Ostfront 1944: The German Defensive Battles on the Russian Front 1944

333 Pages·1995·6.26 MB·English

by  Alex Buchner (Translated from the German by David Johnston)

OSTFRONT 1944
Alex Buchner
Also by Alex Buchner
The German Infantry Handbook • 1939-1945
OSTFRONT 1 9 44
The German Defensive Battles
on the Russian Front
1944
Alex Buchner
Translated from the German by David Johnston
Schiffer Military/Aviation History
Atglen, PA
Translated from the German by David Johnston.
Cover photo courtesy of Ullstein Verlag.
Book Design by Robert Biondi
Copyright © 1995 by Schiffer Publishing Ltd..
Library of Congress Catalog Number: 90-62982
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or used in any forms or
by any means - graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or infor
mation storage and retrieval systems - without written permission from the copy
right holder.
Printed in the United States of America.
ISBN: 0-88740-282-8
This book was originally published under the title,
Ostfront 1944,
© 1988, by Podzun-Pallas Verlag.
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Foreword
T he fate of the German Sixth Army surrounded in Stalingrad was decided in
early 1943, marking the turning point in the eastern campaign. From then on the
German forces were steadily on the retreat in the face of continual Soviet
offensives. As 1944 began, the superiority of the Red Army had become so
crushing, aided by the obstinacy at the highest levels of German command, that the
German Eastern Front, which was under heavy pressure everywhere, suffered a
number of disasters which cost the eastern armies alone more than half a million
German soldiers killed, missing and wounded.
It began with the Cherkassy Pocket, where two corps were smashed. Then
followed the end of the German forces defending Ternopol, the belated evacuation
of the Crimea, the destruction of Army Group Center, the failed breakout of an
entire army corps from the encirclement near Brody and the collapse of the entire
Army Group South-Ukraine in Rumania. The hundreds of thousands of German
soldiers who had to endure this fate were symbols of distress, suffering, sacrifice
and death, of fulfillment of duty, courage and comradeship, as well as of fear,
desperation and self-sacrifice. It borders on the miraculous that the German soldier
continued to stand and hold out despite these bitter setbacks of such enormous
proportions.
Cherkassy and Ternopol, Crimea and Sevastopol, Vitebsk, Bobruisk and
Minsk, Brody, Jassy and Vutcani entered the history of the Second World War as
beacons in a pitiless struggle with tragic results.
These truly dramatic events, concealed at the time and until now the subject
of only a very few essays, are not well known. They are brought together in this
volume for the first time. In addition to purely military history, individual divisions
and former combatants have been given their say in order to better illustrate the
nature of the inferno of those days and weeks.
This is a book which shows what German fighting men, officers as well as
common soldiers, had to endure at a time when the war was already lost.
This is a book that had to be written, because never again should such a thing
be allowed to happen.
Dillishausen, Summer 1988 Alex Buchner
CONTENTS
Foreword 5
Introduction
I • Cherkassy: XI and XXXXII Army Corps 17
Winter Drama on the Gniloy Tikich
Two Army Corps Surrounded • The First Tank Attack, The Shot Misses
• Emergency in the Pocket • The New Relief Attempt Bogs Down • The
Breakout Area Must Be Captured • Operations by the Luftwaffe • III
Panzer Corps, One Last Effort • Shenderovka, "Hell's Gate" • The Des
perate Break for Freedom
II • Ternopol: Fortress Garrison 73
Of 4,600 Soldiers 55 Came Back
Ternopol: "Fortified Place" • The First Pointless Armored Advance •
The Fortified Place Becomes a Pile of Rubble • The Second Relief
Attack, Far Too Late • The Last Radio Message from Ternopol: Com
mandant Fallen, Then Nothing More
III • Crimea: The Seventeenth Army 97
Tragedy on the Black Sea
Defense of the Crimea, Cut off from the Entire Eastern Front • A 240-
Kilometer Withdrawal in Four Days • Sevastopol Is No Longer a For
tress • Where Are the Evacuation Orders and Rescue Ships? • Drama on
the High Sea • The Final Hours on the Khersonyes Coast
IV • White Russia: Army Group Center 141
The Worst Defeat Ever Suffered by the German Army
The German Army Group Center, An 1,100-Kilometer Front • Prelude:
Partisans Open the Soviet Offensive • Third Panzer Army, Situation
Already Critical on the First Day • The Battle for Vitebsk, and with the
German High Command • Breakthroughs on Fourth Army's Left and
Right • Retreat to the Beresina, the Russian Air Force Commands the
Sky • No Way Out for the Remains of Three Corps • The Assault on the
Ninth Army • XXXV Army Corps Surrounded • Breakout from
Bobruisk, Only 15,000 Escape • The Long Way Back to the German
Front
V • Brody: XIII Army Corps 219
An End in the Pocket
A New Soviet Offensive on Both Sides of Brody • Once Again, Panzer
Divisions in a Futile Counterattack • The Breakout is Delayed, In Spite
of Past Experience • The Relief Attempt Fails • Headlong Rush to De
feat • The End for 30,000 German Troops
VI • Rumania: Army Croup South Ukraine 239
Catastrophe between the Dnestr and Prut
A Thin German-Rumanian Front on the Dnestr • The "Black" 20th of
August • Nothing Left But To Fall Back to the Prut, With the Enemy all
Around • Sixth Army Encircled, Futile Breakout Attempts • An Island in
the Prut Becomes a Trap • "Korpsgruppe Mieth" Surrounded in Vutcani
• XXIX Corps Also Fails to Escape • "Rückkämpfer" Fight Their Way
Through
Bibliography 305
Bank Equivalent Charts 311
Photo Section Follows Each Chapter

Introduction
Adolf Hitler was legally named Chancellor of the German Reich on January 30,
1933 by the then Reichspräsident von Hindenburg. Strengthened by domestic and
foreign political successes, he quickly became the all-powerful dictator of Ger
many. Hitler was leader of the political party he had built, the National Socialist
German Workers Party, with all of its ubiquitous sub-organizations. He became
head of state, Reichskanzler and Reichspräsident in one, and from 1938 was also
Commander-in-Chief of all the German Armed Forces. To the German people he
remained simply der Führer.
In 1939 Hitler launched the campaign against Poland, which widened into the
Second World War. Following the subsequent victorious campaigns in Holland,
Belgium, France, Norway, Yugoslavia, Greece, Crete and North Africa he was
hailed by German propaganda as the "greatest strategist of all time." By the
beginning of the Russian Campaign Hitler had lost sight of what could be
realistically expected from the armed forces which he commanded, subordinating
such considerations to his political and economic interests, as well as to thoughts
of his own prestige. His unlimited self-overestimation was summed up in one
sentence when he took over command of the army during the Winter of 1941: "The
little matter of operational command on the Eastern Front is something anyone can
do."
At the latest, Hitler's unsuccessful conduct of the war became apparent with
the destruction of the Sixth Army at Stalingrad in the Winter of 1942/43 and the
final abortive German offensive near Belgorod-Orel in the summer of 1943. From
then on the growing Soviet forces launched one offensive after another along the
entire front, from Finland to the Black Sea, while the ever more depleted German
divisions were constantly on the retreat. The result for the German Army was
heavy defeats and disasters which could no longer be made good. Hitler's