Fantasque Time Line (France Fights On) - English Translation
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8915 - End of Operation Buttress
July 28th, 1943
Central Greece - The Germans of the XVIII. GAK complete the regrouping on their new defense line, on the steep bank of the river Sperchios.
In total, Operation Buttress (Contrefort for the French, Anterida for the Greeks) resulted in 1,300 killed, wounded and missing on the Allied side, 1,700 killed and wounded and 2,500 prisoners in the ranks of the Axis. Among the prisoners are a number of Italians and Greeks whose legal situation is more than uncertain.
Central Greece - The Germans of the XVIII. GAK complete the regrouping on their new defense line, on the steep bank of the river Sperchios.
In total, Operation Buttress (Contrefort for the French, Anterida for the Greeks) resulted in 1,300 killed, wounded and missing on the Allied side, 1,700 killed and wounded and 2,500 prisoners in the ranks of the Axis. Among the prisoners are a number of Italians and Greeks whose legal situation is more than uncertain.
8916 - Start of Operation Whirlwind
July 28th, 1943
Central Greece, Mount Parnassus - The Polish 2nd Army Corps (Gen. Władysław Anders) is tasked with beginning operations and unleashing "Western Whirlwind."
The soldiers of the 5th DIP ("of the Confines") of General Bolesław Bronisław-Duch set off to Nafpatkos, taking advantage of the withdrawal of the 3. Gebirgs-Division.
The British and Gurkas remain in place and then go into reserve, as does the entire British XIII Corps. It is true that General Horrocks' troops had provided the largest share of the previous operation and suffered quite heavy losses. Thus, the Highlanders of the 51st Infantry Division deplore a deficit of 35% of their strength (dead, wounded, missing), as a result of the offensive they carried out in rough terrain against less numerous forces, but well trained and relatively fresh. They were relieved by the 3rd Polish ID of Bohusk-Szusko, which took over their positions. Mazek's armoured brigade is deployed in Patras, waiting.
Central Greece, Mount Oeta massif - Further north, the Franco-Moroccans of the 3rd GTM watch Australians and New Zealanders passing by, heading towards Skamos and Lamia, while leaving Thermopylae on their right. Australians in the Aegean? After all, we had already seen that in 1916! This time, one can hope that the outcome will be more favorable.
The tanks of Robertson's 1st Australian Armoured Division open the way, Sherman and Cromwell chasing the Germans of the 4. Gebirgs Division. On their tracks, the 2nd New-Zealand Division (Major-General Freyberg) and of the 6th Division, AIF (Major-General Stevens) advance, accompanied by Churchill Mk IIIs which serve as chaperones - an unnecessary precaution, for the moment.
The Yugoslavs are in reserve. They will later provide the necessary troops to hold the front line which will not fail to lengthen once the allied forces will have left Attica. To their great frustration, the evzones of the 2nd Greek Army Corps (General Georgios Tsolakoglou) also remain on standby between Athens and Mount Parnassus. Their leader, despite a sensitivity bordering on Germanophilia, fought courageously in Epirus during the German invasion. The government of George II keeps all its confidence in him, more especially as his fiercely anti-communist opinions are both known and welcomed.
Finally, the 1st Greek AC (Lt-general Giorgios Kosmas) remains in Attica for recompletion and rest, thus keeping company with the rare French units present, which the staff chose to spare. In fact, if the Allies have a large number of front-line troops at their disposal, the constraints of supply, the terrain and the narrowness of the front line do not allow to deploy them efficiently and to take advantage of their numbers.
.........
Some distance in front of the allied forces, the troops of the LXVIII. AK continue their withdrawal or work to establish a new line of defense leaning on the lake of Agrinio to the west and beyond the river Sperchios in the east, where the mountain men of the XVIII. GAK take over.
The 11. Luftwaffen-Feld-Division and the 164. ID, which suffered heavy losses, reaches the road to Karditsa. They are soon to be reinforced by the 100. Jäger-Division (XXII.
GAK), coming from Albania.
Duly informed of these "redeployment maneuvers" by Foertsch, chief of staff of the 12. Armee, Hitler does not react significantly - to the great relief of the generals concerned, it must be said. After all, why waste the lives of good Germans to preserve the conquests of cowardly and treacherous Italians? The Hellenes are Aryans and brothers, the Führer has always known that, and their military exploits since antiquity are proof of that.
As soon as they have their land back, says Hitler, they will understand the Bolshevik peril and get rid of the Anglo-Saxons and Africans to negotiate a peace with honor with the Reich. Alexander Löhr, who commands the 12. Armee, can therefore organize his defense as he sees fit, because the Führer's attention remains focused on the Eastern Front.
Central Greece, Mount Parnassus - The Polish 2nd Army Corps (Gen. Władysław Anders) is tasked with beginning operations and unleashing "Western Whirlwind."
The soldiers of the 5th DIP ("of the Confines") of General Bolesław Bronisław-Duch set off to Nafpatkos, taking advantage of the withdrawal of the 3. Gebirgs-Division.
The British and Gurkas remain in place and then go into reserve, as does the entire British XIII Corps. It is true that General Horrocks' troops had provided the largest share of the previous operation and suffered quite heavy losses. Thus, the Highlanders of the 51st Infantry Division deplore a deficit of 35% of their strength (dead, wounded, missing), as a result of the offensive they carried out in rough terrain against less numerous forces, but well trained and relatively fresh. They were relieved by the 3rd Polish ID of Bohusk-Szusko, which took over their positions. Mazek's armoured brigade is deployed in Patras, waiting.
Central Greece, Mount Oeta massif - Further north, the Franco-Moroccans of the 3rd GTM watch Australians and New Zealanders passing by, heading towards Skamos and Lamia, while leaving Thermopylae on their right. Australians in the Aegean? After all, we had already seen that in 1916! This time, one can hope that the outcome will be more favorable.
The tanks of Robertson's 1st Australian Armoured Division open the way, Sherman and Cromwell chasing the Germans of the 4. Gebirgs Division. On their tracks, the 2nd New-Zealand Division (Major-General Freyberg) and of the 6th Division, AIF (Major-General Stevens) advance, accompanied by Churchill Mk IIIs which serve as chaperones - an unnecessary precaution, for the moment.
The Yugoslavs are in reserve. They will later provide the necessary troops to hold the front line which will not fail to lengthen once the allied forces will have left Attica. To their great frustration, the evzones of the 2nd Greek Army Corps (General Georgios Tsolakoglou) also remain on standby between Athens and Mount Parnassus. Their leader, despite a sensitivity bordering on Germanophilia, fought courageously in Epirus during the German invasion. The government of George II keeps all its confidence in him, more especially as his fiercely anti-communist opinions are both known and welcomed.
Finally, the 1st Greek AC (Lt-general Giorgios Kosmas) remains in Attica for recompletion and rest, thus keeping company with the rare French units present, which the staff chose to spare. In fact, if the Allies have a large number of front-line troops at their disposal, the constraints of supply, the terrain and the narrowness of the front line do not allow to deploy them efficiently and to take advantage of their numbers.
.........
Some distance in front of the allied forces, the troops of the LXVIII. AK continue their withdrawal or work to establish a new line of defense leaning on the lake of Agrinio to the west and beyond the river Sperchios in the east, where the mountain men of the XVIII. GAK take over.
The 11. Luftwaffen-Feld-Division and the 164. ID, which suffered heavy losses, reaches the road to Karditsa. They are soon to be reinforced by the 100. Jäger-Division (XXII.
GAK), coming from Albania.
Duly informed of these "redeployment maneuvers" by Foertsch, chief of staff of the 12. Armee, Hitler does not react significantly - to the great relief of the generals concerned, it must be said. After all, why waste the lives of good Germans to preserve the conquests of cowardly and treacherous Italians? The Hellenes are Aryans and brothers, the Führer has always known that, and their military exploits since antiquity are proof of that.
As soon as they have their land back, says Hitler, they will understand the Bolshevik peril and get rid of the Anglo-Saxons and Africans to negotiate a peace with honor with the Reich. Alexander Löhr, who commands the 12. Armee, can therefore organize his defense as he sees fit, because the Führer's attention remains focused on the Eastern Front.
8917
July 29th, 1943
Hamburg - For this last act of the Battle of Hamburg, 537 aircraft - 220 Lancasters, 164 Halifaxes, 29 Victorias, 80 Wellingtons, 44 Mosquitos - are engaged. According to the plans, the attackers are to approach the city from the north and bomb the northern and northeastern parts of the city, which had not been hit until then.
But the pathfinders (using for the marking the H2S technique) will aim 3 km east of the planned point, and several residential districts are hit hard: Wandsbek, Barmbek and parts of Uhlenhorst and Winterhude.
The fire spreads widely and the exhausted firemen cannot do much.
The defence forces shoot down 28 aircraft - 11 Halifax, 11 Lancaster, 6 Wellington.
Hamburg - For this last act of the Battle of Hamburg, 537 aircraft - 220 Lancasters, 164 Halifaxes, 29 Victorias, 80 Wellingtons, 44 Mosquitos - are engaged. According to the plans, the attackers are to approach the city from the north and bomb the northern and northeastern parts of the city, which had not been hit until then.
But the pathfinders (using for the marking the H2S technique) will aim 3 km east of the planned point, and several residential districts are hit hard: Wandsbek, Barmbek and parts of Uhlenhorst and Winterhude.
The fire spreads widely and the exhausted firemen cannot do much.
The defence forces shoot down 28 aircraft - 11 Halifax, 11 Lancaster, 6 Wellington.
8918
July 29th, 1943
Yevpatoria (Crimea) - Two MiGs on Lagadec's menu.
"A day dedicated to MiGs. I was able to make three flights of 42 minutes, 21 and 32 minutes on the MiG-9, of which the "experimental series" (I think it is the pre-series) has recently entered into service. I also had a 24 minutes flight on one of the prototypes of the MiG-11. These two aircraft are much more serious than the Yak-3 of yesterday, even if the latter was brilliant. They are accompanied by their test pilots and a young engineer, Rostislav Belyakov, who seems competent and who asked me a lot of questions about the Corsair.
The MiG-9 has a 14-cylinder star engine that looks like the Wright but uses direct injection. The power gain is at least three hundred horsepower.
The aircraft is very slim, very well designed. I could discuss with the test pilot, a guy named Golofastov, with the help of my translator. It accelerates quickly, better conserves its energy at altitude than the Yak-3 and seems to be less specialized as a stop fighter; it is very fast under 6,000 m and reaches 670 km/h at 7,000 m. It stings less well than a F6F or a Corsair, but the difference is small; the F6F could not escape in a dive and, according to what the Russian pilots say, the Fw 190 either. It climbs very well, less than 4 minutes for 5 000 m. It is just as maneuverable as the Yak-3, but probably less simple to build, and it uses more duralumin.
The armament is light (2 x 20 mm cannons).
The autonomy of the MiG-9 is a little better than that of the Yak-3, but still very low, and it is not equipped with additional tanks. It is therefore also unsuitable for escort missions, and if it is to be formidable in aerial combat, it must also be based near the front.
I was not able to test the MiG-11 thoroughly, because its pilot, a certain Yakimov, told me that the tests started only at the end of spring. This aircraft is different from the MiG-9 as well as the Yak-3; it gives its full measure above 7,000 meters. It therefore appears to be complementary to the other two. It seems more modern, with a systematic use of duralumin and radio equipment to American standards. It is also much better armed, with four 20 mm cannons."
Yevpatoria (Crimea) - Two MiGs on Lagadec's menu.
"A day dedicated to MiGs. I was able to make three flights of 42 minutes, 21 and 32 minutes on the MiG-9, of which the "experimental series" (I think it is the pre-series) has recently entered into service. I also had a 24 minutes flight on one of the prototypes of the MiG-11. These two aircraft are much more serious than the Yak-3 of yesterday, even if the latter was brilliant. They are accompanied by their test pilots and a young engineer, Rostislav Belyakov, who seems competent and who asked me a lot of questions about the Corsair.
The MiG-9 has a 14-cylinder star engine that looks like the Wright but uses direct injection. The power gain is at least three hundred horsepower.
The aircraft is very slim, very well designed. I could discuss with the test pilot, a guy named Golofastov, with the help of my translator. It accelerates quickly, better conserves its energy at altitude than the Yak-3 and seems to be less specialized as a stop fighter; it is very fast under 6,000 m and reaches 670 km/h at 7,000 m. It stings less well than a F6F or a Corsair, but the difference is small; the F6F could not escape in a dive and, according to what the Russian pilots say, the Fw 190 either. It climbs very well, less than 4 minutes for 5 000 m. It is just as maneuverable as the Yak-3, but probably less simple to build, and it uses more duralumin.
The armament is light (2 x 20 mm cannons).
The autonomy of the MiG-9 is a little better than that of the Yak-3, but still very low, and it is not equipped with additional tanks. It is therefore also unsuitable for escort missions, and if it is to be formidable in aerial combat, it must also be based near the front.
I was not able to test the MiG-11 thoroughly, because its pilot, a certain Yakimov, told me that the tests started only at the end of spring. This aircraft is different from the MiG-9 as well as the Yak-3; it gives its full measure above 7,000 meters. It therefore appears to be complementary to the other two. It seems more modern, with a systematic use of duralumin and radio equipment to American standards. It is also much better armed, with four 20 mm cannons."
8919
July 29th, 1943
Hanoi - Like every morning, many Vietnamese are waiting on the platforms of the Hàng Co train station. Day and night, the place is full of Japanese soldiers in arms. Heavy and light anti-aircraft batteries always on the alert bristle the area. The patrols had - for the moment - avoided "attacks committed by the henchmen of the Colonialists", but the flak has not prevented roads and buildings from being bombed on several occasions. The walls and broken windows are a reminder of the station's target status.
Yet the station continues to operate. But this morning, would-be travelers attempting to approach platform 2 are turned away by the soldiers. The notice boards indicate several cancellations on this track. However, the locomotive that enters the station around noon is not a hallucination. It pushes in front of it a flatcar filled with rocks, to protect itself from a possible mine. Immediately behind the coal tender come classic passenger cars, but also two armored compartments with pierced walls and two trays with anti-aircraft guns.
The passengers getting out of the crowded cars are Japanese soldiers, haversacks on their shoulders and a canvas cap with a gold star on the head. The uniform jacket is strapped by a brown leather belt with a magazine holder and by the crossed bandoliers of two saddlebags. The men line up with discipline at the call of their officers and leave the station, while another train is already announced, which will turn out to be similar to the first one.
Thus begins the 33rd Division's return to Indochina. In the following days, other trains will drop off the rest of the force in Hanoi. Meanwhile, boats carrying the division's heavy equipment arrive in Haiphong, while other ships bring to Saigon the men and equipment of the 56th Division.
Hanoi - Like every morning, many Vietnamese are waiting on the platforms of the Hàng Co train station. Day and night, the place is full of Japanese soldiers in arms. Heavy and light anti-aircraft batteries always on the alert bristle the area. The patrols had - for the moment - avoided "attacks committed by the henchmen of the Colonialists", but the flak has not prevented roads and buildings from being bombed on several occasions. The walls and broken windows are a reminder of the station's target status.
Yet the station continues to operate. But this morning, would-be travelers attempting to approach platform 2 are turned away by the soldiers. The notice boards indicate several cancellations on this track. However, the locomotive that enters the station around noon is not a hallucination. It pushes in front of it a flatcar filled with rocks, to protect itself from a possible mine. Immediately behind the coal tender come classic passenger cars, but also two armored compartments with pierced walls and two trays with anti-aircraft guns.
The passengers getting out of the crowded cars are Japanese soldiers, haversacks on their shoulders and a canvas cap with a gold star on the head. The uniform jacket is strapped by a brown leather belt with a magazine holder and by the crossed bandoliers of two saddlebags. The men line up with discipline at the call of their officers and leave the station, while another train is already announced, which will turn out to be similar to the first one.
Thus begins the 33rd Division's return to Indochina. In the following days, other trains will drop off the rest of the force in Hanoi. Meanwhile, boats carrying the division's heavy equipment arrive in Haiphong, while other ships bring to Saigon the men and equipment of the 56th Division.
8920
July 29th, 1943
New Georgia - As the offensive on Munda continues, the U.S. command concludes its reshuffle with the complete withdrawal of Major General Hester, replaced by General John R. Hodge. This decision is not disciplinary, however. The unfortunate commander of the 43rd ID is simply exhausted by the events of the last few weeks and unable to play his role. It is obvious that his living conditions and the pressure he was under from Halsey, until he was ousted from the ground command of the operation, had a bearing on his current condition. The repatriation order will mention the term "combat exhaustion", today we would probably speak of psychological exhaustion in combat.
Hester is given two months of leave at home before being appointed Commanding General of the Tank Destroyer Center at Camp Hood, Texas, on October 23rd, 1943. He was then given a series of training center commands until his retirement on February 28th, 1946, without ever returning to the front. When he left the army, he was twice awarded the Legion of Merit, the first for his actions in New Georgia, the second for his entire career. A somewhat belated recognition.
.........
"Hester is gone. On a stretcher, I was told at Griswold HQ. We were not friends, to say the least, but I can't help but have a bad taste in my mouth when I see what happened to him. To me, he has clearly been put in an impossible situation, and yet I am not in the secret of the gods! What exactly did we expect? That he would send his men to the slaughterhouse, when he shared their dangerous daily life and that he knew them personally? That he would risk everything to meet insane deadlines, for the satisfaction of the brass in their offices? He cracked, it's true.
But who wouldn't have cracked in his place? Simpsons, who is usually reserved, said "Such a shame, this eagerness to change!" I'm less of a poet, so I'll just write simply that it is ugly." (L.V. Jacques Chambon - op. cit.)
New Georgia - As the offensive on Munda continues, the U.S. command concludes its reshuffle with the complete withdrawal of Major General Hester, replaced by General John R. Hodge. This decision is not disciplinary, however. The unfortunate commander of the 43rd ID is simply exhausted by the events of the last few weeks and unable to play his role. It is obvious that his living conditions and the pressure he was under from Halsey, until he was ousted from the ground command of the operation, had a bearing on his current condition. The repatriation order will mention the term "combat exhaustion", today we would probably speak of psychological exhaustion in combat.
Hester is given two months of leave at home before being appointed Commanding General of the Tank Destroyer Center at Camp Hood, Texas, on October 23rd, 1943. He was then given a series of training center commands until his retirement on February 28th, 1946, without ever returning to the front. When he left the army, he was twice awarded the Legion of Merit, the first for his actions in New Georgia, the second for his entire career. A somewhat belated recognition.
.........
"Hester is gone. On a stretcher, I was told at Griswold HQ. We were not friends, to say the least, but I can't help but have a bad taste in my mouth when I see what happened to him. To me, he has clearly been put in an impossible situation, and yet I am not in the secret of the gods! What exactly did we expect? That he would send his men to the slaughterhouse, when he shared their dangerous daily life and that he knew them personally? That he would risk everything to meet insane deadlines, for the satisfaction of the brass in their offices? He cracked, it's true.
But who wouldn't have cracked in his place? Simpsons, who is usually reserved, said "Such a shame, this eagerness to change!" I'm less of a poet, so I'll just write simply that it is ugly." (L.V. Jacques Chambon - op. cit.)
8921
July 28th, 1943
Operation Molot
Weather - The weather over Moldova is decidedly bad today, and one would think one was back in the middle of the raspoutitsa. The Dniester is not overflowing, but its current is becoming very fast. This change of weather obviously influences the operations: the works of the engineers are made almost impossible and the planes remain on the ground.
.........
Molot North (4th Ukrainian Front) - The VVS have disappeared from the dark sky and the Soviet artillery has difficulties to adjust its fire because of bad weather and confused transmissions. The Germans take advantage of this situation to attack the Yampil peninsula with almost three regiments of the 215. ID and 225. ID, of the XXX. AK. In front of them, the frontovikis are exhausted and can hardly hope to receive reinforcements. The 81st Rifle Division is swept away, despite the desperate supporting fire of the guns of the 47th Army, whose shells fall - it must be said - a little haphazardly, because of the chaos of the communications system.
The 236th Rifle Division, which had already spent three days of uninterrupted fighting in the worst conditions, could not intervene. It has to retreat to the southeast and becomes entangled with the 271st Division, which retreats from Egoreni, pursued by the 225. ID. The chaos becomes total, as soldiers and vehicles try to cross the Dniester again, under enemy fire and despite the current. In the absence of a ferry, a T-34 tries to cross a bridge of boats - it makes a hole and sinks instantly. The political commissars are overwhelmed, inaudible - sometimes, they play with their fists to be the first to pass. On the shore, it is now panic - a structure is swept away by the current, then two. Some soldiers try to swim across - better to risk drowning than being taken prisoner by the Nazis. Very few succeed...bodies of the 236th will be found as far as Dubăsari, almost 135 kilometers downstream! And they are alas, not alone.
Finally, noting the futility of continuing, General Zhmashenko orders personally, with a heavy heart, to blow up the bridges before the Germans take them. The Germans quickly reach the river bank, which is full of corpses and wounded - they do not have time to triumph, because the Soviet artillery takes revenge by bombing the area. The Landsers withdraw. They still have almost 2,000 men to capture, trapped on the peninsula. This will be the job of the 215. ID - the 225. ID must stall to help Kohler's 282. ID to reduce the Sanatauca beachhead.
This may not be as easy as at Yampil: the 13th Guards Division has finally seized the plateau for which it had been fighting for 72 hours. The men of the 282. ID have to retreat to Japca, to avoid being in turn driven back to the river and the cliffs. On its side, the 77th Rifle Division deploys in defense facing west, in the hills near Napadova - the disaster of Yampil makes the 47th Army cautious, and Filipp Zhmachenko does not want to announce to the Stavka the loss of two bridgeheads in the same day...
This eventuality would please Philipp Kleffel - but he still asks a lot from his men, especially since the 282. ID has just spent three days fighting against half a Soviet army. It starts to show... In spite of his orders, Schnitzel's division is unable to go on the offensive in any meaningful way, and finally withdraws, hoping for reinforcements. Faced with them, the Soviets cannot reinforce themselves. The situation in Sanatauca seems to be blocked.
However, the counter-offensive orders issued by Reinhardt do not only concern the XXX. AK - the XLII. AK of von Sponeck is also asked to advance, if only to maintain some form of pressure on the Reds until the army reserve arrives.
At Rîbnița, the 46. ID of Arthur Hauffe and the 72. ID of Philipp Müller-Gebhard, taking in pincer two and a half Soviet divisions, push hard eastward and push the 104th Division and the few other elements that are able to cross. They take back the roads to Mateuti and Echimăuți. The 10th Guards Division, on the other hand, hangs on in Rezina.
Indeed, here, contrary to Yampil, the terrain favors the defense: gentle slopes, valleys, groves and houses are all traps for the German soldier, who must also face a real wall of fire erected by the Soviet artillery - where this time, the artillery can act in concentration. Night falls on a ruined village, but the 14th Army of Frolov now holds only a rectangle of 1,500 meters long by 800 meters wide ...
Finally, in Dubăsari, the 62nd Army spends the day trampling against a weakened 335. ID, which took care of the respite offered by the skies to entrench itself. Kolpakchi, informed of the failures of his neighbors, knows that his sector could become decisive for the 4th Ukrainian Front, for lack of competition. So he does not insist much today, contenting himself with bombing the fascists to cover his attempts to bring in reinforcements by building bridges.
A difficult task, even for the brave sappers of the Red Army! A half-completed structure gives way, taking a section with it. Against all odds, the unfortunate castaways will survive and run aground in Vadul lui Vodă (that is, on the wrong bank). Hiding in the enemy lines, they will later join their comrades ... to be immediately arrested by the NKVD for desertion, or even for intelligence with the enemy! The USSR often blames its soldiers for surviving - it needs martyrs even more than heroes.
At nightfall, the 62nd Army will have more or less succeeded in getting the 60th Rifle Division across the river. It can hope to take advantage of its numerical superiority tomorrow, if all goes well...
A Soviet officer for whom everything is already going very badly, it is General Fyodor Tolbukhin. He is forced to note that his forces do not advance, or even retreat. The 4th Ukrainian Front is largely blocked in front of the 11. Armee, entrenched behind the Dniestr and which eliminates one after the other the bridgeheads it tried to create west of the river.
His armored reserve is already on its way to Rîbnița - it will probably arrive there tonight.
Tolbukhin sees the moment coming when he would be ordered to hand it over to the Odessa Front, which is breaking through. In Stalin's Russia, such a failure can be very costly, even in view of past successes and despite Zhukov's protection. The leader of the Front finally decides, alone in his tent: the 47th Army is... tired, the 62nd Army is too far south - its effort must be focused on Rezina and the 14th Army will be its spearhead! From tomorrow, the tanks must start to cross the river to support it!
......
Molot South (Odessa Front) - Petrov's forces are not as disturbed by the bad weather as Tolbukhin's: they crossed the river in quite good conditions a few days before. Glagolev's 9th Army is no longer stopped - it pushes the 4th Romanian ID further and further into Bender, without giving the 2nd ID, which had just arrived as a reinforcement
the opportunity to influence the battle, let alone to entrench itself... As for the 2nd ID, it no longer exists, so to speak. Confronted with this catastrophic picture (if Bender fell, the doors of Chișinău are not far from being opened!), general Dumitrescu throws into the melee all he has: territorial, lightly wounded and especially the Armored Division of the Guard, which enters in scene to take the Soviets of flank without waiting for the arrival of the 8th ID.
Radu Gherghe's armored division courageously attacks the Hagimus plain in the worst circumstances, hoping to reverse the situation by a decisive action.
However, Panzer III and TACAM are not Leopard and Tiger - and the Romanians, who do not have the know-how of the Germans, suffer a lot against the Russians, who still have only about thirty T-34s, and many more T-50s or BT-7s (initially intended for the second line). The wood around the forest pond becomes a support point, theater of a fight of annihilation. Before the end of the day, out of the 73 vehicles available to the Romanian armored division, only 41 are operational. The Panzer IIIs pay the heaviest price, with 13 vehicles destroyed; 9 Panzer IVs and 10 TACAMs were also lost. At least General Glagolev is forced to recall his tanks from Bender, waiting for the arrival of reinforcements promised by Petrov...
A detail for the Soviet, who can content himself with his infantry to complete the capture of the city: the Romanians hold only the northern fringe, largely ruined by the fighting, and where rain and mud compete with steel and blood. The 9th Army is also largely assured of its rear and of future reinforcements to come: many tanks begin to cross from Tiraspol to Merenești and Chițcani. In the following days, Glagolev will not face alone, but reinforced with the 9th Armored Corps of Shamshin in full force!
Indeed, given the still detestable weather and the difficulties arising from the terrain, the Odessa Front prefers to neglect the road to Răscăieți, where the 6th Guards Army had already lost enough machines as it is. The armor passes in dribs and drabs, on ferries most of the time... but they pass nevertheless.
Finally, on the Soviet left, Batov's forces take advantage of the action in progress at Bender to make the 16th Guards Rifle Division pass through Copanca. The latter rejects the 18th DIM, the 7th DC (which was trying to infiltrate along the Dniester)... and it finally leads in a totally unexpected way to Talmaza, on the flank of the 6th ID of General Ianovici, who notes with concern that he is, so to speak, cut off from his left and caught in a vice between these forces and those present at Crasnoe! Realizing that his neighbors are cracking and fearing that he would be surrounded and then trapped against the river, Ianovici withdraws in a hurry from Răscăieți on a Slobozia-Viişoara line, thus leaving the banks of the Dniestr free! The Soviet forces stationed on the other side are quick to cross the river and set up a bridgehead, despite the rain and the Romanian artillery.
General Sanatescu, head of the 4th Romanian Corps, is very worried: he is now forced to order General Stavrescu's 14th ID to move westward, while the 18th Army's probes on this one and the 19th ID are intensifying. He does not hesitate to inform his contacts at the Royal Palace...
.........
"Din, flashes of light, dust that falls to the ground by the water tumbling from the sky. I am hidden in the embrasure of an empty space that used to be a window, before a shell fell on this façade. Lying beside me is a comrade whose name I have already forgotten. He made the mistake of thinking he could run past the hole.
I would probably have made the same mistake, if he had not been the first. But now it's his blood that's flowing, flooding the ground and staining my uniform. To think that he was the least worried of the group when we came down from Bulboaca. As my uncle once told me: "A battle is very different if you see it from below or from the top of the hill."
I am now alone in this place - well maybe. It's impossible to say, but that's how it seems to me. Last I heard, our platoon was scattered throughout the building, with our sergeant two floors below me. The street looks deserted, but I know that's just an impression. The Russians are beating like crazy with their cannons on the slightest nest of resistance, before storming in screaming, red flag in hand. The easiest way to survive, it is of course not to be seen - so not to shoot. Or at the last moment: I observe a scout crossing the street next door, going from rubble to rubble. His brown uniform may look a bit like ours, but it is very recognizable.
I adjust it and pull the trigger at the same time as one of my comrades - the Russian falls.
The riposte is immediate. With a clatter of steel, at the end of the street, a dark green tank with a flat turret fires a shell at the façade, shaking it to its foundations. The strike is terrifying - not only because of its noise, but also because of the silence that follows it. The Russian calmly reloads, while I put my hands on my eardrums, which have become painful. Second shot - move as fast as you can! On the stairs, I almost collide with a compatriot in an even greater hurry - a little more and we would both roll down the rickety steps." (Farewell my country... once again, Vasil Gravil, Gallimard 1957)
Operation Molot
Weather - The weather over Moldova is decidedly bad today, and one would think one was back in the middle of the raspoutitsa. The Dniester is not overflowing, but its current is becoming very fast. This change of weather obviously influences the operations: the works of the engineers are made almost impossible and the planes remain on the ground.
.........
Molot North (4th Ukrainian Front) - The VVS have disappeared from the dark sky and the Soviet artillery has difficulties to adjust its fire because of bad weather and confused transmissions. The Germans take advantage of this situation to attack the Yampil peninsula with almost three regiments of the 215. ID and 225. ID, of the XXX. AK. In front of them, the frontovikis are exhausted and can hardly hope to receive reinforcements. The 81st Rifle Division is swept away, despite the desperate supporting fire of the guns of the 47th Army, whose shells fall - it must be said - a little haphazardly, because of the chaos of the communications system.
The 236th Rifle Division, which had already spent three days of uninterrupted fighting in the worst conditions, could not intervene. It has to retreat to the southeast and becomes entangled with the 271st Division, which retreats from Egoreni, pursued by the 225. ID. The chaos becomes total, as soldiers and vehicles try to cross the Dniester again, under enemy fire and despite the current. In the absence of a ferry, a T-34 tries to cross a bridge of boats - it makes a hole and sinks instantly. The political commissars are overwhelmed, inaudible - sometimes, they play with their fists to be the first to pass. On the shore, it is now panic - a structure is swept away by the current, then two. Some soldiers try to swim across - better to risk drowning than being taken prisoner by the Nazis. Very few succeed...bodies of the 236th will be found as far as Dubăsari, almost 135 kilometers downstream! And they are alas, not alone.
Finally, noting the futility of continuing, General Zhmashenko orders personally, with a heavy heart, to blow up the bridges before the Germans take them. The Germans quickly reach the river bank, which is full of corpses and wounded - they do not have time to triumph, because the Soviet artillery takes revenge by bombing the area. The Landsers withdraw. They still have almost 2,000 men to capture, trapped on the peninsula. This will be the job of the 215. ID - the 225. ID must stall to help Kohler's 282. ID to reduce the Sanatauca beachhead.
This may not be as easy as at Yampil: the 13th Guards Division has finally seized the plateau for which it had been fighting for 72 hours. The men of the 282. ID have to retreat to Japca, to avoid being in turn driven back to the river and the cliffs. On its side, the 77th Rifle Division deploys in defense facing west, in the hills near Napadova - the disaster of Yampil makes the 47th Army cautious, and Filipp Zhmachenko does not want to announce to the Stavka the loss of two bridgeheads in the same day...
This eventuality would please Philipp Kleffel - but he still asks a lot from his men, especially since the 282. ID has just spent three days fighting against half a Soviet army. It starts to show... In spite of his orders, Schnitzel's division is unable to go on the offensive in any meaningful way, and finally withdraws, hoping for reinforcements. Faced with them, the Soviets cannot reinforce themselves. The situation in Sanatauca seems to be blocked.
However, the counter-offensive orders issued by Reinhardt do not only concern the XXX. AK - the XLII. AK of von Sponeck is also asked to advance, if only to maintain some form of pressure on the Reds until the army reserve arrives.
At Rîbnița, the 46. ID of Arthur Hauffe and the 72. ID of Philipp Müller-Gebhard, taking in pincer two and a half Soviet divisions, push hard eastward and push the 104th Division and the few other elements that are able to cross. They take back the roads to Mateuti and Echimăuți. The 10th Guards Division, on the other hand, hangs on in Rezina.
Indeed, here, contrary to Yampil, the terrain favors the defense: gentle slopes, valleys, groves and houses are all traps for the German soldier, who must also face a real wall of fire erected by the Soviet artillery - where this time, the artillery can act in concentration. Night falls on a ruined village, but the 14th Army of Frolov now holds only a rectangle of 1,500 meters long by 800 meters wide ...
Finally, in Dubăsari, the 62nd Army spends the day trampling against a weakened 335. ID, which took care of the respite offered by the skies to entrench itself. Kolpakchi, informed of the failures of his neighbors, knows that his sector could become decisive for the 4th Ukrainian Front, for lack of competition. So he does not insist much today, contenting himself with bombing the fascists to cover his attempts to bring in reinforcements by building bridges.
A difficult task, even for the brave sappers of the Red Army! A half-completed structure gives way, taking a section with it. Against all odds, the unfortunate castaways will survive and run aground in Vadul lui Vodă (that is, on the wrong bank). Hiding in the enemy lines, they will later join their comrades ... to be immediately arrested by the NKVD for desertion, or even for intelligence with the enemy! The USSR often blames its soldiers for surviving - it needs martyrs even more than heroes.
At nightfall, the 62nd Army will have more or less succeeded in getting the 60th Rifle Division across the river. It can hope to take advantage of its numerical superiority tomorrow, if all goes well...
A Soviet officer for whom everything is already going very badly, it is General Fyodor Tolbukhin. He is forced to note that his forces do not advance, or even retreat. The 4th Ukrainian Front is largely blocked in front of the 11. Armee, entrenched behind the Dniestr and which eliminates one after the other the bridgeheads it tried to create west of the river.
His armored reserve is already on its way to Rîbnița - it will probably arrive there tonight.
Tolbukhin sees the moment coming when he would be ordered to hand it over to the Odessa Front, which is breaking through. In Stalin's Russia, such a failure can be very costly, even in view of past successes and despite Zhukov's protection. The leader of the Front finally decides, alone in his tent: the 47th Army is... tired, the 62nd Army is too far south - its effort must be focused on Rezina and the 14th Army will be its spearhead! From tomorrow, the tanks must start to cross the river to support it!
......
Molot South (Odessa Front) - Petrov's forces are not as disturbed by the bad weather as Tolbukhin's: they crossed the river in quite good conditions a few days before. Glagolev's 9th Army is no longer stopped - it pushes the 4th Romanian ID further and further into Bender, without giving the 2nd ID, which had just arrived as a reinforcement
the opportunity to influence the battle, let alone to entrench itself... As for the 2nd ID, it no longer exists, so to speak. Confronted with this catastrophic picture (if Bender fell, the doors of Chișinău are not far from being opened!), general Dumitrescu throws into the melee all he has: territorial, lightly wounded and especially the Armored Division of the Guard, which enters in scene to take the Soviets of flank without waiting for the arrival of the 8th ID.
Radu Gherghe's armored division courageously attacks the Hagimus plain in the worst circumstances, hoping to reverse the situation by a decisive action.
However, Panzer III and TACAM are not Leopard and Tiger - and the Romanians, who do not have the know-how of the Germans, suffer a lot against the Russians, who still have only about thirty T-34s, and many more T-50s or BT-7s (initially intended for the second line). The wood around the forest pond becomes a support point, theater of a fight of annihilation. Before the end of the day, out of the 73 vehicles available to the Romanian armored division, only 41 are operational. The Panzer IIIs pay the heaviest price, with 13 vehicles destroyed; 9 Panzer IVs and 10 TACAMs were also lost. At least General Glagolev is forced to recall his tanks from Bender, waiting for the arrival of reinforcements promised by Petrov...
A detail for the Soviet, who can content himself with his infantry to complete the capture of the city: the Romanians hold only the northern fringe, largely ruined by the fighting, and where rain and mud compete with steel and blood. The 9th Army is also largely assured of its rear and of future reinforcements to come: many tanks begin to cross from Tiraspol to Merenești and Chițcani. In the following days, Glagolev will not face alone, but reinforced with the 9th Armored Corps of Shamshin in full force!
Indeed, given the still detestable weather and the difficulties arising from the terrain, the Odessa Front prefers to neglect the road to Răscăieți, where the 6th Guards Army had already lost enough machines as it is. The armor passes in dribs and drabs, on ferries most of the time... but they pass nevertheless.
Finally, on the Soviet left, Batov's forces take advantage of the action in progress at Bender to make the 16th Guards Rifle Division pass through Copanca. The latter rejects the 18th DIM, the 7th DC (which was trying to infiltrate along the Dniester)... and it finally leads in a totally unexpected way to Talmaza, on the flank of the 6th ID of General Ianovici, who notes with concern that he is, so to speak, cut off from his left and caught in a vice between these forces and those present at Crasnoe! Realizing that his neighbors are cracking and fearing that he would be surrounded and then trapped against the river, Ianovici withdraws in a hurry from Răscăieți on a Slobozia-Viişoara line, thus leaving the banks of the Dniestr free! The Soviet forces stationed on the other side are quick to cross the river and set up a bridgehead, despite the rain and the Romanian artillery.
General Sanatescu, head of the 4th Romanian Corps, is very worried: he is now forced to order General Stavrescu's 14th ID to move westward, while the 18th Army's probes on this one and the 19th ID are intensifying. He does not hesitate to inform his contacts at the Royal Palace...
.........
"Din, flashes of light, dust that falls to the ground by the water tumbling from the sky. I am hidden in the embrasure of an empty space that used to be a window, before a shell fell on this façade. Lying beside me is a comrade whose name I have already forgotten. He made the mistake of thinking he could run past the hole.
I would probably have made the same mistake, if he had not been the first. But now it's his blood that's flowing, flooding the ground and staining my uniform. To think that he was the least worried of the group when we came down from Bulboaca. As my uncle once told me: "A battle is very different if you see it from below or from the top of the hill."
I am now alone in this place - well maybe. It's impossible to say, but that's how it seems to me. Last I heard, our platoon was scattered throughout the building, with our sergeant two floors below me. The street looks deserted, but I know that's just an impression. The Russians are beating like crazy with their cannons on the slightest nest of resistance, before storming in screaming, red flag in hand. The easiest way to survive, it is of course not to be seen - so not to shoot. Or at the last moment: I observe a scout crossing the street next door, going from rubble to rubble. His brown uniform may look a bit like ours, but it is very recognizable.
I adjust it and pull the trigger at the same time as one of my comrades - the Russian falls.
The riposte is immediate. With a clatter of steel, at the end of the street, a dark green tank with a flat turret fires a shell at the façade, shaking it to its foundations. The strike is terrifying - not only because of its noise, but also because of the silence that follows it. The Russian calmly reloads, while I put my hands on my eardrums, which have become painful. Second shot - move as fast as you can! On the stairs, I almost collide with a compatriot in an even greater hurry - a little more and we would both roll down the rickety steps." (Farewell my country... once again, Vasil Gravil, Gallimard 1957)
8922
July 28th, 1943
Romanian 3rd Army HQ, Cimișlia, Moldova - In the middle of a night that is far too cool and damp for the season, General Petre Dumitrescu has a most heated discussion with Bucharest and more particularly with the Conducator. After having given an account of the "mixed" results of the engagement of the Armored Division of the Guard this afternoon, he proposes to withdraw on a Bender-Căușeni-Olanesti axis, while asking Germany and the Motherland to bring up the reinforcements necessary for the execution of a counter-offensive in due form.
Antonescu agrees with the principle, but demands that the 3rd Army continue its counter-attacks to eliminate, or at least reduce, the Copanca pocket, which continues to swell like a balloon in the rain and threatening to explode at any moment. The Conducator knows it: the Reich will only help him when it is assured that the 11. Armee is safe and this help will be far from free. His troops must therefore stand alone, for the time being: "Your units must defend their positions at all costs! There is no salvation in retreat - once on the plain, the Reds will catch up with you, cut you like a slice of meat and wipe you out!"
It is Dumitrescu's turn to agree - he finds himself stuck, as he feared, in a defense without second line. The survival of the 3rd Romanian Army is thus suspended on the performances of the 11. Armee, and especially to the will of the Germans. "We might as well say that it's not looking good..." an officer on his staff discreetly chuckles. Especially since, from where he is, Reinhardt sees absolutely no reason to call on his Army Group!
Romanian 3rd Army HQ, Cimișlia, Moldova - In the middle of a night that is far too cool and damp for the season, General Petre Dumitrescu has a most heated discussion with Bucharest and more particularly with the Conducator. After having given an account of the "mixed" results of the engagement of the Armored Division of the Guard this afternoon, he proposes to withdraw on a Bender-Căușeni-Olanesti axis, while asking Germany and the Motherland to bring up the reinforcements necessary for the execution of a counter-offensive in due form.
Antonescu agrees with the principle, but demands that the 3rd Army continue its counter-attacks to eliminate, or at least reduce, the Copanca pocket, which continues to swell like a balloon in the rain and threatening to explode at any moment. The Conducator knows it: the Reich will only help him when it is assured that the 11. Armee is safe and this help will be far from free. His troops must therefore stand alone, for the time being: "Your units must defend their positions at all costs! There is no salvation in retreat - once on the plain, the Reds will catch up with you, cut you like a slice of meat and wipe you out!"
It is Dumitrescu's turn to agree - he finds himself stuck, as he feared, in a defense without second line. The survival of the 3rd Romanian Army is thus suspended on the performances of the 11. Armee, and especially to the will of the Germans. "We might as well say that it's not looking good..." an officer on his staff discreetly chuckles. Especially since, from where he is, Reinhardt sees absolutely no reason to call on his Army Group!
8923
July 29th, 1943
Latvia - The situation is calming down on the banks of the Dvina, while after already ten days of battles, the fighters have exhausted their strength and ammunition. The main actions are carried out by the 1st Army, which is still trying to get closer to the Riga railway station to disrupt the enemy's position. It does not succeed.
In Kegums, the 4th Army recaptures Silzemnieki - a town that the 21. ID had evacuated because it could not hold its lines sufficiently well to avoid enemy infiltration. The woods of the sector are still the scene of obscure clashes, often in hand-to-hand combat - but less numerous than the day before. Major Schmidt's StuGs provide most of the support for the German infantry - the 22. Panzer is given permission to withdraw to Zvirgzde for reorganization and a solid recomposition, accompanied by a 1. Luftwaffen-Feld-Division which is well exhausted.
In Koknese, the situation of the 42nd Army does not change - its soldiers hold their positions, at the cost of daily losses and an expenditure of shells that the defense of some Latvian villages does not justify. For General Popov, the question of the evacuation of this bridgehead is now being raised - in hushed tones, because for the time being, the offensive is still not officially halted.
It is therefore with great satisfaction that he receives a message from Moscow in the middle of the night: "Favourable development of the situation in Ukraine - Suspend offensive movements and secure the gains obtained while awaiting new instructions - Authorization to adjust the front to avoid unnecessary losses." The leader of the 1st Baltic Front was just asking for it!
Latvia - The situation is calming down on the banks of the Dvina, while after already ten days of battles, the fighters have exhausted their strength and ammunition. The main actions are carried out by the 1st Army, which is still trying to get closer to the Riga railway station to disrupt the enemy's position. It does not succeed.
In Kegums, the 4th Army recaptures Silzemnieki - a town that the 21. ID had evacuated because it could not hold its lines sufficiently well to avoid enemy infiltration. The woods of the sector are still the scene of obscure clashes, often in hand-to-hand combat - but less numerous than the day before. Major Schmidt's StuGs provide most of the support for the German infantry - the 22. Panzer is given permission to withdraw to Zvirgzde for reorganization and a solid recomposition, accompanied by a 1. Luftwaffen-Feld-Division which is well exhausted.
In Koknese, the situation of the 42nd Army does not change - its soldiers hold their positions, at the cost of daily losses and an expenditure of shells that the defense of some Latvian villages does not justify. For General Popov, the question of the evacuation of this bridgehead is now being raised - in hushed tones, because for the time being, the offensive is still not officially halted.
It is therefore with great satisfaction that he receives a message from Moscow in the middle of the night: "Favourable development of the situation in Ukraine - Suspend offensive movements and secure the gains obtained while awaiting new instructions - Authorization to adjust the front to avoid unnecessary losses." The leader of the 1st Baltic Front was just asking for it!
8924
July 29th, 1943
Operation Zitadelle
Sector of the 3. PanzerArmee - From his rather ordinary studies, Model keeps some memories of Greek myths. The myth of Tantalus did not interest him much, but now it comes back to him, because he seems to be in the position of this fallen and hungry Greek. Victory - HIS victory - is there, within reach, and yet, each time he puts his hand forward to pick it,it refuses him, fleeing further and further east. And Tantalus did not have to fight against hordes of Slavs superior in number and capable of losing a hundred chariots a day without appearing to suffer.
In the air, LuftFlotte IV gathers some means, restored some planes, but these are clearly too few. If the German Experten increase their score, they do not prevent the 3rd Air Force from reigning as the undisputed master above the battlefield. Having perceived for two days the weakness of the Luftwaffe, Novikov orders the PVO to engage all its aircraft in support of the 3rd Ukrainian Front: no need to protect Kiev and the Ukrainian urban centers against German bombing raids that will not come anymore. In one go, Vatutin benefits from several hundred additional aircraft. These are less efficient than their comrades of the tactical aviation, but they compensate for their lack of know-how by their number, their enthusiasm and their sheer presence. Criss-crossing the skies from dawn to dusk, the VVS and PVO strafe and bombard convoys, light vehicles and armored vehicles, without any other opposition than that of an overwhelmed Flak and a few dozen Bf 109s drowned out by the numbers. The planes with the red star multiply the grains of sand in the German war machine.
One of the biggest of these grains of sand spoils the assault of the 81. ID on Ivankov: spotted by a Pe-2 in transit, the leading elements of Schopper are immediately reported to Krasovsky and Vatutin. Caught cold by a dive-bombing regiment, the Landsers are then targeted by two dozens of Ilyushin Il-2 and their Yak-9 escort.
Deprived of Flak, the trucks and half-tracks have no chance against the machine guns and bombs of the attackers. "A real massacre!" judges Krasovsky - who had seen others - by examining the films taken by the attackers.
Gathering the survivors, Schopper orders the retreat while in Ivankov, a detachment of infantry mounted on a few BT-7 tanks and BA-32 self-propelled gunships launches to the currying.
The disappointment of the 81. ID is not even avenged on the Narodichi side. Convinced by Trofimenko, Vatutin requested during the night a massive air support to protect this point of resistance that visibly bothers the Germans. Skeptical at first, Stalin let himself be convinced by his advisors: anything that can prevent Hitler from claiming victory is welcome for propaganda purposes, not to mention that the experience will provide valuable data on the possibility of assisting an encircled garrison by air. All day long, the fire support missions follow one another to keep the besiegers at a distance and prevent them from eliminating the survivors of the 57th Army. At the same time, Il-4 bombers and some Li-2 transport planes proceed to more or less successful drops of ammunition and foodstuffs over the city. The sending of gliders, at first considered, was rejected by Novikov, the VVS cruelly lacking experience in the field and the potential landing zones being very small. In Narodichi, Gagen recovers in the case a new radio to communicate with the back, arrived with a technician sufficiently mad to have parachuted with.
But during the day, the attention of the Stavka is mainly focused elsewhere. Because Narodichi is small compared to what happens in front of Malin.
The best part of the 3. PanzerArmee is trying to wrest the heart of the 3rd Ukrainian Front.
Panzers and Panzergrenadiers against Armored Corps and cavalry, Landsers against Frontoviki, Experten against Stalin's Falcons. Kryuchenkin and Pliev have now recovered all their reinforcements and deployed them on the front. On the Soviet side, the queen of the battlefield is indeed artillery, and in particular the batteries of multiple rocket launchers that tirelessly plow the German concentration zones and the approaches to the front lines.
Despite the Katyusha, the 5th Army loses Lumyla after having lost Dubrova and Baranovka, but after a fight where, for the first time in a long time, the Russian defender lost fewer men than the German attacker.
In the armored confrontation, we see T-34s attacking Panzer IVs with flamethrowers or T-50s clumsy with guns charging Marder IIIs to ram them. "It was no longer the fair fight of the Aryans against the Slavic subhuman. It was no longer the struggle of National Socialism against the debasing Bolshevism.
No, all our struggles, all our values, all our humanity had disappeared to make way for a generalized butchery. There was nothing human anymore, there were only wild beasts tearing each other apart in an orgy of unbridled violence. Blood, tears and screams. How did it come to this?" (An anonymous German officer quoted in Citadel: the defeat of german Army Group Nord-Ukraine, by Paul Carrell, Schiffer Publishing, 1993).
At night, the 3. PanzerArmee painfully reaches a Olizarovka-Rutvyanka-Lumlya-Shcherbatovka-Nyanevka [Olyzarivka-Rutvyanka-Lumyla-Shcherbativka-Nyanivka] line. Its
closest points of Malin are only eight kilometers away. Eight kilometers! A breath, nothing, some turns of wheel or caterpillar... Five miles too far.
.........
Sector of the 6. Armee - The situation maps and a night visit on the field have convinced Maslennikov on the solidity of his flank. Although he was initially pushed around, his men recovered well and contained the German advance. Several conversations with the troops also confirm an assessment that had been maturing in him for several days: the enemy is out of breath and no longer has the means to advance against any serious resistance. And he no longer has any armor, with the exception of the last self-propelled guns of the 210. StuG Abt. But even if the 11th Armored Corps could not be heavily engaged. Vassilyevsky and Vatutin make it clear to the head of the 4th Shock that missions in support of the infantry are still possible, if they remain purely local. And his army still has some armoured means of its own: by mixing cannibalization of wrecks, deliveries that escaped the absolute priority given to the armored corps, and D system, it can count on some 40 T-34s and 60 T-50s. A real fortune in these times of shortage!
It remains to be decided what to do next. Attacking Korosten, in the north, is very tempting - a Guderian would have undoubtedly disobeyed to enrich his hunting list. But Maslennikov is a Soviet officer, and what's more, he has passed through the NKVD. He has to think bigger... and cover himself. The information transmitted by Vatutin gives him the key to the problem: the 302. ID is certainly the most fragile unit of the sector, the most threatened of destruction - an unacceptable risk for Paulus, who will be forced to come to its aid. By covering well its right against any offensive return of the 56. ID (by the very visible threat of an imminent attack of Alexeiev's tanks), the 4th Shock will be able to inflict a hard correction to the 302. ID and to attract to it reinforcements of the 6. Armee, while wearing out, if not eliminating the battalion of StuG. "To put it simply, we attack their weak point. As soon as the 302. ID is destroyed, we will move forward to the west. That should be enough to panic the Fascists, Comrade!" he explains to his army commissar.
From the beginning of the morning, Elfeldt sees the consequences of this decision. Hammered by the Soviet artillery, the first lines of his division give way to the first assault, while the Sturmgeschutz are muzzled by the air force. The 4th Shock takes everything in its path to Guta Moshkovka [Moshkivka] and to the woods located further north. Broken, the 302. ID scatters to the four winds, leaving a gap in the German front bordered to the south by the 210. StuG Abt and the 9. ID, in the north by the 79. and 56. ID. Instructed by the experience, Maslennikov orders in the stride to secure the two flanks of the attack to avoid any bad surprise.
The success of the 4th Shock is increased by that of the 37th Army. After Leznik, it resumes marching on Paromovka [Poromivka] and threatens Volodarsk and Ryzhiny, where the 294. ID could not really hold out. It is the entire left wing of the 6. Armee that bends under the weight of the two Soviet armies that came back from the wilderness. And on the southern side, nothing is going well either.
.........
Battle of Zhitomir - Mahlmann (147. ID) and Usinger (223. ID) are now in great danger of being expelled from the city. Attempts to drive the Soviets back across the Kemenka fail in the face of regular mortar salvos covering the bridgeheads of the riflemen. Using truck tire tubes or boats, or simply by swimming, other soldiers regularly cross the river to reinforce these positions. To make matters worse, Petlyakov Pe-2s start to attack again on the west of Zhitomir. Chernyakovsky told the airmen that they could now bomb without fear of a fratricidal strike.
Taking note of the foreseeable debacle, Mahlmann requests from Paulus the authorization to evacuate Zhitomir. With the advance of Vlassov and the growing weight of the enemy armored corps further north, it becomes necessary to reconstitute a solid defensive line, even if it means losing ground! The answer is negative. The leader of the 6th Army is caught between two fires. He knows that his troops are unable to take the city. But he cannot accept another failure, let alone propose a retreat to Kluge, not to mention the fact that retreating under pressure could lead to another disaster... and that, after all, the 223. ID depends on Manstein! Unable to decide between Charybdis and Scylla, Paulus lets himself more and more to drift according to the events, to the great despair of his staff.
Outside of Zhitomir, things are going from bad to worse for the right wing of the 6. Armee.
Beaten for the third time in three days, the 332. ID becomes the weak link of the XXIX. AK.
Pushing its advantage, the 5th Shock Army recaptures Vygoda [Vyhoda], reaching the Novgorod-Volynski railroad. From there, detachments leave to take Dubovets (in the west) and Vilsk (in the north). For its part, the 17th Armored Corps splits its resources into two groups, the first one dissuading Gollnick's Panzergrenadiers from approaching the 5th Shock too closely, the second one reaching and retaking Novopol [Novopil], where the 147. ID was on July 15th. Meticulously, Chernyakovsky and Leliushenko enlarge the tear opened by the Red Army north of Zhitomir, creating a possible starting zone for future offensives.
In the immediate future, Kluge thinks in the short term: such a Soviet breakthrough can only allow one thing: a future encirclement of German units in Zhitomir, a prospect already feared several times. But what to do? We can not propose to the Führer to evacuate an important city "where the German soldier has set foot"!
.........
Sector of the 8. Armee - Weiß, dismayed, is well aware of the impasse in which he finds himself. Re-launching the attack on Andrushovka would not work any more than it had in the previous two days. Facing the 26th Army supported by three cavalry divisions, his XXVII. AK simply does not have the means to break the Soviet defenses. Surrounding the area with Balck's tanks (11. Panzer) is not possible, nor is a new frontal assault.
The breach of Kashperovka having been closed by the 4th Guards, it is impossible to pass through there. And it is difficult to think calmly while the initiative is again passed to the Red Army!
The 26th Army and Dovator's horsemen hold the north and northeast, representing a strong salient around Berdichev. In the east, the 4th Guards is surrounded by the two armored corps of Katukov and Chanchibadze, corrected several times but still valid.
Finally, further south, the 5th Guards is dispersed and fragmented. Remezov's army has no form and does not really hold a precise zone, so much it was jostled, crumbled and demolished by the German armor. We should rather speak of several divisional groups distributed between Kazatin and Kalinovka, themselves often fragmented into smaller elements. On the map, the vision of such a group gives white hair to many officers of the Stavka, but neither Zhukov nor Rokossovsky hold it against Remezov. His army has largely contributed to slow down Hausser and Kempf - and it is still fighting.
Blocked by Dovator and Skvirsky, Weiss finally proposes to Manstein to break in the 11. Panzer to the north in order to assault the left flank of the 1st Shock Army. Disengaging his own force would give time for the LIX. ArmeeKorps to further contain Vlassov's army.
But the leader of the 8. Armee is strongly opposed to it: we need Balck's panzers here, not in the north! To prove him right, the Soviet armored corps goes back to the attack in support of the cavalry and the 4th Guards, the 26th Army remaining in retreat around Andrushovka.
Aiming at two objectives at the same time - Chervonnoye and Kazatin - the Soviet effort is too dissociated to allow an effective push, but justifies the resolute commitment of the 11. PanzerDivision and the LAH. Noting this failure, Rokossovsky decides to return for the next day to the principle of a single assault on a single point. The target will be Chervonnoye - the 132. ID will thus bear the full weight of the means engaged.
During this time, refusing to wait for the sunrise to avoid for at least a few hours, Hausser starts his night columns in the direction of Skvira. A first jump of three kilometers brings his two SS divisions to the edge of a small river, along which elements of infantry and artillery are providing a first line of defense. Brutally awakened by the din of the tanks' engines, the surprised defenders are quickly eliminated and the river crossed. From there, the Totenkopf continues north to cut the road to Berdichev before approaching Skvira from the west. For its part, the Das Reich sends elements to secure Domanovka [Domantivka], a little to the east, where the second road to Skvira passes, this time from the south.
Hausser intends to get as close as possible to the city before launching the assault, in order to leave as little timeas possible for the garrison to organize its defense. But on the way, Krüger's men have to blow up the Domanovka stopper, which takes much longer and makes much more noise than expected. The alarm is given in Skvira and the first calls are made on the air. Expecting a lot from the day, Manstein convinced the Luftwaffe to cut back on the maintenance time of its machines to offer him some support missions. Attacking just before the arrival of the MiG and Yakovlev called to the rescue, assault planes and bombers destroy several artillery positions and set fire to the city's outskirts, while the Tiger and the biggest assault guns approach, crushing manholes and poorly protected trenches in the process. Quickly, the Das Reich penetrates the suburb of Sloboda, while the Totenkopf defeats the anti-tank guns deployed to the west. As they did not have time to fortify properly the quarters they occupied, the men of the 10th NKVD Division face the enemy in the open, or almost, trying to lure the Germans between the buildings in order to take them on in contact. Refusing to lose tanks on mines or hit at close range by anti-tank guns, Eicke and Krüger give strict instructions: in a city, shoot first, then send in the infantry to eliminate the survivors and only lastly to advance the tanks. The method proves to be effective and considerably reduces losses, especially since the Soviet air force did not strike as hard as in the previous days. To spare his own troops? Hausser asks himself. No, it is not his habit. The answer comes at the end of the afternoon: the VVS are there, but to protect a ground force that is running to the sound of the cannon. The Volkov Group.
On the southern flank of "Zitadelle", isolated and almost left to itself, Kempf's III. PanzerKorps defends itself as best it can against the 3rd and 13th Soviet Armies, abandoning
the southern bank of the Southern Bug to withdraw on the northern bank. Kalinovka becomes more and more untenable, despite the arrival of reinforcements of the 5. Luftwaffen-Feld-Division. It will soon be necessary to consider its evacuation, but Manstein refuses to accept this solution. Kempf has to hold on until Kiev is within rifle range!
.........
Operation Koliushka - Occupying Nemirov, abandoned by Korpsabteilung B, the 10th Army still suffered losses, Weidling having ordered to mine everything that could be mined. Unwilling to die a senseless death in a booby-trapped building, Golikov hastens to leave the place to the good care of the engineers (and of the prisoners of war who will go to the most dangerous places) to supervise the pursuit of the Germans. They retreat to Strelchintsy [Stril'chyntsi], about ten kilometers further west, to get closer to the 94. ID and especially the 16th Hungarian ID. Multiplying the obstacles and traps, they delay the Soviets who are not in a hurry to advance, especially in front of the multiple temptations that appear on the road: empty villages, abandoned vehicles, old unguarded depots.
The 2nd Shock Army occupies Rakhny Lesovvye and expands its bridgehead north to Uyarinsty and to the northwest towards Guya Bushinestakya [Huta Bushyns'ka], pushing back the survivors of the 257. ID to the west... from where the 202. StuG Abt comes. Informed with delay by aerial reconnaissance, Galitsky wisely decides to dig in the city and
to call for air support. General Konrad (who commands the XLIX. ArmeeKorps) demands an immediate assault, despite the protests of the officers of both units. Trying to take cover behind the StuG III, themselves targeted by all the guns and howitzers that the riflemen were able to put in battery (including German pieces turned over), the Landsers of the 257. ID are pinned down on their starting positions. The arrival of the Soviet planes increases the confusion and inflicts additional losses, forcing the self-propelled guns to withdraw under the shouts of the soldiers of the 2nd Shock. Taking advantage of the situation, Galitsky orders two armored regiments to prepare to rush into the breach. About sixty T-50 and T-34 can easily create chaos in the enemy's rear, and even, who knows, give ideas to Bagramyan.
At Lukin's, the prospect of finishing off the 19th Hungarian ID arouses as much enthusiasm as that of taking Chargorod, fifteen kilometers away. The final defense in front of the objective is a forest of five kilometers by two, crossed by a single road passing through the village of Rolya. The Hungarians urgently built firing positions there and, above all, they set their last guns on the forest cover in order to use the woods against the attackers. Like its neighbor, the 16th Army first seeks to seize as much ground as possible, taking Dolzhok [Dovzhok] to the north and Pisarevka [Pysarvika] to the west. In a second stage, it launches its forces into the forest. The first wave, although cautious, undergoes an intense fire, particularly deadly because of the shards of trees shattered by the enemy guns and thrown in all directions. In retaliation, Ilyushin Il-4 drop incendiary bombs to chase away the occupants of the wood and hinder the artillery fire while the infantry goes around the forest on both sides. The desperate resistance of the defenders of Chargorod prevents the riflemen from finishing the job before nightfall, but Lukin is now certain of one crucial point: the Hungarians have no reserves at immediate disposal.
Operation Zitadelle
Sector of the 3. PanzerArmee - From his rather ordinary studies, Model keeps some memories of Greek myths. The myth of Tantalus did not interest him much, but now it comes back to him, because he seems to be in the position of this fallen and hungry Greek. Victory - HIS victory - is there, within reach, and yet, each time he puts his hand forward to pick it,it refuses him, fleeing further and further east. And Tantalus did not have to fight against hordes of Slavs superior in number and capable of losing a hundred chariots a day without appearing to suffer.
In the air, LuftFlotte IV gathers some means, restored some planes, but these are clearly too few. If the German Experten increase their score, they do not prevent the 3rd Air Force from reigning as the undisputed master above the battlefield. Having perceived for two days the weakness of the Luftwaffe, Novikov orders the PVO to engage all its aircraft in support of the 3rd Ukrainian Front: no need to protect Kiev and the Ukrainian urban centers against German bombing raids that will not come anymore. In one go, Vatutin benefits from several hundred additional aircraft. These are less efficient than their comrades of the tactical aviation, but they compensate for their lack of know-how by their number, their enthusiasm and their sheer presence. Criss-crossing the skies from dawn to dusk, the VVS and PVO strafe and bombard convoys, light vehicles and armored vehicles, without any other opposition than that of an overwhelmed Flak and a few dozen Bf 109s drowned out by the numbers. The planes with the red star multiply the grains of sand in the German war machine.
One of the biggest of these grains of sand spoils the assault of the 81. ID on Ivankov: spotted by a Pe-2 in transit, the leading elements of Schopper are immediately reported to Krasovsky and Vatutin. Caught cold by a dive-bombing regiment, the Landsers are then targeted by two dozens of Ilyushin Il-2 and their Yak-9 escort.
Deprived of Flak, the trucks and half-tracks have no chance against the machine guns and bombs of the attackers. "A real massacre!" judges Krasovsky - who had seen others - by examining the films taken by the attackers.
Gathering the survivors, Schopper orders the retreat while in Ivankov, a detachment of infantry mounted on a few BT-7 tanks and BA-32 self-propelled gunships launches to the currying.
The disappointment of the 81. ID is not even avenged on the Narodichi side. Convinced by Trofimenko, Vatutin requested during the night a massive air support to protect this point of resistance that visibly bothers the Germans. Skeptical at first, Stalin let himself be convinced by his advisors: anything that can prevent Hitler from claiming victory is welcome for propaganda purposes, not to mention that the experience will provide valuable data on the possibility of assisting an encircled garrison by air. All day long, the fire support missions follow one another to keep the besiegers at a distance and prevent them from eliminating the survivors of the 57th Army. At the same time, Il-4 bombers and some Li-2 transport planes proceed to more or less successful drops of ammunition and foodstuffs over the city. The sending of gliders, at first considered, was rejected by Novikov, the VVS cruelly lacking experience in the field and the potential landing zones being very small. In Narodichi, Gagen recovers in the case a new radio to communicate with the back, arrived with a technician sufficiently mad to have parachuted with.
But during the day, the attention of the Stavka is mainly focused elsewhere. Because Narodichi is small compared to what happens in front of Malin.
The best part of the 3. PanzerArmee is trying to wrest the heart of the 3rd Ukrainian Front.
Panzers and Panzergrenadiers against Armored Corps and cavalry, Landsers against Frontoviki, Experten against Stalin's Falcons. Kryuchenkin and Pliev have now recovered all their reinforcements and deployed them on the front. On the Soviet side, the queen of the battlefield is indeed artillery, and in particular the batteries of multiple rocket launchers that tirelessly plow the German concentration zones and the approaches to the front lines.
Despite the Katyusha, the 5th Army loses Lumyla after having lost Dubrova and Baranovka, but after a fight where, for the first time in a long time, the Russian defender lost fewer men than the German attacker.
In the armored confrontation, we see T-34s attacking Panzer IVs with flamethrowers or T-50s clumsy with guns charging Marder IIIs to ram them. "It was no longer the fair fight of the Aryans against the Slavic subhuman. It was no longer the struggle of National Socialism against the debasing Bolshevism.
No, all our struggles, all our values, all our humanity had disappeared to make way for a generalized butchery. There was nothing human anymore, there were only wild beasts tearing each other apart in an orgy of unbridled violence. Blood, tears and screams. How did it come to this?" (An anonymous German officer quoted in Citadel: the defeat of german Army Group Nord-Ukraine, by Paul Carrell, Schiffer Publishing, 1993).
At night, the 3. PanzerArmee painfully reaches a Olizarovka-Rutvyanka-Lumlya-Shcherbatovka-Nyanevka [Olyzarivka-Rutvyanka-Lumyla-Shcherbativka-Nyanivka] line. Its
closest points of Malin are only eight kilometers away. Eight kilometers! A breath, nothing, some turns of wheel or caterpillar... Five miles too far.
.........
Sector of the 6. Armee - The situation maps and a night visit on the field have convinced Maslennikov on the solidity of his flank. Although he was initially pushed around, his men recovered well and contained the German advance. Several conversations with the troops also confirm an assessment that had been maturing in him for several days: the enemy is out of breath and no longer has the means to advance against any serious resistance. And he no longer has any armor, with the exception of the last self-propelled guns of the 210. StuG Abt. But even if the 11th Armored Corps could not be heavily engaged. Vassilyevsky and Vatutin make it clear to the head of the 4th Shock that missions in support of the infantry are still possible, if they remain purely local. And his army still has some armoured means of its own: by mixing cannibalization of wrecks, deliveries that escaped the absolute priority given to the armored corps, and D system, it can count on some 40 T-34s and 60 T-50s. A real fortune in these times of shortage!
It remains to be decided what to do next. Attacking Korosten, in the north, is very tempting - a Guderian would have undoubtedly disobeyed to enrich his hunting list. But Maslennikov is a Soviet officer, and what's more, he has passed through the NKVD. He has to think bigger... and cover himself. The information transmitted by Vatutin gives him the key to the problem: the 302. ID is certainly the most fragile unit of the sector, the most threatened of destruction - an unacceptable risk for Paulus, who will be forced to come to its aid. By covering well its right against any offensive return of the 56. ID (by the very visible threat of an imminent attack of Alexeiev's tanks), the 4th Shock will be able to inflict a hard correction to the 302. ID and to attract to it reinforcements of the 6. Armee, while wearing out, if not eliminating the battalion of StuG. "To put it simply, we attack their weak point. As soon as the 302. ID is destroyed, we will move forward to the west. That should be enough to panic the Fascists, Comrade!" he explains to his army commissar.
From the beginning of the morning, Elfeldt sees the consequences of this decision. Hammered by the Soviet artillery, the first lines of his division give way to the first assault, while the Sturmgeschutz are muzzled by the air force. The 4th Shock takes everything in its path to Guta Moshkovka [Moshkivka] and to the woods located further north. Broken, the 302. ID scatters to the four winds, leaving a gap in the German front bordered to the south by the 210. StuG Abt and the 9. ID, in the north by the 79. and 56. ID. Instructed by the experience, Maslennikov orders in the stride to secure the two flanks of the attack to avoid any bad surprise.
The success of the 4th Shock is increased by that of the 37th Army. After Leznik, it resumes marching on Paromovka [Poromivka] and threatens Volodarsk and Ryzhiny, where the 294. ID could not really hold out. It is the entire left wing of the 6. Armee that bends under the weight of the two Soviet armies that came back from the wilderness. And on the southern side, nothing is going well either.
.........
Battle of Zhitomir - Mahlmann (147. ID) and Usinger (223. ID) are now in great danger of being expelled from the city. Attempts to drive the Soviets back across the Kemenka fail in the face of regular mortar salvos covering the bridgeheads of the riflemen. Using truck tire tubes or boats, or simply by swimming, other soldiers regularly cross the river to reinforce these positions. To make matters worse, Petlyakov Pe-2s start to attack again on the west of Zhitomir. Chernyakovsky told the airmen that they could now bomb without fear of a fratricidal strike.
Taking note of the foreseeable debacle, Mahlmann requests from Paulus the authorization to evacuate Zhitomir. With the advance of Vlassov and the growing weight of the enemy armored corps further north, it becomes necessary to reconstitute a solid defensive line, even if it means losing ground! The answer is negative. The leader of the 6th Army is caught between two fires. He knows that his troops are unable to take the city. But he cannot accept another failure, let alone propose a retreat to Kluge, not to mention the fact that retreating under pressure could lead to another disaster... and that, after all, the 223. ID depends on Manstein! Unable to decide between Charybdis and Scylla, Paulus lets himself more and more to drift according to the events, to the great despair of his staff.
Outside of Zhitomir, things are going from bad to worse for the right wing of the 6. Armee.
Beaten for the third time in three days, the 332. ID becomes the weak link of the XXIX. AK.
Pushing its advantage, the 5th Shock Army recaptures Vygoda [Vyhoda], reaching the Novgorod-Volynski railroad. From there, detachments leave to take Dubovets (in the west) and Vilsk (in the north). For its part, the 17th Armored Corps splits its resources into two groups, the first one dissuading Gollnick's Panzergrenadiers from approaching the 5th Shock too closely, the second one reaching and retaking Novopol [Novopil], where the 147. ID was on July 15th. Meticulously, Chernyakovsky and Leliushenko enlarge the tear opened by the Red Army north of Zhitomir, creating a possible starting zone for future offensives.
In the immediate future, Kluge thinks in the short term: such a Soviet breakthrough can only allow one thing: a future encirclement of German units in Zhitomir, a prospect already feared several times. But what to do? We can not propose to the Führer to evacuate an important city "where the German soldier has set foot"!
.........
Sector of the 8. Armee - Weiß, dismayed, is well aware of the impasse in which he finds himself. Re-launching the attack on Andrushovka would not work any more than it had in the previous two days. Facing the 26th Army supported by three cavalry divisions, his XXVII. AK simply does not have the means to break the Soviet defenses. Surrounding the area with Balck's tanks (11. Panzer) is not possible, nor is a new frontal assault.
The breach of Kashperovka having been closed by the 4th Guards, it is impossible to pass through there. And it is difficult to think calmly while the initiative is again passed to the Red Army!
The 26th Army and Dovator's horsemen hold the north and northeast, representing a strong salient around Berdichev. In the east, the 4th Guards is surrounded by the two armored corps of Katukov and Chanchibadze, corrected several times but still valid.
Finally, further south, the 5th Guards is dispersed and fragmented. Remezov's army has no form and does not really hold a precise zone, so much it was jostled, crumbled and demolished by the German armor. We should rather speak of several divisional groups distributed between Kazatin and Kalinovka, themselves often fragmented into smaller elements. On the map, the vision of such a group gives white hair to many officers of the Stavka, but neither Zhukov nor Rokossovsky hold it against Remezov. His army has largely contributed to slow down Hausser and Kempf - and it is still fighting.
Blocked by Dovator and Skvirsky, Weiss finally proposes to Manstein to break in the 11. Panzer to the north in order to assault the left flank of the 1st Shock Army. Disengaging his own force would give time for the LIX. ArmeeKorps to further contain Vlassov's army.
But the leader of the 8. Armee is strongly opposed to it: we need Balck's panzers here, not in the north! To prove him right, the Soviet armored corps goes back to the attack in support of the cavalry and the 4th Guards, the 26th Army remaining in retreat around Andrushovka.
Aiming at two objectives at the same time - Chervonnoye and Kazatin - the Soviet effort is too dissociated to allow an effective push, but justifies the resolute commitment of the 11. PanzerDivision and the LAH. Noting this failure, Rokossovsky decides to return for the next day to the principle of a single assault on a single point. The target will be Chervonnoye - the 132. ID will thus bear the full weight of the means engaged.
During this time, refusing to wait for the sunrise to avoid for at least a few hours, Hausser starts his night columns in the direction of Skvira. A first jump of three kilometers brings his two SS divisions to the edge of a small river, along which elements of infantry and artillery are providing a first line of defense. Brutally awakened by the din of the tanks' engines, the surprised defenders are quickly eliminated and the river crossed. From there, the Totenkopf continues north to cut the road to Berdichev before approaching Skvira from the west. For its part, the Das Reich sends elements to secure Domanovka [Domantivka], a little to the east, where the second road to Skvira passes, this time from the south.
Hausser intends to get as close as possible to the city before launching the assault, in order to leave as little timeas possible for the garrison to organize its defense. But on the way, Krüger's men have to blow up the Domanovka stopper, which takes much longer and makes much more noise than expected. The alarm is given in Skvira and the first calls are made on the air. Expecting a lot from the day, Manstein convinced the Luftwaffe to cut back on the maintenance time of its machines to offer him some support missions. Attacking just before the arrival of the MiG and Yakovlev called to the rescue, assault planes and bombers destroy several artillery positions and set fire to the city's outskirts, while the Tiger and the biggest assault guns approach, crushing manholes and poorly protected trenches in the process. Quickly, the Das Reich penetrates the suburb of Sloboda, while the Totenkopf defeats the anti-tank guns deployed to the west. As they did not have time to fortify properly the quarters they occupied, the men of the 10th NKVD Division face the enemy in the open, or almost, trying to lure the Germans between the buildings in order to take them on in contact. Refusing to lose tanks on mines or hit at close range by anti-tank guns, Eicke and Krüger give strict instructions: in a city, shoot first, then send in the infantry to eliminate the survivors and only lastly to advance the tanks. The method proves to be effective and considerably reduces losses, especially since the Soviet air force did not strike as hard as in the previous days. To spare his own troops? Hausser asks himself. No, it is not his habit. The answer comes at the end of the afternoon: the VVS are there, but to protect a ground force that is running to the sound of the cannon. The Volkov Group.
On the southern flank of "Zitadelle", isolated and almost left to itself, Kempf's III. PanzerKorps defends itself as best it can against the 3rd and 13th Soviet Armies, abandoning
the southern bank of the Southern Bug to withdraw on the northern bank. Kalinovka becomes more and more untenable, despite the arrival of reinforcements of the 5. Luftwaffen-Feld-Division. It will soon be necessary to consider its evacuation, but Manstein refuses to accept this solution. Kempf has to hold on until Kiev is within rifle range!
.........
Operation Koliushka - Occupying Nemirov, abandoned by Korpsabteilung B, the 10th Army still suffered losses, Weidling having ordered to mine everything that could be mined. Unwilling to die a senseless death in a booby-trapped building, Golikov hastens to leave the place to the good care of the engineers (and of the prisoners of war who will go to the most dangerous places) to supervise the pursuit of the Germans. They retreat to Strelchintsy [Stril'chyntsi], about ten kilometers further west, to get closer to the 94. ID and especially the 16th Hungarian ID. Multiplying the obstacles and traps, they delay the Soviets who are not in a hurry to advance, especially in front of the multiple temptations that appear on the road: empty villages, abandoned vehicles, old unguarded depots.
The 2nd Shock Army occupies Rakhny Lesovvye and expands its bridgehead north to Uyarinsty and to the northwest towards Guya Bushinestakya [Huta Bushyns'ka], pushing back the survivors of the 257. ID to the west... from where the 202. StuG Abt comes. Informed with delay by aerial reconnaissance, Galitsky wisely decides to dig in the city and
to call for air support. General Konrad (who commands the XLIX. ArmeeKorps) demands an immediate assault, despite the protests of the officers of both units. Trying to take cover behind the StuG III, themselves targeted by all the guns and howitzers that the riflemen were able to put in battery (including German pieces turned over), the Landsers of the 257. ID are pinned down on their starting positions. The arrival of the Soviet planes increases the confusion and inflicts additional losses, forcing the self-propelled guns to withdraw under the shouts of the soldiers of the 2nd Shock. Taking advantage of the situation, Galitsky orders two armored regiments to prepare to rush into the breach. About sixty T-50 and T-34 can easily create chaos in the enemy's rear, and even, who knows, give ideas to Bagramyan.
At Lukin's, the prospect of finishing off the 19th Hungarian ID arouses as much enthusiasm as that of taking Chargorod, fifteen kilometers away. The final defense in front of the objective is a forest of five kilometers by two, crossed by a single road passing through the village of Rolya. The Hungarians urgently built firing positions there and, above all, they set their last guns on the forest cover in order to use the woods against the attackers. Like its neighbor, the 16th Army first seeks to seize as much ground as possible, taking Dolzhok [Dovzhok] to the north and Pisarevka [Pysarvika] to the west. In a second stage, it launches its forces into the forest. The first wave, although cautious, undergoes an intense fire, particularly deadly because of the shards of trees shattered by the enemy guns and thrown in all directions. In retaliation, Ilyushin Il-4 drop incendiary bombs to chase away the occupants of the wood and hinder the artillery fire while the infantry goes around the forest on both sides. The desperate resistance of the defenders of Chargorod prevents the riflemen from finishing the job before nightfall, but Lukin is now certain of one crucial point: the Hungarians have no reserves at immediate disposal.
8925
July 29th, 1943
Operation Molot
Weather - It rains - once again - heavily in the theater of operations for a good part of the day The Soviet air force cannot intervene,but the Red Army also has an advantage: the Germans (and in particular their tanks) are also bogged down and the Communist forces continue to cross the Dniester, disregarding all the risks.
.........
Molot North (4th Ukrainian Front) - The situation in the Yampil area is stabilized - the Russian troops have been driven out of the peninsula and are now retreating to the other side of the river, regrouping or even reforming. The 47th Army lost 43 medium tanks, about sixty light tanks and the equivalent of three divisions ... it is notable, even for the Red Army and in this war. From the point of view of the Propaganda Staffel, frustrated by the triumphs expected during the Zitadelle operation and which are slow to materialize, it is even a Great Victory.
Its war correspondents are already there - they have not been slow to fall on the battlefield like vultures, staging the glorious soldiers of the 215. ID busy with the latecomers, interrogating haggard prisoners, photographing the mountains of bodies piled up in front of the Nazi machine guns. Signal will even make its cover on Yampil: "Disaster on the Dniestr for the Bolsheviks!" - but the magazine will be careful not to speak of a triumph for the Axis, the situation having somewhat changed between the writing of its report and its actual publication... This will not prevent it however, from complacently describing "the Bolshevik wave, broken on the steel wall of the Wehrmacht and swept by the waters of the river, [which] descends towards the sea to sink into the abyss it should never have left."
It is for the Soviets a real setback, of course, but finally quite minor in the conflict. Nevertheless, it will be so well publicized by the Reich that it will eventually attract the attention of Churchill himself. Legend has it that Mr. First simply commented: "Now Marshal Stalin will not be able to quibble with me about my past failures... As beautiful as strategies are, one must sometimes consider their results." The comparison between the Dniester and the Dardanelles is a bit daring - especially since, on the spot, the fighting continues.
Thus, in Sanatauca, the 47th Army continues to strengthen. It has just crossed the 143rd Rifle Division across the river - and its commander, General Zhmachenko, is now using its artillery to support its last bridgehead. Facing a 282. ID, which is just beginning to be reinforced by a regiment of the 225. ID on its left, the Soviets can play a relative numerical superiority, doubled by a superiority of real firepower. With method, the frontovikis thus begin to nibble away at the German perimeter in the rain. In the evening, the three Russian divisions clear Japca and hold a rectangle of 5 by 10 kilometers, towards which the pontoon-boats try to pass all the remaining armoured vehicles in their formation...
However, the main action today is by no means on the side of XXX. AK. On the area held by the XLII. AK and especially towards Rîbnița, the intensity of the fighting is increasing hour by hour. General Tolbukhin plays his card: to strengthen the 14th Army, which is still fighting with tenacity but difficulty in the ruins of Rezina, the Soviets make use of their artillery to the maximum, adding the self-propelled guns of the two reserve armored corps. The opposite bank is crushed under the shells... And even if some of them hit the Soviets, most of them hit the men of the 46. ID and 72. ID. Moreover, vigorously pushed by his superior, General Frolov does not hesitate to throw his 122nd Division on the strike. It is added to the equivalent of two divisions already on site, with the mission to clear a beach that would finally allow the tanks to pass.
The Soviet soldiers are openly sent to the scrap heap - or almost. Against all odds, they succeed in securing a good part of the shore north of Rezina, and even in taking the village of Ciorna. On the other side, the 46. ID starts to run out of steam. This spectacular, frightening and magnificent action will inspire many historical or romantic works, in the USSR and elsewhere, from the end of 1943 to the present day.
Consequently, at nightfall, the 2nd Armored Corps prepares to cross without worrying about losses.
.........
"A boat (no doubt a simple civilian ferry) in the mist and rain, overloaded with soldiers in brown uniforms. The gray around is sometimes dotted with flashes - it is artillery fire from the shore. At the bow, a man in blue uniform dominates the troop and harangues with a loudspeaker in his hand: "Welcome to Rezina, the place where you are going to live the most exciting moments of your life! The Fascists have already lost many men there, tanks and planes!"
An exclamation - "Look!" - as the boat leaves a wreck of the same type on its right, drifting with the current and overflowing with corpses. It has obviously been hit by several shells... The political commissar ignores it and continues: "Hitler's barbaric hordes are trying at this very moment to drive our people back into the river, advancing on mountains of their own soldiers' bodies. Our Party, our Fatherland, our great Nation has entrusted us with the task of repelling the enemy and retaking our land." (The boat pitches badly under the effect of a near-miss). "Death to the enemy! Let's throw ourselves into the never-ending battle, comrades! For Marshal Stalin, not a step back!" (Another shell hits a few meters to the left of the boat - two soldiers jump into the water in panic. The speaker pulls out his pistol and empties his magazine in their direction). "The cowards and traitors will be shot! Do not count the days, do not count the kilometers, count only the number of Germans you will kill!" (The boat zigzags as the gunfire gets closer and closer - the commissar yells over the explosions). "Kill the Germans - it's your mothers' wish! Kill the Germans - this is the prayer of our Mother Russia! Do not hesitate! Do not give up! Death to the fascist invader!" The boat reaches the shore under heavy automatic weapons fire." (Draft script for a scene from the film The Flag Must Fall, MGM Studios, 2007).
.........
Finally, on the extreme left of the 4th Ukrainian Front and on direct instruction from Tolbukhin, the 62nd Army of Kolpakchy launches an assault towards Susleni, always with the aim of threatening Orhei and (somewhat) to relieve the pressure on the 14th Army by diverting possible reinforcements. The Front commander hasthe distinct feeling that his credibility - if not his survival - is hanging by a thread, especially when his performance is compared to that of his neighbor. He is therefore prepared to take risks to turn things around.
The 60th Rifle Division, still relatively fresh and supported by some 20 T-50, succeeds in breaking through the line of the 335 ID - the latter has to retreat to Susleni. Karl Casper's forces are now stretched over 30 kilometers... Their leader therefore asks von Sponeck permission to shorten his lines by abandoning the banks of the Dniestr towards Ustia and Criuleni - the leader of the XLII. AK agrees, but the leader of the 11. Armee, informed shortly after, refuses! Reinhardt does not want to see this corps retreat further, especially since the reserve units will be in Orhei this evening, despite the terrible weather. Casper is thus reduced to move his division more and more towards the west and the north...
.........
Molot South (Odessa Front) - On the left flank of Molot, the fighting continues, with real vigor, although tempered by the elements. The 9th Army is still fighting north of Bender against the Romanian 2nd and 4th IDs, reinforced by territorial troops and the men of the 2nd Mountain Division. Leaving to its valiant frontovikis the task to eliminate definitively these despicable auxiliaries of fascism, general Glagolev launches all his armor towards Hagimus, to face the Romanian reserves - they are even reinforced by the first two regiments of the 9th Armored Corps, which is now crossing the "capitalist bridges" set up south of Tiraspol.
The Red Army thus faces with a certain serenity the counter-offensive of the armored troops of Gherghe, supported by the 8th ID of General Dumitru Carlaonţ. Despite their courage and energy, the Romanians are curtly stopped on the outskirts of the village by T-34s firing at point-blank range then countered by a mixture of T-50s and BT-7s... In the evening, the Armored Division has only 27 operational vehicles left - 10 Panzer IV, 8 Panzer III and 9 TACAM.
It has advanced 4 kilometers and claimed the destruction of 53 Soviet tanks - but it is also at the end of its potential, exhausted and in danger of being encircled. The offensive intended to free Bender failed. The Soviet tanks continue to cross the Dniester, preluding an irresistible rush. General Dumitrescu has no other choice than to ask Bucharest to call the Germans to the help, while announcing the next and inevitable loss of Bender.
And the situation is not really better in the center of the 3rd Army. In Copanca, the 18th Army has virtually no opponent left - the 18th DIM withdrew to the west and Bender in a hurry, the 7th DC towards the south and Cîrnățeni, while the 9th DC tries not to disappear by entrenching itself in the few reliefs north of Feștelița. Generals Arramescu and Racovita hope to maintain the junction between the 1st and 4th AC for a while longer...
An illusion because, in the opinion of everyone in Odessa, the breakthrough is imminent. Petrov, delighted, exclaims: "At the rate things are going, we will not even need to attack their right flank - it will fall back on their own!" And as letting the Romanians go is not written in his orders, the Russian general does not envisage anything else than a massive and decisive assault of the 6th Guards Army towards the south and Tarutyne, in order to definitively cut his opponent in two! However, there is no need to rush - the Odessa Front will wait until Batov's troops have all crossed the Dniester and are in position. A chance that the Romanians obstinate to attack instead of fleeing... more of them will leave for the Siberian prison camps!
Busy with the preparation of this glorious assault, the 6th Guards Army spends the day to make its elements cross the river while harassing the enemy. It thus imitates a little the 18th Army of Gretchko, which presses more and more the Romanian 4th AC of Sanatescu. Within the latter, the 14th ID, in Palanca (weakened by the reinforcements sent to Olanesti and the 6th DI), and the 17th DI, in Zatoka (which must stretch to compensate for the slippage of its neighbor), decidedly begin to bend under the weight of a complete Soviet army, which attacks unsupported troops... They still hold on though - for now.
Operation Molot
Weather - It rains - once again - heavily in the theater of operations for a good part of the day The Soviet air force cannot intervene,but the Red Army also has an advantage: the Germans (and in particular their tanks) are also bogged down and the Communist forces continue to cross the Dniester, disregarding all the risks.
.........
Molot North (4th Ukrainian Front) - The situation in the Yampil area is stabilized - the Russian troops have been driven out of the peninsula and are now retreating to the other side of the river, regrouping or even reforming. The 47th Army lost 43 medium tanks, about sixty light tanks and the equivalent of three divisions ... it is notable, even for the Red Army and in this war. From the point of view of the Propaganda Staffel, frustrated by the triumphs expected during the Zitadelle operation and which are slow to materialize, it is even a Great Victory.
Its war correspondents are already there - they have not been slow to fall on the battlefield like vultures, staging the glorious soldiers of the 215. ID busy with the latecomers, interrogating haggard prisoners, photographing the mountains of bodies piled up in front of the Nazi machine guns. Signal will even make its cover on Yampil: "Disaster on the Dniestr for the Bolsheviks!" - but the magazine will be careful not to speak of a triumph for the Axis, the situation having somewhat changed between the writing of its report and its actual publication... This will not prevent it however, from complacently describing "the Bolshevik wave, broken on the steel wall of the Wehrmacht and swept by the waters of the river, [which] descends towards the sea to sink into the abyss it should never have left."
It is for the Soviets a real setback, of course, but finally quite minor in the conflict. Nevertheless, it will be so well publicized by the Reich that it will eventually attract the attention of Churchill himself. Legend has it that Mr. First simply commented: "Now Marshal Stalin will not be able to quibble with me about my past failures... As beautiful as strategies are, one must sometimes consider their results." The comparison between the Dniester and the Dardanelles is a bit daring - especially since, on the spot, the fighting continues.
Thus, in Sanatauca, the 47th Army continues to strengthen. It has just crossed the 143rd Rifle Division across the river - and its commander, General Zhmachenko, is now using its artillery to support its last bridgehead. Facing a 282. ID, which is just beginning to be reinforced by a regiment of the 225. ID on its left, the Soviets can play a relative numerical superiority, doubled by a superiority of real firepower. With method, the frontovikis thus begin to nibble away at the German perimeter in the rain. In the evening, the three Russian divisions clear Japca and hold a rectangle of 5 by 10 kilometers, towards which the pontoon-boats try to pass all the remaining armoured vehicles in their formation...
However, the main action today is by no means on the side of XXX. AK. On the area held by the XLII. AK and especially towards Rîbnița, the intensity of the fighting is increasing hour by hour. General Tolbukhin plays his card: to strengthen the 14th Army, which is still fighting with tenacity but difficulty in the ruins of Rezina, the Soviets make use of their artillery to the maximum, adding the self-propelled guns of the two reserve armored corps. The opposite bank is crushed under the shells... And even if some of them hit the Soviets, most of them hit the men of the 46. ID and 72. ID. Moreover, vigorously pushed by his superior, General Frolov does not hesitate to throw his 122nd Division on the strike. It is added to the equivalent of two divisions already on site, with the mission to clear a beach that would finally allow the tanks to pass.
The Soviet soldiers are openly sent to the scrap heap - or almost. Against all odds, they succeed in securing a good part of the shore north of Rezina, and even in taking the village of Ciorna. On the other side, the 46. ID starts to run out of steam. This spectacular, frightening and magnificent action will inspire many historical or romantic works, in the USSR and elsewhere, from the end of 1943 to the present day.
Consequently, at nightfall, the 2nd Armored Corps prepares to cross without worrying about losses.
.........
"A boat (no doubt a simple civilian ferry) in the mist and rain, overloaded with soldiers in brown uniforms. The gray around is sometimes dotted with flashes - it is artillery fire from the shore. At the bow, a man in blue uniform dominates the troop and harangues with a loudspeaker in his hand: "Welcome to Rezina, the place where you are going to live the most exciting moments of your life! The Fascists have already lost many men there, tanks and planes!"
An exclamation - "Look!" - as the boat leaves a wreck of the same type on its right, drifting with the current and overflowing with corpses. It has obviously been hit by several shells... The political commissar ignores it and continues: "Hitler's barbaric hordes are trying at this very moment to drive our people back into the river, advancing on mountains of their own soldiers' bodies. Our Party, our Fatherland, our great Nation has entrusted us with the task of repelling the enemy and retaking our land." (The boat pitches badly under the effect of a near-miss). "Death to the enemy! Let's throw ourselves into the never-ending battle, comrades! For Marshal Stalin, not a step back!" (Another shell hits a few meters to the left of the boat - two soldiers jump into the water in panic. The speaker pulls out his pistol and empties his magazine in their direction). "The cowards and traitors will be shot! Do not count the days, do not count the kilometers, count only the number of Germans you will kill!" (The boat zigzags as the gunfire gets closer and closer - the commissar yells over the explosions). "Kill the Germans - it's your mothers' wish! Kill the Germans - this is the prayer of our Mother Russia! Do not hesitate! Do not give up! Death to the fascist invader!" The boat reaches the shore under heavy automatic weapons fire." (Draft script for a scene from the film The Flag Must Fall, MGM Studios, 2007).
.........
Finally, on the extreme left of the 4th Ukrainian Front and on direct instruction from Tolbukhin, the 62nd Army of Kolpakchy launches an assault towards Susleni, always with the aim of threatening Orhei and (somewhat) to relieve the pressure on the 14th Army by diverting possible reinforcements. The Front commander hasthe distinct feeling that his credibility - if not his survival - is hanging by a thread, especially when his performance is compared to that of his neighbor. He is therefore prepared to take risks to turn things around.
The 60th Rifle Division, still relatively fresh and supported by some 20 T-50, succeeds in breaking through the line of the 335 ID - the latter has to retreat to Susleni. Karl Casper's forces are now stretched over 30 kilometers... Their leader therefore asks von Sponeck permission to shorten his lines by abandoning the banks of the Dniestr towards Ustia and Criuleni - the leader of the XLII. AK agrees, but the leader of the 11. Armee, informed shortly after, refuses! Reinhardt does not want to see this corps retreat further, especially since the reserve units will be in Orhei this evening, despite the terrible weather. Casper is thus reduced to move his division more and more towards the west and the north...
.........
Molot South (Odessa Front) - On the left flank of Molot, the fighting continues, with real vigor, although tempered by the elements. The 9th Army is still fighting north of Bender against the Romanian 2nd and 4th IDs, reinforced by territorial troops and the men of the 2nd Mountain Division. Leaving to its valiant frontovikis the task to eliminate definitively these despicable auxiliaries of fascism, general Glagolev launches all his armor towards Hagimus, to face the Romanian reserves - they are even reinforced by the first two regiments of the 9th Armored Corps, which is now crossing the "capitalist bridges" set up south of Tiraspol.
The Red Army thus faces with a certain serenity the counter-offensive of the armored troops of Gherghe, supported by the 8th ID of General Dumitru Carlaonţ. Despite their courage and energy, the Romanians are curtly stopped on the outskirts of the village by T-34s firing at point-blank range then countered by a mixture of T-50s and BT-7s... In the evening, the Armored Division has only 27 operational vehicles left - 10 Panzer IV, 8 Panzer III and 9 TACAM.
It has advanced 4 kilometers and claimed the destruction of 53 Soviet tanks - but it is also at the end of its potential, exhausted and in danger of being encircled. The offensive intended to free Bender failed. The Soviet tanks continue to cross the Dniester, preluding an irresistible rush. General Dumitrescu has no other choice than to ask Bucharest to call the Germans to the help, while announcing the next and inevitable loss of Bender.
And the situation is not really better in the center of the 3rd Army. In Copanca, the 18th Army has virtually no opponent left - the 18th DIM withdrew to the west and Bender in a hurry, the 7th DC towards the south and Cîrnățeni, while the 9th DC tries not to disappear by entrenching itself in the few reliefs north of Feștelița. Generals Arramescu and Racovita hope to maintain the junction between the 1st and 4th AC for a while longer...
An illusion because, in the opinion of everyone in Odessa, the breakthrough is imminent. Petrov, delighted, exclaims: "At the rate things are going, we will not even need to attack their right flank - it will fall back on their own!" And as letting the Romanians go is not written in his orders, the Russian general does not envisage anything else than a massive and decisive assault of the 6th Guards Army towards the south and Tarutyne, in order to definitively cut his opponent in two! However, there is no need to rush - the Odessa Front will wait until Batov's troops have all crossed the Dniester and are in position. A chance that the Romanians obstinate to attack instead of fleeing... more of them will leave for the Siberian prison camps!
Busy with the preparation of this glorious assault, the 6th Guards Army spends the day to make its elements cross the river while harassing the enemy. It thus imitates a little the 18th Army of Gretchko, which presses more and more the Romanian 4th AC of Sanatescu. Within the latter, the 14th ID, in Palanca (weakened by the reinforcements sent to Olanesti and the 6th DI), and the 17th DI, in Zatoka (which must stretch to compensate for the slippage of its neighbor), decidedly begin to bend under the weight of a complete Soviet army, which attacks unsupported troops... They still hold on though - for now.
8926
July 29th, 1943
Villa of the Conducator (Băneasa), 16:00 - Antonescu receives at noon the disastrous news transmitted by general Dumitrescu. The Conducator has no choice but to ask help from Berlin, through his Minister of Foreign Affairs and his main interlocutor in the Romanian capital: the ambassador Manfred Freiherr von Killinger. Von Killinger is a man far removed from military affairs, but well connected within the Party. He is a convinced Nazi, already responsible for the ongoing deportation of the Jewish population of Romania. The Romanians' request delights him: the sooner Antonescu understands the debt he owes to the Reich, the better... And the sooner he stops pretending to resist the plundering of his nation, which Germany is organizing according to the Hungarian model, and to propose ridiculously to solve the Jewish question by a simple emigration*.
Also, after many smiles and venomous comments, von Killinger finally indicates that he would transmit the Romanian request to his masters, with absolute priority. It is important that the Wehrmacht responds favorably - for obvious political reasons. "We will have the opportunity to talk about it again, Mr. Antonescu!" the national socialist triumphantly concludes, without specifying whether he is addressing the man in front of him or his namesake Conducator... The Romanian minister leaves in a state of contrition - his country, the most powerful, the most powerful and reliable of all the Reich's European allies in the summer of 1943, is decidedly ill-treated.
.........
HQ of the 11. Armee (Iaşi, Romania), 23:30 - General Reinhardt has just received a message from the Wolf's Lair: the Field Marshal demands the diversion of the army reserve from Orhei to Bender "to solve the difficulties encountered by the Romanian Army on your right". In fact, Antonescu was careful not to translate the entire report of his general - and then, seen from East Prussia, beyond the battlefields of Ukraine, it should not be very complicated for the 11. Armee to disperse a ridiculous little bridgehead, right? As it has just done the day before! Unless of course Georg-Hans Reinhardt admits that he is in difficulty and once again unable to hold the sector assigned to him...
The chief of the 11. Armee does not hesitate - and all the more so since he is not really asked his opinion. By moving his infantry divisions from one Soviet position to another, he should be able to reject a good part of the Reds in the river, or at least buy the time needed to solve the Romanian "problems". His forces are not in difficulty, he can well afford to wait one week, especially under such a deluge, which will fatally handicap the obviously exhausted Bolsheviks. If the maneuver works, he will be able to boast of having stopped two Russian Fronts on his own. If it fails... Well, it will always be time to ask for reinforcements in Berlin, to repair the mistakes of the designated culprits.
The 60. PzG, which has just arrived at its destination, leaves for the south with the 191. StuG Abt - in terrible weather, on muddy and congested roads, hoping that the train would follow.
* Antonescu, although a fascist and notorious anti-Semite, sometimes affected to favor a form of "externalization" of the "Jewish problem" through expulsions to the USSR (with the help of German weapons) and through relocations to distant countries. These delaying tactics had absolutely nothing humanitarian about them, but corresponded to simple mood swings in the German-Romanian relationship. They allowed the Jewish populations of historical Romania and southern Transylvania to escape a fatal fate for a time - but only for a time. It should also be noted that in the other provinces of Romania, and in particular in Bessarabia, the Wehrmacht carried out tens of thousands of executions by shooting without the Conducator deigning to be moved by it...
Villa of the Conducator (Băneasa), 16:00 - Antonescu receives at noon the disastrous news transmitted by general Dumitrescu. The Conducator has no choice but to ask help from Berlin, through his Minister of Foreign Affairs and his main interlocutor in the Romanian capital: the ambassador Manfred Freiherr von Killinger. Von Killinger is a man far removed from military affairs, but well connected within the Party. He is a convinced Nazi, already responsible for the ongoing deportation of the Jewish population of Romania. The Romanians' request delights him: the sooner Antonescu understands the debt he owes to the Reich, the better... And the sooner he stops pretending to resist the plundering of his nation, which Germany is organizing according to the Hungarian model, and to propose ridiculously to solve the Jewish question by a simple emigration*.
Also, after many smiles and venomous comments, von Killinger finally indicates that he would transmit the Romanian request to his masters, with absolute priority. It is important that the Wehrmacht responds favorably - for obvious political reasons. "We will have the opportunity to talk about it again, Mr. Antonescu!" the national socialist triumphantly concludes, without specifying whether he is addressing the man in front of him or his namesake Conducator... The Romanian minister leaves in a state of contrition - his country, the most powerful, the most powerful and reliable of all the Reich's European allies in the summer of 1943, is decidedly ill-treated.
.........
HQ of the 11. Armee (Iaşi, Romania), 23:30 - General Reinhardt has just received a message from the Wolf's Lair: the Field Marshal demands the diversion of the army reserve from Orhei to Bender "to solve the difficulties encountered by the Romanian Army on your right". In fact, Antonescu was careful not to translate the entire report of his general - and then, seen from East Prussia, beyond the battlefields of Ukraine, it should not be very complicated for the 11. Armee to disperse a ridiculous little bridgehead, right? As it has just done the day before! Unless of course Georg-Hans Reinhardt admits that he is in difficulty and once again unable to hold the sector assigned to him...
The chief of the 11. Armee does not hesitate - and all the more so since he is not really asked his opinion. By moving his infantry divisions from one Soviet position to another, he should be able to reject a good part of the Reds in the river, or at least buy the time needed to solve the Romanian "problems". His forces are not in difficulty, he can well afford to wait one week, especially under such a deluge, which will fatally handicap the obviously exhausted Bolsheviks. If the maneuver works, he will be able to boast of having stopped two Russian Fronts on his own. If it fails... Well, it will always be time to ask for reinforcements in Berlin, to repair the mistakes of the designated culprits.
The 60. PzG, which has just arrived at its destination, leaves for the south with the 191. StuG Abt - in terrible weather, on muddy and congested roads, hoping that the train would follow.
* Antonescu, although a fascist and notorious anti-Semite, sometimes affected to favor a form of "externalization" of the "Jewish problem" through expulsions to the USSR (with the help of German weapons) and through relocations to distant countries. These delaying tactics had absolutely nothing humanitarian about them, but corresponded to simple mood swings in the German-Romanian relationship. They allowed the Jewish populations of historical Romania and southern Transylvania to escape a fatal fate for a time - but only for a time. It should also be noted that in the other provinces of Romania, and in particular in Bessarabia, the Wehrmacht carried out tens of thousands of executions by shooting without the Conducator deigning to be moved by it...
8927
July 29th, 1943
Moscow - General Zhukov is happy to announce to Marshal Stalin, among other more or less good news from the front, that the Molot breakthrough is "imminent".
"The Dniester is crossed, Comrade Marshal, and is hardly an obstacle for anything but the transfer of our troops. In spite of the... slight weather problem that we were unable to anticipate [One will appreciate the meaning of this formula...], our forces should have dislocated the Romanian front tomorrow. The day after tomorrow at worst."
The marshal, his forehead serene and his moustache friendly as for the photo, nods: "Perfect, Georgi Konstantinovich. I expect another triumph of our forces within a week." This is an order, of course - exactly the same kind of order that the Stavka will address tonight to Tolbukhin and Petrov: "Insist, comrades."
Moscow - General Zhukov is happy to announce to Marshal Stalin, among other more or less good news from the front, that the Molot breakthrough is "imminent".
"The Dniester is crossed, Comrade Marshal, and is hardly an obstacle for anything but the transfer of our troops. In spite of the... slight weather problem that we were unable to anticipate [One will appreciate the meaning of this formula...], our forces should have dislocated the Romanian front tomorrow. The day after tomorrow at worst."
The marshal, his forehead serene and his moustache friendly as for the photo, nods: "Perfect, Georgi Konstantinovich. I expect another triumph of our forces within a week." This is an order, of course - exactly the same kind of order that the Stavka will address tonight to Tolbukhin and Petrov: "Insist, comrades."
8928
July 29th, 1943
South of France - While the four-engine planes of the 376th BG, accompanied by the 82nd FG, bomb Alès, the medium groups remain on the coast. The Süd Wall is attacked in the sectors of Sérignan, Vinassan and Frontignan by the 320th and 321st BG and by the 25th EB, escorted respectively by the 57th and 27th FG and by the 4th EC.
In the Var, the area around La Cadière d'Azur, where the Resistance had reported German defensive works under construction, are treated energetically by GAN 2. Covered by the Corsairs, the dive bombers have a great time on the fortifications and other artillery positions still unfinished and poorly camouflaged. The aircraft return to their Corsican base in Sainte-Catherine at the end of the afternoon without having suffered losses.
South of France - While the four-engine planes of the 376th BG, accompanied by the 82nd FG, bomb Alès, the medium groups remain on the coast. The Süd Wall is attacked in the sectors of Sérignan, Vinassan and Frontignan by the 320th and 321st BG and by the 25th EB, escorted respectively by the 57th and 27th FG and by the 4th EC.
In the Var, the area around La Cadière d'Azur, where the Resistance had reported German defensive works under construction, are treated energetically by GAN 2. Covered by the Corsairs, the dive bombers have a great time on the fortifications and other artillery positions still unfinished and poorly camouflaged. The aircraft return to their Corsican base in Sainte-Catherine at the end of the afternoon without having suffered losses.
8929
July 29th, 1943
Italian Front - If, to the great joy of the infantrymen, nothing noteworthy is happening on the ground again, the war continues in the air.
The 324th FG is out in full force for a new "Strangle" mission in the Pisa area. Arriving at low altitude after having made a large detour by the sea, the three squadrons attack the depot, the bridges and other railway infrastructure, and the runway to the southwest of the city. The surprise is total and luck is with the Americans: on the airfield, more than half a dozen aircraft are destroyed on the ground, and at the depot level, no less than six locomotives were put out of service and a convoy of about forty wagons carrying more than 80 vehicles was destroyed in the fire following the destruction of an ammunition wagon and the burning of several fuel cars. The leader of the 315 FS, Lt-Colonel Leonard Lydon, said: "I had just completed my resource with the Blue Group when my P-47 was shaken like a plum, so much so that I thought I was hit by flak. The conversations immediately became animated on the radio, letting me know that something big had been hit. Less than a minute later, after the Red group had dropped their bombs, I put things back in order by shouting: "Knights, stop chatting, fly south, level 4, hurry up!" Needless to say that if the discipline came back quickly, once we landed, it was a different story. Our guys were excited and repeated the episode over and over until the evening in the mess hall."
Italian Front - If, to the great joy of the infantrymen, nothing noteworthy is happening on the ground again, the war continues in the air.
The 324th FG is out in full force for a new "Strangle" mission in the Pisa area. Arriving at low altitude after having made a large detour by the sea, the three squadrons attack the depot, the bridges and other railway infrastructure, and the runway to the southwest of the city. The surprise is total and luck is with the Americans: on the airfield, more than half a dozen aircraft are destroyed on the ground, and at the depot level, no less than six locomotives were put out of service and a convoy of about forty wagons carrying more than 80 vehicles was destroyed in the fire following the destruction of an ammunition wagon and the burning of several fuel cars. The leader of the 315 FS, Lt-Colonel Leonard Lydon, said: "I had just completed my resource with the Blue Group when my P-47 was shaken like a plum, so much so that I thought I was hit by flak. The conversations immediately became animated on the radio, letting me know that something big had been hit. Less than a minute later, after the Red group had dropped their bombs, I put things back in order by shouting: "Knights, stop chatting, fly south, level 4, hurry up!" Needless to say that if the discipline came back quickly, once we landed, it was a different story. Our guys were excited and repeated the episode over and over until the evening in the mess hall."
8930
July 29th, 1943
Gargnano (Lombardy) - The Feltrinelli villa, near the Garda lake, receives only rare visitors. Benito Mussolini, Duce without powers of an evanescent Social Republic, is happy that a few rare officials come to greet him today, on his birthday.
Among them, SS Eugen Dollmann, Himmler's personal representative in Italy, and Gen. Moriakira Shimizu, military attaché of the Empire of Japan to the RSI. The general, with
all kinds of politeness, congratulates the Duce for his contribution to the recovery of the Axis and finally gives the reason for his visit: he would like to visit the Italian front and, if possible, "see one of these new Italian units that people talk about so much". At first, the Duce found it difficult to understand what he was talking about, but then he remembered that a National Republican Army is being formed in the Apennines... "Hey, sure, I'll talk to General Carloni about it, he'll do what is necessary for you. And my respects to your emperor."
Mario Carloni, who was only a lieutenant colonel in the 51st DI Siena in Greece, was one of the officers who had rallied to the Axis the previous December. Mussolini remembers seeing him recently in the RSI newsreels, wearing the feathered hat of the Bersaglieri. As the Führer did not forget (at least, his secretaries thought of it for him) to send his greetings to his tired old ally, Mussolini dictates a message in reply in which he touches a word about Carloni and the Japanese visitor.
Gargnano (Lombardy) - The Feltrinelli villa, near the Garda lake, receives only rare visitors. Benito Mussolini, Duce without powers of an evanescent Social Republic, is happy that a few rare officials come to greet him today, on his birthday.
Among them, SS Eugen Dollmann, Himmler's personal representative in Italy, and Gen. Moriakira Shimizu, military attaché of the Empire of Japan to the RSI. The general, with
all kinds of politeness, congratulates the Duce for his contribution to the recovery of the Axis and finally gives the reason for his visit: he would like to visit the Italian front and, if possible, "see one of these new Italian units that people talk about so much". At first, the Duce found it difficult to understand what he was talking about, but then he remembered that a National Republican Army is being formed in the Apennines... "Hey, sure, I'll talk to General Carloni about it, he'll do what is necessary for you. And my respects to your emperor."
Mario Carloni, who was only a lieutenant colonel in the 51st DI Siena in Greece, was one of the officers who had rallied to the Axis the previous December. Mussolini remembers seeing him recently in the RSI newsreels, wearing the feathered hat of the Bersaglieri. As the Führer did not forget (at least, his secretaries thought of it for him) to send his greetings to his tired old ally, Mussolini dictates a message in reply in which he touches a word about Carloni and the Japanese visitor.
8931
July 29th, 1943
Adriatic - After conversion on their new mounts, the men of Sqn 39 are back and attack the artillery positions of the Losinj sector. The mission goes smoothly and the cover, provided by Sqn 119, did not have to intervene.
A little further north, Sqn 55 attacks the airfield of Pula, but the German reaction is strong. The German pilots have an altitude advantage and even a slight numerical advantage, but Sqn 249, which constitutes the escort, is almost entirely made up of Canadians, many of whom had been fighting together for as long as the Malta-Tunis Blitz. The Germans lose four aircraft and the Canadians three. Two of the pilots are recovered at sea, including Flight Lieutenant Kennedy, who is credited with a fifth victory, making him an ace.
Adriatic - After conversion on their new mounts, the men of Sqn 39 are back and attack the artillery positions of the Losinj sector. The mission goes smoothly and the cover, provided by Sqn 119, did not have to intervene.
A little further north, Sqn 55 attacks the airfield of Pula, but the German reaction is strong. The German pilots have an altitude advantage and even a slight numerical advantage, but Sqn 249, which constitutes the escort, is almost entirely made up of Canadians, many of whom had been fighting together for as long as the Malta-Tunis Blitz. The Germans lose four aircraft and the Canadians three. Two of the pilots are recovered at sea, including Flight Lieutenant Kennedy, who is credited with a fifth victory, making him an ace.
8932
July 29th, 1943
Athens - In Syntagma Square, contingents of the various allied forces march in front of an enthusiastic crowd to celebrate the "battle of Cephisus", according to the term adopted by official communiqués (inspired by Montgomery). The 6th Greek Mountain Brigade proudly marches: the liberation of the whole national territory is only a question of time.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Georgios Papandreou, decidedly very comfortable in his role of government orator, reminds us in passing that July 29th is also the anniversary of another battle, a thousand years earlier, where the Byzantine Greeks had crushed on the Sperchios barbarians from the north - in this case, the Bulgarians of tsar Samuel: the Bulgarian question seems to hold very with heart with the minister. Professor Picard, representative in Athens of the French SR, does not fail to see in it an allusion "to the last developments on the Russian front and the rumors of a separate peace between Bulgaria and the Allies."
Athens - In Syntagma Square, contingents of the various allied forces march in front of an enthusiastic crowd to celebrate the "battle of Cephisus", according to the term adopted by official communiqués (inspired by Montgomery). The 6th Greek Mountain Brigade proudly marches: the liberation of the whole national territory is only a question of time.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Georgios Papandreou, decidedly very comfortable in his role of government orator, reminds us in passing that July 29th is also the anniversary of another battle, a thousand years earlier, where the Byzantine Greeks had crushed on the Sperchios barbarians from the north - in this case, the Bulgarians of tsar Samuel: the Bulgarian question seems to hold very with heart with the minister. Professor Picard, representative in Athens of the French SR, does not fail to see in it an allusion "to the last developments on the Russian front and the rumors of a separate peace between Bulgaria and the Allies."
8933 - Liberation of Delphi
July 29th, 1943
Central Greece, along the Sperchios - The Greek mountaineers will not be long in coming to the front as the ANZAC of Lt. General John D. Lavarack reach the Sperchios and the suburbs of Lamia, with the mountainous barrier of the Samaria Gorge just to the north as its objective. He breaks through the improvised defense line of a battalion of the 4. Gebirgs Division, sacrificed in the rearguard to allow the retreat of the rest of the division. However, it takes half a day to settle the matter: the "mountain hunters", well entrenched behind the river, inflict heavy losses on the Australians with several carefully camouflaged Pak 40s. Nevertheless, the intervention of the Blenheim IVs of the 237th 4 and 238th Wings (based at Molai) and the Boston III of the 235th Wing (recently moved from Heraklion), under a sky where no German aircraft appears, tip the balance in favor of the Allies. A Bailey bridge is quickly built to replace the civilian bridge that the Germans had blown up and, at 18:30, the first tanks are in Agrilia, at the threshold of the road overhanging the gorges. There they are waiting for the infantry to assist them in crossing this area, which is too favourable for ambushes.
.........
Central Greece, Gulf of Corinth region - The 5th Polish ID continues its road from east to west, towards the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth. In the absence of any organized resistance, except for a few snipers, the progression is fast. Delphi and its ancient city are liberated in the morning, Itea followed in the afternoon. In the rush, the Poles reach Galaxidi at the end of the evening, in a landscape which could be idyllic... if it were not for the war.
.........
Central Greece, Volos region - While their retreating comrades try to stop the wave from Oceania, some Germans prefer less formidable targets than Robertson's Cromwells. As the tide turned and the end of the government of "president" Konstantínos Logothetópoulos is getting closer every day, it is time to settle accounts without worrying about appearances. Consequently, in a last gesture of revenge, ordered by the HQ of the 12. Armee but executed under the cover of the collaborating Minister of the Interior Ioánnis Rállis, the soldiers of KG Müller go into action.
The KampfGruppe commanded by Colonel Friedrich-Wilhelm Müller withdraws very quickly after the initial fighting of Operation Butress. This ad hoc formation groups individuals from very different backgrounds, but all with nothing to lose: Fascist Italians, collaborating Greeks, Germans expelled from their units for disobedience or some other serious fault. They engage in a ferocious hunt for Resistance fighters in the region, whether they are genuine - there are many of them, or supposed to be - there are even more. They are supported and encouraged in this task by elements of the 4. SS-Polizei-Brigade retreating to Salonika, who willingly shared their knowledge and enthusiasm.
Thus, they resorted to a formidable technique. A battalion closes off a neighborhood and then, one block after the other, the inhabitants are taken out on the sidewalk by the force of bayonets and under the blows of rifle butts. A hooded collaborator then circulates in the ranks of the inhabitants and points to those he considers enemies of the Reich, who are executed without further trial, in front of their families, who sometimes share their fate.
Of course, during these roundups, all precious goods are "requisitioned" and the most desirable women "taken for interrogation". When evening falls, the city and the surrounding countryside are on fire.
Central Greece, along the Sperchios - The Greek mountaineers will not be long in coming to the front as the ANZAC of Lt. General John D. Lavarack reach the Sperchios and the suburbs of Lamia, with the mountainous barrier of the Samaria Gorge just to the north as its objective. He breaks through the improvised defense line of a battalion of the 4. Gebirgs Division, sacrificed in the rearguard to allow the retreat of the rest of the division. However, it takes half a day to settle the matter: the "mountain hunters", well entrenched behind the river, inflict heavy losses on the Australians with several carefully camouflaged Pak 40s. Nevertheless, the intervention of the Blenheim IVs of the 237th 4 and 238th Wings (based at Molai) and the Boston III of the 235th Wing (recently moved from Heraklion), under a sky where no German aircraft appears, tip the balance in favor of the Allies. A Bailey bridge is quickly built to replace the civilian bridge that the Germans had blown up and, at 18:30, the first tanks are in Agrilia, at the threshold of the road overhanging the gorges. There they are waiting for the infantry to assist them in crossing this area, which is too favourable for ambushes.
.........
Central Greece, Gulf of Corinth region - The 5th Polish ID continues its road from east to west, towards the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth. In the absence of any organized resistance, except for a few snipers, the progression is fast. Delphi and its ancient city are liberated in the morning, Itea followed in the afternoon. In the rush, the Poles reach Galaxidi at the end of the evening, in a landscape which could be idyllic... if it were not for the war.
.........
Central Greece, Volos region - While their retreating comrades try to stop the wave from Oceania, some Germans prefer less formidable targets than Robertson's Cromwells. As the tide turned and the end of the government of "president" Konstantínos Logothetópoulos is getting closer every day, it is time to settle accounts without worrying about appearances. Consequently, in a last gesture of revenge, ordered by the HQ of the 12. Armee but executed under the cover of the collaborating Minister of the Interior Ioánnis Rállis, the soldiers of KG Müller go into action.
The KampfGruppe commanded by Colonel Friedrich-Wilhelm Müller withdraws very quickly after the initial fighting of Operation Butress. This ad hoc formation groups individuals from very different backgrounds, but all with nothing to lose: Fascist Italians, collaborating Greeks, Germans expelled from their units for disobedience or some other serious fault. They engage in a ferocious hunt for Resistance fighters in the region, whether they are genuine - there are many of them, or supposed to be - there are even more. They are supported and encouraged in this task by elements of the 4. SS-Polizei-Brigade retreating to Salonika, who willingly shared their knowledge and enthusiasm.
Thus, they resorted to a formidable technique. A battalion closes off a neighborhood and then, one block after the other, the inhabitants are taken out on the sidewalk by the force of bayonets and under the blows of rifle butts. A hooded collaborator then circulates in the ranks of the inhabitants and points to those he considers enemies of the Reich, who are executed without further trial, in front of their families, who sometimes share their fate.
Of course, during these roundups, all precious goods are "requisitioned" and the most desirable women "taken for interrogation". When evening falls, the city and the surrounding countryside are on fire.
- Status