By the end of February 1942, the Soviet offensive began to run out of steam. The days became longer, the sun warmed up, and for the Wehrmacht the period of difficult winter trials was coming to an end. The Red Army, despite some successful operations such as the advance to Velikiye Luki in February, had already exhausted its strength and means. The magnificent Far Eastern divisions were spent and exhausted in continuous three-month battles in the harsh conditions of a harsh winter.

As spring approached, the warring parties faced an important problem: determining the enemy’s intentions and clarifying their plans for the summer campaign, which would begin after the thaw.

As soon as the front stabilized and it became possible to accumulate strategic reserves, most German generals began to lean in favor of resuming offensive operations in the summer of 1942. Controversy arose about the scale of the summer offensive.

In hindsight, many surviving German generals would state after the war that they were in favor of conducting limited offensive actions, since a wide offensive would have been a "gamble and a dangerous risk." If so, then this is yet another example (which, by the way, abounds in the Eastern Campaign) of the inability of the OKH General Staff to make a correct assessment of the overall strategic position of Germany. It turns out that the OKH generals admit that they viewed the 1942 summer campaign in Russia as a narrow tactical problem in isolation from other international events that made it imperative for Germany to win the war that year or collapse under the weight of the enormous industrial power of the coalition of three great powers.

In their defense, the German generals cite the fact that they were not invited to meetings on economic problems where Germany's needs for grain, manganese, oil and nickel were discussed, and that Hitler "did not initiate" them into these aspects of strategy. But this is clearly not true. Hitler emphasized the importance of economic factors behind his decisions on every occasion when he had to convince his military leaders. One thing is clear: the generals either did not understand Hitler, or they - which seems most likely - are now striving to create a completely wrong idea about him, as does, for example, the Deputy Chief of the OKH General Staff, General Blumentritt, who claims that “Hitler did not know what he to do - he didn’t want to hear about the withdrawal of troops. He felt he had to do something, and it could only be an offensive.”

In reality, Hitler had a very clear idea of ​​what he was going to do in the summer of 1942. He intended to defeat the Russians once and for all, destroying their armed forces in the south of the country, and to capture the most important economic regions USSR, and then decide whether to advance north to the rear of Moscow or south towards the oil regions of Baku. But instead of directly and firmly setting this goal before the OKH General Staff from the very beginning, he presented his strategic ideas extremely carefully, with caution. As a result, although the plan for summer operations was gradually developed, Hitler and the OKH General Staff interpreted it ambiguously. These differences were never resolved, and their origins and history are important for understanding the course of the Battle of Stalingrad and its disastrous outcome.

The first draft of the plan, prepared by the OKH in mid-winter, painfully impressed by the powerful attacks of the Red Army, provided for a limited campaign in the south Soviet Union and the strengthening of German positions east of the Dnieper bend to secure the manganese mines near Nikopol. It was also planned to capture Leningrad and link up with Finnish troops - a task that would be diligently carried over into all subsequent versions of the plan and would lead to a serious dispersion of forces in the summer of 1942.

In April, a more ambitious project was developed with the goal of capturing the isthmus between the Don and Volga and Stalingrad, or “at least exposing the city to heavy weapons so that it would lose its importance as a center of military industry and a communications hub.” But for Hitler, the capture of Stalingrad was only the first step. He then intended to turn his armies north along the Volga and cut off the communications of the Soviet troops defending Moscow, as well as send “reconnaissance groups” even further east to the Urals. Hitler, however, understood that an operation of such a scale would be possible only if the Red Army suffered a crushing defeat. The alternative was to seize Stalingrad as an anchor to secure the German left flank while the bulk of the armored forces turned south to seize the Caucasus and threaten the borders of Iran and Turkey.

Halder later claimed that these ideas were not brought to the attention of the OKH at the planning stage.

“In Hitler’s written order to prepare for an offensive in southern Russia in the summer of 1942, the Volga and Stalingrad were named as targets. We therefore focused on this goal and considered it necessary only to cover our flank south of the Don River ... "

It was planned to “block” the Eastern Caucasus, and concentrate a mobile reserve in Armavir, providing a barrier against Russian counterattacks from Manych.

In all likelihood, Hitler still hoped to defeat and destroy the Russian troops before the German armies reached the Volga, which would allow the implementation of the “main decision” - a rush northward to Saratov and Kazan - and he postponed planning further operations for the period after the capture of Stalingrad , retaining the choice between an attack on the Caucasus and a throw north along the Volga.

As a result, the OKH began the summer campaign, believing that its goal was Stalingrad, and the troops advanced to the Caucasus would perform only a “blocking” role as a barrier, whereas, according to the OKB’s plan, which Hitler would later communicate to some army commanders, the “barrier” should be exhibited in Stalingrad, and the main German forces will move either north or south. Even more incomprehensible is the fact that in the preamble of Directive No. 41 of April 5, 1942, the “seizure of oil regions in the Caucasus” is highlighted as one of the main goals of the summer campaign, but in the section that lists the main operations of the German troops, nothing is said about this goal it says.

This duality, naturally, was reflected in the command structure of Army Group South, which at the beginning of the summer campaign was commanded by Field Marshal von Bock, who had recovered from illness. It was divided into Army Group B (2nd Army, 4th Panzer Army, strong 6th Army and 2nd Hungarian Army), which in the initial stage of the offensive was to conduct the main fighting, and Army Group A under Field Marshal von List. At first glance, this army group looked weaker. It consisted of the German 17th Army and the Italian 8th Army, and, according to Directive No. 41, it was ordered to advance alongside, but somewhat later and slightly behind Army Group B. However, List also had under his command the strong 1st Panzer Army under Colonel General von Kleist. And Hitler confidentially informed Kleist on April 1 that his army was intended to be the instrument with which the Reich would forever provide itself with Caucasian oil and undermine the mobility of the Red Army, depriving it of fuel.

As a result of these “discrepancies” between the operational order of the OKH and Hitler’s personal instructions to the commander of the 1st Panzer Army, the latter had to participate in the summer offensive, having a special private goal in front of him. “Stalingrad,” Kleist would say after the war, “at first for my tank army was nothing more than one of the names on a geographical map.”

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The number of German forces on the Eastern Front in the spring of 1942 remained approximately at the level of the previous year, and if the troops of Germany's allies are taken into account, the total number of divisions has increased compared to 1941, since Hungary and Romania increased their quota during the winter.

The technical equipment and firepower of the German division even increased slightly, the number tank divisions increased from 19 to 25.

But in terms of quality and morale, the Germans were already in decline. No army could have survived such a terrible winter without serious and lasting damage, experienced repeated disappointments as apparent victories were followed by bitter reverses during the past summer, and without succumbing to sentiments of futility and depression. These sentiments reached the Reich, and from there they ricocheted back to the front. For the German nation, “war” meant war on the Eastern Front. Air bombing, German submarine operations, daring raids by the Afrika Korps - all these were minor side events when millions of fathers, husbands, sons and brothers fought fierce battles day and night with the Russian "barbarians".

The feelings of despair and doom that can already be seen in the letters and diaries of German soldiers and officers of that time were not yet as widespread as they would be after the failure of Operation Citadel in 1943. This was partly due to the fact that relatively few units were involved in heavy winter fighting, and the German practice of raising new divisions rather than restoring old ones to full strength curbed the spread of defeatism. However, the disease had already taken root, it was incurable, and its symptoms would repeatedly manifest themselves in German units during the summer fighting.

Anyone who went to the East already found himself in a completely different world. As soon as the Germans crossed the border separating the Reich from the occupied territories, they found themselves in a huge zone up to 800 kilometers wide, where Nazi terror reigned openly. Massacres, forced removal of civilians, deliberate starvation of prisoners of war, burning alive of schoolchildren and children, "practice" bombings and shelling of civilian hospitals and hospitals - such atrocities were widespread, and they had a corrupting effect on newly arrived German soldiers.

Among other factors that negatively affected the morale of the German troops, it should be noted that Germany was unable to create new types of military equipment that could be compared with the T-34 and the Katyusha rocket-propelled mortar. The German infantry went into battle equipped in the same way as last summer. Only in some companies the number of machine gunners increased. The tank divisions, however, underwent a more thorough reorganization, but this only affected the divisions on the southern wing of the Soviet-German front. The most important change was the inclusion of a battalion of 88mm anti-aircraft guns, which were widely used by the Germans in the fight against Soviet tanks. The motorcycle battalion was abolished, but one of the four motorized rifle battalions (in SS tank divisions sometimes two battalions) was equipped with half-track armored personnel carriers, which significantly improved its maneuverability. The motorized infantry of these armored personnel carriers became known as "panzergrenadiers", and this term soon began to be applied to all infantrymen who were part of the tank divisions.

The German medium tanks T-III and T-IV were equipped with more powerful long-barreled guns, with a caliber of 50 and 75 mm, respectively. The number of tanks in the tank division was increased by including a fourth company in the battalion. However, German factories produced only 3,256 tanks in 1941, and only some 100 units in the first months of 1942. Losses in the summer campaign of 1941 amounted to almost 3,000 tanks, and in addition, most light tanks were removed from the staff list of tank divisions. T-I tanks and T-II, as no longer suitable for the combat conditions of the Eastern Front, and were transferred to security and police units. Therefore, although fourth companies were created in each battalion, very few of the companies had the required 22 T-III or T-IV medium tanks. In fact, at the beginning of the 1942 summer campaign, the Germans had fewer tanks than on the eve of June 22, 1941. The German command compensated for the shortage of tanks by keeping armored units on a starvation diet in the northern and central sectors of the Soviet-German front, and concentrating all new tanks in the divisions of Army Group Boka on the southern wing, creating powerful armored fists in the sectors of the front planned for attack. .

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If Soviet factories really produced 700 tanks per month, as Halder reported to Hitler with reference to the received military intelligence information, the German prospects were indeed gloomy. But the two main tank production centers in Kharkov and Orel, as well as most of the factories in Ukraine and Donbass that supplied various components, were captured by the Germans.

The Kirov plant in Leningrad was not operating at full capacity, and the tanks it produced were used for the defense of the city. The famous tank-building factories in the Urals (in Sverdlovsk and Chelyabinsk) were just beginning to expand production. And although official Soviet sources report a significant increase in tank production by the end of 1942, it is unlikely that in the first months of this year the Soviet Union built more tanks than Germany, and in terms of the total number of tanks at the front - especially medium and heavy ones - the Russians were clearly inferior to the Germans . In the first months of 1942, a number of American and British tanks arrived in the Soviet Union by sea to Murmansk, as well as through Iran. But the Russians - understandably - considered most of them unsuitable for combat. (The only tank that could be used on the Eastern Front, the Sherman, began to roll off production lines when, by Soviet standards, it was already outdated. The first batches of this tank were delivered in the fall of 1942, and by that time the T-34, to which the Sherman was clearly inferior, it had already been built in series for about two years.) A small number of British infantry tanks of the Matilda and Churchill types, thanks to their thick frontal armor, found use as infantry escort tanks in individual brigades. But in general, American and British tanks were apparently sent to secondary fronts, such as the Karelian-Finnish front, and to the Far East, and played no more than an indirect role in the decisive battles on the Soviet-German front.

* * *

The defeat which the Soviet troops inflicted on the Germans during the winter, the miserable condition of individual German prisoners of war and the obvious superiority of some types of military equipment, especially tanks and artillery, seem to have given the Russians the impression that the Wehrmacht was in a more dire situation than it had been at the time. actually. This idea was stubbornly maintained at the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command even after the ineffective offensive battles in March 1942.

Information about the progress of the discussion of strategic plans that took place in Moscow in the spring of 1942 was not published, and we do not know who at Headquarters objected to the idea of ​​​​conducting a series of offensive operations that were approved at that time. Stalin was naturally their supporter - traces of the personal intervention of the Soviet dictator are visible in the fruitless dispersal of forces that were hardly sufficient from the very beginning, and in the persistently rigid continuation of operations after their failure had become obvious.

Although the Soviet plan was based on correct assessments of the enemy's intentions, it favored preemptive strikes rather than setting the Germans in a trap like the one that worked so well at Moscow, in the hope that the Red Army would gain an advantage by striking first. If the Germans intended to capture Leningrad in the summer, then Stalin was going to break the blockade ring with an offensive in the Volkhov direction; Hitler's plans to conquer the Caucasus were countered by an offensive operation to liberate Crimea. Central to the Soviet plan was Marshal Timoshenko's concentric offensive on Kharkov to capture this important communications center in the south of the country and undermine the Germans' offensive ability along that sector of the front.

Conducting three independent operations so far apart from each other that the success of one could not directly affect the course of the others would be justified only if the attacking side had a significant superiority over the defending side. The Russians' incorrect assessment of the balance of forces and the combat effectiveness of the German forces led to the catastrophic failure of all three operations, and as a result, the Red Army almost found itself on the brink of a mortal crisis in the summer of 1942.

The first of the Red Army's spring offensives was launched on April 9 on the Kerch Peninsula in Crimea. The failure of Manstein's 11th Army to capture Sevastopol in the fall of 1941 and the successful incursions of the encircled city's garrison throughout the winter encouraged periodic Russian attempts to liberate the entire Crimean Peninsula. On December 26–29, the Russians, having landed troops, captured bridgeheads in Kerch and Feodosia, and although the latter was liquidated by Manstein on January 18 after fierce fighting, a strong group of Soviet troops remained on the Kerch Peninsula, which made three separate but unsuccessful attempts (February 27, March 13 and March 26) break into Crimea. Five tank brigades were concentrated for the “Stalinist offensive” in April 1942. By this time, Manstein had also received significant reinforcements: the 22nd Panzer Division, the 28th “light” division and Richthofen’s 8th Air Corps with Ju-87 and Ju-88 dive bombers. The Russians again failed to break through the German positions, and after three days the offensive stalled. On May 8, Manstein's divisions themselves went on the offensive and captured the Kerch Peninsula, and then Sevastopol. The Red Army lost more than 100 thousand people as prisoners and more than 200 tanks.

Soviet attacks on the Kerch Peninsula at least gave respite to besieged Sevastopol and forced the Germans to transfer as many as three divisions to the Crimea. The offensive on the Volkhov Front turned out to be a complete failure and led in May to the encirclement and death of the 2nd Shock Army.

Now much depended on the main spring operation, approved by Headquarters - the offensive of Marshal Timoshenko on Kharkov. Unfortunately, the Russian plan, far from original and easily predictable, fatally coincided with the offensive operation of Field Marshal von Bock - Friederikus 1, which the Germans planned to carry out almost at the same time.

Von Bock's goal was to eliminate the "Barvenkovsky ledge", which was pressed during the winter offensive by Soviet troops into German positions southwest of the Seversky Donets near the city of Izyum. In early May, von Bock replaced German troops on the western end of the salient with the Romanian 6th Army, and then began concentrating Paulus's army on the northern front between Belgorod and Balakleya, and von Kleist's 1st Panzer Army on the southern, in the Kramatorsk-Slavyansk area. It was planned that these two armies would strike under the base of the Russian salient and cut it off before the start of the main summer operation - Plan Blau.

But it turned out that Timoshenko was a week ahead of von Bock, and on May 12 his troops went on the offensive. It was assumed that the 6th Army under the command of General Gorodnyansky, with the support of another army group, would break through the German front and capture Krasnograd. Then Gorodnyansky’s army will advance north towards Kharkov. The 28th Army, as well as units of two other armies of the Southwestern Front, will attack it from the bridgehead near Volchansk.

North of Kharkov, the fighting became fierce from the very beginning: the Soviet armies faced 14 fresh divisions of Paulus, but to the south, Gorodnyansky’s troops easily broke the Romanian resistance and soon began fighting for Krasnograd. Over the next three days, as Gorodnyansky's troops advanced successfully, Tymoshenko must have felt that Kharkov was about to fall into his hands. But on May 17 the first arrived alarms. The Soviet armies, having pushed Paulus' troops back to the Belgorod-Kharkov railway and suffered heavy losses, were unable to advance further. They failed to break through the German front. Further south, the advancing Soviet units reached the village of Karlovka, thirty miles from Poltava, and General Gorodnyansky's army, following the original plan, turned north to Merefa. But all attempts to expand the breakthrough to the south from Barvenkovo ​​were unsuccessful due to the stubborn resistance of the Germans, who had a suspiciously large number of tanks. Soviet tank forces stretched over as much as 70 miles. This was the Russians' first attempt at using tanks in a broad offensive operation, and numerous weaknesses - their brigade organization, lack of supply vehicles, lack of air defenses to protect fuel tanker convoys - soon became apparent.

At dawn on May 18, Kleist launched a counteroffensive on the southern face of the salient, and a few hours later his tanks reached the confluence of the Oskol and Seversky Donets rivers, cutting the base of the salient by 20 miles. By evening, General Kharitonov had practically lost control of his 9th Army, parts of which were fighting desperately but isolatedly. Timoshenko and his staff repeatedly contacted the Headquarters, but Moscow insisted on continuing the offensive.

On May 19, Paulus, having transferred two tank corps to his right flank, struck the northern front of the Russian corridor, stretching from the Seversky Donets to Krasnograd. On May 23, his tank divisions met with Kleist’s tanks south of Balakleya, closing the encirclement ring. On May 19, the Headquarters softened its position, allowing General Gorodnyansky to stop the offensive. But it was already too late, and only a quarter of the encircled troops of the 6th and 57th Soviet armies were able to escape from the encirclement. The Russians officially reported that they lost 5 thousand people killed and 70 thousand missing, as well as 300 tanks. The Germans claimed that they captured 240 thousand people and destroyed 1,200 tanks (which is undoubtedly an exaggeration, since Timoshenko had only 845 tanks at his disposal).

If the Soviet offensive had resulted in a serious delay to German plans for the summer campaign, it would have been justified even without the capture of Kharkov. But although it cost the Russians dearly, this did not happen. When the German armies began regrouping for the summer offensive in early June, the Russians had no more than 200 tanks left on the entire Southern and Southwestern fronts. The balance of forces changed sharply in favor of the Germans.

Wehrmacht at its apogee

On June 28, under a stormy sky, von Bock's offensive, Operation Blau, struck like a clap of thunder. Three armies, advancing from areas northeast and south of Kursk in converging directions, broke through the Russian front, and eleven German tank divisions rushed across the steppe to Voronezh and the Don. Two days later, Paulus' 6th Army (four infantry and one tank corps) to the south went on the offensive, and Kleist transported the 1st Panzer Army across the Seversky Donets.

From the very beginning, the Germans created a significant numerical superiority in manpower and equipment, and the lack of tanks prevented the Russians from launching even local counterattacks. Of the four Soviet armies resisting the German onslaught, the 40th, which received the main blow from Hoth's tanks, was scattered and partially surrounded, the 13th Army of the Bryansk Front was quickly retreating to the north. The other two armies - the 21st and 28th, which had not yet managed to recover their strength after the unsuccessful May battles on the Seversky Donets, were forced to retreat from line to line; control of some armies was disrupted, a gap was formed at the junction of the Bryansk and Southwestern fronts, into which German troops rushed.

The advance of the German columns could be seen from a distance of 50–60 kilometers. A huge cloud of dust, mixed with gunpowder smoke and the ashes of burning villages, rose into the sky. Thick and dark smoke at the forefront of the column hung in the still July air for a long time after the passage of the tanks, a brownish haze stretched like a veil to the west to the very horizon. War correspondents accompanying the German units wrote enthusiastically about the “unstoppable mastodon” or motorized square (“Mot Pulk”) - this is how these columns looked on the march with trucks and artillery, moving surrounded by tanks. “This is the formation of the Roman legions, now transferred to the twentieth century to tame the Mongol-Slavic hordes!”

During this successful period of the war for the Germans, Nazi propaganda of racist "theories" reached its peak, and every report and photograph from the front emphasized the racial superiority of the advancing "Nordic" armies over their enemy. The SS publishing house even published a special magazine called “Untermensch” (“Underman”).

It does not require special psychological insight to understand the purpose of this propaganda - to “theoretically” support the unlimited right to exploit and oppress the “inferior race”, which also had the audacity to resist its enslavers. “The Russian fights even when the fight is pointless,” complained one German correspondent, “he fights wrong, he fights if there is even the slightest chance of success.”

Soviet reserve armies were concentrated near Moscow in case the Germans resumed their offensive on the central sector of the front; moreover, from here it was easier to transfer them along the railways to Leningrad or to the south, as soon as the enemy’s intentions became obvious. The power of the German offensive that began in the south, however, came as a surprise to the Russians, and when on July 5 German tank divisions broke through to the Don on both sides of Voronezh, the Supreme High Command could not yet know with certainty whether the Germans, having crossed the Don, would make a rush to north with a turn to the rear of Soviet troops in the Yelets and Tula region. Accordingly, Timoshenko received an order to firmly hold the “supporting” flank positions in the Voronezh and Rostov region and withdraw the troops of the Southwestern and Southern Fronts from attack in order to avoid encirclement and, by giving up space, to gain time. From the withdrawn divisions of the Bryansk Front and reserves urgently transferred by the Headquarters, a new Voronezh Front was created, the command of which on July 14 was taken by General N. F. Vatutin, who was directly subordinate to Moscow.

At this point, Soviet resistance, although poorly organized and sporadic, began to affect German operational planning. In the second week of July, the Russians staunchly defended their positions only in the Voronezh region and south of the Seversky Donets. In the wide corridor between the Don and the Seversky Donets, the Red Army was retreating. A correspondent for the Volkischer Beobachter newspaper described how “the Russians, who had previously fought stubbornly for every kilometer of territory, retreated without firing a shot. Our progress was delayed only by destroyed bridges and air raids. When the Russian rearguards could not escape the fight, they chose positions that would allow them to hold out until nightfall... It was quite unusual to go deep into these wide steppes without seeing signs of the enemy.”

Apparently, this disorganized (as it seemed to the Germans) retreat of the Russian troops was unexpected for Hitler, as well as for many of his generals. At the OKW, Hitler was in a more bravura mood than at any time since the fall of France. In his conversations with Halder on the phone there was no longer the irritability and wariness characteristic of last year. “The Russians are finished,” he told the OKH Chief of General Staff on July 20, and the latter’s response: “I must admit, it seems that way” reflects the euphoria that reigned in the OKW and the main command of the ground forces. And, based on this conviction, the OKW made two decisions that had a significant impact on the further course of the summer campaign. Initially, according to Directive No. 41, Hoth was supposed to pave the way for Paulus with his tanks to Stalingrad, then transfer this “blockhouse” to the 6th Army and withdraw his divisions to the mobile reserve. But after the start of the summer offensive, the commander of Army Group South von Bock, alarmed by the power of Soviet counterattacks in the Voronezh region, proposed detaining the main forces of the 6th Army to attack Russian positions in this sector of the front and throwing one 4th Army into a rapid attack on Stalingrad Hoth's tank army. Now, on July 13, the OKW decided that Hoth would not advance on Stalingrad at all, but would turn his army to the southeast and help the armies of Group A “cross the Don in its lower reaches.” Paulus should be able to capture Stalingrad on his own - provided that the armies of Group B provide defense on the line from Voronezh to the big bend of the Don. On 12 July, due to differences with Hitler, von Bock was removed from his post as commander of Army Group South, and the two army groups became independent and given separate - and opposing - operational missions. Directive No. 45 of July 23 on the continuation of Operation Brunswick decreed: “Army Group A (under the command of Field Marshal Weichs) must strike Stalingrad, defeat the enemy group concentrated there, capture the city, and also cut the isthmus between the Don and Volga". Thus, the new order provided for a significant expansion of the strategic scope of operations. The saving clause that it would be possible to “block the Volga with artillery fire” was no longer there, and the campaign in the Caucasus was no longer limited to the capture of Maikop and Proletarskaya, but included the occupation of all oil regions.

The decision to change the direction of attack of the 4th Tank Army was undoubtedly of critical importance. The OKH apparently also considered it desirable. From Paulus's testimony it is clear that the turn of Hoth's army to the southeast was originally conceived with the aim of encircling the Soviet troops holding back Kleist's tanks and the 17th Army in the Donetsk basin. But a few days after Hoth received this order, Soviet troops in the Donbass abandoned their positions and began to quickly retreat to the south. The opportunity to cut off their escape routes had disappeared.

As a result, two German tank armies reached the Don almost simultaneously - a giant armored fist, the blow of which fell through the air. The Russians did not actually defend the crossings across the Don. The troops of the Southern Front had already retreated beyond the Don and were consolidating themselves on the borders of the Manych Canal.

On July 23, German troops entered Rostov, and on July 25, Kleist’s advanced detachments crossed the Don. The 4th Tank Army captured a bridgehead on the southern bank of the Don in the Tsimlyanskaya area on July 29, but two days later it received new orders - to send the 16th Motorized Division southeast to the Elista area, and with the main forces to advance in the direction of Kotelnikovo, across the river Aksai and break into Stalingrad from its unprotected southern side.

Having crossed the Don, Kleist's tank corps rushed south, on July 29 the Germans broke into Proletarskaya (the final line of advance according to the previous OKH plan), two days later they entered Salsk, where one tank column turned to Krasnodar to cover the left flank of the 17th Army, and the second moved straight to Stavropol. On August 7, the Germans occupied Armavir, and on August 9, Maykop.

But for Paulus’s army, which was advancing on Stalingrad along the corridor between Don and Donets, the situation was different. Since only the 14th Panzer Corps of Wietersheim was fully motorized, the rest of the army corps stretched over many tens of kilometers, and there were few prospects for successfully attacking from the march an enemy who decided to go on a hard defense. On July 12, the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command created a new, Stalingrad Front (Lieutenant General V.N. Gordov was appointed its commander on July 23) and began quickly - as far as the railway network allowed - to transfer reinforcements to it. For three weeks there was a race, familiar from the summer battles of 1941, between the German columns hurrying to Stalingrad and the Russian reserve armies hastily advancing and deploying. This time the Russians were ahead of the Germans, but not by much.

General V. I. Chuikov, who would later become one of the prominent Soviet commanders who led the defense of Stalingrad and inspired the city’s defenders by his example, served as commander of the reserve army located in the Tula region at the beginning of July. The order his 64th Army received to redeploy to the Stalingrad area gives a clear idea of ​​the urgency and complexity of moving four rifle divisions and four army brigades to the Don, associated with the arrival and unloading of military trains at seven different railway stations and a forced march of 100 to 200 kilometers along the steppe west to the Don.

From Chuikov’s story it is also clear that, in addition to the need to forestall Paulus’s divisions approaching the Don, it was also equally important to increase the discipline and combat resilience of the retreating units of the Red Army. Soviet tactics during this period in 1942 boiled down to the withdrawal of troops to new lines, with the enemy breaking through on the flanks to avoid costly battles when surrounded. But in conditions of a long retreat across a burning native land, it is difficult to maintain discipline and morale of the troops, especially among recruits and insufficiently trained and seasoned soldiers, of whom the formations and units of the Red Army mainly consisted at that time. The courage and heroism shown during the defense of Stalingrad is the best criterion for the revival of the high fighting spirit and moral fortitude of the Red Army soldiers. Commanders such as Chuikov, Eremenko, and Rodimtsev managed to achieve this in just a few weeks.

Between 23–29 July, while Hoth's mechanized divisions were plowing the steppe in the Tsimlyanskaya area, the 6th Army attempted to break into Stalingrad on the move. The slight resistance offered by the retreating Soviet forces thus far encouraged Paulus to attack with his divisions as they approached the Soviet 62nd Army, which had been ordered to take up defensive positions along the Chir River and the Great Bend of the Don. As a result, both the arriving German reinforcements and the advancing Soviet reserves, including units of the 64th Army, entered the battle as they approached in approximately equal proportions.

Paulus, who had a significant superiority in tanks, launched first three, then five, then seven infantry divisions on the offensive. A fierce battle ensued, which took place with varying success, during which Russian troops were gradually forced out of the large bend of the Don. But the 6th Army was so badly battered that it no longer had enough strength to cross the Don. The Germans also failed to clear the river bend in the Kletskaya area of ​​Russian troops, which later in November led to disastrous consequences.

The unexpected strength of the Russian resistance convinced Paulus that the 6th Army could not cross the Don alone, and in the first week of August there was a temporary lull while the 4th Panzer Army fought its way towards Stalingrad from the southwest. During this period, the balance of forces changed noticeably in favor of the Germans, since the 64th Army, which had played such an important role in repelling Paulus's first onslaught, found itself forced to stretch its left flank further and further southward due to the approach of Hoth's tanks. By August 10, the 6th Army had brought all its divisions and artillery to the Don.

In addition - which is very significant from the point of view of how Stalingrad gradually began to attract all the strike forces of the Wehrmacht - Richthofen's 8th Aviation Corps, which provided support for the operations of Kleist's tank army in the Caucasus, was relocated to the airfield in Morozovsk to participate in the upcoming German offensive on Stalingrad.

Another week passed as Hoth fought his way north from Aksai, and then on August 17–19 the Germans launched their first concentrated offensive to capture Stalingrad.

Paulus, as the senior commander to whom Hoth's army was subordinate, concentrated his tank corps on the flanks to cover the cities from the north and south—two tank and two motorized divisions on the north, three tank and two motorized on the southern flank, nine infantry advancing in the center divisions.

The front of the defending Soviet troops stretched in an arc from Kachalinskaya in the north down the banks of the Don, and then went east to the Volga along the Myshkova River. Its length was several hundred kilometers, but its diameter was only 60–70 kilometers. It was defended by two armies - the 62nd and 64th - eleven rifle divisions, many of them incomplete, and the remnants of several tank brigades and other units.

At first the offensive developed slowly. Hoth, in particular, was unable to break through the Russian defensive lines between Abganerovo and Lake Sarpa.

On August 22, German troops managed to cross the Don and create a bridgehead at Peskovatka. At dawn the next day, Wietersheim's 14th Panzer Corps punched a narrow hole in the Russian defenses in the Vertyachey area, broke through to the northern suburbs of Stalingrad, and by the evening of August 23 reached the high, steep bank of the Volga. Now it seemed to Paulus and the commander of Army Group B, Weichs, that Stalingrad was in their hands. Cut off from the north by Wietersheim's tanks from the rest of the Soviet troops of the Stalingrad Front, the city's garrison found itself in a difficult situation: the problem of supplying it, and especially transferring reinforcements to it, seemed insurmountable. Seydlitz's 5th Infantry Corps was introduced into the breakthrough, and the Germans believed that with an attack from the north they would quickly crush the 62nd Army. That same evening the Luftwaffe received orders to deliver a knockout blow.

In terms of the number of aircraft involved and the weight of bombs dropped, the air raid on Stalingrad on the night of August 23-24 was the most massive Luftwaffe operation since June 22, 1941. All air corps (I, IV and VIII) of Richthofen's 4th Air Fleet took part in it, along with the existing squadrons of transport tri-engine Ju-52 and long-range bombers from airfields in Kerch and Orel. Many of the pilots made three missions, and more than half of the bombs dropped were incendiary. Almost everything wooden buildings- including numerous workers' settlements on the outskirts of Stalingrad - burned to the ground, the fire raged all night, and it was so light that you could read a newspaper 70 kilometers from the city. It was an act of terror undertaken with the aim of killing as many civilians as possible in the city, disabling city services, causing panic, demoralizing the defenders of Stalingrad and laying a funeral pyre in the path of retreating troops - following the example of Warsaw, Rotterdam and Belgrade.

“The whole city is on fire,” Wilhelm Hoffmann, an officer of the 267th regiment of the 94th division, writes with satisfaction in his diary, “by order of the Fuhrer, the Luftwaffe put it on fire. So they, these Russians, need to stop resisting..."

But August 24th came and went, followed by the 25th, and as the days passed, it became clear that the Russians were determined to fight on the outskirts of the city and, if necessary, in Stalingrad itself. Wietersheim held the corridor he had created, stretching to the Volga, but could not expand it in a southern direction. The Russian 62nd Army slowly retreated towards the city, but gained a foothold on its outskirts. A huge superiority in tanks and aircraft allowed Hoth to push the 64th Army back to Tundutovo, but it continued to defend itself, and hopes of breaking through its front with a powerful tank attack did not come true.

The second major German offensive in a month floundered, and one of the consequences of this, unplanned by both opponents, was the special magnetic attraction that Stalingrad would exert on both warring sides. On August 25, the city defense committee, headed by the first secretary of the regional committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, addressed the residents of Stalingrad with an appeal to protect the besieged city:

“Dear comrades! Dear Stalingraders!.. We will not give up our hometown to be desecrated by the Germans. Let us all stand as one in defense of our beloved city, our home, our family. We will cover all the streets with impenetrable barricades. Let’s make every house, every block, every street an impregnable fortress.”

On the same day, Hitler and his retinue moved from Rastenburg to the new Werwolf headquarters near Vinnitsa, where he would remain until the end of 1942. The commander of Army Group B, Weichs, was ordered to launch a new offensive and “clear the entire right bank of the Volga” as soon as Paulus’s army completed preparations. On September 12, the day before the “last” assault, both generals were summoned to the Fuhrer’s new headquarters, where Hitler repeated to them that “it is now necessary to concentrate all available forces and capture all of Stalingrad and the banks of the Volga as quickly as possible.” He also stated that they do not need to worry about their left flank along the Don, since the transfer of satellite armies (which should defend it) is taking place in an orderly manner.

Additionally, Hitler allocated three more fresh infantry divisions (two from Manstein's disbanded 11th Army), which would arrive in the 6th Army in the coming days.

Around the same time, when Hitler moved to Vinnitsa, the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command also concluded that the center of military operations had irreversibly shifted to the south and the further course of the struggle on the Soviet-German front would be decided in Stalingrad. Shortly before this, Marshal Timoshenko was transferred to the Northwestern Front, and on August 29, the only commander in the Red Army who had never known defeat, General G.K. Zhukov, as well as those aviation and artillery specialists, like the chief of artillery of the Red Army, flew to the Stalingrad area The armies of N.I. Voronov, who together with Zhukov developed a victorious plan for a counteroffensive near Moscow.

"Verdun on the Volga"

The fighting on the Soviet-German front contains the entire spectrum of military history. The steel of bladed weapons and dashing cavalry charges are not much different from the battles of the Middle Ages; The hardships and suffering experienced by the soldiers in a stinking trench under constant bombardment are reminiscent of the battles of the First World War. However, in general, a characteristic feature of the battles on the Eastern Front was their mixed nature. Maneuverable operations in open terrain, similar to those carried out in the Libyan desert, alternate with periods of fierce positional battles, reminiscent of battles in the dungeons of Fort Vaux (the central fort of the Verdun fortress).

Of course, the gigantic battle that was fought in Stalingrad can most appropriately be compared with Falkenhayn’s terrible Verdun “meat grinder.” But there is also a significant difference. In Verdun, the opponents rarely saw each other; they destroyed each other with high-explosive shells or shot each other with machine gun fire from a distance. In Stalingrad, every battle resulted in a fight between individuals. The soldiers shouted curses and mocked the enemy, from whom they were separated by the street; often, while reloading their weapons, they heard the breathing of the enemy in the next room; hand-to-hand fights ended in twilight smoke and clouds of brick dust with knives and axes, pieces of stone and twisted steel.

In the beginning, when the Germans were on the outskirts of the city, they could still benefit from their superiority in tanks and aircraft. The houses here were made of wood, and they were all burned down during a massive air raid on August 23.

The fighting took place in a gigantic petrified forest of blackened chimneys, where the city's defenders could only find shelter in the charred ruins of individual wooden houses and workers' villages that surrounded the city. But as the Germans pushed deeper and deeper into the area of ​​sewer pipes, brick and concrete, their previous operational plan lost its value.

In tactical terms, decisive importance in the defense of Stalingrad was control over the crossings across the Volga, on which the fate of the Stalingrad garrison depended... Although the heavy and medium artillery of the Russians was on the left bank of the river, the defenders required a huge amount of ammunition for light small arms and mortars, and this in many other respects, including the evacuation of the wounded, they were completely dependent on the uninterrupted operation of the crossings. A small bend and numerous islands in the riverbed between Rynok and Krasnaya Sloboda made it difficult to flank shelling of all crossings, even after the Germans installed guns on the right bank of the Volga, and even more so at night, when most of the transportation was carried out. From the very beginning, the Germans underestimated the significance of this fact and concentrated their efforts on breaking through to the Volga at several points at once through a narrow strip of urban territory defended by the troops of the 62nd Army. Each of the three major offensives launched by the Germans during the siege of Stalingrad pursued precisely these goals. As a result, even when the Germans managed to break into the Russian defenses, they were stuck in a web of enemy firing points and fortified points, the breached corridors were too narrow, and the Germans at the tip of the wedge themselves found themselves in the role of defenders.

Thus, while the Russians, during defensive battles, showed great skill and resourcefulness in developing new tactics, Paulus took the wrong path from the very beginning. The Germans were baffled by a situation that they had never encountered before in their military experience, and they responded to it in their characteristic manner: by using brute force in increasingly massive doses.

This confusion gripped both senior military leaders and ordinary soldiers. The already mentioned Wilhelm Hoffmann (who had previously rejoiced in his diary about the bombing of Stalingrad) reflected it in the epithets with which he rewards the defenders of Stalingrad and in which one can see amazement and indignation, fear and self-pity.

September 1: “Are the Russians really going to fight on the very banks of the Volga? This is crazy."

Then Goffman refrains from speaking about the character of the enemy for a month, during which time his diary entries are filled with gloomy reflections on the sad fate of his comrades in arms and himself.

October 27: “Russians are not people, but some kind of iron creatures. They never get tired and are not afraid of fire.”

When Paulus returned to his headquarters after conferring with Hitler on September 12, the third offensive was only hours away. This time the 6th Army was going to throw eleven divisions into battle, including three tank divisions. The Russians had only three rifle divisions, parts of four other divisions and brigades, and three tank brigades. By this time, Hoth's 14th Panzer Division finally managed to break through to the Volga in the Kuporosnoye area, a suburb of Stalingrad, on September 9, and cut off the 62nd Army from the 64th Army. Thus, the 62nd Army, defending on the inner perimeter of the city in the central part of Stalingrad and the northern factory areas, found itself completely isolated from the rest of the Soviet troops. On September 12, General Chuikov, summoned to front headquarters, was appointed commander of the 62nd Army and in the evening of the same day he took a ferry to the burning city.

“To a person inexperienced in battles,” recalls Chuikov, “it would seem that in the burning city there was no longer a place to live, that everything there was destroyed, everything was burned. But I knew: on the other side the battle was going on, a titanic struggle was going on.”

Stalingrad was subjected to round-the-clock shelling - all the artillery of the 6th Army paved the way for Paulus' massive offensive. The commander concentrated two attack groups, which were supposed to take the southern part of the city in pincers and close them in the area of ​​​​the so-called central crossing opposite Krasnaya Sloboda. Three infantry divisions - the 71st, 76th and 295th - were to advance down from the Gumrak railway station, to capture the central hospital, to Mamayev Kurgan. An even stronger group - the 94th Infantry Division and the 29th Motorized Division, with the support of the 14th and 24th Tank Divisions - struck in a north-easterly direction from the mining village of Yelshanka.

The defenders had to solve difficult problems: it was necessary to firmly hold the flanks adjacent to the river. Every meter of the steep Volga bank was of exceptional value to the Russians, who dug underground tunnels in it for ammunition depots, fuel and other equipment, hospitals and even garages for Katyushas mounted on cars. The latter emerged from their underground shelters, fired a volley of rockets and took refuge again in the “caves” in less than five minutes. The northern flank below the Market was more reliable, because there the reinforced concrete structures of the Tractor Plant and the Barricades and Red October plants were essentially indestructible. But on the southern flank the buildings were not so strong, the terrain was relatively open, and several grain elevators rose above the piles of ruins and isolated clearings of scorched weeds. Here was the shortest route to the central crossing - along the Tsaritsa riverbed, to the nerve center of the Stalingrad defensive system, the command post of General Chuikov, which was located in a dugout-tunnel, the so-called “Tsaritsyn dungeon,” built on the bank near the bridge on Pushkinskaya Street.

By the evening of September 14, German troops advancing on the central part of the city broke through the defenses and advanced to Mamayev Kurgan and the Central Station. To eliminate the breakthrough, Chuikov transferred one tank battalion from his small reserve - a heavy tank brigade (19 tanks) located in the southern part of Stalingrad, which was also subject to heavy enemy attacks. A group of staff workers and a security company from the army command post were also drawn into the battle. The infiltrated German machine gunners were located a few hundred meters from the “Tsaritsyn dungeon”; large-caliber machine guns installed by the Germans in the houses fired at the Volga and the central crossing. There was a threat that before the arrival of the reinforcements promised to Chuikov - the strong 13th Guards Division of General A.I. Rodimtsev (who gained experience in urban battles on the streets of Madrid in 1936) - the enemy would cut the 62nd Army in half and reach the central crossing.

During this period of fighting, German tactics, although formulaic and leading to large losses among the attackers, allowed them to gnaw through the thin line of the 62nd Army's defenses, stretched to the limit. The Germans used "packs" of three or four tanks supported by a company of infantry. Since the Russians defending in the houses did not open fire on tanks alone, allowing them into the depths of the defensive formations, where they found themselves in the fire zone of anti-tank guns and sheltered T-34s, the Germans, as a rule, had to send infantrymen forward to identify Russian firing points. As soon as the Germans spotted them, the tanks, covering each other, fired shell after shell into the building at point-blank range until it turned into ruins. Where the houses were tall and strong, the operations to capture them were both protracted and complex. Tanks were reluctant to delve into narrow streets, where they became easy prey for armor-piercers or grenades thrown from above onto the thin armor. Therefore, each such group had to include several flamethrowers in order to burn the house with a stream of fire and smoke out the defenders from it.

In the first days of the September offensive, the Germans had an almost threefold superiority in men and artillery and a sixfold superiority in tanks, and German aviation dominated the air. The period from September 13 to 23, when the 6th Army was relatively fresh, and the Russians were defending the remnants of units exhausted in previous battles, was the most dangerous for Stalingrad.

On the night of September 15, the position of the defenders deteriorated so much that Rodimtsev’s division that had crossed had to be thrown into battle battalion by battalion as soon as the fighters got off the ferries and boats. As a result, fresh units, without having time to look around and gain a foothold, entered into fierce battles, and many of them at dawn found themselves among German units, in the ruins of houses. But even in these difficult conditions, the courage of the Russian soldiers, who fought to the last bullet, played a role in disrupting the German offensive.

By September 24, both sides had exhausted their strength, and the fighting in the city center began to fade. The Germans managed to advance along the bed of the Tsarina River to the Volga and installed guns a few meters from the central pier. They also took possession of the residential area behind the Central Station, between the Tsarina River and Steep Ravine. Chuikov was forced to move his command post to the banks of the Volga east of Mamayev Kurgan. With the loss of the central pier, the defenders of Stalingrad now depended on the crossings operating in the northern part of the city in the area of ​​​​the factories.

At this stage of the battle, the Germans were close to capturing the entire southern part of the city up to the Steep Ravine, since only parts of two brigades were defending south of the Tsarina River. But the advance of Hoth's divisions was held back by isolated pockets of resistance that the Germans failed to deal with during their first tank attack on September 13 and 14. One of the main centers of resistance was in the area of ​​the elevators, and the struggle for one such elevator is told in the surviving memoirs of direct participants in the battle. Here are excerpts from the diary of a German soldier:

“September 16. Our battalion, together with tanks, is attacking an elevator, from which smoke is pouring out - the wheat is burning. They say the Russians set it on fire themselves. The battalion suffers heavy losses. There were 60 people left in the companies. It is not people who fight in the elevator, but devils who cannot be killed by bullets or fire.

September 18. The fighting is taking place in the elevator itself. The Russians inside it are doomed. Our battalion commander says that the commissars ordered these people to fight in the elevator to the end.

If all the buildings in Stalingrad are defended like this, not a single one of our soldiers will return home.

September 20. The battle for the elevator continues. The Russians are firing from all sides. We are sitting in the basement, we can’t go outside. Senior Sergeant Nuschke was killed while running across the street. Poor guy, he has three children.

September 22. The Russian resistance in the elevator has been broken. Our troops are advancing towards the Volga. In the elevator we found the corpses of forty killed Russians. Half of them are in naval uniform - sea ​​devils. Only one seriously wounded man was taken prisoner, who cannot speak - or is pretending.”

This “severely wounded” was the commander of the machine gun platoon of the 92nd Marine Rifle Brigade, Andrei Khozyainov, and his story, given in the memoirs of General Chuikov, creates an impressive picture of the fighting on the streets of Stalingrad, where the personal courage and resilience of a handful of soldiers and junior commanders, often lost contact with their command and those considered dead, influenced the entire course of the battle.

The German offensive, which began so brilliantly and in a few short weeks confirmed the Wehrmacht's ability to hold the whole world's breath, pushed the boundaries of the Reich's conquests to their highest limit. However, it was obvious that it was now firmly stalled. For almost two months, the headquarters maps remained unchanged.

The Ministry of Propaganda claimed that "the greatest battle of attrition the world had ever seen" was being waged and published daily figures that showed how the Soviet armies were bleeding. But whether the Germans believed it or not, the state of affairs was completely different. It was not the Red Army, but the German command that was forced to repeatedly raise the stakes.

With the same composure that characterized his refusal to commit Siberian reserve divisions into battle until the outcome of the Battle of Moscow was clear, Zhukov kept reinforcements sent to the 62nd Army to a minimum. In two critical months - from September 1 to November 1 - only five divisions were transported across the Volga - barely enough to cover losses. However, during the same period, 27 new rifle divisions and 19 tank brigades were formed from conscripts, new material, a core of experienced officers and seasoned junior commanders. All of them were concentrated in the area between Povorino and Saratov, where they completed combat training, and then some of them were transferred for a short period to the central sector of the front to gain combat experience. Thus, while the German command was gradually exhausting and bleeding all its divisions, the Red Army created powerful reserves of manpower and tanks.

The feeling of bitterness at having to stop a few steps (as it seemed to the Germans) from “complete victory” was soon mixed with a premonition of disaster, which intensified as the weeks passed one another, and the 6th Army remained in the same position .

While the mood of the German soldiers fluctuated from feverish optimism to depression, the situation in the highest echelons of the German command was animated by mutual recriminations and personal feuds.

The first to be removed were two generals of the tank forces - Wietersheim and Schwedler. The essence of their complaint was that the armored divisions were wasting themselves in operations for which they were completely unsuited and that after a few more weeks of street fighting they would not be able to carry out their main tasks - fighting enemy tanks in maneuver battles. However, the rules of military protocol did not allow even distinguished corps commanders to criticize broad strategic principles, and each of them preferred to voice complaints on narrower issues of tactics.

General von Withersheim commanded the 14th Panzer Corps, which was the first German unit to reach the Volga in the Rynka area in August 1942. Wietersheim hinted to Paulus that the losses from Russian artillery fire on both sides of the corridor in the Market sector were so adversely affecting his armored divisions that they should be pulled back and the infantry assigned to hold the corridor. He was relieved of his post, sent to Germany and ended his military career as a private in the Volkssturm in Pomerania in 1945.

The case of General von Schwedler, commander of the 4th Panzer Corps, is interesting in that he was the first general to warn about the dangers of concentrating all the tanks at the forefront of a failed main attack and the vulnerability of the flanks to Russian attack. But in the fall of 1942, the idea of ​​a Russian offensive was considered “defeatist.” ", and Shwedler was also fired from service.

Next (September 9) the head of Field Marshal List, commander of Army Group A, rolled.

After a quick push through the Kuban and the exit of Kleist's 1st Panzer Army to Mozdok at the end of August, the German offensive stalled, and the front line along the Terek River and the Main Caucasus Range stabilized. The resistance of the Soviet troops increased, and Richthofen's 8th Air Corps was transferred to the Stalingrad area.

As a result, the original plan to seize the oil regions underwent changes. The OKW ordered List to advance through the passes in the western part of the Main Caucasus Range and capture Tuapse and the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus up to the Turkish border. Reinforcements, including three Alpine divisions that would have been very useful to Kleist, were transferred to the 17th Army. But, despite this, List failed to break through the defenses of the Russian troops. In September, Colonel-General Jodl was sent as a representative of the OKW to List's headquarters to express "the Führer's dissatisfaction" and try to force more active action.

But Jodl returned with the disappointing news that "Lisz acted in punctual compliance with Hitler's orders, but the Russians everywhere offered strong resistance, taking advantage of the difficult terrain."

In response to Hitler’s reproaches, Jodl (for the first and last time) referred to the fact that “the Fuhrer, with his orders, forced List to attack on a very extended front.”

A "stormy scene" followed, and Jodl fell out of favor.

“After this, Hitler completely changed his usual daily routine. He stopped visiting the canteen, where he had previously had lunch and dinner every day with the rest of the generals. He almost never left his apartment during the day, and even stopped attending daily reviews of the situation at the fronts, which from that moment on were reported to him in his office in the presence of a strictly limited circle of people. He pointedly refused to shake hands with the OKW generals and ordered Jodl to be replaced by another officer.”

Jodl was never replaced and, having learned his lesson, soon won Hitler's favor again. Nevertheless, the possibility of replacing him with “another officer,” as we will soon see, had certain consequences.

By this time, relations between Hitler and Halder had deteriorated significantly, and on September 24, Halder was removed from his post as Chief of Staff of the Army, and Colonel General Kurt Zeitzler took his place.

Halder's removal is of particular interest to historians of the Second World War because of the changes that were made to Hitler's daily conference procedures. These meetings became the main body for directing military operations, directing operations, and issuing orders and directives. The final step to consolidate their key role in the strategic and tactical leadership of the war was the establishment of a “stenography service”, which diligently recorded literally every statement of Hitler and other participants in the meetings. Some of these transcripts have been preserved, and they are of enormous documentary value from the point of view of studying what happened at the Fuhrer's headquarters.

The biggest beneficiary from this shuffle was the Fuhrer's chief aide-de-camp, General Schmundt, a Nazi loyal to Hitler who was appointed to the influential post of head of the Army Personnel Directorate.

Shortly after his appointment, Schmundt flew to Paulus's headquarters, where the commander of the 6th Army immediately began to complain about the state of the troops, the lack of equipment, the strength of the Russian resistance, the danger of exhaustion of the 6th Army, and so on.

Schmundt, however, had an irresistible answer in store for any disgruntled commander. After introductory phrases about the Fuhrer’s desire for the Stalingrad operation “to be brought to a successful conclusion,” he announced amazing news. That “other officer” who is tipped for the post of chief of staff of the operational management of the OKB is none other than Paulus himself! True, Jodl’s removal has not yet been approved, but Paulus is “definitely earmarked” for promotion to a higher post, and General von Seydlitz will take the place of commander of the 6th Army.

Paulus may have been a good staff officer; as a front-line commander, he did not assess the situation quickly enough and thought in stereotyped ways. But judging by his career, he well understood the importance of sources of power and knew how to keep his nose to the wind. Having heard from Schmundt about the opening prospects, Paulus set about preparing the next, fourth offensive with particular enthusiasm.

* * *

This time, Paulus decided to deliver the main blow to the strongest part of the enemy’s defense - the territory of large factories - Traktorny, Barrikady, Red October in the northern part of Stalingrad, a few hundred meters from the bank of the Volga. The new German offensive, which began on October 14, led to the longest and most fierce battle in this destroyed city. It raged for almost three weeks. Paulus reinforced his troops with a number of specialized units, including police battalions and sapper squads with experience in street fighting and demolition. But the Russians, despite the enemy’s huge numerical superiority, surpassed the Germans in the tactics of fighting for every house. They improved the practice of using “assault groups” - small detachments of soldiers armed with light and heavy machine guns, machine guns, grenades, anti-tank rifles, which supported each other with rapid counterattacks, developed the tactics of creating “death zones” - densely mined houses and squares to which the defenders the side knew all the accesses and into which the German offensive should be channeled.

Practice has taught us, Chuikov wrote, that “success is largely based on covert rapprochement with the enemy.”

“...Move by crawling, using craters and ruins; dig trenches at night, camouflage them during the day; accumulate to launch an attack covertly, without noise; take the machine gun around your neck; grab 10–12 grenades - then time and surprise will be on your side.

...Break into the house together - you and the grenade, both be dressed lightly - you without a duffel bag, the grenade without a shirt; rush in like this: the grenade is in front, and you are behind it; go through the whole house again with a grenade - the grenade is in front, and you follow.”

Inside the house, “an inexorable rule comes into force: have time to turn around! At every step the fighter lurks danger. No problem - throw a grenade into every corner of the room, and off you go! A burst from a machine gun across the remains of the ceiling; a little - a grenade, and again forward! Another room - a grenade! Turn - another grenade! Comb automatically! And don't hesitate!

Already inside the object itself, the enemy can launch a counterattack. Don't be afraid! You have already taken the initiative, it is in your hands. Act angrier with a grenade, machine gun, knife and shovel! The fight inside the house is furious. Therefore, always be prepared for the unexpected. Don't yawn!

Slowly, suffering colossal losses, the Germans made their way through the factories, past dead machines and machines, through foundries, assembly shops and offices. “God, why did you leave us? - wrote a lieutenant of the 24th Panzer Division. “We fought for fifteen days for one house, using mortars, grenades, machine guns and bayonets. Already on the third day, the corpses of 54 killed Germans were lying in the basements on the stairwells and stairs. The “front line” runs along the corridor separating the burnt rooms, along the ceiling between the two floors. Reinforcements are brought in from neighboring houses along fire escapes and chimneys. From morning to night there is a continuous struggle. From floor to floor, with faces blackened by soot, we throw grenades at each other in the roar of explosions, clouds of dust and smoke, among heaps of cement, pools of blood, fragments of furniture and parts human bodies. Ask any soldier what half an hour of hand-to-hand combat means in such a battle. And imagine Stalingrad. 80 days and 80 nights of hand-to-hand combat. The length of the street is now measured not in meters, but in corpses..."

Burial of the 6th Army

By the end of October, the Russian positions in Stalingrad consisted of several pockets of resistance among the stone ruins on the right bank of the Volga, the depth of which rarely exceeded 300 meters. The tractor plant was in the hands of the Germans, who littered every meter of the factory area with the dead. The “barricades” were half captured by the Germans, who were sitting on one side of the foundry against Russian machine guns, hidden in extinguished open-hearth furnaces, on the other. The Russian defensive positions on the territory of the Red October plant were split into three parts.

But these last islands of resistance, hardened in the crucible of incessant attacks, were indestructible. The 6th Army was exhausted, it was as exhausted and battle-weary as Haig's English divisions at the Battle of Passchendaele a quarter of a century earlier, and from a purely military point of view, the idea of ​​​​another offensive in the city was pointless.

The obvious argument in favor of the immediate withdrawal of German troops to “winter positions” could be countered by a generally convincing argument for soldiers about the well-known “lesson” of Waterloo and the Battle of the Marne: “the outcome of the battle is decided by the last battalion.” The Germans, who had seen their forces melt away week after week in the heat of battle, refused to believe that the Russians were not suffering losses in similar proportions.

For many of them, and especially for Hitler, the comparison of Stalingrad with Verdun was irresistible. When some point on military map acquires symbolic significance, its loss can break the will of the defenders, regardless of its strategic value. In 1916, General Falkenhayn’s “meat grinder” was stopped when another month of fighting would have led to the destruction of the entire French army. At Stalingrad, what was at stake was not only the Russian will to fight, but also the assessment by all other countries of the world of German military power. The withdrawal of troops from the battlefield would be tantamount to an admission of defeat, which, although perhaps acceptable to the dispassionate and calculating professional military mind, was unthinkable from the point of view of German “world politics.”

Most of the staff officers of Army Group B were still busy preparing the “final assault” on Stalingrad. Richthofen writes that even the new OKH Chief of General Staff, Zeitzler, believed that “if we cannot complete the job now, when the Russians are in an exceptionally difficult situation, and the Volga is blocked by ice, then we will never be able to achieve this.” This opinion of the OKH Chief of Staff would certainly have changed had he known that the Russians, contrary to his judgment of their “difficult situation,” had concentrated more than 500 thousand soldiers, about 900 new tanks, 230 artillery regiments and 115 rocket-propelled mortar battalions on an attack front less than 60 kilometers long. kilometers - the highest concentration of manpower and firepower since the beginning of the Eastern Campaign.

While the 6th Army was gathering forces for a decisive attack on Russian positions in the ruins of Stalingrad and on its flanks the Soviet armies, in accordance with the plan of G.K. Zhukov, secretly occupied the starting lines, a strange silence at times fell on the seemingly extinct city.

As each side constantly tried to improve its tactical positions, local company-level fighting broke out around the clock on one or the other section of the front. A German tank crawled around the corner, slowly turned around and carefully crawled towards the skeletons of buildings held by the Russians: the hatches were tightly battened down, the tankers were nervous in anticipation of the battle. Hidden Soviet soldiers are closely watching the tank, waiting for the appearance of the rest of the German forces. The second tank appears on the street corner, stops, its turret with its gun gradually turns, covering the first crawling tank. Suddenly the thick silence is broken by the roar of an explosion - a Soviet 76.2-mm divisional gun at the eastern end of the street opens fire. The first shell flies past the target. Instantly the whole scene comes alive with confusion and noise of battle. A German tank desperately backs away, a second one covering it immediately fires a shell, then another, a third at a camouflaged Soviet gun, at the same time a platoon of German infantrymen armed with machine guns and grenades rises from their shelters - narrow trenches, craters, piles of rubble and debris, - where they crawled, and opens feverish fire on a Soviet anti-tank gun. In turn, Soviet snipers and riflemen, hiding behind the eaves of destroyed houses, the remains of balconies and staircases, “remove” them one by one. If the fight does not develop into a larger battle, involving more and more heavy weapons, then it soon fades away; only the wounded, groaning in pain, remain lying where the bullet caught them, waiting for the night.

These “quiet days” belonged to the snipers. In the art of marksmanship, the Russians took the lead. Particularly experienced snipers soon became famous not only among their own troops, but also among the enemy, and Russian superiority became so noticeable that the head of the sniper school in Zossen, SS Standartenführer Heinz Thorwald, was sent to Stalingrad to rectify the situation. One of the best Soviet snipers was tasked with tracking down one of these German aces and left a detailed story about this fight.

For its final offensive, the 6th Army revised its tactics and organization. Tank divisions had actually already lost their structure, since the tanks included in them were divided into small groups to support the infantry. Four more sapper battalions were airlifted into the city, which were planned to be used as the head echelons of four strike groups designed to complete the dismemberment of the defenders’ positions. The last “nests” of resistance were then supposed to be “pulverized” with massive artillery fire. The old wasteful tactics of seizing one building after another, in which a whole company could be required to capture one house with its stairs, balconies, and attics, were resorted to only in extreme cases. On both sides of the front line, infantry dug into the ground: basements, sewer shafts, tunnels, mines, covered trenches - these were the contours of the battlefield. Only tanks, closely watched by snipers hiding in their holes, slowly crawled along the surface of the earth.

Paulus's offensive, which began on November 11, was as misguided and hopeless as Army Group Center's last winter offensive near Moscow the year before. After 48 hours, it boiled down to a series of fierce hand-to-hand underground battles that defied any centralized leadership. Small groups of Germans managed to overcome the last three hundred meters that separated them from the Volga, but, having reached the river, they found themselves surrounded by the Russians, who cut off the narrow corridors laid by these German detachments. For another four days, desperate, furious fighting erupted on and off between these isolated groups. No prisoners were taken, and those who fought had little hope of surviving.

By November 18, due to exhaustion of forces and lack of ammunition, there was a forced lull. During the night, machine-gun fire and dull explosions of mortar shells died down, and the sides began to pick up the wounded. Then, as dawn illuminated clouds of smoke, over the dying embers Battle of Stalingrad A new and terrible sound rolled through - the thunderous roar of two thousand guns of Colonel General Voronov, who opened fire north of Stalingrad. And every German who heard it knew that it foreshadowed something that the German army had never encountered before.

At 9.30 am on November 20, this roar of cannonade was added to the roar of the guns of F.I. Tolbukhin, N.I. Trufanov and M.S. Shumilov, whose armies went on the attack south of Stalingrad, and the scale of the Red Army counter-offensive, combined with the threat, which it created for the entire German position began to dawn on the officers of Paulus's 6th Army.

Within three days - from November 19 to 22 - the front of Romanian and German troops in the north was broken through for 80 kilometers, and in the south for 55 kilometers. Six Soviet armies poured into the breakthrough, suppressing the surviving islands of resistance and pitiful attempts at counterattacks by Colonel Simons’ units and the thinned-out 48th Tank Corps. Sixth Army Headquarters spent two sleepless nights frantically trying to regroup precious tank units and withdraw infantry from the smoking ruins of Stalingrad to protect its collapsing flanks. Complete confusion reigned in the rear of Paulus's army; the railway west of the city of Kalach was cut in several places by Soviet cavalry; The sounds of gunfire came from all sides, and from time to time skirmishes broke out between the Germans moving towards the front line and groups of Romanians retreating in disorder. The wide bridge across the Don northwest of Kalach, through which every pound of provisions and every cartridge for Paulus's 6th Army was transported, was prepared for explosion and was continuously guarded by a platoon of sappers awaiting a possible order to destroy it.

A few hours before dawn, sappers heard the noise of a tank column approaching from the west. The lieutenant in command of the platoon initially thought that it might be Russians, but calmed down, deciding that it was a German training unit returning. The tanks crossed the bridge, Russian soldiers jumped out of the trucks, shot most of the platoon with machine guns, and took the survivors prisoner. The soldiers cleared the bridge, and Soviet tanks moved southeast, towards the city of Kalach. By the evening of November 23, Soviet tankers advancing from the north met with the 36th Brigade of the 4th Mechanized Corps, which approached from the southeast. The first thin link in the chain that was to strangle a quarter of a million German soldiers had been forged, and the turning point of the Second World War had arrived.

When the tanks of the 4th Tank Corps, having captured the city of Kalach, linked up with the troops of the Stalingrad Front approaching from the south, the success of the Russians was much more important than even the magnificent victory that the encirclement of the 6th Army promised. For this brilliant blow signaled in all its aspects - in the choice of moment, the concentration of forces, the form of exploitation of weaknesses in the disposition of enemy troops - a complete and final change in the strategic balance of forces between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. From this point on, the initiative passed to the Red Army, and although the Germans would repeatedly try to change this situation, their efforts would be of little more than tactical significance. From November 1942 onwards, German armed forces in the East will generally be on the defensive.

The defeat at Stalingrad shocked all of Germany, and this shock from the midst of the German people echoed to the high command of the German armed forces. The consciousness of inevitable defeat, although the actual loss of the war was still far away, grew like a giant shadow.

Notes:

Basil Liddell Hart's article appears in A History of the Second World War (Vol. 8), published in Great Britain in 1969 ( Liddel Hart B. Great Strategic Decisions. - History of the Second World War. Gr. Br., 1969, vol. 8, r. 3231–3238).

Liddell Hart, Basil(1895–1970) - prominent English military theorist and military historian. Participant in the First World War. Author of numerous books and articles, including editor-in-chief of the aforementioned eight-volume History of the Second World War. - Note translation

In September - October 1939, the Soviet government concluded mutual assistance pacts with Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, according to which Soviet garrisons were stationed on the territory of these states in order to guarantee the security of the Baltic countries. In connection with the hostile activities of the bourgeois governments of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia and attacks on Soviet military personnel, additional formations were introduced. In July 1940, the newly elected parliaments adopted a unanimous decision on the entry of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia into the Soviet Union. In August 1940, at the seventh session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, they were admitted to the Soviet Union with the rights of union republics. - Note translation

A note from the USSR government dated June 26, 1940 stated that “the issue of the return of Bessarabia is organically connected with the issue of transferring to the Soviet Union that part of Bukovina, the vast majority of whose population is connected with Soviet Ukraine both by a common historical destiny and a common language and national composition." The Romanian government, in a note on June 28, 1940, announced its agreement with the proposals of the Soviet government. - Note translation

The Three Powers Pact, signed on September 27, 1940 by representatives of Germany, Italy and Japan, formalized the military-political alliance of the fascist states. The pact was later joined by Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Finland and Spain. - Note translation

From Alan Clarke's book “Barbarossa”. Russian-German conflict 1941–1945.”

The German 11th Army was stationed in the Crimea, and some of its divisions were later transferred to Leningrad. - Note translation

On April 1, 1942, on the Eastern Front, Germany and its allies had 206 divisions and 26 brigades, of which 176 divisions and 9 brigades were German. See: History of the Second World War 1939–1945. M., 1975, vol. 5, p. 25. - Note translation

Before the attack on the USSR, the German tank division consisted of a tank regiment (2 or 3 battalions), two motorized infantry regiments, one artillery regiment, and a reconnaissance motorcycle battalion. A total of 16 thousand people, from 147 to 209 tanks, 27 armored vehicles and 192 guns and mortars.

In the second half of 1941, Soviet industry produced 4.8 thousand tanks (40 percent of them were light). In 1942, the tank industry produced about 24.7 thousand tanks, including heavy and medium tanks - about 60 percent. See: Weapons of Victory. M., 1987, p. 218, 224. - Note translation

A. Clark’s book was published before the release of G. K. Zhukov’s memoirs “Memories and Reflections,” which tells about the discussion at a meeting in the State Defense Committee at the end of March 1942 of the general situation and possible options for the actions of Soviet troops in the summer campaign. At this meeting, G.K. Zhukov and B.M. Shaposhnikov expressed disagreement with the deployment of several offensive operations, but I.V. Stalin rejected their point of view. Cm.: Zhukov G.K. Memories and Reflections, p. 383–385. - Note translation

By May 1942, the Soviet active fronts and fleets numbered 5.5 million people, 43,642 guns and mortars, 1,223 rocket artillery installations, 4,065 tanks (including 2,070 heavy and medium and 1,995 light) and 3,164 aircraft (including 2115 aircraft of new designs).

Germany and its allies had 6.2 million people, 3,230 tanks and assault guns, about 3,400 aircraft and 43 thousand guns and mortars on the Soviet-German front. See: 50 years of the USSR Armed Forces, p. 313. - Note translation

In May 1942, there were three Soviet armies on the Kerch Peninsula - the 47th, 51st and 44th (21 divisions), 3,580 guns and mortars, 350 tanks and 400 aircraft.

During May, the Crimean Front lost more than 3.4 thousand guns and mortars, about 350 tanks and 400 aircraft, as well as more than 176 thousand people in battles. See: History of the Second World War 1939–1945, vol. 5, p. 125; Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union, p. 155. - Note translation

Cm.: Moskalenko K. S. In the South-Western direction, M., 1973, book. 1, p. 184. - Note translation

Army Groups A and B, deployed on the southern flank for the offensive, included 97 divisions, including 10 tank and 3 motorized (900 thousand people, 1.2 thousand tanks and assault guns, more than 17 thousand guns and mortars) , supported by 1,640 combat aircraft. See: History of the Second World War 1939–1945, vol. 5, p. 145–146. - Note translation

And later also the entire Black Sea coast of the Caucasus, right up to Batumi. - Note translation

It was one of the most powerful air corps of the Luftwaffe, which (500–600 aircraft) included dive bombers and attack aircraft. In 1941, the air corps operated on the Leningrad Front and then supported the German offensive on Moscow. - Note translation

The number of personnel of both groups was approximately equal, but in artillery and aviation the Germans outnumbered the Soviet troops by 2 times, and in tanks by 4 times. See: History of the Second World War 1939–1945, vol. 5, p. 172. - Note translation

Chuikov V.I. Battle of the century. M., 1975, p. 81–82. - Note translation

From April 1 to November 18, 1942, the fascist German command transferred about 70 additional divisions from the West to the Soviet-German front. See: History of the Second World War 1939–1945, vol. 5, p. 317. - Note translation

Falkenhayn, Eric von(1861–1922) - German general, in 1914–1916 - chief of the general staff, removed for failure at Verdun. - Note translation

Chuikov V.I. Battle of the Century, p. 101–102. - Note translation

Cm.: Chuikov V.I. Battle of the Century, p. 130–133. - Note translation

Liddell Hart B.H. The Other Side of the Hill. London, 1951, p. 314.

The main German strike force consisted of 90 thousand people, 2,300 guns and mortars, and about 300 tanks. Their actions were supported by about a thousand combat aircraft of the 4th Air Fleet. The troops of the 62nd Army had 55 thousand people, 1,400 guns and mortars, 80 tanks. The 8th Air Army had only 190 serviceable aircraft. See: History of the Second World War 1939–1945, vol. 5, p. 191. - Note translation

Chuikov V.I. Battle of the Century, p. 307–308. - Note translation

Haig, Douglas(1861–1928) - English field marshal. During the First World War (from December 1915) commander of the British expeditionary forces in France. This refers to the British offensive in Flanders near the city of Ypres in August - November 1917, during which the British lost about 260 thousand people to capture the village of Passchendaele. - Note translation

A. Clark reproduces in his book the entire story of the Soviet sniper Vasily Zaitsev about his duel with the German “super sniper” in Stalingrad, using the memoirs of V. I. Chuikov as a source. Cm.: Chuikov V.I. From Stalingrad to Berlin. M., 1980, p. 178–180. - Note translation

On instructions from Headquarters, the chief of artillery of the Red Army, Colonel General N. N. Voronov, assisted in organizing artillery support for the counter-offensive of Soviet troops near Stalingrad. - Note translation

In the summer of 1942, Hitler planned to again seize the initiative on the Soviet-German front with the goal of destroying the vital sources of Soviet power, the most important military-economic centers. The strategic goals of the summer campaign of 1942 were the conquest of the fertile southern lands of Russia (bread), the acquisition of coal in the Donbass and the oil of the Caucasus, the transformation of Turkey from a neutral into an ally, and the blocking of the Iranian and Volga Lend-Lease routes. Initially, the invasion of the grandiose region between the Black and Caspian Seas was called "Siegfried", but as the plan developed and became more detailed, it became known as "Blau" ("Blue").

To achieve these goals, it was planned to involve, in addition to the German armed forces, the armed forces of the Allies as much as possible.

The plan for the summer campaign of the German army on the Soviet-German front was set out in OKW Directive No. 41 of 04/05/1942. (Appendix 2.1)

Main task, set up by Hitler, maintaining the position in the central sector, in the north to take Leningrad and establish contacts on land with the Finns, and on the southern flank of the front to make a breakthrough to the Caucasus. This task was planned to be accomplished by dividing it into several stages, taking into account the situation created after the end of the winter campaign, the availability of forces and means, as well as transport capabilities.

First of all, all available forces were concentrated to carry out the main operation in the southern sector with the goal of destroying Soviet troops west of the Don, in order to then capture oil-bearing areas in the Caucasus and cross the Caucasus ridge.

The capture of Leningrad was postponed until a change in the situation around the city or the release of other sufficient forces for this purpose created the appropriate opportunities.

The primary task of the ground forces and aviation after the end of the thaw period was to stabilize and strengthen the entire Eastern Front and rear areas with the task of freeing up as many forces as possible for the main operation, while at the same time being able to repel the enemy’s attack with small forces on other fronts. For this purpose, it was planned to conduct offensive operations of a limited scale, concentrating the offensive assets of ground forces and aviation to achieve quick and decisive successes with superior forces.

Before the start of the main offensive in the south, it was planned to capture the Kerch Peninsula and Sevastopol to clear the entire Crimea from Soviet troops, providing routes for the supply of allied troops, ammunition and fuel through the ports of Crimea. Block the Soviet navy in the ports of the Caucasus. Destroy the Barvenkovsky bridgehead of Soviet troops, wedged on both sides of Izyum.

The main operation on the Eastern Front. Its goal is to defeat and destroy the Russian troops located in the Voronezh region, to the south of it, as well as to the west and north of the river. Don.

Due to the scale of the operation, the grouping of fascist German troops and their allies had to be built up gradually, and therefore, the operation was proposed to be divided into a series of successive but interconnected strikes, complementary to each other and distributed in time from north to south in such a way so that in each of these blows decisive directions As many forces as possible of both the ground army and especially the aviation force were concentrated.

Having assessed the resilience of the Soviet troops during battles in encirclement, Hitler proposed carrying out deep breakthroughs of mechanized units in order to encircle and tightly block the Soviet troops with approaching infantry units. The plan also required that tank and motorized troops provide direct assistance to the German infantry by striking in the rear of the pincered enemy with the aim of completely destroying him.

The main operation was to begin with an enveloping offensive from the area south of Orel in the direction of Voronezh towards the Moscow defense line. The purpose of this breakthrough was to capture the city of Voronezh, and to hide from the Soviet command the true direction of the main attack on the Caucasus (the distance from Voronezh to Moscow is 512 km, Saratov - 511 km, Stalingrad - 582 km, Krasnodar - 847 km).

At the second stage of the plan, part of the infantry divisions advancing behind the tank and motorized formations was supposed to immediately equip a powerful defensive line from the initial offensive area in the Orel area in the direction of Voronezh, and the mechanized formations were supposed to continue the offensive with their left flank from Voronezh along the river. Don to the south to interact with troops making a breakthrough approximately from the Kharkov area to the east. With this, the enemy hoped to encircle and defeat Soviet troops in the Voronezh direction, reach the Don in the section from Voronezh to Novaya Kalitva (40 km south of Pavlovsk) to the rear of the main forces of the Southwestern Front and seize a bridgehead on the left bank of the Don. Of the two groupings of tank and motorized forces intended for enveloping maneuver, the northern one should be stronger than the southern one.

At the third stage of this operation, the forces striking down the Don River were supposed to unite in the Stalingrad area with the forces advancing from the Taganrog, Artemovsk area between the lower reaches of the Don River and Voroshilovgrad through the Seversky Donets River to the east. The plan was to reach Stalingrad, or at least expose it to heavy weapons so that it would lose its importance as a center of military industry and a communications hub.

To continue the operations planned for the subsequent period, it was planned to either capture undamaged bridges in Rostov itself, or firmly capture bridgeheads south of the Don River.

Before the start of the offensive, the Taganrog group was planned to be reinforced with tanks and motorized units in order to prevent the majority of the Soviet troops defending north of the Don River from leaving the river to the south.

The directive required not only to protect the northeastern flank of the advancing troops, but also to immediately begin equipping positions on the Don River, creating a powerful anti-tank defense and preparing defensive positions for the winter and providing them with all the necessary means for this.

To occupy positions on the front being created along the Don River, which would increase as operations unfolded, it was planned to allocate allied formations in order to use the released German divisions as a mobile reserve behind the front line on the Don River.

The directive provided for the distribution of allied forces in such a way that the Hungarians would be located in the northernmost sectors, then the Italians, and the Romanians furthest to the southeast. Since the Hungarians and Romanians were bitterly hostile, the Italian army was stationed between them.

Hitler assumed that the Soviet troops would be encircled and destroyed north of the Don and, therefore, after overcoming the Don line, he demanded that the troops advance beyond the Don to the south as quickly as possible, since this was forced by the short duration of the favorable time of year. Thus, Hitler’s strategists were preparing to create a gigantic encirclement of Soviet troops in a vast area that was extremely inconvenient for their defense. And then on the waterless, scorched by the southern sun, smooth as a table, steppe expanses would be dominated by enemy tank and aviation fists.

To carry out an offensive in the Caucasus, already on April 22, 1942, an order was issued from the head of the armament department of the ground army and the head of replenishment on the creation of the command of Army Group "A" with a combat readiness headquarters by 20.5.42. Field Marshal List was appointed commander of the army group. Lieutenant General von Greifenberg was appointed chief of staff of the army group, and colonel of the general staff von Gildenfeldt was appointed first officer of the general staff. During formation, for camouflage purposes, the headquarters is called “Anton Headquarters.”

Operation planning and preparatory work they are carried out by Army Group "South", the corresponding instructions and orders are transmitted to the future command of Army Group "A" during their development at the headquarters of Army Group "South".

On May 23, the working headquarters arrives in Poltava and, under the code name “Azov Coastal Headquarters,” is placed under the command of the commander of Army Group South, Field Marshal von Bock, whose headquarters had previously led military operations on the entire southern sector of the eastern front and was also located in Poltava.

On June 1, Hitler leaves for Poltava, accompanied by Field Marshal Keitel. The commander-in-chief of Army Group "South", the chief of staff of Army Group "South" and the army commanders takes part in the discussion of the situation at the front by the chief of the "Azov Coastal Headquarters". An order is issued about the tasks of the command during operations and preparation for them. Over time, the “Azov coastal headquarters” became involved in the affairs of the armies that later came under his command.

10.6.42 The operational department of the General Staff of the Supreme Command of the Ground Forces issues an order on the command of Crimea after the fall of Sevastopol, according to which all ground forces operating in Crimea are commanded by the commander of 42AK, subordinate, after the transfer of command, to the “Coastal Headquarters Azov”. On July 11, an order was issued on the procedure for introducing troops arriving in the second place into battle for the 11th and 17th armies, and on July 5, the operational department of the General Staff reported on the procedure for transferring troops from Crimea to areas 17A and 1TA. First of all, the infantry of the 73rd and 125th Infantry should be transferred, secondly the infantry of the 9th Infantry, and thirdly the infantry of the security division. To guard the Crimea region, one German division each is left in Sevastopol and Simferopol, the third battalion of the 204th tank regiment of the 22nd tank division, and a sufficient number of Romanian formations.

On July 5 at 14.45, the “Azov coastal headquarters” received by telephone the final order to assume command from the General Staff of the Supreme Command of the Ground Forces. On July 7, the “Azov coastal headquarters” at 0.00 in encrypted form takes over command of 11A, 17A, with the Witersheim group (57TK), 1TA, Romanian formations, and the Italian 8th Army (upon its arrival in the unloading area) subordinate to it.

In total, by June 28, 1942, on the Soviet-German front, the enemy had 11 field and 4 tank armies, 3 operational groups, which included 230 divisions and 16 brigades - 5,655 thousand people, more than 49 thousand guns and mortars, 3, 7 thousand tanks and assault guns. These forces were supported from the air by aviation from three air fleets, the Vostok aviation group, as well as aviation from Finland and Romania, which had about 3.2 thousand combat aircraft.

The largest grouping of Wehrmacht forces - Army Group South, which made up 37 percent of infantry and cavalry and 53 percent of tank and motorized formations, was deployed by the last ten days of June 1942 on the southern wing of the Soviet-German front. It consisted of 97 divisions, of which 76 were infantry, 10 tank, 8 motorized and 3 cavalry. (History of the Second World War vol. 5, p. 145)

As a result of the measures taken to strategically deploy troops for the summer offensive of 1942 on the southern wing of the Soviet-German front, the total number of armies in Army Group South increased to eight; In addition, the 3rd Romanian Army followed in marching order to Ukraine.

The enemy held the operational-strategic initiative in his hands. Under the circumstances, this was an extremely great advantage, providing the Nazi command with freedom to choose the direction of attack and the opportunity to create a decisive superiority of forces and means in this direction.

The Headquarters of the Supreme High Command and the General Staff of the Red Army recognized the possibility of a summer offensive by the German army in the south, but believed that the enemy, who held a large group of his troops in close proximity to Moscow, would most likely deliver the main blow not towards Stalingrad and the Caucasus, but to the flank of the central grouping of the Red Army with the aim of capturing Moscow and the central industrial region, therefore the Headquarters continued to strengthen the central section of the front and strengthen the Bryansk Front, the bulk of whose troops were grouped on the right wing, covering the direction to Moscow through Tula.

The Supreme Commander-in-Chief had no doubt that the main task of the Wehrmacht remained the same - the capture of Moscow. Taking this into account, the General Staff in July 1942 analyzed the general operational-strategic situation and events on the southern flank of the Soviet-German front. It was necessary to decide which of the two directions - to the Caucasus or to Stalingrad - was the main one. The distribution of troops and materiel, the use of strategic reserves, forms of interaction between fronts, and the nature of preparatory activities and much more.

The General Staff took into account that the Caucasus direction was connected for the enemy with the need to overcome a powerful mountain barrier with a relatively poorly developed network of convenient roads. Breaking through our defenses in the mountains required large available forces, and in the future a significant replenishment of troops with people and equipment. The enemy's main strike weapon - numerous tanks - could only roam the fields of the Kuban, and in mountainous conditions they lost a significant share of their combat capabilities. The position of Hitler's troops in the Caucasus would have been seriously complicated by the fact that their flank and rear, under favorable conditions, could have been threatened by our Stalingrad front and troops concentrated in the area south of Voronezh.

In general, the General Staff considered it unlikely that Hitler’s troops would deploy their main operations in the Caucasus. According to General Staff estimates, the Stalingrad direction was more promising for the enemy. Here the terrain was conducive to the conduct of extensive combat operations by all types of troops, and up to the Volga there were no major water barriers, except the Don. With the enemy's access to the Volga, the position of the Soviet fronts would become very difficult, and the country would be cut off from sources of oil in the Caucasus. The lines through which the Allies supplied us through Iran would also be disrupted. (Shtemenko S.M. General Staff during the war, Voenizdat 1981, vol. 1, p. 87)

Taking this into account, the bulk of the strategic reserves were located in the western and also in the southwestern direction, which subsequently allowed the Headquarters to use them where the Nazi command delivered the main blow. Hitler's intelligence was unable to reveal either the number of reserves of the Soviet Supreme High Command or their location.

Due to an underestimation of the southern direction, Headquarters reserves were not stationed there - the main means of influencing the strategic leadership on the course of important operations. Options for action by Soviet troops in case of a sudden change in the situation were not worked out. In turn, underestimating the role of the southern direction led to tolerance for the mistakes of the command of the Southwestern and partly the Southern fronts.

As a result of the unsuccessful actions of the Southwestern and Southern Fronts during the May offensive in the Kharkov direction, the situation and balance of forces in the south changed sharply in favor of the enemy. Having eliminated the Barvenkovsky ledge, German troops significantly improved their operational position and took advantageous starting positions for a further offensive in the eastern direction. (diagram of Operation Wilhelm and Frederick 1)

Soviet troops, having suffered significant losses, gained a foothold by mid-June at the line of Belgorod, Kupyansk, Krasny Liman and put themselves in order. Having gone on the defensive, they did not have time to properly gain a foothold on new lines. The reserves available in the southwestern direction were used up.

thesis

1.1 Plans of Hitler's military command

On the eve of the second year of the Great Patriotic War, the situation in the Soviet Union remained difficult. Its material and human losses were enormous, and the territories captured by the enemy were vast. However, the strategy of Nazi Germany’s “blitzkrieg” war against the USSR failed. In a grandiose armed confrontation on the outskirts of Moscow, Red Army troops defeated the main Wehrmacht group and drove it back from the Soviet capital. The Battle of Moscow has not yet finally decided the outcome of the struggle in favor of the USSR, but it marked the beginning of a radical turning point in the course of the Patriotic War and the Second World War.

According to the plans of the German command, the forty-second year was supposed to be the decisive year in the war, because Hitler was confident that the United States and England would not attempt to land their troops in Europe this year; he still had a free hand for actions in the east.

However, the defeat near Moscow and the losses in the summer of 1941 inflicted by the Red Army on the invaders could not but have an impact. Despite the fact that by the spring of '42, Hitler's army had increased in number and received significant technical equipment, the German command did not find the strength to attack along the entire front.

“At the end of 1941, 9,500 thousand were under arms in Hitler’s army, and in 1942 there were already 10,204 thousand” Morozov V.P. The historical feat of Stalingrad. - M., 1982. - P. 41... The overall strength of the army increased, and the chief of Hitler’s general staff of the ground forces, Colonel General Halder, wrote the following significant entry in his diary: “As of May 1, 1942, 318 thousand people are missing in the East. It is proposed to send 240 thousand people to the army in the East in May. For the period from May to September there is a reserve of 960 thousand young conscripts. Then in September there will be nothing left” Halder F. From Brest to Stalingrad: a war diary. - Smolensk, 2001. - P. 231. .

Somewhat later, at the headquarters of the operational leadership of the OKW, a more precise document was drawn up regarding the general condition of Hitler’s army. The certificate intended for Hitler stated: “The combat effectiveness of the armed forces as a whole is lower than in the spring of 1941, which is due to the inability to fully ensure their replenishment with people and materiel.”

“And yet, by the summer of forty-two,” writes General Chuikov, “Hitler managed to concentrate quite significant forces against us. On the Soviet-German front, he had an army of six million, numbering up to 43 thousand guns and mortars, over three thousand tanks, and up to three and a half thousand combat aircraft. The forces are significant. Hitler started the war with the smaller ones” Chuikov V.I. Battle of the century. - M., 1985. - P. 211. .

Hitler undertook a campaign in the Caucasus with the aim of seizing oil sources and access to the Iranian border, to the Volga. He apparently hoped that at a distance from the center of the country, the resistance of the Soviet troops would not be so thorough.

By entering the Caucasus, Hitler hoped to drag Turkey into the war, which would give him another twenty to thirty divisions. By reaching the Volga and the Iranian border, he hoped to drag Japan into the war against the Soviet Union. The performance of Turkey and Japan was his last chance for success in the war against us. Only this can explain such a broadcast nature of his directive for the spring-summer campaign of 1942.

Let us turn to the text of this directive, known as Directive No. 41. The introduction itself does not contain an analysis of the current situation on the Soviet-German front, but propaganda idle talk.

The directive begins with these words: “The winter campaign in Russia is approaching its end. Thanks to the outstanding courage and readiness of the soldiers of the Eastern Front for self-sacrifice, our defensive actions were crowned with great success by German weapons. The enemy suffered huge losses in men and equipment. In an effort to capitalize on his supposed initial success, he spent this winter most of the reserves intended for further operations."

“The goal,” says the directive, “is to completely destroy the forces still at the disposal of the Soviets and to deprive them, as far as possible, of the most important military-economic centers.”

“...First of all, all available forces must be concentrated to carry out the main operation in the southern sector with the goal of destroying the enemy west of the Don, in order to then capture the oil-bearing areas in the Caucasus and cross the Caucasus ridge.”

And here comes a disclaimer. “The final encirclement of Leningrad and the capture of Ingria are postponed until a change in the situation in the encirclement area or the release of other sufficient forces for this purpose creates the appropriate opportunities.”

This reservation shows that Hitler, having forces greater than those with which he began his campaign in Russia, did not dare to carry out operations along the entire front, but concentrated everything in the south.

As General Chuikov wrote: “The Directive is a document of a secret nature, a document that a limited circle of people had the right to familiarize itself with, it is a document in which there is no place for propaganda formulations. He must accurately and soberly assess the situation. We see that in its premise the German command completely incorrectly assesses our forces, and is trying to portray its defeat near Moscow as a military success. Underestimating our strengths, Hitler at the same time overestimates his own.” Chuikov V.I. Battle of the century. - P. 234. .

Thus, the main goal of the enemy’s offensive on the Eastern Front, according to the above Directive No. 41, was to win victory over the Soviet Union. “However, unlike the Barbarossa plan,” writes A.M. Samsonov, - achieving this political goal was no longer based on the “blitzkrieg” strategy. That is why Directive No. 41 does not establish a chronological framework for the completion of the campaign in the East. But on the other hand, it says that, while maintaining positions in the central sector, defeat and destroy Soviet troops in the Voronezh region and west of the Don, and take possession of the southern regions of the USSR, rich in strategic raw materials.” Samsonov A.M. Battle of Stalingrad. - M., 1989. - P. 327. . To solve this problem, it was planned to carry out a series of successive operations: in the Crimea, south of Kharkov, and after that in the Voronezh, Stalingrad and Caucasus directions. The operation to capture Leningrad and establish ground communications with the Finns was made dependent on the solution of the main task on the southern sector of the front. Army Group Center during this period was supposed to improve its operational position through private operations.

Hitler declared on March 15 that during the summer of 1942 “the Russian army will be completely destroyed” Welz G. Soldiers who were betrayed. - Smolensk, 1999. - P. 69. . It can be assumed that such a statement was made for propaganda purposes, was demagogic and went beyond the scope of the real strategy. But there was more likely something else going on here.

Hitler's inherently adventurous policy could not be built on the basis of deep foresight and calculation. All this fully affected the formation of the strategic plan, and then the development of a specific plan of operations for 1942. Difficult problems arose before the creators of the fascist strategy. The question of how to attack, and even whether to attack at all, on the Eastern Front became increasingly difficult for Hitler's generals.

Preparing the conditions for the final defeat of the Soviet Union, the enemy decided first of all to seize the Caucasus with its powerful sources of oil and the fertile agricultural regions of the Don, Kuban and North Caucasus. The offensive in the Stalingrad direction was supposed to ensure, according to the enemy’s plan, the successful implementation of the main operation to conquer the Caucasus. This strategic plan of the enemy very much reflected the urgent need of Nazi Germany for fuel.

Speaking on June 1, 1942 at a meeting of the command staff of Army Group South in the Poltava region, Hitler stated that “if he does not receive the oil of Maikop and Grozny, he will have to end this war.” Nuremberg Trials / Ed. Batova P.I. - M., 1994. - P. 178. . At the same time, Hitler based his calculations on the fact that the USSR's loss of oil would undermine the strength of Soviet resistance. “It was a subtle calculation that was closer to its goal than is generally believed after its final catastrophic failure” Liddell Hart B. G. Strategy of indirect actions. - M., 1997. - P. 347-348. .

So, the German military command no longer had confidence in the success of the offensive - the miscalculation of the Barbarossa plan in relation to the assessment of the forces of the Soviet Union was obvious. Nevertheless, the need for a new offensive was recognized by both Hitler and the German generals. “The Wehrmacht command continued to strive for the main goal - to defeat the Red Army before the Anglo-American troops began fighting on the continent of Europe. The Nazis had no doubt that the second front, at least in 1942, would not be opened.” Dashichev V.I. Bankruptcy of the strategy of German fascism. T. 2: Aggression against the USSR. The fall of the "third empire". - M., 1983. - P. 125. And although the prospects for a war against the USSR for some people looked completely different than a year ago, the time factor could not be overlooked. There was complete unanimity on this.

“In the spring of 1942,” writes G. Guderian, “the German high command was faced with the question of what form to continue the war in: offensive or defensive. Going on the defensive would be an admission of our own defeat in the 1941 campaign and would deprive us of our chances of successfully continuing and ending the war in the East and West. 1942 was the last year in which, without fear of immediate intervention by the Western powers, the main forces of the German army could be used in an offensive on the Eastern Front. It remained to decide what should be done on a front 3 thousand kilometers long to ensure the success of an offensive carried out by relatively small forces. It was clear that along most of the front the troops had to go on the defensive.” Stalingrad: lessons from history / Ed. Chuikova V.I. - M., 1980. - P. 134.

The specific content of the plan for the summer campaign of 1942 at a certain stage and to some extent was the subject of discussion among Hitler's generals. “The commander of Army Group North, Field Marshal Küchler, initially proposed an offensive on the northern sector of the Soviet-German front with the goal of capturing Leningrad. Halder ultimately also favored resuming the offensive, but, as before, continued to consider the central direction decisive and recommended launching the main attack on Moscow with the forces of Army Group Center Butlar von. War in Russia / World War 1939-1945 - M., 1957.- P. 92. . Halder believed that the defeat of Soviet troops in the western direction would ensure the success of the campaign and the war as a whole.

Hitler, unconditionally supported by Keitel and Jodl, ordered the main efforts of German troops in the summer of 1942 to be directed south to capture the Caucasus. Due to the limited number of forces, the operation to capture Leningrad was planned to be postponed until the troops in the south were released.

The fascist German high command decided to launch a new offensive on the southern wing of the Soviet-German front, hoping to defeat the Soviet troops here in successive operations piecemeal. Thus, although Hitler’s strategists first began to show hesitation when planning the 1942 campaign, nevertheless, as before, the highest military and political leadership of the Third Reich came to a common point of view.

On March 28, 1942, a secret meeting was held at Hitler's headquarters, to which only a very limited circle of people from the highest headquarters were invited.

According to the plan of Hitler's military-political leadership, the fascist German troops in the summer campaign of 1942 still had to achieve the military and political goals set by the Barbarossa plan, which were not achieved in 1941 due to the defeat near Moscow. The main blow was supposed to be delivered on the southern wing of the Soviet-German front with the aim of capturing the city of Stalingrad, reaching the oil-bearing regions of the Caucasus and the fertile regions of the Don, Kuban and Lower Volga, disrupting communications connecting the center of the country with the Caucasus, and creating conditions for ending the war in their favor (see Appendix 1). Hitler's strategists believed that the loss of Donbass and Caucasian oil would seriously weaken the Soviet Union, and the entry of Nazi troops into Transcaucasia would disrupt its ties with its allies through the Caucasus and Iran and would help drag Turkey into a war against it.

Based on the assigned tasks, changes were made to the structure of the command of troops on the southern wing of the German Eastern Front. Army Group South (Field Marshal F. von Bock) was divided into two: Army Group B (4th Panzer, 2nd and 6th Field German and 2nd Hungarian armies; Colonel General M . von Weichs) and Army Group A (1st Panzer, 17th and 11th German Field Armies and 8th Italian Armies; Field Marshal W. List).

For the offensive in the Stalingrad direction, the 6th Field Army (General of Tank Forces F. Paulus) was allocated from Army Group B. On July 17, 1942, it included 13 divisions, 3 thousand guns and mortars and about 500 tanks. It was supported by aviation of the 4th Air Fleet (up to 1200 aircraft).

The capture of Stalingrad was very important to Hitler for several reasons. It was a major industrial city on the banks of the Volga (a vital transport route between the Caspian Sea and northern Russia). The capture of Stalingrad would provide security on the left flank of the German armies advancing into the Caucasus. Finally, the very fact that the city bore the name of Stalin, Hitler's main enemy, made the capture of the city a winning ideological and propaganda move. Stalin also had ideological and propaganda interests in protecting the city that bore his name.

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The general concept of the offensive in the summer campaign of 1942 on the Eastern Front and the plan for the main operation were set out in Directive of the Supreme High Command of the Wehrmacht No. 41 of April 5, 1942. The main goal of the fascist German troops on the Eastern Front was to completely defeat the Soviet troops in the south of the country, seize the oil regions of the Caucasus, the rich agricultural regions of the Don and Kuban, disrupt communications connecting the center of the country with the Caucasus, and create conditions for ending the war in for your benefit. The main operation was planned to be carried out in three stages in the form of a series of separate offensives, following directly one after the other, interconnected and complementary.

At the first stage, it was planned, through private operations in the Crimea, near Kharkov and other parts of the Eastern Front, to improve the operational position of the Nazi troops and level the front line in order to free up maximum forces for the main operation. At the second stage of the operation, it was planned to strike from Kharkov to Voronezh with the strike group turning south, with the aim of encircling Soviet troops in the area between the Donets and Don rivers. After the defeat of the encircled Soviet troops, it was planned to capture the areas of Stalingrad, the Lower Volga and the Caucasus. At the third stage, it was planned to transfer troops released in the south to strengthen Army Group North to capture Leningrad.

By the end of the spring of 1942, the Wehrmacht in terms of personnel (about 5.5 million people) and weapons was approximately at the level of its invasion of the USSR. Germany's allies sent up to a million of their soldiers to the Eastern Front. The number of German tank divisions was increased from 19 to 25, while the combat power and equipment of an individual division increased. On the eve of the offensive, the German divisions were staffed to full strength. Most of the officers, non-commissioned officers and soldiers of these divisions had combat experience in offensive operations. German aviation continued to dominate the air. The advantage of the Wehrmacht over the opposing Soviet armed forces was not so much in the number of troops, but in their quality. The soldiers and officers of the Wehrmacht believed in the Fuhrer of the German people - A. Hitler. The first military successes of the summer of 1942 muted the bitterness of the winter defeats, and the offensive spirit in the Wehrmacht units was almost as high as at the beginning of the Blitzkrieg.

In furtherance of Directive No. 41, Hitler signs the Blau plan, according to which Wehrmacht troops, initially advancing in the direction of Voronezh, should mislead the Soviet command about the final goal of the offensive and pin down Soviet reserves in the Moscow area. With an unexpected and fastest possible turn of the fascist German troops along the Don to the south, Hitler planned to capture the Donetsk coal basin, seize the oil region of the Caucasus and block the path of water transport along the Volga at Stalingrad. The extended northern flank of this operation along the right bank of the Don was to be covered by Hungarian, Italian and Romanian troops.

The implementation of this operation was entrusted to Army Groups “A” and “B”, which included 5 fully equipped German armies, numbering more than 900 thousand people, 17 thousand guns, 1.2 thousand tanks, supported by 1640 aircraft of the 4th Air Fleet Air Force. The southern Army Group A, under the command of Field Marshal List, included the 17th Field and 1st Panzer Armies, and the northern Army Group B, under the command of Field Marshal von Bock, included the 4th Panzer, 2nd and the 6th Field Army.

Since March, the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command and the General Staff of the Soviet Union have also been developing a new strategic plan for the summer of 1942. They had no doubt that with the onset of summer or even spring, fascist German troops would try to recapture the strategic initiative, and they tried to more accurately reveal the enemy’s plans.

Military intelligence and state security agencies reported that Germany would deliver the main blow in the south of the Soviet-German front.

However, the intelligence data was not fully taken into account. Headquarters and the General Staff proceeded from the fact that the strongest group of the Wehrmacht continued to be in the central sector of the Soviet-German front, still threatening the capital of the USSR. Therefore, they considered it most likely that the Wehrmacht would deliver the main blow in the Moscow direction.

An assessment of the situation showed that the immediate task should be the active strategic defense of Soviet troops without large-scale offensive actions, in the accumulation of powerful trained reserves and military equipment, and only after that could the transition to a decisive offensive be carried out. Supreme Commander-in-Chief I.V. Stalin, contrary to the current situation, in a directive of April 8, 1942, ordered the commanders of a number of fronts to go on the offensive in order to force the Wehrmacht to use up its reserves and thus ensure victory over Germany already in 1942. However, calculations for the rapid depletion of the Nazi troops turned out to be completely unfounded, and the tactics of the General Staff, built on a combination of defense and offensive simultaneously in several directions, led to catastrophic results.

Despite the huge losses of 1941, by May 1942 there were more than 5.5 million people in the ranks of the Red Army on the Soviet-German front. The troops lacked experienced commanders. Military infantry and mortar and machine gun schools of the Red Army trained platoon commanders - junior lieutenants - according to accelerated programs, in just six months, and the training of Red Army soldiers and junior commanders in reserve regiments, training battalions and regimental schools was carried out even faster. Newly formed and reorganized divisions most often rushed to the front without the necessary training, understaffed with personnel and weapons, and without well-developed interaction between units.

Home front workers made incredible efforts to increase the production of military equipment and ammunition for the front. Among the huge mass of obsolete equipment, T-34 and KV tanks and new types of aircraft increasingly began to arrive at the front. Soviet troops continued to experience an urgent need for vehicles, anti-aircraft artillery, engineering equipment and communications equipment.

On November 19, 1942, a counteroffensive of Soviet troops began; on November 23, units of the Stalingrad and Southwestern fronts united near the city of Kalach-on-Don and surrounded 22 enemy divisions. During Operation Little Saturn, which began on December 16, Army Group Don under the command of Manstein suffered a serious defeat. And although the offensive operations undertaken on the central sector of the Soviet-German front (Operation Mars) ended unsuccessfully, success in the southern direction ensured the success of the winter campaign of the Soviet troops as a whole - one German and four German allied armies were destroyed.

Other important events of the winter campaign were the North Caucasus offensive operation (in fact, the pursuit of forces withdrawing from the Caucasus to avoid encirclement of the Germans) and the breaking of the blockade of Leningrad (January 18, 1943). The Red Army advanced 600-700 km to the West in some directions and defeated five enemy armies.

On February 19, 1943, troops of Army Group South under the command of Manstein launched a counteroffensive in the southern direction, which made it possible to temporarily wrest the initiative from the hands of Soviet troops and throw them back to the east (in certain directions by 150-200 km). A relatively small number of Soviet units were surrounded (on the Voronezh front, due to the mistakes of front commander F.I. Golikov, who was removed after the battle). However, measures taken by the Soviet command already at the end of March 1943 made it possible to stop the advance of German troops and stabilize the front.

In the winter of 1943, the German 9th Army of V. Model left the Rzhev-Vyazma ledge (see Operation Buffel). Soviet troops of the Kalinin (A. M. Purkaev) and Western (V. D. Sokolovsky) fronts began pursuing the enemy. As a result, Soviet troops moved the front line away from Moscow by another 130-160 km. Soon the headquarters of the German 9th Army led the troops on the northern front of the Kursk salient.

Summer-autumn campaign 1943

The decisive events of the summer-autumn campaign of 1943 were the Battle of Kursk and the Battle of the Dnieper. The Red Army advanced 500-1300 km, and although its losses were greater than those of the enemy (in 1943, the losses of the Soviet armies in killed reached the maximum for the entire war.

On November 28 - December 1, the Tehran Conference of I. Stalin, W. Churchill and F. Roosevelt took place. The main issue of the conference was the opening of a second front.

The third period of the war was characterized by a significant quantitative growth of the German armed forces, especially in technical terms. However, the strategic initiative remained with the USSR and its allies, and German losses increased significantly.

Winter-spring campaign of 1944

Winter campaign of 1943-1944. The Red Army launched a grand offensive on the right bank of Ukraine (December 24, 1943 - April 17, 1944). This offensive included several front-line operations, such as the Zhitomir-Berdichev, Kirovograd, Korsun-Shevchenkovskaya, Lutsk-Rovno, Nikopol-Krivorozh, Proskurov-Chernivtsi, Uman-Botoshan, Bereznegovato-Snigirevsk and Odessa.

As a result of the 4-month offensive, Army Group “South” under the command of Field Marshal E. Manstein and Army Group “A”, commanded by Field Marshal E. Kleist, were defeated. Soviet troops liberated Right Bank Ukraine, the western regions, reached the state border in the south of the USSR, in the foothills of the Carpathians (during the Proskurov-Chernivtsi operation), and on March 28, having crossed the Prut River, entered Romania. Also included in the offensive on the right bank of Ukraine is the Polesie operation of the 2nd Belorussian Front, which operated north of the troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front.

The offensive was attended by troops of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th Ukrainian Fronts, the 2nd Belorussian Front, ships of the Black Sea Fleet and the Azov Military Flotilla, and a large number of partisans in the occupied territories. As a result of the offensive, the front was moved away from its original positions at the end of December 1943 to a depth of 250-450 km. The human losses of the Soviet troops are estimated at 1.1 million people, of which irrevocable ones are just over 270 thousand.

Simultaneously with the liberation of Right Bank Ukraine, the Leningrad-Novgorod operation began (January 14 - March 1, 1944). As part of this operation, the following frontal offensive operations were carried out: Krasnoselsko-Ropshinskaya, Novgorodsko-Luga, Kingiseppsko-Gdovskaya and Starorussko-Novorzhevskaya. One of the main goals was to lift the siege of Leningrad.

As a result of the offensive, Soviet troops defeated Army Group North, under the command of Field Marshal G. Küchler. Also, the almost 900-day blockade of Leningrad was lifted, almost the entire territory of the Leningrad and Novgorod regions, most of the Kalinin region was liberated, Soviet troops entered the territory of Estonia. This offensive of the Soviet troops deprived the German command of the opportunity to transfer the forces of Army Group North to Right-Bank Ukraine, where Soviet troops delivered the main blow in the winter of 1944.

The operation involved troops of the Leningrad and Volkhov fronts, part of the forces of the 2nd Baltic Front, the Baltic Fleet, long-range aviation and partisans. As a result of the Leningrad-Novgorod operation, the troops advanced 220-280 km. The losses of Soviet troops were more than 300 thousand people, of which more than 75 thousand were irrevocable.

April-May was marked by the Crimean offensive operation (April 8 - May 12). During it, 2 front-line operations were carried out: Perekop-Sevastopol and Kerch-Sevastopol; The goal of the operation is the liberation of Crimea. Soviet troops liberated Crimea and defeated the 17th German field army. The Black Sea Fleet regained its main base - Sevastopol, which significantly improved the conditions for basing and combat operations both for the fleet itself and for the Azov military flotilla (on the basis of which the Danube military flotilla was formed). The threat to the rear of the fronts liberating Right Bank Ukraine was eliminated. The losses of Soviet troops during the liberation of Crimea amounted to just under 85 thousand people, of which more than 17 thousand were irrevocable. Soviet troops liberated Crimea in just over a month, while the Germans took almost 10 months just to capture Sevastopol.