Operation Little Saturn
Operation Little Saturn | |||||||
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Part of the Battle of Stalingrad during the Eastern Front | |||||||
Soviet advances during Little Saturn. | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
Germany Italy Hungary Romania | Soviet Union | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Adolf Hitler Erich von Manstein Erhard Raus Edwald von Kleist Italo Gariboldi Gusztáv Jány Petre Dumitrescu |
Operation Little Saturn was a Red Army offensive on the Eastern Front of World War II that led to battles in Don and Chir rivers region in German-occupied Soviet Union territory in 16–30 December 1942.
The success of
With subsequent operations, in January and February 1943, the Soviet armies eventually reached and took Rostov as originally planned in "Saturn". Despite these victories, the Soviets themselves became over-extended, setting up the stages for the German offensives of the Third Battle of Kharkov and the Battle of Kursk.
Background
On 17 May 1942, German Army Groups A and B launched a counteroffensive against advancing Soviet armies around the city of Kharkov, resulting in the Second Battle of Kharkov;[1] this would ultimately be expanded on 28 June into Case Blue, which aimed to capture of the Caucasus oil fields.[2] By 6 July, General Hermann Hoth's Fourth Panzer Army had taken the city of Voronezh, threatening to collapse the Red Army's resistance.[3] By early August, General Paul Ludwig Ewald von Kleist's First Panzer Army had reached the oil center of Maykop, 500 kilometres (310 mi) south of the city of Rostov,[4] which had been taken by the Fourth Panzer Army on 23 July.[5] The rapid German advance threatened to cut the Soviet Union off from its southern territories, while also threatening to cut the Lend-Lease supply through the Persian Corridor.[6] However, the offensive began to peter out, as the offensive's supply train struggled to keep up with the advance and spearhead units began to run low on fuel and manpower;[7] for example, some panzer divisions were down to 54 tanks.[8] Eventually, the German focus shifted towards Stalingrad in an attempt to cut off supply shippings on the Volga river. The fall of Stalin's namesake city would also mean a psychological boost for the Germans and, vice versa, a blow to the Soviets. However, after months of brutal fighting in which more than 90% of the city had been conquered by the Germans, the city would eventually deplete the German forces (the 6th Army and units from 4th Panzer Army) in their unsuccessful and exhausting attempt to expel the remainder of the Soviet defences. Both sides suffered enormous casualties during this battle, but, most importantly for the outcome, the Germans severely depleted their forces, made them strip their flanks ever increasingly, leaving these in the hands of overstretched and poorly equipped Italian and Romanian allies. The dangerous situation that evolved, while addressed several times by worried German generals, were ignored and, thus, had set the circumstances for the ultimate disaster for the Germans and their allies.
Operation Uranus
Operation Uranus was the codename of the
German attempt to relieve Stalingrad
Operation Winter Storm (Unternehmen Wintergewitter), undertaken between 12 and 23 December 1942, was the German 4th Panzer Army's attempt to relieve encircled Axis forces during the Battle of Stalingrad. In late November, the Red Army completed
Operation Little Saturn
Original plan: Saturn
After the defeat of the Romanian Army around Stalingrad and the successful encirclement of the German Sixth Army, Stalin started planning a counter-offensive operation nicknamed "Saturn" in order to enlarge the area controlled by the Soviet Army, with Rostov-on-Don as the ultimate objective. The Axis troops encircled in the Stalingrad pocket should have been completely destroyed in a few days, however the plan, based on an incorrect calculation by the Soviet intelligence service about the number of enemy troops actually encircled (estimated at only 80,000 men instead of the real number of over 250,000), proved impracticable and unrealistic,[9][10] due to lack of logistics and vehicles of the Red Army.[11]
Little Saturn
In the new scaled-down version of the operation, codenamed "Little Saturn", the Soviet offensive had still to attack the Axis troops on the Don and Chir rivers; after the destruction of the enemy forces, the mechanized forces would have to proceed quickly in two directions: west, to the communications center of
Operation Little Saturn was launched on 16 December. General
To the south the advance of General Gerasimenko's 28th Army threatened to encircle the 1st Panzer Army and General Trufanov's 51st Army attacked the relief column directly. On 24 December, tanks of the
Operation Little Saturn was accompanied by another counter-offensive south of the Don which prevented further German advances to the relief of the entrapped forces at Stalingrad. With the relief column under threat of encirclement, Manstein had no choice but to retreat back to Kotelnikovo on 29 December, leaving the encircled Germans at Stalingrad to their fate. Of the 250,000 soldiers encircled 90,000 survived to be taken prisoner. Only 5,000 lived to return to Germany. The limited scope of the Soviet offensive also gave Kleist time to withdraw his Army Group A]] in the direction of the Kuban, with the exception of 1st Panzer Army, which joined Army Group Don via Rostov-on-Don.
Subsequent operations
In January 1943 the Soviet armies began the Voronezh–Kharkov offensive which resulted in an advance of Soviet troops between 360 and 520 km, crashing against Axis troops. The 8th Italian Army and the 2nd Hungarian Army were almost completely destroyed. Army Group B suffered a defeat from the Soviets which now penetrated into Eastern Ukraine.
In February, the Soviet armies eventually reached and took Rostov, achieving objectives as originally planned in "Operation Saturn".
See also
- Italian participation in the Eastern Front
- ARMIR
- Romanian Armies in the Battle of Stalingrad
- Hungarian Army in Operation Little Saturn
References
- ^ Glantz (1997), p. 116
- ^ Glantz (1997), p. 117
- ^ Cooper (1978), pp. 415–416
- ^ McCarthy & Syron (2002), p. 132
- ^ Erickson (1975), p. 362
- ^ Beevor (1998), p. 84
- ^ Glantz (1997), pp. 119–120
- ^ Glantz (1997), p. 120
- ^ Erickson (1983), pp. 7–8
- ^ Beevor (1998), pp. 323–324
- ISBN 0-7146-4064-6.
- ISBN 9781781592915.
- ^ Erickson (1983), pp. 13–16
Sources
- ISBN 0-670-87095-1.
- Bell, Kelly (Fall 2006). "Struggle for Stalin's Skies". WWII History: Russian Front (Special Issue). Herndon, Virginia: Sovereign Media. 1539-5456.
- Clark, Alan (1965). Barbarossa: The Russian-German Conflict, 1941-1945. New York City, New York: William Morrow. ISBN 0-688-04268-6.
- Cooper, Matthew (1978). The German Army 1933-1945. Lanham, Maryland: Scarborough House. ISBN 0-8128-8519-8.
- Erickson, John (1983). The Road to Berlin: Stalin's War with Germany. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-07813-7.
- Erickson, John (1975). The Road to Stalingrad: Stalin's War With Germany. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-07812-9.
- Glantz, David M. (January 1996). "Soviet Military Strategy During the Second Period of War (November 1942–December 1943): A Reappraisal". The Journal of Military History. 60 (1). Society for Military History: 115–150. JSTOR 2944451.
- Glantz, David M.; ISBN 0-7006-0717-X.
- Heiber, Helmut; ISBN 1-929631-09-X.
- McCarthy, Peter; Mike Syryon (2002). Panzerkieg: The Rise and Fall of Hitler's Tank Divisions. New York City, New York: Carroll & Graf. ISBN 0-7867-1009-8.
- McTaggart, Pat (Fall 2006). "Soviet Circle of Iron". WWII History: Russian Front (Special Issue). Herndon, Virginia: Sovereign Media. 1539-5456.
- Raus, Erhard (2002). Panzers on the Eastern Front: General Erhard Raus and his Panzer Divisions in Russia 1941–1945. Mechanicsburg, PA: Military Book Club. ISBN 0-7394-2644-3.
- von Manstein, Erich (1982). ISBN 0-7603-2054-3.