Battle of Korsun–Cherkassy

Battle of the Korsun-Cherkassy Pocket
Part of World War II
Date January 24, 1944 – February 16, 1944 Location Cherkassy / Korsun, USSR Result Soviet Victory; German Breakout
Belligerents
Germany	Soviet Union
Commanders and leaders
Erich von Manstein, Wilhelm Stemmermann, Theobald Lieb, Hermann Breith, III Panzerkorps	Georgy Zhukov, Nikolai Vatutin (1st Ukrainian Front), Ivan Konev (2nd Ukrainian Front),
Strength
56,000 70 tanks and assault guns in pocket. Larger numbers when counting relief troops	200,000 500 tanks
Casualties and losses
26,000 killed, wounded and captured entire German equipment lost (Glantz/House, When Titans Clashed, p. 188)	80,000 killed, wounded and captured (Glantz/House, When Titans Clashed, p. 298) ?tanks

The Battle of the Korsun-Cherkassy Pocket took place in the winter of 1944. The battle was fought on the Eastern Front between the forces of the German Army Group South and the Soviet 1st Ukrainian and 2nd Ukrainian Fronts.

January

In January 1944, the German forces of Field Marshal Erich von Manstein’s Army Group South had fallen back to the Panther-Wotan Line, a defensive position along the Dniepr river in Ukraine. Two corps, the XI under Gen. Wilhelm Stemmermann, the XLII Army Corps under Lt.Gen. Theobald Lieb and the attached Corps Detachment B from the 8th Army were holding a salient into the Soviet lines extending some 100 kilometers to the Dniepr river settlement of Kanev, with the town of Korsun roughly in the center of the salient, west of Cherkassy. Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Zhukov realized the potential for a second Stalingrad and recommended to the Soviet Supreme Command (STAVKA) to deploy 1st and 2nd Ukrainian Fronts to form two armored rings of encirclement: an inner ring around a cauldron and then destroy the forces it contained, and an external ring to prevent relief formations from reaching the trapped units. Despite repeated warnings from Manstein and others, Hitler refused to allow the exposed units to be pulled back to safety.

Encirclement

On 18 January, Manstein was proven prescient when General Nikolai Vatutin’s 1st and General Ivan Konev’s 2nd Ukrainian Front’s attacked the edges of the salient and surrounded the two German corps. The link-up on 28 January of 20th Guards Tank Brigade with 6th Tank Army of the First Ukrainian Front at the village of Zvenigorodka completed the encirclement and created the cauldron or kessel that became known as the Korsun-Cherkassy Pocket. Stalin expected and was promised a second Stalingrad; Konev wired: "There is no need to worry, Comrade Stalin. The encircled enemy will not escape."

Soviet advances that created the Korsun-Cherkassy pocket.

Trapped in the pocket were under 60,000 men, a total of six German divisions at approximately 55% of their authorized strength, along with a number of smaller combat units. Among the trapped German forces were the 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking and the SS Sturmbrigade Wallonien (SS Assault Brigade), and 5-6,000 Russian auxiliaries. The trapped forces were designated Gruppe Stemmermann and the commander of XI Korps, Gen. Wilhelm Stemmermann was placed in command. Wiking had 43 Panzer III/IV tanks and assault guns. Two assault gun battalions provided an additional 27 assault guns.

Response

Manstein moved quickly, and by early February the III and XLVII Panzerkorps were assembled for a relief effort. However, Hitler intervened and ordered the rescue attempt to be transformed into an impossible effort to counter-encircle the two Soviet fronts.

General Hermann Breith, commander of III Panzerkorps insisted that both the relief formations should unite and attempt to force a corridor to the trapped Gruppe Stemmermann. Manstein initially sided with Hitler, although in deceptive fashion, and the attack was to be an attempt to encircle the massive Red Army force.

The XLVII Panzerkorps attack, led by the veteran 11th Panzer Division quickly stalled. Realising the encirclement was going to fail, Manstein ordered III Panzerkorps to attempt to relieve the beleaguered Gruppe Stemmermann.

Led by the 1st SS Panzer Division, the attack got underway in terrible conditions of the rasputitsa and soon encountered heavy resistance from four Soviet Tank Corps, the IIIrd began to bog down in the thick mud of the rasputitsa.

On February 8, Breith ordered the attack to be renewed, this time led by the 16th Panzer division. After heavy fighting, the exhausted force reached the Gniloy Tikich stream and established a small bridgehead on the eastern bank. The IIIrd could advance no further, Gruppe Stemmermann would have to fight its way out.

Kessel Fever

The forces of Gruppe Stemmermann had formed their defense around the town of Korsun, which had a single airstrip – the besieged unit's supply line. Junkers Ju-52 transports delivered fuel, ammunition, medical supplies and food – until the airfield was abandoned on 12 February – and flew out the wounded, an all-important morale consideration for German troops on the Eastern front. Orders from 8th Army command came through

Group Stemmermann will shorten the front lines and move the pocket in the direction of Shanderovka in order to be able, when the time comes, to break out towards the forces mounting a relief attack from outside.

Stemmermann immediately began pulling back troops from the north of the cauldron, and attacking south to expand towards the relief forces on the north bank of the Gniloy Tikich. The frenetic maneuvering within the kessel confused the Soviets, convincing them that they had trapped the majority of the 8th Army. The trapped forces, the troops suffering from kessel fever, were now to attack south, capturing the villages of Shanderovka, Novo-Buda and Komarovka. The 105th Regiment of the 72nd Division was to take Novo-Buda and move on to Komarovka. The shattered regiment would have to attack uphill over an area with no cover, and with the Soviets well entrenched. Major Robert Kästner, the 105th commander decided upon a night assault. With fixed bayonets, wearing white camouflage suits over their winter anoraks and white-washed helmets, the men moved silently forward, getting within meters of the Soviet trench before being challenged by a sentry. In fierce hand-to-hand combat, the 105th took the ridge in a matter of minutes. The following night the 105th captured Komarovka in similar fashion.

By 15 February, the pocket had “wandered” south and half-way towards its rescuers and rested on the village of Shanderovka; now it needed the rescuers, III Panzer Korps, to finish their drive and relieve the encircled formations. Shanderovka was heavily defended by the Soviets; had been captured by 72nd Infantry troops, was retaken by the Soviet 27th Army and recaptured by the Germania regiment of Wiking.

Breakout through Hell’s Gate

The III Panzerkorps was stuck. After several failed attempts to seize Hill 239 and advance on Shanderovka, the IIIrd was close to exhaustion. 8th Army radioed Stemmermann

Group Stemmermann must perform breakthrough as far as Zhurzintsy/Hill 239 by its own effort. There link up with III Panzer Corps.

The message did not specify that Zhurzintsy and the hill were still firmly in Soviet hands. Stemmermann elected to stay behind with the rearguard of 4,000 men drawn from three divisions. The cauldron was now only 3.5 kilometres in diameter, depriving Stemmermann of room to maneuver. Shanderovka, once seen as a gate to freedom, now became known as Hell’s Gate. The Red Army poured intense artillery and rocket fire on the area around the encircled troops. Various unit diaries described a scene of gloom, with fires burning, destroyed or abandoned vehicles everywhere and wounded men and disorganized units on muddy roads. Ukrainian civilians were caught between the combatants. During the 16th of February 1944, without waiting for Hitler’s approval, Field Marshal von Manstein sent a communiqué to Stemmermann to authorize the breakout. It said simply,

Password Freedom, objective Lysyanka, 2300 hours.

The German breakout.

With extreme reluctance, Stemmermann and Lieb decided to leave several thousand non-ambulatory wounded at Shanderovka attended by doctors and orderlies. The troops then began to assemble at dusk, and at 2300 hours, in bitter cold, the men moved out in three assault columns with 72nd Infantry Division, Division Group 112 and Wiking leading. The formations moved silently through the darkness, with all going well for several battalions who reached the German lines at Oktyabr by 0410. Kästner’s 105th Regiment also reached friendly lines after brief, effective skirmishing. At the center column, a Wiking reconnaissance patrol returned bearing grim news. The geographic feature Hill 239 was occupied by Soviet T-34's of the 5th Guards Tank Army. Despite energetic efforts by Wiking units, Hill 239 remained in Soviet hands and had to be bypassed. SS troops then seized the highway at Hill 239 with a bayonet attack, but Soviet possession of Hill 239 with a wall of T-34's pushed the German escape direction to the south, thus ending for the bulk of Group Stemmermann at the wrong position of the Gniloy Tikich stream. When daylight arrived, the German escape plan began to unravel.

The Soviet commanders, now realizing that the Germans were escaping, ordered all-out assaults to close the corridor. No quarter was given by either side, the T-34s running down wounded men and those who surrendered.

By mid-morning, the majority of Gruppe Stemmermann had reached the Gniloy Tikich stream, now turbulent and swollen by the melting snow. Despite the fact that 1st Panzer had captured a bridge, and engineers had erected another, the panicking men saw the river as their only escape. Since the main body of Group Stemmermann was further south and away from the bridgeheads, the last tanks, trucks and wagons were driven into the icy water, trees were felled to form make-shift bridges and the troops floundered across as best as they could, with hundreds of exhausted men drowning or subsequently freezing to death. Groups of men were brought across on lifelines fashioned from belts and harnesses. Others formed rafts of planks and other debris to tow the wounded to the German side, at all times under Soviet artillery and T-34 fire. Gen. Lieb, after establishing a semblance of order at the banks throughout the day, swam to the western side. When Wiking commander Herbert Otto Gille attempted to form a human chain across the river, alternating between those who could swim and those who could not, scores of men died when someone’s hand slipped and the chain broke. Several hundred Soviet prisoners of war, a troupe of Russian women auxiliaries and Ukrainian civilians who feared reprisals by the Red Army, also crossed the icy waters.

That so many reached the German lines at Lysyanka was due in great measure to the exertions of III Panzer Korps as it drove in relief of Group Stemmermann. The cutting edge was provided by Heavy Armored Regiment Bäke (Schweres Panzer Regiment Bäke), named for its commander Lt.Col. Dr. Franz Bäke (a dentist in civilian life). The unit was equipped with Tigers and Panthers and an engineer battalion with specialist bridging skills.

The Outcome

The Red Army encirclement Cherkassy-Korsun inflicted serious damage on six under strength German divisions, including Wiking; these units were further decimated, were neutralized and had to be withdrawn and required complete re-equipping after this military disaster. Most escaped troops were eventually shipped from collection points near Uman to hospitals in Poland and to rehabilitation areas, or were sent on leave to their bombed home towns. The Soviet forces continued their steamroller drive westward with massive tank armies of T-34's, Joseph Stalin-II’s, and trucks and Shermans supplied by their American allies.

Considerable controversy exists to this day over casualties and losses. Soviet historian Vladimir Telpukhovsky claims that the Red Army inflicted 52,000 casualties on the Germans and took 11,000 prisoners, other Soviet sources claim 57,000 casualties and 18,000 prisoners – with Soviet casualty numbers officially unpublished. The high numbers given are attributed by sources to the erroneous Soviet belief that all German units were at their full establishment and that most of the German 8th Army was trapped - so that a second Stalingrad could be presented to the Soviet dictator. German accounts state that the under 60,000 men originally inside the cauldron had shrunk to less than 50,000 by 16 February, that 45,000 took part in the breakout and that 35,000 got through, with a total of 19,000 dead, captured or missing. Douglas E. Nash’s Appendix 7 “German Present for Battle Unit Strengths after the Breakout” in Hell’s Gate lists per unit survivors, with total survivors of 40,423, including wounded flown out of the pocket and evacuated from Lysyanka.

Gen. Stemmermann died fighting among his rear guard. Generals Lieb and Gille survived the war. The commander of 2nd Ukrainian Front, Gen. Konev, was made a Marshal of the Soviet Union for his great victory. Gen. Vatutin was shot by Ukrainian Nationalist UPA insurgents on February 28, 1944 and died on April 15, 1944.

References

• Department of the Army Pamphlet 20-234. Operations of Encircled Forces: German Experiences in Russia (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1952)
• Carell, Paul. Scorched Earth (New York: Ballantine Books. 1971)
• Harold Shukman, ed. Stalin's Generals (New York: Grove Press. 1993. pp. 146, 176-177, 297)
• Colonel Richard N. Armstrong. Red Army Tank Commanders. The Armored Guards (Atglen, PA. 1994, pp. 29, 127-128, 363-367, 414-419, 421).
• David Glantz, Jonathan M. House. When Titans Clashed. How the Red Army Stopped Hitler (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press. 1995, pp. 186-189)
• Nash, Douglas E. Hell's Gate: The Battle of the Cherkassy Pocket, January-February 1944 (Southbury, CT: RZM Publishing. 2002)