Battle of Smolensk (1941)
The first Battle of Smolensk (German: Kesselschlacht bei Smolensk, lit. 'Cauldron-battle at Smolensk'; Russian: Смоленская стратегическая оборонительная операция, romanized: Smolenskaya strategicheskaya oboronitelnaya operatsiya, lit. 'Smolensk strategic defensive operation') was a battle during the second phase of Operation Barbarossa, the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union, in World War II. It was fought around the city of Smolensk between 10 July and 10 September 1941, about 400 km (250 mi) west of Moscow. The Ostheer had advanced 500 km (310 mi) into the USSR in the 18 days after the invasion on 22 June 1941.
For other battles in Smolensk, see Battle of Smolensk.The Soviet 16th, 19th and the 20th armies were encircled and destroyed just to the east of Smolensk, though many of the men from the 19th and 20th armies managed to escape the pocket. While the battle was a stunning operational success for the Germans, the rapid advances into Soviet territory led to supply and logistics crises of increasing severity, as German supply lines were stretched to their limit. Following the Smolensk encirclement, much of Army Group Centre became mired in positional warfare, suffering significant losses in defensive battles throughout the late summer of 1941.[16] These factors seriously depleted the offensive strength of the German divisions, and contributed to the disastrous setbacks later suffered in the Battle of Moscow in December 1941.
On 22 June 1941, the Axis nations invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa. At first, the campaign met with spectacular success, as the surprised Soviet troops were not able to offer coordinated resistance. After three weeks of fighting, the Germans had reached the Dvina and Dnieper rivers and planned for a resumption of the offensive. The main attack, aimed at Moscow, was carried out by Army Group Centre (Fedor von Bock). Its next target on the way to the Soviet capital was the city of Smolensk. The German plan called for the 2nd Panzer Group (later 2nd Panzer Army) to cross the Dnieper, closing on Smolensk from the south, while the 3rd Panzer Group (later 3rd Panzer Army) was to encircle the town from the north.[17]
After their initial defeats, the Red Army began to recover and took measures to ensure a more determined resistance and new defensive line was established around Smolensk. Stalin placed Field Marshal Semyon Timoshenko in command and transferred five armies out of the strategic reserve to Timoshenko. These armies had to conduct counter-offensives to blunt the German drive. The German high command (OKW) was not aware of the Soviet build-up until they encountered them on the battlefield.[17][18]
Facing the Germans along the Dnieper and Dvina rivers were stretches of the Stalin Line fortifications. The defenders were the 13th Army of the Western Front and the 20th Army, 21st Army and the 22nd Army of the Soviet Supreme Command (Stavka) Reserve. The 19th Army was forming up at Vitebsk, while the 16th Army was arriving at Smolensk.[19][18]
In Soviet histories, the great Battle (Srazheniye)[b] of Smolensk (10 July – 10 September 1941) is divided into the following phases and operations:
The German Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH) lists the following operations around Smolensk:[20]
Official Soviet data on losses in the Battle of Smolensk (10 July - 10 September 1941) were disclosed only in 1993. According to the study by a team of authors led by Grigori F. Krivosheev,[38] the troops of the four "fronts" and the Soviet Pinsk Naval Flotilla lost a total of:
What part of the 486,171 irrecoverable losses relates to the killed and what part to the prisoners-of-war is not indicated. The Germans reported the following number of prisoners for some operations during this time:
Thus, there are more than 500,000 reported prisoners in total.
The famous Western researcher of the war on the Eastern front, Nigel Askey, in his study of Soviet military losses in 1941-1945, based on an analysis of Soviet documents and archives, argues that official Soviet data on military losses in the First Battle of Smolensk is greatly underestimated. Actual casualties amount to 1,000,000 men, including 565,000 prisoners.[45]
The losses of the German side, according to one of the documents from the Russian archives, amounted to only 101,000 men. Historian David Glantz draws attention to the fact that the number of killed for the 9th army in this document is obviously too low. In his opinion, this number should be 7 thousand higher. His own estimate of the personnel losses of Army Group Center for the period 10 July - 10 September, made on the base of known German documents, gives around 115,500 killed and wounded, compared with the 760,000 losses the Soviet fronts incurred during the same period.[46]