Siege of Odessa (1941)

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c38,000 Soviet personnel were awarded the medal for the defence of Odessa from 22nd December 1942.

Siege of Odessa

Part of The Eastern Front of World War II

A Soviet gun crew during the siege.

Date	8 August 1941 to 16 October 1941
Location	Odessa region, USSR
Result	Romanian and German victory, city occupied after a siege lasting 73 days

Belligerents

Romania

Germany

Soviet Union

Commanders

Nicolae Ciupercă

Erich von Manstein

Sofronov

Strength

340,223 men

initially 34,500 men
240 artillery pieces

Casualties and losses

92,545 men (17,729 dead, 63,345 wounded and 11,471 missing)

41,268 men (16,578 dead and missing and 24,690 wounded)

v • d • e

Eastern Front

Barbarossa – Baltic Sea – Black Sea – Finland – Leningrad and Baltics – Crimea and Caucasus – Moscow – 1st Rzhev-Vyazma – 2nd Kharkov – Blue – Stalingrad – Velikiye Luki – 2nd Rzhev-Sychevka – Kursk – 2nd Smolensk – Dnieper – 2nd Kiev – Battle of Narva – Korsun – Hube's Pocket – Baltic – Bagration – Lvov-Sandomierz – Lublin-Brest – Balkans (Iassy-Kishinev) – Budapest – Vistula-Oder – East Prussia – East Pomerania – Silesia – Vienna – Berlin – Prague

v • d • e Operation Barbarossa

Brest – Bialystok-Minsk – Raseiniai – Brody – Smolensk – Uman – 1st Kiev – Yelnya – Odessa – Leningrad – 1st Kharkov – 1st Crimea – 1st Rostov

The Siege of Odessa was part of the Soviet-German War in 1941.

The siege was primarily conducted by Romanian forces and elements of the German Army's (Wehrmacht Heer) 11th Army (11. Armee). Due to the heavy resistance of the 9th Independent Army (initially) and the rapidly formed Separate Coastal Army, which was formed from the Coastal Group of the 9th Army, ^[1]) and the Black Sea Fleet forces in Odessa, it took the Romanian army 73 days of siege and four attempts to take the city, during which they suffered 160,000 in casualties.

On 14 October 1941, most of the remaing forces of the Red Army were evacuated.

Organised resistance was left behind to terrorise German, Romanian, and Italian forces during the occupation of the city. Stalin would later refer to Odessa as the "Black Sea Tobruk".^{[citation needed]} It was the only major Soviet city which was captured by a German ally without significant German assistance.^{[citation needed]}

In April 1944, Odessa was liberated by the Red Army.