5th Shock Army

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5th Shock Army

active December 1942 to December 1946
Country Soviet Union 1923Soviet Union Soviet Union
Armed forces Soviet Union 1923Soviet Union Red Army
Armed forces Land Forces
Type army

The 5th Shock Army ( Russian 5-я ударная армия ) was the last of five during the Second World War by the Red Army established shock armies and was, during the in December 1942, one year after the other four Battle of Stalingrad formed. She took part in this battle, the operations in Ukraine in 1943 and 1944, the Jassy-Kishinev operation and, towards the end of the war, the Vistula-Oder operation and the Battle of Berlin . After the end of the war she was stationed in Germany until 1946 and had her headquarters in Potsdam .

history

Second World War

The 5th Shock Army emerged on December 9, 1942 by order of the Stawka from the previous day from the 10th Reserve Army , which was one of the ten reserve armies of the High Command formed in 1942, and was subordinate to the Stalingrad Front (2nd formation). At that time, it included three rifle divisions as well as the 4th Mechanized Corps and the 7th Panzer Corps. In December 1942 the army took part in the defense against the German company Wintergewitter to relieve the 6th Army troops trapped in Stalingrad . On December 26th it came into the population of the Southwest Front .

After the renaming of the Stalingrad Front at the turn of the year 1942/43, it became part of the southern front and took part in the advance on Rostov-on-Don , which aimed to cut off the route of retreat for the German forces in the Caucasus ( Army Group A ). This project failed, Rostov could not be retaken until February 14th, when Army Group A had largely withdrawn behind the Don .

From mid-July to early August, the 5th Shock Army formed one of the main attack armies on the southern front in the Donets-Mius offensive . The objectives of the operation were missed and the land gains made in the meantime were lost again after a German counterattack. The second attempt to regain possession of the Donets Basin was more successful , the so-called Donets Basin operation from mid-August to the end of September. The 5th shock army succeeded in taking Stalino (today Donetsk ) together with the 2nd Guards Army on September 8th . Immediately afterwards, the army continued its advance in the Melitopol operation , the city of Melitopol fell to the troops of the 4th Ukrainian Front on October 23 , as the former southern front was called from October 20.

In the winter of 1943/44 fighting raged over the German bridgehead south of Nikopol , which was captured on February 8th. In the Dnepr-Carpathian operation in the spring of 1944, almost all of western Ukraine was liberated, with the 5th Shock Army taking part in the operations against Odessa at the beginning of April . At the end of February it became part of the 3rd Ukrainian Front .

In August 1944, the 5th Shock Army took part in Operation Jassy-Kishinew and was involved in the closure of the Chisinau pocket, in which a large part of the German 6th Army was destroyed. Subsequently, the army was assigned to the Stawka Reserve and at the end of October it was subordinated to the 1st Belarusian Front , which at that time was outside Warsaw .

From mid-January 1945 the army took part in the Vistula-Oder operation and at the end of the month reached the Oder near Küstrin , where it built a bridgehead over the river. The fight for Küstrin , in which the 8th Guards Army Vasily Tschuikows was involved, lasted until the beginning of April. From the successfully secured bridgehead of Küstrin, the attack of the 1st Belarusian Front on the German positions on the Seelow Heights (→  Battle of the Seelow Heights ) took place on April 16, which , together with the operations of the 1st Ukrainian Front to encircle Berlin led.

The 5th shock army reached Altlandsberg on April 21 and then began to attack the capital itself. To this end, on April 23, it attacked Berlin with the 1st Guards Armored Army from the southeast. The following morning one of their corps reached the Spree and the Berlin Ringbahn at Treptower Park , but then met stronger resistance in Friedrichshain . Then she advanced along Frankfurter Allee to Berlin-Mitte . The honor of storming the Reichstag fell to the 3rd Shock Army , supported by the 8th Guards Army. For this, the army commander, Nikolai Erastowitsch Bersarin , was appointed the first Soviet city commander of Berlin. In his headquarters in Berlin-Karlshorst , the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht was signed for the second time (after the surrender of Reims on May 7th to the SHAEF in the presence of a Soviet representative) on the night of May 8th to 9th .

post war period

After the end of the war, the 5th Shock Army belonged to the group of Soviet occupation troops in Germany until 1946 . One of the army's divisions took part in the Allied victory parade in Berlin on September 7, 1945. In December 1946 the army was disbanded.

Commander

literature

  • Владимир Дайнес: Советские ударные армии в бою. Эксмо-пресс, 2009, ISBN 978-5-699-31536-9 .
  • Алексей Исаев: Берлин 45-го: Сражения в логове зверя. Part 4-5. Яуза, Эксмо, 2007, ISBN 978-5-699-20927-9 .