Battle of Kiev in 1941

The Battle of Kiev (Kyiv) in July-September 1941 was a major Axis victory in Operation Barbarossa, Adolf Hitler's attack on the USSR during the Second World War (1939-45). Hitler wanted the resources of Ukraine since these would allow the continuation of the conflict, and in order to get them, he was prepared to fight the single largest battle so far seen in the entire war. According to official German figures, 665,000 Soviet prisoners were taken after they were caught in a giant Axis pincer movement.

Operation Barbarossa

Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), the leader of Nazi Germany, was confident after swift victories in the Low Countries and France in 1940 that he could make even greater territorial and resource gains in 1941 by attacking the USSR. The Nazi-Soviet Pact, signed between Germany and the USSR back in August 1939, was shown to be a mere agreement of convenience until Hitler was ready to wage war in the east. Hitler, as he had always promised, was determined to find Lebensraum ('living space') for the German people, that is, new lands in the east where they could find resources and prosper.

Operation Barbarossa, the code name for the attack on the USSR, was launched on 22 June 1941. The overall objective of three army groups (North, Centre, and South) was to smash the USSR's Red Army west of the Western Dvina and Dnieper (Dnepr/Dnipro) rivers and take control of several key cities, which would give Germany and its Axis allies access to natural resources from Leningrad (Saint Petersburg) to the Black Sea. The way would also then be open to the Soviet capital Moscow. The invading force, made up of German, Slovakian, Italian, Romanian, and Finnish forces, amongst others, consisted of 3.6 million men in 153 divisions, 3,600 tanks, and 2,700 aircraft (Dear, 86). The overall commander was Field Marshal Walter von Brauchitsch (1881-1948). With the largest army in history, Hitler assured his generals that victory would come before the winter.

The Axis armies won several major confrontations with the Red Army such as the Battle of Białystok-Minsk (June-July) and the Battle of Smolensk in 1941 (completed in the first week of August). These two battles alone gathered in 700,000 Soviet prisoners of war. The Axis Blitzkrieg ('lightning war') tactics of using fast-moving armoured divisions with air and infantry support while attacking on a narrow front had reaped great rewards. The military historian B. Liddell Hart succinctly summarises this tactic, which would be successfully employed again in the gigantic battle for Kiev:

…deep penetration by the Panzers and motorised infantry into the enemy's rear, followed by a turning inwards so as to cut off a slice, to be minced between the Panzer forces and the infantry armies coming up behind, mostly on foot.

(129)

Ukraine

Ukraine had briefly been an independent republic between 1917 and 1921, but by 1939, following the Nazi-Soviet Pact, its eastern section was made part of the USSR and the western part was occupied by the armed forces of Hungary. The USSR's Red Army took over the western half of Ukraine as it advanced westwards after the outbreak of the war. Ukraine was, then, perhaps a nation rather than a unified state in this turbulent period. The Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin (1878-1953), had subjected Ukrainians to severe purges and an engineered famine through the early 1930s, a famine which caused seven million deaths. The Soviet regime committed another brutal round of arrests, deportations, and murders through 1940 and 1941, affecting hundreds of thousands of people. Here, if anywhere, the Western invaders might find a responsive people who eagerly sought to release themselves from Soviet shackles. Hitler and Stalin were both determined to control this region, but that ambition hinged on holding the capital, Kiev, then the third largest city in the USSR. Ukraine's vast reserves of wheat, coal, minerals, and hydroelectricity, if captured, would allow the invading Axis army to fight on through 1942.

Army Group South

The Axis Army Group South was commanded by field marshal Gerd von Rundstedt (1875-1953), one of Germany's most respected commanders but one who had doubts as to the plan to occupy the USSR in a single season. This army group consisted of between 46 and 52 infantry divisions and five panzer divisions. A significant part of the force, 14 divisions in all, were from the Romanian Army. Rundstedt would send 35 divisions in total to Kiev. The German commander's plan was to attack so deep into Soviet territory with two separate armoured armies that the Red Army would not be aware it was going to be encircled until it was too late.

The Red Army

The Soviet front which included Kiev was initially commanded by Marshal Semyon Budenny (1883-1973), but, after calling for a retreat, he would be replaced by Marshal Semyon Timoshenko (1895-1970). The force around Kiev consisted of four separate armies, "the four strongest and best equipped armies in the Red Army" (Dimbleby, 182). Realising its importance, Stalin sent two additional armies to Kiev to meet the expected Axis attack. This would be the largest battle so far seen in WWII. Civilians were involved, too. Kiev was given a series of 30-mile (48-km) long defences composed of 100,000 mines, 750 bunkers, and a number of flamethrower traps. The citizens of Kiev helped build these lines of defences, tirelessly digging miles and miles of deep ditches to be used as tank traps.

The Kiev Encirclement

At the Battle of Uman (July-Aug), Rundstedt encircled and captured over 100,000 Soviet soldiers. The next target was Kiev. For this objective, Rundstedt received significant support from Army Group Centre, specifically, the 2nd Panzer Group led by Heinz Guderian (1888-1954), a master of Blitzkrieg tactics. Rundstedt planned to form a massive pincer movement using Guderian's panzer group and the 1st Panzer Group led by Ewald von Kleist (1881-1954). These two groups would surround the enemy in a massive pocket, what the German army called a cauldron or Kessel. To that end, Guderian headed for Romny, 125 miles (200 km) from Kiev while Kleist headed for Kremenchug (Kremenchuk) on the Dnieper, some 160 miles (260 km) away. Stalin, when informed such a pincer movement was underway, refused to allow the Red Army at Kiev to retreat. Stalin believed in "his own genius despite his almost total ignorance of military strategy" (Rees, 63).

Kleist's panzers reached the outer defences around Kiev on 11 July. On 30 July, the first direct attack on Kiev came. It was also on 30 July that Stalin's chief of staff, Marshal Georgy Zhukov (1896-1974), resigned when Stalin refused to take his advice and allow the Red Army at Kiev to withdraw so that it could counterattack later from a safer position. In Kiev itself, through August, the Red Army moved back to the more easily defended east bank of the Dnieper River as the enemy closed in on the western side of the city. On 25 August, the Dnieper was crossed at Kremenchug. On 26 August, the vital bridge over the Desna River was taken by the 3rd Panzer Division led by General (later field marshal) Walter Model (1891-1945). The Axis infantry now followed up the armoured divisions and advanced through Kiev's deep outer defences, taking heavy casualties. The Red Army's artillery bombarded the attackers and made strong counterattacks. The Axis air force had control of the skies and relentlessly bombed the Soviet positions. The main Red Army continued to withdraw to the east, but, conversely, Soviet reinforcements from the east were arriving by train to pack Kiev.

By 14 September, Kleist and Guderian had closed the pincer by meeting near Romny, but the advance had cost them half of their strength. Everything was in short supply: men, tanks, trucks, spare parts, fuel, oil, and ammunition. Even food rations were meagre, most troops having to survive on black bread and marmalade. Fortunately for the invaders, Romny had been a Soviet supply depot, and the Axis forces put the fuel, food, and ammunition to immediate use. "Over the next twelve days eastern Ukraine saw some of the heaviest fighting of the entire Barbarossa campaign" (Trigg, 227).

When the pincer movement closed, Stalin saw fit to sack Budenny for insisting on a retreat, replacing him with Marshal Timoshenko, who now took personal command of the Southern Front, the South-West Front, and the Black Sea Fleet. For Kiev, it was to be a fight to the last man. Even worse for the Red Army, the gigantic pocket east of the city – some 7,700 square miles (20,000 sq. km), or the size of the country of Slovenia – now contained four armies, 43 divisions in all. Lieutenant-General Mikhail Petrovich Kirponos (1892-1941) led the Red Army trapped in the pocket. On 17 September, Kirponos ordered all troops caught in the pocket to try and break their way out by whatever means they could.

If the Axis armies could force the huge number of trapped enemy soldiers to surrender or annihilate them, this could be the knock-out blow Hitler had hoped would end the campaign. To achieve this, the Axis infantry had to quickly follow up on the armoured advance, but they often depended on nothing faster than their own feet to get to the fighting front.

Some Soviet units, including tanks, made fierce and concerted attacks to get out of the Axis trap before all the gaps were closed off. As the days went by, though, the Axis troops, particularly German 88mm artillery units, caused more and more devastation amongst the Red Army armour. The Axis air force flew hundreds of missions to bomb the pocket. Kirponos died of shrapnel wounds on 20 September while trying to break out. One German soldier, Günther von Scheven, describes this area of the battle:

The last few days of combat are taking their toll of my courage…they have placed a heavy burden on me. You cannot comprehend the annihilation of so much life. The wild despairing break-out attacks the Russians attempted, surprising even for us, right up to our front with tanks, infantry and Cossacks. I am too shattered to grasp it all.

(Trigg, 229)

Kiev Falls

From 16 September, the Axis forces began to strike the heart of Kiev. Pontoon bridges were built to allow the crossing of the Dnieper. House-to-house fighting became a feature of the battle for the city. The Red Army had protected their tanks and could fire at the enemy from prepared bunkers. To add a bizarre note to the fighting, Stalin's propaganda speeches continued to be broadcast over public loudspeakers. By 18 September, most of the city was under Axis control, but some pockets held out. Even when the streets were empty and the fighting over, the Axis troops had to be careful since booby traps had been laid everywhere, usually attached to something attractive like a gold wristwatch or bar of soap. The Red Army even used dogs with mines hung around their necks. This was total war and like nothing the Axis troops had experienced in the campaigns in Western Europe. On 24 September, when all of the city had finally been cleared, the Soviets set off several massive explosive devices using remote controls.

On 26 September, the remaining Red Army soldiers in the shrinking pocket outside Kiev laid down their arms. Around 665,000 Red Army soldiers were taken prisoner according to official German figures (Dear, 511). Some historians would put the figure closer to 500,000. According to German official figures, the battle resulted in "343 aircraft, 884 tanks and 3,718 gun captured or destroyed" (Trigg, 236). Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945), the Nazi propaganda minister, had a field day with these figures as newspapers, radio broadcasts, and newsreels talked up what was already a major victory, the fourth great encirclement of Soviet troops in just over three months of fighting. Hitler described the Kiev engagement as "the greatest battle in the history of the world" (Shirer, 859). However, "its strategic consequences were not to prove as fatal as those of many a smaller battle" (Liddell Hart, 138). In short, the Red Army in the centre and north of the front was still a formidable force.

The Battle of Kiev, like others so far in Operation Barbarossa, had been a costly one for the Axis army: "26,856 dead, 100,000 wounded and 5,000 missing…The reality for the Germans – and Rundstedt's army group typified the situation – was that they were too worn down to seize a war-winning advantage from the Kiev bloodbath" (Trigg, 237). The war on the Eastern Front was only just beginning.

Aftermath

Hitler pressed on with Barbarossa despite the alarming accumulation of losses in men and material and the already deteriorating weather. After the Battle of Kiev, Rundstedt divided his force, one heading for the cities of Kharkov (Kharkiv) and Rostov and the other to Crimea. All three objectives were taken as the Axis army headed towards the oil-rich Caucasus. Hitler also had his sights on Moscow and Leningrad.

Initially, as Axis soldiers have recounted, the invaders in Ukraine were often regarded as liberators, and the local people gave the new arrivals such traditional gifts of hospitality as bread and salt. This warm welcome, although not universal, soon cooled dramatically. Kiev and Ukraine was subjected to Nazi rule, which included atrocities against Soviet commissars (political officers) and Jewish people, amongst others. Einsatzgruppen mobile killing squads shot people without trial. In one massacre in the Babi Yar ravine outside Kiev on 29 September 1941, over 33,000 Jewish men, women, and children were executed. The harsh treatment of the population in general as Hitler sought merely to exploit for all they were worth the region and its people (whom he regarded as racially inferior), meant that Ukrainian resistance soon grew to trouble the new occupiers, and so, in turn, the episodes of Nazi brutality increased. Kiev's population was reduced by 60% during the war while 7 million Ukrainians died during the conflict as a whole.

The Axis victories in the first stages of Operation Barbarossa were impressive, but they came at an unsustainable cost in men and material. The Red Army was not destroyed as planned but remained ready and willing to fight on. In a long war of attrition, the vastly superior capabilities of the USSR to replenish losses meant that Hitler could never win in the East. In 1942, Germany produced 15,409 aircraft and 9,200 tanks to the USSR's 25,436 and 24,446, respectively (Stahel, 442).

There were other inherent weaknesses to the campaign besides production of arms figures. The supply lines of the invaders were too stretched, and with already poor roads made even worse by wet autumn weather, the frontline troops lacked the fuel, supplies, and reinforcements they badly needed. In addition, Stalin had called for partisans to sabotage these supply lines wherever they could. When winter hit, the invaders found that their equipment and vehicles froze. Hitler's gamble on a quick knock-out blow had failed. The Red Army fightback began with the Battle of Moscow and resistance at the siege of Leningrad through the winter of 1941/2. The German-Soviet War entered a new phase, one which would last for three more years and result in more deaths than in any other theatre of WWII. In the winter months of 1943/4, Ukraine, including Kiev, was retaken by the Red Army. In May 1945, Berlin was finally occupied by the USSR, and Germany surrendered. Stalin had outdone Hitler.