Battle of Uman
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The Battle of Uman (July 15, 1941 – August 8, 1941) was a battle on the Eastern Front of World War II in the summer of 1941. The battle was fought in Western Ukraine between the German Army Group South commanded by General Gerd von Rundstedt and the Soviet Forces in the Southwestern Direction, Commander-in-Chief Marshal Semyon Budyonny, which included Soviet Southwestern Front commanded by Colonel General Mikhail Kirponos) and Soviet Southern Front commanded by Army General Ivan Tyulenev. This was among the great battle of encirclements that the Germans inflicted on the Soviet Armies.
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[edit] Prelude
In the initial weeks of Operation Barbarossa, Army Group South had driven rapidly east, capturing Lvov, Tarnopol and Vinnitsa, and destroying four mechanized corps that Kirponos led in a counterattack at Brody. This episode was the largest engagement of tank forces before the Battle of Kursk. The Soviet tanks outnumbered Germans, but their activities were poorly coordinated. The Soviet forces tried to cut off the advancing German columns, but they were hit both from North and South in the area of Dubno. By June 29, 1941, the German advance was temporarily halted, but the Soviet forces were exhausted and started to retreat. With the failure of the Soviet armor offensive against the German 1st Panzer Army, Army Group South drove east and reached to a few miles of Kiev and Uman by mid-July.
[edit] The Battle
On July 10, 1941, Budyonny was given the general command of the troops operating in the Southwestern direction, to coordinate the actions of Southwestern and Southern Fronts. Budyonny had 1.5 million soldiers under his command in two large concentrations at Uman and Kiev. No sooner had he taken up his command than Army Group South launched three assaults deep into Ukraine. General Ewald von Kleist’s Panzer Group 1 drove a wedge between the two Soviet concentrations south of Kiev and north of Uman, capturing Berdichev on 15 July 1941 and capturing Kazatin on July 16, 1941. General Karl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel’s Seventeenth Army advanced to the south of Uman and General Eugen Ritter von Schobert’s Eleventh Army advanced northwards from the Romanian border (Schobert was killed 11 September 1941 when his plane landed in a minefield).
STAVKA and the Southern Front's command staff mistakenly assumed that the Germans were striving to reach the crossing of the Dnieper between Kiev and Cherkassy for a further march towards Donbass and underestimated the danger of the encirclement of the 6th Army and the 12th Army. On 28 July 1941, an order was given to the Southwestern and Southern Fronts to block the Germans from the Dnieper and to retreat only in the Eastern direction. As a result, an opportunity to avoid the danger of encirclement by retreating in the Southeastern direction was lost.
On August 2, 1941, the encirclement loop was closed by the meeting of the German 1st Panzer Group and German 17th Field Army. This encirclement was reinforced the next day by a second loop formed when the German 16th Panzer Division met with the Hungarian Mechanized Corps (or Gyorshadtest). By 8 August 1941, the Soviet resistance was generally stopped. Twenty divisions from the 6th Army and the 12th Army were smashed (including 80th Rifle Division, II Formation[1], and 139th Rifle Division). Reportedly about 100,000 troops were captured. Those captured included the commanders of both the 6th Army (Soviet Union) and the 12th Army, four corps commanders, and eleven division commanders.
[edit] After the Battle
As the pocket was eliminated, the tanks turned north and drove towards Kiev where upon they encircled nearly 480,000 Soviet troops in Kiev out of which 180,000 broke out netting the Axis 300,000 prisoners of war.
[edit] See also/References
- ^ Craig Crofoot, Armies of the Bear
