Stalingrad to Berlin - The German Defeat in the East [Illustrated Edition] (The Russian Campaign of World War Two) by Ziemke Earl F

Author:Ziemke, Earl F. [Ziemke, Earl F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Published: 2013-08-23T00:00:00+00:00

The Crimea

Seventeenth Army sat out the winter in the Crimea. (Map 25) After the last hope that Manstein might come to its relief had faded in November 1943 and the Russians in the same month had taken beachheads on the south shore of the Sivash and on the Kerch' Peninsula, Zeitzler, Kleist, and Jaenecke had agreed the army should get off the Crimea. They reasoned that the peninsula could not be held in the long run, that the troops were needed on the main front, and that any further diversion of troops there would be an outright waste. But Hitler had insisted the army stay put, and, during the winter, at the expense of Army Groups South and A, had increased its strength in German troops from one infantry division to five, plus two self-propelled assault gun brigades. Marshal Antonescu, who would much rather have taken them out, had left the seven Rumanian divisions with Seventeenth Army.

The army, keeping its main defense line on the Perekop Isthmus, had managed during the winter to reduce the Soviet beachheads to two very small areas, one at the southeastern end of the isthmus and one on the easternmost tip of the Kerch' Peninsula. If the Perekop Isthmus was lost, the only other place the army could make a stand was at Sevastopol. It had built the GNEISENAU line in a rough arc around Simferopol but had troops enough only to fight a rear-guard action there until the main force moved into Sevastopol.

On 7 April 1944 Schörner inspected the Crimea defenses, pronounced them in excellent shape, and in reporting that the peninsula could be held "for a long time" made one of the least accurate predictions of the war. The next morning Fourth Ukrainian Front attacked. The isthmus line held, but the Rumanian 10th Division holding half of the Sivash bridgehead line was badly shaken the first day and collapsed the next.

That night Jaenecke took the line back to the base of the isthmus. Schörner told Zeitzler the retreat to Sevastopol might have to begin any minute and therefore Jaenecke should be authorized to make the decision. He was confident, he said, that neither Jaenecke nor his chief of staff would jump to any hasty conclusions. Hitler of course refused. Instead, he dispatched Zeitzler to the army group headquarters where the latter arrived on 10 April just in time to be told the Russians had pushed into the interior and the first stage of the retreat had started. Since the first stage, as planned, chiefly involved removing the troops from the Kerch' Peninsula, Hitler approved, but then, when he learned the next day that the order for all units to withdraw to the GNEISENAU line had also been given, fell into a rage and accused Jaenecke of having lost his nerve.[719] As the German and Russian units retreated west of Kerch', the Independent Coastal Army (the former North Caucasus Front) began applying pressure from the east.[720]

When Schörner and the Army Group South Ukraine chief

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