Yelnya offensive
Yelnya offensive | |||||||
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Part of World War II, Battle of Smolensk | |||||||
Mass grave of Red Army soldiers buried in Yelnya | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
Germany | Soviet Union | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Fedor von Bock |
Georgy Zhukov Konstantin Rakutin | ||||||
Strength | |||||||
103,200[1] | |||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
23,000 (XX Army Corps for the period from August 8 to Sept 8)[2] |
10,701 killed or missing 21,152 wounded 31,853 overall[1] |
The Yelnya offensive (August 30 – September 8, 1941) was a military operation by the
Background
The town of
On 1 August, Stavka (Soviet High Command) authorised formation of the
The German forces initially located in the salient were the
Battle
The first phase of the operation began at the end of the first week in August; the initial attack was a failure and was called off within 48 hours. Nevertheless, the Soviet offensive operations continued up till 20 August and then resumed on August 30, in concert with operations by the Western Front and the Bryansk Front under General Andrey Yeryomenko.[2]
The intent of the 30 August offensive was to assault the bases of the salient, with the
On September 3, under the threat of an encirclement, the German forces started retreating from the salient while maintaining resistance on the flanks. After a week of heavy combat, Hitler permitted Army Group Center's commander Fedor von Bock to evacuate the Yelnya bridgehead; on September 6 Yelnya was retaken by the Red Army. The Soviet offensive continued through September 8, when it was halted at the new German defense line. Although Soviet sources claimed that the German forces were destroyed in the salient, most of them were able to retreat. Nonetheless, the fighting in August and September had caused the XX Army Corps 23,000 casualties and the 4th Army was not able to recover from them for the rest of the year.[2]
Aftermath
British war correspondent Alexander Werth described his visit to the Yelnya area in the aftermath of its recapture in his 1964 book Russia at War 1941–1945. The town of the 15,000 inhabitants had been completely destroyed, and nearly all able bodied men and women had been formed into forced labor battalions and driven to the German rear. Only a few hundred old people and children were allowed to stay in the town. The witnesses described to Werth how, on the night before the Wehrmacht pulled out of the town, they had been locked into the church and observed German soldiers looting houses and systematically setting each on fire. They were freed by the advancing Red Army.[7] Werth described the countryside of the "Yelnya salient" (territory that had been held by the Wehrmacht) as "completely devastated", with "every village and every town destroyed, and the few surviving civilians living in cellars and dugouts".[8]
The Wehrmacht losses included 23,000 casualties of the XX Army Corps for the period from 8 August to 8 September.
In German and Soviet propaganda
The Yelnya offensive was the first substantial reverse that the
Officially it was called a "planned withdrawal" (...). But to me it was so much bullshit. The next day, we heard on the radio, in the 'news from the front' [the Wehrmachtbericht] about the "successful front correction" in our Yelnya defensive lines and the enormous losses we inflicted on the enemy. But no single word was heard about a retreat, about the hopelessness of the situation, about the mental and emotional numbness of the German soldiers. In short, it was again a "victory". But we on the front line were running back like rabbits in front of the fox. This metamorphosis of the truth from "all shit" to "it was a victory" baffled me, and those of my comrades who dared to think.[11]
For its part,
Here was not only, as it were, the first victory of the Red Army over the Germans; here was also the first piece of territory —perhaps only 100 to 150 square miles [260 to 390 km2]— in the whole of Europe reconquered from Hitler's Wehrmacht. It is strange to think that in 1941 even that was considered an achievement.[12]
Creation of the Guards
The Yelnya offensive is associated with the creation of the elite
Citations
- ^ a b Glantz & House 1995, p. 293.
- ^ a b c d Glantz & House 2015, p. 90.
- ^ Glantz & House 2015, p. 72.
- ^ Glantz & House 2015, p. 87.
- ^ Glantz & House 2015, pp. 89–90.
- ^ a b c Khoroshilov & Bazhenov 1974.
- ^ Werth 1964, p. 196.
- ^ Werth 1964, p. 190.
- ^ Glantz 2010.
- ^ Glantz & House 2015, p. 91.
- ^ a b Stahel 2009, pp. 412–413.
- ^ a b Werth 1964, p. 189–190.
References
- Glantz, David M.; House, Jonathan (1995). When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas. ISBN 0-7006-0899-0.
- ISBN 9780700621217.
- Glantz, David (2010). "The Soviet-German War, 1941-1945: Myths and Realities". United States Army War College. Archivedfrom the original on 2021-12-13.
- Khoroshilov, G. (Col.); Bazhenov, A. (Maj.) (1974). "Yelnya Offensive Operation of 1941 (Russian: Полковник Г. Хорошилов, майор А. Баженов, Ельнинская наступательная операция 1941 года, Военно-исторический журнал" № 9, 1974 г)". Military Historical Journal (9).
- ISBN 978-0-521-76847-4.
- OCLC 613727310.