Battle of the cauldron near Uman

Battle of the cauldron near Uman

Part of: Second World War

date	July 15 to August 8, 1941
place	Ukraine , Soviet Union
output	German victory
consequences	The advance on Kiev was continued

Parties to the conflict
German Empire Hungary Romania	Soviet Union
Commander
Gerd von Rundstedt Ewald von Kleist Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel	Mikhail Petrovich Kirponos
Troop strength
Army Group South ( Panzer Group 1 ) 17th Army	Southwest Front 6th Army 12th Army 18th Army
losses
n / a	20 divisions 103,000 prisoners

The Kesselschlacht bei Uman was a battle in the Second World War from July 15 to August 8, 1941. In it, the German Wehrmacht, with the support of Hungarian and Romanian units, smashed 20 divisions of the Red Army .

requirements

According to the plan of Operation Barbarossa , Army Group South's thrust was concentrated on Ukraine . After overcoming the heavily fortified Stalin Line (from July 7th), it was important to destroy larger units of the Red Army in Ukraine. In contrast to Army Group Center , which was able to carry out pincer operations with two tank groups, Army Group South only had one tank group. The Soviet Southwest Front , which was also the strongest of the four Soviet fronts and had more tanks than the Germans, was led by Colonel-General Mikhail Petrovich Kirponos and was first hit hard in Volhynia at the end of June 1941 during the tank battle between Rovno and Dubno .

After the successful border battles in mid-July, the German Commander-in-Chief GFM von Rundstedt succeeded in setting up the 17th Army under General Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel in such a way that Panzer Group 1 under Ewald von Kleist bypasses 2 armies of the Soviet South and Southwest Fronts in the rear and to include. In the south this operation was covered by units of the allied Romanian 3rd Army .

Course of the battle

A German infantryman in front of a fallen Soviet soldier, behind him a destroyed Soviet BT-7 tank (Ukraine, June 1941)

After the Panzer Group Kleist was briefly stopped in the Fastow area to wait for their supplies , they resumed their attack on July 15. The III. Army Corps (mot.) (General von Mackensen ) remained for the time being with the 13th and 14th Panzer Divisions as well as the SS division "Wiking" for cover to the east in the Kasatin area . The Soviet 26th Army deployed there (Lieutenant General Kostenko ) consisted of 8 rifle and 2 cavalry divisions, but had too few tanks to effectively counter Mackensen's tank corps in open terrain. As a result, the 26th Army was thrown back from the Fastov and Belaya Tserkov area. The remnants of the Soviet 15th and 16th mechanized corps were pushed against the Dnieper together with the 5th Cavalry Corps (General Kamkow) . This broke the connection between 6th and 26th Armies, and a huge gap in the front opened up.

The XXXXVIII. Army Corps (mot.) (General der Panzertruppen Kempf ) then carried out from the north with the 11th and 16th Panzer Divisions to encircle the Soviet forces in the area west of the Sinucha sector in the rear. In addition, the XIV Army Corps (mot.) (General von Wietersheim ) was introduced into this gap in the front, and the 9th Panzer Division under Lieutenant General von Hubicki was placed at the head. The Soviet 6th Army failed to respond appropriately to this danger by regrouping the still intact 2nd and 24th Mechanized Corps (Major General Tschistjakow ) north to stop the 11th and 16th Panzer Divisions. A violent tank battle was carried out by the XXXXVIII. Army Corps (mot.) Fought in the Monastyryschtsche area from July 21 to 27 , when the 2nd and 24th mechanized corps of the Soviets tried to support the threatened flank of the army while the bulk of the 6th and 12th Armies headed south withdrew towards Uman. The 2nd Mechanized Corps (Major General Juri W. Nowosselski) had only about 100 operational tanks, including 18 of the T-34 type , fuel and ammunition were scarce. To the east the XIV. Corps secured (mot.) In the space between Tolstyje and Zvenigorod . In the meantime, the Soviet 18th Mechanized Corps on the Southern Bug was fighting against the pursuing 17th Army. The German 9th Panzer Division took Novo Archangelsk and thereby threatened the rear connections of the Soviet troops returning to Uman.

The remnants of the 4th Mechanized Corps (General Vlasov ), decimated at Brody at the end of June, were tasked with retaking Novo Arkhangelsk on July 31, but the few still intact T-34s had neither sufficient fuel nor enough ammunition. After the 9th Panzer Division had been replaced by the reinforced SS regiment "Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler" , General Hubicki's units moved further south and were able to unite with parts of the 17th Army - the 1st Mountain Division . The infantry divisions of the German LII. Army Corps and the XXXXIX. Mountain Corps harassed the Soviet 6th and 12th Armies under Lieutenant General Muzychenko and Major General Ponedelin from the west.

The 17th Army only had the Hungarian "Rapid Corps" under Major General Béla Miklós . The Hungarian Rapid Corps was given the task of managing the crossing over the southern Bug at Gaiworon , as well as starting the energetic advance along the railway line on Pervomaisk . From July 26 to 30, the Soviet units, which were surrounded on three sides, waged heavy defensive battles; to the southeast, the connection to the 18th Army under General Smirnov was still open. Marshal Budjonny , commander of the armed forces operating in the south-west, reported to the Stawka that the attempts by the 6th and 12th Armies to fully open the rear connections would not succeed without additional reinforcements. On July 29, the meeting of Hungarian and Romanian troops took place near Berszad, although a year earlier they had faced each other on the Transylvanian border . As a precaution, the OKW pushed a German division with a new general command into the front between the Hungarian Rapid Corps and the Romanians.

The vanguard of the German 1st Mountain Division advanced in early August over Tarasowka to Sinjucha section before and met with Sabugskoje the spearheads of the 9th Armored Division. Mikló's Rapid Corps also reached the connection with the 9th Panzer Division the following day and closed the Uman pocket. The 17th Army and Kleist's units had encircled most of the Soviet 6th and 12th Armies, including the remains of several mechanized corps. On August 3, the ring was firmly closed in the area north of Pervomaisk, around 20 Soviet divisions were in the pocket. The German XI , standing north of the Hungarians at Pervomaisk . Army corps under General von Kortzfleisch gathered the 101st and 257th Infantry Divisions in the area near Jozefpol and strengthened the kettle front there.

The XXXXIX. Mountain Corps narrowed the basin in the south between the Podwyskoye and Kopenkovata line in the direction of Radvyssokoye, the Hungarian Corps operated between Konstantinovka and Pervomaisk, and the troops of the LII pushed in to the west. Army Corps between the Olschonka and Dobryanka line on Golovaniewsk . The XIV Army Corps held the eastern basin front of Tischkowka-Olshanka-Perzchonyi, the vanguard of XXXXVIII. Army corps was already marching south on Voznesensk . Since the German and Hungarian containment forces were still relatively weak, tens of thousands of Red Army soldiers were able to escape eastwards into Soviet-held areas, giving up their heavy weapons and equipment. In the Podwyskoye area, the 1st and 4th Mountain Divisions repelled all attempts to escape. The Kesselschlacht was successfully ended by the German troops by August 8, with heavy fighting. 103,000 Soviet soldiers capitulated, and 317 tanks, 858 guns and 5,250 trucks fell into German hands or were destroyed.

Result

The battle of Uman was the first step for the Germans to conquer the economically important Donbass region. The hinterland of Ukraine as far as the Dnieper and the Black Sea was now open to extensive attack operations. Mackensen's III. Army corps (motorized) was also advancing again, had occupied Kirovograd on August 4th and reached Kremenchug with the 13th Panzer Division on August 15th . Troops of the XIV Army Corps (motorized) stormed Dnepropetrovsk at the great Dnieper bend and parts of the 14th Panzer Division and the 60th Motorized Infantry Division occupied the city of Zaporozhye . However, the Soviets managed to blow up all important railway bridges over the Dnieper - in Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhye, Kremenchug and Kanev in time. On August 17 and 18, the German troops built an eastern bridgehead over the river and then secured it in weeks of fighting. At the beginning of September, the III, standing in the Dnepropetrovsk bridgehead. Army corps freed by the motorized 60th and 198th Infantry Divisions and the SS "Wiking" division. In the meantime the "Gruppe Kempf " ( motorized 16th , 16th Panzer and reinforced SS regiments "Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler") had advanced further south to the port of Nikolajew by August 16 and occupied the lower Dnieper together with Romanian troops. Area. At the end of August Kleist's armored troops had taken control of the entire west bank of the Dnieper and, on the instructions of the OKW , grouped themselves north again to take part in the battle for Kiev .

literature

When looking at Soviet sources, with the exception of samizdat and tamizdat literature that was published up to 1987, the activities of the Soviet censorship authorities ( Glawlit , military censorship) in revising various contents in line with Soviet ideology must be taken into account. (→ censorship in the Soviet Union )

• Horst Boog, Jürgen Förster, Joachim Hoffmann , Ernst Klink, Rolf-Dieter Müller , Gerd R. Ueberschär : The attack on the Soviet Union (= Military History Research Office [ed.]: The German Reich and the Second World War . Volume 4 ). 2nd Edition. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1987, ISBN 3-421-06098-3 .
• LL Dessjatow, PA Shilin, BG Soloviev: The fighting in Ukraine during the initial period of the war. in: Pawel Andrejewitsch Schilin (ed.): The most important operations of the Great Patriotic War, 1941–1945. Publishing house of the Ministry for National Defense, Berlin (East) 1958, pp. 112–130.
• Oleg Nuzhdin: Уманский котел: Трагедия 6-й и 12-й армий , LLC Yauza Moscow 2015
• Percy E. Schramm (ed.): The war diary of the OKW - a documentation. Volume 1. Bechtermünz, Augsburg 2002, ISBN 3-8289-0525-0 .
• Hans Steets: Gebirgsjäger near Uman - The corps battle of XXXXIX. Mountain Army Corps near Podwyssokoje 1941. Scharnhorst Buchkameradschaft , Heidelberg 1955. (= The Wehrmacht in combat. Volume 4.)
• Herbert Schrödter: Diary fragments from the Second World War, section: Kesselschlacht von Uman