Prerequisites for the Battle of Kharkov
At the beginning of 1942, units of the Southwestern Front advanced successfully, occupying a bridgehead near Barvenkovo, convenient for further advance to Kharkov.
The Barvenkovsky bulge of the front aroused the interest of both the Soviet and German commands. It planned the start of the operation to eliminate the Barvenkovo bridgehead on May 18.
Rally in the 121st Tank Brigade before the start of the offensive
Soviet troops were ahead of the enemy: they went on the offensive on May 12 . But it did not come as a surprise to the Germans. The command of the Red Army did not disclose the significant reinforcement of the enemy in the main directions of future attacks, and the secrecy of the maneuvers of its formations was also not ensured.
Lessons from the Battle of Rzhev
In conclusion, it is worth emphasizing once again that the battles in the Rzhev direction are a whole complex of not fully studied, but undoubtedly bloody events. The total losses of the USSR are estimated by some at 1.1–1.3 million people, of the enemy - at 668 thousand, but even these calculations require clarification. The operations in question cannot be adequately described by unambiguous categories familiar to the public: they were neither “the bloodiest” nor successful; heroism intersected with panic, and an analysis of individual situations will inevitably lead to a discussion of not only the role of the personalities of the commanders and their mistakes, but also the weakness of the Soviet military machine as a whole. But focusing only on this will push us to exclude a skilled, experienced, prepared enemy from view, which will also distort our dialogue with history. The Red Army (both commanders and soldiers) learned to fight in the literal sense of the word, but such “practical training” is inevitably paid for in blood. For military historians, operations in the Rzhev direction are of great interest from the point of view of studying the features of positional battles in the context of industrial, mass wars. As for the public, these battles are probably an excellent example from which we can learn to talk about the contradictions of our military history, about valor and tragedy. Perhaps the very ability to enter into a dialogue with the past, and not squeeze it into a set of given categories and “learn” previously known lessons, can be called the main value. However, this requires special aesthetic taste and tact, but this is a completely different problem.
Kharkov military operation 1942 – forces of the parties and the initial stage
The forces of the opponents, each of whom was preparing to attack, were almost equal. Both in human reserves - 640 and 636 thousand fighters, and in aviation (a slight advantage of the Germans), and in armored vehicles (a slight advantage of the Red Army).
The Kharkov operation of 1942 involved mainly Soviet divisions made up of recruits, led by newly minted commanders without serious experience. The German formations opposing them were staffed by professional personnel and highly experienced fighters.
The Kharkov offensive operation of 1942 started on May 12, with the Red Army delivering two attacks that were supposed to converge near Kharkov: from the north, from Belgorod - Volchansk and from the south (Barvenkovsky bridgehead). They pursued the goal: to encircle the main part of Hitler’s 6th Army near Kharkov and liberate it.
Operation "Mars": the failed Stalingrad?
In the fall of 1942, the German offensive in Stalingrad and the surrounding area became bogged down. The beginning of November is a period of active preparation for the Soviet counteroffensive against the army of Friedrich Paulus, which began on the 19th (Operation Uranus) and became a turning point in the entire Second World War. However, in parallel, an offensive was being prepared in the Rzhev direction - Operation Mars - under the general leadership of Georgy Zhukov, who had returned there. Historians are actively arguing: Stavka prepared two major strategic offensives, of which only one succeeded, or was the Rzhev direction given less importance from the very beginning, and if less, then by how much? Supporters of the second version, as a rule, put forward the following arguments: the offensive near Rzhev was planned earlier, and in correspondence with the allies, Stalin emphasized the future counter-offensive near Stalingrad. Sometimes an argument is used, going back to the memoirs of the head of the reconnaissance and sabotage department of the NKVD, Pavel Sudoplatov, that Soviet intelligence deliberately planted disinformation about the offensive near Rzhev in order to divert attention from Stalingrad. This statement is not supported by documents; the memoirist confuses the nickname of the double agent, who then entered into a complex radio game with the enemy. However, due to the long preparation in conditions of a stable front, the enemy was able to detect activity (including thanks to defectors), and therefore the Soviet offensive did not come as a big surprise to him. However, “Mars,” as was stated in Soviet times, cannot be considered as an attempt to divert the enemy’s attention from the main attack: in the Rzhev direction, the Soviet command concentrated slightly more troops and artillery than at Stalingrad, plus the operation began six days after “Uran” , although demonstrative strikes aimed at pinning down enemy reserves are carried out on the eve of the main offensive.
Operation Mars was launched on November 25 and lasted a month. It consisted of attempts to break through the enemy’s defenses through simultaneous attacks from different sides of the “Rzhev salient,” which was met with powerful counterattacks. In the area of the city of Bely, part of the troops of the 41st Army that had broken through fell into the “cauldron” and were destroyed. The total losses of the 9th German Army amounted to approximately 45 thousand people, and only the irretrievable losses of the Red Army, according to official data, were 74.4 thousand people (the estimate of total losses is up to 335 thousand people, but this figure requires clarification).
The surrender of the remnants of Paulus's army on February 2, 1943 led to a general reassessment of the situation by the Germans. At the beginning of March they decided to narrow the length of the common front line in order to free up additional forces. That is why at the beginning of March (Operation Buffel) they withdrew their forces from the “Rzhev ledge” to a pre-built fortified defense line, leaving scorched earth behind them. The front line of the 9th German Army was reduced from 530 to 200 km, and the army leadership had more than two dozen released divisions and other units at its disposal. Soviet troops (the so-called Rzhev-Vyazemsk strategic offensive operation, if we proceed from the Soviet historiographical tradition) were unable to disrupt this plan. The Red Army soldiers entered Rzhev on March 3, 1943.
Battles for Kharkov 1942 – offensive May 12-17
During the first day of the operation, the northern strike group advanced 2-10 km, crushing the enemy’s forward positions and forcing him to commit large reserves. The next day the Germans launched fierce counterattacks with armored vehicles.
Despite these counterattacks, as well as the sharp activation of German aviation, the advancing Red Army soldiers were not stopped. In the central part of the breakthrough, they advanced another 20-25 km.
Red Army soldiers inspect damaged German tanks
The southern strike force also advanced decisively. On May 12, it broke through the German defenses, and the Red Army quickly advanced into its depths. On May 14, they defeated the main forces of the 108th Hungarian and 62nd German divisions, and continued to advance, expanding the breakthrough and going deeper (20-25 km).
The Soviet command was convinced that the Germans would use all available reserves to defend Kharkov. This miscalculation led to the main military tragedy of 1942. The German command's plan was different.
It was decided to continue containing the Red Army’s advance on Kharkov with limited forces, and with the main forces to strike the Barvenkovo bridgehead, turning it into the Barvenkovo cauldron. May 1942 brought a heavy defeat to the Soviet troops.
Rzhev - positional deadlock
The fighting of August–September 1942 is sometimes metaphorically referred to as the “Verdun of World War II,” implying that it was very similar to what happened on the Western Front from 1915–1918. If maneuver battles are fought over large spaces and represent rapid movements of a mass of troops, often trying to encircle the enemy, then positional warfare - and this is what the parties at Rzhev have descended to - is something of the opposite. The attacking side - in our case, the Soviet Union - suffers higher losses, winning back kilometer by kilometer. Let us take into account that, unfortunately, at that time the Red Army had not yet learned how to effectively break into the enemy’s defenses, the aviation showed partly forced passivity, let’s add here the lack of communication means and the weakness of intelligence, including due to the cruelty of the Germans towards the local population, which prevented the establishment of partisan-sabotage warfare . But first of all, we must pay attention to the comparative lack of artillery, which was of decisive importance, since conducting an offensive means driving the enemy out of fortified points, which cannot be done without first destroying them with artillery or aviation.
In principle, these battles were a large-scale artillery duel, but in response to one Soviet shell, several German ones flew in in response. The 9th Army relied on developed communications, which ensured uninterrupted supply from the deep rear; its command was able to use the reserves of Army Group Center to increase the number of troops by a quarter. The “Greater Germany” division, an elite unit of the Wehrmacht, was also brought in here, whose difference lay precisely in the high level of training of its personnel (and not in ideological indoctrination with mediocre tactical skill, which distinguished the SS divisions, for example, “Das Reich” or “Totenkopf”). . However, as Alexey Isaev emphasized, Walter Model himself preferred to split up reserves and throw them in parts to different sections of the front, which, on the one hand, made it possible to improve the position in different directions, and on the other hand, prevented the gathering of a single fist to turn the situation around as a whole. As the Soviet troops learned to penetrate through the system of strong points, the Germans moved on to building a defense in the form of a continuous front line.
The Soviet offensive turned into gnawing through enemy defenses with all the ensuing consequences, including fierce battles for individual fortified points. Thus, on the Kalinin Front, the brave and bloody battles for the village of Polunino on the Znamensky bridgehead (the southern bank of the Volga) stand out, and the 20th Army of the Western Front suffered bloody losses in the battles for the village of Pogoreloye Gorodishche, which was eventually taken. Against the backdrop of defeats on almost the entire Soviet-German front, propaganda presented this episode as a “success” and a “ray of hope.” As a result, the Red Army advanced 35–40 kilometers.
In September 1942, Lieutenant General Dmitry Lelyushenko's 30th Army entered heavy urban fighting on the northern outskirts of Rzhev; During two offensives, she liberated a number of areas on the northern bank of the Volga, but most of the city remained behind the enemy. Both the Red Army soldiers and their opponents learned to fight in urban conditions on the fly; the battles took place for each sector and were somewhat reminiscent of what happened less than a month later far down the river - in Stalingrad. Here, in Rzhev, the Soviet side formed improvised assault groups that fought for individual houses, and the tension reached the point that everything was thrown into battle: battalions of several dozen people, outdated models of tanks, and even a basically useless armored train.
The Red Army lost up to 300 thousand people, the Wehrmacht - 50 thousand. These are, naturally, large losses, but when understanding their reasons, it is worth pointing out not only the listed shortcomings and mistakes of the command, but also a skillful, well-prepared enemy. Compared to other, alas, frequent defeats of the Red Army in 1941–1942, the loss ratio does not look impressive. The main operational result of these battles was the disruption of possible enemy operations in the Moscow direction. The subsidence of the fighting by the end of September did not lead to the fact that Headquarters abandoned the idea of conducting another offensive here. It was planned for October 12, but due to the unpreparedness of the troops, it was postponed for more than a month.
Battle of Kharkov 1942 – Wehrmacht counterattacks
Having secretly regrouped, on May 17, 1942, von Kleist’s tanks attacked the Red Army troops on the Barvenkovo ledge. The German armored vehicles and infantry went on the attack after an hour and a half artillery barrage, with the support of hundreds of aircraft, and broke through the defenses very quickly.
The administration of the 9th Army of the Red Army was disorganized, and contact with the front command was lost. It only learned of the enemy's major breakthrough towards the end of the day.
Due to the rapid advance of the Germans, field airfields had to be urgently evacuated. This left the advancing troops without air cover and hastened the defeat at Kharkov in 1942.
Tank landing near Kharkov. May 1942
On May 18, the head of the General Staff, General Vasilevsky, proposed to curtail the offensive and begin to withdraw troops from the Barvenkovo ledge. But Marshal Timoshenko insisted on continuing the operation. He wanted to launch counterattacks against Kleist’s groups, taking two tank corps from the western edge of the Barvenkovo ledge.
At the same time, no one canceled the task for the Soviet units advancing on Kharkov. But these troops were already significantly exhausted and bleeding; they were constantly subjected to air strikes (no one interfered with the German planes). Therefore, they have largely lost their combat power.
The Kharkov disaster of 1942 became possible also because offensive battles for (mostly) inexperienced soldiers and junior officers constantly led to serious losses in both men and armored vehicles.
Brief historical overview
In a counteroffensive that began in December 1941 and continued until the spring of 1942, the Soviet army pushed the German invaders far beyond the Moscow region . As a result of victorious battles in the western direction, it was possible to liberate dozens of settlements captured by the Nazis and stop the rapid advance of the Germans deeper into the country. The Wehrmacht's plan for the lightning capture of the USSR was thwarted.
The success of the winter battles was replaced by a series of defeats caused by strategic miscalculations of the Supreme High Command, which believed that the main blow of the German troops would again be directed at Moscow. Between spring and autumn, German divisions occupied part of the southern territories . In May, the Nazis captured the Kerch Peninsula; in early July, after 9 months of heroic defense, Sevastopol fell. With its fall, control of Crimea passed into the hands of the enemy.
The army of Nazi Germany approached the North Caucasus and the Volga. The plans of the Nazi command included achieving in the summer of 1942 those goals that were not realized at the initial stage of the war due to the defeat near Moscow. It was planned to capture Stalingrad , enter the oil-bearing regions of the Caucasus and the fertile Kuban and Don lands. The fall of Stalingrad would have allowed the Nazis to cut off the southern territories from the center and capture an important waterway (Volga), along which cargo from the Caucasus regions was melted.
From July to November 1942 ( 125 days the Battle of Stalingrad lasted . In mid-November, a successful offensive by the Soviet army began, ending in February of the following year with the defeat of German formations . The turning point military battle changed the balance of power and allowed the Soviet command to dictate its line of war to the enemy.
Battle of Stalingrad
In December 1942, preparations were made for the operation to liberate the North Caucasus . (As a result of a successful offensive, by October 1943, domestic troops drove the Germans to the Kerch Strait and liberated the entire Caucasus region.)
Encirclement near Kharkov 1942 - completion of the operation
By May 23, most of the advancing Soviet troops were surrounded. Conditions were difficult: lack of ammunition, fuel, and provisions. The terrain is open, steppe type, making troops vulnerable to air raids.
The unsuccessful offensive of the Red Army near Kharkov turned at the final stage of the operation into furious and bloody attempts to break out of the cauldron. No more than ten percent of them managed to do this.
Columns of Soviet soldiers captured in the Kharkov area are moving to a field camp - a collection point.
Only on May 28, Tymoshenko issued an order to curtail the offensive and withdraw troops . At this time, the Kharkov battle of 1942 was already virtually over. The Germans announced the capture of 240 thousand prisoners of war near Kharkov. This was the largest Wehrmacht victory of that year of war. The disaster near Kharkov made possible the German strategic offensive in the Caucasus and the Volga.
Unsuccessful Soviet offensives in 1942
The strategically successful, despite their bloodshed, winter battles of 1941 near Moscow, Yelets, Rostov, Tikhvin, which led, if not to encirclement, but at least to the retreat of the Germans - the obvious unpreparedness of German troops for battles in winter conditions led Stalin to an erroneous assessment of the military potential of Germany.
This assessment was reflected in the well-known directive to members of the military councils of the fronts on the strategic goals of military operations in the winter of 1942, which set the task of ending the war victoriously in 1942. Germany’s military defeat was obvious, but victory was still far away. Unfortunately, our expected victory in 1942 turned out to be a mirage. The calculations of the Supreme High Command Headquarters to wrest the strategic initiative from the hands of the enemy by conducting a number of private offensive operations in the winter and spring of 1942 did not come true. Instead of new victories, a series of failures followed, which significantly worsened the situation on the Soviet-German front. “After the Red Army managed to sufficiently exhaust the Nazi troops, it launched a counteroffensive and drove the German invaders west. In order to delay our advance, the Germans went on the defensive and began to build defensive lines with trenches, barriers, and field fortifications. The Germans expect to delay our offensive in this way until spring, so that in the spring, having gathered strength, they will again go on the offensive against the Red Army. The Germans therefore want to gain time and gain a respite. Our task is to not give the Germans this respite, to drive them west without stopping, to force them to use up their reserves before the spring, when we will have large new reserves, and the Germans will no longer have reserves, and thus ensure complete the defeat of Hitler’s troops in 1942,” I. Stalin believed. Stalin at this time still did not feel a great need for the advice of qualified military specialists and was fascinated by the number of divisions available, without taking into account their real combat power. However, in this respect Hitler was similar to Stalin. German offensive plans for 1942 were very adventurous.
The winter offensive operations of the Red Army took place in completely impassable conditions, as a result of which it was impossible to quickly carry out deep operations to encircle and defeat German formations. The offensive was carried out according to the tactics of the First World War: infantry and cavalry with the support of artillery, which in winter conditions, which hampered maneuver off roads with strongholds of German defense covering them, only led to the squeezing of the Germans from populated areas (in military reports of those years, they are mentioned first of all the names of liberated small settlements, and not the number of captured Germans), while the Red Army suffered heavy losses. At that time, the Headquarters and the command of the Western Front did not plan systematic front-line operations, and local army operations to capture individual settlements (and even cities) did not bring great operational and, especially, strategic success - a major defeat of enemy troops - did not bring. Stalin's neglect of the functions of the General Staff led to poor calculations (in terms of supplies through the lengthening communications of the formations advancing almost across the winter impassability) of the planned offensive. In the end, despite the unparalleled heroism of the advancing Soviet troops in the harsh winter conditions of January 1942, it was precisely due to the lack of necessary supplies that the planned results were not achieved.
The Battle of the Demyansk Pocket was a battle that lasted a year and half a month and, therefore, was the longest battle encircled on the Eastern Front. The Demyansk pocket was completely blocked by Soviet troops from February 25, 1942 to April 23, 1942. Then the Germans managed to break through the front and form the so-called Ramushevsky corridor. The Demyansk salient existed until February 28, 1943. For the first time in military history, an entire German corps of six divisions with a total strength of about 100,000 people - almost an entire army - was successfully supplied with everything it needed by air. It was on the Valdai Hills in Russia that the first air bridge in the history of wars operated. About 100 planes had to fly in and out of the pocket every day. In certain cases the number of aircraft reached 150.
As Rokossovsky recalled: “The army troops launched a counteroffensive without any pause. The further they moved away from Moscow, the stronger the enemy resisted. Even before approaching the Volokolamsk line, the front command began to resort to creating groupings in one sector or another, for which some part of the forces from one army was transferred to another. Such improvisation ensured some local success. With the arrival of our troops at the Volokolamsk line, it became absolutely clear that the enemy had managed to recover from the blow received and that its defense was becoming more organized. It was no longer possible to continue the offensive with the forces we had by that time with the expectation of a decisive breakthrough of the enemy’s defenses and further development of success. The moment had come when our high command had to think about taking advantage of the results achieved and begin serious preparations for the summer campaign of 1942. Unfortunately, this did not happen, and the troops, following the order, continued to advance. Moreover, the front command was given the task of exhausting the enemy without giving him any respite. This was incomprehensible to me. It is one thing to wear down the enemy with defensive actions, achieving an equalization of forces, which is what we did before launching a counteroffensive. But to exhaust and weaken him with offensive actions when the balance of forces is clearly not in our favor, and even in harsh winter conditions, I could not understand this. Our repeated reports to the front command about the grave condition of the army as a result of the losses suffered, about the discrepancy between its forces and the tasks that the front set for us, were not taken into account. We had to push forward with effort, pushing the enemy out in one area or another. There was no question of breaking through the enemy defenses. Our capabilities were exhausted to the extreme, and the enemy continued to replenish his troops with fresh forces, transferring them from the west.” By the spring of 1942, the reserves accumulated with difficulty in the 9 armies were wasted in these unsuccessful battles.
In addition, the fact that marching reinforcements consisted entirely of poorly trained recruits often contributed to the Red Army’s heavy losses. Only in 1942 did they realize that it was necessary to replenish units when they were withdrawn from battle, while recruiting a mixed composition of units from recruits and experienced soldiers. In accordance with Stalin's directive, in 1942 all fronts were ordered to go on the offensive. On January 8, 1942, the first large (group of over 1 million people) strategic offensive Rzhev-Vyazma operation began to defeat Army Group Center. The 39th Army (NKVD General Maslennikov) of the Kalinin Front made a successful breakthrough of the front to the south just west of Rzhev with a subsequent build-up of the attack and, developing the breakthrough with the 11th Cavalry Corps, reached an important railway. Sychevka station. German troops near Rzhev found themselves in a critical situation: according to the German command, a tank army without supplies could fight for no more than three days.
Almost simultaneously, the 20th Army of General Vlasov successfully crossed the Lama River and the 2nd Guards Cavalry. The corps began to move west from Volokolamsk to Zubtsov - with the goal of connecting with the 39th Army and completing the encirclement of the German Rzhev group. From the Sukhinichi area from Medyn, having found gaps in the German defense (there was no continuous front line), the 33rd Army of Efremov and the 1st Guards Cavalry began to attack north (to Vyazma). Belov building. An airborne force was dropped into the area west of Vyazma. The troops of the Northwestern Front moved in an unprecedented march through impenetrable forests in the snow to the rear of the German groups “North” and “Center”. The Germans did not expect an attack from this direction at all. The supply of Soviet troops along long winter roads was poor; the main resource was captured supplies captured in the towns of Andreapol and Toropets.
But the outposts of the German defense - Kholm, Velikiye Luki, Velizh, Bely, Olenine remained in the hands of German troops. The only important result of the offensive in the zone of the 3rd and 4th shock armies was the weakening of the coherence of the German defense: the important Velikiye Luki - Rzhev road was cut. The successful start of the operation on the Kalinin and Western fronts led Stalin to the conclusion that the forces in the Rzhev direction were sufficient, and he, despite Zhukov’s pleas, transferred the 1st Shock Army, the right neighbor of the 20th, to the Northwestern Front to encircle the German group in Demyansk ledge. This eased the pressure on the Rzhev-Sychevka front, and the 20th Army got stuck in the assault on the position area. The strategically important Smolensk-Vyazma railway and highway, which decided the outcome of the battle, remained in the hands of the Germans. The Germans formed the Rzhev strike group (two tank divisions of the 3rd TA - the 5th and 7th, the SS division "Reich" and other units) at the expense of passive sections of the front and closed the breakthrough at Rzhev. They also successfully closed the breakthrough at Medyn, cutting off the communications of the 33rd Army. In addition to the 33rd Army, both cavalry corps were surrounded.
South of Lake Ilmen, the offensive of the 1st Shock Army from the north succeeded by February 20 in completely encircling two army corps (6 divisions) of the German 16th Army in the Demyansk ledge, formed after the successful advance of the 3rd and 4th Shock Armies to the southwest from Demyansk in the direction of Velikie Luki. At the same time, an attempt was made to break through the blockade of Leningrad by troops of four armies (4th, 59th, 2nd shock - the former 26th new formation - and 52nd) of the Volkhov Front (Meretskov), which occupied defenses along the river. Volkhov from Ladoga to Ilmen lakes. However, the offensive was poorly prepared: surprise could not be achieved, air cover and support were virtually absent, and the necessary concentration of forces was not created at the first, decisive stage. After crossing the Volkhov and breaking through the front, by March 1, the 2nd Shock Army advanced 75 km. and was surrounded along with units of the 59th Army (a total of 7 divisions and 6 brigades plus a cavalry corps). By mid-March, the 33rd Army near Vyazma, the 2nd Shock Army between Chudov and Novgorod and symmetrically with respect to Lake Ilmen on the eastern shore of Lovat were sitting in “cauldrons” and “bags” - six divisions (two corps) of the German 16th Army under Demyansky
During March - June 1942, bloody battles continued in the swamps for the corridors to the encircled armies, during which the 54th Army (Fedyuninsky) was temporarily trapped in the “bag” in the Pogostya area, fighting its way through frontal bloody attacks to meet the 2nd shock . The Germans mercilessly bombed the surrounded and starving 2nd Shock Bomb with super-heavy caliber bombs, and in the battles against the 54th Army at Pogost (already in June) they used new heavy tanks T-6 - “Tiger”. The result was sad for the Red Army: the commander of the 33rd Army, Efremov, shot himself after the actual defeat of the encircled army, and General Vlasov surrendered and already in June led the ROA (Russian Liberation Army of prisoners of war), which fiercely fought against the Red Army at the end of the war.
The irretrievable losses of the Volkhov Front and the 54th Army of the Leningrad Front over four months of fighting are estimated at 100 thousand people (including 20 thousand captured). No one knows the exact figure: the remains of the dead are still being found in the swamps, the number of whom has exceeded 70 thousand. The first (if you do not count the Smolensk battle of the summer of 1941 as such) Stalin’s blow was very expensive: in the Rzhev-Vyazma operation alone, more than 250 people died thousand Red Army soldiers, over 500 thousand wounded. The same level of losses was in the mentioned Smolensk battle. And then, in 1941, and now, in 1942, this is a consequence of Stalin’s illiterate leadership. The reason for the defeat (discrepancy between results and costs) was the impossibility of creating the required concentration of forces in the decisive sectors of the offensive due to the poor supply of the attackers. In general, this is a clear miscalculation (and fault) of the Soviet General Staff and Headquarters in assessing the risk of the operation. The numerical advantage of the Soviet troops did not work, and the reserves were wasted. A heroic and at the same time inglorious page in the history of the war.
One of the most difficult and unsuccessful offensive (as difficult as the Smolensk, and as unsuccessful as the Vyazemsk) operation of the Red Army during the war unfolded in the Crimea in the spring of 1942. It began brilliantly - with a landing in Kerch and Feodosia in winter stormy weather in December 1941. The situation for the Germans was critical: on the Kerch Peninsula they had only one infantry division and weak Romanian units. The commander of the army corps, Count Sponeck, decided to leave the Kerch Peninsula; during the retreat, the Germans lost artillery on the icy roads. Sponeck was put on trial and sentenced to death. Within two weeks, the Soviet command had a real opportunity to reach Manstein’s communications with Dzhankoy. Truly a lost victory. As Manstein wrote: “...even having a triple superiority in forces, the enemy did not dare to undertake a bold, deep operation that could lead to the defeat of the 11th Army.” Commander of the Transcaucasian Front D.T. Kozlov, who had no combat experience, whose headquarters was in Tbilisi (!), made a truly fatal decision: he postponed the start of the offensive by ten days, without warning either the commander of the Primorsky Army or the commander of the Black Sea Fleet.
As a result, the offensive of the Primorsky Army from Sevastopol and the landing of troops, not supported by the offensive from the Kerch Peninsula, only led to casualties. And on January 15, Manstein struck at the junction of the 44th and 51st armies and occupied Feodosia on January 18. The front command decided to further accumulate forces before going on the offensive: another (47th) army was transferred along the ice (!) road from the Taman Peninsula. Finally, from February 27 to April 9, the offensive was launched three times, but time was lost - the Germans organized a defense on a narrow isthmus. As K. Simonov wrote: “Everything was stuck in the mud, the tanks did not move, the guns were stuck somewhere behind, the cars too, the shells were carried by hand. There were a pointlessly large number of people on the front line. Neither before nor later have I seen such a large number of people killed not in battle, not in an attack, but during systematic artillery attacks. People were trampling and did not know what to do. There were no trenches, no cracks around - nothing. Everything happened on a bare, dirty field, completely open on all sides. The corpses were buried in the mud, and death here, on this field, for some reason seemed especially terrible.”
On May 8, the Germans, not having numerical superiority, went on the offensive, which ended in disaster for the entire Crimean Front: the losses of people and equipment were terrifying (150 thousand prisoners). Manstein simply “deceived” Kozlov in the direction of the attack, broke through the front and, having forced the anti-tank ditch, came out as the only tank division to the rear of the main forces in the north of the peninsula. Two months later, tragedy befell the Primorsky Army: after fierce battles with intensive use of artillery (caliber 305,600 and even 800 mm) and aviation, the Germans, with heavy losses (10% remained in the ranks in the forward companies!), broke through to the Northern Bay and unexpectedly crossed it at night. Under fire, evacuation of the army by sea proved impossible. At night, only the top management was taken out by submarine. The heroic Maritime Army finally died at the last line of defense at Cape Chersonesus. This catastrophe is Stalin’s personal personnel miscalculation (the result of his credo: “no one is irreplaceable”), including the consequence of his indulgence in the insane repressions of the NKVD against the commanding personnel of the Red Army in 1931 and 1937-1938.
The command of the South-Western Direction (SWD) of the Soviet Front under the command of Timoshenko, in accordance with the general instructions of Stalin on the offensive in 1942, conceived a grandiose offensive operation to liberate Kursk, Belgorod, Kharkov (troops of the South-Western Front - Kostenko) and Donbass ( troops of the Southern Front - Malinovsky). As eyewitnesses testified, the background to this unrealistic plan was Tymoshenko’s desire to increase her “rating” in the eyes of Stalin and regain, probably after a quick victory, the post of People’s Commissar of Defense. The balance of forces, however, did not allow such major strategic tasks to be solved. At the beginning of 1942, with approximately equal numbers of Soviet and German groups on the Southern Front (approximately 1 million people each), the Germans outnumbered tanks and artillery. In the spring, they began to secretly concentrate reserves for the upcoming offensive in the Caucasus, in particular three new tank divisions from France (22, 23 and 24). However, none of the set goals (liberation of Donbass and Kharkov) could be achieved - the Germans prepared a strong positional defense, and the Soviet troops did not have a decisive superiority of forces. In February, Tymoshenko decided to limit himself to the capture of Kharkov. A decisive contribution to the disruption of the Soviet offensive of the shock armies near Kharkov and the defeat of the Barvenkov group of Soviet troops was made by Richthofen dive bombers, transferred from Crimea on Hitler's orders. The cut-off group (6th, 57th and 9th armies) was bombed without interruption. It was a real beating. Attempts to relieve the troops encircled to the west of the Donets did not lead to success, including due to strong air opposition. Only 20 thousand people fought out of the encirclement, more than 200 thousand were captured and died.
“...Within three weeks, the Southwestern Front, thanks to its frivolity, not only lost the half-won Kharkov operation, but also managed to surrender 18-20 divisions to the enemy... We are also talking about the mistakes of all members of the Military Council, and above all comrade. Timoshenko and comrade Khrushchev. If we informed the country in its entirety about the catastrophe that the front experienced and continues to experience, then I am afraid that you would be treated very harshly,” Stalin said to the Military Council of the Southwestern Front. After the Kharkov disaster, Stalin did not allow Marshal Timoshenko to develop plans for military operations within a cannon shot. G.K. Zhukov pointed to another significant consequence: “Basically, I agreed with the operational-strategic forecasts of the Supreme Commander, but I could not agree with him on the number of planned front-line offensive operations, believing that they would absorb our reserves and this would complicate preparations for the subsequent general offensive of the Soviets.” troops"
The Soviet General Staff planned a major attack on Orel for the summer of 1942 (the Germans knew about this - Halder noted, referring to the Kharkov Soviet offensive: “Soon we will be watching the same “film” about Orel”), for which purpose they were concentrated in the Bryansk Front large tank formations in the form of five separate corps (1000 tanks) and a reserve, recently formed and located in the Yelets 5th Tank Army (Hero of the Soviet Union Lizyukov) consisting of 700 tanks. Soviet troops had a numerical superiority in tanks here. The natural decision of the Headquarters in the situation that arose was to organize a counterattack from the north against the flank of the advancing German group. An opportunity presented itself to disrupt the strategic German offensive. However, there was no surprise factor: the Germans knew about the presence of the tank army - they took this into account, i.e. The counterattack was expected by them. As a result, the Germans organized a strong anti-tank defense, including tank ambushes and mine warfare, as well as intensive air attacks on Soviet tank units, especially destructive to artillery and light tanks (which made up up to 50% of Soviet tank forces).
Poor management of the counterattack by the command of the Bryansk Front and Headquarters, expressed in haste and lack of air and artillery support, also led to the loss of the factor of concentration of forces necessary for success. Tank units were hastily introduced into battle piecemeal in infantry battle formations against unsuppressed strong anti-tank defenses and without air cover. Headquarters recklessly believed that “tanks can do anything” (they completely forgot about the failure of tank counterattacks exactly a year earlier in the summer of 1941). The arithmetic advantage in tanks did not work again: throughout July, tank attacks were unsuccessfully carried out against the German defensive line, which protected the rear of the strike force advancing to the south. Only God knows how many tanks and people were lost in this case (one must think - about 1000 tanks). Among others, the army commander, Lizyukov, died in battle on his KV.
Characteristic of 1942 is the particularly intensive use of dive bombers by the Germans: according to the recollections of war participants, for some reason it was in 1942 that German bombing was especially unbearable. Our troops were completely defenseless against massive bombing: as noted earlier, direct losses from bombing reached 50% of total losses, in addition, prolonged unpunished bombing had a huge demoralizing effect on the personnel of infantry formations.
On August 19, 1942, a mobile enemy group broke through the Soviet defenses north of Kalach and on August 23 reached the banks of the Volga northeast of Stalingrad. But neither the more and more troops deployed to Stalingrad, nor the penal battalions and military courts, nor the scoldings of Stalin himself - nothing helped. A.M. Vasilevsky stated with bitterness: “Despite all the measures we carried out on August 23 and 24, we were unable to eliminate the enemy who approached the outskirts of the city, close the corridor and restore the situation in those days.” Why? A.M. Vasilevsky gives an honest answer: “The hastily created strike groups consisted, as a rule, of rifle formations weakened in battle. The troops sent by the Headquarters by rail arrived slowly and, without completing concentration, were immediately brought into battle... There was not enough time to prepare counterattacks, to practice interaction and organize command and control of the troops.” On September 2, German troops reached the outskirts of Stalingrad. In order to prevent their further wedging into the defensive formations of the 62nd and 64th armies, Stalin instructed G.K. Zhukov, who had been on the Stalingrad front since August 26 as a representative of the Headquarters, organized a counterattack on the flank of the enemy group that had broken through. On September 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10, Soviet troops stormed well-fortified enemy positions head-on, suffering heavy losses. While the 1st Guards, 24th and 66th armies were bleeding in aimless assaults, the Germans wasted no time. Shock groups from Hoth's 4th Panzer Army significantly widened the gap between the Stalingrad and South-Eastern fronts and continued to push back the 62nd and 64th armies in the city itself.
On September 13, German troops began a general assault on Stalingrad. The city was defended by the same soldiers of Chuikov and Shumilov, against whom the most stringent measures had previously been taken in accordance with the requirements of Order No. 227. But the Germans advanced at a snail’s pace. What's the matter? The reason was simple: the Germans lost freedom of maneuver, they had to storm every house and pay for every step forward with blood, blood, and blood. From the second half of September, the battle for Stalingrad entered the extremely unfavorable phase of the battle of attrition for the Germans. Now the outcome of the fight was decided by the number of reserves. In such conditions, the German command had to pull additional forces into the city, weakening the flanks.
The Soviet General Staff closely monitored these movements. The development of Operation Uranus was in full swing, the goal of which was to encircle the entire group of German troops in the Stalingrad area. The idea of the operation was to defeat the weak Romanian and Italian troops by delivering powerful attacks on the flanks and close the ring around Paulus’s army. On November 19, the Stalingrad offensive operation began. Soviet troops achieved complete surprise. The Romanian units, without offering serious resistance, fled in disorder. As a result of skillfully executed attacks on converging directions, the troops of the Southwestern and Stalingrad fronts, with the active assistance of the right wing of the Don Front, united in the Kalach area on November 23. 22 German divisions were surrounded. This was the first major encirclement of enemy troops since the beginning of the war.
In addition to Operation Uranus, the Soviet General Staff developed another offensive operation, larger in scale and objectives. It was called "Saturn". The Southwestern Front was to strike at Rostov through Kamensk. It was assumed that the success of this operation could create conditions for the complete defeat of the entire southern enemy group on the Soviet-German front. At the same time, not only Paulus’s army was in the cauldron, but also the 1st and 4th tank, 11th German armies, 3rd and 4th Romanian, 2nd Hungarian and 8th Italian armies. In fact, it was about achieving a decisive victory over the German armed forces and a radical turning point in the Second World War. It was planned to inflict a catastrophic defeat on Hitler already during the winter campaign of 1942-1943. However, at this crucial moment, the Soviet command began to make one mistake after another. First of all, according to A.M. Vasilevsky, the General Staff seriously miscalculated in assessing the number of German troops surrounded in Stalingrad. Before the offensive operation, it was believed that 85-90 thousand enemy soldiers and officers would be surrounded. But suddenly it turned out that the true figure was about 350 thousand people. At Headquarters there was also concern about the presence of the German army groups “Don” and “Gollidt” at a slight distance from the cauldron, the latter of which was located only 40 kilometers from the encircled group.
It was decided to “temporarily abandon” Operation Saturn. Instead of attacking Rostov, the Southwestern Front refocused on attacking the flank of the enemy’s Tormosinsk group. From that day on, the previous operation plan was divided in two: Operation Big Saturn, which provided for the encirclement of the entire southern wing of the German troops, was postponed, and was replaced by Operation Little Saturn, which turned the main forces of the Southwestern Front south, in the direction Morozovsk. As for the idea of dissecting the Paulus group, it had one significant flaw. As you know, powerful defensive belts were created around Stalingrad and in the city itself in the summer of 1942. The Germans broke off all their teeth, tearing them through for four months. Now Paulus used these fortifications to organize a strong defense inside the ring. And Soviet troops attacked them. What came of this can be found in the memoirs of A.M. Vasilevsky: “Meeting stubborn resistance from the encircled enemy, the Soviet troops were forced to pause their advance... Following the instructions of Headquarters, in early December we again tried to dismember and destroy the encircled group. However, this time we did not achieve any significant results. The enemy, relying on a network of well-prepared engineering defensive structures, fiercely resisted, responding with fierce counterattacks to our every attempt to advance.”
The debate over Operation Saturn continued for another two weeks. By that time, the troops of the Stalingrad and Don fronts were completely bogged down in battles with the Paulus group. On December 12, Manstein launched an offensive from the Kotelnikovo area, causing a surge of gloomy sentiment at Headquarters. Therefore, on December 14, the final decision was made: to change the direction of the main attack of the Southwestern and left wing of the Voronezh fronts. Instead of Rostov, to the rear of the entire enemy group on the southern wing of the Soviet-German front, the task was now set to defeat only the 8th Italian Army and reach the rear of Manstein’s troops. This was “Little Saturn”. However, the task assigned to the Soviet troops according to the plan of Operation Little Saturn could not be completed. Manstein noticed the threat from the troops of the Southwestern Front and withdrew his group from the flank attack. Two and a half months later, the 57th Tank Corps, along with other units of Manstein, took an active part in the battle for Kharkov, which was devastating for the Red Army. These were all the fruits of “Little Saturn”.
The abandonment of Operation Saturn was the biggest mistake of the Soviet command during the entire war. How could this operation be carried out? The ideal option was to conduct operations Uranus and Saturn simultaneously. The main thing was that absolute surprise was achieved. There was enough strength. The impact of the Stalingrad and Don fronts served as auxiliary, and the Voronezh and Southwestern fronts served as the main one. Actually, this is what Headquarters and the General Staff assumed before they found out the real size of Paulus’s group. Of course, the enemy would make an attempt to break out of the ring. But what were his capabilities in this regard? First of all, all the fears of the Soviet command regarding Paulus’s army were groundless. General Paulus, firstly, did not have the corresponding order from Hitler. And secondly, the cessation of fuel supply turned the equipment of the 6th Army into a pile of dead metal. Paulus reported to the Fuhrer Headquarters that his tanks, of which about 100 were still ready for battle, had fuel for no more than 30 kilometers. In order to ensure a breakthrough, it was necessary to transfer 4,000 tons of gasoline via the “air bridge”. Of course, this was impossible.
With this course of action of the Red Army, the troops of Gollidt and Manstein would not have time to slip out of the trap. The fact is that the distance from the positions of the 8th Italian Army to Rostov was only 300 kilometers. Therefore, Soviet troops would advance with a lead of 100 kilometers. Thus, not only the capture of Rostov was achieved. In March 1943, the Germans would have virtually nothing to carry out an offensive operation in the Kharkov region. It is interesting to consider the potential for the collapse of the entire southern wing of the German Eastern Front. First of all, the loss of such a mass of troops could not be compensated for by anything. The Germans did not have such reserves. A gap almost 400 kilometers wide appeared in the front line. Again, there was nothing to cover it with. The Red Army, which, unlike the Wehrmacht, had significant reserves, could solve two problems: the defeat of Army Group Center by attacking the flank and rear and the development of a deep breakthrough in Ukraine, the liberation of Kiev, Donbass, Crimea without any significant losses, and access to the state border. In fact, they were talking about the complete defeat of Nazi Germany back in 1943. And the assault on Berlin would have taken place in the spring of '44.
In fact, it should be recognized that there was still more than six months left before the radical change. The loss of the troops of the Stalingrad group, of course, was a disaster, but not so severe as to actually turn the tide of hostilities in favor of the Red Army and finally break the Wehrmacht both psychologically and militarily. After all, a little more than a month has passed since the surrender of Paulus, when Soviet troops suffered a severe defeat in the battle for Kharkov and retreated under enemy pressure 150-200 kilometers to the east. All this, alas, does not speak in favor of the statement about a radical change. The real turning point came after the Battle of Kursk. Then the German army actually suffered a final defeat and completely lost the initiative. But this could have happened much earlier. Manstein’s words can serve as confirmation of this: “No matter how great the gain of the Soviet troops, they still failed to achieve a decisive victory - the destruction of the entire southern flank, which we could not compensate for in any way.”
The battles near Rzhev and the politicization of memory
Only in the mid-2000s did the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense begin to make life easier for researchers by opening funds and removing other restrictions.
Thus, for a long time, work in the reading room involved solely writing out information in a notebook, which was then submitted to special employees for verification. They cut out from there - literally - any information that, in their opinion, discredited the “moral character” of the Red Army (naturally, the researchers wrote on one side of the sheet). Now these practices are a thing of the past, but they need to be remembered when talking about why the revision of Soviet interpretations of the Great Patriotic War in the 1990s gave rise to chimerical constructions: how could it be otherwise? At the same time, the actual updating of historiography is accompanied by public discussions, politicized and polarized, exchanging history for the achievement of external goals: some attack deviations from rooted stereotypes as “falsification” and “attack on patriotism,” while seeing in the past an argument for the total justification of power and authoritarian methods of management , while others, not disdaining outright distortion, through an appeal to the history of the Great Patriotic War, seek to either discredit the Soviet political project or expose the modern government and the interpretations that it is believed to promote. The politicization of the Great Patriotic War turned out to be inevitable, since it was this war that turned into the main “place of memory” of Russia, it is both the cornerstone of state historical policy and the main “point of symbolic assembly” of the Russian nation, and became such due to its widely recognized significance and rooting in family memory. But the state of the public language leaves much to be desired.
Not only heroic, but also tragic events, including those like the battles near Rzhev, become hostage to these discussions. In a number of journalistic works, the desire to blame the Soviet leadership (from which responsibility cannot be removed) for the heavy losses at Rzhev replaced the desire to understand the details. Excessive reliance on selectively selected works of foreign authors also played a role. Let us mention the book of a participant in the battles of the German general Horst Grossmann with the symptomatic title “Rzhev: the cornerstone of the Eastern Front” (published in Russian in Rzhev already in 1996), which ends with the symptomatic phrase: “The German soldier left the Rzhev battlefield undefeated.” The tragic heroism that binds together the half-memoir, half-research of a nostalgic general became one of the reasons for inventing a single “Battle of Rzhev” in Russia.
However, not everything is so tragic. In the 2010s, the “new historiography” of the Great Patriotic War is actively developing, which at the same time leaves no stone unturned both from Soviet officialdom (however, heterogeneous and internally contradictory, since it fluctuated in unison with the party line), and from its politicized criticism . The latter, of course, is preserved in the speeches of politicians, and in the works of historians of the “old generation”, and in various journalistic opuses of both pro-government and opposition media. We include, first of all, A. V. Isaev, V. N. Zamulin, V. Mosunov, M. V. Fomenko, A. R. Dyukov, M. E. Morozov, S. Biryuk as representatives of the “new social scientific historiography” , I. Sdvizhkova, A. Volkov, A. Shneer, L.A. Terushkin, S. Ushkalov, D.B. Khazanov, E. Kobyakov, I. Petrov, R. Aliev, D. Shein and many others. Not all of them are associated with official scientific institutions, not all are professional historians, but their books, often based on archival documents, are published by commercial publishers in circulations that are not bad for scientific literature, they write articles (see the Warspot and Warhead portals), and speak with public lectures (the “Archival Revolution” series and other TacticMedia programs, the lecture hall of the Russian Historical Historical Society and State Historical Museum “Historical Saturdays”, the military history club “Ice and Fire”, etc.), actively argue and share archival finds on social networks. All this gives rise to a special discussion space in which the scientific and media are strongly intertwined, some works are more academic, others less so, but it is here that a fresh scientific view of the Great Patriotic War is formed and the foundations of a new public language, so necessary for conversation, are laid about it, language that goes beyond the tired theses about “protecting historical truth from falsifiers” or “the struggle of living memory, real history against dead officialdom.”
Impact and ratings
The victory at Stalingrad became a decisive contribution to achieving a radical turning point in the Great Patriotic War and had a decisive influence on the further course of the entire Second World War. In the Battle of Stalingrad, new features of the military art of the USSR Armed Forces manifested themselves with all their might.
The world highly appreciated the Battle of Stalingrad. US President Roosevelt called the Battle of Stalingrad an epic struggle, the decisive result of which is celebrated by all Americans. British Prime Minister Churchill called the victory of the Soviet Army at Stalingrad amazing. King George VI of Great Britain sent Stalingrad a dedicatory sword, on the blade of which the inscription was engraved in Russian and English: “To the citizens of Stalingrad, strong as steel, from King George VI as a sign of the deep admiration of the British people:.”
The victory at Stalingrad had a significant impact on the lives of the occupied peoples and instilled hope for liberation and peace.
