hist2004
07-27-2004, 09:29 AM
Reconstituted after the disaster at Stalingrad, the German Sixth Army perished again in the summer of 1944.
By Pat McTaggart
The bodies of Field Marshal Friedrich von Paulus' troops were still being buried under the watchful eyes of the Red Army when Adolf Hitler ordered a new Sixth Army to be constituted in March 1943. Since its reconstitution after the Stalingrad debacle, the Sixth Army had fought a campaign in southern Russia that had seen the Wehrmacht pushed out of the Ukraine and into Romania.
In the area of General Johannes Friessner's Army Group South Ukraine (the Sixth and Eighth German and Third and Fourth Romanian armies), the front remained relatively stable after April 1944. Although Soviet Marshal Rodion Malinovsky's Second Ukrainian Front had entered Romania and taken a small portion of Moldavia in the northwest area of the country, supply demands for the northern operations had forced him to temporarily suspend his attack. However, now that the offensives against the other army groups had run their course, Josef Stalin and the Soviet high command (Stavka) again turned their attention to southeastern Europe.
Stavka devised a plan that had three main objectives. The first and most important was the destruction of German forces in Romania. Politically, the new offensive was designed to knock Romania out of the war, then Soviet troops would advance into Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, outflanking the Germans and, hopefully, forcing Hungary to sue for peace. Finally, there was the economic objective. The Ploesti oil fields had to be seized.
To accomplish these objectives the Soviets planned to use Malinovsky's Second Ukrainian Front and Marshal Fyodor I. Tolbukhin's Third Ukrainian Front to strike in a pincer movement designed to isolate and destroy Army Group South Ukraine. Malinovsky's command consisted of seven armies and a mechanized cavalry group under General S.I. Gorshkov with a total of 537,856 men and 1,283 tanks and self-propelled (SP) guns. The Third Ukrainian Front had four armies and a mechanized cavalry group, commanded by General P. S. Pliev, totaling 348,633 men and 591 tanks and SP guns.
Germany's Army Group South Ukraine occupied a defensive line that bulged eastward, with its right flank (the Third Romanian Army) anchored on the Dniestr River and its left flank (the Eighth Army) nestled in good positions against the Carpathian Mountains. Friessner's two German and two Romanian armies had a total of 430,000 men, of which 220,000 were German. However, the army group was deficient in armor, having only 170 tanks and SP guns, of which about half were assigned to the 1st Romanian Tank Division.
The battleworthiness of the Romanian forces was dubious at best. By spring 1944, most of their best troops lay buried beneath Russian soil or languished in Soviet prisoner-of-war camps. Although undoubtedly brave, the Romanian soldiers were poorly equipped and badly led.
The German Sixth Army, now commanded by General Maximilian Fretter-Pico, was anchored in the middle of Army Group South Ukraine. Fretter-Pico's four army corps, the VII, XXX, XLIV and LII, represented the bulk of German forces, in addition to which he had one Romanian corps and 14 German infantry divisions, totaling 180,000 men. Each corps was assigned an assault gun detachment in lieu of a regular panzer reserve. Lieutenant General Ernst Eberhardt Hell's VII Corps held the army's left flank and provided a link with the Fourth Romanian Army, while Maj. Gen. Georg Postel's XXX Corps bordered the Third Romanian Army on Fretter-Pico's right flank.
Army Group South Ukraine should have been expecting a strong Soviet attack after hearing about the Red Army advances on the northern and central fronts, but German intelligence was sadly lacking. Friessner received the following assessment shortly before the Russian offensive commenced: "The situation opposite Army Group South Ukraine makes a larger enemy attack unlikely in the near future....The offensive against Romania, however, even today plays an undoubtedly important role in Soviet intentions." The assessment also included a phrase speculating that "local attacks are always possible."
How should Friessner interpret the meaning of "in the near future," and in what strength would these "local attacks" be? The situation was further clouded by warnings referring to Soviet reinforcements arriving opposite Friessner's position and the possibility of a flanking attack against the Sixth Army.
On the Soviet side, Malinovsky and Tolbukhin fine-tuned their preparations for the offensive. Artillery was brought close to the front during the night and was concealed in camouflaged positions. Malinovsky later wrote that for each mile of the intended breakthrough sector, he had up to 450 guns of 76mm caliber and higher massed for the attack. The same was probably true for Tolbukhin. Armored forces were also brought up and concealed near the front just before the offensive began. The terrain in the area of attack, with its many rivers, streams and marshes, demanded that engineer units immediately follow the first waves of infantry so that bridges and makeshift roads could be constructed for the mechanized forces to follow. It is not surprising that the main attacks of the Second and Third Ukrainian fronts would center on the weakest links in Army Group South Ukraine's chain of defenses—the Romanians.
Malinovsky's assault force, consisting of the Sixth Tank, Twenty-seventh, Fifty-second, Fifty-third and Seventh Guards armies, supported by Gorshkov, would hit the Fourth Romanian Army near Jassy. At the same time, Tolbukhin's Thirty-seventh, Forty-sixth and Fifty-seventh armies, with Group Pliev in support, would strike the Third Romanian Army south of Tiraspol. Once an initial breakthrough had been achieved, the Soviet armored forces would spread out in the enemy rear, destroying the two Romanian armies and encircling Fretter-Pico's Sixth Army, which was holding the Jassy-Kishinev sector. It was the kind of operation that had been tested time and again since the Stalingrad encirclement. The Soviet army had now become master of the same type of blitzkrieg warfare that the Germans had used so successfully in the early years of the war.
The sun rose blood-red on Sunday, August 20. As the Romanian soldiers of the Fourth Army began their day, a distant rumble was heard behind enemy lines. It was 5 a.m. when the Soviet offensive opened with a huge artillery bombardment from the massed guns of Malinovsky's Second Ukrainian Front. The shells fell without mercy on the surprised Romanians for 11 1/2 hours. Meanwhile, the positions of the Sixth Army and Third Romanian Army also came under a heavy barrage.
Malinovsky's attack armies, the Twenty-seventh, under General S.G. Trofimenko, and the Fifty-second, under Lt. Gen. K.A. Koroteyev, advanced at 6:30 a.m. under the protection of the Red Army Air Force. There was little opposition, and the assaulting troops quickly overran the Romanian defenses. By noon, the attack had gone so well that Malinovsky ordered Lt. Gen. A.G. Kravchenko's Sixth Tank Army to advance through his infantry and fan out behind the dazed and disintegrating Romanians.
Tolbukhin's assault did not come off as well. The men of the Third Romanian Army showed the same signs of disintegration as their brothers to the northwest, but in the Bendary sector the Third Ukrainian Front encountered stiffer resistance as it advanced into an area held by a mixed force of Germans and Romanians. The Soviets ran into a hornet's nest as they tried to force the enemy out of their defensive positions around Bendary.
Shells and bombs from the preliminary barrage had forced the men of Maj. Gen. Erick von Bogen's 302nd Infantry and Brig. Gen. Friedrich Blümke's 257th Infantry divisions deeper into their trenches. As the bombardment lifted, the roar of tank engines and the bloodcurdling Russian war cry could be heard from the enemy lines. Massed Soviet infantry formations soon charged on the German positions.
There was little time for the Germans to recover from the bombardment, and machine-gunners worked feverishly to clear their dirt-clogged weapons. They won the race, and the first wave of Soviets was met with a devastating hail of machine-gun and small-arms fire. As the survivors fell back, a second wave advanced and suffered the same fate. German anti-tank weapons joined in the carnage as Soviet tanks advanced, and several T-34s were soon burning on the battlefield.
A counterattack by Maj. Gen. Hans Tröger's 13th Panzer Division also slowed the Soviet advance. Infuriated by the delay, Tolbukhin ordered General I.T. Schlemin's Forty-sixth Army to turn south and drive into the flank of the Third Romanian Army, while the Thirty-seventh and the Fifty-seventh armies continued to press the right flank of Fretter-Pico's Sixth Army. This move would finally force the units holding the Bendary sector to retreat, but only after another two days of brutal combat.
The combination of Soviet artillery, tank and air power proved too great for most of the Romanian divisions. While the Sixth Army managed to hold most of its sector, the Third and Fourth Romanian armies continued to melt away. The Red Army Air Force ruled the skies, and the two air armies supporting Malinovsky and Tolbukhin flew an estimated 3,000 sorties on the opening day of the attack. In comparison, Luftflotte 4, commanded by Maj. Gen. Paul Deichmann, could muster only 43 bombers, 57 ground support aircraft and 72 fighters to help stem the Russian tide.
Although Fretter-Pico's men had stood up to the initial Soviet attacks, a feeling of doom began to creep through the ranks. Once again the Sixth Army was in danger of being encircled. At Friessner's headquarters, when the Soviets' opening moves were realistically assessed, it soon became clear that the battle to hold the frontier was already lost. The few German divisions interspersed among the Romanian armies could do little to stop the Soviet onslaught, and they were themselves in danger of being surrounded.
The Soviet attack gained momentum the next day. Kravchenko's Sixth Tank Army and the Second Ukrainian Front reserve (XVIII Tank Corps under Maj. Gen. V.I. Polozkov) were able to make substantial gains. Kravchenko's army, meeting stiff resistance from Maj. Gen. Erich Abraham's 76th Infantry Division, managed to take some important positions on the Mare Ridge south of Jassy. The XVIII Tank Corps then pushed over the ridge and turned southeast, forcing elements of Maj. Gen. Friedrich-August Weinknecht's 79th Infantry Division and Colonel Walter Ackermann's 10th Panzergrenadier Division to retreat. Meanwhile, Koroteyev's Fifty-second Army closed on Jassy and took the town after a brief but bitter fight.
In Tolbukhin's sector, two mechanized corps were thrown into the battle to widen the gap between the Third Romanian Army and the Sixth Army. Romanian units caught in the path of the advancing mechanized corps were either cut to ribbons or surrendered en masse. At Sixth Army headquarters, which had been out of contact with Friessner since the opening of the offensive, Fretter-Pico was frantically trying to re-establish communications with higher headquarters. With the exception of his flanks, the main line of German defenses facing Malinovsky's Fourth Guards Army and Tolbukhin's Fifth Shock Army had held firm. However, Fretter-Pico knew that the pending collapse of the Romanian armies on his flanks represented the gravest threat. Unless he could get permission to retreat, the general knew his Sixth Army was doomed.
The order finally came during the evening of August 22, but it was already too late. Fretter-Pico was told to withdraw to a new line south of Kishinev and, later, to take up defensive positions on the west bank of the Prut. By the time the order was received, however, Soviet armored and mechanized forces were already threatening those positions. During the day, Malinovsky's Fifty-second and Twenty-seventh armies had begun to advance on Hsui, some 10 kilometers west of the Prut River. At the same time, the IV Guards Mechanized Corps and I.T. Schlemin's Forty-sixth Army were ordered to turn northwest and head for the town of Leovo, clearing the eastern bank of the river as it advanced. Only the staff headquarters of the Sixth Army and a few scattered units would have time to escape the Soviet trap.
As the Sixth Army struggled to avert disaster, a political upheaval that would have far-reaching consequences for German forces in Romania was taking place in Bucharest, the nation's capital. On August 23, King Michael dismissed Premier Ion Antonescu, who had been a leading supporter of Hitler and Romania's participation in the war against the Soviet Union. Two days later the king concluded an armistice with Moscow and declared war on Germany. The armistice allowed many of the Soviet units participating in mopping up the remnants of the Romanian armies to be brought into action against the Sixth Army. Compounding the danger to the Germans, several Romanian units were almost immediately incorporated into the Red Army.
The Soviet noose around the Sixth Army was almost complete by the evening of August 23. In the west, elements of General Friedrich Mieth's IV Army Corps, which had been attached to the Fourth Romanian Army, had been trapped by the encircling Soviet armor south of Jassy and were being pushed toward the Sixth Army's positions. Meanwhile, Maj. Gen. Georg Postel's XXX Army Corps, guarding the right flank of the Sixth Army, was forced to retreat to the southwest, suffering heavy casualties from enemy armor and air attacks. Along the entire front, Fretter-Pico's divisions fought delaying actions while attempting to reach the assumed safety of the Prut River.
Elements of the 79th and 76th Infantry divisions and the 20th Panzergrenadier Division were actually on the west bank of the river but found themselves in a running battle with Polozkov's XVIII Tank Corps near Hsui. Other German units trying to reach the Prut found their way blocked by the IV and VII Guards Mechanized corps, which had already occupied key crossroads and river crossings. The retreat was also hampered by Soviet aircraft, which strafed and bombed enemy columns without mercy.
The Luftwaffe, forced to fight a defensive battle, was rarely seen by the men of the Sixth Army. When the severity of the Soviet attack became clear, however, more air units were ordered to Romania by the Luftwaffe high command, but it was already too late to help Fretter-Pico's embattled troops.
Elements of famed Stuka pilot Hans-Ulrich Rudel's dive bomber wing were flown to a base near Ploesti during the final week of August. In his memoirs, Rudel described the situation as he arrived at the base: "As I come in to land, I see roads leading to the aerodrome are packed with endless streams of Romanian military trekking southward; in places convoys are halted by traffic jams. Heavy artillery of all calibers are among them. But there are no German units there. I am witnessing the last act of a tragedy. Whole sectors were held by Romanian units which have ceased to offer any resistance whatever and are now in full retreat. The Soviets are at their heels."
Rudel had seen the same thing near Stalingrad -- masses of Romanian troops fleeing in the face of a Russian attack. At that time, he later said, he would have bombed or strafed his erstwhile allies if he had any ammunition left. The same thought apparently crossed his mind as he witnessed this latest debacle.
By August 24, the encirclement of the Sixth Army was nearly complete. Although some gaps remained in the Soviet line guarding the Prut River, units of the IV Guards Mechanized Corps and the XVIII Tank Corps were able to link up, ensuring that most avenues of escape were effectively blocked. Before the ring finally closed, most of the surviving troops of Hell's VII Army Corps had managed to cross the river and continued retreating to the southwest. The remnants of Mieth's IV Army Corps were also on the west side of the Prut. However, their attempt to escape would prove futile, as armored spearheads of the Second Ukrainian Front had already gained positions on the west banks of the Prut, Barladul and Siret rivers.
The rapid Soviet advance forced Friessner to order the Sixth Army to change the direction of its retreat. Instead of heading southwest, the army was told to break out in a westerly direction in order to join with German forces in the Carpathian Mountains. It is doubtful that the order was ever received. Radio contact between Army Group South Ukraine and Fretter-Pico was spotty at best, and the constant Soviet air and artillery attacks had already made a shambles of German communications.
With Soviet forces blocking the German retreat, pressure was now increased on the main body of the Sixth Army north of the Prut. Heavy fighting occurred east of Kishinev, where Tolbukhin's Third Ukrainian Front pounded the divisions of Postel's XXX Army Corps and Lt. Gen. Erich Buschenhagen's LII Army Corps. German casualties increased as Soviet tanks broke through the main defensive line, forcing both corps to retreat. The commander of the 257th Infantry Division received a wound that would prove fatal as his division retreated, and a number of senior officers from both corps were either killed or captured as the Soviets pressed home their attack.
Fretter-Pico's headquarters was being set up at Foscani, some 200 kilometers southwest of Kishinev, but there was now no communication between the headquarters and the army itself. Left to their own devices, the commanders of the XXX, XLIV and LII Army corps met at Postel's headquarters to decide on a plan of action. Although unaware of the strength of the Soviet armored and mechanized forces along the Prut, the generals knew that there was little time left to save the army from annihilation. They had received reports from units trying to make it across the Prut, and the consensus was that the Soviets were already completing the encirclement, but with a relatively weak force. The biggest threat, they believed, was the Soviet assault on the northern and northeastern sectors of the army.
While the generals debated what course of action they should take, the Second Ukrainian Front captured Hsui, closing the last German escape route. Later on August 24, mechanized forces from the Third Ukrainian Front took Stalinesti and then pushed on to meet Malinovsky's spearheads. Instead of relatively weak forces in the southwest, the Germans now faced a double ring of steel.
In the end, the German commanders opted to continue the retreat to the southwest, using combat groups to clear the way while the majority of the combat units continued to resist the perceived threat to the north and northeast. It would be a fighting retreat, but heavy weapons would have to be left behind. As artillerymen fired their last rounds, they destroyed their guns and were issued rifles.
German forces outside the pocket also had their hands full. By August 25, the Eighth Army was being pressed against the Carpathian Mountains by Malinovsky's right flank, while Soviet spearheads struck out for Foscani, which was held by rear echelon Sixth Army personnel who had followed Fretter-Pico's headquarters to the city. With the wholesale capitulation of the Romanian army, the entire German front in southeast Europe was on the verge of collapse. Inside the pocket, General Postel issued orders to the encircled divisions: "We are surrounded. Begin a breakthrough in a southwesterly direction toward the Prut."
The mass retreat began during the night of August 25, in hopes there would be some relief from the constant bombing and strafing by the Soviet air force. As soon as dawn broke, however, the rain of steel began anew as Soviet ground-attack aircraft set upon the columns of retreating Germans. Brigadier General Werner von Eichstadt, commanding the 294th Infantry Division, and Maj. Gen. Hans de Salengre-Drabbe of the 384th were both killed during the retreat while General Postel and General Erich von Bogen of the 302nd Infantry Division were wounded.
The army now began to disintegrate as division and regimental commanders took their own initiative in seeking avenues of escape. South of Gura Garbene, several German units broke through a Soviet rifle division and worked their way across the Prut. In other areas, small groups of Germans found breaks in the Soviet lines and fled farther west. However, the majority of the Sixth Army was caught in a vise that continued to compress the pocket relentlessly.
Malinovsky and Tolbukhin were forced to redeploy units in order to set up a larger blocking force to stop the German drift to the southwest, but some enemy divisions, including the 13th Panzer and 10th Panzergrenadier, were able to fight their way through the Fifty-second Army to safety. The bulk of the Sixth Army, however, remained trapped near the Prut River, with smaller pockets encircled near Vulcani and Stalinesti.
In the end, the Sixth Army suffered the same fate as its predecessor. It took the Soviets another week to eliminate the last pockets of resistance, but most of the German divisions had already been destroyed by the end of the month. On September 5, Moscow issued a communiqué proclaiming victory in Romania. The number of Germans killed during the Jassy-Kishinev op-eration was put at 100,000, with another 98,000 taken prisoner.
Although those figures were somewhat inflated, the fact remains that all 14 German divisions of the Sixth Army were destroyed, though some of them were later rebuilt. The four corps commanders, along with most of the divisional commanders, were taken prisoner or killed. Whatever the true figures, the Wehrmacht had suffered a great calamity on the banks of the Prut.
At a cost of 13,197 dead and 53,933 sick and wounded, the Soviets had accomplished most of the goals of the operation. The Sixth Army was all but gone, and the Eighth Army was badly weakened. Romania was out of the war, and the oil fields at Ploesti were now in the hands of the Red Army. It had been a stunning victory.
Regards,
Hist2004
By Pat McTaggart
The bodies of Field Marshal Friedrich von Paulus' troops were still being buried under the watchful eyes of the Red Army when Adolf Hitler ordered a new Sixth Army to be constituted in March 1943. Since its reconstitution after the Stalingrad debacle, the Sixth Army had fought a campaign in southern Russia that had seen the Wehrmacht pushed out of the Ukraine and into Romania.
In the area of General Johannes Friessner's Army Group South Ukraine (the Sixth and Eighth German and Third and Fourth Romanian armies), the front remained relatively stable after April 1944. Although Soviet Marshal Rodion Malinovsky's Second Ukrainian Front had entered Romania and taken a small portion of Moldavia in the northwest area of the country, supply demands for the northern operations had forced him to temporarily suspend his attack. However, now that the offensives against the other army groups had run their course, Josef Stalin and the Soviet high command (Stavka) again turned their attention to southeastern Europe.
Stavka devised a plan that had three main objectives. The first and most important was the destruction of German forces in Romania. Politically, the new offensive was designed to knock Romania out of the war, then Soviet troops would advance into Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, outflanking the Germans and, hopefully, forcing Hungary to sue for peace. Finally, there was the economic objective. The Ploesti oil fields had to be seized.
To accomplish these objectives the Soviets planned to use Malinovsky's Second Ukrainian Front and Marshal Fyodor I. Tolbukhin's Third Ukrainian Front to strike in a pincer movement designed to isolate and destroy Army Group South Ukraine. Malinovsky's command consisted of seven armies and a mechanized cavalry group under General S.I. Gorshkov with a total of 537,856 men and 1,283 tanks and self-propelled (SP) guns. The Third Ukrainian Front had four armies and a mechanized cavalry group, commanded by General P. S. Pliev, totaling 348,633 men and 591 tanks and SP guns.
Germany's Army Group South Ukraine occupied a defensive line that bulged eastward, with its right flank (the Third Romanian Army) anchored on the Dniestr River and its left flank (the Eighth Army) nestled in good positions against the Carpathian Mountains. Friessner's two German and two Romanian armies had a total of 430,000 men, of which 220,000 were German. However, the army group was deficient in armor, having only 170 tanks and SP guns, of which about half were assigned to the 1st Romanian Tank Division.
The battleworthiness of the Romanian forces was dubious at best. By spring 1944, most of their best troops lay buried beneath Russian soil or languished in Soviet prisoner-of-war camps. Although undoubtedly brave, the Romanian soldiers were poorly equipped and badly led.
The German Sixth Army, now commanded by General Maximilian Fretter-Pico, was anchored in the middle of Army Group South Ukraine. Fretter-Pico's four army corps, the VII, XXX, XLIV and LII, represented the bulk of German forces, in addition to which he had one Romanian corps and 14 German infantry divisions, totaling 180,000 men. Each corps was assigned an assault gun detachment in lieu of a regular panzer reserve. Lieutenant General Ernst Eberhardt Hell's VII Corps held the army's left flank and provided a link with the Fourth Romanian Army, while Maj. Gen. Georg Postel's XXX Corps bordered the Third Romanian Army on Fretter-Pico's right flank.
Army Group South Ukraine should have been expecting a strong Soviet attack after hearing about the Red Army advances on the northern and central fronts, but German intelligence was sadly lacking. Friessner received the following assessment shortly before the Russian offensive commenced: "The situation opposite Army Group South Ukraine makes a larger enemy attack unlikely in the near future....The offensive against Romania, however, even today plays an undoubtedly important role in Soviet intentions." The assessment also included a phrase speculating that "local attacks are always possible."
How should Friessner interpret the meaning of "in the near future," and in what strength would these "local attacks" be? The situation was further clouded by warnings referring to Soviet reinforcements arriving opposite Friessner's position and the possibility of a flanking attack against the Sixth Army.
On the Soviet side, Malinovsky and Tolbukhin fine-tuned their preparations for the offensive. Artillery was brought close to the front during the night and was concealed in camouflaged positions. Malinovsky later wrote that for each mile of the intended breakthrough sector, he had up to 450 guns of 76mm caliber and higher massed for the attack. The same was probably true for Tolbukhin. Armored forces were also brought up and concealed near the front just before the offensive began. The terrain in the area of attack, with its many rivers, streams and marshes, demanded that engineer units immediately follow the first waves of infantry so that bridges and makeshift roads could be constructed for the mechanized forces to follow. It is not surprising that the main attacks of the Second and Third Ukrainian fronts would center on the weakest links in Army Group South Ukraine's chain of defenses—the Romanians.
Malinovsky's assault force, consisting of the Sixth Tank, Twenty-seventh, Fifty-second, Fifty-third and Seventh Guards armies, supported by Gorshkov, would hit the Fourth Romanian Army near Jassy. At the same time, Tolbukhin's Thirty-seventh, Forty-sixth and Fifty-seventh armies, with Group Pliev in support, would strike the Third Romanian Army south of Tiraspol. Once an initial breakthrough had been achieved, the Soviet armored forces would spread out in the enemy rear, destroying the two Romanian armies and encircling Fretter-Pico's Sixth Army, which was holding the Jassy-Kishinev sector. It was the kind of operation that had been tested time and again since the Stalingrad encirclement. The Soviet army had now become master of the same type of blitzkrieg warfare that the Germans had used so successfully in the early years of the war.
The sun rose blood-red on Sunday, August 20. As the Romanian soldiers of the Fourth Army began their day, a distant rumble was heard behind enemy lines. It was 5 a.m. when the Soviet offensive opened with a huge artillery bombardment from the massed guns of Malinovsky's Second Ukrainian Front. The shells fell without mercy on the surprised Romanians for 11 1/2 hours. Meanwhile, the positions of the Sixth Army and Third Romanian Army also came under a heavy barrage.
Malinovsky's attack armies, the Twenty-seventh, under General S.G. Trofimenko, and the Fifty-second, under Lt. Gen. K.A. Koroteyev, advanced at 6:30 a.m. under the protection of the Red Army Air Force. There was little opposition, and the assaulting troops quickly overran the Romanian defenses. By noon, the attack had gone so well that Malinovsky ordered Lt. Gen. A.G. Kravchenko's Sixth Tank Army to advance through his infantry and fan out behind the dazed and disintegrating Romanians.
Tolbukhin's assault did not come off as well. The men of the Third Romanian Army showed the same signs of disintegration as their brothers to the northwest, but in the Bendary sector the Third Ukrainian Front encountered stiffer resistance as it advanced into an area held by a mixed force of Germans and Romanians. The Soviets ran into a hornet's nest as they tried to force the enemy out of their defensive positions around Bendary.
Shells and bombs from the preliminary barrage had forced the men of Maj. Gen. Erick von Bogen's 302nd Infantry and Brig. Gen. Friedrich Blümke's 257th Infantry divisions deeper into their trenches. As the bombardment lifted, the roar of tank engines and the bloodcurdling Russian war cry could be heard from the enemy lines. Massed Soviet infantry formations soon charged on the German positions.
There was little time for the Germans to recover from the bombardment, and machine-gunners worked feverishly to clear their dirt-clogged weapons. They won the race, and the first wave of Soviets was met with a devastating hail of machine-gun and small-arms fire. As the survivors fell back, a second wave advanced and suffered the same fate. German anti-tank weapons joined in the carnage as Soviet tanks advanced, and several T-34s were soon burning on the battlefield.
A counterattack by Maj. Gen. Hans Tröger's 13th Panzer Division also slowed the Soviet advance. Infuriated by the delay, Tolbukhin ordered General I.T. Schlemin's Forty-sixth Army to turn south and drive into the flank of the Third Romanian Army, while the Thirty-seventh and the Fifty-seventh armies continued to press the right flank of Fretter-Pico's Sixth Army. This move would finally force the units holding the Bendary sector to retreat, but only after another two days of brutal combat.
The combination of Soviet artillery, tank and air power proved too great for most of the Romanian divisions. While the Sixth Army managed to hold most of its sector, the Third and Fourth Romanian armies continued to melt away. The Red Army Air Force ruled the skies, and the two air armies supporting Malinovsky and Tolbukhin flew an estimated 3,000 sorties on the opening day of the attack. In comparison, Luftflotte 4, commanded by Maj. Gen. Paul Deichmann, could muster only 43 bombers, 57 ground support aircraft and 72 fighters to help stem the Russian tide.
Although Fretter-Pico's men had stood up to the initial Soviet attacks, a feeling of doom began to creep through the ranks. Once again the Sixth Army was in danger of being encircled. At Friessner's headquarters, when the Soviets' opening moves were realistically assessed, it soon became clear that the battle to hold the frontier was already lost. The few German divisions interspersed among the Romanian armies could do little to stop the Soviet onslaught, and they were themselves in danger of being surrounded.
The Soviet attack gained momentum the next day. Kravchenko's Sixth Tank Army and the Second Ukrainian Front reserve (XVIII Tank Corps under Maj. Gen. V.I. Polozkov) were able to make substantial gains. Kravchenko's army, meeting stiff resistance from Maj. Gen. Erich Abraham's 76th Infantry Division, managed to take some important positions on the Mare Ridge south of Jassy. The XVIII Tank Corps then pushed over the ridge and turned southeast, forcing elements of Maj. Gen. Friedrich-August Weinknecht's 79th Infantry Division and Colonel Walter Ackermann's 10th Panzergrenadier Division to retreat. Meanwhile, Koroteyev's Fifty-second Army closed on Jassy and took the town after a brief but bitter fight.
In Tolbukhin's sector, two mechanized corps were thrown into the battle to widen the gap between the Third Romanian Army and the Sixth Army. Romanian units caught in the path of the advancing mechanized corps were either cut to ribbons or surrendered en masse. At Sixth Army headquarters, which had been out of contact with Friessner since the opening of the offensive, Fretter-Pico was frantically trying to re-establish communications with higher headquarters. With the exception of his flanks, the main line of German defenses facing Malinovsky's Fourth Guards Army and Tolbukhin's Fifth Shock Army had held firm. However, Fretter-Pico knew that the pending collapse of the Romanian armies on his flanks represented the gravest threat. Unless he could get permission to retreat, the general knew his Sixth Army was doomed.
The order finally came during the evening of August 22, but it was already too late. Fretter-Pico was told to withdraw to a new line south of Kishinev and, later, to take up defensive positions on the west bank of the Prut. By the time the order was received, however, Soviet armored and mechanized forces were already threatening those positions. During the day, Malinovsky's Fifty-second and Twenty-seventh armies had begun to advance on Hsui, some 10 kilometers west of the Prut River. At the same time, the IV Guards Mechanized Corps and I.T. Schlemin's Forty-sixth Army were ordered to turn northwest and head for the town of Leovo, clearing the eastern bank of the river as it advanced. Only the staff headquarters of the Sixth Army and a few scattered units would have time to escape the Soviet trap.
As the Sixth Army struggled to avert disaster, a political upheaval that would have far-reaching consequences for German forces in Romania was taking place in Bucharest, the nation's capital. On August 23, King Michael dismissed Premier Ion Antonescu, who had been a leading supporter of Hitler and Romania's participation in the war against the Soviet Union. Two days later the king concluded an armistice with Moscow and declared war on Germany. The armistice allowed many of the Soviet units participating in mopping up the remnants of the Romanian armies to be brought into action against the Sixth Army. Compounding the danger to the Germans, several Romanian units were almost immediately incorporated into the Red Army.
The Soviet noose around the Sixth Army was almost complete by the evening of August 23. In the west, elements of General Friedrich Mieth's IV Army Corps, which had been attached to the Fourth Romanian Army, had been trapped by the encircling Soviet armor south of Jassy and were being pushed toward the Sixth Army's positions. Meanwhile, Maj. Gen. Georg Postel's XXX Army Corps, guarding the right flank of the Sixth Army, was forced to retreat to the southwest, suffering heavy casualties from enemy armor and air attacks. Along the entire front, Fretter-Pico's divisions fought delaying actions while attempting to reach the assumed safety of the Prut River.
Elements of the 79th and 76th Infantry divisions and the 20th Panzergrenadier Division were actually on the west bank of the river but found themselves in a running battle with Polozkov's XVIII Tank Corps near Hsui. Other German units trying to reach the Prut found their way blocked by the IV and VII Guards Mechanized corps, which had already occupied key crossroads and river crossings. The retreat was also hampered by Soviet aircraft, which strafed and bombed enemy columns without mercy.
The Luftwaffe, forced to fight a defensive battle, was rarely seen by the men of the Sixth Army. When the severity of the Soviet attack became clear, however, more air units were ordered to Romania by the Luftwaffe high command, but it was already too late to help Fretter-Pico's embattled troops.
Elements of famed Stuka pilot Hans-Ulrich Rudel's dive bomber wing were flown to a base near Ploesti during the final week of August. In his memoirs, Rudel described the situation as he arrived at the base: "As I come in to land, I see roads leading to the aerodrome are packed with endless streams of Romanian military trekking southward; in places convoys are halted by traffic jams. Heavy artillery of all calibers are among them. But there are no German units there. I am witnessing the last act of a tragedy. Whole sectors were held by Romanian units which have ceased to offer any resistance whatever and are now in full retreat. The Soviets are at their heels."
Rudel had seen the same thing near Stalingrad -- masses of Romanian troops fleeing in the face of a Russian attack. At that time, he later said, he would have bombed or strafed his erstwhile allies if he had any ammunition left. The same thought apparently crossed his mind as he witnessed this latest debacle.
By August 24, the encirclement of the Sixth Army was nearly complete. Although some gaps remained in the Soviet line guarding the Prut River, units of the IV Guards Mechanized Corps and the XVIII Tank Corps were able to link up, ensuring that most avenues of escape were effectively blocked. Before the ring finally closed, most of the surviving troops of Hell's VII Army Corps had managed to cross the river and continued retreating to the southwest. The remnants of Mieth's IV Army Corps were also on the west side of the Prut. However, their attempt to escape would prove futile, as armored spearheads of the Second Ukrainian Front had already gained positions on the west banks of the Prut, Barladul and Siret rivers.
The rapid Soviet advance forced Friessner to order the Sixth Army to change the direction of its retreat. Instead of heading southwest, the army was told to break out in a westerly direction in order to join with German forces in the Carpathian Mountains. It is doubtful that the order was ever received. Radio contact between Army Group South Ukraine and Fretter-Pico was spotty at best, and the constant Soviet air and artillery attacks had already made a shambles of German communications.
With Soviet forces blocking the German retreat, pressure was now increased on the main body of the Sixth Army north of the Prut. Heavy fighting occurred east of Kishinev, where Tolbukhin's Third Ukrainian Front pounded the divisions of Postel's XXX Army Corps and Lt. Gen. Erich Buschenhagen's LII Army Corps. German casualties increased as Soviet tanks broke through the main defensive line, forcing both corps to retreat. The commander of the 257th Infantry Division received a wound that would prove fatal as his division retreated, and a number of senior officers from both corps were either killed or captured as the Soviets pressed home their attack.
Fretter-Pico's headquarters was being set up at Foscani, some 200 kilometers southwest of Kishinev, but there was now no communication between the headquarters and the army itself. Left to their own devices, the commanders of the XXX, XLIV and LII Army corps met at Postel's headquarters to decide on a plan of action. Although unaware of the strength of the Soviet armored and mechanized forces along the Prut, the generals knew that there was little time left to save the army from annihilation. They had received reports from units trying to make it across the Prut, and the consensus was that the Soviets were already completing the encirclement, but with a relatively weak force. The biggest threat, they believed, was the Soviet assault on the northern and northeastern sectors of the army.
While the generals debated what course of action they should take, the Second Ukrainian Front captured Hsui, closing the last German escape route. Later on August 24, mechanized forces from the Third Ukrainian Front took Stalinesti and then pushed on to meet Malinovsky's spearheads. Instead of relatively weak forces in the southwest, the Germans now faced a double ring of steel.
In the end, the German commanders opted to continue the retreat to the southwest, using combat groups to clear the way while the majority of the combat units continued to resist the perceived threat to the north and northeast. It would be a fighting retreat, but heavy weapons would have to be left behind. As artillerymen fired their last rounds, they destroyed their guns and were issued rifles.
German forces outside the pocket also had their hands full. By August 25, the Eighth Army was being pressed against the Carpathian Mountains by Malinovsky's right flank, while Soviet spearheads struck out for Foscani, which was held by rear echelon Sixth Army personnel who had followed Fretter-Pico's headquarters to the city. With the wholesale capitulation of the Romanian army, the entire German front in southeast Europe was on the verge of collapse. Inside the pocket, General Postel issued orders to the encircled divisions: "We are surrounded. Begin a breakthrough in a southwesterly direction toward the Prut."
The mass retreat began during the night of August 25, in hopes there would be some relief from the constant bombing and strafing by the Soviet air force. As soon as dawn broke, however, the rain of steel began anew as Soviet ground-attack aircraft set upon the columns of retreating Germans. Brigadier General Werner von Eichstadt, commanding the 294th Infantry Division, and Maj. Gen. Hans de Salengre-Drabbe of the 384th were both killed during the retreat while General Postel and General Erich von Bogen of the 302nd Infantry Division were wounded.
The army now began to disintegrate as division and regimental commanders took their own initiative in seeking avenues of escape. South of Gura Garbene, several German units broke through a Soviet rifle division and worked their way across the Prut. In other areas, small groups of Germans found breaks in the Soviet lines and fled farther west. However, the majority of the Sixth Army was caught in a vise that continued to compress the pocket relentlessly.
Malinovsky and Tolbukhin were forced to redeploy units in order to set up a larger blocking force to stop the German drift to the southwest, but some enemy divisions, including the 13th Panzer and 10th Panzergrenadier, were able to fight their way through the Fifty-second Army to safety. The bulk of the Sixth Army, however, remained trapped near the Prut River, with smaller pockets encircled near Vulcani and Stalinesti.
In the end, the Sixth Army suffered the same fate as its predecessor. It took the Soviets another week to eliminate the last pockets of resistance, but most of the German divisions had already been destroyed by the end of the month. On September 5, Moscow issued a communiqué proclaiming victory in Romania. The number of Germans killed during the Jassy-Kishinev op-eration was put at 100,000, with another 98,000 taken prisoner.
Although those figures were somewhat inflated, the fact remains that all 14 German divisions of the Sixth Army were destroyed, though some of them were later rebuilt. The four corps commanders, along with most of the divisional commanders, were taken prisoner or killed. Whatever the true figures, the Wehrmacht had suffered a great calamity on the banks of the Prut.
At a cost of 13,197 dead and 53,933 sick and wounded, the Soviets had accomplished most of the goals of the operation. The Sixth Army was all but gone, and the Eighth Army was badly weakened. Romania was out of the war, and the oil fields at Ploesti were now in the hands of the Red Army. It had been a stunning victory.
Regards,
Hist2004