History has its own life, it is like a person, both easy-going and self-respecting. ——Yu Qiuyu
Need a major change! As long as the German army in World War II is mentioned, I believe that many people's first impression is a clean and handsome uniform, high morale and so on. But in the fierce battlefield of the Soviet Union and Germany, this image of the German army is often broken by the harsh reality. If you want to talk about one of the most desperate breakout battles of the German army, then this "Battle of Cherkasser" will definitely be mentioned, although this is not a decisive big battle, but the German army's embarrassment and discipline are undoubtedly reflected at the same time!
Germans in World War II
Since the summer of 1942, the southern battlefield at this time has been the focus of the Soviet-German battlefield, where the strongest main army groups of the Soviet Union and Germany are engaged in fierce fighting. On the southern front, the German front had a very conspicuous Kanev salient, and militarily speaking, the Germans should abandon this salient and level the front, but Hitler did not agree to do so!
Hitler thought that this salient had been a wedge between the Soviet First and Second Fronts in Ukraine, and even fantasized about using it as a springboard to launch a counterattack on the entire Soviet front, but because of his stubbornness, Manstein could only order the Germans not to retreat, and to hold the Cherkasser salient, but eventually led to the tragic escape of the German troops in the salient.
At the beginning of 1944, the two Soviet fronts formed a pinch attack on the German Kanev salient, in order to grasp the initiative, the Soviet army gathered a total strength of about 150,000 people, and formed a combined attack on the German army of the Kanev salient between the two landing sites, in order to obtain the right to move freely to the south Ofburg River, the Soviet army was determined to remove the thorn in the eye of this salient.
On January 28, 1944, the elite troops led by the Fifth Tank Army of the Soviet Guards completed the encirclement of the salient German army, known in history as the "Cherkaser Steel Pocket", in which more than 60,000 people of two German armies were trapped, the only armored division of which was the famous SS "Viking Division". It was winter and spring, rain and snow, and the roads on the battlefield were muddy, which was actually not suitable for large troops to fight, but the Soviets chose this time to attack, and in their opinion, the harsh climate was precisely the suddenness of the attack.
Manstein and colleagues
When Hitler suddenly learned that the Germans in The Kanev salient were surrounded, he arrogantly thought that this was a great shame for the Germans, and he strictly ordered the Germans in Cherkasser to stand by, and at the same time ordered Manstein to organize elite armored troops to break the siege and look for fighters to annihilate the Soviet troops besieging Cherkasser. Marshal Manstein then gathered his forces, hoping to break the siege while also severely damaging the Soviets, but unfortunately he overestimated the strength of his own hands.
The German troops who had gone to relieve the siege were stubbornly resisted by the Soviets and were soon unable to move any further. And they were only less than 10 kilometers away from the Germans inside and outside the encirclement, but the last 10 kilometers of the distance could not be reached by any means for the exhausted encircled Germans, and The Manstein on the outskirts helplessly telegraphed the besieged troops: the rescue forces have been exhausted, and your unit can only break through on its own.
Lonely German soldiers
The supreme commander of the besieged German army was General Steziermann, who was extremely depressed when he received Manstein's telegram, and finally decided to set the time of the breakthrough on the evening of the 16th, because the ground was frozen at that time, which was more conducive to the march, and the visibility at night was extremely poor, which was conducive to the Germans to conceal their actions.
That night there was a real snowstorm, visibility was only 10 to 20 meters, it was a godsend, the trapped 60,000 German troops immediately discarded all the artillery, heavy weight, they even tearfully gave up more than 2,000 seriously wounded. After arranging the steps for the breakout, General Steziermann calmly said to his subordinates: "I will see you outside the encirclement with the rearguard troops, brothers."
General Steyrmann
The Germans, led by the "Viking" division, tried to quietly break through under the cover of tanks, while the Soviets placed five lines of resistance in the direction of the German breakthrough, the first two were infantry, the third was artillery, and the fourth and fifth were tanks and cavalry. The Germans encountered only weak resistance when they broke through the first three lines of soviet defense, when the Germans thought they had escaped safely, and the soldiers fired their guns into the air and cheered.
But what they didn't know was that the nightmare had only just begun, and at about 6 a.m. on February 17, as the Germans were breaking through to an open field, Soviet tanks and cavalry that had been in ambush for a long time suddenly appeared in large numbers. The T34 tanks lined up in dense formations and rushed into the crowded German marching column, wantonly crushing the German officers and men who had scattered the formations.
Soviet tanks tried not to fire as much as possible so as not to accidentally injure the tanks around them. They knocked over German trucks and ran over trailers and wagons like matchboxes, and the German wounded and horses on the cars were crushed into meatloaf by tanks. The Soviet cavalry followed the tanks, chasing the fleeing German soldiers, slashing and slashing with their knives, and even the hands raised by the surrendered German soldiers were split.
When the surviving Germans rushed to the front of the Soviet positions, they were swept away by machine guns, and it is said that the Soviet female farmers of a farm in this battle shot hundreds of German officers and men with light machine guns. By this time, the battle was no longer a battle, and it had completely turned into a unilateral massacre by the Soviet army.
However, the Soviets made a stupid mistake in this blockade operation: they believed that the Number of German breakthroughs was only 20,000, but in fact, more than 40,000 German troops fled, and the number of enemies was misjudged, which finally led to a serious shortage of Soviet resistance troops, which also gave these German troops the last glimmer of life.
The Soviets pursued and killed the Germans
And in this extremely tragic and tragic breakthrough battle, the "Viking" panzer division also exerted the spirit of Viking, and their tankers fully demonstrated their bloodiness, with their "Leopard" tanks desperately resisting the impact of the Soviet T34 tanks, saving many German officers and soldiers who were in a desperate situation. In particular, the tanks of the rearguard battalion of the "Viking" division were completely destroyed in this life-and-death duel, and only 5 people successfully broke through in the end.
But fortunately, the desperate Germans in the breakout finally rushed to an unknown 239 hill nearby, and after brutal white-knife and hand-to-hand combat, they finally escaped the cover of Soviet artillery and the crushing of tank tracks, and they successfully reached the north bank of the Gniloitiki River at noon on February 17.
The Gniloitiki Was the last obstacle on the German breakout road, and the 30-meter-wide river had no bridges, but it was safe to reach as soon as it passed. At this time, the Soviet shells had begun to explode on the riverbank, and the German officers and soldiers had only one choice: throw away their weapons and swim over! Despite the temperature of minus 5 degrees Celsius, German officers and soldiers scrambled to jump into the river and swim desperately to the opposite bank.
Judging from the history of warfare in ancient and modern China and abroad, in this situation where there is a big river in front and a chasing army in the back, the army is very easy to disintegrate, but the unique discipline of the Germans saved them at this time: many German officers spontaneously stood up to maintain order on the shore, loudly encouraging the soldiers to "hold on, cross the river and get home", under their command, some soldiers carry simple life-saving tools, some help each other, can swim to help, strong help weak, Even the wounded were mostly carried across the river by strong soldiers.
But many people still sink to the bottom of the river due to physical exhaustion, and at least hundreds of people drowned in the process of crossing the river. In the afternoon, the breakthrough Germans found a shallow section of the river downstream, so that many German officers and soldiers were able to cross the river relatively easily, and finally jumped out of the Soviet encirclement.
To the consolation of the German top brass, the battle did not become the second Stalingrad: of the 68,000 German officers and men trapped, more than 40,000 escaped, a whopping 66 percent. However, the Germans who could not escape were miserable, and the rest of the officers and soldiers, including Admiral Stemmermann, were buried in the snow, and even the German soldiers who were lucky enough to escape with their lives would have a lifetime of shadows in their hearts for this terrible experience.
After this fierce breakthrough battle, the Soviet commander-in-chief, General Konev, came to the battlefield, and he saw that along the path of the German breakthrough, the German corpses were all over the field, and the scene in front of him shocked him! He recalled after the war: "I have seen countless bloody scenes in the war, but rarely have I seen so many German corpses in such a small area. ”
As the Soviets cleaned up the battlefield, they finally found the body of Admiral Stemmermann on the most intense high ground, clutching a rifle in his hand and lying next to him the rearguard battalion of the Viking Division, a small unit that served as a blockade in exchange for the survival of a large number of compatriots at the cost of all the deaths. Looking at the scene in front of him, General Konev, who was also a soldier, could not help but be deeply moved, and he personally ordered the burial of this German general who had fallen on the rear guard position with a military salute, although the Nazi German army in World War II was an evil army, but this German general was undoubtedly excellent and responsible!