OPERATION BARBAROSSA 1941 ARMY GROUP SOUTH von RUNDSTEDT UKRAINE CRIMEA OSPREY

Description: OPERATION BARBAROSSA 1941 ARMY GROUP SOUTH von RUNDSTEDT UKRAINE CRIMEA OSPREY OPERATION BARBAROSSA 1941 ARMY GROUP SOUTH von RUNDSTEDT UKRAINE CRIMEA OSPREY CAMPAIGN #129 SOFTBOUND BOOK in ENGLISH by ROBERT KIRCHUBEL ILLUSTRATED BY HOWARD GERRARD Osprey's first title that examines the events of Operation Barbarossa -- Germany's surprise assault on the Soviet Union in June 1941, aimed at nothing less than the complete destruction of Communist Russia. This book focuses on Field Marshal von Rundstedt and Army Group South, tasked with the capture of the Ukraine and Crimea. Von Rundstedt's 46 divisions and single Panzer Group faced fierce resistance from the best equipped, trained and commanded units in the Red Army, but ultimately succeeded in destroying the Soviet 6th and 12th Armies at Uman before inflicting a further 600,000 casualties at Kiev. Here, von Rundstedt's five-month advance to Rostov is examined in detail. ---------------------------- Additional Information from Internet Encyclopedia Karl Rudolf Gerd von Rundstedt (12 December 1875 24 February 1953) was a German Generalfeldmarschall (Field Marshal) in the Heer (Army) of Nazi Germany during World War II. Born into a Prussian family with a long military tradition, von Rundstedt entered the Prussian Army in 1892. During World War I, he served mainly as a staff officer. In the interwar period, he continued his military career, reaching the rank of Colonel General (Generaloberst) before retiring in 1938. He was recalled at the beginning of World War II as commander of Army Group South in the invasion of Poland. He commanded Army Group A during the Battle of France, and requested the Halt Order during the Battle of Dunkirk. He was promoted to the rank of Field Marshal in 1940. In the invasion of the Soviet Union, he commanded Army Group South, responsible for the largest encirclement in history, the Battle of Kiev. He was relieved of command in December 1941 after authorizing the withdrawal from Rostov but was recalled in 1942 and appointed Commander-in-Chief in the West. He was dismissed after the German defeat in Normandy in July 1944 but was again recalled as Commander-in-Chief in the West in September, holding this post until his final dismissal by Adolf Hitler in March 1945. Though aware of the various plots to depose Hitler, von Rundstedt neither supported nor reported them. After the war, he was charged with war crimes, but did not face trial due to his age and poor health. He was released in 1949, and died in 1953. The attack began on 22 June. Despite ample warning from intelligence sources and defectors, Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Command were caught by surprise, and the Germans rapidly broke through the frontier defences, helped by their total command of the air.[48][49] But the Soviet commander in northern Ukraine, Colonel-General Mikhail Kirponos, was one of the better Soviet generals, and he commanded the Red Army's largest and best-equipped force: nearly a million men and 4,800 tanks.[50] The Germans soon encountered stubborn resistance. Rundstedt testified at Nuremberg: "The resistance at the frontier was not too great, but it grew continually as we advanced into the interior of the country. Very strong tank forces, tanks of a better type, far superior to ours, appeared." The Soviet tank armies were in fact stronger than the German panzer divisions, and in the T-34 they possessed a superior tank: Kleist called it "the finest tank in the world."[51][page needed] Rundstedt said after the war: "I realised soon after the attack that everything that had been written about Russia was wrong."[52] But at this stage of the war the Red Army tank commanders lacked the tactical skill and experience of the German panzer commanders, and after ten days of bitter fighting Kleist's armour broke through, reaching Zhitomir, only 130 km from Kiev, on 12 July. By 30 July the Red Army in Ukraine was in full retreat.[53] Rundstedt and his commanders were confident that they could seize Kiev "off the march," that is, without a prolonged siege. Despite these successes, the campaign did not go according to plan.[55] The front door was "kicked in", but the Red Army was not destroyed, and the Soviet state did not collapse. Once this became apparent, at the end of July, Hitler and his commanders had to decide how to proceed. Hitler ordered Army Group Centre to pause at Smolensk, while the panzer divisions were shipped to the north and the south. Although Rundstedt opposed this diversion of forces, he was its beneficiary as attention was shifted to the southern front. He also benefited from disastrous decisions made by the Soviets. On 10 July Stalin appointed his old crony Marshal Semyon Budyonny commander in the Ukraine, with orders to stop the German advance at all costs. Budyonny ordered Kirponos to push his forces forwards to Kiev and Uman, despite the danger of encirclement, rather than withdraw and make a stand on the Dnieper. Rundstedt therefore decided to break off the advance towards Kiev, and to direct Kleist's armour south-eastwards, towards Krivoy Rog. By 30 July the Germans were at Kirovograd, 130 km east of Uman, cutting off the Soviet line of retreat (which had in any case been forbidden by Stalin). Meanwhile, Schobert's 11th Army was advancing north-eastwards from Bessarabia. On 2 August the two armies met, trapping over 100,000 Soviet troops, virtually all of whom were killed or captured. Southern Ukraine was thus left virtually defenceless, and by 25 August, when they entered Dniepropetrovsk, the Germans had occupied everything west of the Dnieper (except Odessa, which held out until October). Nevertheless, this had all taken longer than expected, and the Red Army was showing no signs of collapse. Rundstedt wrote to his wife on 12 August: "How much longer? I have no great hope that it will be soon. The distances in Russia devour us. Neither the success at Uman nor what followed at Kiev would have happened had Rundstedt not backed his subordinates and resisted Hitler's interference in the conduct of the campaign. As during the French campaign, Hitler was panicked by his own success. By early July he was full of anxiety that the German armour was advancing too quickly, without infantry support, and that it was exposed to Soviet counter-attacks. On 10 July Brauchitsch arrived at Rundstedt's headquarters at Brody, with instructions from Hitler that Kleist was turn south towards Vinnitsa and link up with Schobert's army there, rather than continue south-east to Kirovograd. This would still have trapped many Soviet divisions, but it would have allowed the mass of Soviet forces at Uman and Kiev to escape. Rundstedt defended Kleist's ability to execute the larger encirclement, and persuaded Brauchitsch that he was right. Brauchitsch then contacted Halder, who succeeded in persuading Hitler to support Rundstedt. This was a sign that Rundstedt still had Hitler's respect, as were Hitler's two visits to Rundstedt's armies during this period. After Uman Budyonny's forces massed around Kiev over 700,000 men were left dangerously exposed, with Kleist's 1st Panzer Army regrouping to the south-east and General Heinz Guderian's 2nd Panzer Army (part of Army Group Centre) smashing General Yeromenko's Briansk Front and advancing south from Gomel in White Russia, on a line well east of Kiev. The danger of encirclement was obvious, but Stalin stubbornly refused to consider withdrawal, despite warnings from both Budyonny and Kirponos that catastrophe was imminent. Budyonny has been freely blamed by postwar writers for the disaster at Kiev, but it is clear that while he was out of his depth as a front commander, he warned Stalin of the danger, and was dismissed for his pains.[60] On 12 September Kleist crossed the Dnieper at Cherkasy heading north-east, and on 16 September his tanks linked up with Guderian's at Lokhvitsa, nearly 200 km east of Kiev. Although many Soviet troops were able to escape eastwards in small groups, around 600,000 men four whole armies comprising 43 divisions, nearly one-third of the Soviet Army's strength at the start of the war were killed or captured, and the great majority of those captured died in captivity.[61] Kiev fell on 19 September. Kirponos was killed in action on 20 September, shortly before resistance ceased. Rundstedt had thus presided over one of the greatest victories in the history of warfare. But this catastrophe for the Red Army resulted far more from the inflexibility of Stalin than it did from the talents of Rundstedt as a commander or the skill of the German Army. David Stahel, a recent historian of the Kiev campaign, wrote: "Germany had been handed a triumph far in excess of what its exhausted armoured forces could have achieved without Stalin's obduracy and incompetence." In fact both the German Army and the Red Army were driven more by the dictates of their respective political masters rather than by the decisions of the military professionals. Stahel sums the situation up with his chapter heading: "Subordinating the generals: the dictators dictate."[63] Kirponos could have withdrawn most of his army across the Dnieper in time had Stalin allowed him to do so, and Rundstedt himself acknowledged this.[64] Had this happened, Rundstedt's forces would have been in no state to give chase: they were exhausted after two months of ceaseless combat. Despite their successes, they had sustained high levels of casualties and even higher levels of loss of equipment, both of which were impossible to replace. By September the German Army in the Soviet Union had suffered nearly 500,000 casualties. In a statement to the Army on 15 August, Rundstedt acknowledged: "It is only natural that such great effort would result in fatigue, the combat strength of the troops has weakened and in many places there is a desire for rest." But, said Rundstedt: "We must keep pressure on the enemy for he has many more reserves than we." This was a remarkable admission so early in the Russian campaign, and it showed that Rundstedt was already well aware of how unrealistic the German belief in a quick victory had been. Dismissal Despite the triumph at Kiev, by the end of September Rundstedt was becoming concerned about the state of his command. After three months of continuous fighting, the German armies were exhausted, and the Panzer divisions were in urgent need of new equipment as a result of losses in battle and damage from the poorly-paved Ukrainian roads. As autumn set in, the weather deteriorated, making the situation worse. Rundstedt wanted to halt on the Dnieper for the winter, which would allow the German Army time to rest and be re-equipped. But the German armies could not rest, for fear the Soviet southern armies (now commanded by the stubborn Marshal Semyon Timoshenko) would regroup and consolidate a front on the Donets or the Don So, soon after the fall of Kiev, the offensive was resumed. Reichenau advanced east towards Kharkov and Kleist and Stülpnagel headed south-east towards the lower Donets. In the south 11th Army and the Romanians (commanded by Manstein following the death of Schobert) advanced along the Sea of Azov coast towards Rostov. The Soviet armies were in a poor state after the catastrophes of Uman and Kiev, and could offer only sporadic resistance, but the German advance was slowed by the autumn rains and the Soviet scorched earth policy, which denied the Germans food and fuel and forced them to rely on overstretched lines of supply. Rundstedt's armies were also weakened by the transfer of units back to Army Group Centre to take part in the attack on Moscow (Operation Typhoon).Reichenau did not take Kharkov until 24 October. Nevertheless, during October Rundstedt's forces won another great victory when Manstein and Kleist's tanks reached the Sea of Azov, trapping two Soviet Armies around Mariupol and taking over 100,000 prisoners. This victory enabled Manstein to undertake the conquest of the Crimea (apart from the fortress city of Sevastopol) against only weak opposition, while Kleist advanced towards Rostov. Despite these defeats, the Red Army was able to fall back on the Don in reasonably good order, and also to evacuate many of the industrial plants of the Donbass. On 3 November Brauchitsch visited Rundstedt's headquarters at Poltava, where Rundstedt told him that the armies must halt and dig in for the winter. But Hitler drove his commanders on, insisting on an advance to the Volga and into the North Caucasus, to seize the oilfields at Maikop. These demands put Rundstedt under severe strain. The Germans were more than 300 km from Maikop and 500 km from the Volga at Stalingrad. On the other hand, they were over 1,000 km from their starting point in eastern Poland, and even further from their supply bases in Germany. The Russian winter set in with full force in mid-November. The Germans were short of food, fuel, ammunition, vehicles, spare parts and winter clothing. Partisan activity was growing in their rear areas, threatening their supplies. Rundstedt was now 65 and not in good health he was a heavy smoker, and in October in Poltava he suffered a mild heart attack. He increasingly resorted to drink to cope with the strain.[73] He was now in the position of having to launch a new offensive against his better judgement, with exhausted troops in very adverse conditions. This was a recipe for defeat, but Rundstedt obeyed Hitler's orders. Kleist, his units reinforced by Waffen-SS General Sepp Dietrich's 1st SS Division (the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler), attacked on 17 November, and captured Rostov on the 21st. But the Soviets had had time to prepare, and launched a counter-offensive on the 25th. On the 28th Rundstedt authorised Kleist to withdraw from Rostov and establish a front on the Mius, 70 km to the west. When Hitler heard of this the next day, he ordered that Rostov should be held, although it had in fact already been evacuated. Rundstedt replied by insisting on his decision, and adding: "Should confidence in my leadership no longer exist, I beg to request someone be substituted who enjoys the necessary confidence of the Supreme Command. Hitler took Rundstedt at his word, and on 1 December he dismissed him, replacing him with Reichenau.The new commander saw at once that Rundstedt was right, and succeeded in persuading Hitler, via Halder, to authorise the withdrawal. This was the first significant defeat the German Army suffered in World War II, and Rundstedt was the first senior commander to be dismissed. Hitler, however, immediately realised that he had gone too far in arbitrarily sacking the most senior commander of the German Army. He arrived in Poltava on 3 December, where he found both Reichenau and Sepp Dietrich firm in defending the correctness of Rundstedt's actions. Sodenstern explained the full circumstances of the retreat from Rostov to Hitler, an explanation which Hitler grudgingly accepted. Hitler then met with Rundstedt and excused himself on the grounds that it had all been a misunderstanding. He suggested that Rundstedt take a period of leave, "and then once more place your incomparable services at my disposal." On 5 December, his honour restored, Rundstedt left Poltava, never to return to the Russian front. Shortly after his return to Kassel, on his 66th birthday, Rundstedt received a cheque from Hitler for 250,000 Reichsmarks. This was part of Hitler's policy of buying the continuing loyalty of his senior commanders. Many found this offensive, but none turned down these gifts. Rundstedt tried to do the next best thing by failing to cash the cheque. By February this was attracting adverse comment in Berlin, and Rundstedt then cashed it. Some writers have sought to connect Rundstedt's acceptance of this money with his continuing refusal to support the resistance movement against Hitler's regime within the German Army.[78] In fact Rundstedt refused to have anything to do with the money, handing it over to his daughter-in-law, and it was still untouched at his death in 1953. 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