Russia at war 1941-1945

For several years after the war there was a feeling that Odessa was in poor odour in Moscow and was low on the list of priorities for reconstruction.

Chapter IV CLOSE-UP III: HITLER'S CRIMEAN

CATASTROPHE

Post-war German historians hold Hitler exclusively responsible for the "senseless disaster" that the German Army suffered in the Crimea in April-May 1944, complete with their abortive "Dunkirk" at Sebastopol, perhaps the most spectacular defeat of all inflicted on the Germans since Stalingrad.

Hitler's determination to cling on to the Crimea, even though the whole Ukrainian

mainland to the north of it was now in Russian hands, had been dictated by his usual political and economic considerations, besides the sentimental rubbish about the Crimea having been "the last stronghold of the Goths" and still being potentially a wonderful playground for Kraft durch Freude. It was even said that Hitler intended to retire to the Tsar's palace of Livadia in his old age.

With Turkey beginning to lean heavily the other way since Teheran, it was essential to impress upon her that Germany was still powerful on the Black Sea; secondly, obsessed by economic considerations, Hitler was determined not to allow the Russians to use the Crimea as a springboard for massive air attacks on the Rumanian oil fields—Germany's most important source of oil. Ironically, it was exactly two days before the Russians undertook their attack on the Crimea that the Americans, operating from southern Italy, dropped their first big bombs on Ploesti—which Hitler thought he could make

invulnerable against air attacks by hanging on to the Crimea!

[Philippi and Heim, op. cit., p. 243.]

Anyway, by May 1944, the Russians were already at Odessa, not much farther away from Ploesti than Sebastopol.

The Russians recaptured the Crimea within a month. The attack began in the north on

April 11. In the course of the previous winter the troops of Tolbukhin's 4th Ukrainian Front had established a bridgehead on the south side of the Sivash, the narrow inlet between the Crimea and the mainland. It had been one of the boldest operations of its kind. After a heavy barrage against the relatively slender Rumanian positions on the south side of the Sivash, a considerable number of Russian troops got across by various means and established a bridgehead on the south side. After that hundreds of soldiers spent hours waist-deep or shoulder-deep in the icy and very salt water of the Sivash—the salt eating into every pore and causing almost unbearable pain—laying a pontoon across the inlet. Although the Russians suffered heavy losses in this double operation, the bridgehead was firmly established and fortified.

[Curiously, at the time there was no announcement in the Russian press of this

bridgehead, and later in newspaper articles and films (like The Third Blow) the establishment of the bridgehead was represented as the first part of Tolbukhin's April offensive. Perhaps it was feared that the bridgehead might yet be lost, so it was better to say nothing meantime.]

And so, on April 11, after a heavy artillery barrage, thousands of Russian troops and hundreds of tanks poured from the bridgehead into the interior of the Crimea.

Simultaneously other Russian forces attacked the German defences on the Perekop

Isthmus, but this was more in the nature of a diversion and, with the troops from the Sivash bridgehead threatening to cut off Perekop from the south, the Germans and

Rumanians hastily abandoned the elaborate twenty-mile-deep defences they had been

built on the Isthmus.

[It had been the well-guarded "gate" of the Crimean Tartars up to the 18th century, and the main fortified position of Wrangel's "Whites" in 1920. In 1941 the Isthmus was poorly fortified and manned and the Germans broke through with relative ease.]

Within two days Tolbukhin's troops overran the whole northern part of the Crimea, and captured Simferopol, its capital. Meantime Yeremenko's special Black Sea Army,

advancing from east-Crimean bridgeheads (also established during the winter) struck out west along the southern coast of the Crimea, capturing Kerch, Feodosia, Gurzuf, Yalta and Alupka, and continuing to pursue the Germans retreating to Sebastopol.

Hitler's decision to hold the Crimea was one of his most insane inspirations. According to present-day Russian sources, the Russians succeeded in achieving overwhelming

superiority there. Whereas there were 195,000 German and Rumanian troops in the

Crimea, the Russians had 470,000 and a similar superiority in tanks, guns and aircraft.

[ IVOVSS, vol. 4, p. 89.]

The Russians also had great naval superiority on the Black Sea.

About half of the German 17th Army holding the Crimea consisted of Rumanians; and