The History of Crimean Conflicts: Sevastopol, von Manstein’s Triumph & Hitler’s Last Great Victory, Part II.
Under the command of Generaloberst Erich von Manstein, Hitler’s armies prepared for what would be the final assault on the great fortress city of Sevastopol, belief in their destiny as humanity’s superior race meant ultimate victory was their due. What neither he, nor Hitler knew, was that this would be the Nazis last great victorious battle…
“The two outstanding characteristics of the German mind since the (First World) war have been, first, a sense of national grievance, and second, a declining faith among all classes in liberal capitalism. National Socialism fused the two in the conception of Germany as a “coolie” nation, exploited like any colony, by foreign financial imperialism and military power. It made the liberation of the German nation synonymous with social liberation. Its historic rôle was to put German social radicalism behind German militarism, to hail German militarism as the means of achieving a new society.”
Dorothy Thompson, Foreign Affairs, 1935, on how Germany became a war economy before it ever went to war.
The last few days…
17th-23rd June 1942
In the centre of sector 4, under cover of darkness Hansen brought two infantry divisions forward close to the railway station. They made a surprise attack and quickly smashed through the weakened Soviet line, taking the remaining outpost that guarded the road down to Severnaya Bay.
Interestingly, the Germans tested some new technology as they closed on the series of hill forts that lay between them and the bay. Six remote controlled demolition vehicles were brought up to attack Soviet bunker positions.
However, as with most new technologies, there were teething problems and only two of the six managed to get as far as the Soviet line, only succeeding in destroying a couple of timber bunker positions, but nothing more (4).
Despite this lacklustre technological performance, the surprise and speed of the German assault had managed to shock many defenders and by 5.10am Fort Siberia had been taken.
As dawn broke a heavy mortar bombardment and multiple rocket launcher attacks pummelled the forward Soviet line, and the defenders finally began to weaken. As the two German infantry divisions advanced, supported by two assault gun regiments and two Panzer companies, the Soviet line finally cracked and then shattered.
A succession of forts were overrun in quick order; Tscheka, GPU, and then Fort Molotov all fell before 7am. Then using Forts Stalin and Siberia as cover, the Germans pounded the only fort in the area that remained in Soviet hands, the Volga. The Soviets held on all day, but by 7.30pm Fort Volga fell, and this preceded a massive aerial assault by von Richthofen’s Fleigerkorps VIII, who committed every available aircraft to the destruction of known infantry defences on the northern shore of Severnaya Bay (4).
This was probably von Richthofen’s last direct involvement in the Crimea. Goring had told him 2 days previously that he, and some of his Fliegerkorps VIII, were to be transferred 750 kms to the north to support operations around Kursk. Von Richthofen was disgusted at the decision and said so, calling it a “weird” decision from the combat perspective, bemoaning the fact that “one can never finish what one starts here in the east. After a while, it takes away all the pleasure (3).”
Despite retaining overall command on the air corps in the east, it would be Oberst Wolfgang von Wild who would take over operational control in the Crimea. His Fliegerfuhrer Sud had already achieved much in the course of the campaign. But von Richthofen was disdainful of his achievements, so much so that upon leaving he appointed a man of much lower rank, Oberstleutnant Torsten Christ, as his co-leader, something which Wild, quite understandably, took as a slight on his own performance thus far (3).
Back on the ground, and in the north of sector 4, and once Fort Molotov had been taken, the Germans were free to advance towards the coast whilst what remained of the northern flank of the Soviet line was hammered by German artillery. Already weakened, the Soviet line broke here too, and the Germans moved to surround Fort Maxim Gorky in its entirety. A massive aerial attack by consecutive squadrons of Stukas scored many direct hits on the fort, and all of its guns fell silent.
In the end it took fully 3 days to wear the fort down, and by then the battle for Sevastopol was all but won. Inside the fort on three separate floors, 1000 men were ready for the fight of their lives. Amazingly, they maintained radio contact with Soviet naval command throughout, and by the 19th June the operator reported that the Germans, carrying grenades and flame throwers, were inside the fort and going door by door, room by room. There were 46 men still fighting he said (5).
Thirty minutes later there were only 22 men left, and then a few minutes later he said, ‘goodbye’ and the radio fell silent forever; such sacrifices hard to grasp, even harder to understand, and from such a distance in time, impossible to rationalise (5).
Coastal units broke and ran taking cover in coastal battery 12, some 250m or so from the rugged shoreline almost due West of Fort Maxim Gorky. The courageous defenders dug themselves in, forming a trench-lined bubble, and with the rugged shoreline at their back there wasn’t anywhere else to go. Once surrounded by the marauding Germans, there was nothing left to do, but fight till the bitter end.
On higher ground a last gasp dash of almost 3000 Soviet reserves stopped the Germans from actually reaching the bay on the 17th, but Petrov by now could see the grim lines of the writing on the wall.
The 17th June had been a massive success for Hansen and von Manstein. The bulk of the Soviets in sectors 3 and 4 had been killed, captured or bottled up and isolated in small groups. Severnaya Bay and the northern hills above the city were now within their grasp, but the toll had once again been sorely felt.
The Germans had incurred another 1000 or so casualties, and despite looking, I could find no accurate assessment of the Soviet losses that day, but one can only imagine, they must have been almost incomprehensible.
Furthermore, Oktyabrsky had had to reduce the number of transport and supply vessels coming into Sevastopol in the last few days, in large part because of Wild’s Fliegerfuhrer Sud’s air-naval operations that hadn’t inflicted major damage on the vessels themselves, but had harried them sufficiently to reduce their activity. These operations had been carefully coordinated with flotillas of small Axis ships — MTB’s, armed motorboats and mini-subs — now making active forays from both Yalta and Simferopol (3).
Despite a more generalised historical disdain for Italian military efforts in WWII, it’s important to say the Italian flotilla in Crimea did remarkably well and certainly bucked the trend. On the night of the 10/11th they managed to sink a 5,000 ton Soviet motorboat, and then two nights later torpedoed and badly damaged a 10,000 ton freighter, which was sunk shortly afterwards by a direct hit from a Stuka as it was being towed to safety.
The tragic vagueries of war on the 19th June saw them also sink a 3,000 ton troop transport that had just evacuated sick and wounded troops from Sevastopol. It reportedly sank quickly with no survivors.
Additionally, Italian mini-subs managed to sink several Soviet submarines making their way in the dark along the coast towards Sevastopol while surfaced, and it was this as much as anything that forced Oktyabrsky into reducing the supply missions, the German Admiral of the flotilla, Admiral Schwarzes Meer, recording in his war diary, that “…enemy naval activity has greatly decreased.” (3).
This constant harrying of Soviet shipping had also reduced the effectiveness of the Black Sea Fleet’s naval fire support for the Soviet units in sector 4. This reduction in heavy naval support had undoubtedly been a factor in the subsequent collapse of the Soviet line in sector 4 on the 17th.
However, it wasn’t all bad news; because the Soviet convoys invariably travelled under cover of dark, some ships still managed to break through to Sevastopol, but the official Soviet history sums up the difficulties:
“With every day it became more difficult to bring troops, ammunition, armaments, and foodstuffs into Sevastopol; and to evacuate wounded and sick from the besieged city. Only battleships and fast moving transports of the Black Sea Fleet could operate on the sea communication lines. In June, because of the pressure of the situation, submarines began to be used for transport (3).”
Amazingly, Soviet subs completed seventy-eight supply missions during the final month of the siege, managing to deliver almost 4,000 tons of food, medicines, ammunition and gasoline, and evacuated more than 1300 sick and wounded (3).
And Oktyabrsky didn’t just stand idly by and do nothing in response to the Axis flotilla’s activities. Incensed at the cheek of the Germans launching attacks on his fleet from a Crimean port, he demanded that the VVS up their bombing campaign of the port at Yalta from bases in the Caucasus. He also directed his light vessels to increase their attacks on the flotilla, but with only moderate success.
The Germans simply split the flotilla up and launched them from other smaller ports along the coast, waiting to return once again after engineers had installed strong, anti-torpedo nets in both Yalta and Simferopol. However, by the time the nets were fully installed the battle for Sevastopol was all but over.
The Luftwaffe too had their share of successes attacking not only Sevastopol, but ports much wider afield too. Perhaps their most notable success came on July 2nd, the day after the fortress had actually fallen, when a combined bomber and Stuka raid on Novorossiisk sank the Tashkent, which had been one of the most successful supply vessels for the Soviets during the whole siege. During the same raid they also sank the cruiser Komintern, and inflicted severe damage on a destroyer and several other freighters (3).
Back in Sevastopol, and by the morning of the 19th June, sector 4 was almost entirely under German control, apart a few pockets of loose resistance, that still held on grimly.
One particularly gruesome event occurred when German sappers from the 54th Army Korps tried to dislodge some defenders from a multitude of caves and tunnels in the ravines and hilltops on the approaches to the head of the bay. The Soviets had had ample time, and many had been well prepared and often fortified.
But as the sappers moved in on the first large cave installation the occupants blow the cave up, burying both themselves and the sappers in the mountain.
The last fortified defences around the northern shore of Severnaya Bay were difficult to dislodge, but Fleigerkorps VIII kept up a massive and continued assault that gradually ground the last vestiges of Soviet resistance to dust (3), and then the Luftwaffe turned their deadly gaze on the city.
Joel Hayward (3) says that, “…to its terrified inhabitants…19 June was like a nightmare. From first light until noon, bombers conducted immense ‘rolling attacks’ with high-explosive bombs against supply depots, barracks, hangars, and other key buildings in the city. They also hit flak and artillery batteries to the east and southeast. From noon until dusk, they repeated their attacks with incendiary bombs. That evening, Richthofen noted with delight that the entire city was ‘a sea of flames’ with smoke clouds reaching 1500m and stretching from Sevastopol to Feodosiya, 150kms away.”
The last fort to fall north of Severnaya Bay was North fort, that lay within sight of the coast and on the slopes heading down to the bay shore near the mouth. It was a 300m star shaped concrete structure protected by a 5m wide anti-tank ditch, 1000 mines, 32 separate concrete bunkers, 7 armed cupolas, and 70 earth and timber bunkers — by any stretch, a formidable obstacle indeed (4).
Two infantry units and a Pioneer Battalion made up the initial assault group. A Panzer battalion once again tried with the remote controlled detonation vehicles, but these lumberous, cumbersome beasts were ripped apart by anti-aircraft fire the moment they broke cover (4).
The German troops fought all day long, pushing themselves to a standstill, and by nightfall had managed to breach the outer works of the fort. The following morning they consolidated their gains and advanced into the centre of the compound, then soon after securing the fort, along with 182 prisoners.
Sector 4 was now entirely in German hands and Petrov ordered a full withdrawal of all remaining Soviet troops, but too few boats were available to ferry them across the bay, and so many scurried for the hills and hid in caves, fodder for the Germans as they cleansed the area.
Now all that lay between the Germans on the north shore of the bay and the great fortress city, was the 1km stretch of water that was the bay itself.
Sector 3 was also hanging by a thread, and whilst German resolve remained strong, the main attacking unit in the sector, the 65th Infantry, had been hard hit and was down to about 125 men in each of its three battalions. The supporting 50th had fared better, but it was still far below optimum with about 600 men per battalion.
However, obviously unaware of the plight of the Germans, two platoon leaders of the Soviet 138th Naval Infantry Brigade surrendered and offered up the positions of all the remaining Soviet defensive positions in the sector.
Ably aided and abetted by this information, the Germans pounded the thinly held line between the identified defending regiments, then pushed into the breaches created, and broke the Soviet line asunder. By the end of the day on the 23rd June sector 3 was fractured with only patchy remnants of defenders still fighting back (4).
In sectors 1 and 2 the Germans had made steady, if not spectacular progress and had fought their way to the lower slopes of the Sapun Ridge by the 22nd, which was now the last major defensive obstacle left on the southern approaches to Sevastopol.
24th-28th June 1942
Fretter-Pico’s troops spent much of the next five days mopping up the last pockets of Soviet resistance on the approaches to the Sapun Ridge. The only offensive actions in the southern sectors was made by the 1st Mountain Korps and the remaining infantry divisions, who managed to take a fort on the eastern side of the small, but picturesque Chernaya river (see image below) which runs from the hills north of Balaklava, with its source in the Baydar valley, and drains into Severnaya Bay at its head on the eastern inlet.
Close by Hansen’s LIV Korps had also managed to clear the last vestiges of resistance from caves and tunnels around Lighthouse Hill, about 1.5kms inland from the head of the bay. Sector 3 was also now under German control.
At a terrible cost in men and materiel von Manstein’s troops had succeeded in pushing the Soviets back inside their inner defensive line (Figure 1.). The steep, rocky cliffs of the southern shore of Severnaya Bay now formed the Soviet’s northern front. Their southern and eastern fronts were now the still impressively fortified Sapun Ridge, and further south the lightly manned, but precipitous hills and ridgetops that formed a natural barrier west of Balaklava (Figure 2.).
Von Manstein now had a decision to make. Writing later, he mused “…the 11th Army command now had to decide how this inner fortification belt would be prised open (3).” The choices were stark, dangerous and none without risk. Any attack from the north would mean the 54th Army Korps having to cross the barren expanse of the bay to reach the southern shore, which was well protected by guns positioned all along the cliff tops.
However, an assault from the south or east would mean 30th Army Korps attacking up the steep sides of the Sapun Ridge before facing off against the seemingly impregnable defences atop the ridge.
Going against the advice of his commanders von Manstein decided the risk an assault across the bay. Under cover of dark a battalion of engineers and an infantry regiment, under the commands of Oberst’s von Choltitz and Schitting, made their way across the bay in 130 small assault boats (4). The Germans laid down a thick smokescreen as cover, along with a heavy artillery bombardment and an intense air attack by Wild’s Fliegerfuhrer Sud to mask the noise their progress might stir.
Schitting’s men landed first, near a heavy electrical plant, and moved to take the high ground above their landing point. The Soviets were caught completely unawares and were killed before the alarm was raised. A few minutes later von Choltitz landed and began to establish a beachhead.
About 15 minutes later the Soviets became alive to the landing, but in the dark confusion reigned, and they wrongly assumed it was an airborne assault. Furthermore, the loss of the immediate high ground above the landing sites had robbed them of any direct observation of the goings on.
Lacking sufficient numbers in the area to mount any sort of counter offensive, Petrov’s Soviets made do with lobbing a few mortars into the general area, more in hope than anything else, before deciding to wait till dawn to fully assess what happened (4).
The Germans had risked much and gained even more. Their losses were light — just four dead and 29 wounded — but they had succeeded against the odds to establish a beachhead on the southern shore of Severnaya Bay (4).
Petrov’s indecision had cost the Soviets dear. The inner defensive ring had been cut open by von Manstein’s adroit manoeuvring and Sevastopol was now mortally wounded.
The 29th June…the beginning of the end
That Sevastopol could be cracked open was never a foregone conclusion. Right till the end von Manstein had his doubts. The loss of von Richthofen a few days earlier had seen air sorties drop by a third. Aware of the enormity of the task ahead of his exhausted men, ultimate victory could yet have been beyond von Manstein. He knew he had to take yet more risks if he was going to succeed.
Wild, aware that the number of Luftwaffe sorties had dropped, rallied his men and they responded admirably. As the first launches had made their way across the bay in the dark, the first sorties were being flown. Attacking not just the southern shore to mask the noise of what was happening below, but also along the Sapun Ridge as well, smashing the bunkers and gun emplacements with one pass after another. Wild’s crews out did themselves.
One besieged resident writing after the fact, “German aircraft were literally raging across the battlefield, bombing and strafing machine gun nests and wiping out the last pockets of resistance (3).”
By the end of the 29th Fliegerfuhrer Sud had conducted a phenomenal 1,329 missions, dropping a 1,218 tons of bombs, all for the loss of just two aircraft on the day. To be sure, the lack of Soviet anti-aircraft fire had helped, but regardless, the performance is mightily impressive.
The nighttime operation had also been helped by Schwarzes Meer’s flotilla of MTB’s, who coordinated well with the land and air operations and made a feint attack at Cape Fiolent (Figure 1.) to further muddy the waters for the Soviets. The official Soviet history actually called this feint, a genuine attack that they had successfully and heroically repelled. The reality was nothing of the kind (3).
As the sun came up over the bay, the southern beachhead had been established, and von Manstein continued to feed the men of the 54th Army Korps across the bay all day. Wild’s relentless aerial bombardment on the heights above succeeded in limiting the losses of men as they crossed, so that by mid-afternoon a solid presence had been created, in numbers sufficient to allow them to move up to take a foothold on the cliffs above, not far from Inkerman.
Petrov had placed all those troops withdrawn from the northern shore during the last days, along with the best of his remaining forces in the hills around Inkerman at the eastern edges of the bay, near the Severnaya river bridge. But many of those units had already suffered appalling losses; the 138th Naval Infantry Brigade for example, had suffered 80% losses since the 17th June alone, and they were by no means alone (4).
The bulk of the Soviet forces were here now, protecting the Chernaya River valley with the cliffs of Inkerman on the one side, and the northern end of the Sapun Ridge on the other. Whilst the Soviets still had plenty of small mortar ammunition, Petrov’s biggest concern now was the lack of manpower.
Just like von Manstein, neither side had hardly any reserve forces left at all. Although, unlike von Manstein, Petrov was still expecting a fresh batch of replacements at the end of the day, something von Manstein knew would never happen for him.
The Communist commissars in the city ordered Petrov’s men to stand firm; there would be no more retreats they insisted, and this even as they began to plot their own last minute escapes from the now doomed city (4).
During the night, as the assault boats had crossed the bay, Fretter-Pico’s troops had been launching their own night attack on the centre of the Sapun Ridge from the eastern side at great risk. Using his freshest men for the assault, he backed them up with a battery of assault guns, a flak gun battery, and a company of PzKpfw III Ausf. Panzers (see image below) (4).
Whilst the Germans suffered heavy losses, it took little more than an hour and a half for them reach the top of the ridge, where, after some desperate, hand to hand fighting, and some eventual success for remote controlled detonation vehicles — which took out several machine gun nests — the Soviets finally succumbed. The ridge line was broken.
As the sun came up Fretter-Pico sent his last few reserves in to widen the breach. Once there they split, the 105th Infantry regiment turning south-west along the ridge top to attack the 9th Soviet Naval Infantry Brigade, who lacking reserves themselves, or any direct command control or communication, were rapidly overwhelmed.
Once the news of these successes reached von Manstein he sent in his main force to attack the right-hand side of the breach near Inkerman at the head of the bay, and by 6am had captured the old fort, and by noon were in possession of the Inkerman Heights. From there two infantry regiments turned to the west to link up with beachhead, which was by now using an 8 ton ferry to bring troops of the 54th across the bay (4).
By late afternoon the link up had been achieved and the remaining Soviets in the area were effectively cut off. It was the same story all along the Sapun Ridge, where those Soviets who were unable to retreat back further into the city, were being isolated, enveloped and cut off. More than 2,700 prisoners were taken; the numbers of Soviet dead unknown.
German losses for the Ridge attack amounted to 1,227 casualties including 153 dead; once again substantial losses, but the German commanders now knew they were on the home run. Von Manstein wrote, “After the successful crossing of the bay, the fall of the Heights of Inkerman and the 30th Army Korps breakthrough of the Sapun positions, the fate of the Sevastopol fortress was sealed (3).”
The desperation in the Soviets ranks palpable, their ruthless, cold-heartedness, even towards the fate of their men, was shown by one terrible incident that occurred at about 1.20am on the morning of the 30th.
A champagne factory, just outside the town of Inkerman had been converted for use as a field hospital, where around 2,000 wounded were being treated. But a lack storage capacity for the Soviets meant that the factory had also doubled up as an ammunition dump.
As darkness had fallen on the evening of the 29th and as the German closed in on their positions, the commander of 3rd Naval Infantry Brigade, Podpolkovnik Gussarov, ordered all able bodied men to fall back inside the city limits, and then rather than allow the ammunition to fall into enemy hands, the hospital was blown up with the loss of everyone inside, shocking even the Germans with their callous disregard for the welfare of own men (4).
30th June-4th July…the fall of Sevastopol
As dawn broke on the 30th June 1942 the defenders must have been well aware that complete and utter defeat was days, if not hours away. The only units left that were more or less intact was General-Major Novikov’s 109th Rifle Division on the south coast near Balaklava, and a fresh off the boat load of reserves from the 142nd Naval Infantry Brigade. All other units had been decimated, and furthermore the loss of the Sapun Ridge and Inkerman in such rapid disorder had also gifted most of the major ammunition dumps to the Germans, leaving the defenders critically low on all kinds of ammunition (4).
At 9.50am Stalin personally ordered the evacuation of the city, telling the commissars to avoid capture and leave before the city fell. Petrov wrote later on that the evacuation order turned what discipline still remained into an ‘every man for himself’ situation. “Panic is spreading,” he wrote, “particularly among the officers,” turning organised resistance into blind chaos (4).
Fretter-Pico’s men continued their assault over the ridge only to find the Soviets fleeing south towards Cape Chersonese (Figure 3.). Fretter-Pico sent the 49th Jagers to cut-off the Soviet retreat, whilst the 107th Infantry Division headed almost due south in an attempt to encircle Novikov’s 109th Rifles (Figure 3).
Novikov, fearing he too was about to become isolated made a hasty retreat along the coast to Cape Fiolent (Figure 3.). By the evening of the 30th the Germans had moved into the outskirts of the city, and the decision was made by the Soviets to evacuate what remained of the senior staff who were by now holed up in Fort Maxim Gorky II on the coast near Chersonese.
At around 3 in the morning on the 1st July a submarine docked close by evacuating Petrov and his other senior commanders, leaving to whatever fate some 23,000 wounded, who were hidden in the bunkers around the fort. Petrov’s last order was telling Novikov he was now in charge of the forces that remained.
As daylight broke Hansen’s LIV Korps began marching into the city, the infantry regiments to the fore. What Soviets remained threw down their weapons and surrendered. By 2pm in the afternoon the city had fallen and the German flag had been raised above the city’s museum (4).
Hansen immediately appointed Oberst Ernst Maisel as the new city commandant.
But even as the city fell the remnants of the Coastal Army under Novikov fought on, pressed into an ever tighter ring of land around Chersonese (Figure 3.). As darkness fell again, Novikov still held a thin line around the Cape and its tiny airstrip. The VVS then performed miracles to bring in 13 transport planes specifically to evacuate Oktyabrsky and 221 of his staff.
A short time later Captain A.J. Leshchenko fired his last artillery rounds from the fort at the approaching Germans, then blew up the fort and what remained of their gunpowder and ammunition.
A slew of small boats began to arrive of shore of the Cape to rescue whoever could swim out to meet them. Novikov himself tried to flee, but was captured.
A few small pockets of resistance continued from the bunkers around the fort, and also at the airstrip, but by the 4th July all Soviet resistance had ended, and Crimea and Sevastopol were in Germans hands.
On the 1st July Hitler had promoted von Manstein to Field Marshall, and on the 5th a victory parade was held in the city, after which von Manstein headed off for a long holiday in Romania.
And as he left, the SS moved in, and quickly began disposing of any of the remaining Soviet prisoners of war, dumping the bodies unceremoniously in some of the many miles of anti-tank ditches that skirted the city. At the same time, and with ruthless efficiency, they set about obliterating any Jewish citizens still alive, the grizzly task being carried using mobile gas chambers called ‘soul killers (4).’
The Germans held onto the peninsula for less than 2 years after the siege had ended, during which time the SS took the ‘soul killers’ on tour, scouring the peninsula, killing any suspected Jews who remained.
In mid-May 1944 the Red Army regained the city, Stalin proclaiming it a ‘hero city,’ but in reality there was little left standing that resembled any sort of metropolis.
The victory, though dramatic, was hard won and the losses on both sides were monumental. The Germans lost at least 4,264 killed, another 21,626 wounded, with a further 1,522 missing. The Romanian units sustained 1,597; 6,571 and 277, killed, wounded and missing (4). Table 1. highlights typical losses sustained by some of the infantry divisions involved.
By the end of the battle the 11th Army was, in effect, finished. They would have been unable to mount any further offensive actions had they been required to do so. They were broken up, sent piecemeal to plug the gaping holes in other armies further north, most of which were now headed for Stalingrad.
It was in the end the battle that saw the most amount of destructive materiel unleashed in the whole of WWII. The third, and final assault lasted only 28 days, with the Germans having used more 1.6 million shells of all categories, amounting to an incredible 46,486 tons of ammunition, including 410,000 105mm rounds, 100,000 150mm rounds, and more than 32,000 Nebelwerfer rockets (4) (5). Fliegerkorps VIII alone mounted a truly astounding 23,751 missions. On the ground the German troops captured more 3.500 permanent, or semi-permanent field installations, including concrete, timber and/or earth bunkers and emplacements, coastal batteries, and forts (5).
In his account of the story, The Heroic Defense of Sevastopol, Heroism of a City, Oktyabrsky wrote that “On July 3rd, Soviet troops withdrew from the city. The Germans marched in over mountains of their dead. It was for them a Pyrrhic victory — they cannot deny that. They lost much and gained a heap of ruins.”
Despite their withdrawal, Oktyabrsky maintained that the victory was theirs, and not Germany’s. I could find no accurate number for numbers of Soviet deaths.
Alexei Tolstoy, a writer and combatant (and no relations to his more illustrious namesake, Leo Tolstoy) compared the battle to that of Verdun in 1916, where the Germans had sent thousands of men senselessly to their deaths. But just like Verdun, after Sevastopol, the Germans were badly wounded, and were never able to stop the bleeding (5).
The lie many German troops were told of an easy victory to be achieved within three days rings horribly familiar now as Putin labours to emulate von Manstein.
The triumph of the German commander of the invading German 11th Army that saw Generaloberst Erich von Manstein promoted to Field Marshall was short lived, with the Stalingrad calamity following not long afterwards.
Sevastopol became known as the city of the dead in the wake of the last siege; graveyards and headstones on every corner; you couldn’t walk but a few metres without stumbling over some new grave or other. They were ubiquitous, ruined bodies among the ruins of a once great city.
Next week, the final part in this series, when Putin’s little green men invade Crimea in 2014.
Thanks for reading.
- The Lighthouse of Stalingrad: The hidden truth at the centre of WWII’s greatest battle; Iain MacGregor, 2022.
- Hitler; Ian Kershaw, 2008.
- Stopped at Stalingrad: The Luftwaffe and Hitler’s defeat in the East 1942–1943; Joel.S.A. Hayward, 1998.
- Sevastopol 1942: Von Manstein’s Triumph; Robert Forczyk, 2008.
- The Defense of Sevastopol 1941–1942: The Soviet perspective; Clayton Donnell, 2016.
