The Eastern Front Week by Week

Last time we spoke about the second battle of Kharkiv. In Crimea, German armored thrusts move through difficult mud, creating a narrow escape corridor but eventually completing the encirclement of the Soviet 51st Army by reaching the Sea of Azov. Soviet attempts to counterattack fail because the 47th Army is too weak and lacks tank or artillery support, while communications to available artillery regiments are severed, leaving them idle. Soviet air coordination is also paralyzed by missing orders. The 51st Army surrenders, and many troops rout toward Kerch, where intense air attacks sink transport vessels and firebomb Kerch to hinder evacuation. As Soviet forces evacuate, a notable holdout forms in the Adzhimushkay Quarry, lasting 170 days despite shortages. Meanwhile, the Soviet offensive around Kharkiv initially breaks through German lines quickly and uses tank-heavy pressure. However, German counterattacks, air disruption, and, crucially, Soviet failure to commit reserves and mobile armor on time cause the breakthrough to stall.

This episode is Disaster at Donetz

Well hello there, welcome to the Eastern Front week by week podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

 

Last week Timoshenko launched his Southwestern Front into a daring offensive that had at first shaken the German 6th Army, creating deep breakthroughs that endangered the entire southern sector of the Eastern Front and possibly allowed the recapture of the key city of Kharkov. Now, this week, the German preparations to respond to Timoshenko—long in the planning and using carefully conserved reserves from Army Group South—were at last prepared to be released in a crushing counterstrike. In the far north, the occasional fighting in Finland and the Arctic theater once more started to quiet down, although this pause came at the high price of intensifying the already tense relations between Germany and its Finnish co-belligerent. Meanwhile, both Germany and the USSR kept up their urgent race against time and the elements to get ready for fresh large-scale battles around the vital axes of Moscow and Leningrad, where winter counteroffensives had left both sides exhausted but without resolution. 

In Finland, the 3rd Corps’ counterattack near Kestenga stayed hopelessly bogged down amid the lingering effects of the spring rasputitsa, the seasonal thaw that turned roads and fields into quagmires of knee-deep mud. Three Finnish regiments had tried a flanking movement against the solidly entrenched Soviet positions, but the impassable terrain made any outflanking impossible, forcing the Germans to commit their own units to expensive frontal assaults in an effort to break the Soviet lines head-on. This grinding combat continued until May 21st, when the Soviets finally began an orderly withdrawal under pressure. Following closely behind them, elements of the 3rd Corps succeeded in regaining most of their original lines by the 23rd. At that point, however, General Siilasvuo ordered an immediate stop to further advances, even though this went against orders from General Dietl and left German and Finnish forces short of occupying the most favorable local defensive terrain in the surrounding hills and forests. Deeply worried that issuing a public rebuke might push the Finns toward abandoning the partnership altogether, Dietl reluctantly let Siilasvuo’s orders remain in place. Privately, though, Dietl acted to limit Siilasvuo’s authority to pull troops from the frontline, hoping to keep tighter operational control over future actions.

 

This relatively minor battle only served to further inflame the growing tensions between Finland and Germany that had been building since the previous autumn. Many German officers on the ground increasingly felt they were being forced to carry the bulk of the heavy lifting in what was supposed to be a joint partnership, with Finnish units often holding back from decisive engagements. The German liaison officer embedded with the 3rd Corps complained directly to Dietl that German troops had carried out virtually all of the intensive offensive operations within the corps since May 15th. Indeed, the Army of Lapland War Diary entry for May 23rd captured the broader German frustration in explicit terms: “In the course of the recent weeks the army has received the growing impression that the Commanding General, III Corps, either on his own initiative or on instructions from higher Finnish authorities, is avoiding all decisions that could involve Finnish troops in serious fighting.” This friction was symptomatic of a deeper and longstanding political reality: Finnish Commander-in-Chief Marshal Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim had never fully embraced Germany’s expansive strategic ambitions for the far north. As early as the autumn of 1941, he had made clear to his own government that Finland’s war aims remained strictly defensive and limited in scope. As Mannerheim later reflected candidly in his memoirs, Finland was “a co-belligerent, not an ally”—a subtle but vital distinction that the Germans found increasingly maddening and unsustainable as the grueling Arctic campaign dragged on without decisive progress.

 

By May 22nd the ice covering Lake Ladoga had finally melted enough to restore full nautical navigation after the long winter freeze. The steamer Gidrotekhnik, towing several heavily laden barges, became the first vessel to complete the critical supply run from Kobona on the eastern shore to Osinovets on the western side, delivering desperately needed food, fuel, and ammunition directly into besieged Leningrad. In its wake, a growing flotilla of additional vessels rapidly began to follow, reopening the vital “Road of Life” naval route that would sustain the city through the coming months of renewed German pressure.

 

Near Leningrad itself, the fighting flared up once again in the Lyuban salient as Soviet forces trapped there made a final, desperate bid for survival. After an entire week wasted in high-level debates over the precise details of their withdrawal plan, the encircled troops of the 2nd Shock Army finally attempted to escape their suffocating pocket. Yet instead of the orderly, phased withdrawal that Khozin and STAVKA had envisioned, the operation quickly devolved into chaotic and haphazard skirmishes across the swampy, forested terrain. The 2nd Shock Army had already suffered catastrophic losses, with 60 to 70 percent of its strength eroded by relentless combat, desertions, and the slow toll of starvation as food supplies dwindled to almost nothing. Command and control had collapsed to such an extent that entire Soviet formations began fragmenting into disorganized groups of survivors. Those units closest to the outer edges of the pocket surged eastward in a frantic bid to reach the safety of the Volkhov River, often abandoning equipment and wounded in the process.

 

Nevertheless, enough organized elements of the army still held together to maintain a viable perimeter, enabling them to beat back several probing German attacks. These German probes had been launched precisely because of the rising tide of Soviet deserters, who painted a picture of an army on the brink of total collapse. The deserters also confirmed that a general withdrawal was underway, a suspicion reinforced when German observers spotted large-scale troop movements exiting the corridor on May 21st and 22nd. Radio traffic interruptions further convinced the Germans that General Vlasov was relocating his command post. Vlasov himself later painted a harrowing picture of his army’s plight in a radio message to Leningrad Front headquarters, reporting that his men were reduced to “eating tree bark and leather” while ammunition stocks hovered near exhaustion. Appeals for emergency food drops and reinforcements went largely unheeded, as the logistical nightmare far exceeded the limited capacity of Soviet aviation to deliver meaningful aid under heavy German fighter cover.

 

Meanwhile, the parallel offensive by the neighboring 59th Army, intended to link up with and relieve the 2nd Shock Army, also ended in failure. Its divisions were woefully understrength, hampered by chronic shortages of artillery and tank support that left them unable to punch through determined German defenses. Compounding the problem, the narrow corridor formed a vulnerable junction between three separate Soviet armies that proved incapable of effective cooperation, with each headquarters operating in isolation and failing to synchronize efforts.

On May 21st, STAVKA issued urgent demands for the 2nd Shock Army to break out, accompanied by sweeping new orders for the entire Leningrad Front. These were formally codified as Stavka VGK directive no. 170406, addressed to the Leningrad Front commander and outlining the missions and reorganization of the Volkhov Group of Forces. The 8th, 54th, and 52nd Armies were instructed to remain strictly on the defensive, while the Front as a whole was tasked with clearing the Kirishi and Gruzino regions by June 1st. The 2nd Shock Army itself was ordered to withdraw, simultaneously eliminating the dangerous Spasskaia Polist’ bulge in coordination with the 59th Army. Once these immediate objectives were secured, the Volkhov grouping was to transition fully to the defensive along the entire line from Lake Ladoga to Novgorod. As part of the broader restructuring, the Volkhov grouping would be split into two distinct commands: the 54th and 8th Armies would form the new Ladoga group, while the 4th, 59th, 52nd, and 2nd Shock Armies would continue as the Volkhov Group proper. This reorganization reflected STAVKA’s growing recognition that fragmented command structures had contributed heavily to the recent disasters.

 

STAVKA went further, issuing detailed orders for the extensive improvement of fortifications held by the 54th, 8th, and 52nd Armies. It was deemed necessary to spell out even the most basic principles—such as constructing defenses in depth with mutually supporting lines of fire—because previous efforts had proven woefully inadequate. All positions were to be meticulously camouflaged, with special emphasis placed on defending population centers, key terrain features, and vital road junctions through dense networks of minefields and obstacles. Displaying an extraordinary degree of distrust in the local commanders’ competence, STAVKA explicitly required that minefield locations be carefully recorded on maps and reported upward. To bolster these efforts, heavy reinforcements were promised to begin arriving by mid-June, signaling Moscow’s determination to stabilize the northern theater before the Germans could renew their drive on Leningrad.

 

Last week had seen the dramatic opening of Timoshenko’s Kharkov offensive, which achieved early successes with a 56-kilometer-wide and 25-kilometer-deep advance that briefly threatened to unhinge the German southern flank. However, the northern prong had already stalled due to the unexpectedly swift commitment of German reserves, far earlier than Soviet intelligence had anticipated. The 38th Army found itself under ferocious combined-arms assaults from panzer units and the Luftwaffe, ultimately driven back to the defensive river line near Velyka Babka. There, a brutal war of attrition unfolded, rapidly drawing in six of the eight available Soviet tank brigades in the sector and consuming precious reserves of fuel and ammunition.

Meanwhile, the 28th Army had made painfully slow progress against a network of stubborn German village strongpoints, such as Ternova, which continued to be resupplied by Luftwaffe airdrops even after being bypassed. These localized fights had devoured a disproportionate share of the Southwestern Front’s logistical capacity and VVS air support, leaving the intended Mobile Group—meant to exploit any breakthroughs—idling uselessly some 20 kilometers behind the frontline, unable to capitalize on fleeting opportunities.

 

This pattern of intense, seesaw fighting carried over into the current week, with both sides launching repeated attacks and counterattacks across the muddy terrain. On May 17th, for instance, a coordinated German push by elements of the 71st and 168th Infantry Divisions, backed by the 3rd and 23rd Panzer Divisions, overwhelmed the Soviet 244th Rifle Division, forcing it to retreat alongside the neighboring 168th. The action not only relieved the long-besieged garrison at Ternova but also compelled a minor withdrawal by the 38th Army to safeguard its exposed flank. German panzers attempted to exploit the breakthrough, only to be halted cold by the determined stand of the 13th Guards Division on the 38th Army’s wing. It was during this very engagement that the first Order of the Patriotic War 1st Class was awarded—to Artillery Captain Krikly, whose battalion was credited with destroying 34 enemy tanks and blunting the entire German assault. Krikly himself was gravely wounded, and the vast majority of his gunners became casualties, yet the 13th Guards Division as a whole claimed to have accounted for over 100 panzers across its defensive actions in the sector.

Timely Soviet reinforcements eventually allowed the line to be stabilized between Pylna and Grafovka, prompting the 21st Army to be shifted onto the defensive. By the end of May 17th, only the 28th Army continued pressing the northern attack. That same evening, however, developments farther south forced Timoshenko to order both the 28th and 38th Armies back onto the offensive. The goal was to tie down the two German panzer divisions in the area and distract enemy reinforcements from the more critical southern sector. In reality, neither army possessed the strength to exert any meaningful influence on events unfolding to the south, highlighting the growing strain on Soviet command and resources.

 

Meanwhile, Golikov’s Bryansk Front saw its own supporting offensive formally cancelled on May 17th. General Bodin personally delivered the new directives to headquarters: the 40th Army was to launch an immediate attack, backed by the full weight of the Front’s VVS air assets, in order to relieve pressure on Timoshenko’s hard-pressed forces. Yet the 40th Army was nowhere near ready, plagued by incomplete mobilization and supply shortages. Despite Golikov traveling personally to the army headquarters to accelerate preparations, the attack came too late to matter. Bagramian would later lament this missed opportunity in his postwar writings, noting that the Front’s formidable strength—ten rifle divisions, eleven rifle brigades, and more than 300 tanks—could have dramatically altered the course of the entire Kharkov battle had it been committed in time.

 

Farther south, the Southern Shock Group had enjoyed greater initial success, carving out a penetration 40 kilometers deep across a 55-kilometer-wide front. Soviet spearheads reached the outskirts of Berestyn, and bridgeheads were secured across the Berestova River. These gains, however, had begun to exact a heavy toll on the assault formations, which had still not achieved the objectives originally projected for completion by May 15th. Ammunition shortages grew acute for the attackers, especially for Group Bobkin, which operated more than 190 kilometers from its nearest supply bases. By stark contrast, the German defenders—pushed back onto their own well-stocked depots around Berestyn—enjoyed virtually unlimited resupply. The second wave of Soviet forces remained uncommitted, held idle 20 to 42 kilometers behind the front, awaiting the elusive moment to exploit a breakthrough that never fully materialized.

Soviet intelligence initially believed that all local German reserves had already been committed, but reconnaissance soon revealed columns of reinforcements rushing toward Kharkov from as far afield as Belgorod and even Rostov. The Germans could move these forces freely thanks to the relative passivity of neighboring Soviet fronts. In addition, Army Group South was hurriedly feeding various German police, security, and auxiliary formations—including Romanian and Hungarian units—directly into the frontline to plug gaps and buy time for the panzers.

The German counteroffensive, launched by Kleist’s 1st Panzer Army as the southern pincer of Operation Fridericus, caught everyone by surprise. The Soviets had not anticipated any major enemy action from this direction, and somehow the 9th Army failed to detect the sudden arrival of three additional infantry divisions and an extra panzer division massed directly in front of its positions. For their part, the Germans had not expected the Soviet 9th Army to disintegrate so rapidly upon contact. Field Marshal von Bock had come close to cancelling Kleist’s offensive altogether, fearing phantom Soviet reserves west of the Donets River might trap the assault forces. Instead, Bock proposed an impractical alternative that would have required Kleist’s troops to somehow “teleport” across vast distances to threaten Dnipro and Poltava. Supported by both Kleist and Paulus, Hitler intervened decisively, overruling Bock and insisting that the original Fridericus plan be executed without deviation.

 

In practice, the German assault forces steamrolled most of the Soviet defenders, though isolated pockets mounted stubborn resistance. The Barvinkove garrison initially repelled the first German attacks but was forced to surrender later that day once the town was fully encircled. The 5th Cavalry Corps succeeded in holding Dovhenke despite receiving no orders, while the 333rd and 51st Rifle Divisions managed to retain control of key Donets River crossings. By nightfall on May 17th, the 3rd Panzer Corps had advanced an impressive 24 kilometers, with the supporting infantry of the 16th Army covering 27 kilometers in the same period.

 

In his memoirs, Bagramian would later complain bitterly about the Southern Front’s failures, describing Malinovskiy’s handling of reserves as “incomprehensible” and accusing the front of effectively handing the Germans an open flank on a silver platter. He wrote: “We had counted on the Southern Front to hold firm. Instead, within hours of Kleist’s blow, that flank had ceased to exist as a coherent defensive force.” Bagramian faulted Malinovskiy for squandering reserves earlier in unordered and unauthorized attacks—such as the recent fiasco against Mayaky—and for failing to entrench forces properly in anticipation of a German counterstroke. Those same reserves had been earmarked in Bagramian’s planning to repel any penetration of the 9th Army. Malinovskiy did manage to dispatch the 296th Rifle Division and 3rd Tank Brigade to shore up the Pisky-Radkivski crossing, and he officially transferred the battered 5th Cavalry Corps to the 9th Army, retroactively endorsing their earlier independent actions.

 

Yet the sheer speed of the German advance quickly overwhelmed Soviet command structures. By the end of May 17th, Malinovskiy had lost contact with both the 9th Army headquarters and the committed reserves. Compounding the disaster, the 9th and 57th Armies had been deployed in a single, shallow defensive echelon only about four kilometers deep, with no meaningful divisional reserves held back. Fortification work had been neglected, leaving both armies dangerously exposed. Readiness levels remained low due to staff negligence, and the Southern Front’s VVS contributed almost nothing—managing just 62 sorties on May 17th against more than 2,000 flown by the Luftwaffe, which dominated the skies and hammered Soviet columns relentlessly.

Because several high-profile figures from the Southwestern Front—including the future Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev—were directly involved, the precise details of the Soviet high command’s response remain clouded by postwar political disputes and attempted cover-ups. Contemporary evidence suggests, however, that both STAVKA and the Southwestern Direction commands initially viewed the German threat as manageable and easily containable through local reserves. Timoshenko directed the 23rd Tank Corps toward the 56th Army’s sector with orders to counterattack toward Barvinkove by May 18th. STAVKA released two rifle divisions and two tank brigades to reinforce the collapsing 9th Army, though these units would require three full days to reach the battlefield. Internal debates raged over whether the 6th Army should halt its own offensive to free up strength for a counterblow against Kleist, but Timoshenko and his staff remained confident they could contain the German thrust while pressing onward toward Kharkov.

 

Consequently, on May 18th the Soviet Sixth Army pressed its attack forward. In several sectors, tanks achieved local breakthroughs, yet every penetration was swiftly sealed off by aggressive German counterattacks, leaving the frontline essentially unchanged from dawn. At the same time, the 9th Army continued its rapid collapse, with panic beginning to infect the neighboring 56th Army. Neither formation mounted a coherent defense, allowing German forces to reach the Donets River north of Izyum with alarming ease.

 

In the years after the war, Khrushchev and Bagramyan would insist they had urged an immediate halt to the 6th Army’s offensive once Kleist’s threat became clear, claiming that Stalin, Vasilevskiy, and Timoshenko stubbornly refused to alter course. Khrushchev’s memoirs recount a personal telephone call to Stalin on May 18th in which he pleaded for cancellation, only to be told curtly, “The offensive must proceed. Timoshenko reports the situation is under control.” Khrushchev claimed he felt “sick with dread” upon hanging up. Vasilevskiy maintained that he too had tried to warn Stalin directly, receiving the reply, “Do not panic. Trust the Front commanders.” Yet Zhukov offered a sharply contradictory account in his own memoirs, Reminiscences and Reflections, asserting he had been present for the conversations and heard no such alarms from Khrushchev or Bagramyan. Archival records of contemporaneous reports and radio messages strongly support Zhukov’s version, suggesting the postwar claims were crafted largely to shield personal reputations after the disaster.

 

Meanwhile, Bock and Kleist grew increasingly uneasy, worried they might be walking into a Soviet trap because of the puzzling absence of any meaningful enemy reaction. Their original intent had been merely to draw Soviet forces away from the beleaguered German 6th Army, yet the Soviets appeared to ignore the threat entirely. Bock confided to his diary on May 18th: “Kleist’s advance is proceeding almost too smoothly. The enemy does not react. I cannot escape the feeling that we are missing something—that reserves are being withheld and will fall upon us suddenly.” The next phase called for the 3rd Panzer Corps to wheel westward along the south bank of the Bereka River—a maneuver less immediately dangerous than the northern thrust the Soviets had already overlooked. Kleist therefore proposed a cautious crossing of the Bereka to preserve the option of a northward drive should the enemy continue to ignore the westward shift. On May 19th the 14th Panzer Division seized a small bridgehead at Petrovskoye, narrowing the Izyum neck to just 24 kilometers and denying the Soviets one of their few usable Donets crossings.

 

Throughout May 19th, the German 8th Corps noted that Soviet attacks against its positions were growing steadily weaker and more disorganized. Luftwaffe reconnaissance flights reported large Soviet formations shifting southeastward, away from the 8th Corps. Acting on his own authority, Timoshenko finally ordered a full cessation of the offensive that evening. The German Sixth Army promptly reported: “The enemy’s offensive strength has cracked. The breakthrough to Kharkov is therewith prevented.” Timoshenko then redirected the 6th Army and Group Bobkin against Kleist’s forces and angrily demanded that Riabyshev destroy the Germans in his sector to free up units for the new crisis. Initial Soviet successes on May 20th were quickly erased by counterattacks from the two German panzer divisions. The newly arrived 88th Infantry Division captured portions of Murom, but the gain was not exploited because more promising opportunities beckoned elsewhere.

 

On May 19th, both Bock and Hitler recognized the dramatic shift in momentum and agreed to press on to the original goal of Operation Fridericus: a complete encirclement. Kleist was ordered to race northward to link up with the 6th Army near Balakliia, trapping every Soviet unit inside the salient. Bock instructed the panzers to attack at once following his conversation with Hitler. The next Donets crossing at Protopopivka was to be seized “under all circumstances and as soon as in any way possible.” It fell early on May 20th, though the 14th Panzer Division was left holding only a narrow 13-kilometer-deep by 2-kilometer-wide corridor.

The main body of the 3rd Panzer Corps, which had been pushing westward to crush the 57th Army as far west as possible, was forced to reverse course. German commanders harbored deep misgivings about the reliability of the Romanian divisions anchoring the western sector—misgivings heightened when one Romanian division commander abruptly took leave upon learning of the impending offensive. Consequently, the 3rd Panzer Corps executed a grueling night march to reinforce the vulnerable 14th Panzer bridgehead.

Simultaneously, Bock pressed the cautious Paulus to launch a southward attack with the 3rd and 23rd Panzer Divisions as the northern arm of Fridericus. Paulus, ever methodical, required personal insistence from Bock before committing his armor. That night Bock recorded in his diary with palpable relief: “…tonight, I have given orders aimed at completely sealing off the Izyum bulge. Now everything will turn out well after all!”

 

Over the following days the German panzers methodically ground forward through stubborn resistance. By May 23rd the 23rd and 16th Panzer Divisions linked up 16 kilometers west of Balakliia, establishing a 16-kilometer-wide barrier that severed the Soviet forces inside the salient from safety. The 6th and 57th Armies, together with Group Bobkin, were now fully encircled. All were critically short of fuel and ammunition after two weeks of nonstop combat. General Kostenko was rushed forward to assume overall command of the trapped Soviet troops in the Izyum pocket. The outcome was catastrophic. When Timoshenko attempted to explain the disaster to Stalin, he reportedly admitted that the speed of Kleist’s northward pivot had been “unexpected” and that the Southern Front’s collapse had rendered any organized response impossible. Stalin’s reaction, according to those present at Stavka, was one of icy fury. After a long, ominous silence following the encirclement report, he simply stated: “See to it that they break out. That is all.” The terse order concealed neither his rage nor any promise of mercy.

To the south, General Kurochkin abandoned his 17-day offensive aimed at crushing the Ramushevo corridor on May 20th. The operation had achieved little beyond inflicting heavy losses on the attacking Soviet divisions and causing temporary supply disruptions to the German 2nd Corps around Demyansk. The frontline stabilized along the Lovat River. After-action reports cited the failure on inexperience in reducing large encircled forces, a persistent underestimation of German defensive capabilities, and repeated misreading of enemy intentions. They also highlighted the chronic Soviet failure to fortify junctions between cooperating armies—a vulnerability the Germans had exploited since the opening days of the war.

With Soviet offensives in the north seemingly exhausted for the moment, the German 2nd Corps turned its attention to rebuilding its depleted ranks and stockpiles. It also focused on subduing the local civilian population and partisan bands, whose resistance had been inflamed by earlier Soviet paratrooper infiltrations. General Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt ordered the civilian population to harvest crops within the occupied salient for German use, while the 10th Corps pressed locals into forced labor to repair the Staraya Russa–Demyansk road and construct bunkers and shelters along the frontline.

 

At the same time, the 16th Army directed the laying of a narrow-gauge railway from Staraya Russa toward the Pola River to improve logistics. Soviet artillery dominance over the narrow Ramushevo Corridor prevented its extension all the way to Demyansk. Group Zorn retained responsibility for defending the corridor itself, now under the command of General Knobelsdorff. Engineers worked feverishly to fortify positions across the entire 16th Army front; in front of the 123rd Infantry Division alone, more than 22,000 mines and 400 rolls of barbed wire were emplaced to create an impregnable defensive belt. Behind the lines of Army Group Center, Operation Hannover—the planned reduction of Soviet partisan forces and encircled units in the rear areas—was postponed once again by heavy rains that once more turned the ground into thick, impassable mud. Despite persistent rain clouds still blanketing the region on May 23rd, General Heinrici ordered the offensive to commence on the 24th anyway, determined not to forfeit the element of surprise.

 

The delay had given the Abwehr time to attempt its own elaborate deception. Since late 1941 the German military intelligence service had been training turned Soviet prisoners of war as diversionist agents. Some 350 of these agents, organized as the Experimental Organization Center, were assigned to Army Group Center for Operation Hannover. They were infiltrated gradually into the operational area of General Belov’s cavalry corps with orders to assassinate Belov and his staff and sow confusion by issuing false orders and disinformation to Red Army units.

 

The plan backfired spectacularly. One of the agents deserted back to the Soviet side, providing Belov with precise advanced warning of the German offensive. This intelligence allowed the majority of the diversionists to be hunted down and eliminated. Belov later recalled that the deserter’s information was startlingly detailed—he could name German assembly points and even the approximate date of the attack. “It was,” Belov wrote, “as if the Germans had sent us their operational orders by courier.” By May 21st Belov was fully aware that the Germans were forming into two assault groups. While subordinate commander Kazankin saw to it that his own formation dug in along the designated line, he neglected to secure the critical Ugra River crossing or coordinate a joint defense plan with Belov.

 

This oversight occurred despite Kazankin’s forces having been officially subordinated to the newly created “Special Group of General Belov,” established by Zhukov on May 20th. The special group granted Belov unified command over his cavalry corps, airborne detachments, and all partisans operating in the region. A planned airlift to reinforce the grouping had also been organized, but poor staff work and organizational chaos hindered the effort despite sharp reprimands from Zhukov. Only 1,663 of the intended 9,000 reinforcements arrived, and only a tiny fraction of planned equipment deliveries materialized, leaving Belov’s forces critically understrength for the coming fight.

 

It was also during this week that the first of the Germans’ super-heavy artillery pieces began arriving in the vicinity of Sevastopol, although even after delivery many would require weeks before becoming fully operational. The colossal Dora railway gun, for example, would need six weeks and its 2,000-man crew to assemble after its scheduled arrival on May 26th. General Erich von Manstein, the meticulous commander overseeing the siege artillery preparations for 11th Army, approached the task with characteristic thoroughness. In his postwar memoirs Lost Victories he emphasized that the reduction of Sevastopol demanded “the most careful coordination of all arms,” adding that he harbored no illusions about the difficulty: “The fortress was one of the strongest in the world. Its garrison was brave and its commanders determined. We could not afford a single mistake in the sequence of the attack.” Eventually more than twenty different calibers of artillery would be concentrated before Sevastopol, creating minor logistical bottlenecks. The Dora arrived with a mere 48 rounds, while the three Karl-Gerät mortars brought only 122 shells between them. Much of the actual German firepower would come instead from more reliable Czech-manufactured pieces—sixteen 30.5 cm mortars and sixteen 14.9 cm Škoda howitzers—precisely because abundant stocks of ammunition were available for these weapons.

On May 19th the Sevastopol Defense Region received orders to complete its final defensive preparations in anticipation of an imminent German assault. Between January and May 1942, Soviet convoys had successfully delivered some 35,000 replacements while evacuating 9,000 wounded from Petrov’s Coastal Army. Petrov now commanded a force numbering between 106,000 and 188,000 men and women—106,000 representing combat-effective strength across eight full-strength divisions plus supporting brigades and regiments, while the higher figure included all rear-echelon and support personnel. The garrison possessed roughly 600 artillery pieces, though none matched the scale of the largest German siege guns. Thousands of civilians had already been evacuated from the city to reduce the burden on supplies. Meanwhile, the Crimean Front was officially disbanded, and the North Caucasus Theater was downgraded to Front status. It remained under Marshal Budenny, with explicit orders to safeguard Sevastopol at all costs and prevent any German or Romanian landing on the Taman Peninsula that might open a second front in the Caucasus.

I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.

German panzers drive through weak Soviet defenses, supported by overwhelming Luftwaffe air power, while Soviet reserves are mishandled, poorly fortified, and too slow to arrive. Attempts to halt or redirect the offensive are tangled in command and political disputes, with later memoir conflicts over whether Stalin was warned in time. By late May, German forces seal the Izyum salient, encircling large Soviet formations including the 6th and 57th Armies and Group Bobkin. The trapped troops face catastrophic shortages and are ordered to break out.

Last time we spoke about operation Trappenjagd. During the initial amphibious landing, Soviet artillery sank thirteen assault boats, but German troops still seized key bunkers and rapidly expanded the bridgehead. Joint air and ground pressure pinned Soviet second-line units while German exploitation surged toward Kerch, despite delays from engineering work to build tank-capable bridges. In the Arctic near Zapadnaya Litsa, heavy snow and fortified German-Finnish positions helped stall Soviet flanking offensives that became overextended and vulnerable to counterattacks. Around Leningrad, industrial production ramped up and Lake Ladoga defenses were strengthened to protect the city’s lifeline. Elsewhere, the Soviets reorganized front commands after the Volkhov Front’s dissolution, while the Germans used deception measures (maskirovka) to conceal true strategic intentions and delay Soviet expectations of the coming campaign.

This episode is the second battle of Kharkiv

Well hello there, welcome to the Eastern Front week by week podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

 

Along the Arctic coastline, the weather around Zapadnaya Litsa had at last improved sufficiently to permit meaningful military activity. However, the operational picture had shifted considerably against the Soviets. The German reinforcements that had arrived during the prior week had fundamentally altered the balance of forces, rendering the 12th Naval Brigade too weak and too diminished to carry out its original flanking mission. Compounding this, sustained attention from Luftwaffe bombers had badly degraded the brigade's already fragile supply line stretching across the bay. That supply line had always been a precarious arrangement — the brigade had been operating at the extreme end of a logistical chain that crossed open water, a fragile lifeline under any circumstances, and one the Germans had targeted with growing ferocity once its function became clear to them. The cumulative effect of enemy air interdiction and dwindling manpower left the brigade in an untenable position. Rather than allow it to be ground down in place to no purpose, orders were issued on the 14th for the brigade to withdraw. The question of whether a larger Soviet landing force, committed two weeks earlier, might have produced a meaningfully different outcome remains a matter of open speculation.

With that flanking threat extinguished, Mountain Corps Norway seized the initiative and launched a series of limited counter-attacks aimed at restoring the line along its entire front to the positions held before the Soviet offensive had begun. These German moves succeeded in forcing the Soviet 14th Army to abandon whatever offensive ambitions it had entertained. The reinforcement of a further rifle division the preceding week had done nothing of consequence — it had proven insufficient either to sustain an offensive push or to stiffen the defence against the renewed German pressure.

The improving weather was also felt further south near Kestenga, where conditions had finally become tolerable enough for the Finnish 3rd Corps to execute the counter-attack it had been compelled to postpone. On the 15th, Finnish forces finally lunged forward — and ran directly into an extensive network of field fortifications that Soviet troops had thrown up with considerable urgency in the intervening time. The Finnish formations quickly found themselves mired, both literally and figuratively. The ground around Kestenga was profoundly inhospitable to the kind of fluid, fast-moving operations that had made Finland's forces so formidable during the Winter War. Dense forests and waterlogged, boggy terrain funnelled any advance along narrow and entirely predictable axes of approach, stripping the Finnish Army of the infiltration tactics that had historically been its greatest asset and reducing the engagement to a grinding attritional contest. By the end of the week, the attack had stalled completely, and the front near Kestenga had settled into an exhausted stalemate.

Within the beleaguered city of Leningrad, the garrison commander brought a deeply alarming picture to official attention. The sanitation and clean-up measures undertaken over the previous two months had manifestly failed in their purpose. His report documented a sixfold increase in cases of dysentery and typhoid fever compared to April of 1941, and an almost incomprehensible twenty-five-fold increase in spotted typhus over the same baseline. As many as thirty percent of the city's population was afflicted with a serious lice infestation. The infrastructure underpinning basic sanitation had collapsed almost entirely: only seven percent of apartments retained running water, while just nine percent had functional access to the sewage system. Of the sixty-five public baths the city had once operated, fewer than half remained in any working order, and only six of the fourteen first aid posts were functional — all of them plagued by frequent and unpredictable interruptions to their service. The garrison commander did not merely catalogue these facts; he issued an urgent call for substantially improved medical provision for the civilian population, alongside a far more proactive strategy for identifying and containing outbreak centres. His underlying fear was specific and pointed: he was gravely concerned that any serious infectious outbreak spreading from the civilian population into the military garrison could degrade the city's defences at a moment when it could least afford such a blow. General Kabanov's warning was as much a military concern as a humanitarian one.

The deteriorating situation surrounding the 2nd Shock Army continued to evolve throughout the week, though the overall picture at command level remained deeply and dangerously confused. By this point the army had been fighting inside the Lyuban pocket for months on end, its combat strength steadily eroded by unrelenting engagements, chronically inadequate resupply, and the simple physical punishment of operating in one of the most hostile stretches of terrain anywhere on the Eastern Front. The Volkhov swamplands, even in summer, were a miserable theatre of operations; in the spring thaw they became something close to impassable, with every track dissolving into quagmire and the movement of any supplies becoming a near-impossible task even in the absence of active German interference.

STAVKA responded on the 14th, issuing Operational Directive No. 00120/op from the Leningrad Front commander to the commander of the 2nd Shock Army concerning the army's withdrawal. STAVKA's assessment was that the proposed defensive line would require no fewer than four divisions simply to hold, while doing nothing at all to secure the army's lines of communication. Stalin's directive ordered the 2nd Shock Army to assault the Priiutino and Spasskaia Polist' salient in concert with the 59th Army, and then to consolidate its position within the Spasskaia Polist' and Miasnoi Bor region, forming a coherent and solid defensive line together with the 52nd and 59th Armies.

On the 15th, Khozin submitted a revised operational plan. As recorded in STAVKA VGK Directive No. 170379 concerning the withdrawal of the 2nd Shock Army, Khozin argued that the original STAVKA plan should be reframed as the first phase of a two-stage withdrawal. Its purpose in this formulation was to disengage safely from German contact and establish a new, compact, and defensible line. This would provide a secure foundation from which to concentrate forces for a subsequent offensive operation. It would also protect the only road suitable for a breakout. The second phase would see the 2nd Shock Army take up a new defensive line safeguarding the Leningrad highway, with the precise details of that phase dependent upon the successful conclusion of the first. STAVKA approved this plan on the 16th. This approval finally allowed Khozin to order Vlasov to attempt the breakout in coordination with a westward offensive by the 59th Army. Glantz records that on that single day alone, the 13th Cavalry Corps, two rifle brigades, three rifle divisions, and two tank brigades managed to fight their way through the narrow Miasnoi Bor corridor. Other sources, however, dispute this account, arguing that operational failures within the Leningrad Front substantially hampered the withdrawal and severely restricted the flow of troops through the corridor. Some accounts go so far as to suggest that no meaningful withdrawal of the 2nd Shock Army occurred until considerably later in the month — a claim that may carry some technical validity, given that not all forces trapped within the Lyuban pocket were formally organised under the 2nd Shock Army. A portion of those forces fell under the 59th and 52nd Armies, or directly under the Front's own command.

During this same week, Field Marshal Kluge reached the conclusion that the 9th Army's Operation Nordpol was an undertaking that exceeded what was operationally achievable and resolved to cancel it. Nordpol had been conceived as a sweeping double envelopment of Soviet forces lodged within the Rzhev salient — a sound enough concept at the level of operational theory, but one that presupposed a degree of logistical and manpower surplus that Army Group Centre simply did not possess in the spring of 1942. It is highly probable that Kluge chose this particular moment to act precisely because Hitler's attention had been drawn entirely southward, consumed by the unfolding crises in Ukraine and Crimea. That distraction afforded Kluge somewhat greater latitude to exercise his own judgement without interference.

In place of Nordpol, a considerably more restrained operation — Seydlitz — was selected. This was a smaller and more focused offensive, aimed at closing the thirty-kilometre gap between German positions at Olenino and Bely. That narrow corridor represented the sole remaining connection between the Soviet 39th Army and the 11th Cavalry Corps and the Kalinin Front, and through it flowed whatever supplies kept those forces alive in the field. The corridor itself was defended by troops drawn from the 22nd and 41st Armies. Of particular note was the 17th Guards Rifle Division, which had dug itself into the streets of the long-disputed town of Bely. Once the corridor was sealed, successive attacks were planned to compress and destroy the encircled forces. However, Kluge determined that Operation Hanover — then already in progress — should be brought to a rapid conclusion first, with the troops thus freed then being redirected to reinforce Operation Seydlitz.

Further south, Kurochin's assault on the Ramnushevo corridor ground on throughout the week in precisely the same pattern that had defined the preceding one. The same positions were struck by the same predictable assaults, and the mud continued to slow all movement to barely a crawl. The narrow corridor at Ramnushevo had by this point acquired all the grim character of a killing ground. Both sides knew with near-perfect certainty where the Soviet attacks would fall, and the Germans had exploited every interval between assaults to deepen their field fortifications, lay additional wire obstacles, and pre-register their artillery on the most likely Soviet axes of approach. This preparation allowed German reserves to be shuttled with relative ease to each threatened point as the need arose, reinforcing a defensive position that was becoming progressively stronger. The week closed with the Soviet offensive having gained no significant ground. The Ramnushevo corridor stood as it had before: a narrow, blood-soaked stretch of contested terrain that illustrated in miniature the terrible difficulty of offensive operations in these conditions.

Meanwhile, Field Marshal von Bock had resolved to take a calculated risk and unleash Operation Fridericus ahead of schedule. The potential payoff was considerable: a successful execution might rescue the German Sixth Army from its mounting difficulties and destroy several Soviet armies in the process. The downside was equally stark — failure would expose additional German formations to potential destruction at a moment when reserves were scarce. Bock's ability to act was further complicated by the fact that he no longer exercised command over all the formations theoretically available to him in Ukraine. A substantial portion of the newly arrived reinforcements remained under the direct control of OKH, and Bock was uncertain of their readiness or even, in some cases, their precise locations. Even setting aside these informational gaps, Hitler was deeply reluctant to release those formations to Bock's command for an offensive operation, preferring to conserve their strength for the summer campaign. The practical consequence was that Army Group Kleist would have to carry the weight of the operation with minimal resources. Kleist himself believed he could realistically accomplish only the southern half of the offensive, which would reduce the mouth of the Soviet salient by no more than thirty-six kilometres — a result that would not materially alter the situation for the Soviets trapped within it.

Bock therefore adopted a tactic borrowed from Kluge's own playbook. He presented Hitler with two operational options. The first was Fridericus as originally conceived. The second was a more modest proposal: four divisions extracted from Kleist's lines and committed to a limited thrust across the rear of the southern Soviet penetration. Privately, Bock favoured the smaller, more prudent counter-thrust, but he knew Hitler's psychology intimately enough to predict with confidence what the presentation of two such options would produce. He explained his reasoning to his Chief of Staff with a kind of resigned clarity: "Now the Führer will order the big solution. The laurels will go to the Supreme Command and we will have to be content with what is left." Events bore him out entirely. Hitler not only ordered Fridericus but also promised that every available aircraft from Crimea would be redirected to support it. The 22nd Panzer Division and the bulk of remaining Luftwaffe support were accordingly stripped away from Manstein. Kleist received orders to attack at dawn on the 17th. Soviet forces had actually seized planning documents for Fridericus as early as the 13th, but the intelligence they contained was not relayed to Timoshenko until late on the 17th — by which point it was of severely diminished value.

In Crimea, the German advance resumed late on the 10th. The operational tempo that Manstein had maintained during the opening days of Operation Trappenjagd had been exceptional — a pace of exploitation so swift that the Soviet command had been unable to process it coherently, let alone respond effectively. Manstein's priority was now to prevent any pause from allowing the Soviets to recover their composure. A thick fog had settled across the operational area, and although the Germans were prepared to push through the mud, it was judged prudent to wait for the fog to clear rather than risk disorientation among attacking formations. There was genuine anxiety that even a brief delay might allow Soviet forces to slip out of the trap, though in truth the same conditions that impeded the Germans were equally obstructive to the Soviets. The 22nd Panzer Division led the northern hook with the 28th Light Infantry following in support. The mud hampered the pace of the armoured advance considerably, and by nightfall a narrow corridor remained open along the coast through which some Soviet elements were attempting to escape. While the Panzers pushed forward, the 28th Light and the 50th Infantry Divisions manoeuvred to positions east and south of the 51st Army to tighten the encirclement. During the day a Soviet armoured counter-attack had been launched against the Panzer spearhead, but it was spotted and interdicted by the Luftwaffe before it could close with the German advance.

With communications from Kozlov's Crimean Front reduced to sporadic fragments and a growing realisation at the higher levels that a catastrophe was developing, STAVKA ordered the 47th Army to counter-attack early on the 10th. What it had available, however, was barely adequate for the task: a handful of second-rate troops without tank support or artillery. The force was so weak it could barely reconstitute a coherent front line, let alone mount a meaningful counter-attack, and its attempts were effortlessly repulsed. Five STAVKA artillery regiments were theoretically available to support operations, but the communications links to them had been severed on the first day of the German offensive and had not been restored. Without direct orders, those regiments simply remained stationary and idle, contributing nothing to either the defence or the counter-attack. The Crimean VVS was similarly inert, paralysed by a complete absence of operational orders.

On the 11th, the 22nd Panzer Division at last reached the Sea of Azov and completed the encirclement of the 51st Army. As Ziemke notes, the 22nd Panzer, 28th Light, and 50th Infantry Divisions were subsequently transferred to the 42nd Corps, which was charged with reducing the pocket. In their place, the relatively fresh 170th Infantry Division was assigned to the 30th Corps to reinforce Group Groddeck and the 132nd Infantry in clearing the remainder of the Kerch Peninsula. The 132nd was to advance along the Black Sea coastline retracing Groddeck's route, while the 170th secured the Sea of Azov coastline.

With the 51st Army completely surrounded, Manstein ordered it crushed from all directions simultaneously. The pressure was overwhelming. Soviet command and control, both inside and outside the pocket, collapsed entirely. The 51st Army surrendered before the day was out. Those Soviet troops who had not been encircled dissolved into a mass rout, streaming toward what they hoped would be safety at Kerch. Panicked rumours had by this point spread so thoroughly about the weight of German forces already behind the Soviet defensive lines that any attempt to re-form along those lines was abandoned before it could be made. Thousands of retreating soldiers crowded onto the only paved road running from Parapach to Kerch, rendering themselves easy targets for Luftwaffe ground attack aircraft. The Soviet anti-aircraft units, however, remained intact and fought determinedly to provide cover for the rout. When Bomber Group 55 sought to press their advantage by flying lower for greater accuracy, they paid a price for the attempt — losing eight He-111 bombers to ground fire before pulling back.

Group Groddeck continued its drive toward Kerch. The Sultanovka line was crossed without serious resistance early on the 10th. With that line breached, the last of the prepared Soviet defensive positions had been penetrated, and the only remaining objective was to reach Kerch itself before the Soviets could complete their evacuation. On the 11th, however, Group Groddeck was ambushed by the 11th NKVD Division just short of the city. Groddeck himself was wounded again in the engagement — though accounts of what became of him vary considerably. Manstein himself would later claim he died of those wounds, while the fact that Groddeck commanded an infantry division as late as 1943 makes this account difficult to accept at face value. Despite the initial shock of the ambush, the NKVD division soon began to fall back once its troops recognised they were facing tanks, artillery, and mounting air attack simultaneously. Even so, the delay proved consequential — it was sufficient to prevent the early seizure of the port facilities at Kerch. Kozlov, by this point, issued orders for the evacuation of what remained of the Crimean Front from Kerch, calling upon the Azov Flotilla and requisitioning eighty fishing vessels to provide whatever sealift capacity could be improvised.

An aerial contest of considerable ferocity developed over the straits as the 8th Air Corps attempted to interdict the evacuation while the VVS fought to protect it. Three transport vessels carrying a combined total of nine hundred wounded were sunk, along with a number of gun and patrol boats and many of the requisitioned civilian craft. In addition to this interdiction campaign, Kerch itself was firebombed on the 12th to hinder Soviet withdrawal efforts. The Black Sea Fleet played an almost entirely peripheral role, contributing little beyond several inconsequential night-time bombardment missions near Feodosiya. It was during this evacuation that both the 22nd Panzer Division and a substantial portion of the 8th Air Corps were recalled to address the rapidly deteriorating situation in Ukraine — a diversion that proved bitterly frustrating to Richthofen, who had watched his VIII Air Corps come within reach of annihilating the entire Crimean Front. He would later lament: "One isn't sure whether to cry or curse," as he observed the surviving Soviet troops completing their passage to the Taman shore — soldiers who would, in time, be reconstituted and return to the fight.

By the 13th, the main body of the 30th Corps had reached the Sultanovka line and engaged the Soviet rearguards. By the 14th, the 132nd and 170th Infantry Divisions had arrived at the western outskirts of Kerch. During this phase of the fighting, a notable incident occurred: one assault group from Infantry Regiment 391, accompanied by four assault guns, overextended its advance and was cut off. The group fought its way back to German lines, but all four assault guns were disabled and their crews wounded in the process. The following day, German forces fought through the port town and established batteries of 20mm and 88mm anti-aircraft guns along the piers to fire directly on Soviet evacuation vessels.

With their planned embarkation points now cut off, Colonel Yagunov withdrew what remained of his force to the Adzhimushkay Quarry. The quarry offered natural shelter and a degree of defensibility that was unavailable in the open terrain around the port, though it also meant from the moment of withdrawal that those troops were operating without reliable access to water, food, or medical supplies. Somehow, they held out for one hundred and seventy days before being overcome — a siege that stands as one of the more remarkable episodes of Soviet resistance in the entire war, though one that has received comparatively little attention in either Soviet or Western historiography, largely overshadowed by the scale of the catastrophe surrounding it. The vast majority of the other Soviet holdouts in and around Kerch had been eliminated by May 20th.

The scale of Soviet losses during this period was catastrophic. Forczyk records that somewhere between 37,000 and 73,000 Soviet personnel were evacuated from the Crimean Front to the Taman Peninsula, though one Soviet source advances the considerably less credible figure of 120,000 evacuated. An estimated twenty percent of those evacuated were wounded. The overwhelming majority of the Crimean Front's heavy equipment had been abandoned in the field, though some care had been taken to recover rocket launcher vehicles and a portion of the artillery. Citino estimates that 1,100 guns and 250 tanks were either abandoned or destroyed. Forczyk's accounting of casualties gives the Crimean Front 28,000 dead and 147,000 captured out of 250,000 troops engaged, with an additional 417 aircraft lost by the Crimean VVS. In exchange, Manstein's 11th Army suffered a total of 7,588 casualties during Operation Trappenjagd. The 6,230 tons of ammunition expended would require two weeks to replenish before the 11th Army could contemplate launching any further major operations.

These losses were on top of the 352,000 casualties of all types the Crimean Front had already suffered between January and April. For context, only the Western Front had sustained heavier losses over that same period, with 524,910 casualties. The Kalinin Front's losses had been of comparable magnitude to those of the Crimean Front, at 317,060. These three fronts accounted for a substantial share of the Red Army's total losses of 2,352,000 between January and April. The survivors were gathered at Budyonny's headquarters, where a formal inquiry into the disaster was convened. Stalin's reaction, upon receiving reports detailing the full extent of the defeat, was remarkable in what it revealed: he commented to Zhukov, "You see, that's where going on the defensive gets you." The observation was striking in its detachment from reality — the Crimean Front had been conducting near-continuous offensive operations since January, had been actively prevented from constructing proper defensive works by Mekhlis's incessant interference, and had collapsed in a rout rather than a methodical fighting withdrawal. Stalin's remark speaks less to the actual causes of the disaster than it does to his own deeply held conviction that an offensive posture must be maintained across all fronts at all times — a conviction that contributed directly to the catastrophes at both Kerch and Kharkov.

Kozlov was demoted and eventually posted to the Trans-Baikal Military District for the remainder of the war. Mekhlis was reduced by two ranks to Corps Commissar, despite his energetic attempts to deflect responsibility onto others, and lost his positions as Deputy Defence Commissar and head of the Political Administration of the Red Army. Citino's assessment of Mekhlis is unsparing: his incompetent interference was worth an entire army corps to the Germans. All other senior officers of the Crimean Front were demoted and relegated to secondary postings. Only Kolganov of the 47th Army would manage to partially recover his professional reputation at a later stage of the war.

The Bryansk Front had been scheduled to launch its offensive on the 12th in coordination with Timoshenko's Southwestern Front. The intended synchronisation was conceptually ambitious — a simultaneous Bryansk thrust was designed to pin German reserves in place and prevent their transfer south to reinforce against Timoshenko's main blow. Logistical difficulties, however, frustrated the build-up of the fuel and ammunition stockpiles needed to sustain the attack. Stalin granted Golikov a postponement to the 16th, but events elsewhere on the front had by that point made any offensive out of the question. The failure to launch the Bryansk Front's supporting attack on its original schedule would prove consequential in hindsight — it granted the Germans an operational flexibility in shifting formations precisely the kind of flexibility the original Soviet plan had been designed to prevent.

Early on the 12th, Timoshenko's offensive opened with an hour-long combined aerial and artillery bombardment. Soviet advantages in manpower varied according to the source consulted, ranging from 3:2 to 1.5:1, though there is general agreement that the Soviets had concentrated a 2:1 advantage in armour over the Germans. Roughly half of the Soviet tank strength, however, consisted of lighter models — the T-60 and older BT-series tanks — rather than the heavier types that might have proved more decisive. The German Sixth Army reported that on the first day alone it was struck by six rifle divisions and more than three hundred tanks. As reports of the Soviet assault accumulated, Bock reported to Halder that the Sixth Army was fighting "for its life." Halder's initial response was dismissive — he characterised the early Soviet gains as nothing more than cosmetic blemishes on the map, and it required persistent effort from Bock to persuade him that they represented a genuine crisis before Halder would consent to releasing reinforcements to Paulus. The episode reflects a peculiar institutional dysfunction: Halder had spent months managing Hitler's volatile and unpredictable interventions in operational matters and had developed a reflexive caution about raising alarms prematurely with the Führer, even when the evidence before him was unambiguous.

By midday on the 12th, the Soviet 6th and 28th Armies, together with Group Bobkin, had broken through the German first line of defence. In the south, the lightly equipped Hungarian 108th Infantry Division and the German 464th Security Division, both critically short of anti-tank weapons, had been brushed aside with minimal difficulty. The day's fighting produced advances of up to fifteen kilometres in depth.

In the north, the 28th Army encountered stiffer resistance that constrained its initial progress, but the more experienced 38th Army on its southern flank moved quickly, advancing ten kilometres. The 38th's forward movement pulled the 28th Army along behind it as the Germans were forced to react. By the evening of the 12th, Soviet tanks attached to the 28th Army were positioned eighteen kilometres north of Kharkiv.

Bock's response was to demand immediate counter-attacks. The 23rd Panzer Division, together with the 71st and 113rd Infantry Divisions, was released to the Sixth Army — formations that had been earmarked for Fridericus but were now redirected to deal with the immediate crisis. It would require further effort to persuade Halder to release divisions that had been set aside for the summer offensive, Fall Blau. This pressure also overrode the more cautious instincts of the relatively inexperienced Paulus, who had preferred to hold his village strongpoints defensively. Bock also transferred four air groups away from Crimea to support the Sixth Army, further straining the resources available to Manstein.

By the 13th, the German 8th Corps had been pushed back to the Berestova River, with gaps opening on both its flanks. It had lost contact with Kleist's neighbouring Army Group and with the 51st Corps. The smaller of the two breaches in the German line was a sixteen-kilometre gap just southwest of Zmiiv. Through the larger southern breach, Soviet cavalry were attempting to infiltrate past German outposts toward Berestyn.

The 28th Army had largely been brought to a halt by a German force that had been encircled and was holding the village strongpoint of Ternova. The 38th Army, however, was still advancing on its southern flank. In response, Paulus assembled the 23rd Panzer Division alongside the 71st and 113rd Infantry Divisions, incorporating elements drawn from the 3rd Panzer and 305th Infantry Divisions, to form a new battle group. This formation was thrown against the 38th Army with dive-bomber support. During this operation the Luftwaffe made extensive use of the Sprengbombe Dickwandig 2 kg butterfly anti-personnel cluster bomb — nicknamed the "Devil's Egg" by German ground crews — against three Soviet rifle divisions, which were forced to fall back to the Donets near Velyka Babka. There they managed to restore a defensive line with the assistance of three tank brigades. While Moskalenko succeeded in containing the German counter-attack, his army had absorbed sufficient damage to force him to abandon further offensive operations, leaving the 28th Army to continue its advance unsupported on its flank.

By the dawn of the 14th, Volchansk's 28th Army had advanced nearly twenty kilometres, while Gorodnyanskii's 6th Army had penetrated almost twenty-five kilometres through German lines. With the Soviets seemingly holding the advantage, this is the point at which the historical record becomes contested and controversial. For reasons that remain disputed, Timoshenko failed to commit the substantial reserves that had been concentrated precisely for the purpose of exploiting the initial successes of those first two days. Some accounts hold that Timoshenko simply failed to recognise the moment of decision when it arrived. Others suggest he was rendered overly cautious by erroneous intelligence reports concerning large concentrations of German Panzers assembling around Zmiiv — a concern documented in a report to STAVKA that cited two Panzer divisions as a serious impediment to continued advance. Still others place the responsibility on the organisational failures of Army Headquarters and their inability to bring the Tank Corps to bear effectively. This last explanation carries some genuine weight: it was assumed by army commanders that the tank corps would follow closely behind the spearheads, but without any explicit orders to do so they remained sitting at their assembly areas. Even once the decision to commit them had been made, this organisational failure would delay their arrival and impact, a delay made worse still by the increasing weight of German air power over the operational area. It is worth noting that one of the principal advocates of the view blaming Army Headquarters was Bagramian, then serving as Chief of Staff of the Southern Front — a position that gave him an obvious professional interest in directing responsibility for the operation's failures away from his own level of command.

Whatever the true cause, the armoured reserves of the Southwestern Front remained idle throughout the 14th. Soviet official histories would later be strikingly candid in acknowledging this failure. The History of the Second World War conceded bluntly that the front and theatre command "did not take advantage of the favorable situation existing on 14 May and did not put in the mobile forces to complete the encirclement." Moskalenko, commanding the 38th Army, attributed the failure to a fundamental indecisiveness at the front command level — Timoshenko, in his view, had waited for "a more favorable moment" and in doing so had allowed the moment that existed to pass him by entirely. Without the commitment of armoured reserves, the Soviet advance stalled. The stall was deepened by a critical shortage of artillery ammunition: when the offensive began, the front's artillery regiments had on average only two days' worth of ammunition available to them, despite the operational plan requiring them to deliver fire support for six days.

I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.

In the Crimea, Soviet communications collapsed and a poorly prepared 47th Army failed to counterattack; artillery and air support were largely immobilized due to severed links, while German forces completed the encirclement of the 51st Army. Meanwhile, the Soviet offensive around Kharkiv initially broke through German lines, advancing rapidly with tank-heavy weight, but German counterattacks and Luftwaffe disruption slowed momentum.

Last time we spoke about the drive towards Kholm. STAVKA created the 53rd Army from Group Ksenofontov to secure the southern approaches to the Demyansk pocket, while additional artillery was allocated to support the forthcoming Soviet effort against the Ramushevo corridor. In parallel, OKH maintained that the Ostheer had grown stronger since June 1941, attributing this to newly formed divisions and continuing deliveries of equipment; however, this assessment tended to overlook lingering manpower shortages, inadequate replacement quality, and deficiencies in junior command. Plans for Kharkiv were likewise refined around a limited breakthrough aimed at facilitating an encirclement. In Crimea, Kozlov’s defensive posture was described as overstretched, and Manstein’s Luftwaffe-supported Trappenjagd was prepared for a coastal thrust toward the Black Sea. 

This episode is Operation Trappenjagd

Well hello there, welcome to the Eastern Front week by week podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

 

The fog of war was hitting hard in Ukraine, with both sides flying blind about what the enemy was cooking up next. Around Kharkiv, Generals Bock and Timoshenko were getting more and more jittery, each one half-expecting the other to beat them to the punch and kick off a massive offensive first. That paranoia sparked a noticeable uptick in small-scale hit-and-run raids all across Ukraine—especially in the Izyum Salient. The Soviets’ inexperience turned these nuisance attacks into a real headache for them, and it was yet another factor pushing back their own Kharkiv offensive until the 12th. Soviet staff officers were painfully green when it came to shuffling huge formations around; instead of crisp written orders, they often barked out conflicting verbal instructions that left units tangled up and crossing each other’s supply lines in a glorious mess. With so few experienced officers on hand, they were stretched ridiculously thin and simply couldn’t sort out the resulting chaos. On top of that, Luftwaffe interdiction raids kept hammering key roads and bridges, scattering troops every time a plane screamed overhead. After each strike, units had to scramble back together, tend to the wounded, and haul away damaged gear before they could even think about moving again.

 

These little raids were no accident—they were part of a bigger pattern of probing and poking that had been ramping up since late April. Both armies were desperately fishing for intelligence while trying to grind down the other side’s readiness. German reconnaissance flights and ground patrols kept spotting Soviet buildups in the salient, but the Soviets’ constant counter-raids—usually small infantry groups backed by a handful of tanks—kept Bock’s forces from going all-in on their own preparations without worrying about getting hit first. Meanwhile, Timoshenko was catching heat from STAVKA to hurry up and get ready for what would become the Second Battle of Kharkov. Logistical knots and command friction kept shoving his timetable back, though. All this mutual suspicion, fed by spotty intelligence, was setting the table for one of the Eastern Front’s most explosive spring showdowns—just days away.

 

While the final tweaks for that big offensive were happening elsewhere, spring fighting was about to flare up again in Crimea. As Citino points out, when Operation Trappenjagd kicked off, the Soviets held a comfortable two-to-one edge in manpower and equipment on the ground. In the air, though, the Germans enjoyed an overwhelming advantage—not just in numbers but in the quality of their planes and pilots. Those Soviet ground advantages were also partly wiped out by the sheer clumsiness of the Crimean Front’s command staff. The sudden spike in Luftwaffe activity was a dead giveaway that something big was coming. By the 5th, the Crimean Front was fully braced for a German attack; some reports even mentioned cheeky placards along the lines reading, “Come on. We are waiting.” Yet the Soviets still hadn’t bothered to dig in properly. Most of their fortifications were leftovers from 1941 or earlier, and only token work had been done to reposition headquarters and artillery. A few Soviet sources even claim that Kozlov was still planning another stab at Koi-Asan late on the 8th—even though he knew a German offensive was right around the corner.

 

This complacency came from months of Soviet pressure on the Parpach Isthmus. Since January, Kozlov’s Crimean Front—made up of the 44th, 51st, and 47th Armies—had been hammering away at Manstein’s thinly stretched 11th Army, which was also busy pinning down Soviet forces at Sevastopol. Those earlier attacks had bled the Soviets badly in men and machines, but they had also convinced Kozlov and his commissar, Lev Mekhlis, that the Germans were stuck on the defensive and ripe for one more push. Manstein, however, had been quietly perfecting a counterpunch, drawing on lessons from earlier campaigns and stressing the need to concentrate force exactly where it would hurt most. As he later wrote in his memoirs, he liked to park himself right behind the front lines before launching big operations so he could keep a personal eye on things—a habit that paid off big time amid the rugged Kerch Peninsula terrain.

What’s more, the feints by a single German division and three Romanian ones under the 42nd Corps had completely sold Kozlov on the idea that any German attack would come in the north. The ramped-up Luftwaffe activity had also blinded his three reconnaissance squadrons. Kozlov bought the whole charade hook, line, and sinker, never once wondering why his recon assets had suddenly become the Luftwaffe’s favorite targets. He hadn’t even noticed that most of the 11th Army had vanished from the usual spots. As a result, both the 51st and the reserve 47th Armies had shifted north into the Kerch area, leaving the southern part of the line dangerously thin. The 44th Army was left holding the bag with just six divisions out of Kozlov’s total of 21. Nobody on the Crimean Front even dreamed that the real blow would fall on the 44th. Facing them, though, was more than half of the 11th Army. To pull off that kind of concentration, Manstein had left only the Romanian 4th Mountain Brigade to watch the Crimean coastline, while the 72nd Infantry Division alone guarded the southern slice of the Sevastopol siege lines (with the German 54th Corps and Romanian 19th Infantry Division covering the northern and eastern parts). It was a masterful piece of deception, playing perfectly on Soviet expectations shaped by earlier German probes and the peninsula’s natural choke points. The northern feint kept the bulk of Kozlov’s mobile reserves tied down, while the real hammer—assembled in secret despite the nightmare of hauling heavy gear over muddy spring roads—slammed into the weaker southern defenses where the 44th Army’s lines had almost no depth and almost no modern fortifications.

 

The original launch date for Operation Trappenjagd had already been pushed to the 7th, but on the 4th it slipped again. A burst of VVS activity right near the front made it impossible to sneak fighter units into forward airfields without being spotted. Richthofen was also sweating the delayed arrival of squadrons still stuck in Silesia. But May 8th promised excellent flying weather, and neither Manstein nor Richthofen wanted to let a perfect day go to waste. They had pulled together eleven bomber, three dive-bomber, and seven fighter Gruppen—555 combat aircraft in all. Operation Trappenjagd roared to life on May 8th with a colossal air assault. The Luftwaffe racked up more than 2,100 sorties that day; many crews flew multiple missions because their airfields sat just a few kilometers behind the lines. That short hop also let them carry heavier bomb loads since fuel wasn’t such a worry. The opening strikes hammered Crimean Front airfields, catching scores of Soviet planes on the ground, while fighter sweeps hunted down anything that got airborne. The Germans claimed 57 kills on day one alone. By noon, roughly a quarter of the Crimean Front’s air force had been wiped out. By May 9th the total climbed past 3,800 sorties, with the Luftwaffe claiming over 100 kills for the loss of just 23 of their own planes. Once air superiority was basically locked down, the Luftwaffe switched to pounding ground targets and choking off movement. Soviet radio discipline was terrible, so most command posts and positions were already lit up like Christmas trees; weak camouflage made them even easier to spot from above. Luftwaffe bombs also kept snapping the field telephone wires that linked everything together, turning communications across the entire front into a nightmare. Richthofen, who led the reinforced VIII Fliegerkorps, later called the scale of this concentrated air support “the likes of which has never existed,” highlighting how the Luftwaffe’s closeness to the battlefield let them turn around fast and hit with devastating accuracy that Soviet pilots—flying inferior machines and lacking the same training—simply couldn’t touch. This total control of the skies didn’t just neutralize the VVS; it sent a psychological shockwave through Soviet ground troops who found themselves constantly dodging Stukas and medium bombers with almost no friendly air cover in sight.

 

The ground attack jumped off at 04:15 with a blistering ten-minute artillery and rocket barrage. The moment the guns fell silent, three leading German divisions—backed by assault guns—stormed forward under a constant Luftwaffe umbrella. The stunned and suppressed Soviets could barely mount any real resistance. Strongpoints were isolated and bypassed, with follow-up waves of infantry expected to mop up anything that wasn’t critical to the advance. Within the hour they had covered the three kilometers to the antitank ditch that cut across the peninsula near Parpach and formed the 44th Army’s second line of defense. By 8 a.m. the 28th Light Infantry had crossed it in strength. The 41st Army’s first defensive belt had been shattered, along with most of the 63rd Mountain Rifle Division, and the second echelon was now wide open. Only the 50th Infantry Division ran into real trouble. Swamps south of Koi-Asan slowed them down, and thick Soviet minefields gave the defenders just enough breathing room to shake off the shock of the barrage and fight back—helped by a few Soviet tanks. The 50th only reached the Parpach ditch by nightfall. Manstein had deliberately chosen a narrow front to build breakthrough speed, counting on a short, sharp artillery prep (beefed up by Nebelwerfer rocket launchers) to keep the Soviets off-balance. As he later reflected, the trick was to exploit the lack of depth in the enemy’s positions—turning a numerically superior defense into a collapsing front through rapid penetration and bypass tactics.

 

To sweeten the deal, an infantry company with a platoon of pioneers had been slipped 1.3 km behind the Parpach ditch by the little boats of the 902 Sturmboote-Kommando. Luckily for them, months of Luftwaffe hammering had made the Black Sea Fleet pretty shy about operating near the Crimean coast. Historian Hayward points out that this caution went all the way back to February orders from Vice Admiral Oktyabrskii: his captains were told to be extremely careful in areas patrolled by enemy aircraft, to limit coastal bombardments to nighttime only, and never to risk bigger ships unless the weather grounded the Luftwaffe. Back in winter the long nights had given them decent cover; now, with shorter nights, better weather, and a much stronger Luftwaffe presence in Crimea, naval missions had become rare. So the Black Sea Fleet never showed up to stop the amphibious landing, which only drew some half-hearted mortar and light-artillery fire during the actual touchdown. Soviet artillery eventually sank thirteen of the assault boats over the course of the day. The landed troops quickly cleared the two bunkers guarding that stretch of coastline and called in the next wave. Before long an entire regiment was ashore, slamming into the Soviet second defensive line from behind. The 157th and 404th Rifle Divisions—supposed to be the 41st Army’s second echelon—couldn’t stop the double whammy of the amphibious landing and the frontal assault. Constant air attacks kept them pinned and unable to shift forces effectively. XXX Corps reported just 104 dead and 284 wounded while bagging 4,514 prisoners on day one. This bold flank insertion, pulled off under the cover of the main barrage and Luftwaffe umbrella, was a textbook example of the joint operations that made Trappenjagd so effective—catching the Soviets completely flat-footed and stopping any organized response to the main breakthrough cold.

 

Once the antitank ditch was behind them, the Groddeck Brigade was unleashed and sent racing toward Kerch as fast as humanly possible. Every available truck, car, and motorcycle was thrown into the effort to motorize as many men as they could, though plenty of infantry still had to pedal bicycles towed behind trucks on ropes. By the end of the day the brigade had pushed three kilometers ahead of the 28th Light Infantry, which itself had advanced nearly ten kilometers. The 22nd Panzer Division, however, had to sit tight while engineers built bridges strong enough for tanks—a job made slower by bypassed Soviet troops harassing the German rear. During the day Cherniak threw his tank reserves at the 28th Light Division, but Luftwaffe interdiction tore into them while they were still assembling; 48 out of 98 tanks were claimed knocked out before they could even join the fight. When the surviving Soviet tanks finally clashed with German ground forces, another 24 were lost in a lopsided scrap against a single battalion of StuG III assault guns. Only one StuG was written off as a total loss, with an unknown number damaged but repairable later. (It’s worth remembering that the Germans only counted a vehicle as “lost” if it was utterly beyond repair; lightly or even heavily damaged ones that could be fixed weeks or months down the line didn’t make the official loss lists. Sometimes crews abandoned tanks or planes in enemy territory hoping to recover them later, and a vehicle might not be officially listed as lost until a full month had passed. That’s why German loss figures always look so low—and why pinning down exact vehicle casualties can be a headache.

 

The Groddeck Brigade’s lightning exploitation showed the German love of motorized mobility in the pursuit phase, even when full panzer support was still waiting on the engineers. Luftwaffe strikes that day also mortally wounded General Lvov of the 51st Army. Combined with the destruction of the Front’s physical communications, it left Kozlov completely in the dark about how bad things really were on day one. He figured it was just a minor diversion and shifted only one rifle division from the 47th Army to help the 44th. He then casually told Cherniak to use that division for local counterattacks to push the Germans back—orders that the 30th Corps swatted aside with ease. Kozlov’s underestimation was a fatal command blunder, made worse by the loss of key leaders and the total paralysis of his headquarters under nonstop air and artillery pounding. Soviet command, already weighed down by political meddling from Mekhlis, simply crumbled under the speed and coordination of the German assault.

 

So on the 9th the German advance rolled on without missing a beat. Group Groddeck covered another 23 kilometers at high speed, brushing aside only light resistance—an NKVD rifle division and a depleted cavalry division that had no idea the Germans were even there. Most of the small Soviet groups they ran into were too shocked and confused to put up much of a fight. Fear and panic began racing through the Crimean Front as wild rumors spread of Germans running loose deep in the rear. Group Groddeck also had the good luck to hit an entirely undefended stretch of the Nasyr Line. Their pace let them seize the Marfovka airfield and destroy 35 I-153 fighter-bombers on the ground. Ironically, they moved so fast that the Luftwaffe itself was caught off guard—several times the 8th Air Corps mistook the big moving columns for retreating Soviets and strafed them. Colonel Groddeck himself was apparently wounded in one of those friendly-fire mix-ups. By the evening of the 10th the brigade was running low on fuel and ammo. Behind them the 132nd Infantry Division trudged along to secure the bypassed ground, while the 28th Light Infantry swung toward Arma-Eli and grabbed it by nightfall. Only in the late afternoon did the engineers finally finish bridges sturdy enough for the 22nd Panzer to roll. Their advance caught the 40th Tank Brigade completely by surprise in its assembly area, where it had been gearing up for a counterattack. Then heavy rain hit right before dark, stopping German mechanized movement cold and grounding the Luftwaffe. Some historians think the 22nd Panzer would have reached the coast and trapped most of the 51st and 47th Armies before nightfall if not for that downpour. Richthofen scribbled in his diary that night: “Unless the weather itself stops us, no Russian will leave the Crimea alive.” The rain also slowed the German infantry, especially those still in contact with Soviet forces. By now the momentum belonged completely to Manstein. His troops had smashed the southern sector and were already starting to roll up the Soviet lines from the flank—setting the stage for the huge encirclements that would follow in the days ahead.

 

Up on the Arctic coastline, fighting near Zapadnaya Litsa stayed mostly frozen in place thanks to heavy snowstorms. Hitler was convinced the area was a ticking time bomb, worried that the Anglo-Americans might try a naval landing somewhere along the Norwegian or Finnish coast. German high command pegged the stretch between Narvik and Pechenga as the most likely invasion spot. Pressure was mounting on Dietl to wrap things up quickly, but there were no spare reserves, so coastal defenses had to be stripped. Dietl and Schörner agreed to send the 2nd Mountain Division plus every small detachment between Tana Fjord and Pechenga Bay down to Litsa as reinforcements. These moves showed Berlin’s lingering paranoia about Allied landings in the far north—fears stoked by intelligence reports of increased shipping activity—even as the spring thaw turned the ground into a nightmare and limited any big operations.

 

At Kestenga the heavily outnumbered Finnish 3rd Corps was still being slowly pushed back. To capitalize, the Soviets sent a ski brigade and a rifle regiment on a wide flanking sweep south of the 3rd Corps positions. When Finnish intelligence spotted it, Siilasvuo wanted to pull his corps back between Lakes Pya and Top. Dietl overruled him, insisting any retreat would cost even more men and equipment, and ordered them to stand fast no matter what. By the 5th the main body of the Soviet flanking force was within three kilometers of the supply road, with advance elements practically on top of it. But that same day the main Soviet assault by the 26th Army bogged down in the swamps northwest of Kestenga. That gave the Finns and Germans just enough time to slap together a joint battlegroup and counterattack the flankers. By the 7th the Soviet flanking force was surrounded and essentially wiped out—only about one-tenth of the ski brigade made it back to Soviet lines. The 26th Army called off its offensive after exhausting itself in the swamps. Its huge numerical edge had been wasted on dozens of small, scattered attacks by individual units. The 186th Rifle and 23rd Guards Divisions plus the 80th Rifle Brigade had taken casualties as high as 40 percent. Dietl ordered a counterattack that day, but the spring thaw turned the whole region into a muddy quagmire that stopped everything dead. This Finnish-German teamwork in the far north showed just how brutal the terrain could be—Soviet flanking attempts often backfired because of overextension, while Axis positions held by tough mountain troops proved remarkably resilient.

 

Inside besieged Leningrad the drive to restart military production kept rolling. Seven new factories came online during May, bringing the total to 57 active plants. By the end of the month they would turn out 150 machine guns, 2,875 submachine guns, and 150,700 shells and mines. Outside the city, Finnish and German forces were spotted building up on the northern shores of Lake Ladoga. In response, Govorov beefed up defenses along the shoreline and its islands. Sukho Island eventually got a 100-man garrison with three 100 mm guns; its position was perfect for covering most of the southeastern Lake Ladoga coastline with artillery. These industrial efforts inside the city were a gritty display of Soviet resilience—workers grinding out weapons under constant bombardment and desperate shortages to keep the defense alive and prepare for future counteroffensives. The lake fortifications were meant to stop any Axis amphibious raids or supply disruptions across Ladoga, the city’s vital lifeline.

 

Desperate for more manpower to hold the lines around the encircled 2nd Shock Army, General Lindemann of the 18th Army told Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln to scrape together a battlegroup from his SS police units and Latvian security auxiliaries. These were to join the 50th Corps on the Leningrad siege lines so regular infantry divisions could be freed up for the next round of Soviet offensives. It was a telling sign of the manpower crunch facing Army Group North—regular divisions were being pulled toward hotter sectors while the siege lines still needed constant bodies to hold them.

 

On May 3rd STAVKA finally finished the command-and-control shake-up that followed the dissolution of the Volkhov Front. The 8th, 54th, 4th, 59th, and 2nd Shock Armies were grouped into the Volkhov Group of Forces, while the 23rd, 42nd, and 55th Armies plus the Neva and Coastal Operational Groups became the Leningrad Group of Forces. Malaia Vishera was named the Leningrad Front’s new headquarters. A few hours later an order arrived denying Khozin the reinforcements he had asked for. What happened next is still hotly debated among historians—partly because of the postwar rivalry and finger-pointing between Meretskov and Khozin. Meretskov claimed Khozin stayed upbeat and optimistic about his planned rescue of the 2nd Shock Army. Khozin later insisted that a big chunk of the 2nd Shock had already been pulled out of the pocket by the 3rd. Yet German records show almost no movement in or out of the pocket until May 21st, although some captured deserters started claiming in mid-May that the army was being withdrawn. Glantz splits the difference, saying that after hearing the refusal Khozin began preparing to evacuate the 13th Cavalry Corps, four rifle divisions, the 7th Tank Brigade, and all the sick and wounded of the 2nd Shock Army. They also hoped to pull out the army’s rear installations. None of these steps had actually been carried out yet. The reorganization showed STAVKA’s attempt to tidy up command during the brutal fight to relieve Leningrad, but the lack of reinforcements left Khozin’s forces in a very shaky spot—and it fueled endless postwar arguments about who was to blame for the 2nd Shock Army’s fate.

 

While the Leningrad area saw no major offensives, the German 16th Army’s sector stayed a cauldron of fighting. The 16th Army was busy with the relief of Kholm (which wrapped up on the 5th), so on May 3rd Korochkin launched a fresh offensive to pinch off the Ramushevo corridor. The Soviet 11th Army attacked the four-kilometer-wide corridor from the north while the 1st Shock Army hit from the south. Facing them were the battered infantry of the 2nd Corps. After months of siege and living on starvation rations, the Germans were in rough shape—every division was down to about one-third strength. Worse, a lot of the men still on the line would normally have been classified unfit for combat. Even so, and despite having to fight in two directions, the defenders gave up almost no ground all week. Just like their earlier repeated assaults on the Demyansk Pocket, these attacks were predictable in both timing and location—nothing like the earlier airborne attempt to disrupt the Demyansk airbridge. That predictability made life much easier for the 16th Army. Thick mud and standing water helped the defense even more. Although Kurochkin failed to overrun the corridor, his artillery kept up a constant barrage on the supply road to the 2nd Corps. That shelling, plus the mud, is why the Demyansk airbridge was still essential even after the link-up weeks earlier. The Demyansk salient—encircled since February—had become a symbol of German stubbornness, kept alive at huge cost by the airlift. Kurochkin’s predictable pushes let the weakened II Corps hold on and buy time for relief efforts elsewhere.

 

Army Group Center’s front and rear stayed relatively quiet except for the usual skirmishes and nonstop partisan attacks. Both the Ostheer and the Red Army were simply waiting for better weather before starting anything big. On the 4th Zhukov ordered Belov to dig in and hold his positions at all costs. The same instructions went to the 39th Army and the 11th Cavalry Corps, which were half-encircled behind the 9th Army. Meanwhile the Western and Kalinin Fronts kept building up. By late May the Kalinin Front was drawing rations for 601,894 men and the Western Front for 823,101. Ration strength is one way to track unit sizes, but it includes the sick and wounded the formations still have to feed, so it overstates immediate combat power—even though it’s useful for logistics planning. Even with that overestimate and some doubts about the numbers, more than a million men were being massed against Army Group Center. As a side note, Zhukov’s Western Theatre command had been dissolved and both the Kalinin and Western Fronts returned to direct STAVKA control—though sources disagree on the exact date, some saying early April and others May. On the 9th Belov’s encircled force received a battalion of anti-tank guns by air—kicking off a new airlift meant to strengthen Group Belov. On the same planes came General Mayor Golushkevich, Deputy Chief of Staff, carrying secret orders for Belov to be ready for a new southward offensive no later than June 5th. Belov was also told that the 50th Army would get major reinforcements and refitting in preparation for the joint attack. These moves showed Zhukov’s strategy of keeping pressure on German lines even inside encircled pockets, using air resupply to keep partisan-linked forces alive for future exploitation once the weather improved.

 

At the same time the Germans were busy planning Operation Hannover. The 4th Army was given a single corps headquarters and three divisions pulled from the 3rd Panzer Army (which had taken over for the 4th Panzer Army, now headed to Ukraine), plus a corps HQ and three divisions from its own forces. Their planning mistakenly assumed that most of Belov’s roughly 20,000-man force was east of the Ugra River because of bad intelligence. In reality only parts of the 4th Airborne Corps and the Zhabo Partisan Regiment were on that side. The Airborne had an active strength of 2,300 plus another 2,000 sick or wounded as of May 1st, and 1,700 attached partisans from the Zhabo regiment. If the Germans had been right, they could have launched a fast offensive along the river to split the 3,900-square-kilometer pocket into easier-to-handle chunks and bag most of Belov’s strength. Once Hannover wrapped up quickly, most of those forces were supposed to head north to help the 9th Army’s coming offensive. May 21st was the planned start date. The movement of these German divisions had already been spotted, which only encouraged Group Belov to dig in harder. German deception was already ramping up to hide bigger summer plans, but local clean-up operations like Hannover were meant to tidy up rear-area headaches first.

 

Even though the Soviets had noticed some of these smaller preparations, the Germans went to enormous lengths to hide their real summer intentions. After a Moscow newspaper somehow predicted a German summer offensive aimed at Voronezh and Stalingrad, Jodl demanded even heavier deception efforts ahead of Fall Blau. That gave birth to Operation Kremlin. Its first phase was to make the Soviets think the German summer buildup was actually happening in Army Group North and Center—especially to reinforce Soviet fears of another push toward Moscow. Fake headquarters were set up with bogus radio traffic suggesting frantic activity. Dummy aircraft were parked at phony airfields to simulate a bigger Luftwaffe presence. Security troops staged very visible fake redeployments. Reconnaissance raids were stepped up all along the front of both army groups. This elaborate maskirovka would play a huge part in keeping STAVKA guessing about the true direction of the coming campaign, giving the Germans precious time to prepare their southern thrust. And finally, after last week’s Reichstag speech Hitler had gone on a short holiday at the Berghof. But on May 3rd he cut the vacation short and returned to the Wolf’s Lair in Prussia. He said he simply couldn’t stand the sight of snow anymore after the horrors of the last winter.

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Operation Trappenjagd in Crimea proceeded with rare Black Sea interference, as Soviet artillery sank thirteen landing craft. German engineers and mobile exploitation then pushed rapidly toward Kerch, while Soviet command mistakes and Luftwaffe interdiction crippled attempted tank and counter moves; a downpour later slowed mechanization. In the Arctic, German and Finnish forces resisted Soviet flanking attempts near Kestenga as mud and bogs stalled offensives. Around Leningrad, factories expanded output and Lake Ladoga defenses strengthened, while STAVKA reorganized fronts after the Volkhov dissolution.

Last time we spoke about the end of the winter offensive.STAVKA ordered the Western and Kalinin Fronts to defensive positions after heavy losses. Fighting persisted in pockets like Demyansk, where Germans relieved encircled forces at great cost, and Belov's cavalry/airborne group near Moscow, increasingly isolated as the 50th Army failed to link up. In the north, the 2nd Shock Army near Volkhov faced encirclement; General Vlasov was appointed to salvage it. Leningrad's siege continued, with German air raids damaging ships and the Road of Life halting due to thaw. German plans included summer operations like Nordlicht to capture Leningrad. In the center, rear-area raids and failed offensives left Belov's forces vulnerable. In the south, debates delayed Operation Fridericus; Manstein prepared Trappenjagd in Crimea, with Richthofen leading air support. Stalin planned a Kharkiv offensive, but secrecy faltered when General Samokhin was captured with plans. Gehlen's Operation Flamingo infiltrated Soviet command.

This episode is the Towards Kholm

Well hello there, welcome to the Eastern Front week by week podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

 

The end of April was relatively quiet on the Eastern Front as the combatants looked to recover from several months of constant fighting. However, conflict still occurred. In the Arctic, the Soviets expanded their offensive while the Germans attempted to finally relieve the garrison at Kholm. This week, we will cover the events of April 26th to May 2nd, 1942, as OKW decided they did not like OKH’s old report and created a new one. The Soviet offensive in the Arctic expanded on the 27th with the 14th Army attacking over the Litsa. The 10th Guard and 14th Rifle divisions struck the 6th Mountain division on both its flanks. During the night, the 12th Naval brigade crossed the Litsa bay and exploited the open flank. This caught the Mountain Corps of Norway completely by surprise. The assault formed part of a broader Soviet effort to seize Petsamo and threaten the vital nickel mines that supplied German war industry, with naval infantry and land forces coordinating in a three-phased push supported by the Northern Fleet. However, the Naval brigade’s advance was stopped at the end of April by extreme snowstorms, which stalled all movement in the area for several days. This gave the 6th Mountain Division time to recover and reorganize its battered lines before the weather finally broke.

 

Meanwhile, the Germans were struggling to deal with the offensive launched in the Kestenga region last week. On May 1st, Dietl was forced to request that the Finnish 12th Brigade be transferred to reinforce the Finnish 3rd Corps. Mannerheim, however, refused, as he was unwilling to be drawn into a lengthy operation that might overcommit Finnish resources far from their own strategic priorities. On the other hand, he offered to transfer the 163rd Infantry Division to Dietl’s command and assume responsibility for the Ukhta section of the front, but only after a German Corps relieved the 3rd Corps. While this was no immediate help to Dietl, it would mean he was no longer responsible for Ukhta and that he was gaining a new division under his command. Thus, it was accepted. With no help arriving from the Finnish, Dietl was forced to bring in further battalions from neighbouring formations, scraping together whatever reserves he could from already stretched units across the far northern sector. At the same time, the Soviet 26th Army reinforced its attempt to envelop the 3rd Corps with the 186th Rifle Division and the 80th Rifle Brigade. This meant Siilasvuo’s 9 battalions were now opposing 2 Soviet divisions and 2 brigades, a ratio that highlighted the growing imbalance in the frozen wilderness.

 

These events convince Mannerheim to abandon his plans to downsize Finnish infantry divisions into brigades. Those plans had been based on the assumption that the war was nearly won and that only minimal forces were needed to hold the front line until the USSR’s surrender. This was now very evidently false. While only two divisions had fully completed the conversion, many Finnish divisions would find themself partially converted with a heavily reduced third regiment, a structural weakness that would haunt the Finnish Army for the remainder of the Continuation War as manpower demands continued to mount.

 

With the start of May, the recently arrived He-111 torpedo bombers started operations from their Norwegian bases. On May 2nd, they attacked Convoy PQ 15 and claimed to have sunk 3 vessels. In reality, one of the hit vessels had only been damaged, but this vessel would later be sunk by a German submarine. The strikes came from aircraft of KG 26 operating out of Bardufoss, targeting the Allied supply run to Murmansk in a daring low-level torpedo run that caught the convoy north of Norway; the merchant ships Botavon, Jutland, and Cape Corso were among those lost, with heavy loss of life aboard. May would also see a continuation of the German naval build-up, and by the end of the month, 1 battleship, 3 heavy cruisers, 8 destroyers, 4 torpedo boats, and 20 submarines would be based in Norway. However, the lengthening daylight hours in the Arctic meant submarines were becoming increasingly easy to spot, making their sorties increasingly dangerous as Allied air cover and escorts grew more effective with the changing season.

 

The Leningrad Front’s bridgehead across the Neva River at Nevskaia Dubrovka would be crushed by a small offensive by the 18th Army on the 29th. The assault had started back on the 26th with a heavy artillery barrage. The 357 Soviet defenders from the 86th Rifle division would manage to hold out for three days against repeated infantry assaults before being overwhelmed. Most of the soviet defenders would end up being killed in the battle, including the divisional chief of Staff Major Kozlov. The elimination of this small but irritating bridgehead allowed the Germans to shorten their lines slightly and redirect artillery that had been pinned down covering the crossing.

 

On the 30th, Khozin would order the 2nd Shock Army to adopt an all-around defensive posture in the Lyuban salient. The 13th Cavalry Corps was to be kept as a mobile reserve force for the Army. He hoped this move would buy time to plan and prepare a new operation. Its goal was to widen the corridor connecting the 2nd Shock Army to Soviet lines. On May 2nd, Khozin would report his plans to STAVKA. The Kirishi sector was seen as vital to crush to free up forces from the 4th Army for use elsewhere, while the Spasskaia Polist' region was also seen as vital as it dominated the communication routes to the 2nd Shock Army. These adjustments reflected the hard lessons of the winter fighting, where overextended salients had repeatedly invited German counterattacks.

 

To resolve this, a series of offensives was planned for early May. The 59th Army was to take Spasskaia Polist, while the 54th would continue toward Lipovik to support the 4th Army and also prepare an offensive on Lyuban. The 4th Army was to attack Kirishi, then advance on Chudovo. Meanwhile, the 2nd Shock Army would largely stay on the defensive, though it was to form a small shock group to support the 59th Army and prepare its own offensive on Lyuban once the 6th Guards Rifle Corps arrived. It seems, then, that Meretskov had won the previous week’s debate. The 13th Cavalry Corps was to remain in reserve to exploit any success by the 2nd Shock Army and 6th Guards Rifle Corps. These operations were tentatively set for mid to late May. Khozin then submitted a series of reinforcement requests and listed the formations needing rehabilitation. While STAVKA approved his operational plans on May 3rd, it made no comment on the requested reinforcements, leaving field commanders to improvise with what little extra support might trickle down from the strategic reserve.

 

Throughout May, partisans would continue to smuggle resources into Leningrad. 500 tons of bread, meat, and other products from occupied regions were transferred into the city to help sustain the population. Scurvy had become an issue during the winter. City officials had countered the rise of this health issue by producing Vitamin C extract from pine needles. They produced 738,500 liters of pine extract in the first half of 1942. There, the conditions were slowly improving. The Leningrad funeral trust recorded burying 102,497 bodies in April. This decreased to “only” 53,562 in May. These grim figures, while still horrifying, marked a turning point after the catastrophic winter, as the partial reopening of supply lines and the heroic efforts of the “Road of Life” across Lake Ladoga began to ease the worst of the famine that had claimed hundreds of thousands of civilian lives.

With Demyansk relieved last week, the 16th Army's main priority was now to relieve Kholm. Group Lang started its assault to relieve Scherer on April 30th. Blocking their way was the heavily dug-in 8th Guard Rifle Division supported by the 71st Tank Brigade. Constant heavy Luftwaffe support was needed to blast a way north. This initial charge reached within 2km of Kholm before getting bogged down by the evening of the 30th. The defenders under Generalmajor Theodor Scherer had already endured months of isolation, reduced by this point to roughly 1,500 combat-effective men from an original force of around 5,500, fighting with whatever weapons and ammunition could be flown in or dropped by glider.

 

Thus, Purkaev realised time was running out to capture Kholm, so that evening he launched a massive assault on Scherer’s garrison. Overnight, a massive artillery barrage knocked out the majority of the garrison’s heavy weapons. Then, at 5:45 am on May 1st, three rifle regiments and 15 tanks launched concentric attacks on the town. Multiple T-34s broke into Kholm, and the defences around the Red Ruins nearly collapsed. Urgent Stuka support was called in to drive the tanks back. As this arrived, so did a new 5cm AT gun, which was delivered via glider—an audacious resupply that proved decisive in the close-quarters fighting. This support would eventually allow Scherer’s forces to stop and contain the Soviets after a roughly seven-hour battle. 7 Soviet tanks alone were found knocked out around the airstrip, where fighting had been partially intense. The garrison’s survival hung by a thread, but the combination of airpower and desperate improvisation had bought just enough time.

 

Group Lang spent the next several days bogged down along the Kholm road, unable to defeat the last layers of Soviet defences. Then, on the 5th, Lang gathered his forces for one final effort in coordination with Stuka support. This allowed the 411th Infantry Regiment to create a breach in the 3rd Shock Army’s Lines. Through this, a small battlegroup of two assault guns and 60 infantry rushed into Kholm. Scherer’s garrison was relieved after a 105-day-long siege. Forczyk states Scherer had suffered 60% casualties with 1,500 killed and 2,200 wounded from his original force of 4,500. However, he also estimated the 3rd Shock Army had suffered up to 25,000 casualties during the Siege of Kholm. Scherer’s garrison would be replaced with the 218th Infantry Division, and its survivors were withdrawn to Germany for home leave. Kholm would remain in German hands as a heavily fortified strongpoint, a thorn in the Soviet side that continued to tie down forces long after the relief.

 

During the entire sieges of Demyansk or Kholm, the VVS of the Northwestern Front, for some reason, never decided to raid the primary airbases at Pskov or Ostrov. Nor did they attack the supporting fighter bases around Dno. This could have seriously disrupted the Demyansk airbridge, which was essential for the survival of the 2nd Corps inside the pocket—perhaps due to poor coordination, competing priorities elsewhere, or the Luftwaffe’s own fighter cover making such raids too costly. Between the start of the airbridge in January and the relief of Kholm in early May, 14,455 transport sorties were flown to Kholm and Demyansk. This brought in 24,303 tons of supplies and equipment, in addition to 15,446 replacements, for the hard-pressed troops inside the pocket. 22,093 wounded were extracted on the return flights. This had come at a steep cost. The transport groups lost 125 aircraft, with another 140 seriously damaged. Furthermore 387 aircrew were killed during these missions. These losses would amount to roughly half of all the transport airframes Germany would build throughout 1942. It had also consumed 42,155 tons of aviation fuel, which was nearly one-third of the aviation fuel produced in the Reich in a month. The operation had also severely disrupted pilot training programs, with pilots and airframes ruthlessly stripped away from training groups to replace losses and bring up their numbers.

 

And the losses would not stop here. Demyansk may have been relieved, and supplies reached them through the Ramushevo corridor. However, even by the end of May, only 50 to 100 tons of supplies per day would reach the 2nd Corps over ground. The Luftwaffe would need to supply the rest of the Corps' minimum daily supply of 300 tons. The only bright side was that improving weather would gradually increase the efficiency of the transports, allowing groups to be transferred away. Morzik would eventually release all but three groups, which were needed to keep the 2nd Army Corps supplied in its overextended position. These missions would continue all the way until the Stalingrad operation, with another 18,639 transport sorties flown after the creation of the Ramushevo corridor. While the Airlift had saved the 2nd Corps and Scherer’s Kholm garrison, Morzik considered it a horrific failure due to its costs. Furthermore, Hitler and the Wehrmacht had been encouraged and rewarded for holding on to several hopeless positions and thus would do so again in the future, a dangerous precedent that would echo in later campaigns.

 

In response to these events, STAVKA would detach Group Ksenofontov from the Kalinin Front and use it as a cadre to form the 53rd Army. This was tasked with holding the south of the Demyansk Pocket. The Northwestern Front would also be assigned nine Artillery Regiments from STAVKA reserve forces to bolster its firepower. These were to support an upcoming operation with the 1st Shock and 11th Armies against the Ramushevo Corridor due to start next week, signalling Soviet intent to keep pressure on the Germans even as winter gave way to spring.

 

Unhappy with the previous OKW report on Ostheer’s strength, the OKH sought to remove what it saw as nonsense. In purely numerical terms, the Army was now judged stronger than in June 1941, with 7 new infantry divisions, 2 new panzer divisions, and 4 more infantry divisions expected soon. The 625,000-manpower shortfall, despite 1.1 million replacements, was quietly overlooked, as was the poor quality of many replacements and new troops. The shortage of skilled NCOs and junior officers was likewise downplayed. On the other hand, the report was satisfied with weapons deliveries to the frontline, which would meet the needs of Army Group South, even if the other two Army Groups still lacked heavy equipment. Ziemke claims: “725,000 rifles, 27,000 machine guns, 2,700 antitank guns, and 559 pieces of light and 350 pieces of heavy field artillery” For comparison Erickson claims the Soviets produced during the winter alone “4,500 tanks, some 3,000 aircraft, nearly 14,000 guns[artillery pieces] and over 50,000 mortars”

 

The report did admit artillery and anti-tank ammunition supplies; however, they were likely to be a concern due to delays in increasing their production. This assessment painted an optimistic picture that masked deeper structural weaknesses, with Army Group South receiving priority at the clear expense of the other two army groups.

 

Meanwhile, the 3,300 tanks believed to be on hand were smaller than in Operation Barbarossa; this was more than made up for by the increase in the armaments on these vehicles. Both the Panzer III and Panzer IV had been upgraded since 1941, as had support vehicles like the StuG. Obsolete light tanks were also being converted into vehicles such as the Marder II tank destroyer. The report admitted that mobility had declined sharply, with Army Group South retaining only 80% of its original mobility. This came at the cost of demotorising its regular infantry and denying motorisation to the other two Army Groups. Even so, there remained a 75,000-vehicle shortfall, of which only half was expected to be replaced. Worse still, current production was below the losses anticipated for Fall Blau. As a result, nearly 250,000 horses were to be requisitioned across Germany and the occupied territories to help make up the deficit and replace those already lost, a stark reminder that the Wehrmacht was increasingly reliant on horse-drawn transport even as it prepared for its next great summer offensive.

 

Following this, on May 1st, Gehlen would report that the Soviets were largely on the defensive across the front, but wearing down attacks were extremely likely. Kharkiv was identified as a particularly likely target for a Soviet attack. However, it was insisted that none of these attacks would likely cause a breakthrough, an assessment that would soon be put to the test.

In the Army Group Center’s sector, the flow of formations south started. The 4th Panzer Army HQ would be transferred to Army Group South, as would five of the twenty Corps-level Headquarters. For the most part, the frontline was quiet with both sides looking to recover from their winter ordeals. Still, minor skirmishes and other small actions were commonplace even when no major operation was underway, as exhausted units probed for weaknesses and gathered intelligence.

 

Behind German lines, the Belov’s Guard Cavalry and the 8th Airborne Corps had all gone on to the defensive by the 26th. On the other side of the German lines, the 50th Army had also halted its offensive. They had not been able to sever the Warsaw highway nor link up. With this cessation of the offensive, local German forces would attempt to counterattack the Airborne troopers. However, the same waist-high floodwater had hindered the paratrooper’s offensive through the swamp land and now obstructed German offensives. For the rest of April, attacks against the Soviet village strongholds were easily repulsed. Under these conditions, Zhukov granted the paratroopers permission to withdraw to their pre-offensive positions. After the Germans noticed this withdrawal, they followed closely behind but did not engage the Soviets, apart from some small skirmishes. Both sides were relatively content to entrench themselves and recover throughout the early days of May. New airstrips were constructed in the Soviet territory to bring in sufficient supplies to keep Belov’s forces adequately supplied. The 1st Guard Cavalry Corps occupied the northern sector of the line from Dorogobuzh to south of Viaz’ma. The 1st Partisan regiment covered the Northeastern flank, supported by a composite battalion drawn from survivors of the 33rd Army. Belov and Kazakin still hoped to return to Soviet lines but knew they needed time to recover before making any new attempt, buying precious weeks to reorganize their battered but still dangerous raiding force.

 

On April 28th, Timoshenko would finalise the plans for the Kharkiv offensive with Directive 00275. Several alterations had been made after multiple protests from Timoshenko’s subordinates. One example was General Moskalenko of the 38th Army, who had been concerned about the initial major role given to the green 28th Army. Their men and command structure had not yet seen combat, while the 38th Army had been fighting in the local area for months already. This had led to the 28th neighbouring armies being ordered to support their offensive. Group Bobkin was created out of concern that the 6th Army’s Shock group was too large and dispersed to be controlled by a single officer, thus necessitating the division of command. However, not all concerns about the offensive were listened to. Shaposhnikov and several other figures thought Timoshenko was mad for cramming so many forces into the Izyum Salient. Timoshenko, however, would manage to convince Stalin that the operation would be a complete success despite these fears. While May 4th had been initially set as the offensive start date, last week's redeployment problems, which continued into this week, delayed the offensive until the 12th. The rushed planning reflected the high command’s eagerness to strike before German reinforcements could fully arrive, even as intelligence warnings about enemy concentrations began to filter in.

 

The 28th Army was to attack from the Volchansk bridgehead northeast of Kharkiv, supported by the 21st and 38th Armies. Riabyshev’s shock group, made up of 6 rifle divisions and 4 tank brigades, would strike along a narrow 20-km front against the German 17th Corps. Once a breach was made, the 3rd Guards Cavalry Corps would dash through and wheel south to encircle Kharkiv. At the same time, the 6th Army was to attack from the Izyum bulge with 8 rifle divisions, 4 tank brigades, and Operational Group Bobkin, which included 2 rifle divisions, a cavalry corps, and a tank brigade. After breaking the German 8th Corps, the new 21st and 23rd Tank Corps would exploit the gap and link up with the 3rd Guards Cavalry Corps, while the 6th Cavalry Corps raced toward Berestyn to form the outer encirclement ring. If successful, the Soviets would not only retake Kharkiv but also encircle much of the German 6th Army. The Southern Front would protect the flank, with the 57th Army defending Lozova and the 9th Army holding Barvinkove. May 4th was set as the starting date. Despite the postponement, Soviet redeployment remained rushed, allowing the Germans to detect parts of the buildup. Defensive works were therefore expanded across the front, using coerced local labour and requisitioned local materials. Strongpoints dominating key communications were heavily reinforced, and positions were designed to hold out even if encircled. The formations in Ukraine were also the strongest in the Ostheer, having been prioritized for replacements. By May 1st, there were on average only 2,400 vacancies per infantry division in Army Group South. It was hoped to fully restore the Army Group’s infantry before Fall Blau started, although this would be at the expense of the amount and quality of replacements going to the other two army groups.

Meanwhile, Bock’s HQ would issue Army Group South Directive 1 on the 29th, providing a detailed plan for the BLAU operations. Bock would also complain in his diary “In the evening, on the insistence of the OKH, the first draft of our directive for the [summer] offensive was hastily thrown together”

There had been no terrain studies nor consultation with the involved army commands nor with OKH. The rushed directive was done solely as a desk exercise. This assumed that Bock would retain control of the entire Army Group until the completion of Blau II, at which point the split into Army Groups A and B would occur. Group B would hold the line from Kursk to Stalingrad using the Don River when possible. Group A would be responsible for capturing Stalingrad and then driving into it. The plan reflected the high command’s growing confidence in a renewed summer drive toward the Caucasus oil fields, even as local threats loomed.

 

Also, the quibbling over Operation Fridericus would end on the 30th, largely due to Hitler’s pressure. Remarking the decision as “born in severe pain and on the whole not pretty”, Bock reluctantly ordered Fridericus II into effect with a tentative start date of May 18th. Thus, German forces north and south of the Izyum Salient started to concentrate near its neck. As the Germans moved to attack and defend simultaneously, the floodwaters of major rivers began to subside. At the same time, roads started to become recognisable as roads as the Rasputitsa finally started to ebb away in Ukraine, opening the way for the mobile operations both sides now craved.

In Crimea, both sides were likewise making final preparations for a new offensive on the Kerch Peninsula. Kozlov was preparing yet another attack on Koi-Asan. It remains disputed whether STAVKA ordered the Crimean Front to go on the defensive, only for Budenny, Kozlov, and Mekhlis to ignore it, or whether STAVKA instead urged Kozlov to attack again. What is clear is that the Crimean Front made no serious effort to build defense in depth. Foxholes, trenches, and other fieldworks were treated as a waste of effort better spent preparing for the next offensive. Two-thirds of Kozlov’s forces were concentrated within the northern 51st Army, with nine divisions crammed into the salient and more in reserve—a deployment that left the southern sector dangerously thin.

 

Meanwhile, the Luftwaffe continued to increase its advantage over Crimea. Back on the 24th, the VVS commander of Sevastopol Ostryakov, was assassinated alongside the deputy commander of Naval Aviation, Korobkov, in a precision strike from six JU-88. Korobkov had just arrived to conduct a STAVKA inspection. Lax radio discipline had allowed German signals intelligence to learn about the event and its itinerary. By May 1st, Richthofen had arrived in Crimea and established a headquarters in Kischlaw. Unofficially, the 8th Air Corps and Wild's provisional Air Command South were independent of each other. In reality, Richthofen subsumed Wild’s command into his Air Corp which would be officially recognised several weeks later.

 

The day after Richthofen arrived, Manstein held the final briefing for Trappenjagd, describing it as a ground offensive whose main effort would come from the air. The Luftwaffe was to pull the infantry forward. With Kozlov preparing a new offensive and the diversionary attacks of the 42nd Corps and the Romanians drawing many Soviet forces north of Kerch, only three divisions of the 44th Army held the front line, with three more in reserve. Opposing them, Manstein concentrated two infantry divisions and one light infantry division as the spearhead of his attack. They were to be amply supported with combat engineers, two batteries of Flak 88 guns, and 3 Assault Gun battalions. A makeshift motorised brigade known as the Groddeck Motorized Brigade, despite being near divisional strength, was formed as an offensive reserve. After the Parpach Antitank ditch had been breached, the 22nd Panzer and 170th Infantry Division would be ordered to race towards Kerch. In his briefing, Manstein explained the plan’s logic: the Soviets had massed two-thirds of their forces in the northern sector, leaving the south thinly held with only three divisions in line and two or three in reserve. “We intended to make our decisive thrust… down in the southern sector, along the Black Sea coast. In other words, in the place where the enemy would be least expecting it.” 5th May was hoped to be the start date, but bad weather stranded two fighter groups and a ground attack wing in Silesia. This forced a delay until the 7th to allow these formations to arrive in Crimea. The three reconnaissance squadrons of the Crimean VVS with ancient aircraft missed all of the German preparations, leaving Kozlov largely blind to the gathering storm.

 

And lastly, on the 26th, Hitler would give a speech at the Reichstag. Here, all the defeats and reverses of the Winter were transmuted into a stunning victory over the elements emphasised with many comparisons to Napoleon’s disastrous 1812 campaign. In the speech, Hitler declared, “We have a gigantic winter battle behind us. The hour will come when the fronts will awaken from their paralyzed state,” framing the retreat to a stable line from Taganrog to Lake Ladoga as a triumph of German will against temperatures that had dropped to 52 degrees below zero at points. However, he would use this speech as an excuse to gain more power over the German generals; the Reichstag unanimously granted him sweeping new authority to act without legal constraints, allowing him to punish or remove any German—soldier, officer, judge, or official—without due process if he deemed it necessary for victory. Similarly, on May 1st, Stalin would issue his annual May Day order. 

 

May Day order. 130

“…  Greeting you and congratulating you on this First of May, I order:

1. The men of the rank and file to study their rifles to perfection, to become plasters of their arms, to hit the enemy without fail, just as our glorious snipers, the exterminators of the German occupationists, are hitting them!
2. Machine-gunners, artillerymen, mortar crews, tankmen and fliers to study their arms to perfection, become experts at their jobs, to hit the German-fascist invaders point-blank until their final extermination.
3. Commanders of all units—to learn to perfection the art of co-ordinating the various branches of the service, to become expert in the art of commanding troops, to show the whole world that the Red Army is capable of fulfilling its great mission of liberation!
4. The entire Red Army—to make 1942 the year of the final rout of the German-fascist troops and the liberation of the Soviet land from the Hitlerite blackguards!
5. Men and women guerillas—to intensify partisan warfare in the rear of the German invaders, destroy the enemy’s communications and transport facilities, to destroy the headquarters and equipment of the enemy, and not to spare any cartridges against the oppressors of our Motherland!

Under the invincible banner of the great Lenin—forward to victory!”

 

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STAVKA ordered the Western and Kalinin Fronts into defensive positions, reflecting severe losses, while skirmishes continued around Demyansk and near Moscow. German forces struggled too: Soviet offensives grew in the Arctic, endangering key resources, even as the Kholm garrison stayed under siege. Elsewhere, the 18th Army cleared a Soviet bridgehead near Leningrad, enabling German operational adjustments. Finnish troops under Mannerheim managed mounting Soviet pressure with limited resources. 

Last time we spoke about the end of the 33rd. In the north, the Soviet 2nd Shock Army remained encircled near Volkhov, while Leningrad continued producing war materiel despite the ongoing siege. Germans relieved the Demyansk Pocket and pressed to eliminate the Kholm salient. In the center, General Belov's cavalry and Soviet Airborne forces attempted to close an 8km gap with the 50th Army south of Moscow, before German counterattacks reversed their gains. The centerpiece tragedy is the destruction of the Soviet 33rd Army, with General Efremov committing suicide to avoid capture.In the south, Manstein finalized Operation Trappenjagd (Bustard Hunt) to destroy Soviet forces on the Kerch Peninsula in Crimea. Meanwhile, German bombers devastated Soviet Black Sea shipping, sinking evacuation vessels. Planning for the summer offensive Fall Blau also advanced, with elaborate deception operations to mask the massive redeployment of forces southward.

This episode is the End of the Winter Offensive

Well hello there, welcome to the Eastern Front week by week podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

 

Succumbing to bone-deep exhaustion and the ever-worsening, glue-like mud that sucked at boots and bogged down vehicles across the entire frontline, the fighting gradually dies down until STAVKA is finally forced to admit the painful reality: the great General Offensive has come to an end. Yet even in this moment of official pause, two key exceptions refuse to quiet—the bitter, desperate battles still raging around the Demyansk and Belov’s pockets, where soldiers on both sides continued to clash in the freezing slush. And despite the lulls that had settled over most of the ground war, the war in the air still rages on with undiminished fury, as aircraft duel through the grey skies above the thawing landscape. 

 

STAVKA ended the Winter Offensive on 20 April, ordering the Western and Kalinin Fronts onto the defensive after weeks of grinding, costly advances that had pushed men and machines to their absolute limits. The campaign had failed to meet Stalin’s ambitious territorial aims or destroy the targeted German forces as hoped, though local attacks and skirmishing continued in scattered sectors where small units still probed for any weakness in the enemy lines. Casualty figures remain disputed even today: official Soviet sources list 776,889 losses; Mikhalev estimates about 948,000; and Mawdsley gives roughly 400,000 from 5 December to 20 April, possibly excluding the thousands of wounded and sick who filled hospitals and evacuation trains. Such disputes reflect the wider confusion over Eastern Front losses, since terms often varied in whether they included only dead, missing, and captured or also the wounded and sick who were sometimes simply struck from the rolls in the chaos of retreat and advance. Around the same time, Marshal Shaposhnikov’s declining health left him unable to fully serve as Chief of the General Staff any longer; the burden of directing the vast Soviet war machine had finally taken its physical toll. On the 24th, General Vasilevskii stepped in as acting chief after serving under him in careful preparation for the role, a quiet but significant handover in a command system already strained by months of relentless pressure.

 

In northern Finland, the lack of any Soviet offensive would persuade Dietl that the reports of a Soviet build-up was a false alarm and that they would not attack before the thaw reached this far north, where winter still clung stubbornly to the landscape. Dietl would also rule out any summer offensive action by his own Army, as his reinforcements were not expected to arrive for up to five months, leaving his mountain troops stretched thin and vulnerable in the vast, roadless terrain. Then on the 23rd, Kestenga was struck by the 23rd Guard Rifle Division supported by the 8th Ski Brigade in a sudden, violent assault that shattered the quiet. Frontal attacks pinned the Finnish 3rd Corps’ right and centre as their weakly held left flank cracked over two days of fierce, close-quarters fighting in the thawing forests and bogs. By the 25th, Dietl was forced to throw in his only reserves: a tank battalion with obsolete Panzer Is that rattled forward on worn tracks, a company from the Brandenburg sabotage regiment known for its daring behind-the-lines missions, a single infantry battalion from the 34th Mountain Corps, and a battalion redeployed from Ukhta in a desperate scramble to stabilize the line. The 5th Air Force was forced to abandon its anti-shipping operations entirely to save the 3rd Corps, diverting precious aircraft and crews from their usual patrols over the icy seas.

 

Until then, German forces had been trying to disrupt Convoy PQ-13 in the freezing waters of the Arctic convoy route. On the 24th, a heavy storm scattered the convoy, leaving stragglers exposed to attack amid towering waves and blinding snow. The Luftwaffe sank two ships in daring low-level strikes, while three destroyers sank another merchantman but lost one of their own in the chaotic surface action. Submarines destroyed two more supply ships, though one U-boat was also lost in the icy depths. A British destroyer and cruiser were badly damaged in the fighting, and a Soviet destroyer was also damaged by enemy fire. Despite having the heavy cruiser Hipper, the pocket battleship Lützow, and 20 submarines in Norway—eight assigned to defence and twelve allocated for use against the convoys—the Kriegsmarine refused to commit its heavier ships because it lacked reliable intelligence on the convoy’s size and escort strength, a cautious decision born of bitter experience with Arctic convoys. As the Luftwaffe introduced newly converted He-111 torpedo bombers to Arctic bases, PQ-14 encountered less German opposition, partly because of the Kestenga offensive that had pulled aircraft and attention southward. But weather proved just as dangerous: pack ice forced 16 of its 24 merchant ships to turn back in a heartbreaking retreat, and one of the remaining eight was sunk by a submarine, its cargo lost to the black waters.

 

Outside Leningrad, the Rasputitsa imposed a complete stalemate on the battlefield, with tanks sinking axle-deep, artillery pieces immobilized in the mire, and even infantry struggling to move more than a few hundred meters without exhaustion. Unable to fight effectively in these conditions, Khozin turned to politics and asked Stalin to absorb the Volkhov Front into his own command. He argued that poor coordination between the two Fronts required a unified command and promised this would bring victory despite the mud that now dominated every operation. Shaposhnikov objected, doubting that one man could control ten armies and several independent corps split into two separate groups spread across difficult terrain. Stalin sided with Khozin, and Meretskov only learned of the decision when he was personally ordered on the 23rd to dissolve the Volkhov Front. Khozin was to directly control the forces on the Volkhov Axis with Meretskov as his deputy commander. Govorov was assigned as commander of the forces around Leningrad. Although intended to streamline command, the merger only created more problems, as the Front became overwhelmed by the sheer number of formations under its control and the logistical nightmare of coordinating them in the mud. 

 

Back on the 20th, General Klykov had become seriously ill and needed to be replaced amid the ongoing crisis. Meretskov chose the rising star Vlasov as his replacement—though it should be noted that the dates of Vlasov’s appointment are confused in the sources, with some claiming he was assigned as far back as January. Vlasov had developed a reputation for handling difficult situations during his postings so far in the war, earning respect for his calm under fire. He was given orders by Meretskov to either reinvigorate the 2nd Shock Army or withdraw it from its near-encircled state in the swamps. Most of the 2nd Shock Army’s formations were down to only 30% strength, and their food and ammunition supplies were both nearly exhausted after weeks of isolation. As Meretskov himself put it: “Second Shock is completely played out: it can neither attack nor defend itself. Its communications are at the mercy of German thrusts. If nothing is done, catastrophe can’t be staved off. To get out of this situation, I suggest that 6th Guards Rifle Corps is not removed from the Front but used to strengthen that army. If that can’t be done, then Second Shock must be pulled out of the swamp and forest back to the Chudovo–Leningrad road and rail lines.” On the 24th, he told Stalin exactly this, laying out the dire realities in unflinching detail. Stalin was politely noncommittal while Khozin insisted those forces be transferred to the Northwestern Front instead, adding yet another layer of command friction.

 

Meanwhile, Küchler’s staff started planning three different operations for the summer, each one carefully weighed against the realities of the coming thaw. Bettelstab was a three-division offensive to crush the Oranienbaum bridgehead in a sharp, limited thrust. Moorbrand was a small pincer attack to remove the Pogost’e salient that had long been a thorn in the German side. However, the third operation was much larger in scope. Nordlicht aimed to storm and then capture Leningrad itself in a bold, city-seizing assault. Army Group North did not have the forces available to actually achieve this, but Hitler had promised Küchler reinforcements in the form of 4 divisions from Manstein’s 11th Army and all its heavy artillery after they completed the siege of Sevastopol, dangling the prospect of a decisive victory in the north.

 

Meanwhile, on the 24th, the Luftwaffe launched Operation Götz von Berlichingen as part of the wider air offensive Eisstoss. Frustrated with its supporting role in northern Russia and seeking to withdraw the Stukas aiding BRÜCKENSCHLAG, it used grandiose names to appeal to Hitler and deter Wehrmacht objections, hoping the dramatic titles would secure priority. That day, the battleship October Revolution and the cruisers Maxim Gorkiy and Marty were hit, though only lightly damaged in the precision strikes. The raid also forced the 18th Army to expend large amounts of artillery ammunition against Soviet air defences, which was then used to justify reducing support for later strikes as shells grew scarce. Further attacks followed on the 25th and 27th, but with less army backing, dense Soviet flak limited their effect to a few hits on destroyers and support ships. Instead, German siege artillery focused on bombarding Leningrad’s port facilities and ships on the Neva, pounding the city’s lifeline in a relentless drumbeat of fire.

This coincided with the Road of Life’s declining utility as the spring thaw accelerated. Back on the 15th, the ice had melted enough to prevent buses from passing safely across the fragile surface. By the 19th, tanker trucks could no longer use the routes without risking disaster. On the 21st, the Leningrad Front ordered all movement across the ice roads to be halted entirely. 

 

Nevertheless, one last 64-ton shipment of spring onions arrived in Leningrad on the 23rd in a final, heroic delivery that symbolized the road’s extraordinary service. That was the end of all vehicular movement across the Road of Life. Yet despite its closure, the road had accomplished a remarkable feat over the winter. According to Glantz, it carried 361,109 tons of cargo in total, including 262,419 tons of food, 8,357 tons of forage, 31,910 tons of ammunition and explosives, 34,717 tons of fuel and lubricants, 22,818 tons of coal, and 888 tons of other cargo. In addition, 2,000 tons of anti-scurvy and other health-enhancing, high-calorie products such as chocolate and eggs made it into Leningrad across the ice road. Furthermore, the reserves amassed during its operations were sufficient to feed the population from the time the ice road melted until water transport across the lake resumed, buying precious time for the besieged city.

 

While the fighting on the frontline died down, Army Group Center’s rear areas still remained a warzone of raids and counter-raids. The 11th Cavalry Corps continued their raids while the 6th Panzer Division still nibbled away at the villages under the control of the 39th Army in grinding, attritional actions. At the same time, Belov’s offensive to unite with the 50th Army continued despite suffering a heavy blow with the loss of Buda back on the 18th. Reinforcements belatedly arrived on the 19th. The 4th Battalion from the 23rd Airborne Brigade had been dropped just west of Svintsovo on the 16th, but as with previous drops, they arrived scattered and needed three days to regroup amid the chaos of the drop zones. With these 645 extra troopers, the 4th Airborne Corps was ordered to conquer Novoe Askerovo. The 214th Brigade remained defending the flanks while the main force crossed the thawed swampland to reach their objective through knee-deep water and clinging mud. The soaked and exhausted paratroopers attacked on the night of the 20th. The German garrison was deeply entrenched, with all approaches to the village heavily mined and covered by interlocking fire. The 8th Brigade’s attack was an utter failure, and it was forced to withdraw to the forest just north of the village under heavy fire. At the same time, other German forces attacked along the entire line from Miliatino to Kalugovo and Baskakovka with extensive artillery support that lit up the night sky. The 9th Brigade made good use of ambushes and hit-and-run skirmishes to defeat these German attacks at night in a masterclass of irregular warfare. The following morning, reconnaissance from Belov’s Corps identified elements from two infantry divisions and a panzer division holding the narrow corridor between them and the 50th Army. Most were fortified in positions to defend the Warsaw highway, turning the route into a deadly gauntlet.

 

After regrouping, the 50th Army launched a new offensive on the night of the 21st. Two fresh Rifle divisions took the lead of this attack in a determined push. Once again, they could not take Fomino 2 despite heavy fighting. In a report to STAVKA and the Western Front, Boldin largely blamed the impact of the thaw on operations, painting a vivid picture of the environmental obstacles. As the report noted: “The use of tanks was strongly hampered by ground conditions, stream flooding, and the accumulation of water in valleys” and “insufficiencies in ammunition supplies had a great influence on the tempo of operations. Low provisions of ammunition to units was a result of roads impassable for wheeled transport. As an extreme measure, in some units resupply of ammunition was by soldiers’ hands.” The flooding and mud severely restricted the use of tanks and prevented the operation of trucks needed to keep formations resupplied, forcing men to haul shells forward on their backs through the mire. Despite the Army obviously being at the limits of their capability and no longer suitable for offensive operations, the 50th would remain on the attack until the 26th. That day saw a massed assault against Miliatino fail sufficiently badly that the Army was ordered onto the defensive, marking the end of their exhausted efforts.

 

As the 50th Army burnt itself out trying to push north, the Germans counterattacked Belov’s forces again on the 25th. Buda, Staroe and Novoe Askerovo, and Kalugovo all fell under attack by German infantry and tanks with extensive Luftwaffe support that roared overhead. Across the line, the cavalry and airborne forces were forced to withdraw to new defensive positions in a fighting retreat. Belatedly, Zhukov ordered that Belov cease offensive operations. Only 2,027 personnel remained in the 4th Airborne Corps, which included 645 men from the 23rd Brigade, a shadow of the force that had begun the operation.

 

With the Western and Kalinin Fronts on the defensive, Belov and his forces were left in a dire position as the week ended. The German forces were no longer pinned down, and more formations could be pulled off the frontline to crush their pocket as soon as the weather improved and the ground firmed. Furthermore, the thaw meant that rivers were running high or even overflowing their banks, while swamps rendered large areas impassable and turned the landscape into a labyrinth of water and mud. Movement was becoming possible only via roads and through villages, which could no longer be bypassed—all of which were increasingly fortified by the Germans or patrolled with heavily armed convoys that made infiltration suicidal. Supplying Belov with overland infiltration through German lines was becoming increasingly impossible. Only risky air drops remained a viable option to bring new supplies to Belov, dangling by a thread in the face of German fighters and flak.

 

As the Rasputitsa forced the cessation of most Soviet offensives, Army Group Center sought to recover its strength amid the lull. It was losing 16 divisions to Army Group South, and the divisions that remained were severely battered after the winter’s ordeals. The Army Group was the lowest priority for replenishment, so most of its shortages were not expected to be filled until summer or later, leaving units chronically understrength. The manpower deficit forced the remaining divisions to reduce their infantry regiments from three battalions to two, thinning the line even further. Artillery batteries were reduced from 4 to 3 guns each, cutting firepower noticeably. Many Panzer and motorised formations were that in name only, with only 20% of their remaining vehicles actually serviceable after months of constant use. This was due to a mixture of extreme overuse, the added mechanical strain from the extreme cold followed by the mud, and a lack of dedicated repair facilities and spare parts that plagued the entire Eastern Front. A study of German tank maintenance in the war captures the problem well: field repair shops theoretically handled only those repairs completable within a set time, turning anything requiring more than 14 days over to depot installations. In practice, however, most shops were able to handle all types of repairs provided adequate spare parts were available—the larger items were usually in short supply. If three tanks were disabled because of damaged engines and the parts would take three weeks to supply, the tanks would typically remain at the shop and return to service within four weeks, rather than be sent to a depot where the unit might never see them again. Under these circumstances, shop personnel preferred to deadline tanks for prolonged periods or even cannibalize them rather than use the depot maintenance services. Among the armored forces in Russia, there was a strong aversion to allowing a disabled tank to leave the regimental area. On top of this, there was often insufficient time for a vehicle to be withdrawn, fully maintained, and restored. Thus, most repairs that were actually conducted were short-term patches, liable to break down again soon after, keeping the panzer units in a constant state of precarious readiness.

 

That month, Stalin lamented that nearly all Red Army commanders from regimental level upward were trained as infantrymen or cavalrymen, with few senior officers from other branches, highlighting a critical gap in expertise. He also criticized the Voroshilov and Frunze Academies for producing planners with too little practical understanding of combined-arms warfare, and ordered reforms to improve inter-arm coordination across the board. At the same time, the USSR took steps to expand its manpower pool in a sweeping mobilization effort. Groups previously exempt from bearing arms, such as ethnic Germans, were drafted into labour formations to support the war economy and construction, freeing others for military service in the front lines. Some exemptions were also removed outright, adding 170,000 men of military age to the ranks. The NKO further ordered women into signals and other rear-area roles to replace men sent to the front, a pragmatic shift that tapped into a vast new reservoir of talent. By war’s end, a total of 490,235 women had served in the ranks of the Soviet armed forces and another 500,000 in civilian support staff, with 86 women winning the medal Hero of the Soviet Union. Altogether, nearly one million women had served in the Red Army or its civilian support system, contributing in ways that would prove essential to the eventual victory.

 

Back on the 16th, Timoshenko ordered his forces to start deploying for the Kharkiv offensive in a massive logistical undertaking. While he issued an elaborate plan which insisted on stringent security and deception to maintain surprise, the reality was rather different on the ground. Mud from the Rasputitsa hindered movement at every turn, as did flooded river banks and the utter lack of paved roads that turned supply columns into quagmires. The entire redeployment operation was rushed, which compromised the deception measures and left Soviet intentions far more exposed than intended. As Moskalenko later noted: “the regrouping of large masses of forces to their appointed penetration sectors occurred without required organisation and secrecy. Therefore, no one was surprised that the German-Fascist command divined our plans. Having divined them, he hurriedly undertook measures to strengthen the defences in threatened sectors . . . Thus, the prepared operation was not unexpected, nor was it a surprise for the enemy.” Compounding this, there was no centralised road traffic control, which caused heavy congestion, especially around bottlenecks such as bridges where vehicles sat stalled for hours.

Stalin would also order the reorganisation of the Front’s tank brigades into three Tank Armies, a major structural shift. The Southern Front also formed a Tank Army around Barvinkove. This caused further delays and complicated the concentration of forces, as command-and-control structures had to be created for the new Tank Armies, along with the establishment of their logistical support from scratch. Thus, the preparations for the Kharkiv offensive fell rapidly behind schedule, adding tension to an already complex operation.

 

During this time, the German bickering over which variant of Operation Fridericus to use continued even after its planned start on April 22nd came and went, with headquarters locked in debate. Bock attempted to force the issue: the flooding of the Donets River prevented the Soviets from moving reinforcements into the area, and in his own words, “I am considering the attack at Volchansk now because the Donets is still in flood and the enemy in the bulge at present has only one usable bridge behind him. Therefore he cannot bring significant reserves across from the other side and will, if the attack succeeds at all, be destroyed. Later everything will be harder. Just as in the first failed counterattack, after the high water recedes the enemy can be reinforced from the other side of the Donets at any time. Then I will need double the forces for the attack, which will then not offer nearly the same chances of success. I am not recommending the attack for my own amusement. I just think it necessary, as well as a basis for the operations to come and for securing Kharkov. — Doesn’t the Führer think the enemy will attack us at Kharkov?” However, Hitler wanted assurances of a smashing success with minimal losses, and preferred to postpone until after Manstein’s Kerch offensive so as to maximise air support available to both operations. This would mean waiting until the floodwaters had subsided—at which point Soviet mobility would no longer be hindered. Even by the 25th, no agreement could be reached over Operation Fridericus, leaving the situation unresolved.

 

Richthofen would arrive at the headquarters of Luftflotte 4 in Mykolaiv on April 21st. There, he oversaw preparations for the aerial elements of Trappenjagd with characteristic energy. While this should traditionally have been the purview of Luftflotte 4, Richthofen was placed in charge of all air operations for the offensive, reporting only to Göring and given broad authority. He was extremely critical of General Löhr’s preparations and thus spent the rest of the week travelling from base to base in his Storch light aircraft, personally briefing and encouraging wing and group commanders along with all the flak battalion leaders in face-to-face meetings. Meanwhile, his Air Corps spent the week refitting, with many of their groups having been sent back to their German home bases earlier in the month to be restored to full strength thanks to Hitler’s direct orders—though to get enough personnel, this required prematurely drawing men from training groups, a shortcut that carried risks. Hitler also directed that during this period, the supply of the Kerch Peninsula must be interrupted in the strongest manner. Recognising that the short travel time of ships between Novorossiysk and Kerch made attacks at sea often impractical, he designated the harbours of Kerch and Komysh-Burun as well as Novorossiysk and Tuapse as the Schwerpunkt—the point of main effort—for the interdiction campaign.

 

On the 23rd, Stalin ordered the Bryansk Front to prepare an offensive on Oryol in support of Timoshenko’s Kharkiv attack, adding yet another coordinated blow to the spring plans. The 61st and 48th Armies, backed by the 3rd and 13th, were to outflank the city, with Golikov told to be ready by 12 May. The newly formed 48th Army, created on the 21st from recent reinforcements, was placed under General Samokhin. But while flying from Moscow to his headquarters at Yelets, his pilot blundered and landed at a German airfield near Mtsensk in a stunning navigational error. Worse still, Samokhin was carrying directives outlining both the Kharkiv offensive and the Bryansk Front’s supporting role, handing the Germans a potential intelligence windfall.

 

During April, Fedorenko changed the composition of the Tank Corps to add a third tank brigade after field exercises had shown that the old template was too weak to achieve the intended mission. This nominally brought them up to 30 KV tanks, 60 T-34 medium tanks, and 60 T-60 light tanks—though Glantz notes that the authorised strength actually ranged from 30 to 65 KV tanks and 46 to 56 T-34s depending on the reform. Shortages meant not all Corps would reach even these numbers. For example, the four Tank Corps assigned to the Bryansk Front actually averaged 24 KV-1 tanks, 88 T-34s, and 69 T-60s. Furthermore, an engineering company was added to help clear obstacles and minefields, providing much-needed support. However, this only made formations even more tank-heavy, with only six infantry battalions to provide dedicated infantry support to six tank battalions—a imbalance that combat experience would soon force the Soviets to address. The 1st through 4th Corps had been formed in March, with the 5th through 8th, 10th, and 21st through 24th formed in April. By the end of the month, there were 13 Tank Corps in total, marking a significant expansion of Soviet armored power.

On the 21st, the North Caucasus theatre was created under Marshal Budenny, who assumed responsibility for the Crimean Front, the Sevastopol Defense Region, and all naval and air forces in the Black Sea–Caucasus area. Budenny was to coordinate these forces for a new spring offensive aimed at liberating Crimea, a high-stakes mission. Preparations were started for a new offensive in early May. Mekhlis still forbade the digging of trenches, a controversial order that would have serious consequences in the fighting to come.

 

Around Demyansk, the twin prongs of Groups Seydlitz and Zorn continued their slow advance towards each other through the difficult terrain. On the 21st, Pioneers from Group Seydlitz managed to cross the Lovat River and link up with the SS forces now leading Group Zorn’s advance in a hard-won junction. By the 22nd, a narrow 4km-wide corridor was secured between the 10th and 2nd Corps, with supply barges bringing supplies across the Lovat to the relieved troops. Forczyk notes these two Corps had suffered 63,000 casualties with 17,000 dead or missing since the start of the Soviet Winter Offensive—a staggering price for the relief. During this time, Kurochkin’s forces had suffered an estimated 245,000 casualties, including 88,908 dead or missing, underscoring the mutual bloodletting. While supplies could now reach the encircled 2nd Corps overland, they were still not safe, and that land link was tenuously thin and vulnerable to counterattack. Hoping to still crush the 2nd Corps, STAVKA decided to reinforce the Northwestern Front with 5 Rifle divisions and eight rifle and two tank brigades in a major commitment. Kurochkin distributed them to the 1st Shock and 11th Armies, although these formations would take time to arrive and integrate. With Demyansk relieved, German focus rapidly turned to Group Lang’s preparations to relieve Kholm. April 30th was given as the provisional start date for his offensive, setting the stage for the next chapter.

 

To expand intelligence inside the USSR, Gehlen launched Operation Flamingo in a bold bid to penetrate the Soviet high command. Its key asset was Commissar Mishinskii, captured in October 1941 and gradually won over through bribery and persuasion over many months. The Germans staged his escape, allowing him to return to Soviet lines as a hero greeted with celebration. Armed with information supplied by Gehlen, Mishinskii secured a post at a Moscow headquarters, from which he relayed reports on secret summer conferences and strategic discussions. Using similar methods, the Germans built a small network of informers within the Red Army, the Party, and other Soviet institutions, quietly weaving a web that would provide valuable insights in the months ahead.

 

I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.

As the Rasputitsa mud season set in, Soviet offensives ground to a halt across all fronts. Belov's encircled cavalry and airborne forces near Moscow were left increasingly isolated, with the exhausted 50th Army failing to break through to them. The Germans relieved the Demyansk Pocket after brutal fighting with catastrophic losses on both sides. In the south, Timoshenko's rushed preparations for the Kharkiv offensive were plagued by poor secrecy and logistical chaos.

Last time we spoke about Timoshenko taking control. In the north, Soviet forces on the Volkhov Front struggled to rescue the encircled 2nd Shock Army near Lyuban, with narrow supply corridors and heavy losses in the "Meat Grinder" at Miasnoi Bor. German Group Seydlitz advanced slowly toward the Demyansk Pocket, while Kholm defenders repelled assaults. Leningrad's logistics improved with Lake Ladoga plans, and partisans inflicted significant damage behind German lines. Hitler's Directive 41 outlined Fall Blau, targeting Caucasian oil and Leningrad. In the center, partisans and Soviet airborne/cavalry units disrupted Army Group Center, prompting operations like Hannover to shorten lines. In the south, Timoshenko took Southwestern Front command, planning a Kharkov offensive with massed tanks to encircle German forces. Crimea saw Kozlov's disastrous attack on Koi-Asan, yielding 352,000 Soviet casualties versus 24,120 German. Preparations for Sevastopol's siege included massive artillery like the Dora gun.

This episode is the end of the 33rd

Well hello there, welcome to the Eastern Front week by week podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

On the 13th, the Germans in Finland partly spotted the buildup of the Karelian Front when a recon flight noticed 700 rail cars at Loukhi, highlighting the challenges of aerial reconnaissance in such remote, forested terrains where visibility was often hampered by weather and camouflage. But awful weather meant the only Soviet units they identified were the two ski brigades near the Mountain Corps Norway, specialized troops trained for winter warfare that had proven effective in earlier Finnish-Soviet conflicts like the Winter War of 1939-1940. That was enough for the 3rd Corps to scrap a small attack they had planned and focus instead on beefing up their defenses, a prudent shift given the harsh Arctic conditions that could quickly turn any offensive into a costly stalemate. In the end, though, the attack never happened because the Soviet deployment dragged on so slowly, hampered by the same logistical bottlenecks that plagued both sides in this theater, where supply lines stretched over hundreds of kilometers of rugged wilderness.

Inside Leningrad, the city's trams, canals, water systems, and a lot of its factories restarted, with a big emphasis on war production, especially shells and mines, which were critical for sustaining the Red Army's artillery-heavy tactics that had evolved from lessons learned in the Russian Civil War and the purges of the 1930s. In fact, by the end of April, the city's output included 5 machine guns, 649 submachine guns, and 67,900 shells and mines, a remarkable feat considering the siege had already claimed hundreds of thousands of lives through starvation and bombardment since September 1941. Since most of the remaining male population in Leningrad had already been conscripted by then, these factories relied mostly on women; out of the 254,000 war industry workers in Leningrad that month, 181,000 were women, many of whom were stepping into roles traditionally held by men, reflecting a broader Soviet mobilization effort that saw women taking on combat and industrial duties in unprecedented numbers. The population also planted food crops in every possible spot of land—over 2,000 hectares of parkland and empty ground got turned into fields, an initiative born from the desperate need for self-sufficiency amid the blockade that had severed normal supply routes. Civilians could only use wood and peat as fuel to save on coal and petrol, and all buildings not fit for living were ordered torn down for firewood, a grim necessity in a city where the harsh winter had already forced residents to burn furniture and books for warmth. They even ordered a fuel pipeline built across the floor of Lake Ladoga, an engineering marvel that would complement the "Road of Life" ice route used during the frozen months, ensuring a lifeline for oil and other essentials as the thaw progressed.

Outside Leningrad, Generals Mikhail Khozin and Kirill Meretskov’s offensive plans completely fell apart, unraveling under the weight of poor coordination and the unforgiving environment. The logistical mess from the Rasputitsa and the resulting quagmire made any offensive moves impractical, as trucks sank into the mud and horses exhausted themselves pulling artillery pieces through the slop, echoing similar disruptions in past Russian campaigns. They had no choice but to stop their formations, dig in, and wait, which left the 2nd Shock Army exposed and squeezed tight, its soldiers enduring not just enemy fire but also the psychological toll of isolation in a rapidly deteriorating situation. Only a 4km corridor of mud and water linked it to the Soviet frontline, and that was under constant German fire, with snipers and machine guns turning the narrow path into a deadly gauntlet. The advantage the Russians got from retaking the two lanes didn't fully match the trouble it caused the Germans, as the Germans adapted quickly with their doctrine of flexible defense. The 37th Corps and I Corps kept the corridor to a width of less than two miles, and by mid-April, the thaw plus nonstop air and artillery bombardments had turned those lanes into cratered strips of mud, where movement was slowed to a crawl and casualties mounted from exposure alone. The Second Shock Army wasn't completely cut off, but it was struggling badly, with supply shortages leading to rationing that weakened the troops' morale and combat effectiveness. The Eighteenth Army reported that their hold on Lyuban depended entirely on "luck and unfounded optimism," both of which could vanish anytime with some Soviet infantry "and a few tanks," a stark assessment that underscored the precarious balance of power in this sector. Despite these horrible conditions, there were no plans to pull those forces out, as Stalin's "not one step back" mentality, which would later formalize in Order No. 227, influenced decisions to hold ground at all costs. On the flip side, the conditions also shielded the 2nd Shock Army in a way, as the mud equally hampered German advances, creating a mutual standoff that bought time for potential reinforcements.

Küchler requested three infantry divisions on the 13th to quickly crush the Volkhov Pocket and shorten his line, a move that would have allowed for better resource allocation in a theater stretched thin by the vast distances. But Hitler denied it because all the uncommitted formations were needed in the south, where preparations for the summer offensive were prioritizing the oil-rich Caucasus. Hitler suggested "smoking out" the Soviet groups west of the Volkhov, a term evoking scorched-earth tactics that had been used in earlier anti-partisan operations. The mud had hit the 18th Army hard too, mirroring the broader impact of Rasputitsa on German logistics, which relied heavily on rail and road networks ill-suited to the terrain. By the end of the week, it struggled to get supplies to the frontline, with convoys delayed for days. They estimated that any movement or offensive push by the 18th Army would double the supply needs, so any attack to smash the 2nd Shock Army had to wait for better weather, a delay that allowed the Soviets precious time to reorganize.

Between February and April 1942, Luftflotte I lost 41 bombers, 21 Stukas, and 19 fighters, while claiming to have destroyed 581 Soviet aircraft, figures that highlighted the intense attrition in the air war, where German pilots like those in JG 54 amassed high kill counts due to superior training and aircraft like the Messerschmitt Bf 109. Most aerial operations in this sector directly helped ground combat, both in defense and offense, serving as a force multiplier in an era when close air support was evolving rapidly. They also launched persistent interdiction strikes against the Volkhov Front’s railhead at Malaya Vishera, disrupting supply chains that were already strained by the vast Soviet geography. Plus, when the VVS tried to supply the 2nd Shock Army by air, General Alfred Keller forced his JG 54s to act as night fighters to counter those transports, an adaptation that showed the flexibility of Luftwaffe tactics under pressure. They claimed to have shot down 30 Soviet transports, dealing a blow to Soviet airlift capabilities that were still in their infancy compared to Allied efforts later in the war.

On the 11th, Aleksandr Novikov got promoted to commander-in-chief of the entire VVS because of his successes in defending Leningrad, where his innovative use of air assets had helped blunt German advances. Novikov, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War and a survivor of Stalin's purges, quickly started a series of reforms, including creating Air Armies made up of fighter, bomber, and ground-attack planes, centralized units that would improve coordination in a force previously hampered by fragmented command. These Air Armies stayed in a strategic reserve and then got sent to the Front commands that needed support, a system inspired by lessons from the early defeats of 1941. The first air army officially formed on May 5th, with 16 more by the end of the war, marking a turning point in Soviet air power that would contribute to later victories like at Kursk. Novikov also pushed for widespread use of RADAR and radio, technologies that the Soviets had lagged behind in but were now adopting rapidly to match German advancements. He overhauled airframe maintenance and repair systems to boost efficiency, addressing chronic issues like poor spare parts availability that had grounded many planes. He insisted on creating dummy airfields while heavily camouflaging the real airbases for protection, tactics borrowed from both Allied and Axis practices to reduce vulnerability to bombing.

Seydlitz's advance kept going that week, named after the Prussian general Friedrich Wilhelm von Seydlitz for his daring cavalry exploits in the 18th century, though this modern operation was a grueling infantry slog. On the 12th, Gebirgsjäger-Regiment 206 broke through the Soviet defensive lines, and by the end of the day, they reported seeing Ramushevo in the distance, a morale boost for troops who had endured freezing conditions in the pocket. But by April 14th, the 5th Light Infantry Division was so worn out that it couldn't keep up offensive actions, exhausted from casualties and the physical toll of fighting in mud. So, the 8th Light Division took over the spearhead, fresh enough to maintain momentum. The next day, Seydlitz’s group finally reached the Lovat River, letting them turn north toward Ramushevo, a strategic crossing point vital for linking up encircled forces. In an effort to stop the relief of the 2nd Corps, the 11th Army transferred three rifle divisions to the area, diverting resources from other fronts in a bid to maintain pressure.

Inside the Demyansk Pocket, Operation Fallreep kicked off on the 14th, a name meaning "parachute" in German, evoking the airborne aspects though it was primarily a ground effort. Group Zorn started their push toward the Lovat River to link up with Group Seydlitz, forging ahead through dense forests and swollen rivers. Originally, they hadn't planned to attack until after Seydlitz secured Ramushevo. But Seydlitz had already taken over 10,000 casualties, and at the current pace, they wouldn't reach Ramushevo until the Rasputitsa hit full force, worsening an already dire supply situation. So, Fallreep started early as a gamble to keep the relief operation's momentum, a bold decision reflecting the high stakes of leaving troops encircled. Zorn’s main assault force was a battlegroup with five battalions from the 32nd Infantry Division and a battalion pieced together from companies from the rest of the encircled Corps, a patchwork unit that exemplified the German practice of ad hoc formations in crises. This led to a narrow breakthrough by the 7th Guard Rifle Division, exploiting a weak point in Soviet lines. Behind that, the rest of the Group began a slow march toward Ramushevo, inching forward under artillery cover.

Army Group North had already started planning what to do after relieving Demyansk, anticipating the need for long-term positioning in a war that was shifting toward attrition. The Army Group staff initially wanted to pull back both the 2nd and 10th Corps to let their divisions recover over the summer, allowing for rest and refit in a conflict where manpower was becoming increasingly precious. But that wasn't allowed because Hitler and Chief of the General Staff Franz Halder wanted to use those positions for offensives against the Toropets salient, viewing it as a vulnerability in Soviet lines that could be exploited for strategic gains.

To the south, planning got underway for another try to relieve the besieged garrison at Kholm, a small town that had become a symbol of German resilience much like the Demyansk Pocket. The seriously ill General Theodor Uckermann had been replaced by Generalleutnant Viktor Lang, a capable officer with experience in infantry commands. An assault group formed from most of the 218th Infantry, a regiment from the 122nd Infantry, 20 Panzers from the 8th Panzer division, and 12 assault guns, this included 5 battalions that Küchler had originally scraped together to reinforce Operation BRÜCKENSCHLAG, but they got diverted to the Kholm Operation instead because humanity and comradeship made it unthinkable to abandon the Scherer Group, and because Army Group Center’s cancellation of their Ostashkov offensive reduced the tactical value of holding Demyansk, shifting priorities in a fluid strategic landscape. Plus, a tank hunter battalion joined this group, specialized units equipped for anti-armor roles that had proven effective against Soviet T-34s in earlier engagements. It had a larger-than-normal number of 5cm PaK 38 guns to take on the known clusters of T-34 tanks reinforcing the Soviet blocking positions, weapons that represented the pinnacle of German anti-tank technology at the time. However, Lang didn't expect to start his attack until the end of April, a timeline influenced by weather and force readiness. This slow pace came from the apparent exhaustion of the 3rd Shock Army, which had stopped its constant offensives by the 18th, its troops depleted after months of high-intensity combat. Both Purkaev and Scherer’s forces had been completely worn down in the nonstop fighting from April 2nd to 18th, a period of attrition that mirrored the broader Eastern Front's grinding nature. Scherer’s casualties for that period were estimated at 500, with Soviet losses unknown but definitely much higher, likely in the thousands given the Red Army's tendency for mass assaults.

In Army Group Center’s sector, worsening mud steadily made combat operations tougher, complicating movement and logistics in ways that echoed the initial Barbarossa invasion's autumn quagmires. Even so, the Kalinin and Western Fronts kept up their ineffective attacks on German positions, persistent efforts that drained resources without decisive gains. At the same time, the 9th Army worked hard to prepare for Operation Nordpol 2, hoping to launch it either despite the weather or as soon as things improved, building on the first Nordpol's partial successes in stabilizing lines. Their efforts were limited further by Army Group Center’s overall shortage of men and supplies, since Nordpol also competed with the 4th Army’s Operation Hannover for scarce resources, highlighting the internal rivalries for allocations within the Wehrmacht. On October 18, Field Marshal Günther von Kluge bluntly told one of his generals, “We must economize on the forces we have left,” a directive born from the cumulative losses since 1941. That shortage showed in his decision to send only one security division to help the 2nd Panzer Army against the growing partisan threat around Bryansk, where guerrilla warfare was escalating, inspired by Soviet directives to disrupt German rear areas. Kluge preferred conventional operations like Hannover because they targeted regular Red Army formations, whose movements were more predictable than the elusive partisans, allowing for better application of limited firepower. These forces were also larger and more concentrated than the scattered partisan bands, making them a more efficient target for limited German resources, a calculation rooted in the principles of Auftragstaktik, or mission-type tactics.

This came from a severe manpower shortage, exacerbated by the enormous casualties of Barbarossa and the winter counteroffensives. OKH estimated that by May 1, Army Group Center would average a deficit of 6,900 men per division, while Army Group North would be short 4,800, figures that painted a picture of an overstretched force. The more favored Army Group South was expected to face a smaller average deficit of 2,400, as Hitler prioritized it for the upcoming offensives. Altogether, the Ostheer was projected to be short 625,000 men, and many replacements arriving at the front were poorly trained because they had been rushed into service, often with minimal combat drills. Halder believed this would reduce infantry combat effectiveness by roughly 65 percent in the two weaker army groups and by 50 percent in Army Group South, a dire assessment that influenced planning for the summer. Nearly all available manpower from the Class of 1922 had already been used to refill the Wehrmacht to this level, while most of the Class of 1923 was still in training, drawing from ever-younger cohorts. As a result, in April, the Germans decided to begin conscripting men born in 1924 by September and to remove even more exemptions for workers in the war economy, measures that strained the home front and foreshadowed the total war mobilization of 1943.

That week, permission finally came for the 33rd Army to withdraw back to Soviet lines, a reluctant approval from higher command after weeks of encirclement. A planned attack by the 10th Army aimed to create a breach in the German lines near Kirov, letting them escape through coordinated pincer movements. But by then, the 10,000 remaining starving men were surrounded by elements from 7 German divisions and were expected to march up to 180km through thick mud, a daunting prospect for troops already weakened by malnutrition and disease. In no shape to cover that distance, Lieutenant General Mikhail Efremov instead ordered a breakout toward the 43rd Army’s lines by the shortest route, a desperate bid for survival. By the 15th, the 33rd Army was crushed, its formations shattered in fierce close-quarters fighting. At most 1,000 soldiers and Efremov escaped the pocket, a fraction of the original force. They followed the Ugra River into the dense forests to try and hide, using the natural cover that had aided partisans in the region. A plane tried to extract Efremov but couldn't land—though other accounts say the plane did land, but the wounded Efremov refused to be taken to safety, prioritizing his men's escape in a display of leadership. Days later, German forces caught up to these survivors before they could reach the 43rd Army, closing the noose with superior mobility. On the 18th, Efremov committed suicide rather than be captured; Erickson claims his last words were: “Boys, this is the end for me, but you go on fighting,” a poignant end for a commander who had fought in the Russian Civil War.

Despite not being allowed to weaken his forces around Dorogobuzh, Belov decided to attack toward the 50th Army on the 12th, defying orders in a move that reflected the autonomy sometimes exercised by Soviet generals under pressure. 25km separated the two forces, along with heavily entrenched German formations in all-round defensive positions, fortified with minefields and bunkers. The 8th and 9th Airborne were to attack south toward Staroe Askerovo and Novoe Askerovo, elite paratroopers who had been dropped behind lines earlier in the year. The 214th Airborne was to stay between Akulovo and Plotki to protect the Airborne’s base camp, securing vital supply depots. The 2nd Guard Cavalry was to flank around to take Fanernovo Factory, using mobility to outmaneuver static defenses. The reformed 329th Rifle division and a battalion of Partisans were to defend the northern part of the line facing Vyazma, incorporating irregular fighters who brought local knowledge. This operation stopped the German push from last week and started driving them back, reversing momentum in localized battles. Kombain, Ugra Station, and Voznesene were taken on the 12th, key points that controlled rail access. By the 14th, the Airborne had reached Terekhovka, Bolshaia Myshenka, and Bogoroditskoe, advancing through forested terrain.

The 50th Army, meanwhile, kept its offensive going that week, pressing forward with determination despite mounting losses. The back-and-forth battles over Fomino 1 went on until the 13th, when the 50th Army finally secured the village and the nearby Zaitseva Gora, a hill that provided overlooking fire positions. However, they failed to keep advancing, with multiple attacks on Fomino 2 getting repulsed as German Army and Luftwaffe reinforcements arrived, including fresh troops rotated from quieter sectors. So, on the 14th, Georgy Zhukov ordered Belov to speed up his advance south but still refused to let the 1st Guard Cavalry Division leave Dorogobuzh, a decision rooted in his cautious approach to reserves. On the 15th, the Airborne reached Plotki while the 214th brigade retook Akulovo, reclaiming lost ground. The 2nd Guard Cavalry had also gotten within 3km of Baskakovka Station by then, threatening German supply lines. Then, on the 15th, the German reinforcements turned the tide, launching counterattacks with coordinated armor. The 50th Army got thrown back from Zaitseva Gora, and the Germans secured the Warsaw Highway again, a vital artery for their logistics. Still, Belov and the airborne kept trying to drive south on their own, undeterred. The 8th Brigade took northern Buda and its rail station on the 17th, while the 9th Brigade took southeastern Buda on the same day, clearing house-to-house. By nightfall, the entire village was cleared of Germans, a small victory amid the chaos. Even after the 50th Army's setback, the gap was now only 8km, tantalizingly close. Belov and Kazankin messaged Boldin to urge him to renew his offensive as soon as possible, coordinating via radio in a rare display of inter-unit cooperation. However, Zhukov demanded that the Airborne Corps take Askerovo and Kalugovo by the 19th, setting ambitious goals. To do that, they left only a small garrison at Buda, stretching their forces thin. Meanwhile, the Germans shifted forces to face this northern threat while the 50th Army regrouped, adapting quickly as per their elastic defense doctrine. The Germans finished their moves first and hit Buda on the 18th, in a fierce assault. Despite suffering over a thousand casualties, they took the village, with the defending Soviet battalion nearly wiped out, including its commander, a tragic loss that exemplified the human cost of these engagements.

As part of the planning for Fall Blau, the massive summer offensive code-named for its deceptive phases, they intended to split Army Group South into two sections at some point during the operation, a reorganization to better manage the vast theater. While the original Army Group B would hold the frontline against the USSR, the new Army Group A would turn south to capture the Caucasus and its vital oil fields, resources that had fueled the Soviet economy since the Bolshevik Revolution. These produced over 80 percent of all Soviet petroleum products, making them a prime target. Not only would this badly hurt the Soviet war economy, it would also ease some of the Axis's petroleum shortages, a chronic issue since the war's start. This was desperately needed because only so much fuel could be squeezed from the Romanians, whose Ploiești fields were under constant threat of Allied bombing later in the war. Shortages of fuel had been crippling operations across all branches of all the Axis members since late 1941, and had also caused issues for civilian and military industrial efforts, hampering everything from tank production to civilian transport. However, the criteria for when this split would happen weren't specified, nor was any exact date, leaving flexibility for Hitler's impulsive style. On the 14th, Hitler ordered the OKH to set up a new Army Group Headquarters under Field Marshal Wilhelm List—several days earlier, Hitler had announced he wanted to use only his best commanders for Fall Blau, including telling Hermann Hoth he would take command of the 4th Panzer Army after it transferred into the theater, drawing on Hoth's panzer expertise from France in 1940.

Field Marshal Fedor von Bock’s February memorandum had estimated that 39 reinforcement divisions were needed for a major summer offensive, and this became the basis for Fall Blau, shaping the ambitious scope. By the time OKH finalized its deployment plans, though, it had bumped that number up to 41 fresh divisions for Army Group South, reflecting escalating ambitions. Sixteen of these were to come from Army Group Center, stripping it of about 20 percent of its total strength and 30 percent of its panzers, a significant weakening that raised concerns among commanders. Because the poor rail network behind German lines couldn't handle such a large transfer all at once, hampered by sabotage and overuse, the redeployment had to be staggered, phased over weeks. The first wave, due by late May, included 15 German, 3 Hungarian, and 2 Romanian divisions, multinational forces that brought their own challenges in coordination. A second wave of 5 German, 4 Hungarian, and 3 Italian divisions was meant for exploitation and support roles in Ukraine, leveraging allied troops to free up German units. Several weeks later, a final wave of 3 Italian, 3 Hungarian, and 3 Romanian divisions would start moving east, mainly to guard the offensive’s flanks, though they were unlikely to arrive before the operation was already underway, a timing issue that would prove fateful at Stalingrad. Blau I was projected to begin on June 15, setting the stage for one of the war's pivotal campaigns. To convince the Soviets that the new formations redeploying into Ukraine were there only for fortification work, the Army Group A HQ was called Coastal Staff Azov, a deception tactic common in German operations like Barbarossa. Until it took control at the front, the staff would go under the cover name "Coastal Staff Azov." To preserve security, Hitler's orders were that no new unit symbols, flags, or other identifying markings were to be introduced in the Army Group South area until BLAU began, and the other staffs coming in were also assigned cover names, elaborate ruses to mislead Soviet intelligence. Fourth Panzer Army became "Superior Special Purpose Staff 8." Six corps headquarters were designated fortress staffs. Division headquarters became "sector staffs." Similarly, cover names were given to all the formations which would be transferred from Army Group Center or from Germany, ensuring operational secrecy.

While contingents from German allies operated under their own command structures on the Eastern Front, members from Western European occupied territory or non-belligerents fell under the auspices of the SS, the paramilitary organization that had grown from Hitler's bodyguard into a vast empire. However, those contingents were often limited to regimental strength due to a lack of trust, rooted in Nazi racial ideologies. Hitler expressed this skepticism to Heinrich Himmler on April 5th, saying, “In any case, we must not commit the mistake of enlisting in the German Army foreigners who seem to us to be worthwhile fellows, unless they can prove that they’re utterly steeped in the idea of a Germanic Reich. While we are on the subject. I’m skeptical about the participation of all those foreign legions in our struggle on the Eastern front. One mustn’t forget that, unless he is convinced of his racial membership of the Germanic Reich, the foreign legionary is bound to feel that he’s betraying his country. The fall of the Hapsburg monarch clearly shows the full size of this danger. On that occasion, too, it was thought the other peoples could be won over—Poles, Czechs, etc.—by giving them a military formation in the Austrian Army. Yet at the decisive moment it became obvious that precisely these men were the standard-bearers of rebellion.” By the end of the war, an estimated 500,000 foreigners joined the SS forces, although by that point, most were not volunteers despite the popular myths, often conscripted or coerced amid the Reich's desperation.

While General Dmitri Kozlov's forces threw themselves at Erich von Manstein’s defensive lines in the Crimea, a peninsula with a long history of strategic importance from the Crimean War to ancient times, the staff of the 11th Army finalized the plan for Operation Trappenjagd, or "Bustard Hunt," named for the bird to evoke a swift pursuit. If they could achieve air superiority, Manstein felt confident concentrating his forces in the south of Kerch, where the terrain favored armored breakthroughs. There, they would punch through the weak 44th Army and then encircle the 51st Army before it could react, a classic pincer maneuver. Both Soviet armies were deployed in three lines, but their defensive depth was only 2 km, shallow due to overconfidence. Plus, they had only minimal defenses with a single anti-tank ditch running across the peninsula, since Lev Mekhlis’ prohibition against digging trenches still stood, a political interference that crippled preparations. Manstein believed the Red Army was best at tightly choreographed operations but struggled to keep up with fast-flowing situations, a view informed by his successes in France.

The German 42nd Corps was to pin the 51st Army in place with help from the soon-to-arrive Romanian 7th Army Corps, allies whose reliability varied. These two were also to conduct feinting attacks until the operation started to draw Kozlov’s attention to the north and convince the Soviets that the German counterattack would hit there, psychological warfare at its finest. These distraction attacks would also help hide the fact that most of the 11th Army's strength was concentrating in the south, a buildup masked by night movements. The 30th Corps weren't to occupy their assault positions until the night before the operation began, minimizing detection. In addition, a small landing by 902 Sturmbootekommando was planned behind Kozlov’s lines as a distraction, amphibious tactics that harkened back to German successes in Norway.

This plan was presented to Hitler on the 16th, during one of his Wolf's Lair briefings. Hitler approved all parts of the plan except the Luftwaffe dispositions, saying he would handle them personally, asserting his growing control over air assets. The winter fighting had turned Hitler into a big supporter of air power, influenced by the Stuka's role in early blitzkriegs. Back on the 13th, Hitler had lectured Küchler that Toropets wouldn't have been lost in January if the Army Group Commanders had understood how to use airpower, a criticism laced with hindsight. So, the same day as the meeting with Manstein, Hitler demanded the transfer of the 8th Fliegerkorps along with several elements of Luftflotte 4 to support the planned Kerch offensive, massing air might. Hitler took a personal role in the dispositions by then, assigning all of Luftflotte 4 to the Crimea, an overkill commitment. A Luftflotte was like a World War II American air force, and normally it handled the airpower needs for an entire army group, representing hundreds of planes. It was an incredible mass of aircraft to devote to the tiny Kerch peninsula, a decision that showcased Hitler's fixation on decisive blows. The risk was obvious: while Manstein attacked Kerch, Army Group South would be without any air support at all, vulnerable to counteroffensives. Any Soviet offensive in Ukraine could have serious consequences, a gamble that paid off short-term but strained resources. As if deploying all of Luftflotte 4 weren't enough, Hitler also assigned Fliegerkorps VIII under General Wolfram von Richthofen to support the offensive in the Crimea, the cousin of the famous Red Baron, known for his aggressive tactics in Spain. This meant that 11 bombers, 3 dive bombers, 2 ground-attack, and 5 fighter Groups were transferred to Crimea. Manstein commented that he would have "concentrated air support the like of which has never existed," a testament to the scale.

This left Army Group South short on air support during the operation, creating gaps elsewhere. To finalize the plan, 11th Army and Luftwaffe staff scheduled a conference for the 30th, while an entire Flak division, including several formations of Luftwaffe anti-air guns, was ordered to Crimea to protect the large concentration of aircraft, bolstering defenses against Soviet raids. Hitler also stressed that, unlike during Barbarossa, the Luftwaffe no longer had the resources to support several major operations at once, a reality after heavy losses in 1941. Manstein therefore had to stick to a strict timetable so the air units could shift to other sectors of Army Group South, ensuring sequential support.

The limited airpower available to Manstein in March and April had already proven extremely effective against the land targets of the Crimean Front, exploiting the open landscape. Soviet ground targets were easy to hit because of the flat terrain and a near-complete lack of natural or manmade cover, exposing columns to strafing. The thick mud also prevented any evasive maneuvers to dodge the ground-attack planes, immobilizing vehicles. On top of that, Soviet incompetence meant their supply roads were isolated and overcrowded, so if the attacker missed their target, they were almost guaranteed to hit something else, amplifying damage. This applied to harassing air strikes against Soviet combat formations too, wearing down morale. This only got even more effective after the 8th Fliegerkorps arrived on May 1st, bringing fresh squadrons. They brought over 400 aircraft, all modern or nearly modern designs, like the Ju 87 Stuka with its siren for psychological impact. In particular, Luftwaffe fighter strength in Crimea grew from one Jagdgruppe with 45 Bf-109F fighters to four Jagdgruppen with 166 Bf-109E/F fighters, dominating the skies. Plus, Richthofen’s command boosted German bomber strength in Crimea to five Kampfgruppen with 160 bombers and all of StG 77 with 106 Ju-87 Stukas, dive-bombers feared for precision. On May 6, two Gruppen from Schlachtgeschwader 1 (SchG 1) started arriving at an airstrip near Feodosiya; I./SchG 1 was equipped with Bf-109E-7 fighter-bombers and II./SchG 1 had 43 of the new Hs 129 B-1 ground-attack planes, innovative designs with thick armor. These heavily armored aircraft were designed as tank destroyers and came with two 20mm and one 30mm cannon, plus antipersonnel fragmentation bombs, weapons tailored for the Eastern Front's tank battles. This number then grew to 555 combat airframes by May 7th with arrivals from Luftflotte 4, an overwhelming force. Facing this huge air power concentration, the Crimean VVS had 176 fighters and 225 bombers available in early April, a mismatch in numbers and quality. Even worse, most were outdated models like the I-16, vulnerable to modern foes. Only three squadrons had modern Yak-1 or LaGG-3 fighters, early models that would improve over time.

While they waited for the arrival of the eclectic mix of heavy artillery, pieces drawn from across the Reich including captured French guns, three artillery observation battalions teams started creating extremely detailed grid maps around Sevastopol, a fortress city with defenses dating back to the 19th century. Each Soviet bunker and identified position got assigned a unique target number for precise use in a future bombardment, a methodical approach that maximized efficiency. Yet doubts grew about the value of taking Sevastopol, given the high cost in lives and materiel. Manstein believed that, at best, success would free only three or four divisions that would otherwise stay tied down in a prolonged siege and blockade, allowing redeployment elsewhere. Hitler had reservations too, wary of overcommitment. When Manstein presented his Trappenjagd plan on the 16th, he also brought plans for Operation Störfang, the assault on the city, code-named for the sturgeon fish. Hitler neither approved nor rejected it, instead postponing a decision, typical of his indecisive phases. One of his main concerns was that the required Luftwaffe support could only be sustained for a few days before those air units had to shift to Ukraine for Fall Blau, balancing multiple fronts.

While these preparations went on, the German interdiction efforts in the Black Sea continued, a naval-air campaign to isolate the Crimea. By then, any vessel near Crimea or the Soviet coastline was considered a valid target, expanding the war to maritime domains. This included the large, slow passenger ships used to evacuate civilians from Sevastopol, vessels repurposed from peacetime roles. On the 17th, the Svanetia got hit by two torpedoes from a group of He-111 bombers, torpedo variants adapted for sea strikes. 750 of the 950 crew and passengers died, a tragedy amid the evacuation efforts. Lacking the long-range fighters needed to patrol the Black Sea and protect their shipping, the Crimean VVS commander ordered the conversion of several Pe-2 Bombers into heavy fighters, makeshift modifications born of necessity. However, these planes proved incapable of preventing or deterring the marauding German bombers, limited by range and armament. Two more merchant vessels got sunk and four more damaged in German bomber raids on Tuapse and Novorossiysk, ports crucial for Soviet Black Sea logistics. These April raids culminated in a massive strike on the 28th, when 43 He-111s raided Kerch while 21 Ju-88s hit Novorossiysk, coordinated waves. Only one bomber got shot down by Soviet fighter defense, underscoring the imbalance.

During all these battles, the Nazi war of extermination kept going in the rear areas, part of the broader Holocaust and Generalplan Ost that targeted Jews, Slavs, and others deemed inferior. On April 16th, the SS claimed that at the bar Sevastopol, “Crimea is Jew free,” a boastful exaggeration rooted in Einsatzgruppen activities. This was an exaggeration, as they would still murder thousands more in July alone, continuing the genocide, and the holocaust continued all through the period of German occupation, with local collaborators aiding in roundups.

I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.

The 2nd Shock Army remained encircled near Volkhov amid mud and German pressure, while Leningrad ramped up production despite siege hardships. Germans relieved the Demyansk Pocket and planned to crush Kholm. In the center, the 33rd Army was destroyed, with General Efremov committing suicide. Partisans disrupted German lines, prompting operations like Hannover. In the south, Timoshenko prepared a Kharkov offensive, while Manstein geared up for Crimean assaults with massive Luftwaffe support for Fall Blau.

Last time we spoke about the continuation of Operation Bruckenschlag. From March 29 to April 4, 1942, the Eastern Front was paralyzed by the Rasputitsa spring thaw, turning battlefields into mud and disrupting logistics. In besieged Leningrad, reports revealed 70% of deaths from starvation, with declining fatalities and German bombings targeting supply routes on Lake Ladoga. Soviet efforts to relieve the encircled 2nd Shock Army near Lyuban faltered due to narrow corridors and poor coordination, amid heavy losses in the "Meat Grinder" at Miasnoi Bor. At Demyansk Pocket, German Operation BRÜCKENSCHLAG stalled short of relief, with Soviet airborne forces suffering catastrophic casualties—only 400 of 5,000 survived. Mud hampered advances, prompting air tactic shifts and reinforcements. In Kholm, defenders repelled assaults using improvised tactics amid melting defenses. Hitler issued Directive 41 (Fall Blau), prioritizing the Caucasus oil fields while Army Group North targeted Leningrad. In Crimea, no major assaults occurred as both sides recovered; Manstein prepared Operation TRAPPENJAGD, questioning Romanian reliability. The period highlighted logistical woes, high casualties, and dueling preparations for summer campaigns.

This episode is Timoshenko assumes Direct Control

Well hello there, welcome to the Eastern Front week by week podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

Even as the Rasputitsa worsened, fighting raged along most of the frontline. The Volkhov Front continued its efforts to rescue the 2nd Shock Army, while Group Seydlitz renewed its drive towards Demyansk. Behind Army Group Center, Belov and the 4th Airborne Corps sought to fend off a German offensive aimed at separating them. In Ukraine, the front remained relatively quiet as both sides awaited better weather. 

This week, the Karelian Front received orders to drive the Finns and Germans back to the prewar borders between the Zapadnaya Litsa River and Kestenga. Frolov’s forces steadily received reinforcements from the 26th Army at Kestenga with two new divisions, and while the ski battalions facing the 46th Mountain Corps were reinforced to brigade strength. He also received a guards rifle division and two ski brigades along the Zapadnaya Litsa River. While small compared to buildups elsewhere in the USSR, it was massive compared to most of the fighting in the far north and only possible due to the Murmansk railway. Lacking a similar infrastructure, neither the Finns nor the Germans could match it. From the 11th to the 21st, the Soviet 7th Army attacked the small Finnish bridgehead over the Svir River with no tangible results.

With the Road of Life about to melt, plans were made to improve the logistical flow into Leningrad. On the 9th, the State Defense Committee approved a new transport plan, setting daily targets of 2,500 tons of food, 300 tons of ammunition, 100 tons of military equipment, 100 tons of coal and fuel oil, and 300 tons of lubricants to be transported into Leningrad per day. Additionally, 3,000 people and 1,000 tons of cargo—mainly from the city’s surviving industry—were to be brought out on the return trips. The primary burden fell on the Ladoga Military Flotilla, where many boats had been repaired over the winter, new vessels were constructed (including 14 metal barges, 31 towed wooden boats, and 118 small-capacity self-propelled boats for use on the lake, plus 17 self-propelled boats and 4 towed boats provided by fishermen), and relevant docking facilities were greatly expanded.

The Germans finally succeeded in persuading the Finns to deploy a small naval group comprising 4 Italian torpedo boats, 4 German cutters, 7 self-propelled amphibious assault boats, 12 self-propelled landing barges, 1 headquarters ship, 1 medical ship, and 4 transport ships to support a 3,000-man amphibious task force. These were concentrated in the ports of Sortavala, Lakhdenpokhia, and Impilakhti.

The partisan movement around Leningrad continued to grow with 50 new detachments. By the end of April, Soviet records claimed the partisans behind Army Group North had inflicted 15,000 losses on German troops along with 69 tanks, 500 vehicles, and 13 aircraft. They also claimed to have destroyed 26 warehouses in addition to 114 rail and road bridges. On top of this, Party officials had formed 25 special partisan groups in key population centers to create an underground network and provide the necessary infrastructure to support the growing partisan movement.

Meretskov’s forces reopened route Dora during early April, claiming the corridor connecting the 2nd Shock Army had been expanded to 6km (though some reports noted it was 4km wide by the 9th), still too narrow to adequately protect the communication routes. He also reported the 59th and 52nd Armies were failing in their offensives, although he would claim they were inflicting heavy casualties on the Germans. The 2nd Shock Army had also been stopped by a German defensive line along the Tigoda River line, suffering from heavy fatigue from their constant fighting. Meretskov would also blame the dense forests for assisting the German defensive efforts. He also accused Klykov of failing to properly organise his men and of being overly concerned about his exposed lines of communication.

Meretskov proposed widening the supply route towards Chudovo and eventually capturing the town. To do this, the 52nd Army was to switch to a defensive posture and hold the southern neck of the supply corridor. The 2nd Shock Army would halt to rest and refit bar a small local offensive to capture Ruchi. The 59th Army was to be strengthened with forces taken from the 52nd Army and attack on the 12th to take Spasskaia Polist with a secondary offensive aimed at taking a railroad bridge over the Volkhov near Sosninskaia Pristen. STAVKA approved this plan on the 9th. However, the Rasputitsa arrived in full force. The combination of mud and German artillery fire prevented nearly all movement through the corridor to the 2nd Shock Army. Both supply routes quickly became submerged in mud and water. Lack of all supplies caused conditions to rapidly deteriorate, and command-and-control systems began to break down. While the 2nd Shock Army had not been strangled by Operation Raubiter, it was certainly being choked.

Despite this, the German 18th Army reported it was only holding onto Lyuban due to “luck and entirely unfounded optimism, both of which could be dispersed at any time by Soviet infantry and a few tanks.” Army Group North itself would report to Hitler and the OKH that it was “living from hand to mouth and on an almost indefensible optimism.”Seydlitz’s renewed drive towards the Demyansk Pocket started back on the 4th, with his frontline only 8km from the Lovat river. Yet it would take until the end of this week for them to reach within 500m of the river. The 5th and 8th Light Infantry Divisions were advanced slowly on a narrower front than the original attempt at the end of last month. The 5th Division was leading the offensive but was rapidly exhausting itself. Mountaineer Regiment 206 was brought up as reinforcement with its lighter equipment more mobile in the terrible conditions. The thawing snow and heavy mud prevented any sophisticated manoeuvres, leaving only the most direct route to Demyansk. This route also minimised the amount of forest cover which could be used by the Soviet defenders.

At Kholm, the daily attacks kept up the pressure on Scherer. On the 10th, one well-planned Soviet offensive struck the north of the town. One rifle battalion supported by three KV-1 tanks swept through the outer defensive lines as the German antitank guns failed. Scherer was forced to beg for urgent air support, but it did not arrive. It was only the steep banks of the Policeman’s ravine which stopped the tanks and their push. Purkaev, however, failed to capitalise on this due to still being forced by STAVKA to split his attention between Kholm and Velikiye Luki. His army lacked the strength to achieve both objectives simultaneously. For their part, the Luftwaffe had a battalion of paratroopers that it was willing to drop into Kholm to reinforce the garrison. However, doing so meant diverting transports from the Demyansk airlift. Furthermore, it was predicted that the transports would suffer heavy losses in such an operation. Also, it was considered likely that half the paratroopers would land amongst the soviets while a majority of the other half was likely to suffer broken bones landing amongst the buildings of Kholm. Thus, the airdrop was rejected.

By the end of March, the 3rd Shock Army had suffered 40,000 casualties, including 15,000 dead or missing from grinding attritional assaults on village and town fortresses. It was a burnt-out husk of its former self. The 4th Shock Army had also largely burnt itself out in its sieges of Velizh and Demidov. While these battles would help teach the Red Army the need for heavy artillery, tanks, and extensive engineer support in order to take prepared positions; the Germans decided the lesson of these battles was that encircled forces were capable of easily holding out indefinitely in a fortified position if the Luftwaffe was capable of keeping them supplied. This would thus buy sufficient time for the ground relief operation to be organised and reach them while draining Soviet strength.

 

In a weird quirk, the German 59th Corps defending the Velikiye Luki area had found itself directly attached to Army Group Center rather than any Army Command. This left it in an extremely weak position to compete for the Army Group's scarce resources. Thus, its commander, Chevallerie, began fortifying his positions. The Velikiye Luki itself was recognised as being particularly vulnerable to being isolated and thus was turned into an all-around strongpoint.

In April, the straight-line distance between the northern boundary of Army Group Center at Velikiye Luki and its southern boundary near Oroyol was approximately 564 km. However, its frontline was actually closer to 1450 km. This was in part thanks to the roughly 250 by 250km Toropets salient and the 120 by 200 km bulge, which had been created after the Sukhinichi encirclement. This was also not helped by the Salient into the Soviet lines held by the 9th, 4th Panzer, and 4th Armies. There, the forces of the 4th Panzer Army around Gzhatsk remained only 140km from Moscow. In addition to this, there still remained a mass of partisans, two cavalry Corps, an airborne corps, and two Armies operating in the Army Group’s rear areas. To shorten this frontline, the 9th German Army still planned to remove the Toropets salient in Operation Nordpol 2. Meanwhile, the 4th Army began planning Operation Hannover to remove the 33rd Army, Belov’s Guard Cavalry, and the 4th Airborne Corps.

Behind Army Group Center’s lines, the 5th Corps received its new mission to crush the Soviet 33rd Army. By the 10th, parts of the 5th Panzer division had managed to properly deploy around the 33rd. It was one of 7 divisions which was deploying elements against the 33rd. The 33rd Army suffered worse than Belov and the airborne forces from a lack of supplies. Its soldiers were still on a starvation diet and lacking ammo of all sorts. Its artillery was often quiet due to a lack of ammo and fuel. While the 33rd starved, the 4th Airborne Corps would continue to lose ground from the German push north, with Bol’shaia Myshenka falling early in the week. Then on the 9th, another large offensive hit the junction of the Corps and the 2nd Guard Cavalry division. Verterkhovo Station and Zhukovka fell to the Germans. By the 10th Ugra station was relieved with its besieged garrison withdrawn from the frontline. On the 11th, the Germans pushed northeast towards Preobrazhensk and Marinovka, threatening the link between Belov and the Airborne Corps. This threat meant all forces would be operationally subordinated to Belov. His orders were to destroy this German counterattack and then unite with the 50th Army. By the end of the 11th, the two Corps working together had managed to stop the German drive, although the main objective of relieving Ugra Station had been achieved. To allow enemy penetration still further north meant giving him the capability in the future of uniting with his Viaz’ma group. That threatened the full separation of 4th Airborne Corps and Partisan Detachment Zhabo from General Belov’s group, which was operating northwest of Ugra Station. It was necessary to combine the actions of all units operating on that axis. With that aim, 4th Airborne Corps was operationally subordinated to General Belov, to whom the front commander gave the mission – by uniting the forces of all units to liquidate the penetrating enemy group, and, while attacking in the direction of Miliatino, unite with 50th Army, which had already attacked in the direction of that point. On April 8th, the 8th Airborne Brigade was resubordinated to the 4th Airborne Corp after several months operating under Belov’s Command.

In response to this deteriorating situation, Belov would already report to Zhukov on the 10th. There he detailed the condition of his forces, which covered over 300km of the frontline. He was heavily outnumbered with no reserves. The circumstances forced him to focus only on defensive operations. In this report, he requested permission to break out of the encirclement near Milyadno to link up with the 50th Army and potentially the 10th Army. This would also sever the Warsaw highway. After the link-up was achieved, Belov sought permission to restore his Corps, including the elements that had been cut off when he originally crossed the Warsaw highway. Then his Guard Corps could concentrate for a drive on Yartsevo to link up with the Kalinin Front. Zhukov approved this plan on the 11th, but both Zhukov and Stalin forbade any weakening of the forces around Dorogobuzh. Belov would also be informed that the 50th Army had exhausted itself again and was not ready to renew its offensive.

They had restarted their attack on the 5th. This time, the 50th Army reached Fomino 1 before their momentum ran out. Successive counterattacks would see Fomino 1 repeatedly change hands for the rest of the week as both the Soviets and Germans threw fresh formations into the sector.Some of the most successful partisan formations had by now gathered over 1,000 members. Those formations between 1 and 3 thousand men were now starting to be split into partisan regiments and brigades with some organisational features mirroring the Red Army. With over 5,000 members, one of the most successful partisan formations was the 1st Smolensk Partisan division which was one of the two partisan divisions operating alongside Belov’s 1st Guard Cavalry Corps. It would grow to have 7,342 men, two BT-7 tanks, fifty mortars, ten field guns and assorted equipment. Another successful formation was the 1st Kalinin Partisan Corp which controlled 7 brigades and 3 detachments. These larger formations were increasingly able to control entire regions unchallenged by the Germans, who could not divert the necessary manpower to suppress them. However this increase in size was criticised by some as it encouraged the partisans to become far more defensive of their territory. It also meant they were less capable of stealthy operations while also still lacking the firepower to truly stand up to any concerted German attack. A German report dated April 6th claimed one third of Army Group Center’s operational area was controlled by Partisans.

The USSR kept partisan operations under strict control, embedding Party officials in their command because it feared how armed civilians might behave and questioned their loyalty to the Soviet state. These concerns were partly justified by the presence of anti-Soviet groups. In the Bryansk region, for instance, one force operating under a Tsarist emblem regularly fought pro-Soviet partisans and grew to around 9,000 men by late spring. Lacking the manpower to suppress Soviet-aligned resistance, the Germans even allowed this group to administer the Lokot district as an autonomous zone.

 

Despite their lack of manpower to police their conquered territory, Hitler still resisted the idea of creating militia or police forces from the populations in the conquered territories. He wanted only Germanic troops to maintain law and order in the occupied USSR, as he stated: "The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to bear arms. So let's not have any native militia or police. German troops alone will bear the sole responsibility for the maintenance of law and order throughout the occupied Russian territories." This, of course, contradicted Hitler’s desire in Directive 41 issued on 5 April 1942. This detailed the Wehrmacht's strategy for the Eastern Front after the harsh winter of 1941-1942. Praising German troops' defensive triumphs, which inflicted heavy Soviet losses and depleted their reserves, Hitler aimed to reclaim the initiative post-thaw. The goal was to annihilate remaining Soviet forces and isolate key industrial centers, while securing Western and Northern European occupations. Adhering to Barbarossa's outline, the plan prioritized sequential operations due to logistical constraints. Central armies would hold; northern forces would seize Leningrad and link with Finns later. The main focus was the southern sector: destroying Soviets west of the Don to capture Caucasian oil fields and passes. Preparations involved mopping up the front to free forces, with limited offensives using overwhelming Army and Luftwaffe power for quick wins. Key actions included clearing Kerch Peninsula, capturing Sevastopol (with naval Black Sea disruptions), and encircling. Izyum breakthroughs. The core "Main Operation" (Operation Blau) entailed phased attacks from north to south, concentrating armor and air power for tight encirclements to avoid 1941-style escapes. It began with a pincer from south of Orel to Voronezh, followed by advances along the Don from Kharkov, linking near Stalingrad via a Taganrog thrust. Stalingrad was to be captured or neutralized as an industrial hub. Bridgeheads across the Don, especially at Rostov, were prioritized. Allied troops (Hungarians north, Italians central, Romanians southeast) would hold the extending Don front, backed by German anti-tank reserves, prepared for winter. The Luftwaffe supported Army deployments, disrupted Soviet logistics (e.g., Don bridges), and targeted air forces. The Navy aided Black Sea supplies and blockaded the Baltic. Hitler emphasized secrecy and reported preparations, reflecting optimism in German superiority but underestimating Soviet recovery.

On the 8th, Timoshenko was given direct command of Southwestern Front with Bagramian becoming its Chief of Staff to tighten their control over the planning and conduct of the forthcoming Kharkiv operation. The first version of Timoshenko’s offensive was issued on the 10th. Following a preparatory period of strategic deception, the Southwestern Front was to launch two converging attacks on Kharkiv. In the south, Timoshenko planned to mass 200 tanks to support the infantry forces of the 6th Army. Following them was a mobile group of 269 tanks to exploit success toward German lines of communication west of Kharkiv.

 

In the northern attack, 300 tanks would support the initial attack of the 21st Army and the newly mobilized 28th Army. Their second echelon was to be the 3rd Guards Cavalry Corps, reinforced with one tank brigade. They were to race towards Kharkiv to link up with the mobile force advancing from the south. These Soviet mechanised and cavalry forces would then encircle Kharkiv and the German operational reserves. Following rifle forces would occupy the city and destroy its defenders. The minimum goal of this offensive was to shorten the front line and weaken the expected German offensive against Moscow, but both Timoshenko and Stalin hoped for greater results that could prepare the way for subsequent operations towards the Dnepr River. It was hoped to capture the City but the minimum expectation was to reach artillery range of the City and destroy its industrial and transportation capabilities. Back on April 1, the Bryansk Front had been removed from Southwestern Direction control and resubordinated directly to the Stavka. Furthermore the 40th Army on Southwestern Front's right flank was shifted to the Bryansk Front to participate in its anticipated May offensive.

The Southern Front was to dig in along the frontline from the southern face of the Izyum bulge down to the Sea of Azov. The 57th Army defended Lozova, and the 9th Army held Barvinkove. However, Timoshenko would raid the Southern Front for additional formations for his offense. Seven artillery regiments, three tank brigades and two rifle brigades were taken from Southern Front's right wing armies to reinforce Southwestern Front's offensive and to strengthen its reserves. Later another Rifle Division was transferred from the 9th Army to the 18th. This left just 11 weak rifle divisions and one rifle brigade to cover the Barvenkovo axis between the 57th and 9th Armies. Bagramian believed the two armies could support each other if either came under attack. But despite Stalin’s backing, the plan faced opposition from other STAVKA members and the front commanders. General Moskalenko was especially critical, particularly of the major role assigned to the inexperienced 28th Army. As a result, the plan underwent weeks of revisions, while smaller offensives were launched to improve Soviet positions on the bridgeheads and along the northern face of the Izyum salient.

On the 10th, Gehlen would argue that a general offensive by the Soviets was unlikely, but local offensives could be expected where the German line was weak or near vital objectives. He also argued that Soviet Combat strength was concentrated in the south. Meanwhile, Bock would still remain in fierce debate with Halder and Hitler over which variant of the FRIDERICUS plan to use to crush the Izyum Salient. Their attention was also split with the preparations for Fall Blau. Interestingly while Directive 41 had been signed on the 5th, it would not arrive at Army Group South until the 10th. Bock however was on leave and would not be able to see the document until April 21st.

Directive 41 called for a three-phase offensive with an implied fourth phase to take the Caucasus. The first phase was to be a drive on Voronezh. Phase 2 was then a push south along the river line towards Millerovo. The third phase was to reach Stalingrad. This would secure the northern flank of the later drive to the Caucasus. This rolling offensive was decided upon due to the expected difficulties of assembling and supplying the needed forces, with the worst difficulties expected in the south. Thus, the phased operations would ease this burden and prevent the difficulties in the south, thereby delaying operations in the northern areas of the Army Group. Furthermore, it was expected that the majority of the troops involved would be young and inexperienced, having been hastily trained. Thus, the succession of smaller operations would help build up their experience and confidence. Hitler would hammer home this particular point, announcing: “The operation must start with success: young troops cannot be exposed to setbacks. Setbacks must not occur.” To aid the ground units of Army Group South, General Löhr’s Luftflotte 4 would provide air support to both axes of advance of Case Blue, tasked to protect the concentration of forces in the Army Group South area, to disrupt Soviet lines of communications, and above all to destroy the railroad bridges across the Don. On the other hand, the Kriegsmarine's main function was to carry out naval transports in the Black Sea and to be ready to engage the Soviet Black Sea Fleet in combat without delay.

The operation’s second main objective was to crush the Red Army’s fighting strength. To this end, each phase called for a two-prong offensive to create as many encirclements as possible. Hitler had been convinced that the massive encirclement battles of Barbarossa and Typhoon had been tactical errors, with the large distances involved allowing too many Soviets to escape. Thus, Hitler demanded a succession of smaller, more tightly controlled encirclements. The phased nature of the operation would assist in this by allowing the greatest concentration of ground and air forces possible.

If successful, this plan would end up creating a long stationary frontline along the Don river south of Voronezh. Mindful of the shortage of German manpower, Germany’s allies were encouraged to volunteer forces to help man this static line. Hitler had also announced that allied national contingents would go into action, ‘if possible within the framework of their own Armies or in closed Army Corps”. The Hungarians would take the northern segment of the line, and the Romanians would take the south. The Italian forces would keep these two rivalled allies apart with a small number of German divisions and extensive anti-tank detachments backstopping all three. One of the problems that constantly preoccupied Hitler during the preparatory period was the exposed flank that would extend from Voronezh to the area northeast of Kursk. The Fuhrer ordered this defense line amply provided with antitank guns. A total of 350-400 self-propelled 75-mm antitank guns-more than half of them captured French weapons-and some 150 captured Russian 76-mm guns were to be distributed along this front to repel Soviet medium and heavy tanks. Tractors and captured prime movers were to be employed to give a certain degree of mobility to those guns which were not self-propelled. The allied forces were expected to be weaker than the German equivalents, along with being far less committed to the cause. However, it was believed they could manage the static defensive front, especially after the German forces had crippled the Red Army.

One reason for this confidence was a catastrophic underestimation of Soviet war production by German intelligence services. A report from the end of March estimated that the Soviets would be able to produce only 6,600 aircraft, 6,000 armoured vehicles, and 7,800 artillery pieces throughout 1942. Post-war data show these figures were in reality 21,681, 24,446, and 33,111, respectively. In part, this error was due to an underestimation of how much Soviet industry was moved and reactivated in the eastern parts of the USSR. It was also based on the mistaken assumptions that the USSR was as inefficient as German production was. First, the German assumption was that for the manufacture of a tank, an aircraft, or an artillery piece Soviet industry needed the amounts of crude and alloyed steels then still customary in Germany. Secondly, the experts in the Wehrmacht High Command, while quite realistically assuming that a much larger proportion of the total steel production went into armaments in the Soviet Union than in Germany, proceeded to the over-optimistic conclusion that the resulting neglect of all other sectors ‘must result in a far-reaching disruption of the entire production and transport apparatus, and that output of war equipment has already declined compared with the autumn of 1941 and will decline even further’. In point of fact, as far as the final part of that prediction was concerned, the opposite was the case. This very exception highlights a third source of error in the German calculations. The relief provided to Soviet production by Anglo-American Lend- Lease deliveries was underrated. The fact that between 1942 and 1944 the Soviet Union produced only 128,000 trucks, or roughly a third of the vehicles supplied to it by the United States, reveals the dimension of that relocation of production. This was coupled with the overestimation of the disruption caused by the USSR switching to a War Economy, which, in reality, had only boosted Soviet military production. The benefits of Lend-Lease were also largely discounted, despite the fact that the US deliveries of motor vehicles allowed the USSR to focus production of vehicles towards tanks and other ground vehicles.

To secure his Allied manpower, Germany launched a diplomatic offensive aimed at its war partners. On the 6th, the Romanian chief of staff would visit the Wolfsschanze. During April, Hitler would grant decorations and awards to the president of Finland, the king of Bulgaria, the Field Marshal of Croatia, and the Regent of Hungary. At the end of the month, Mussolini would be hosted in Salzburg. Hitler would even make a surprise visit to Finland on June 4th for Mannerheim's 75th Birthday. The Germans were not the only ones interacting with their allies. On the 8th, the British Government invited Molotov to London, but the Soviets would take several weeks to accept.

Bock’s War diary notes: “On April 1, attacks were beaten off on Slavyansk’s northwestern front. On the 6th Army’s southern front, Kopanskoje south of the Donets was lost, further attacks were repulsed in the bridgehead south of Novo-Borisoglebsk; to its right and left weak enemy forces again crossed the Donets. Repeated Russian attacks in the north tip of the Volchansk breach broke down. On April 6, there were only localized attacks on the entire army group front, all of which were repulsed. The following day, weak enemy forces were driven back across the Donets near Ogurzewa.”

In Crimea, Kozlov launched another offensive on April 9 to seize Koi-Asan with six rifle divisions and over 150 tanks, but repeated the same mistakes. He still lacked the heavy artillery needed to suppress German guns or break strongpoints. The infantry attacks were poorly coordinated, advancing across open, muddy ground where standing water left men exposed. Tanks were committed too early, before anti-tank defenses were cleared, and arrived piecemeal, making them easy targets. The assault collapsed by April 11, achieving nothing but heavy losses. In light of this and later events, Vasilevsky would describe both Kozlov and Mekhlis as utterly incompetent. Konstantin Simono, Correspondent for Krasnaya Zvezda, observed: “Never before or since have I seen such a great number of people who were killed neither in battle nor in the attack, but rather in systematic artillery strikes. Without fail, every ten meters there was an individual subjected to that danger. The people were trampled and knew not what they were doing. There was neither a foxhole nor a slit trench around—nothing. Everything was taking place in these barren open spaces and mud, and it was absolutely open on all sides of the field.” Forczyk states that the Crimean Front suffered an over 40% casualty rate with 352,000 total losses between January and April 11th. Manstein's 11th Army suffered only 24,120 casualties over the same time period. This includes both the Kerch and Sevastopol frontlines.

Lastly, as the week ended, the 11th Army artillery command surveyed the Sevastopol perimeter for heavy gun positions, signalling the arrival of a massive siege train. Across Europe, huge artillery pieces were dismantled and sent by rail to Crimea. Even the smallest was a 280 mm coastal howitzer. Among the largest were the 420 mm Gamma mortars, firing 1-ton shells, and the 533 mm Karl guns, firing 1.5-ton shells. Yet even these were overshadowed by Dora, with its 800 mm bore, 31-meter barrel, and 7-ton shells. At the opposite extreme, tiny Goliath remote demolition vehicles were also being packed for transfer to 11th Army.

I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.

Soviets struggled to relieve the encircled 2nd Shock Army near Volkhov and Demyansk Pocket, facing heavy losses. Leningrad's logistics improved via Lake Ladoga amid partisan growth. In the rear of Army Group Center, Belov's forces resisted German encirclements. Hitler issued Directive 41 for Operation Blau, targeting Caucasus oil. Timoshenko took Southwestern Front command, planning a Kharkiv offensive with massed tanks. In Crimea, Kozlov's attack on Koi-Asan failed disastrously, suffering massive casualties against Manstein's defenses. 

Last time we spoke about Operation Bruckenschlag. From March 22–28, 1942, the Eastern Front grappled with the Rasputitsa spring thaw, turning roads into mud and disrupting logistics, including Leningrad's vital Lake Ladoga ice road. In besieged Leningrad, manpower shortages led to recruiting 1,000 Komsomol women for air defense roles like anti-aircraft guns and radar. Soviet forces struggled to relieve the encircled 2nd Shock Army near Lyuban; the 54th Army's offensives stalled due to poor coordination, while a breakout carved a narrow "Meat Grinder" corridor at Miasnoi Bor with heavy losses. Finns, with Estonian aid, recaptured Suursaari island after fierce aerial clashes. Operation BRÜCKENSCHLAG advanced slowly toward the Demyansk Pocket, crossing the Redya River amid mud and Soviet counterattacks, halting just short of relief. At Kholm, German defenders repelled brutal assaults, using improvised tactics against tanks despite melting defenses and supply woes. Airborne losses were catastrophic, with only 900 of 8,500 paratroopers surviving. In Crimea, Kozlov's attacks failed disastrously, costing 74,125 casualties in March alone, as German interdictions sank Soviet ships.

This episode is The best laid plans of Fuhrers and Premiers

Well hello there, welcome to the Eastern Front week by week podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

 

Inside Leningrad, the committee headed by Popkov shared its findings on March 31. The report pointed out that 70% of the deaths in the city since the blockade started had come from starvation and related conditions known as “elementary dystrophy.” Deaths from infections had increased from 2,826 in January 1942 to 4,917 by the end of March. On April 2, the NKVD delivered a detailed report on civilian deaths over the previous three months, noting a monthly decrease of 15,000 in total civilian fatalities since January.

 

Beginning on April 4, the German air force launched bombing raids aimed at Kronstadt, the anchored Baltic naval ships, and the flotilla on Lake Ladoga. The goal was to disrupt supply shipments to Leningrad and weaken the firepower support from the Baltic Fleet. Meanwhile, Finnish troops kept up their attacks on islands in the Gulf of Finland, capturing Tytärsaari on the 1st.

 

On March 30, Meretskov told the high command that they had successfully reopened supply lines to the 2nd Shock Army, allowing it to keep pushing toward Lyuban. However, because of dense forests and poor roads, the attack through Krasnaia Gorka failed. As a result, Meretskov asked for approval to redirect the main effort toward Malaia Bronitsa. A supporting attack near Babino station was meant to cut off German escape routes around Chudovo. The operation was expected to start on April 2. The 59th Army received orders to continue its attacks around Spasskaia Polist and then Torfianovo, while securing a bridgehead over the Volkhov River. Parts of the Army were to be reorganized into the 6th Guard Rifle Corps, although the 4th Guards Rifle division needed re-equipping.

 

At the same time, the planned assault by the 52nd Army on Novgorod got adjusted because key reinforcements hadn't arrived yet. Small local fights were set up to smooth out bulges in the front line until then, after which the original attack plan could go forward. The 4th Army was told to remain defensive unless signs showed a German withdrawal.

 

The high command approved this plan the next day, but Khozin was unhappy, claiming that Meretskov's reports weren't accurate. “On 30 March the Volkhov Front commander reported to the Stavka that the liquidation of the enemy who had penetrated at the junction of the 52d and 59th Armies was developing successfully and that communications with the 2d Shock Army had already been opened. [He also reported] that the front command intended to complete the destruction of the enemy grouping in the next few days. However, in no way did this report exactly reflect the actual situation. The penetration had been made, but its width did not exceed 1.5-2 kilometers (.4-1.2 miles). Small groups of soldiers, equipment, and supplies could move along such a narrow corridor only at night by using column routes employing wooden planks in the swampy places. In January, at a time when the width of the penetration reached 8-10 kilometers (5-6.2 miles), narrow-gauge was used to supply the 2d Shock Army with all necessities and to withdraw the sick and wounded, and also to evacuate unserviceable equipment. They did not manage to complete this [task], and, later, all that was accomplished was destroyed in the ensuing heavy combat.”

 

As a result, Küchler removed the commander of the 38th Corps for failing to capture and hold the Erika supply line. Hitler demanded the replacement of the 58th Infantry division's commander for this failure, despite Küchler's protests. (Ziemke: “At the Führer Headquarters, the feeling was that the 58th Infantry Division commander, in whose sector the mishap had occurred, should also be relieved because he was ‘more a professor than a soldier.’ While Kuechler protested in vain for two days that being ‘educated and well-read’ did not necessarily make an officer ineffectual,...”) Although he couldn't change Hitler's mind, these objections delayed the division commander's replacement until the end of April.

 

Inside the Demyansk Pocket, the 1st Airborne Corps kept struggling. Even though the 2nd Brigade had pulled back the previous week with just 500 soldiers, the 1st and 204th Brigades remained surrounded. Withdrawing north to the main base at Maloe Opuevo became impossible after an attack by SS Group Simon on the camp on March 29. Over 180 Soviets died, with 27 captured along with 50 non-combatants. This cost the SS reportedly 3 dead and 3 wounded. All other Airborne camps in the pocket got overrun by small SS units in a similar way, breaking down their support networks. (German II Army Corps’ 1300 29th March report: “The 1st and 204th Airborne Brigades are being beaten to pieces through the 12th, 123d, and SS Totenkopf Divisions (Group Simon) so that the severe risk to Demiansk stronghold is reduced.500 paratroopers have been driven into Novy Moch Swamp. The remainder of the brigades are moving south along the Visiuchii Bor–Demiansk road on both sides of the Ladomirka Valley. The mission of 12th, 123d, and SS Totenkopf Divisions is to overwatch these forces.”) After regrouping in the Gladkoe Swamp, the 1st Brigade tried another breakout on the 29th. A group of paratroopers aimed to surprise the Germans at Kornevo but ran into heavy rifle and mortar fire. They lost 60 Soviets before retreating. That same day, 200 paratroopers tried to cross the road near Lunevo. This attempt also failed, leading to 40 more deaths. Afterward, the 204th brigade assembled near Starye Ladomiry before moving toward Nikolaevskoe, facing constant attacks. The two brigades planned to link up near Nikolaevskoe on their way to Novyi Novosel. Their aim was to join Group Ksenefontov, which was attacking the village. During the march, the brigades suffered ongoing losses from deserters and wounds. Several small units broke off and attempted their own breakouts, most of which didn't succeed.

 

Near Novoe Maslovo, the two brigades repeatedly tried to find weak spots in the German lines as patrols closed in around them. Tarasov got captured during a 600-person escape attempt on the 7th. His replacement, Ustinov, died in a follow-up attempt on the 8th. The last known action of the 1st brigade happened on the 9th, with 400 men trying to break out and suffering heavy losses. German report dated 0845 9 April: “The remainder of 1st Airborne Brigade with a strength of 400 men tried to break out yesterday 16 kilometers southwest of Demiansk while suffering heavy losses.”

 

The 1st and 204th Brigades had started the operation with 5,000 troops. Glantz estimated that only 400 escaped. In a time when many Soviet commanders kept ordering frontal attacks on strong German positions, Kurochkin’s daring plan to sneak behind enemy lines and cut their only supply route earned praise for its ingenuity. However, the Airborne Corps lacked the manpower or weapons to achieve the goal once the Germans spotted them. Plus, the Front’s air forces proved unable to support those units properly. In the end, more than 7,000 highly trained and committed airborne troops were lost.

 

The start of the mud thaw began causing problems for Morzik, as landing fields inside the Demyansk pocket turned into soggy bogs. This required the construction of new airstrips. His difficulties grew with the arrival of the 6th Assault Aviation Group, which included six Fighter Regiments, to the area in early April. This was prompted by the failure of the 1st Airborne Corps and growing awareness in the high command of the airbridge's importance. In response, the German air force moved more fighters to protect the transport planes. Morzik changed his tactics too. Transports flew in larger groups with fighter escorts. They also stayed at higher altitudes to avoid Soviet anti-aircraft guns and reduce losses. This approach worked, as by late April, only 8 Ju 52s got shot down compared to a claimed 260 Soviet aircraft destroyed.

 

The mud thaw also slowed down Group Seydlitz. Supply trucks sank into deep mud up to their axles, and horses pulling carts and guns often got stuck, sometimes breaking legs while trying to get free. Dense forests also helped the dug-in Soviets by hiding their positions from the German air force. As engineers worked to build log roads, the German advance crawled to a halt. On March 30, Seydlitz informed Küchler that they would pause to regroup before turning the attack north toward the road connecting Staraya Russa and Demyansk.

 

In response, the high command split responsibilities in the Northwestern Front. Vatutin, the Chief of Staff, took over units containing the Demyansk Pocket, while Kurochkin focused solely on blocking Seydlitz’s advance. To support him, the Soviets sent five regiments of anti-tank guns and four divisions of light anti-aircraft guns, while old biplanes carried out low-level nighttime harassment raids over German positions.

 

Seydlitz’s renewed push was scheduled to begin on April 4. Both sides used the break to reorganize and bring in fresh troops. Soviet tanks had dug in and used the trees and bushes for cover. This vegetation also protected against German shaped-charge rounds, which detonated too early on the plants. Zimke noted that Group Seydlitz introduced an early version of a new infantry anti-tank weapon during this renewed offensive, effective only within 50 yards. However, he called it a Panzershrek, which wasn't developed until 1943 and had a longer range. (Given that Panzershreck just generically means Tank Terror. The original source referenced in Ziemke’s Moscow To Stalingrad - Decision In The East (2014) might have nicked named the weapon that with that name not sticking and then getting applied to the later Raketenpanzerbüchse 54 (what we know today as the Panzershreck). That Ziemke also mentions a 50 yard range which fits far more closer to a pistol fired grenade than the actual panzerschreck which had several times that range.) It's likely this new weapon was the Panzerwurfkörper 42, a high-explosive anti-tank grenade designed to be fired from standard infantry signal pistols.

 

In Kholm, the defenders struggled to hold their outer lines, leading Scherer to form all walking wounded into reserve units to plug gaps. The melting ice barriers allowed better Soviet observation of movements inside the town. Sniper and mortar fire started racking up casualties, making daytime movement outside dangerous. On their end, the Soviets launched near-daily attacks to keep pressure on the exhausted defenders.

 

On March 29, Hitler agreed with Model and Kluge that targeting the 39th Army should be the main priority for the 9th Army. The advance toward Ostashkov now seemed too risky for Hitler's liking, given the road conditions. Preparations for the operation against the 39th Army got the code name Nordpol 2. (Nordpol I being a counter intelligence operation by the Abwehr.) The push toward Nelidovo was planned as the first stage, but weather problems, lack of troops, and constant Soviet attacks caused repeated delays. In reality, the only activity was the slow advance by the 6th Panzer, which steadily took Soviet-held villages. Meanwhile, the Kalinin Front's repeated attacks on the 9th Army resulted in no ground changes beyond losses and kept German forces pinned down. The arrival of mud further reduced the Front's offensive capability, as it limited movement and complicated supplies. 

 

Stalin kept worrying about a possible spring or summer attack on Moscow, seeing the routes from the southwest through Bryansk and Oryol as the biggest threat. Moreover, Stalin had already expressed dissatisfaction with Cherevichenko's command during the general offensive, due to the total lack of progress by the Bryansk front against the 2nd Panzer Army. Golikov, whom he trusted, took over as replacement on April 2. Stalin also assigned four tank corps, the newly created 5th Tank Army, and seven rifle divisions as extra reinforcements.

 

During this time, the 2nd Panzer Army finally got some relief as the attack on Kirov was called off at last. German reports mainly credited the failure of the Kirov operation to the actions of the 4th Airborne Corps, Group Belov, and the 33rd and 50th Armies in their fights for the Warsaw highway. Reinhardt, Russian Air Landings, 27–8: “The situation in Fourth Army was made far more serious by the appearance of the Russian airborne corps functioning as a compact unit. The war diary of this army almost daily mentions the fear that the Rollbahn will be threatened simultaneously from the north and south and the army cut off. The withdrawal of the army to the Ressa–Ugra line at the beginning of March 1942 may be regarded as a tactical result of this threat; that is to say that, in addition to other factors, it was due to the effects of the Russian airborne corps. It became necessary to release German forces (131st Infantry Division) to attack the airborne troops. Another direct result of the fighting for the Rollbahn was the abandonment of the plan to make a joint attack at the end of March with the German Second Panzer Army and the Fourth Army to retake Kirov. The forces set aside by the Fourth Army for this purpose were tied down by the violent attacks of Russian Tenth [50th] Army on the Rollbahn from the south and the simultaneous threat to it from the north by the airborne corps and 1st Guards Cavalry Corps, combined into Group Belov. The effective share taken by the airlanding corps in this was relatively small.”

 

The 4th Airborne Corps continued to face pressure this week. On March 31, the small German probes against Kurakino from the week before turned into a major assault with three infantry battalions, supported by heavy artillery barrages and frequent air strikes. This attack also hit the link between the 9th and 214th Airborne Brigades at Prechistoe and Dubrovnia. By the end of the day, all three places fell. The 9th Brigade had to retreat into the forests to their north. As a result of these battles, by the end of March, the Corps was down to 1,483 able-bodied troops, with about 2,000 paratroopers sick or wounded. Supplies were scarce, and rations were minimal, with most of their anti-tank assets used up.

 

On April 2, the 131st Infantry Division resumed its attack on Novinskaia Dacha and Akulovo. It captured Novinskaia Dacha, but the 214th Brigade held Akulovo. At the same time, a small German force took Bogoroditskoe from partisan defenders. The next day, the Germans launched fresh tank attacks on Akulovo. The defenders knocked out two tanks but used up most of their anti-tank ammunition. A follow-up assault at midnight finally forced their retreat after 150 casualties. Still, they inflicted about 300 German losses and destroyed four more tanks. At the same time, the 9th Brigade counterattacked and recaptured Prechistote from an unprepared German unit. (Glantz: “In a night attack on a small German force in Prechistoe, the brigade cleared the town, killed 34 Germans, and captured one machine gun and a single damaged German tank.” The 9th Brigade claimed 4 tanks destroyed but at the cost of all their Anti tank weapons.)

 

So, by the end of the week, the 214th Brigade was dug in in the forests north and northwest of Akulovo, while the 9th held a string of villages including Prechistoe, Novinskaia Dacha, and Viazovets. Partisans kept guarding the Corps’s less exposed northern flank.

 

In response to this pressure, Kazankin decided to extend his right flank north to link up with Belov’s forces along the railway. They met the 800 troops of the 8th Airborne Brigade near Preobrazhensk on the 3rd. (210 of those 800 were lightly wounded.) The 8th Brigade got orders to dig in between Preobrazhensk and Zhukovka to protect the link between the Airborne Corps and Belov.

 

At the same time, Belov’s 2nd Guards Cavalry Division faced heavy attacks while holding the line from Selishche to Malaia Myshenka and Verterkhovo Station. By the end of April 3, German forces had driven the cavalry out of Kliuchiki and nearby villages, then pushed north toward Bol’shaia Myshenka. This advance threatened to cut off Belov from the 4th Airborne Corps. The attacking group worked with the one that had taken Bogoroditskoe, as part of a broader effort to reach Ugra Station and help its defenders.

 

Meanwhile, the 50th Army kept trying to link up with the 4th Airborne Corps. Although the previous week's push made some early gains, it soon stalled. Boldin tried to build momentum by committing the second echelon and then the army's reserves, but by April 2, the operation had completely stopped. He paused the attack and planned to resume it on the 5th after regrouping.

 

This week, the operations staff of the high command presented the first draft of Directive 41 to Hitler, who made major revisions before signing it on April 5. In this process, the code name SIEGFRIED changed to Fall Blau. The directive sought to decisively break Soviet defensive strength and deprive the USSR of key resources for its war economy. Army Group Center was to stay defensive, Army Group North was tasked with capturing Leningrad and linking up with the Finns, and Army Group South got the main objective: the Caucasus and its oil fields. Hitler recognized that the Wehrmacht lacked the resources to pursue both northern and southern goals simultaneously, so Army Group South took priority, with Army Group North acting only when resources permitted. The directive also called for limited operations to free up troops along the front, such as eliminating Soviet forces behind Army Group Center and clearing the Izyum salient.

 

Attached to the initial draft was an evaluation of Soviet capabilities. This evaluation rested on the flawed assumption that the USSR mobilized manpower like Germany did. If true, the maximum Soviet military manpower would top out at 18 million. German analysts believed they had killed or captured 6.8 million Soviet troops from June 1941 to April 1942. After subtracting the manpower from occupied territories, Foreign Armies East calculated that the USSR had only 9.73 million men left, of which 6.6 million were already in service. (“The available manpower reserves will be sufficient to cover the present shortfall plus the losses to be expected over the next few months, and to raise new formations on a substantially lesser scale than hitherto. That performance will be maintained for some time by means of expedients, though with a further decline in quality. New creations on a major scale appear possible only by eating into the substance. Whether such interventions will be possible, given the undoubtedly shaken state machinery and the critical situation of armaments and food supplies, seems doubtful.”) They also assumed the Red Army operated at about 20% below full strength, with the remaining 3.13 million as its last manpower reserve. German planners estimated that 1.2 million would be needed to bring fielded units back to full strength, and another 1.12 million to create new formations—enough for about sixty rifle divisions, twelve tank brigades, and small support units. Still, they largely dismissed the impact of these reserves because of their low opinion of Soviet fighting ability. The idea that the Red Army would remain forever ineffective, while German units kept their effectiveness despite mounting losses and shortages, proved to be a fatal mistake. (The Red Army had already gone through several rounds of reforms to boost its effectiveness in 1941 and early 1942. This included steady improvements in training new and existing officers and a gradual process of making them drop outdated linear tactics.) The rest, they figured, would be considered too unfit or unreliable for duty. The analysis wrapped up: (“The enemy can no longer withstand losses such as he took from Bialystok to Vyazma-Bryansk… Nor can he again throw reserves into the scales as in winter 1941/42.”) Based on shaky assumptions and rough guesses, the German Army convinced itself and Hitler that the USSR was close to running out of manpower. Kinzel went further, claiming the Soviets had a nominal strength of 160 divisions but an effective strength of only 75 divisions and 40 tank brigades. In his opinion, the USSR could muster at most 150 effective full-strength divisions and 40 tank brigades by spring. On April 1, Halder replaced Kinzel with Reinhard Gehlen, annoyed by Kinzel’s mistakes and his department’s bad predictions in 1941 and early 1942. Gehlen turned out to be more skilled and better at convincing Soviet prisoners to switch sides. (Erickson: “He played an important part in the briefing for 'Barbarossa', exploiting his 'contacts' inside the Soviet Union, the agents planted in the Baltic states, the Ukraine and the Crimea, but it was after the opening of hostilities with the Soviet Union that Gehlen displayed his astonishing talents in handling Russian prisoners of war, working upon those willing to co-operate with the Germans with great deftness and finally infiltrating them behind the Soviet lines, not infrequently into significant positions. (To turn over Gehlen's files is to come upon a vast stock of information on the Soviet Union: the reports of the 'V-männer', Gehlen's own agents, statistics of Soviet industry, detailed compilations of Soviet order of battle, careful and informative analysis of captured mail, the tortuous trails of the Funkspiele, the 'radio games' played with fake radio stations and decoy operators all to trap Soviet agents, and at each turn bulging dossiers of Soviet strength, reinforcement, movement and preparation.)”)

 

The German high command wasn't the only one gearing up for a major campaign in Ukraine. On March 30, Timoshenko and his staff had another meeting with the high command. His initial request for more troops got rejected for being too much. (At the start of the meeting on the 30th, Timoshenko had asked for 37 infantry formations, 29 mobile brigades and 25 artillery regiments, totaling 1,200 tanks, 1,200-1,300 artillery pieces and 620 aircraft.) These demands for reinforcements came from widespread concerns among Timoshenko’s subordinates about the weaknesses of the Southwestern Direction’s units compared to their tasks. (Glantz: “In his memoirs Moskalenko claimed that he and other commanders, particularly those involved in March operations, questioned Timoshenko’s and Bagramian’s decision to conduct such a widespread offensive. They catalogued for Timoshenko the weaknesses of Soviet units, which included an absence of strong mobile forces capable of forming necessary shock groups, shortages of infantry support tanks, inadequate numbers of trained and experienced junior and mid-range officers, and weak second echelons and reserves. In retrospect, Moskalenko explained that, despite his entreaties for caution, Military Council members were carried away by their over-optimism. The council members did admit these deficiencies existed but assured Moskalenko and other worried subordinates they would correct these problems before the offensive began. Moskalenko underscored Khrushchev’s remark to the effect that ‘the Supreme High Commander, Stalin himself, had assigned the Front that mission and that it was already a guaranteed success’. Moskalenko admitted that his fears finally were assuaged when he and others considered the fact that: ‘,.. their assigned mission was associated with a broad Stavka plan, and it was possible that it (the operation) had special significance for the entire forthcoming Red Army spring-summer campaign. In that event, we understood that Stalin had to take care to strengthen the armies, designated to participate in the offensive in the Kharkov region’.”) But his repeated calls for reinforcements worried Stalin, who pushed Timoshenko to shrink the offensive even more. By the meeting's end, Timoshenko put forward a scaled-back request: 10 rifle divisions, 26 tank brigades, 10 artillery regiments, and enough replacements to get the Southwestern Front to 80% of authorized strength. If delivered by April 15, he said, the offensive could start in late April and beat a German spring attack to the punch. STAVKA approved the request and told him to finalize the plan.

 

The plan called for the Southwestern Front to take Kharkiv first, paving the way for the Southern Front to advance to Dnipro. To do this, three of the nine armies, three of the four cavalry corps, and most of the tanks from both fronts gathered in the Izyum Salient. Along the salient’s northern side, the Southwestern Front placed 20 rifle divisions, 1 motorized rifle division, 4 cavalry divisions, and 1 motorized rifle plus 2 tank brigades across a 370 km front. (The average operational density here was one division for 7km of front. This consisted of around 350 tanks and 1,600 guns.) They faced four German Corps and a Romanian Corps, totaling 16 infantry divisions, two Panzer divisions, and two small battle groups. The Hungarian 108th Light infantry division was there too. (The average operational density in the zone of these armies was one division for 10.8km of front.)

 

The Southern Front had 31 rifle, 9 cavalry, and 1 motorized rifle divisions along with 7 rifle and 9 tank brigades defending the remaining 415km frontline of the salient. (The average operational density was one division every 14km.) Another 18 rifle divisions, 6 rifle and 3 tank brigades protected the 245km from Krasnyi Liman to the Gulf of Taganrog. (This totaled 856 guns of 75-210mm calibre, 1,024 mortars and 370 tanks. The average operational density was one division per 18.5km.)

 

They opposed 26 divisions and 5 battle groups, though these groups were at most reinforced regiments in size. (First Panzer and Seventeenth Armies under the control of Army Group Kleist.) These were under Army Group Kleist's command. Plus, the Germans had built a layered defense, with the main line 8 to 12km deep. Two more levels went up to 25km behind it. All villages and inhabited areas had been turned into strongpoints able to withstand attacks from any direction. As Timoshenko’s forces prepared for their move against Kharkiv, mistakes were already showing up. An intelligence report on April 1 missed the presence of two German and one Romanian Infantry division, plus a Panzer Division. They also didn't spot the expected arrival of two more infantry divisions. Additionally, they assumed it would take five or six days for German reserve units to reach the threatened front sectors. Those two incoming infantry divisions had been assigned by the high command for Bock’s planned FRIDERICUS operation. However, the high command would ship them by rail only to Rivne and Grodno in Poland. They would then have to march over 800km to the front on bad roads. This was because the Ukrainian rail system was overloaded with supplies and troops heading to Army Group South for the summer buildup.

 

In Crimea, early signs of spring appeared as temperatures warmed. The German air force was stepping up efforts to disrupt Soviet supply lines in the Black Sea. He-111 planes routinely dropped mines in the Kerch Strait to block supplies to Kozlov. On April 2, the tanker Valerian Kuybyshev sank from air-launched torpedoes, despite being escorted by a destroyer and two MiG-3 fighters. The German navy also decided to increase its presence by sending six Type IIb submarines to the Black Sea. These would be transported in pieces by barge and reassembled at Constanta. (The first U boat (U-9) would not become operational until October 28th. U-19 would become operational in November but the other four would take until mid 1943.) For reasons related to departmental prestige and rivalry, they also looked at other ways to bring warships into the Black Sea. One proposal was to complete the unfinished Sovetskaya Ukraina captured in Mykolaiv, but it got rejected as too costly. Plus, Forczyk mentions that German officials tried to buy back the Goeben from Turkey, but the offer was ignored. (There is no date provided for when this event occurred.)

 

For a change, no major assault happened in the Kerch Peninsula as both sides recovered from prolonged fighting. However, communications security had been particularly bad within the Crimean Front. This let German intelligence units locate the positions of the Front’s Army and some divisional headquarters. This information went to the air force to target those commands. It also helped gather intel for planning Operation TRAPPENJAGD. Manstein commanded five German and two Romanian infantry divisions, one Panzer division, and one Romanian Cavalry division. (Leaving three German and one Romanian infantry divisions and a Romanian Mountain Infantry division around Sevastopol.) Yet, Manstein questioned the Romanians' reliability and mostly discounted them. While this view was rather harsh, the lack of anti-tank weapons was a real flaw for all Romanian divisions. Against this, the Germans identified 17 rifle and 2 cavalry divisions plus 3 rifle and 4 tank brigades. Most of these were concentrated in the northern and central sectors of Kerch under the 51st Army. On April 2, Manstein informed Bock and the high command that his forces weren't enough to win; reinforcements weren't expected until mid-May, but Bock wanted the operation to start in April once good weather arrived and before reinforcements reached the Crimean Front.

 

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In besieged Leningrad, starvation claimed most deaths, with German bombings targeting supplies. Soviet efforts to relieve the 2nd Shock Army near Lyuban stalled, while airborne troops suffered heavy losses in Demyansk. German Group Seydlitz paused advances due to mud.. Soviets planned a Kharkiv offensive under Timoshenko. In Crimea, both sides recovered, with Manstein preparing Trappenjagd amid naval disruptions. Casualties mounted as leaders devised ambitious strategies.