Where the Iron Crosses Grow

The fact that the Romanian Army had also bled considerably for Sevastopol – suffering a total of 8,454 casualties, including 1,874 dead or missing during Störfang – received considerably less attention from the German propaganda machine, which sought to portray the victory at Sevastopol as primarily a German triumph. The Romanian troops were afforded less opportunity to enjoy the fruits of victory. Instead, they were assigned to hunt down any of Petrov’s troops who had escaped through the ring around Sevastopol before it fell in an effort to reach the partisans in the mountains, or to guard the long coastlines. German officers turned a blind eye to the post-battle drunkenness and looting of their own soldiers, but loudly complained if Romanian troops were caught doing the same. Sevastopol itself was a burning, smashed ruin when the Axis entered the city, with gas mains shattered, no electricity, and rubble preventing vehicles from driving down streets. It would take a tremendous clean-up effort to restore even minimal functions to the city.

On the Soviet side, the entire Maritime Army had been destroyed, with seven rifle divisions and six naval infantry units lost. Altogether, German sources indicate that they captured 97,000 Soviet prisoners, of which about one-third were wounded, which would suggest that about 18,000 Soviet soldiers and sailors died in the final battle for Sevastopol. What exactly happened to these prisoners is not exactly clear, but the survival rate for Soviet prisoners captured in 1941–42 was very low. Data from AOK 11 records for July indicate that 36,000 prisoners were transported to Dnepropetrovsk, 76,000 remained in AOK 11’s POW cages (likely including some left over from Trappenjagd), and 5,000 were Hilfswilliger, who volunteered to serve as laborers to repair infrastructure in the Crimea.⁹⁰ Many of the Hiwis were Ukrainians or Caucasian troops, who had little loyalty for the Soviet regime. However, it appears that many Soviet prisoners such as commissars and other designated enemies of the Reich were turned over to the SD for summary execution, and their bodies buried in the antitank ditches on Mekenzievy Mountain or in the numerous bomb craters scarring the local landscape.

The loss of the Crimea was a bitter blow for Stalin, who had believed reports that Sevastopol was impregnable. Coming so soon after the stunning defeat at Kerch, he was dumbfounded that Manstein’s AOK 11 had captured the entire region so quickly. In Stalin’s mind, this kind of defeat could be explained only by criminal negligence, treachery, or both, but recriminations could wait. Foremost in his mind was the necessity of concealing from the Soviet people the fact that Sevastopol’s troops and civilians had been abandoned by their military and party leadership – that could hurt morale – so that the truth would be carefully whitewashed from history for many decades to come. Instead, Stalin mandated that revenge was the order of the day and that the liberation of the Crimea would be a priority when the Soviet counteroffensive began. Despite losing his enire army, Petrov was given command of the survivors of the 44th Army that had escaped from Kerch in May, and he was instructed to prepare the defenses of the northern Caucasus. Oktyabrtsky remained as commander of the Black Sea Fleet, although his star was much diminished, while Gorshkov’s was beginning to rise.

Altogether the conquest of the Crimea from the attack at Perekop to the fall of Sevastopol cost AOK 11 over 96,000 casualties, including 21,600 dead or missing. When the Romanian Army’s 19,000 casualties are added in, it is clear that the Axis suffered at least 115,000 casualties in the Crimea in 1941–42. However, a far more important cost to the Axis cause was the loss of valuable time and resources poured into securing what amounted to a secondary objective. The diversion of so much Luftwaffe and artillery firepower to reduce Sevastopol was a luxury that the Wehrmacht in Russia could ill afford. Soviet losses in the Crimea in 1941–42 were catastrophic: five armies destroyed and with overall casualties aproaching 500,000. Even worse, the Soviets failed to achieve any of their operational-level objectives in the Crimea in 1941–42, and that theater proved to be a bottomless pit for resources. Nevertheless, the Soviet Union could better afford the manpower and resources wasted in pursuit of holding the Crimea than the Third Reich could afford the cost of seizing it. The German conquest of the Crimea would prove to be both expensive and, ultimately, empty.

CHAPTER 7 The German Occupation of the Crimea, 1942–44

“The Crimea should be freed from all foreigners and inhabited by Germans.”

Adolf Hitler, July 19, 1941