Russia at war 1941-1945

During that week in the Ukraine I was to hear—and, indeed see— a great deal of the

"Little Stalingrad" of Korsun. Since then I have read both Russian and German accounts of the operation, and whereas, by and large, the Russian and German versions of what happened at Stalingrad coincide, there are some major differences in the two versions on Korsun.

According to the official Russian History, the German troops still in the bag after a fortnight's heavy fighting, and after the failure of the Germans to break through from outside, made a final bid to break out of the encirclement on the night of February 16-17.

Despite a violent blizzard, they were heavily attacked, first by artillery and mortar fire and by "light bomber planes", and then by machine-gun fire, and Russian tanks and cavalry.

Only a small group of enemy tanks and armoured cars, carrying the generals and

senior officers, succeeded, thanks to the blizzard, in breaking out of the

encirclement in the Lisyanka area, leaving their troops to their fate. Before that, they had succeeded in evacuating 2,000 to 3,000 officers and soldiers by air. The whole operation ended in the liquidation of ten enemy divisions and one brigade.

55,000 Nazi officers and soldiers were killed or wounded, and 18,000 taken prisoner.

The enemy also lost all his equipment, all of which had a highly demoralising effect on other units of the German Army in the Ukraine.

[IVOVSS, vol. IV, p. 68.]

German writers, on the other hand, have tried to minimise the disaster. According to Manstein [Op. cit., p. 585. There is also a detailed account of this battle in

Mellenthin's Panzer Battles.] only six divisions and one brigade were encircled, totalling 54,000 men—a figure which the Russians challenge on the strength of German army

documents captured at the time. Other German historians, such as Philippi and Heim,

while (as usual) putting the whole blame on Hitler for trying to hang on to the "utterly useless" Korsun salient at all, claim that when the 50,000 encircled troops still left there attempted their desperate breakthrough on February 17, 30,000 got out, and some 20,000

"were lost", besides the entire equipment of all the divisions that had been encircled.

[The big margin between the German admission of a loss of 20,000 men and the Russian claim of 80,000 German dead, wounded or prisoners, is perhaps due to the Germans

referring only to the " final" breakthrough attempt without taking account of the extremely heavy fighting that had gone on for a fortnight for the liquidation of the "bag".

When the casualties the Germans suffered during this period are added to the 20,000 men lost on February 17, the Russian figure of 80,000 becomes much less improbable.]

What is certain is that the breakthrough of February 17—unsuccessful according to the Russians, partly successful according to the Germans—was very costly for the Germans.

In view of the conflicting post-war versions, it may be interesting to quote Major

Kampov's very dramatic eye-witness account given me at the time.

After describing how the Vatutin and Konev troops had formed their ring round the

salient on February 3, Kampov said:

"Having broken through with our tanks and guns and mobile infantry, we now had to face both ways in the 'ring'—and, for a time, this was very hard. We were shelled from both sides, and we had to attack unceasingly to widen our 'ring'—which, at first, was often only some two miles wide. Of course, we suffered very heavy losses. Even so, after six days, we had managed to widen the ring to nearly twenty miles at its narrowest point.

"At the beginning of the encirclement the area of the 'bag' was almost 240 square miles, and for a long time we had to fight not only the troops inside, but also those outside—and these amounted to no fewer than eight Panzer divisions.

[Seven, according to Philippi and Heim.]

They were under the command of General Hube. Inside the ring there were ten divisions, including a tank division, plus the Belgian SS Wallonia Brigade. Degrelle, the Belgian top Nazi, was among them but, along with several German generals, he escaped by plane.

Pity; it would have been interesting to 'interview' him. The Belgian SS were all

underworld thugs and adventurers of the worst kind.

"We had very strong forces in our 'ring' and Hube's troops did not make much progress.