to duty after recovering from wounds. Oktyabrsky had assigned two cruisers, six destroyers, and eight minesweepers to conduct these final supply runs in May and June. All except the old Krasny Krym were capable of 30 knots, making them extremely difficult targets for air attack. The destroyers, however, could carry at most 400 troops per run, and the cruisers up to 2,000 troops each. They were also poorly suited for transporting heavy cargo. Consequently three cargo ships and a tanker were also detailed to carry supplies to Sevastopol. These vessels, however, could manage only 12 knots at best, rendering them far more vulnerable to air attack. Moreover, the faster warships were tied down escorting them. Even worse, only the cruiser Molotov possessed any air-search radar, and it was of a very primitive type. Most of the warships also relied on obsolete, slow-firing single-mount 21-K anti-aircraft guns. The basic dilemma of Sevastopol’s resupply was one that offered no satisfactory solution: fast warships could survive the gauntlet of air attacks but could carry little; slow cargo vessels could carry a great deal but were highly vulnerable to the Luftwaffe’s Ju-88s operating at short range from Crimean airfields. The garrison’s survival therefore depended on a logistical balance that became steadily more unfavorable with each passing week as German forces tightened the land perimeter and Manstein prepared the deliberate, set-piece assault that would determine the fortress’s fate. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals [http://www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals]. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. Germany launched a strategic deception, “Operation Kreml,” to convince the USSR Germany would attack Moscow, fixing Soviet reserves while Fall Blau prepared. In Ukraine, Kharkov’s destruction shattered Soviet offensive capability. Meanwhile Nazi hunger policy tightened under Backe, and Sevastopol’s strained resupply in May–June worsened.

28 de may de 202642 min

Eastern Front #51 Disaster at Donetz

21 de may de 202638 min

Eastern Front #51 Disaster at Donetz

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