Battle of the Dnieper
Encyclopedia
The Lower Dnieper Offensive 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 kilometer 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 bridgehead
s 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 Dnipropetrovsk Offensive.
, 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 latter 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 thrust of the offensive was in a southwesterly direction; the northern flank being largely stabilised, and the southern flank resting on the Sea of Azov
.
and the Azov Sea.
Overall, the operation would be executed by 36 Combined Arms, 4 Tank and 5 Air Armies.
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.
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.
STAVKA
detached the Central Front's 3rd Tank Army
to the Voronezh Front
to race the weakening Germans to the Dnieper, to save the wheat crop from the German scorched earth policy, and to achieve strategic or operational river bridgehead
s 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 and the hard-pressed 19th Panzer Division Reconnaissance Battalion. Those forces 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.
Arrival of personnel 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. Mission change orders finally got down 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, assembled on airfields to load for an 1830 liftoff. Owing to weather, not all assigned aircraft had arrived at airfields on time (if at all). Further, most flight safety officers disallowed maximum loading of their aircraft. Given fewer aircraft (and lower than expected capacities), the master loading plan, ruined, was abandoned. Many radios and supplies got left behind. Best case, it would take three lifts to deliver the two 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. Meanwhile, 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, except from training towers) 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 paratrooper
s over Dubari at 1930, came under small arms, machine gun, and quad-20 anti-aircraft
fire from the armored personnel carrier battalion (Pioneers) 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.
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 dam
med in several places made it even larger. Moreover its western shore —the one still to be retaken— was much higher and steeper than the eastern, complicating the offensive even further. In addition, the opposite shore was transformed into a vast complex of defenses and fortification
s 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
Panzer
s bypassed the Maginot line
in 1940). This, however, would give Germans time to get more reserve
s 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 to be used to transport the attackers to the opposite shore, including small fishing
boats and improvised raft
s of barrels and trees (like the one in the photograph). The preparation of the crossing equipment was further complicated by the German scorched earth strategy with total destruction of all boats and the raft building material in the area. The crucial issue would obviously be heavy equipment. Without it, the bridgeheads would not stand for long.
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 Dniprodzerzhinsk, another on 25 September near Dnipropetrovsk
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.
The crossing of the Dnieper was very extremely difficult. Soldiers used every available floating device to cross the river, under heavy German fire and taking heavy losses. After that, Soviet troops had to dig themselves into the clay ravines composing Dnieper's right shore.
German troops soon launched heavy counterattack
s 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 patrol
s 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.
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.
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.
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 could seem correct, 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.
The Battle of the Dnieper is listed among the most lethal battles in world history
.
Dnieper River
The Dnieper River is one of the major rivers of Europe that flows from Russia, through Belarus and Ukraine, to the Black Sea.The total length is and has a drainage basin of .The river is noted for its dams and hydroelectric stations...
was recovered from German forces by five of the Red Army's Fronts, which conducted several river assault crossings to establish several bridgehead
Bridgehead
A bridgehead is a High Middle Ages military term, which antedating the invention of cannons was in the original meaning expressly a referent term to the military fortification that protects the end of a bridge...
s on the western bank. Subsequently, Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
was liberated in a separate offensive
Battle of Kiev (1943)
The 1943 Battle of Kiev describes three strategic operations by the Soviet Red Army, and one operational counterattack by the Wehrmacht which took place in the wake of the failed German offensive at Kursk during World War II...
.
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 Dnipropetrovsk Offensive.
Strategic situation
Following the Battle of KurskBattle of Kursk
The Battle of Kursk took place when German and Soviet forces confronted each other on the Eastern Front during World War II in the vicinity of the city of Kursk, in the Soviet Union in July and August 1943. It remains both the largest series of armored clashes, including the Battle of Prokhorovka,...
, 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
Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe is a generic German term for an air force. It is also the official name for two of the four historic German air forces, the Wehrmacht air arm founded in 1935 and disbanded in 1946; and the current Bundeswehr air arm founded in 1956....
forces had managed to cross the Dnieper river to the West and reestablished defence along the Wotan fortified line
Panther-Wotan line
The Panther-Wotan Line was a defensive line partially built by the German Wehrmacht in 1943 on the Eastern Front. The first part of the name refers to the short northern section between Lake Peipus and the Baltic Sea at Narva.-Purpose :...
. 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 latter 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
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
'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
Coal
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as anthracite coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure...
mines and other ores would provide precious resources for the Soviet state. The main thrust of the offensive was in a southwesterly direction; the northern flank being largely stabilised, and the southern flank resting on the Sea of Azov
Sea of Azov
The Sea of Azov , known in Classical Antiquity as Lake Maeotis, is a sea on the south of Eastern Europe. It is linked by the narrow Strait of Kerch to the Black Sea to the south and is bounded on the north by Ukraine mainland, on the east by Russia, and on the west by the Ukraine's Crimean...
.
Soviet planning
The operation begun on 24 August 1943 with divisions starting to move on a 1400-kilometer front stretching between SmolenskSmolensk
Smolensk is a city and the administrative center of Smolensk Oblast, Russia, located on the Dnieper River. Situated west-southwest of Moscow, this walled city was destroyed several times throughout its long history since it was on the invasion routes of both Napoleon and Hitler. Today, Smolensk...
and the Azov Sea.
Soviet Organisation
The operation would involve five fronts:- Central Front (known as the Bielorussian Front1st Belorussian FrontThe 1st Belorussian Front was a Front of the Soviet Army during World War II...
after 20 October 1943) - Voronezh FrontVoronezh FrontThe Voronezh Front was a front of the Soviet Union's Red Army during the Second World War. The name indicated the primary geographical region in which the Front first fought, based on the town of Voronezh on the Don River....
(known as the 1st Ukrainian Front1st Ukrainian FrontThe 1st Ukrainian Front was a front—a force the size of a Western Army group—of the Soviet Union's Red Army during the Second World War.-Wartime:...
after 20 October 1943) - Steppe FrontSteppe FrontThe Steppe Front and later the 2nd Ukrainian Front was a Front , effectively an Army group sized formation, of the Soviet Army during the Second World War...
(known as the 2nd Ukrainian Front after 20 October 1943) - Southwestern Front (known as the 3rd Ukrainian Front3rd Ukrainian Front3rd Ukrainian Front was a Front of the Red Army during World War II.It was founded on 20 October 1943, on the basis of a Stavka order of October 16, 1943, by renaming the Southwestern Front. It included 1st Guards Army, 8th Guards Army, 6th, 12th, and 46th Armies and 17th Air Army...
after 20 October 1943) - Southern Front (known as the 4th Ukrainian Front4th Ukrainian FrontThe 4th Ukrainian Front was a front of the Red Army during World War II...
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.German planning
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
Scorched earth
A scorched earth policy is a military strategy or operational method which involves destroying anything that might be useful to the enemy while advancing through or withdrawing from an area...
policy.
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
Poltava
Poltava is a city in located on the Vorskla River in central Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Poltava Oblast , as well as the surrounding Poltava Raion of the oblast. Poltava's estimated population is 298,652 ....
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
Urban warfare
Urban warfare is combat conducted in urban areas such as towns and cities. Urban combat is very different from combat in the open at both the operational and tactical level...
, 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.
Dnieper airborne operation
(The following is, largely, a synopsis of an account by Glantz with support from an account by Staskov.)STAVKA
Stavka
Stavka was the term used to refer to a command element of the armed forces from the time of the Kievan Rus′, more formally during the history of Imperial Russia as administrative staff and General Headquarters during late 19th Century Imperial Russian armed forces and those of the Soviet Union...
detached the Central Front's 3rd Tank Army
3rd Guards Tank Army (Soviet Union)
The 3rd Guards Tank Army was a tank army established by the Soviet Union's Red Army during World War II. The 3rd Tank Army was created in 1942 and fought in the southern areas of the Soviet Union, Poland, Germany, and Czechoslovakia until the defeat of Germany in 1945...
to the Voronezh Front
Voronezh Front
The Voronezh Front was a front of the Soviet Union's Red Army during the Second World War. The name indicated the primary geographical region in which the Front first fought, based on the town of Voronezh on the Don River....
to race the weakening Germans to the Dnieper, to save the wheat crop from the German scorched earth policy, and to achieve strategic or operational river bridgehead
Bridgehead
A bridgehead is a High Middle Ages military term, which antedating the invention of cannons was in the original meaning expressly a referent term to the military fortification that protects the end of a bridge...
s 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 and the hard-pressed 19th Panzer Division Reconnaissance Battalion. Those forces 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
VDV
The Russian Airborne Troops or VDV is a military branch of service of the Russian Military, on par with the Strategic Rocket Forces and the Russian Space Forces...
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.
Arrival of personnel 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. Mission change orders finally got down 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, assembled on airfields to load for an 1830 liftoff. Owing to weather, not all assigned aircraft had arrived at airfields on time (if at all). Further, most flight safety officers disallowed maximum loading of their aircraft. Given fewer aircraft (and lower than expected capacities), the master loading plan, ruined, was abandoned. Many radios and supplies got left behind. Best case, it would take three lifts to deliver the two 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. Meanwhile, 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, except from training towers) 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 paratrooper
Paratrooper
Paratroopers are soldiers trained in parachuting and generally operate as part of an airborne force.Paratroopers are used for tactical advantage as they can be inserted into the battlefield from the air, thereby allowing them to be positioned in areas not accessible by land...
s over Dubari at 1930, came under small arms, machine gun, and quad-20 anti-aircraft
2 cm FlaK 30
The Flak 30 and improved Flak 38 were 20 mm anti-aircraft guns used by various German forces throughout the Second World War. It was not only the primary German light anti-aircraft gun, but by far the most numerously produced German artillery piece throughout the war...
fire from the armored personnel carrier battalion (Pioneers) 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
Soviet partisans
The Soviet partisans were members of a resistance movement which fought a guerrilla war against the Axis occupation of the Soviet Union during World War II....
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.
Execution considerations
The Dnieper is the third largest river
River
A river is a natural watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, a lake, a sea, or another river. In a few cases, a river simply flows into the ground or dries up completely before reaching another body of water. Small rivers may also be called by several other names, including...
in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, second only to the Volga and the Danube
Danube
The Danube is a river in the Central Europe and the Europe's second longest river after the Volga. It is classified as an international waterway....
. In its lower part, its width can easily reach 3 kilometers, and the fact that it was dam
Dam
A dam is a barrier that impounds water or underground streams. Dams generally serve the primary purpose of retaining water, while other structures such as floodgates or levees are used to manage or prevent water flow into specific land regions. Hydropower and pumped-storage hydroelectricity are...
med in several places made it even larger. Moreover its western shore —the one still to be retaken— was much higher and steeper than the eastern, complicating the offensive even further. In addition, the opposite shore was transformed into a vast complex of defenses and fortification
Fortification
Fortifications are military constructions and buildings designed for defence in warfare and military bases. Humans have constructed defensive works for many thousands of years, in a variety of increasingly complex designs...
s 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
Breakthrough (military)
A breakthrough occurs when an offensive force has broken the enemy defensive line, and is rapidly exploiting the gap.Usually, large force is employed on a relatively small portion of the front to achieve this...
and encircle the German defenders, rendering the defense line next to useless (very much like German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
Panzer
Panzer
A Panzer is a German language word that, when used as a noun, means "tank". When it is used as an adjective, it means either tank or "armoured" .- Etymology :...
s bypassed the Maginot line
Maginot Line
The Maginot Line , named after the French Minister of War André Maginot, was a line of concrete fortifications, tank obstacles, artillery casemates, machine gun posts, and other defences, which France constructed along its borders with Germany and Italy, in light of its experience in World War I,...
in 1940). This, however, would give Germans time to get more reserve
Military reserve
A military reserve, tactical reserve, or strategic reserve is a group of military personnel or units which are initially not committed to a battle by their commander so that they are available to address unforeseen situations or exploit suddenly developing...
s and furthermore, would expose Soviet troops to flank
Flanking maneuver
In military tactics, a flanking maneuver, also called a flank attack, is an attack on the sides of an opposing force. If a flanking maneuver succeeds, the opposing force would be surrounded from two or more directions, which significantly reduces the maneuverability of the outflanked force and its...
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
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
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 to be used to transport the attackers to the opposite shore, including small fishing
Fisherman
A fisherman or fisher is someone who captures fish and other animals from a body of water, or gathers shellfish. Worldwide, there are about 38 million commercial and subsistence fishermen and fish farmers. The term can also be applied to recreational fishermen and may be used to describe both men...
boats and improvised raft
Raft
A raft is any flat structure for support or transportation over water. It is the most basic of boat design, characterized by the absence of a hull...
s of barrels and trees (like the one in the photograph). The preparation of the crossing equipment was further complicated by the German scorched earth strategy with total destruction of all boats and the raft building material in the area. The crucial issue would obviously be heavy equipment. Without it, the bridgeheads would not stand for long.
The assault-crossings
The first bridgeheadBridgehead
A bridgehead is a High Middle Ages military term, which antedating the invention of cannons was in the original meaning expressly a referent term to the military fortification that protects the end of a bridge...
on Dnieper's right shore was established on 22 September 1943 at the confluence of Dnieper and Pripyat
Pripyat River
The Pripyat River or Prypiat River is a river in Eastern Europe, approximately long. It flows east through Ukraine, Belarus, and Ukraine again, draining into the Dnieper....
rivers, in the northern part of the front. On 24 September, another bridgehead was created near Dniprodzerzhinsk, another on 25 September near Dnipropetrovsk
Dnipropetrovsk
Dnipropetrovsk or Dnepropetrovsk formerly Yekaterinoslav is Ukraine's third largest city with one million inhabitants. It is located southeast of Ukraine's capital Kiev on the Dnieper River, in the south-central region of the country...
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.
The crossing of the Dnieper was very extremely difficult. Soldiers used every available floating device to cross the river, under heavy German fire and taking heavy losses. After that, Soviet troops had to dig themselves into the clay ravines composing Dnieper's right shore.
Securing the bridgeheads
Counterattack
A counterattack is a tactic used in response against an attack. The term originates in military strategy. The general objective is to negate or thwart the advantage gained by the enemy in attack and the specific objectives are usually to regain lost ground or to destroy attacking enemy units.It is...
s on almost every bridgehead
Bridgehead
A bridgehead is a High Middle Ages military term, which antedating the invention of cannons was in the original meaning expressly a referent term to the military fortification that protects the end of a bridge...
, 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 patrol
Patrol
A patrol is commonly a group of personnel, such as police officers or soldiers, that are assigned to monitor a specific geographic area.- Military :...
s 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
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-DnipropetrovskDnipropetrovsk
Dnipropetrovsk or Dnepropetrovsk formerly Yekaterinoslav is Ukraine's third largest city with one million inhabitants. It is located southeast of Ukraine's capital Kiev on the Dnieper River, in the south-central region of the country...
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.
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
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
, 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 KurskBattle of Kursk
The Battle of Kursk took place when German and Soviet forces confronted each other on the Eastern Front during World War II in the vicinity of the city of Kursk, in the Soviet Union in July and August 1943. It remains both the largest series of armored clashes, including the Battle of Prokhorovka,...
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
Killed in action
Killed in action is a casualty classification generally used by militaries to describe the deaths of their own forces at the hands of hostile forces. The United States Department of Defense, for example, says that those declared KIA need not have fired their weapons but have been killed due to...
and more than 1,500,000 total Soviet casualties. British historian,
John Erickson
John Erickson (historian)
John Erickson was a British historian who wrote extensively on the Second World War...
, 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 could seem correct, with the WIA
Wounded in action
Wounded in action describes soldiers who have been wounded while fighting in a combat zone during war time, but have not been killed. Typically it implies that they are temporarily or permanently incapable of bearing arms or continuing to fight....
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.
The Battle of the Dnieper is listed among the most lethal battles in world history
Most lethal battles in world history
The following is a list of the casualty count in battles in world history. The list includes both sieges and civilian casualties during the battles. Large battle casualty counts are almost impossible to calculate precisely...
.