Battle of Uman. Battle of Uman Uman defensive operation 1941 in literature

Battle of Uman (late July - early August 1941). Occurred during the offensive of Army Group South. Led to the encirclement and subsequent death of the troops of the 6th and 12th armies of the Southwestern Front and individual units of the Southern Front of the Red Army

Map of military operations at the end of July - beginning of August 1941. The yellow circle shows the area of ​​encirclement of the 6th and 12th armies near Uman

Previous events.
In the first weeks of Operation Barbarossa, Army Group South, moving east, occupied the cities of Lviv (June 30), Ternopil, Vinnitsa and Zhitomir (July 10). During the battle near Lutsk-Rovno-Brody, units of the 4th, 15th and 16th, as well as the 9th, 19th and 22nd mechanized corps of the Red Army, from the Southwestern Front, were defeated. These groups of corps attacked the advancing Wehrmacht troops in the area of ​​Dubno from the south and north, respectively. However, despite superiority in tanks, these attacks were unsuccessful. PIn terms of the number of armored vehicles, the clash was comparable only to the Battle of Kursk. By June 29, the battle was over and German troops continued their offensive.
On July 10, the Supreme Command Headquarters transferred overall command of the Red Army units operating in the South-Western direction to Budyonny. His task was to coordinate the actions of the two fronts. Thus, under the command of Budyonny there were troops totaling about 1.5 million people, concentrated in the areas of Uman and Kyiv. However, Budyonny barely had time to take command when the 1st Tank Group, under the command of Kleist, wedged between these groups, occupying Berdichev (July 15) and Kazatin (July 16). Thus, parts of Kleist ended up north of Uman. At the same time, Uman was bypassed from the south by the 17th Army of the Wehrmacht (commander - General Stülpnagel). In addition, from the south, from the border with Romania, the 11th Army under the command of General Schobert was advancing on Uman.

Fighting surrounded is one of the hardest jobs for a soldier.

Actions of the parties.
Headquarters and the command of the Southern Front mistakenly assumed that the Germans intended to reach the Dnieper between Kiev and Cherkassy with the aim of further attacking Donbass, and underestimated the danger of encirclement.
On July 23, by order of the commander of the Southwestern Front, the 6th and 12th armies were united under the overall command of General P.G. Monday.
On July 25 they became part of the Southern Front. From an operational point of view, this was quite expedient, since our troops fought shoulder to shoulder with the troops of this front and were far from the main forces of the Southwestern Front. In the evening of the same day, a directive was received from the commander of the Southern Front troops on the withdrawal of the 6th and 12th armies to the Zvenigorodka, Khristinovka, Teplik line.
From July 26 to July 30, the troops of these armies, covered on three sides, fought heavy defensive battles with superior enemy forces and retreated to the Novo-Arkhangelsk, Krasnopolka, Peregonovka line, with the city of Uman at the center of their operational formation. During these days, our small but strong-willed formations and units not only pinned down significant enemy forces, but also inflicted great damage on them. The fighting was furious and brutal. Many items changed hands several times.

In all-round defense

On July 31, fascist German troops managed to close the encirclement. On the night of August 1, by order of the front commander, the troops of Ponedelin’s group left Uman and retreated to the line of the Sinyukha River. On the morning of August 1, a combat order was received by radio to firmly hold this line. Having received the order to switch to a tough all-round defense, the group’s troops dug deep into the ground, strengthened and camouflaged their positions, set up anti-tank barriers, in a word, prepared to give the enemy a worthy rebuff. The Nazis sought to dismember the group’s defenses. However, all their attempts, despite their multiple numerical superiority, invariably ended in failure.
On August 4, the group received a combat order by radio from the commander of the Southern Front, I.V. Tyuleneva: “Organize a way out of the encirclement using our own resources.”
Part of the forces escaped the encirclement, but the enemy closed the gap with strong counterattacks, and by the middle of the day on August 5, he had significantly narrowed the encirclement. It was decided that the remaining forces would again try to get out of the encirclement, in a northerly direction with a further turn to the east. If an organized breakthrough fails, destroy heavy material, vehicles and make your way to your own in small groups.

Lieutenant General Ivan Nikolaevich Muzychenko (1901-1970) commanded the 6th Army in 1941. In August 1941, near Uman, the 6th and 12th armies of the Southern Front were surrounded. While trying to escape the encirclement, Army Commander Muzychenko was wounded and captured. He was in German captivity until 1945; on April 29, 1945 he was liberated by American troops.

The troops of the 6th and 12th armies in these 46-day intense battles, with their heroic military actions, contributed to the disruption of the “blitzkrieg” plan of Nazi Germany. By pinning down a large enemy group, they inflicted enormous damage on him, destroying more than one thousand of the most trained and combat-ready soldiers and officers.
Consequences.
20 divisions of the 6th and 12th armies from the Southern Front were surrounded. Their commandersLieutenant General I. N. Muzychenko and Major General P. G. Ponedelin were captured. Also captured were:commander of the 49th Rifle Corps S. Ya. Ogurtsov, commander of the 13th Rifle Corps N. K. Kirillov, 8th Rifle Corps M. G. Snegov, commander of the 16th Mechanized Corps A. D. Sokolov, commander of the 80th 1st Red Banner Donetsk Division Major General V.I. Prokhorov, Chief of Staff of the 192nd Mountain Rifle Division, Lieutenant Colonel Svechnikov Vasily Ivanovich
Died: commander of the 44th Tank Division V.P. Krymov, commander of the 8th Tank Division P.S. Fotchenkov, commander of the 24th Mechanized Corps, Major General V.I. Chistyakov.

Soviet prisoners of war were placed in a concentration camp created on the territory of a quarry near the city of Uman, unofficially called the “Uman pit”. Many died there due to poor living conditions. In the battlefields and in the camp, the Germans and their accomplices shot Jewish prisoners of war, commissars, “political fighters,” the wounded and weakened.

The Uman operation of 1941, a defensive operation of the troops of the left wing of the South-Western and the right wing of the Southern fronts in the Great Patriotic War, carried out from July 16 to August 7 in order to repel the Nazi offensive. troops in the Uman direction. In mid-July 1941, the 6th and 12th armies of the South-West defended in the Uman direction. front (command, General Regiment M.P. Kirponos) and the 18th Army of the Southern Front (command, front General Army I.V. Tyulenev) - a total of 18 riflemen. divisions (many of them had no more than 1/3 of the regular strength) and the remnants of two mechs. corps (4th and 15th), which each had 20-30 tanks. As a result of the breakthrough of the 1st tank, group and 6th field army of the pr-ka in the Kiev direction in the region of Zhitomir (see Border battles 1941), the troops of the 6th, 12th and 18th armies were deeply engulfed with S. In the Uman direction the main forces were advancing. forces of Army Group "South" (command, Field General G. Rundstedt), which had 38 divisions, including 5 tanks, and 5 motorized units. Land. The troops were supported by the 4th air force. pr-ka fleet (700 aircraft). At the same time, the troops of the 6th and 12th armies had almost no air force throughout the entire operation. support. Despite the steadfastness and dedication of the owls. troops operating in extremely difficult conditions, the pr-ku managed to break through the defenses on the left wing of the South-West. and the right wing of the South. fronts and penetrate deeply into their location. There was a real threat of being surrounded by owls. troops. In the current situation, the 6th, 12th and 18th armies, by order of the Supreme High Command Headquarters, retreated in battle to new frontiers. By the end of August 7. The 18th Army retreated to the line south of Voznesensk, Marinovka, Bol. Vradievka went on the defensive. The troops of the 6th and 12th armies were forced to fight under conditions of encirclement. Separate groups of them fought until August 13, breaking through to the east.

Materials from the Soviet Military Encyclopedia in volume 8, vol. 8 were used.

Read further:

Beginning of World War II(chronological table)

Literature:

History of the Second World War. 1939-1945. T. 4. M., 1975, p. 286-293;

Beginning of World War II(chronological table)

The main “cauldrons” of 1941, if we take the largest ones, include Minsk, Smolensk, Uman (which probably few people know about), Kyiv, Vyazma, Rzhev, Bryansk, the Sea of ​​Azov (where about a hundred thousand people were surrounded) , Roslavl.

What is a "boiler"? This is a tracing paper from the German “kessel”. In relation to military affairs, a “cauldron” is an encirclement, the entry of military formations into the enemy’s ring.

The “boilers” near Kiev and Vyazma became disasters for the Red Army

It would seem that what’s terrible if, say, several armies that have tanks, guns, airplanes, mortars, a huge amount of equipment and weapons fall into the “cauldron”? The Germans were also surrounded three times during the war. The first time (and quite successfully) was the Demyansk “cauldron”, when they actually defended in this “cauldron” for a year and Theodor Eicke’s “Totenkopf” division demonstrated completely inhuman ability to fight. The second “cauldron” they found themselves in was Stalingrad, where the “Demyan trick” failed because the scale was no longer the same. And the third time the Germans found themselves in the “cauldron” was in 1944, when they finally managed to escape from it - not completely, abandoning a significant part of the equipment, but nevertheless they succeeded.

With us in 1941 and 1942, if you don’t take small “kettles”, only large ones, this happened eight times. Why? Let's start from the very beginning. So, some dry statistics.

A group of Red Army soldiers surrenders near Uman, August 1941

On June 24, Kaunas was quickly captured, and on June 26, Daugavpils. (In fact, no “cauldrons” arose there.) June 28, that is, just six days after the start of the war - Minsk. June 30 - Lviv. And on July 2, that is, literally two days after Lvov, Pskov was already in the “cauldron”. On September 19, Kyiv was surrounded. But before Kyiv there was also the Uman “cauldron”, which we will dwell on separately. Actually, what happened?

We have already said that a “cauldron” is an environment in which an army or several armies find themselves. And it’s as if the enemy forces surrounding them are depriving them of the opportunity to transport ammunition and supplies, disrupting their communications and simply starting to squeeze them. But with competent leadership of the surrounded troops, the “cauldron” plays the role of a kind of magnet, to which certain forces are attracted, blocked and cannot be used by the enemy in other, more or less important directions.

Near Uman, 103 thousand of our soldiers were captured by the Germans

What happened in the “cauldrons” of 1941? The pattern was that in all cases when “cauldrons” were formed, with the exception of one, the high command located in them abandoned their subordinates, as well as the officers, and literally a few days after the group found itself surrounded, it was simply a mass of uncontrollable soldiers whom no one, in fact, tried to take out anywhere. This was the general trend. There were, of course, exceptions: before Kyiv fell, Mikhail Petrovich Kirponos died, the circumstances of whose death are not entirely known.

As an example, consider the Uman “cauldron”, which formed before Kyiv was taken. The 48th German motorized corps reached the Uman area on July 20, and a group of German troops began encircling the 6th and 12th armies, commanded by Lieutenant General Ivan Nikolaevich Muzychenko and Major General Pavel Grigorievich Ponedelin. In general, the situation was not yet catastrophic: the 26th Army was moving towards them from the east, which was supposed to help them break through this “cauldron”, but nevertheless this did not happen.

Captured Soviet generals Pavel Grigorievich Ponedelin and Nikolai Kuzmich Kirillov talk with German officers in the Uman area, August 1941

What were the forces that were in this “cauldron”? 24 divisions in the 6th and 12th armies. 13 divisions and 4 German brigades acted against them. Yes, in addition to these 24 divisions, Muzychenko and Ponedelin also had an airborne and two anti-tank brigades. In general, quite a large number of people. However, finding themselves in a “cauldron” created by 13 divisions, they were unable to escape from it, despite the fact that the 26th Army tried to break through to their aid from the outside.

German forces numbered 100 thousand people, about 3 thousand guns and mortars and only 200 tanks. Soviet troops had 130 thousand people, more than a thousand guns and mortars and 384 tanks, that is, they had 184 tanks more than the Germans. Nevertheless, the latter somehow managed to close a ring around our troops, and despite all attempts to unblock it, nothing happened.

The most paradoxical thing is that, having received the order to break through to the east, the forces of Muzychenko and Ponedelin could leave this “cauldron”, because in the southeast, at the junction with the 18th Army of the Southern Front, there was an almost hundred-kilometer “corridor” that the Germans did not controlled. However, the army commanders received an order from the higher leadership to break through precisely in the direction that was assigned to them, and, thus, the opportunity to get out of the “cauldron” in a civilized manner was simply lost. Our troops tried to break through where it was impossible - through the 48th Mechanized Corps, which by this time Kleist had strengthened.

August 1 was a turning point in the battle for Uman. The 26th Army retreated beyond the Dnieper, and no one could support these troops, surrounded in a “cauldron.” Well, on August 2, the German 1st Tank Group and the 17th Field Army closed the encirclement ring. Thus, the issue was resolved.

What were the losses in the Uman “cauldron”? On July 20, that is, when the encirclement began, our forces near Uman numbered about 130 thousand people. According to the headquarters of the Southern Front on August 11, only 11 thousand people emerged from the encirclement. That is, out of 130 thousand - only 11 thousand. According to German data, 103 thousand people were captured, including army commanders (Muzychenko and Ponedelin), four corps commanders, and eleven division commanders. These were the sad statistics.

Order No. 270: “Those who surrender to the enemy are considered malicious deserters”

What was the main reason for the formation of “boilers”? Many researchers call the principle of the Headquarters a tough defense. The troops, virtually deprived of contact with the Center, not very well trained, did not show the proper initiative, but received only the instruction - “not a step back, stand to the death.”

On the other hand, this is the attitude of military leaders to their own military duty. Take, for example, the Demyansk “cauldron,” which the Germans held for almost a year. Yes, they are surrounded, yes, it is unpleasant, yes, they have to supply the troops by air, they are hungry, there is not enough ammunition, but the command of the Demyansk group did not run away anywhere, control of the troops was not lost. In our case, the opposite trend was observed: would-be commanders abandoned their troops and ceased to control them. This is what Rokossovsky and other commanders wrote about, who collected “fugitives” and tried to send them back to carry out their immediate duties.

What did we get as a result? In the “cauldron” near Minsk, the Germans captured about 330 thousand people and captured more than 3,300 tanks. Near Roslavl, relatively few people were captured in terms of the scale of that war - 38 thousand, 250 tanks. Near Smolensk - 310 thousand people, 3000 tanks. Near Gomel - 78 thousand people. Near Kiev there are over 600 thousand people (a gigantic figure), almost a thousand tanks, a huge number of guns. In the area of ​​the Azov Sea - 100 thousand people. Near Vyazma there are more than 600 thousand people, a large amount of military equipment. The totality turns out to be monstrous. After a thorough analysis of all sources, it was determined that over 5 million of our military personnel were captured during the war years. The main figure came from 1941, as well as the two “boilers” of 1942.

Soldiers of the SS division "Totenkopf" deliver ammunition on a drag in the forest in the Demyansk "cauldron", 1942

In August 1941, Stalin issued order No. 270 “On the responsibility of military personnel for surrendering and leaving weapons to the enemy,” according to which every commander or political worker was obliged to fight to the last opportunity. Violators of the order could be shot on the spot. At the same time, they were recognized as deserters, and their families were subject to arrest and deprived of all government benefits and support.

"Commanders and political workers<…>those who surrender to the enemy are considered malicious deserters, whose families are subject to arrest as families of deserters who violated the oath and betrayed their homeland.

Oblige all higher commanders and commissars to shoot such deserters on the spot...

The families of Red Army soldiers who surrendered will be deprived of state benefits and assistance.”

By the way, as it turned out later, Stalin turned out to be even kinder, since he did not insert capital punishment into this order. Comrade Zhukov, who bore the nickname “Stalin’s fist,” proposed much cooler solutions. For example, when he commanded the Leningrad Front, he ordered the execution of the families of military personnel who surrendered.

During the Second World War, over 5 million Soviet troops were captured

It is worth mentioning one more reason for the formation of “boilers”. Since until June 1941, during the exercises, mainly the offensive course of operations was practiced, the orders that the troops began to receive in the front-line districts in the first days of the war almost all began with the need to counterattack. That is, there was no ideology of creating a qualified defense and conducting combat operations in defensive conditions.

For the Germans, everything was different. If we recall the same Hans von Luck, a career Wehrmacht officer: a battalion on the offensive - a battalion on the defensive, a regiment on the offensive - a regiment on the defensive, and so on. That is, for German military leaders these are standard things. For our commanders, the state of the encirclement was, of course, a very big surprise, since no one had really prepared for it.

Plan:

Introduction

• 1 Previous Events
• 2 Actions of the parties
• 3 Consequences
Literature
Notes

Introduction

Battle of Uman occurred at the end of July - beginning of August 1941, during the offensive of Army Group South of the Wehrmacht on the territory of the USSR. Led to the encirclement and subsequent death of the troops of the 6th and 12th armies of the Southwestern Front and individual units of the Southern Front of the Red Army. Formally, it is part of the Kyiv strategic defensive operation (July 7 - September 26, 1941, Southwestern Front), the Defensive Operation in Moldova (7/1-26/41, Southern Front) and the Tiraspol-Melitopol Defensive Operation (7/27/9/28/41). 41, Southern Front). Accordingly, the losses suffered by the Red Army in the Battle of Uman are included in the statistics of Red Army losses in these 3 operations.

1. Previous events

In the first weeks of Operation Barbarossa, Army Group South, moving east, occupied the cities of Lvov (June 30), Ternopil, Vinnitsa and Zhitomir (July 10). During the battle near Lutsk - Rivne - Brody, units of the 4th, 15th and 16th, as well as the 9th, 19th and 22nd mechanized corps of the Red Army, from the Southwestern Front, were defeated. These groups of corps attacked the advancing Wehrmacht troops in the area of ​​the city of Dubno from the south and north, respectively. However, despite superiority in tanks, these attacks were unsuccessful. In terms of the number of armored vehicles, the clash was comparable only to the Battle of Kursk. By June 29, the battle was over and German troops continued their offensive.

On July 10, the Supreme Command Headquarters transferred overall command of the Red Army units operating in the South-Western direction to Budyonny. His task was to coordinate the actions of the two fronts. Thus, under the command of Budyonny there were troops with a total number of about 1.5 million people, concentrated in the areas of Uman and Kyiv. However, Budyonny barely had time to take command when the 1st Tank Group, under the command of Kleist, wedged between these groups, occupying Berdichev (July 15) and Kazatin (July 16). Thus, parts of Kleist ended up north of Uman. At the same time, Uman was bypassed from the south by the 17th Wehrmacht Army (commander - General Stülpnagel). In addition, from the south, from the border with Romania, the 11th Army under the command of General von Schobert was advancing on Uman (See map July-September 1941).

2. Actions of the parties

Headquarters and the command of the Southern Front mistakenly assumed that the Germans intended to reach the Dnieper between Kiev and Cherkassy with the aim of further attacking Donbass, and underestimated the danger of encirclement. On July 28, the troops of the Southwestern and Southern Fronts received orders to retreat to the east in order to cut off the Germans’ access to the Dnieper. As a result, the opportunity to avoid encirclement by retreating to the southeast was lost.

On August 2, Kleist's tank group linked up with the 17th Army, completing the encirclement. The next day, the encirclement was reinforced by a second ring formed by the 16th Panzer Division and the Hungarian Corps. By August 8, the resistance of the surrounded units of the Red Army had generally ceased. German troops were given the opportunity to conduct an operation to encircle the Southwestern Front.

3. Consequences

20 divisions of the 6th and 12th armies from the Southern Front were surrounded. Their commanders, Lieutenant General I.N. Muzychenko and Major General P.G. Ponedelin, were captured. Also captured were:

• commander of the 49th Rifle Corps S. Ya. Ogurtsov
• commander of the 13th Rifle Corps N.K. Kirillov
• 8th Rifle Corps M. G. Snegov
• commander of the 16th mechanized corps A. D. Sokolov
• commander of the 80th Red Banner Donetsk Division, Major General V. I. Prokhorov
• Chief of Staff of the 192nd Mountain Rifle Division, Lieutenant Colonel V.I. Svechnikov

• commander of the 44th tank division V. P. Krymov
• commander of the 8th tank division P. S. Fotchenkov
• Commander of the 24th Mechanized Corps, Major General V. I. Chistyakov

Soviet prisoners of war were placed in a concentration camp created on the territory of a quarry near the city of Uman, unofficially called the “Uman pit” ( on the picture). Many died there due to poor living conditions. In the battlefields and in the camp, the Germans and their accomplices shot Jewish prisoners of war, commissars, “political fighters,” the wounded and weakened.

Literature

• Christian Zentner: Der Zweite Weltkrieg. Stuttgart, Unipart-Verlag 1986. ISBN 3-8118-1761-2
• Isaev A.V. From Dubno to Rostov. - M.: AST; Transitbook, 2004.
• Dolmatovsky E. A. Green Brama: A documentary legend about one of the first battles of the Great Patriotic War. M.: Politizdat, 1989.
• New recruit V. A. “Notes of a military intelligence officer” (Published in the journal “Military Historical Archive” N: 4(52) −12(60), 2004 - 1(61)-3(63), 2005)
• Valentin Runov. 1941. Hitler's victory parade. The truth about the Uman massacre. Series: War and us. Publishers: Yauza, Eksmo, 2010, 416 pp. ISBN 978-5-699-42582-2

Notes

1. 1 2 Isaev A.V. From Dubno to Rostov - M.: AST Publishing House LLC: Transitkniga Publishing House, 2004 - militera.lib.ru/h/isaev_av3/.
2. Sergey Pereslegin. World War II. War between realities. Publisher: Eksmo, Yauza, 2007, 544 pp. ISBN 5-699-15132-X,978-5-699-15132-5. page 121. Circulation: 5000 copies.
3. Human Losses in World War II Heeresarzt 10-Day Casualty Reports per Army/Army Group, 1941, BA/MA RW 6/556, 6/558 - ww2stats.com/cas_ger_okh_dec41.html
4. Albert Seaton "Russo German War, 1941-45 (Paperback)", Presidio Press; Reprint edition (June 1, 1993) ISBN 0-89141-491-6, ISBN 978-0-89141-491-9
5. I remember. Heroes of the Great Patriotic War. Participants of the Second World War. Book of memory. - Mortar men. Adamsky Izo Davydovich. Project I Remember. Hero of the Second World War - www.iremember.ru/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=390&Itemid=21

The Uman cauldron became one of the most poorly studied episodes of the first six months of the war; suffice it to say that in Soviet times only one scientific work was devoted to it - the report of a retired general (by the way, S.I. Iovlev was not a witness to the events, he fought in Belarus) . There were also about a dozen memoirs, published diaries and a documentary story by Evgeniy Dolmatovsky “The Green Gate”. But the renaissance of military historical literature in the last two decades and access to Western archives and research nevertheless broke through the veil of obscurity, and Oleg Nuzhdin, a candidate of historical sciences and associate professor at UFU, who devoted about two decades to researching the battle, in 2011 published the first decent study about the Uman cauldron in a microscopic edition in 300 pieces. I got it out of my stingy and unbudgetary habit of buying everything short-circuited about the Second World War; I had never read anything on this topic before.

What's in the content? This is a day-by-day description of the fighting from July 25 to August 7, 1941, preceded by the operational situation in Right-Bank Ukraine at the beginning of this period and ending with the results of the Battle of Uman, written with an emphasis on Soviet and German sources, in approximately equal proportions. Only naturally, as with many descriptions of the encirclement of 1941-42, the last days of organized resistance are given mainly on the basis of German combat reports, because the cessation of headquarters activities and communications with higher command leaves historians in the future with only the memories of survivors. Plus protocols of interrogation of captured Soviet officers and a list of command personnel in the appendix. The only drawback of the entire study I found was the total absence of at least one battle map on the pages of the book. As a result, I found on the Internet about a dozen maps of individual stages of the battle of varying quality and sometimes contradictory information, including scans from Runov’s dubious creative work, and based on them, I was reading a book on my laptop.

At the level of the theater of operations, the Uman cauldron is interesting primarily because the German “Cannes” were qualitatively different from other large encirclements of the 41st. If near Bialystok, Minsk, Luga, Vyazma, German mobile troops - tank groups, mechanized corps or separate tank and motorized divisions broke through the defenses of the Soviet troops and united in the rear of the defenders, and behind them the backbone of the blitzkrieg went into the breakthrough - the German infantry units that surrounded defenders and finished off the cauldron. As a rule, escapes from encirclement with heavy losses in personnel and materiel were successful at a time when the tankers and panzergrenadiers of the Wehrmacht had not yet been replaced by denser infantry corps and divisions, and the battle order of those around them remained with holes. Plus also personal habits like frantically pushing forward and forward like Guderian in Belarus-41. Uman is interesting because von Kleist’s first tank group formed only the northern front of the encirclement and closed the ring from the east. The Germans generally planned to encircle all three Soviet armies in the south-west of Ukraine west of the Dnieper, with Panzergruppe-1 playing the role of a hammer, approaching the Dnieper crossings in a large bend of the river, and the 7th and 11th Wehrmacht infantry armies coming from the borders played the role anvil ram. It was not possible to encircle everyone when, after the capture of Vinnitsa, German tank units moving almost along the compass directly to the east began to evade to the southeast, going to the rear of the 6th and 12th Soviet armies. From the west, the Soviet armies were supported by the 17th Army, and the role of the enveloping southern claw was played by the 1st Mountain Division (often called the “Edelweiss” by its emblem) and the lesser-known “Gentian” - the 4th GSK Division, who came from the Alpine lands of Bavaria and Austria. They made a high-speed race deep into the fragmented Southern Front, encountering virtually no organized resistance. On July 30, 1941, the 4th Civil Defense Division set almost an absolute record for an infantry march of World War II, covering 45 kilometers across neutral territory, which was very fast by the standards of even motorized troops. Of course, the light equipment of the rangers, their youth and endurance required for fighting in the mountains also played a role, but nevertheless I do not remember such agility anywhere else. By the standards of pre-war Wehrmacht exercises, a day's march was usually carried out for 28-30 kilometers, the same 45 kilometers are designated as the maximum in the Soviet PU-42. It’s not just walking, but with full combat gear, carrying a weapon or a 12-kg MG-34.

The organizational chaos of the Soviet side in the 6th and 12th armies, and in the Southern Front as a whole, seems to have done everything to lead more than a hundred thousand people into encirclement. From not figuring out the German plan for moving parts, to “peeking through” the exit of German mountain riflemen on the escape route from the command side. It was possible to withdraw the troops from the attack. But personal competition and conflict between army commanders Ponedelin and Muzychenko, hostility arose after the order from headquarters to unite the remnants of the two armies into the so-called. Ponedelina group. All this increased the confusion and disorganization of the troops, and the commander of the Southern Front, Tyulenev, openly “beat” Budyonny’s command to withdraw everyone, but he could not carry out the hatched operation to close the flanks of the armies, and then relieve the encirclement. But he promised a lot, and the troops from the cauldron mainly made their way in a southern direction through dense formations of German infantry opposite the imaginary attack of the Southern Front troops. While the few examples of a breakthrough to the north, through German mobile formations, were much better. It’s painful to read how Muzychenko gathered the remaining tanks in the cauldron, disembarked the tankers, planted the command staff and went for a breakthrough, essentially abandoning his subordinate troops to Ponedelin. He didn’t go far, the Germans destroyed the column and captured the general. Ponedelin was captured later, but in a twist of fate he was shot in 1950 for the surrender and defeat of the entrusted troops, and Muzychenko was rehabilitated and died of natural causes in 1970.