This article is about the 1941 Axis invasion of Crimea. For the 1944 Soviet invasion of Axis-occupied Crimea, see Crimean offensive. For other uses, see Crimean War (disambiguation).
Beginning on 26September 1941, the German 11th Army and the Romanian Third Army and Fourth Army were involved in the fighting.[1] They were opposed by the Soviet 51stArmy and elements of the Black Sea Fleet. After the campaign, Crimea was occupied by Germany's Army Group A, with the 17thArmy as a major subordinate formation.[2]
Sevastopol and Kerch were the only Crimean cities that were not occupied by Axis forces during this campaign; the former was honoured by the Soviet government as a Hero City for resisting against the German and Romanian armies, and the latter was briefly recaptured by the Soviets during an amphibious operation near the end of 1941 before being taken again by the Germans during Operation Bustard Hunt on 8May.[1][3] The Siege of Sevastopol lasted 250days, from 30October 1941 to 4July 1942, when the Axis finally captured the city.
In the early hours of 6 November, the Romanian submarine Delfinul, commanded by Constantin Costăchescu, torpedoed and sank the Soviet 1,975-ton cargo ship Uralets6.4 kilometres (4mi) to the south of Yalta. The submarine was subsequently attacked by Soviet forces, but she followed a route along the Turkish coast and managed to evade up to 80 depth charges before safely arriving at Constanța on 7 November.[4][5][6]
Sevastopol, the main object of the campaign, was surrounded by German forces and assaulted on 30October 1941. However, the Germans were repulsed by a Soviet counterattack. Later, many troops who had been evacuated from the city of Odessa contributed to defending Sevastopol. The Germans then began an encirclement of the city. Other attacks on 11November and 30November, in the eastern and southern sections of the city, failed. German forces were then reinforced by several artillery regiments, one of which included the railway gun Schwerer Gustav.[citation needed] Another attack on 17December was repulsed at the last moment with the help of reinforcements, and Soviet troops landed on the Kerch Peninsula one day after Christmas to relieve Sevastopol. They remained in the area until being subject to a German counterattack on 9April and being eliminated by 18May. With the distraction removed, German forces renewed their assault on Sevastopol, penetrating the inner defensive lines on 29June.[citation needed] Soviet commanders had been flown out or evacuated by submarine towards the end of the siege and the city surrendered on 4July 1942, although some Soviet troops held out in caves outside of the city until 9 July.[1][additional citation(s) needed]
↑ Richard Compton-Hall, Submarines at War 1939-1945, Periscope Publishing, 2004, p. 127
↑ Florian Bichir, Corsarii uitați ai adâncurilor, p. 101 (in Romanian)
Bibliography
Bishop, Chris, The Military Atlas of World War II, Igloo Books, London, 2005 ISBN1-904687-53-9
http://www.soldat.ru/spravka/freedom/1-ssr-3.html Dudarenko, M.L., Perechnev, Yu.G., Yeliseev, V.T., et.el., Reference guide "Liberation of cities": reference for liberation of cities during the period of the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945, Moscow, 1985 (Дударенко, М.Л., Перечнев, Ю.Г., Елисеев, В.Т. и др., сост. Справочник «Освобождение городов: Справочник по освобождению городов в период Великой Отечественной войны 1941–1945»)
Keegan, John, The Times Atlas of the Second World War, Crescent Books, New York
The siege of Sevastopol, also known as the defence of Sevastopol or the Battle of Sevastopol, was a military engagement that took place on the Eastern Front of the Second World War. The campaign was fought by the Axis powers of Germany and Romania against the Soviet Union for control of Sevastopol, a port in Crimea on the Black Sea. On 22 June 1941, the Axis invaded the Soviet Union during Operation Barbarossa, with Axis land forces reaching the Crimean peninsula in the autumn of 1941 and overrunning most of the area. The only objective not in Axis hands was Sevastopol. Several attempts were made to secure the city in October and November 1941. A major attack was planned for late November, but heavy rains delayed it until 17 December 1941. Under the command of Erich von Manstein, Axis forces were unable to capture Sevastopol during this first operation. Soviet forces launched an amphibious landing on the Crimean peninsula at Kerch in December 1941 to relieve the siege and force the Axis to divert forces to defend their gains. The operation saved Sevastopol for the time being, but the bridgehead in eastern Crimea was eliminated in May 1942.
The Eastern Front was a theatre of World War II which primarily involved combat between the nations and allies of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Combat in the Eastern Front began with the two powers remaining peaceful towards each other, with the annexation of countries such as Albania and portions of Poland by Germany and its allies, and the annexation of Finland and the rest of Poland by the Soviet Union. However, in 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, putting an end to the peacetime. The majority of major battles in the Eastern Theatre from 1941 until the end of the war in 1945 were fought between the two powers. The following timeline indicates major events taking place on the Eastern Front.
The Battle of the Caucasus was a series of Axis and Soviet operations in the Caucasus as part of the Eastern Front of World War II. On 25 July 1942, German troops captured Rostov-on-Don, opening the Caucasus region of the southern Soviet Union to the Germans and threatening the oil fields beyond at Maikop, Grozny, and ultimately Baku. Two days prior, Adolf Hitler had issued a directive to launch an operation into the Caucasus named Operation Edelweiß. German units would reach their high water mark in the Caucasus in early November 1942, getting as far as the town of Alagir and city of Ordzhonikidze, some 610 km from their starting positions. Axis forces were compelled to withdraw from the area later that winter as Operation Little Saturn threatened to cut them off.
The Crimean offensive, known in German sources as the Battle of the Crimea, was a series of offensives by the Red Army directed at the German-held Crimea. The Red Army's 4th Ukrainian Front engaged the German 17th Army of Army Group South Ukraine, which consisted of Wehrmacht and Romanian formations. The battles ended with the evacuation of the Crimea by the Germans. German and Romanian forces suffered considerable losses during the evacuation.
The Battle of the Kerch Peninsula, which commenced with the Soviet Kerch-Feodosia Landing Operation and ended with the German {{Operation Bustard Hunt, was a World War II battle between Erich von Manstein's German and Romanian 11th Army and the Soviet Crimean Front forces in the Kerch Peninsula, in the eastern part of the Crimean Peninsula. It began on 26 December 1941, with an amphibious landing operation by two Soviet armies intended to break the Siege of Sevastopol. Axis forces first contained the Soviet beachhead throughout the winter and interdicted its naval supply lines through aerial bombing. From January through April, the Crimean Front launched repeated offensives against the 11th Army, all of which failed with heavy losses. The Red Army lost 352,000 men in the attacks, while the Axis suffered 24,120 casualties. Superior German artillery firepower was largely responsible for the Soviet debacle.
The 11th Army was a World War II field army.
The German Seventeenth Army was a field army of Nazi Germany during World War II.
The Kerch–Eltigen operation was a World War II amphibious offensive made in November 1943 by the Red Army as a precursor to the Crimean offensive, with the object of defeating and forcing the withdrawal of the German forces from the Crimea. Landing at two locations on the Crimea's eastern coast, the Red Army successfully reinforced the northern beachhead of Yenikale but was unable to prevent an Axis counterattack that collapsed the southern beachhead at Eltigen. Subsequently, the Red Army used the beachhead at Yenikale to launch further offensive operations into the Crimea in May 1944.
The Black Sea Campaigns were the operations of the Axis and Soviet naval forces in the Black Sea and its coastal regions during World War II between 1941 and 1944, including in support of the land forces.
The Dnieper–Carpathian offensive, also known in Soviet historical sources as the Liberation of Right-bank Ukraine, was a strategic offensive executed by the Soviet 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Ukrainian Fronts, along with the 2nd Belorussian Front, against the German Army Group South, Army Group A and elements of Army Group Center, and fought from late December 1943 to early May 1944. The battles in right-bank Ukraine and in the Crimea were the most important event of the 1944 winter-spring campaign on the Eastern Front.
The Separate Coastal Army, also translated to English as Independent Coastal Army, was an army-level unit in the Red Army that fought in World War II. It was established on July 18, 1941, by the order of the Southern Front from the forces of 9th Army’s Coastal Group and was stood up on July 20, 1941.
The 87th Guards Rifle Division was created on 16 April 1943 from the veterans of the 300th Rifle Division, in recognition of that division's leading role in the penetration of the German/Romanian defenses south of Stalingrad in the opening stages of Operation Uranus, its subsequent defense against Army Group Don's attempt to relieve the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad, and later for its pursuit of the defeated German forces along the Don River to Rostov-na-Donu as far as the Mius River. The 87th Guards continued a record of distinguished service through the rest of the Great Patriotic War, first in the southern sector of the front, where it participated in the liberation of the Donbas region and the Crimea, and then, after a major redeployment, in the north-central sector, advancing through the Baltic states and into East Germany. After the war it was restructured into a rifle brigade, before being reestablished as 87th Guards Rifle Division in October 1953. In June 1957, it was reorganized as a motor rifle division, but appears to have been disbanded in 1959.
The 318th Rifle Division began forming on June 15, 1942, in and near Novorossiysk on the coast of the Black Sea, as a standard Red Army rifle division; it was later re-formed as a mountain rifle division, but exactly when this happened is disputed among the various sources. It fought in the area it was formed in until September 1943, and was granted the name of this city as an honorific. In November of that year it took part in the largest Soviet amphibious operation of the war, across the Kerch Straits into the easternmost part of the Crimea, but its small beachhead was eliminated some weeks later. After the Crimea was liberated in May 1944, it remained there for several months before it was transferred to the Carpathian Mountains west of Ukraine as a mountain division, and spent the remainder of the war fighting through Czechoslovakia in the direction of Prague. The division continued to serve postwar in this same role, but was converted back to a standard rifle division before it was disbanded in the early 1950s.
The 390th Rifle Division was an infantry division of the Soviet Union's Red Army during World War II. It was formed twice, first in August 1941, and after its destruction in 1942, re-formed in 1944.
The 339th Rifle Division was first formed in late August, 1941, as a standard Red Army rifle division, at Rostov-on-Don. As it was formed in part from reservists and cadre that included members of the Communist Party from that city, it carried the honorific title "Rostov" for the duration. In late November it was part of the force that counterattacked the German 1st Panzer Army in the Battle of Rostov and forced its retreat from the city, one of the first major setbacks for the invaders. During 1942 the division was forced to retreat into the Caucasus, where it fought to defend the passes leading to the Black Sea ports. In 1943 it fought to liberate the Taman Peninsula, and then in early 1944 to also liberate Crimea. In the following months the division was reassigned to the 1st Belorussian Front, with which it took part in the Battle of Berlin in 1945. Following a distinguished career, the division was disbanded in the summer of that year.
The 414th Rifle Division was twice formed as an infantry division of the Red Army; very briefly in the winter of 1941/42, then from the spring of 1942 until after May 1945. It was officially considered a Georgian National division, having nearly all its personnel of that nationality in its second formation. After its second formation it remained in service in the Caucasus near the borders of Turkey and Iran in the 44th Army until the summer of 1942, when it was redeployed to help counter the German drive toward Grozny. As German Army Group A retreated from the Caucasus in January 1943 the division was reassigned to the 37th Army in North Caucasus Front, and during the fighting in the Taman Peninsula during the summer it served in both the 58th and 18th Armies, earning a battle honor in the process. It entered the Crimea during the Kerch–Eltigen Operation in November, and was awarded the Order of the Red Banner following the offensive that liberated that region in April and May 1944, fighting in the 11th Guards Rifle Corps of the Separate Coastal Army. After the Crimea was cleared the Coastal Army remained as a garrison and the 414th stayed there for the duration of the war. Postwar, it was relocated to Tbilisi, being renumbered as the 74th Rifle Division in 1955 and disbanded the following year.
The LIV Army Corps was a Wehrmacht army corps during World War II. It was formed in June 1941. After February 1944, it was upgraded to a command equivalent in rank but not in name to an army, something that the Wehrmacht dubbed an army detachment. It operated under the following names:
The 63rd Mountain Rifle Division was formed as a specialized infantry division of the Red Army in July 1936, based on the 2nd Georgian Mountain Division. When the German invasion of the Soviet Union began it was in the Transcaucasus Military District and was soon assigned to the 47th Army for the invasion of Iran. Following this it was moved to the western Caucasus region where it joined the 44th Army of Crimean Front for amphibious operations against the Axis forces in the Crimea. In late December 1941 it landed at Feodosia as part of 9th Rifle Corps. Along with the remainder of the Corps the 63rd Mountain hindered but failed to block the retreat of Axis forces from Kerch, where the 51st Army had also made landings. After a German counteroffensive retook Feodosia in mid-January 1942 the division fell back to the Parpach Isthmus where it took part in trench warfare near the Black Sea coast into the spring, gradually losing strength. On May 8 it was caught up in the opening stage of Operation "Bustard Hunt" (Trappenjagd) and in a few hours was overwhelmed and largely destroyed by German air and artillery bombardment in support of infantry and armor attacks. Less than a week later it was stricken from the Red Army's order of battle and was never rebuilt.
Hero City of Ukraine is a Ukrainian honorary title awarded for outstanding heroism during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. It was awarded to ten cities in March 2022, in addition to four already-named Hero Cities of the Soviet Union. This symbolic distinction for a city corresponds to the distinction of Hero of Ukraine awarded to individuals.
The Crimean resistance movement during World War II refers to various decentralised groups who resisted the occupation of Crimea by Nazi Germany during World War II. Also often referred to by the term Crimean partisans, the resistance movement in the Crimean peninsula formed a significant part of the Soviet partisan movement during World War II, and included many of the peninsula's various ethnic groups, such as Russians, Ukrainians, Crimean Tatars, and Greeks.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
Germany 
Romania 
Italy 
Soviet Union 
Black Sea Fleet 
