The battle of the Dnieper Bend 1941

[Kelvin]

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Hi, I see German sources that they carried out an encirclement battle near the Dnieper Bend, capturing 84,000 Russian soldiers in 1941. I seldom see the desciption of this battle in normal Soviet-German war history. And exactly what is this ? Anyone have details on that battle ? In my opinion, Taking over 80,000 soldiers is not a small scale encirclement battle.

[JC]

Hello Kelvin,

I'm not aware of any specific battle at the time that is known as the "Battle of the Dneipr Bend", the Dneipr River of course, has many curves and bends which might qualify. If one is referring to the great bend in the Dneipr, the center of that would seem to be at Kiev. Certainly there could have been at least 84,000 Russians encircled at Kiev as there were more that 600,000 encircled and captured when Ukraine was encircled and captured in 1941.

BR...........JC

[Kelvin]

In accordance with the map I see, which lists 20 encirclments which were carried out by German in 1941, the battle of Kiev was separated from the battle of Dnieper Bend. At least 16 encirclment battles in map : Minsk-Bialoystok, Smolensk, Viaz'ma-Bryansk, Roslavl, Gomel, Straya Russia, Veliki Luki, Vinnistra, Uman, Kiev, Nikolaev, Dnieper Bend, Donetsk, Perestop, Mariupol and Tallinn (Reval), another four I guess is a series of small encirclement battles accumlated together, not exactly a standard encirclement battles
Of these 16 battles I mentioned, some is very small battles, like Tallin , Donetsk, Vinnitsa and Perestop each took less than 20,000 men. Other battles is well known by everybody like Kiev, Uman, Minsk, Gomel, Roslavl, but about this battle of Dnieper Bend which took 84,000 men which I never know before. So I post it on forum to ask for help.

[steverodgers801]

There was a battle near the Black Sea coast, around the south part of the Dneiper, after Kiev in which about 106k men were captured.

[Jeff Leach]

Weren't the 9th and 18th Army almost surrounded south / southeast of the Dnepr River at the end of September - beginning of October 1941?

[JC]

In accordance with the map I see

Who made the map?

[Kelvin]

From James Lucas old book " War on the Eastern Front : German soldiers in Russia"

And battle of Azov (Mariupol) too was separated from those in Dnieper Bend. That mean Kiev, Azov Sea, and Nikolaev all were separated from this battle of Dnieper Bend.

[Jeff Leach]

Most likely you are referring to the battles around Melitopol during the end of September beginning of August.

[Art]

After liquidation of the Uman pocket in the first weeks of August the German Army Group South occupied territory west of the Dnieper River including a large city of Dneipropetrovsk. Little decent resistance was meet except Dniepropetrovsk itself. There was no large-scale encirclement in the process as far as I'm aware.

[Art]

According to von Mackensen his corps (III AK (mot)) captured 33 200 prisoners plus large numbers of equipment between 13 and 26 August 1941.
What is Perestop by the way? If it's Perekop Isthmus in Crimea, then I'm sure it wasn't associated with any encirclement. Formally speaking Tallin wasn't encircled either and had communications via sea (although threatened).

[Kelvin]

Hi, Art, after searching many sources, I think possibly the encirclement battle of Petrikovka during Sept 28-30 1941, after the end of Kiev battle and prior to battle of Mariupol. This battle was carried out by III Panzerkorps with 13. Panzer division with spearhead with Wiking and 60.Mot.Inf.Div and also 198.infanterie division and LAH mot.Brigade and also Italian CSIR ( three mobile divisions, two were truckborne and one was cavalry). The units from Soviet sides were rebuilt Soviet 6th and 12th Armies. German claimed they took 21,862 Russian soldiers and Italian claimed 10,000 men mostly from Soviet 273rd Rifle Division under Col.N.K.Kalinin. Though captured numbers is small than James Lucas book but possibly also includes other small encirclement in this period and possibly includes you mentioned in post earlier.

And regarding Pereskop and Talinin, I also notice those two battles were technically not encirclement battles. Pereskop was more or less a breakthrough battle and Soviet garrison , most part, were evacuated from Tallinn before being captured by German troops, abeit with heavy loss of naval ships from the Baltic Fleet.

[Art]

I would also add to the list:
- Mogilev pocket, July 1941 (probably lumped with Smolensk)
- Chernigov pocket, early September (probably lumped with Kiev)
- Luga pocket, August 1941
There are some other minor ones.

[Jeff Leach]

Here is the battle I was referring to

It is part of a map from the records of the 1st Panzer Army (NARA T314 R3 Fr648). What is the name of the encirclement battle shown on the map? In German it says, "Battle of the Sea of Azov."

[GregSingh]

From Tessin for 1.PzA

Tessin - 1.Panzer-Armee

[Jeff Leach]

Thanks Gregg, that is an interesting list. Does Tessin have a similar list for the Operations of December 1941 - May 1942 (2nd Battle of Karkov)?