Battle of the Dnieper

Lower Dnieper Offensive
Part of the Eastern Front of World War II
Soviet soldiers crossing the Dnieper on improvised rafts.
Date 24 August, 1943 — 23 December, 1943 Location Dnieper river, USSR Result Decisive Soviet Victory
Belligerents
Soviet Union	Nazi Germany Romania
Commanders and leaders
Konstantin Rokossovsky, Ivan Konev	Erich von Manstein Romano Eroscú
Strength
2,650,000 men 51,000 guns 2,400 tanks 2,850 aircraft	1,250,000 men 12,600 guns 2,100 tanks 2,000 aircraft
Casualties and losses
330,000 KIA 1,500,000 total casualties	Low est.: 400,000+ total casualties High est.: 1,000,000 total casualties

The Lower Dnieper Offensive (also known as the "Battle of the Lower Dnieper") of took place in 1943 during the Second World War. It was one of the largest Second World War operations, involving almost 4,000,000 troops on both sides and stretching on a 1400 kilometers long front. During this four-month operation, the eastern bank of the Dnieper was recovered from German forces by five of the Red Army's Fronts, which conducted several river assault crossings to establish several bridgeheads on the western bank. Subsequently, Kiev was liberated in a separate offensive.

One of the costliest operations of the war, the casualties are estimated at being from 1,700,000 to 2,700,000 on both sides. The operation consisted of several smaller operational phases: Melitopol Offensive, Zaporozhye Offensive, Pyatikhatki Offensive, Znamenka Offensive and Dnepropetrovsk Offensive.

Strategic situation

Following the Battle of Kursk, the German High Command was no longer in a position to mount large-scale offensives against the Red Army in the East. During the long retreat after Kursk, the Wehrmacht Heer and supporting Luftwaffe forces had managed to cross the Dnieper river to the West and reestablished defence along the Wotan fortified line. The crossing of the Dnieper was accomplished by thousands of German soldiers in small rafts and boats while under continuous air and ground attacks by pursuing Soviet forces. German losses in men and materiel had been considerable, and many of the experienced units were weakened. This meant that the Wehrmacht forces had to adopt an operational sustained defence against the Soviet Fronts. On occasions Wehrmacht tactical counter-attacks did meet with considerable success, but this could not be translated into a return of the strategic initiative lost at Kursk. While the strength in personnel, materiel and logistical support of the Wehrmacht forces declined, that of the Red Army steadily increased, allowing the later to create an ever larger numerical superiority for further conducting offensives.

By mid-August, Hitler understood that the Soviet offensive could not be contained and he ordered construction of a series of fortifications to slow down the Red Army's offensive capability, demanding that the Wehrmacht defend the Wotan Line positions on the Dnieper at all costs.

On the Soviet side, Stalin was determined to pursue the recovery of the occupied territories, started at the beginning of the year. The Ukrainian industrial region was the first priority, since it was a densely populated area, and its coal mines and other ores would provide precious resources for the Soviet state. The main axis of the offensive was in a southeasterly direction; the northern flank being largely stabilised, and the southern flank resting on the Sea of Azov.

Decision making

Goal of the operation

Objective of the battle

Soviet intelligence

German intelligence

Planning

Soviet planning

The operation begun on 24 August 1943 with divisions starting to move on a 1400-kilometer front stretching between Smolensk and the Azov Sea.

Soviet Organisation

The operation would involve five fronts:

• Central Front (known as the Bielorussian Front after 20 October 1943)
• Voronezh Front (known as the 1st Ukrainian Front after 20 October 1943)
• Steppe Front (known as the 2nd Ukrainian Front after 20 October 1943)
• Southwestern Front (known as the 3rd Ukrainian Front after 20 October 1943)
• Southern Front (known as the 4th Ukrainian Front after 20 October 1943)

Overall, the operation would be executed by 36 Combined Arms, 4 Tank and 5 Air Armies.

Personnel availability

2,650,000 personnel were brought into the ranks for this massive operation.

Equipment availability

The operation would utilise 51,000 guns, 2,400 tanks and 2,850 planes.

German planning

Main article: Panther-Wotan line

Map of the battle of the Dnieper and linked operations

The order to construct the Dnieper defense complex, known as "Eastern Wall", was issued on 11 August 1943 and begun to be immediately executed.

Fortifications were erected along the length of the Dnieper. However, there was no hope of completing such an extensive defence line in the short time available. Therefore, the completion of the "Eastern Wall" was not uniform in its density and depth of fortifications. Instead, the fortifications were concentrated in areas where Soviet assault-crossing were most likely to be attempted, such as near Kremenchug, Zaporozhye and Nikopol.

Additionally, on 7 September 1943, the SS forces and the Wehrmacht received orders to strip the areas they had to abandon from anything that could be used by the Red Army to slow it down, and to try to create supply shortages for the Soviet forces by implementing the scorched earth policy.

Description of the strategic operation

Initial attack

Despite a great superiority in numbers, the offensive was by no means easy. German opposition was ferocious and fights raged for every town and city. The Wehrmacht made extensive use of rear guards, leaving some troops in each city and on each hill, slowing down the Soviet offensive.

Progress of the offensive

Three weeks after the start of the offensive, and despite heavy losses on the Soviet side, it became clear that the Wehrmacht could not hope to contain the Soviet offensive in the flat, open terrain of the steppes, where the Red Army's numerical strength would prevail. Manstein asked for as many as 12 new divisions in hopes of containing the Soviet offensive – but German reserves were perilously thin. Years later, Manstein wrote in his memoirs:

After analysing this situation, I concluded that we can't keep the Donbass with the forces that we already possess, and that even a greater danger for the whole Eastern Front is being created on the north flank of the group. The 8th and 4th armies won't be able to contain the Soviet offensive for very long.

Decisive action

Therefore, on 15 September 1943, Hitler ordered Army Group South to retreat to the Dnieper defense line.

The battle for Poltava was especially bitter. The city was heavily fortified and its garrison well prepared. After a few inconclusive days that greatly slowed down the Soviet offensive, Marshal Konev decided to bypass the city and rush towards the Dnieper. After two days of violent urban warfare, the Poltava garrison was overcome.

Towards the end of September 1943, Soviet forces reached the lower part of the Dnieper. The hardest part was still to come, though.

Final commitment

Dnieper airborne operation

(The following is a synopsis of an account by Glantz with support from an account by Staskov.)

STAVKA detached the Central Front's 3rd Tank Army to the Voronezh Front to race the weakening Germans to the Dnieper, to save the crop and to achieve strategic or operational river bridgeheads before a German defense could stabilize there. The 3rd Tank Army, plunging headlong, reached the river the night of 21-22 September and, on the 23rd, Soviet infantry forces crossed by swimming and makeshift rafts to secure small, fragile bridgeheads, opposed only by 120 German Cherkassy flak academy NCO candidates who, with the hard-pressed 19th Panzer Division Reconnaissance Battalion, were the only Germans within 60 km of the Dnieper loop (virtually nobody). Only heavy German air attack and a lack of bridging equipment kept Soviet heavy weaponry from crossing and expanding the bridgehead.

STAVKA, sensing a critical juncture, ordered a hasty airborne corps assault to increase the size of the bridgehead before the Germans could counterattack. On the 21st, the Voronezh Front's 1st, 3rd and 5th Guards Airborne Brigades got the urgent call to secure, on the 23rd, a bridgehead perimeter 15 to 20 km wide and 30 km deep on the Dnieper loop between Kanev and Rzhishchev, while Front elements forced the river.

The assembly at the airfields was slow, necessitating, on the 23rd, a one-day delay and omission of 1st Brigade from the plan. Consequent mission changes caused near chaos in command channels and barely allowed for propagation of change orders, which got to company commanders on the 24th just 15 minutes before their units, not yet provisioned with spades, anti-tank mines, or ponchos for the autumn night frosts, formed on airfields to load for an 1830 liftoff. Owing to weather, not all the aircraft had arrived at airfields for loading, or on time, ruining loading plans; many radios and supplies got left behind. Best case, it would take three lifts to deliver the brigades. Units still arriving by (over-taxed) rail loaded piecemeal onto returned planes (which were slow to refuel owing to less-than-expected capacities of fuel trucks), while already-arrived troops changed planes, seeking earlier flights. Urgency and the fuel shortage prevented aerial assembly aloft; most aircraft, as soon as loaded and fueled, flew single file, instead of line abreast, to drop points. Assault waves became as intermingled as the units they carried.

As corps elements made their 170 to 220 km flights from four of five fields (one field received no fuel), troops (half of whom had never jumped) got briefed on drop zones, assembly areas and objectives only poorly understood by platoon commanders still studying new orders. Meanwhile, Soviet aerial photography, suspended several days by weather, had missed the strong reinforcement of the area, early that afternoon. Non-combat cargo pilots ferrying 3rd Brigade through drizzle expected no resistance beyond river pickets but, instead, were met by anti-aircraft and starshell fires from 19th Panzer Division (only coincidentally transiting the drop zone, and just one of six divisions and other elements ordered, on the 21st, to fill the gap in front of 3rd Tank Army). Lead aircraft, disgorging paratroopers over Dubari at 1930, came under small arms, machine gun, and quad-20 anti-aircraft fire from the armored personnel carrier battalion of the 73rd Panzer Grenadier Regiment and elements of the division staff of 19th Panzer Division. Some paratroops began returning fire and throwing grenades even before landing; trailing aircraft sped up, climbed and evaded, dropping wide. Through the night, some pilots avoided starshell-lit drop points entirely, and 13 aircraft returned to airfields without having dropped at all. Intending a 10 by 14 km drop over largely undefended terrain, the Soviets instead achieved a 30 by 90 km drop over the fastest mobile elements of two German corps.

On the ground, Germans used white parachutes as beacons to hunt down and kill disorganized groups and to gather and destroy airdropped supplies. Supply bonfires, glowing embers, and multi-color starshells illuminated the bizarre and macabre battlefield. Captured documents gave Germans enough knowledge of Soviet objectives to arrive at most of them before the disorganized paratroops.

Back at Soviet airfields, fuel shortage allowed only 298 of 500 planned sorties, leaving corps 45mm anti-tank guns and 2,017 paratroops undelivered. Of 4,575 men dropped (seventy percent of the planned number, and just 1,525 from 5th Brigade), some 2,300 eventually assembled into 43 ad-hoc groups, missions abandoned as hopeless, and spent most of their time seeking supplies not yet destroyed by Germans. Others joined with the nine partisan groups operating in the area. About 230 made it over (or out of) the Dnieper to Front units (or were originally dropped there). Most of the rest were almost casually captured that first night or killed the next day (though, that first night, 3rd Co, 73rd Panzer Grenadier Regiment, suffered heavy losses while annihilating about 150 paratroopers near Grushevo, some 3 km west of Dubari).

The Germans (under) estimated that 1,500 to 2,000 had dropped; they recorded 901 paratroops captured and killed in the first 24 hours. Thereafter, the Germans largely ignored the paratroopers, to counterattack and truncate Dnieper bridgeheads. Germans deemed their anti-paratrooper operations completed by 2100 on the 26th, though a modicum of opportunistic actions against garrisons, rail lines, and columns were conducted by remnants through early November. For lack of manpower to clear all areas, forests of the region would remain a minor threat.

Germans called the operation a fundamentally sound idea ruined by the dilettantism of planners lacking an expert (but praised individual paratroops for tenacity, bayonet skills, and deft use of broken ground in the sparsely wooded northern region). STAVKA deemed this second (and, ultimately, last) corps drop a complete failure; lessons they knew they’d already learned from their winter offensive corps drop at Viazma hadn’t stuck. They would never trust themselves to try it again.

Soviet 5th Guards Airborne Brigade commander Sidorchuk, withdrawing to the forests south, eventually amassed a brigade-size command, half paratroops, half partisans, obtained air supply, and assisted 2nd Ukrainian Front over the Dnieper near Cherkassy to finally link up with Front forces on 15 November. After 13 more days combat, the airborne were evacuated, ending a harrowing two months. More than sixty percent never returned.

Assault-crossing the Dnieper

Execution considerations

Soviet soldiers preparing the rafts to cross the Dnieper (the sign reads "To Kiev!")...

File:Dnieper Forcing Raft1.jpg

... and crossing the river.

The Dnieper is the third largest river in Europe, second only to the Volga and the Danube. In its lower part, its width can easily reach 3 kilometers, and the fact that it was dammed in several places made it even larger. Moreover its right shore —the one still to be retaken— was much higher and steeper than the left, complicating the offensive even further. In addition, the opposite shore was transformed into a vast complex of defenses and fortifications held by the Wehrmacht.

In front of such a situation, the Soviet commanders had two options. The first would be to give themselves time to regroup their forces, find a weak point or two to exploit (not necessarily in the lower part of Dnieper), stage a breakthrough and encircle the German defenders, rendering the defense line next to useless (very much like German Panzers bypassed the Maginot line in 1940). This, however, would give Germans time to get more reserves and furthermore, would expose Soviet troops to flank mechanized attacks, every Soviet commander's nightmare since 1941.

The second option would be to stage a massive assault without waiting, and force the Dnieper on a broad front. This option left no additional time for the German defenders, but would lead to much larger casualties. For political reasons (Stalin wanted Kiev to be retaken on 7 November), the second option was chosen.

The assault was staged on a 300-kilometer front almost simultaneously. All available means of transport were be used to transport the attackers to the opposite shore, including small fishing boats and improvised rafts of barrels and trees (like the one in the photograph). The crucial issue would obviously be heavy equipment. Without it, the bridgeheads would not stand for long.

The assault-crossings

File:Dnieper Forcing Boats.jpg

Soviet soldiers using small fishing boats to cross the Dnieper under enemy fire.

The first bridgehead on Dnieper's right shore was established on 22 September 1943 at the confluence of Dnieper and Pripyat rivers, in the northern part of the front. On 24 September, another bridgehead was created near Dneprodzerzhinsk, another on 25 September near Dnepropetrovsk and yet another one on 28 September near Kremenchug. By the end of the month, 23 bridgeheads were created on the right shore, some of them 10 kilometers wide and 1-2 kilometers deep.

By all accounts, the crossing of the Dnieper can be described as a slugfest. Soldiers used every available floating device to cross the river, under heavy German fire and taking heavy losses. After that, Soviet troops had to basically dig themselves into the clay ravines composing Dnieper's right shore.

Securing the bridgeheads

Soviet soldiers attacking on a bridgehead in October 1943.

German troops soon launched heavy counterattacks on almost every bridgehead, hoping to annihilate them before heavy equipment could be transported across the river.

For instance, the Borodaevsk bridgehead, mentioned by Marshal Konev in his memoirs, came under heavy armored and air assault. Bombers attacked both the bridgehead and the reinforcements crossing the river. Konev complained at once about a lack of organization of Soviet air support, set up air patrols to prevent bombers from approaching the bridgeheads and ordered forward more artillery to counter tank attacks from the opposite shore. When Soviet aviation became more organized and hundreds of guns and Katyushas started firing, the situation started to improve and the bridgehead was eventually preserved.

Such fights were commonplace on every bridgehead. Although all the bridgeheads were held, losses were terrible – at the beginning of October, most divisions were at only 25 to 50% of their nominal strength.

Western bank operations

The Wehrmacht delivers fire across the Dnieper.

Lower Dnieper offensive

By mid-October, the forces accumulated on the lower Dnieper bridgeheads were strong enough to stage a first massive attack to definitely secure Dnieper's right shore in the southern part of the front. Therefore, a vigorous attack was staged on Kremenchug-Dnepropetrovsk line. Simultaneously, a major diversion was conducted in the south to draw German forces away both from Lower Dnieper and from Kiev.

At the end of the offensive, Soviet forces controlled a bridgehead 300 kilometers wide and up to 80 kilometers deep in some places. In the south, the Crimea was now cut off from the rest of the German forces. Any hope of stopping the Red Army on Dnieper's left shore was lost.

Battle of Kiev

Main article: Battle of Kiev (1943)

Criticisms

Stalin's will to recover Kiev before 7 November has raised quite a few criticisms among historians. It is commonly accepted now that bridgeheads on the Lower Dnieper were deliberately "left alone" to draw German forces from Kiev, resulting in heavy losses. While this hypothesis could be true to some extent, one must not forget that the action of establishing a bridgehead alone is dangerous enough and can (and usually does) lead to heavy losses.

Outcomes

The Battle of Dnieper was another defeat for the Wehrmacht that required it to restabilize the front further West. The Red Army, which Hitler hoped to contain at the Dnieper, forced the Wehrmacht's defenses. Kiev was recaptured and German troops lacked forces to annihilate Soviet troops on Lower Dnieper bridgeheads. The right shore was still in German possession for most part, but both sides knew that it would not last for long.

Additionally, the Battle of Dnieper demonstrated the strength of the Soviet partisan movement. The "rail war" operation staged during September and October 1943 struck German logistics very hard, creating heavy supply issues.

Incidentally, between 28 November and 1 December, 1943 the Teheran conference was held between Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Stalin. The battle of Dnieper, along with other major offensives staged in 1943, certainly allowed Stalin a dominant position for negotiating with his Allies.

Casualties debate

Casualties during the Battle of Dnieper are still a subject of a heavy debate. Some sources give very low figures (200,000 to 300,000 total casualties) which is much lower than the Battle of Kursk for instance. However, given the duration of the campaign and the huge area involved, more than one historian argues that the losses involved were huge, easily reaching or even surpassing those at the Battle of Stalingrad, but going "unnoticed" because of the big operation area (and of the aura of fame enveloping the latter). The death toll also depends on the time frame considered. It also depends whether the toll of the 1943 Smolensk battle, which was used as a kind of "deceptive maneuver" for the Dnieper battle, is included in the Battle of Dnieper's statistics.

On the subject of Soviet casualties, Nikolaï Shefov in his Russian fights puts the figure of 373,000 KIA and more than 1,500,000 total Soviet casualties. British historian, John Erickson, in his Barbarossa: The Axis and the Allies, puts a figure of 173,201 USSR KIA, during a time frame from 26 September to 20 December 1943, therefore not taking into account the period going from 24 August to 26 September. Glantz/House 'When Titans Clashed' put a figure of 428,000 total losses (103,000 KIA) during 26 August to 30 September (Chernigov-Poltava Operation) and 754,000 total losses (173,000 KIA) during 26 September and 20 December. Given the heavy German resistance even before Dnieper force-crossing, this figure seems a low estimate (Soviet sources estimate casualties from the post-Kursk offensive alone at 250,000 killed, wounded and captured), the figure of 300,000+ KIA seems quite correct and acceptable, with the WIA number following the 3:1 empiric ratio.

German losses, however, are more difficult to evaluate. The simple rule of 3:1 losses during an offensive operation against a heavily defended enemy would lead to a 500,000 casualties toll, reaching the one of Kursk. Shefov and other Soviet/Russian historians quote casualties as high as 1,500,000. This is however highly unlikely, this would mean that the number of casualties is close to the same size as the number of men involved, and if one considers the casualties per day ratio of Kursk battle, an operation twice as long under similar conditions would lead to a 1,000,000 toll.

The Battle of the Dnieper is listed among the most lethal battles in world history.

References

• David M. Glantz, Jonathan M. House, When Titans Clashed:how the Red Army stopped Hitler, University Press of Kansas, 1995
• Nikolai Shefov, Russian fights, Lib. Military History, Moscow, 2002
• History of Great Patriotic War, 1941 — 1945. Мoscow, 1963
• John Erickson, Barbarossa: The Axis and the Allies, Edinburgh University Press, 1994
• Marshal Konev, Notes of a front commander', Science, Moscow, 1972.
• Erich von Manstein, Lost Victories, Мoscow, 1957.