Where the Iron Crosses Grow

In a letter sent to Romanian dictator Antonescu on November 28, Hitler informed him of his intent to defend the Crimea “by all means” and to supply AOK 17 by sea. Hitler also promised to send reinforcements by sea to rebuild AOK 17 and that at some point, Heeresgruppe Süd would re-establish ground communications with the Crimea. Hitler did send reinforcements: low-quality cannon-fodder units such as II./Grenadier-Regiment 583 from France and I./Grenadier-Regiment 759, a newly raised fortress unit. Obviously, a few battalions of overage static troops was little more than a gesture, and a pathetic one at that. While it was true that AOK 6 still maintained the Kherson bridgehead on the east side of the Dnepr as a springboard for a potential counteroffensive to re-establish rail links with the Crimea, the Wehrmacht could barely maintain its current front, never mind recover lost territory. Thus, the Crimea was going to remain isolated, and AOK 17’s only realistic options were either to evacuate (and use the troops elsewhere on the Eastern Front) or hold to the death. If AOK 17 had been comprised primarily of German troops Hitler might have been more open to evacuation, but since the bulk of the combat units were Romanian, he regarded them as having negligible value if deployed elsewhere. By holding the Crimea, AOK 17 was tying up three much stronger Soviet armies, as well as two air armies and much of the Soviet naval capabilities in the Black Sea. If the Crimea was evacuated prematurely, the OKH feared that the Soviets might conduct amphibious attacks against Heeresgruppe Süd’s coastal flanks. Thus, there was a brutal military logic to Hitler’s intransigence over evacuating the Crimea, since the logistical infrastructure was available to sustain operations there for some time.

Throughout the winter, the Soviets contained to pound against the German defenses of the Crimea, particularly near Kerch. Prodded by the Stavka to break out from his Kerch lodgment, Petrov mounted an ill-planned amphibious landing behind the V Armeekorps lines at Cape Tarhan on the morning of January 10, 1944. The winter weather was predictably awful, and broke up the Azov Flotilla’s landing force. Colonel Georg Glavatsky, who had been awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union for his bravery at Balaklava in 1942, led over 1,700 troops from his 166th Guards Regiment ashore, but lacked the equipment to seriously threaten the Germans. Furthermore, the VVS-ChF failed to protect the beachhead, and German Ju-87 Stukas and Fw-190F ground-attack aircraft had a field day shooting up the Azov Flotilla and Glavatsky’s regiment. German ground troops moved in the next day and crushed the landing force, although Glavatsky and some of his troops escaped. Petrov tried to reach Glavatsky’s beachhead using a battalion of T-34 tanks that he had just received, but Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 191 was repositioned to counter this effort and knocked out 16 T-34s. On January 20 Petrov began a serious attack with his 16th Rifle Corps against the southern end of the German HKL, but Füsilier-Bataillon 98 put up fanatical resistance that held the line and inflicted heavy losses on Petrov’s assault troops. Bärenfänger’s Grenadier-Regiment 123, now just a battalion-size Kampfgruppe, also put up great resistance, which resulted in Bärenfänger being awarded the Oak Leaves to his Ritterkreuz. German losses were also quite heavy, including Bärenfänger, who was wounded for the sixth time; he was sent home to recover and received his award directly from Hitler.¹⁶

On the night of January 22/23, Petrov attempted a coup de main against Kerch, with the Azov Flotilla transporting two naval infantry battalions into the harbor. Although the Soviet naval infantrymen briefly seized part of the port, the battalions were too far apart to support each other and Allmendinger’s V Armeekorps destroyed them piecemeal. Fighting continued for several days as Petrov’s troops tried to reach the naval infantrymen in Kerch, but every effort by the 339th Rifle Division was repulsed. Two German junior officers, Hauptmann Hans Richter and Hauptmann Hans Neumayer, were each awarded the Ritterkreuz for their role in stopping this Soviet offensive. Stalin was incensed when he learned about the double failures at Cape Tarhan and Kerch; both Petrov and Vice-Admiral Lev Vladimirsk, commander of the Black Sea Fleet, were relieved of command and demoted. Instead, Stalin sent one of his favorites, General Andrei I. Eremenko, to take over the Coastal Army on February 6, while Vice-Admiral Oktyabrsky was brought back to command the Black Sea Fleet once again. Rear-Admiral Sergei Gorshkov (still the same rank after three years of constant combat experience) somehow managed to avoid serious censure, and a subordinate took most of the blame for faulty naval execution.