Battle of Odessa

Battle of Odessa

Part of: Second World War

Soviet artillery near Odessa

date	August 8 to October 16, 1941
place	Odessa region
output	Axis victory

Parties to the conflict
Romania German Empire	Soviet Union
Commander
Alexandru Ioanițiu † (plane crash) Nicolae Ciupercă Iosif Iacobici Erich von Manstein	Georgi Sofronov Ivan Petrow Gavriil Zhukov
Troop strength
340,000 soldiers: 4th Army Parts of the 11th Army	At the beginning 34,500 soldiers: Independent coastal army 240 guns Black Sea Fleet
losses
92,545 soldiers (17,729 dead, 63,345 wounded, 11,471 missing) 20 aircraft	41,268 soldiers (16,578 dead, 24,690 wounded) 151 aircraft

The Battle of Odessa ( Russian Одесская оборона ) was a battle in southwestern Ukraine during the German enterprise Barbarossa . The fighting over Odessa took place mainly between Romanian troops , reinforced by parts of the 11th Army of the German Wehrmacht , and Soviet units. These consisted at the beginning of the 9th Army and the later, on July 20, 1941, established Independent Coastal Army , reinforced by ships of the Black Sea Fleet . The battle lasted from August 5 to October 16, 1941 and thus decisively delayed the advance of the Axis powers on the southern part of the Eastern Front.

prehistory

After the end of the fighting in Bessarabia in the course of Operation Barbarossa , German and Romanian troops reached the Dniester in mid-July 1941 and in places crossed it. On July 27, Adolf Hitler sent the Romanian dictator Marshal Antonescu a letter in which he called on him to take part in the continuation of operations in Ukraine and promised him the area between the Dniester and the Southern Bug (later Transnistria ). At the beginning of August the Romanian 4th Army began to cross the Dniester with an order to take the city of Odessa . The Romanians under General Ciupercă had seven divisions and one brigade.

On the Soviet side it faced the coastal army formed on July 20 under Georgi Sofronov , which at the beginning of the fighting had three rifle divisions (25th, 51st and 150th) and a cavalry division. The 9th Army (General Tscherewitschenko ) of the southern front , which was in command at the beginning of the war , was already in retreat behind the Bug . Large parts of Odessa's population have been evacuated with the help of the Black Sea Fleet since the end of July.

On August 3, the advance of the Romanian 4th Army across the lower Dniester began, the V Corps forced the transition between Tighina and Dubăsari . Marshal Budjonny also transferred the 30th Rifle Division of the 9th Army to the Coast Army on August 6th. General Sofronov nevertheless spoke out in favor of evacuating his troops from Odessa, but was outvoted. The coastal army received sustained support from the Black Sea Fleet under Admiral Oktjabrski , which supplied additional troops, including marine infantry , as reinforcement . 100,000 residents of the city took part in the preparation of the defense. In a short time, three defense lines were built, as well as 250 barricades in Odessa itself.

course

Between August 5th and 8th there was fighting at the wide entrances to the city of Odessa. Then the Soviets withdrew to the outer defensive ring. This was 20 to 25 kilometers from the city. Just one day later, the Romanian 1st Panzer Division broke through the first line of defense and continued towards the second ring. On August 13, the Soviet lines in the east of the city were broken and Odessa was completely enclosed from the land side. The Romanian armored troops suffered heavy losses because they only acted in small groups and separately from or poorly with their own infantry.

After the city had been encircled, Marshal Antonescu's offensive was continued on August 16. On the 17th the Romanian troops captured Odessa's water reserves. Repeated Soviet counter-attacks were repulsed. On the night of August 18, the Romanian Navy torpedo boats damaged a Soviet destroyer. The air force also repeatedly intervened in the fighting of the ground troops, tried to stop maritime traffic to and from Odessa and on August 20 destroyed a Soviet armored train . On August 19, the Odessa Defense District was established, under the command of the Odessa Naval Base, Rear Admiral Gavrill Zhukov . The following day, General Petrov was appointed commander of the 25th Chapayevsk Rifle Division, which together with the 95th Rifle Division (Major General Vorobyev) carried the brunt of the defense.

On August 20th, the Axis Powers began a new offensive in which 17 divisions and 7 brigades were involved, concentrated around the city:

• III. Corps, Major General Vasile Atanasiu (2nd, 3rd, 7th and 11th Infantry Divisions)
• I. Corps, Major General Teodor Ionescu (1st Guard and 21st Infantry Divisions)
• IV Corps, General Constantin Sănătescu (8th and 14th Infantry Divisions)
• V Corps, Major General Aurelian Sion (1st, 4th, 13th and 15th Infantry Divisions)
• XI. Corps, Constantin Constantinescu (6th, 10th and 21st Infantry Divisions)
• Reserve: 5th Infantry, 1st Border Guard and 1st Panzer Division, 9th Cavalry Brigade

After a month of fighting, the Romanians only got 10 to 14 km from Odessa. Between August 5th and 24th, the attacks of the Romanian 4th Army had already resulted in losses of 27,307 men (5,329 dead, 18,600 wounded and 3,378 missing). By August 24, the main line of defense of the Red Army at Kagarlyk was pushed back towards the Karst valley. The Romanian artillery was able to bombard the port of the city from their positions.

About 38,000 people from the Red Army, the Ministry of Interior and Civil Life received the Medal for the Defense of Odessa.

Soviet stamp issue from 1965 designating Odessa as a hero city

A Soviet counterattack took place between August 28th and 30th, repelling the attackers and only returning the initiative to them on the last day. At times the place Kubanka was liberated. When the invaders attacked again, Soviet troops were surrounded in Vakarzhany and wiped out until September 3. An offensive started on September 12 had to be abandoned two days later because the German and Romanian artillery lacked ammunition.

Because the attacks under Lieutenant General Ciuperca did not penetrate despite the strong superiority, he was replaced on September 10 by General Iosif Iacobici . On September 22nd, the Soviet forces, reinforced by the sea, began a counterattack. The Axis powers were pushed back 5 to 8 km and two Romanian battalions were crushed.

After the German breakthrough to the Crimea on September 29, 1941 under General Erich von Manstein and the threat to the Donets Basin and Sevastopol , the Soviet High Command decided to evacuate Odessa. From October 1st to October 16th, 86,000 members of the Red Army were evacuated to protect the Crimean peninsula and 15,000 residents were evacuated by the Black Sea Fleet. The Romanian Air Force carried out nuisance attacks on the evacuation fleet. On October 16, the Axis forces invaded Odessa.

Losses and consequences

Soviet vehicles and barricades abandoned after the capture of Odessa in October 1941

Romanian troops in Odessa after taking the city

The Romanian 4th Army lost 92,545 men in the fighting for Odessa, including 17,729 dead, 63,345 wounded and 11,471 missing. According to its own statements, the Red Army lost 41,000 men (16,500 of them dead and missing).

The units of the Red Army evacuated by the Black Sea Fleet were almost completely destroyed in the later course of the war during the occupation of Crimea and the ensuing battle for Sevastopol .

From October 22 to 24, 1941, the Odessa massacre took place here , in which between 25,000 and 35,000 Jews were murdered in retaliation for a bomb explosion at the Romanian headquarters.

In the catacombs of Odessa until the liberation of Odessa on April 10, 1944, Soviet partisans fought against the Romanian and German occupiers.

Odessa remained under Romanian occupation until April 1944.

Honors

On December 22, 1942, the Soviet high command donated a medal of honor for the city's defenders. On May 1, 1945, Odessa was named a Hero City and was immediately allowed to bear the Order of Lenin and a gold star in the city's coat of arms. On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the victory over fascism , a series of stamps with the city as a motif was published on May 8, 1965.

literature

• Friedrich Forstmeier : Odessa 1941. The struggle for town and port and the evacuation of the sea fortress, August 15 - October 16, 1941 (= individual writings on the military history of the Second World War. Volume 1). Rombach, Freiburg im Breisgau 1967.
• Alexander Dallin: Odessa, 1941–1944. A Case Study of Soviet Territory Under Foreign Rule . The Center for Romanian Studies, Iaşi 1998, ISBN 973-98391-1-8 (English, odessitclub.org ).

Web links

• Odessa Defense (Russian)
• The Battle of Odessa - 1941 on worldwar2.ro

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Second World War Lexicon ( Memento of the original from June 30, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed August 12, 2011. 
2. ↑ The World Odessit Club ( Memento of the original from September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed August 12, 2011. 
3. ^ The Soviet Military Awards Page , accessed August 12, 2011.