Operation Uranus
Soviet thrusts during Operation Uranus
| date | November 19th bis 23. November 1942 |
|---|---|
| place | Soviet Union |
| output | Red Army victory |
| consequences | Enclosure of 330,000 men of the Axis troops in the Stalingrad pocket |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
| Commander | |
|
Andrei Yeremenko |
Maximilian Freiherr von Weichs |
| Troop strength | |
| 1,134,500 soldiers 894 tanks 13,451 guns 1414 aircraft |
1,011,500 soldiers 675 tanks 10,290 guns 732 (1216?) Aircraft |
| losses | |
|
unknown |
unknown |
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Operation Uranus ( Russian Операция "Уран" ) was the designation of the Soviet high command for a military counter-offensive that began on November 19, 1942 against the German troops, which had been involved in the most severe fighting against the Red Army in Stalingrad and against the Red Army since the summer of 1942 Romanian and Italian troops covering the flanks of the German 6th Army and 4th Panzer Army . It led to the confinement of 330,000 Axis forces soldiers in the Stalingrad pocket and is considered to be one of the turning points of the Second World War .
aims
The objectives of the Soviet armed forces were the encirclement and destruction of the German troops in and near Stalingrad and the associated relief of the troops of the 62nd Army fighting under the command of Lieutenant General Vasily Tschuikow in Stalingrad on the western bank of the Volga . Generals Georgi Zhukov , who later won the Battle of Berlin , and Alexander Wassilewski , Chief of the Soviet General Staff, had developed the plans for this since September 1942. For this purpose, extensive reserves were first drawn together behind the front and bridgeheads were formed and tenaciously defended on the Volga to the north and south of Stalingrad, which were to serve as the starting point for the planned operation. The actual operational plan was worked out under Wassilewski's direction.
Furthermore, the Soviet plans saw another operation codenamed Saturn before, with the German army units in the Caucasus (see. Edelweiss businesses ) by taking Rostov-on-Don , just before the mouth of the river into the Sea of Azov area should be cut, . Affected by the plans were not only the German 6th Army under Friedrich Paulus , and the 4th Panzer Army under Hermann Hoth , of which the first named was later encircled in Stalingrad, but also the entire Army Group A .
Operation Mars against Army Group Center took place around the same time .
Troops involved
Troop units of the Soviet Union
On the Soviet side, the Southwest Front under Nikolai Watutin , the Don Front under Konstantin Rokossowski in the north, and the Stalingrad Front led by Andrei Yeryomenko in the south were involved in the large-scale operation . The south-western front was the main blow . The fronts were supported by the 2nd, 8th, 16th and 17th Air Army. General Vasily Chuikov , commander of the 62nd Army fighting in Stalingrad, was only informed of the attack on the eve of the attack in order not to let his troops fall in combat readiness or endanger the company.
For the attack, 115 divisions were concentrated with Katyusha rocket launchers , which with 1250 mounts and launchers had a third of the total reactive artillery of the Red Army.
A 1000-kilometer-long railway line Svyashsk- Saratov - Ilowlja was built in three months for the deployment .
Southwest Front (Colonel General NF Watutin with 398,000 men, 410 tanks and 4,258 guns)
- 1st Guard Army , Lieutenant General DD Lelyushenko (1st, 153rd, 197th, 203rd, 266th and 278th Rifle Divisions)
- 5th Panzer Army , Major General PL Romanenko (1st and 26th Panzer Corps, 8th Cavalry Corps, 14th and 47th Guard Divisions, 50th, 119th, 124th, 159th, 210th, 228th and 346th Guard Divisions) Rifle Division)
- 21st Army , Lieutenant General IM Tschistjakow (4th Panzer Corps, 3rd Guard Cavalry Corps, 3rd Guard Division, 63rd, 76th, 96th, 277th, 293rd and 333rd Rifle Divisions)
- 17th Air Army , Major General SA Krassowski
- 2nd Air Army , Major General KN Smirnov
Don Front (Lieutenant General KK Rokossowski with 307,500 men, 161 tanks and 4,177 artillery pieces)
- 65th Army , Lieutenant General PI Batow (4th, 27th and 40th Guard Divisions, 21st, 23rd, 24th, 252nd, 258th, 304th and 321st Rifle Divisions)
- 24th Army , Major General IW Galanin (16th Panzer Corps, 49th Guards Division, 84th, 120th, 173rd, 214th, 233rd, 260th, 273rd and 289th Rifle Divisions)
- 66th Army , Lieutenant General AS Schadow (64th, 99th, 116th, 226th, 299th and 343rd Rifle Divisions)
- 16th Air Army , Major General SI Rudenko
Stalingrad Front (Colonel General AI Yeremenko with 429,000 men, 323 tanks and 5,016 guns)
- 62nd Army , Lieutenant General VI Chuikov (13th, 37th and 39th Guard Divisions, 45th, 95th, 112th, 124th, 138th, 149th, 193rd, 284th and 308th Rifle Divisions)
- 64th Army , Major General MS Shumilov (36th Guards Division, 29th, 38th, 126th, 157th, 204th, 208th, 214th, 229th Rifle Division and 7th Cavalry Divisions)
- 57th Army , Major General FI Tolbuchin (13th Panzer Corps, 143rd, 169th, 177th and 422nd Rifle Divisions)
- 51st Army , Major General NI Trufanov (4th Mechanical Corps, 4th Cavalry Corps, 15th Guard Division, 91st, 76th, 126th, 302nd Rifle Division)
- 28th Army , Lieutenant General WF Gerasimenko (34th Guard Division, 248th Rifle Division)
- 8th Air Army , Major General TT Chrjukin
Troop associations of the Axis powers
On the German side, the 6th Army and the 4th Panzer Army stood in the Stalingrad area, the Romanian 3rd Army secured the Don section northwest of Stalingrad and the Romanian 4th Army , mixed with the German 4th Panzer Army, covered the area south of Stalingrad into the Kalmyk steppe .
These had the following associations:
Romanian 3rd Army Lieutenant General Petre Dumitrescu
- I. Army Corps, Major General Teodor Ionescu (7th and 11th Infantry Divisions)
- II Army Corps, Major General Nicolae Dăscălescu (9th, 14th Infantry Division and 7th Cavalry Division)
- IV Army Corps, Major General Constantin Sănătescu (13th and 15th Infantry and 1st Cavalry Divisions)
- 5th Army Corps, Major General Aurelian Sion (5th and 6th Infantry Divisions)
Reserve:
- XVII. Army Corps , Lieutenant General Hollidt ( 62nd and 387th Infantry Divisions )
- XXXXVIII. Panzer Corps , Lieutenant General Ferdinand Heim (Romanian 1st Panzer Division, 22nd Panzer Division , 14th Panzer Division , Tschir Alarm Division )
German 6th Army Colonel General Friedrich Paulus
- XI. Army corps with 44th , 376th and 384th infantry divisions
- VIII Army Corps with 76th and 113th Infantry Divisions
- XIV. Panzer Corps with 94th Infantry , 16th Panzer Division , 3rd and 60th Infantry Division (motorized)
- LI. Army Corps with 71st , 79th , 295th , 305th and 389th Infantry Division , 24th Panzer Division , Croat. Reg. 369 , 100th Jäger Division
Reserve:
- Lepper group
German 4th Panzer Army Colonel General Hermann Hoth
- 16th Infantry Division (motorized)
- IV Army Corps (General Erwin Jaenecke) with 371st and 297th Infantry Divisions , Romanian 20th Infantry Division
Reserve:
Romanian 4th Army Lieutenant General Constantin Constantinescu
- VI. Army Corps (Lieutenant General Corneliu Dragalina ) with 1st, 4th, 2nd and 18th Infantry Divisions
- VII Army Corps with 5th and 8th Cavalry Divisions
Element of surprise
For the Soviet leadership, the element of surprise and thorough preparation were crucial to success. The Soviet preparations for the offensive, which had to take place in the open steppe terrain, were recognized by the German side, but the extent was underestimated. For Franz Halder , Chief of Staff , the Soviet Union was "too weak to be dangerous to us like last winter". 6th Army Chief of Staff Arthur Schmidt wrote in a letter:
"The situation did not come as a complete surprise to us, even if it was more sudden than we thought [...] We all did not recognize the size of the danger, overestimated each other and underestimated the Russian once again"
A telex from Army Group B to Army Group Don on November 27, 1942 stated the Red Army during this attack: "Good camouflage of all details of the deployment, especially of the armored units", "Extensive successful radio silence of the attack units", "Almost only nocturnal marching movements", "Inconspicuous pushing force activity". The bulk of the Soviet tank brigades could not be cleared up.
The Foreign Armies department first reported on November 7th that they were preparing to attack in the Kletskaya bridgehead and possibly in the area south of the Choper estuary. Also on November 7th, the German liaison staff reported to the 3rd Romanian Army: “Expecting November 8th. stronger enemy attack with tanks Kletskaya - Raspopinskaya. ”But Paulus said one shouldn't worry about the“ few tanks near Kletskaya ”. On November 9th the situation was considered more serious and the XXXXVIII. To bring up armored corps, the Ia Colonel i. G. Winter meant that all precautionary measures had been taken. On November 12th, it was decided that the XXXXVIII, consisting of 2 tank divisions, should be adopted. Panzer Corps to supply the 14th Panzer Division. Wolfram von Richthofen, the chief of the air forces operating in the Stalingrad area, noted in his diary on November 16, 1942:
"The intellectual weakness of our current leadership results from the fact that we are standing around with 3 PD in anticipation of a Russian attack, instead of, as before, of course, breaking out with strong forces and smashing the Russians."
On December 12, 1942, Hitler and the new Chief of Staff, Kurt Zeitzler, talked about the fact that no countermeasures were initiated in the first 24 hours because the attack was believed to be one of the "Klecker attacks" that had taken place for days. Zeitzler said: "The Russians did it very cleverly, that he would start out quietly, make you feel safe, that you would say that there are only small things and suddenly a big thing is going on in this room." War claimed Zeitzler, however, that he learned directly about the artillery strike that initiated the offensive and knew this was the offensive that Hitler had long warned against and that he immediately phoned Hitler and wrested the decision to use the 48th Panzer Corps to counterattack .
The attack
Southwest Front Offensive
On November 19, 1942 at 7:30 a.m. (Moscow time), the attack on the southwest front in the north of Stalingrad began with an 80-minute artillery strike from 3500 pipes (70 pipes per kilometer) on the positions of the Romanian 3rd Army (General Petre Dumitrescu ). 08:50 stepped out of the bridgehead of Serafimovitch the 5th Panzer Army (General Romanenko ) and out of the bridgehead Kletskaya the 21st Army (General Chistyakov ) to break through to the south of. For the first time, the Soviet troops applied the concept of the artillery offensive, in which the artillery not only prepared the attack, but also received artillery support in all phases of the fight. Around noon the resistance of the Romanian II and IV Corps collapsed. The 293rd and 76th Rifle Divisions were able to break through the enemy lines to a width of 9 km and a depth of 5 to 7 km. After this success, General Tschistjakow introduced the 4th Panzer Corps (General Kravchenko) and 3rd Guards Cavalry Corps ( Pliyev ) in reserve in order to expand the success of the first squadron. In the middle the V Corps was completely surrounded by the 293rd and 76th Rifle Divisions in the area of the villages of Baschowski, Belonemuhin and Raspopinskaya. The Romanian units in the breakthrough sector were broken up, disbanded or panicked. At 9:45 a.m. (German time) General Ferdinand Heim decided, without waiting for the orders of the Army Group, to deploy the XXXXVIII in reserve . Panzer Corps to the northeast against the Don Front attacking from the Kletskaya area. At 11:50 a.m., however, the order of the Army Group was given to deploy the Panzer Corps to the northwest against the southwest front, which led the main strike. For the strategy of the Red Army, it belongs to handle numerous simultaneous attacks on a broad front to disguise the direction of the main shock. The 22nd Panzer Division tried to counter the Soviet advance on the Kurtljak sector, but was pushed back across the Tschir near Chernyshevskaya by the Soviet 1st and 26th Panzer Corps (General Rodin ).
In the evening of the day there was a gap 70 km wide in the middle of the Romanian 3rd Army, the rest of them were encircled. Included were the Romanian 1st Panzer Division, the 5th, 6th and 15th Infantry Divisions and large parts of the 13th and 14th Infantry Divisions. The commander of the 6th Infantry Division, Major General Mihai Lascăr took over the command of the "Lascăr Group" (about 40,000 men) in the boiler. The Romanian 1st Cavalry Division was by the Soviet 3rd Guard Cavalry Corps to the east against the German XI. Army corps , which in turn had to fight its way back to Akimowski due to strong attacks by the Soviet 65th Army with the 44th and 384th Infantry Divisions , where the VIIIth Army Corps kept a bridgehead open until November 20th. Bad weather made it impossible for the Luftwaffe to be deployed on either side.
On November 21, the German 22nd Panzer Division tried to advance in the direction of Perelasowski in order to establish contact with the Romanian 1st Panzer Division and to relieve the "Lascār Group", but failed and had to fight their way back to Tschir the next day. The Romanian 1st Panzer Division (Major General Radu) tried in vain to break out through Bolshoye Donschynka, but this village was already firmly in Soviet hands.
On the afternoon of November 21, the Army High Command of the 6th Army had to vacate its command post in front of the approaching Soviet 4th Panzer Corps. During the transfer, the staff encountered German and Romanian soldiers in wild flight, the 1st orderly officer of the staff of the 6th Army Wilhelm Adam described this with the words:
“Whipped by fear of the Soviet tanks, trucks, command vehicles, cars, motorcycles, riders and horse-drawn vehicles chased west, crashed into one another, got stuck, overturned, blocked the way. In between, pedestrians pushed, pushed, pushed and rolled over. Anyone who stumbled and fell to the ground could not get back on their feet. He was trampled, run over, rolled flat. "
On November 22nd, the encircled Romanian "Lascār Group", whose continued resistance had been ordered at all costs, delivered its final message. Only one battalion from the 15th Infantry Regiment (6th Infantry Division) managed to escape completely to the river Tschir. This battalion under Major Gheorghe Rasconescu also succeeded on November 26th in preventing the Soviet 8th Cavalry Division from occupying the important airfield of Oblivskaya.
Offensive of the Stalingrad Front
On November 20th at 9:30 am the attack in the south of Stalingrad by the 57th Army (General Tolbuchin ) of the Stalingrad Front (Yeremenko) began. The Soviet 13th Panzer Corps (Major General Tanaschishin ) broke through the northern wing of the Romanian 4th Army near Krasnoarmeisk. The Romanian 20th Division under General Tataranu was pushed northwards to the German IV Army Corps in Beketowka and later surrounded by this and the 6th Army. The second attack wedge, the 4th Mechanized Corps (Major General Wolski ) of the 51st Army (General Trufanow ) broke through the front of the Romanian VI. Corps (Lieutenant General Dragalina) at the Tundutowo train station and could not be stopped by the German 29th Motorized Infantry Division . On the southern wing of the attack wedge, the 61st and 81st Cavalry Divisions of the 4th Cavalry Corps under Lieutenant General TT Schapkin broke through the positions of the Romanian VII Corps (General Mitrănescu ) south of the railway line from Krasnoarmeisk via Abganerowo to the Aksai section in the direction of Kotelnikowo by.
It was not until the afternoon of November 20 that Colonel General Paulus recognized the enemy’s intention to completely encircle the 6th Army. He released General Command XIV from the northern front of Stalingrad in order to keep the threatened retreat route at Kalatsch am Don open with the 3rd (motorized) infantry division . General Hube took over the defense of the Don crossings in Golubinskaya and received parts of the 14th and 16th Panzer Divisions as reinforcements.
The IV Army Corps, which was initially subordinated to the 4th Panzer Army, was also subordinated to the 6th Army on November 22nd after being forced into the pocket. Already on November 23rd at 4 p.m. the butt wedges of the 4th Panzer Corps under Kravchenko from the south-western front combined with the 4th mechanized corps of the Stalingrad front at the Sovietsky railway station near Kalach and cut off the German troops east of it between the Don and the Volga. In addition to the German 6th Army with now five general commands and 20 German divisions, air force units, two Romanian divisions and a Croatian regiment - a total of up to 300,000 soldiers - were located in the Stalingrad pocket.
consequences
Under the leadership of General Field Marshal Erich von Manstein , the headquarters of the new Don Army Group was established in Novotscherkask on November 26, 1942 , which, on Hitler's instructions, was to attempt to relieve the 6th Army from the southwest via Kotelnikowo . A few days earlier, Manstein and Field Marshal von Weichs had been briefed on the difficult situation of the 6th Army at the headquarters of Army Group B in Starobelsk . In addition to the enclosed 6th Army, the Don Army Group was assigned the 4th Panzer Army, including the remnants of the Romanian 4th Army under its control. In addition there were the combat groups and alarm units of the XVII. Army corps on the Tschir section, as well as the remains of the Romanian 3rd Army. After the 7th Air Force Field Division at Nizhne Tschirskaja, which was supplied via Morovskaya, was completely destroyed in Soviet attacks, the newly formed Hollidt Army Department took over the defense on the Tschir.
In the days following the meeting of the northern and southern pincer wings, the corridor that separated the enclosed formations from their own front was widened to up to 150 kilometers. Around 60 Soviet divisions formed a containment ring that could not be broken through by the German company Wintergewitter in December. The air supply to the boiler of 500 tons per day promised by Luftwaffe chief Hermann Göring was never even remotely achieved and the situation of the trapped troops consequently became more and more hopeless from day to day. On January 31 and February 2, 1943, the German units capitulated in Stalingrad. 110,000 soldiers of the Wehrmacht and allied troops were taken prisoner of war.
Operation Uranus was the first success of a large-scale Soviet containment operation during the war. They and the subsequent defeat and surrender of the units enclosed in Stalingrad finally destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the German Wehrmacht , which had already been badly hit with the defeat at Moscow the previous winter, which the German Wehrmacht had achieved through its successes from the beginning of the war to the Initial phase of the war against the Soviet Union . The Red Army's victory resulted in a major boost to the self-confidence of Soviet troops and leadership. This victory was based on the identification of the German weak points, mainly the weaker combat strength of the armies allied with Germany, which were mainly equipped with the weapons of the war opponents defeated by Germany, for which there was often insufficient ammunition. It was also recognized that Hitler's unconditional adherence to areas conquered by his troops prevented strategically important retreats and shortening the front. It also became obvious that Germany could not adequately supply its own troops in the vastness of the Soviet Union, which reduced the physical performance of the troops and worsened the combat effectiveness of the technology, which was often only poorly repaired.
The loss of people and material during the entire Battle of Stalingrad was more difficult to cope with for the German Reich than for the Soviet Union, which, despite considerable losses, gradually took control of the German troops and increasingly went on the offensive . The Soviet armaments industry also achieved a high level of productivity, and from the spring of 1943 deliveries from the USA began to a large extent within the framework of the lending and leasing law , which led to the Red Army's increasing material superiority.
On March 29, 1945 Albert Speer wrote to Hitler:
“Never before have external circumstances, such as the weather, played such a decisive and unfortunate role in a war as in this technical war of all things: the frost off Moscow, the foggy weather near Stalingrad and the blue sky over the winter offensive of 1944 in the west. "
Others
The day of the start of the counter-offensive, November 19, was declared Artillery Day on October 21, 1944 .
literature
- Manfred Kehrig: Stalingrad. Analysis and documentation of a battle . Stuttgart 1974.
- David Jordan , Andrew Wiest: Atlas of the Second World War. From the Polish campaign to the battle for Berlin. Tosa, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-85492-972-2 .
- Verlagsgruppe Weltbild (Ed.): Facsimile Edition Second World War - Stalingrad - Russia IV.
- Reader's Digest (Ed.): The Second World War. Volume 2: From Pearl Harbor to Stalingrad.
- Author collective under the direction of Wolfgang Schumann: Germany in the Second World War. Volume 3. Berlin 1982.
- David M. Glantz , Jonathan House: When Titans Clashed. How the Red Army Stopped Hitler. University Press of Kansas, 1995, ISBN 0-7006-0899-0 .
- Walter Kerr: The secret of Stalingrad - Background to a decisive battle, Econ-Verlag 1977
Web links
- Volgograd celebrates the 65th anniversary of the start of the counter-offensive near Stalingrad , RIA Novosti , November 19, 2007.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Richard Overy : Russian War 1941-1945. Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 2003, p. 277.
- ↑ JP Petrow (chairman): History of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union . Berlin 1964, p. 25.
- ↑ TO Lagowski: strategy and economics . Berlin 1959, p. 63.
- ↑ Grigori Fedotowitsch Kriwoschejew : Grifkretnost sniat. Moscow 1993.
-
↑ GF Kriwoschejew , Grif sekretnosti snjat. Poteri Vooružennych Sil SSSR v vojnach, boevych dejstvijach i voennych konfliktach. Statističeskoe issledovanie. Voenno Izdat, Moscow 1993, ISBN 5-203-01400-0 ;
Rokossovsky, Velikaya pobeda na Volga. Moscow 1965. - ↑ Grigori Fedotowitsch Kriwoschejew : Grifkretnost sniat. Moscow 1993.
- ↑ Kehrig, p. 662 ff.
- ↑ Anatoly G. Chor'kov: The Soviet counter-offensive at Stalingrad . In: Jürgen Förster : Stalingrad. Event - Effect - Icon . Munich 1992, p. 56.
- ↑ Kehrig, p. 118.
- ↑ Statement to Ernst von Weizsäcker (note from September 30, 1942). Leonidas E. Hill: The Weizsäcker papers 1933–1950 . Frankfurt am Main, p. 303. Quoted from MGFA (Ed.): The German Reich and the Second World War . Stuttgart 1990, Volume 6, p. 1014 f.
- ^ Letter to Nicolaus von Below dated December 1, 1942. Printed as a facsimile in: Schumann: Germany in the Second World War . Vol. 3, p. 30 f.
- ↑ Printed as a facsimile in: Schumann: Germany in the Second World War . Vol. 3, p. 28.
- ↑ Kehrig, p. 111.
- ↑ Kehrig, p. 102.
- ↑ Kehrig, p. 102 f.
- ↑ Kehrig. P. 103.
- ↑ Kehrig, p. 105.
- ↑ Kehrig, p. 109.
- ↑ Quotation from Kehrig, p. 110.
- ↑ Helmut Heiber: Hitler's situation discussions : The protocol fragments of his military conferences 1942 - 1945 . Stuttgart 1962, p. 101.
- ^ Kurt Zeitzler: Stalingrad . In: William Richardson, Seymor Freidlin: The Fatal Decisions . Barnsley 2012, p. 128.
- ↑ Kehrig, p. 132 f.
- ^ Raymond L. Garthoff: The Soviet Army. Essence and teaching. Cologne 1955, p. 128.
- ↑ Quotation n. The German Reich and the Second World War , p. 1021 f.
- ↑ Percy Ernst Schramm (ed.): War diary of the High Command of the Wehrmacht . Bonn undated, Volume 4, 2nd half volume, p. 1582.