Where the Iron Crosses Grow

9. Flak-Division

SOVIETS

4th Ukrainian Front (General Fyodor I. Tolbukhin)

2nd Guards Army (General-Lieutenant Georgy F. Zakharov)

• 13th Guards Rifle Corps (General-Major Porfirii G. Chanchibadze)

— 3rd, 49th, and 87th Guards Rifle Divisions

— 1,452nd Self-Propelled Artillery Regiment

— 512th Tank Battalion (Flamethrower)

• 54th Rifle Corps

— 126th Rifle Division

• 55th Rifle Corps

— 387th Rifle Division

• 26th Artillery Division (General-Major Nikolai V. Gaponov)

51st Army (General-Lieutenant Iakov G. Kreizer)

• 1st Guards Rifle Corps (General-Lieutenant Ivan I. Missan)

— 33rd Guards Rifle Division

— 91st and 346th Rifle Divisions

— 32nd Guards Tank Brigade

• 10th Rifle Corps

— 216th, 257th, and 279th Rifle Divisions

63rd Rifle Corps (General-Major Peter K. Koshevoi)

— 263rd, 267th, and 417th Rifle Divisions

— 22nd Guards Tank Regiment

19th Tank Corps (General-Lieutenant Ivan D. Vasil’ev)

• 6th Guards Tank Brigade

• 79th, 101st, and 202nd Tank Brigades

8th Air Army

• 7th Ground Attack Aviation Corps (General-Major Vasiliy Filin)

Coastal Army (General Andrei Eremenko)

• 11th Guards Rifle Corps (General-Major Serafim E. Rozhdestvensky)

— 2nd and 32nd Guards Rifle Divisions

— 414th Rifle Division

— 83rd Naval Infantry Brigade

— 85th Tank Regiment

• 3rd Mountain Rifle Corps

— 128th Guards Mountain Rifle Division

— 242nd Mountain Rifle Division, 318th Rifle Division

— 63rd Tank Brigade

• 16th Rifle Corps (General-Major Konstantin I. Provalov)

— 339th and 383rd Rifle Divisions

— 255th Naval Infantry Brigade

— 244th Tank Regiment

• Army Reserves:

— 89th and 227th Rifle Divisions

— 257th Tank Regiment

VVS-ChF

• 4th Air Army

Plates

“The Bolsheviks will be driven off and never return!” proclaims a propaganda poster distributed by 11. Armee in the Crimea. This poster ties in with Manstein’s secret memorandum about annihilating the “Judaeo-Bolshevik” system and depicts the Wehrmacht acting as exterminators under the Nazi banner. (NARA)

German infantry cautiously advance into a Crimean village, 1941–42. (Nik Cornish, WH 721)

This photo was taken in 1920 from the bottom of the ditch below the Tartar Wall. At top left, the remains of barbed wire from the White trenches atop the wall are still visible. (Nik Cornish, RCW 111)

This is the point of Wrangel’s defenses on the Litovsky Peninsula along the Sivash where the Red Army took advantage of the weather to outflank the Perekop position by wading through the lower-than-usual water. Rows of barbed wire were established to bar the movement of small boats, but the fieldworks defending the obstacle were primitive and virtually unmanned. (Nik Cornish, RCW 94)

Since the time of Catherine the Great, Russian naval power in the Black Sea was based upon possession of the naval base at Sevastopol and the possession of capital ships to operate from that base. The battleship Parizhskaya Kommuna was transferred to the Black Sea in 1930 to serve as flagship for the fleet, but it subsequently proved to be ill-suited to operate in Crimean waters that were dominated by enemy air power. The Black Sea Fleet’s sole battleship and handful of cruisers did play a major role in stopping the initial German assault upon Sevastopol in November–December 1941, but afterwards sat out much of the rest of the war in obscure backwater anchorages. (Author’s collection)