Where the Iron Crosses Grow: The Crimea 1941-44 (General Military)
Robert Forczyk
Language: English
Pages: 368
ISBN: 1782006257
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Nazi and Soviet armies fought over the Crimean Peninsula for three long years using sieges, dozens of amphibious landings, and large scale maneuvers. This definitive English-language work on the savage battle for the Crimea, Where the Iron Crosses Grow sheds new light on this vital aspect of the Eastern Front.
The Crimea was one of the crucibles of the war on the Eastern Front, where first a Soviet and then a German army were surrounded, fought desperate battles and were eventually destroyed. The fighting in the region was unusual for the Eastern Front in many ways, in that naval supply, amphibious landings and naval evacuation played major roles, while both sides were also conducting ethnic cleansing as part of their strategy - the Germans eliminating the Jews and the Soviets to purging the region of Tartars.
From 1941, when the first Soviets first created the Sevastopol fortified region, the Crimea was a focal point of the war in the East. German forces under the noted commander Manstein conquered the area in 1941-42, which was followed by two years of brutal colonization and occupation before the Soviet counteroffensive in 1944 destroyed the German 17th Army.
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maintain its current front, never mind recover lost territory. Thus, the Crimea was going to remain isolated, and AOK 17’s only realistic options were either to evacuate (and use the troops elsewhere on the Eastern Front) or hold to the death. If AOK 17 had been comprised primarily of German troops Hitler might have been more open to evacuation, but since the bulk of the combat units were Romanian, he regarded them as having negligible value if deployed elsewhere. By holding the Crimea, AOK 17
Archives Microfilm), Series T-312, Roll 739. 7. Ia, 336. Infanterie-Division, October-December 1943, NAM (National Archives Microfilm), Series T-315, Roll 2,097. 8. lc, Gefangenenvernehmung, AOK 17, November 1, 1943, NAM (National Archives Microfilm), Series T-312, Roll 741. 9. Anatoly N. Grylev, Dnipro-Karpaty-Krym: Osvobozhdenie pravoberezhnoi ukrainy i kryma v 1944 gody [Dnepr-Carpathians-Crimea: The Liberation of the Right Bank of Ukraine and Crimea, 1944] (Moscow: Nauka, 1970). 10.
week of October, and it was not until the final convoy began loading at Odessa on October 14 that the Luftwaffe took an interest in the Soviet operation. Yet of the 11 Soviet transports, loaded with thousands of troops, the Luftwaffe managed to sink only one small transport and damage another. The bulk of the Independent Coastal Army was delivered virtually intact to Sevastopol – this was perhaps the Black Sea Fleet’s finest moment in World War II. Kuznetsov would need all the soldiers he could
even though it was a less likely avenue of approach. Indeed, throughout the fighting on the Perekop Isthmus, Kuznetsov consistently put too many forces to cover his flank on the Sivash even though Manstein had found this option impractical – the memory of the 1920 campaign now created a fear in the Red Army of being flanked. In terms of support weapons, Major Baranov still had nine T-34 tanks operational in the 5th Tank Regiment, but Kuznetsov’s artillery park was much reduced and limited to
war, but Kolganov managed to shine in the final East Prussian campaign of 1945 and retire as a general-lieutenant. Thousands of bypassed Soviet troops went to ground in the Kerch Peninsula, in quarries and other isolated places. Most would surrender or be captured in days, but for a few determined stalwarts, surrender was not in their vocabulary. _______________________________ In order to capture Sevastopol, Manstein knew that he would need an unprecedented amount of firepower to break through
