WW2 - Battle for Kiev

German Capture of Kiew

In the initial attack on the Soviet Union, Panzer Group 1, under General von Kleist, had punched deep into the Western Ukraine, unhinging the Russian front at the junction of the Russian 5th and 6th Armies. Within a fortnight von Kleist had captured Berdichev, bringing the battle to the gates of Kiev and threatening an encirclement of five entire Soviet Armies.

The Rumanian attack, delayed until July 1st, provided the anvil upon which the shattered Russian Armies were increasingly pressed by the blows of von Kleist's armour. The Rumanian armies, however, were neither experienced nor particularly well equipped, and the German armies of Army Group South were comparatively disadvantaged by earlier priorities to concentrate the force of the attack in the centre of the front.

Advancing against Soviet forces nearly two million strong, and incorporating fully half the armoured and mechanised units of the Red Army, the German infantry was unable to fully exploit the advantage of surprise and confusion.

The tenuous embrace of von Kleist's armoured pincer was equally strained by furious Soviet attempts to break out to the East.

To ensure the entrapment of the Soviet Armies in the Ukraine, the destruction of which, he believed, would signal the death knell of the Red Army, Hitler halted the drive on Moscow, ordering Panzer Group 2, under General Gudarian, to strike South, across the Desna and into the path of the Russian retreat.

To Hitler the prospect of Moscow was neither as inviting nor as strategically important as the capture of Kiev, the Crimea and the rich industrial cities and coal fields of the Donets basin.

Throughout July and early August the right flank of German Army Group South moved slowly but inexorably forward from the Rumanian frontier, across the Dniester to Odessa and the River Bug.

By mid-August Odessa had been invested by Romanian forces supported by units detached from the German 11th Army. The Seige of Odessa, which was to last for nine weeks, combined with fierce Soviet resistance along the lines of the Rivers Bug and Dniester further slowed the pace of the German advance, creating a huge Soviet Salient in the Western Ukraine, and further exacerbating the danger of a German encirclement from the North.

On August 26th, General Guderian seized a bridgehead over the Desna at the junction of two Russian Fronts. For sixteen days, Guderian's panzers battered their way through desperate Soviet defences, crossing the Seim on September 7th and reaching Konotop on the 10th, unhinging these fronts and auguring disaster for the Soviet forces in the Kiev Salient.

That same day General von Kleist's Panzer Group 1 broke out of their bridgehead on the River Dnieper and began driving North, through Russian supply columns still heading into Kiev. On September 14th, Kleist's and Guderian's panzers linked up 120 miles to the east of Kiev completing the encirclement of five Russian armies and ensuring the capture of Kiev and the Western Ukraine.

Bitter fighting continued for a further fortnight. Stalin's demand that Soviet forces in the pocket fight to the death, ensured that the scale of destruction visited on Kiev and the battlefields around it was immense. Some half a million Russian soldiers are thought to have been killed in the battles for Kiev. An even greater number were taken prisoner.

Though sustaining heavy casualties the German campaign in the Ukraine had destroyed half the Red Army and secured the richest agro-industrial region of Russia for the Reich.

Driving ever Eastwards it seemed to the Wehrmacht that nothing remained to bar its path into the immense hinterlands of Asiatic Russia. But the German drive was to continue for only another few weeks. The great battles in the West and the extents of distance covered had exhausted both men and machines. The Autumn rains turned dust to mud, further hampering the German advance and distrupting already over extended lines of supply.

In October the Germans reached Kharkov, capturing the city in the face of negligible opposition. By the end of November the Russian Winter had settled across the Steppe, stabilising the front along a line stretching from the Sea of Azov in the South through Kharkov to Moscow.

In ground frozen hard as steel the German armies in the South began constructing defensive positions and preparing for a renewed offensive in the Spring.