During which war did the crossing take place? “The Danube is noisy - the Russians are coming.” Crossing of the great river by the Red Army during the Second World War. Stalin's whim to liberate Kyiv on the anniversary of the revolution cost thousands of lives

The Battle of Kursk occupies a special place in the Great Patriotic War. It lasted 50 days and nights, from July 5 to August 23, 1943. This battle has no equal in its ferocity and tenacity of struggle.

The Wehrmacht needed a victory, it needed a new offensive. And it was planned in the Kursk direction. The German offensive was codenamed Operation Citadel. It was planned to launch two strikes on Kursk from Orel and Kharkov, encircle the Soviet units, defeat them and launch a further offensive to the south. It is characteristic that the German generals still continued to plan the defeat and encirclement of Soviet units, although quite recently they themselves were surrounded and completely destroyed at Stalingrad.

The Germans gathered huge forces for the offensive. About 900 thousand soldiers, more than 2 thousand tanks, 10 thousand guns and 2 thousand aircraft. However, the situation in the first days of the war was no longer possible. The Wehrmacht had no numerical, no technical, and most importantly, no strategic advantage. On the Soviet side, more than one million soldiers, 2 thousand aircraft, almost 19 thousand guns and about 2 thousand tanks were ready to enter the Battle of Kursk. And, most importantly, the strategic and psychological superiority of the Soviet army was no longer in doubt. The plan to counter the Wehrmacht was simple and at the same time absolutely brilliant. The plan was to bleed the German army dry in heavy defensive battles and then launch a counteroffensive. The plan worked brilliantly, as the Battle of Kursk itself showed.

The Kursk Bulge was a protrusion about 150 kilometers deep and up to 200 kilometers wide, facing west. This arc was formed during the winter offensive of the Red Army and the subsequent counter-offensive of the Wehrmacht in Eastern Ukraine. The battle on the Kursk Bulge is usually divided into three parts: the Kursk defensive operation, which lasted from July 5 to 23, the Oryol (July 12 - August 18) and the Belgorod-Kharkov (August 3 - 23).

The avalanche attacks on Soviet positions began on the morning of July 5, 1943, with artillery fire and air strikes. The Nazis advanced on a broad front, attacking from heaven and earth. As soon as it began, the battle took on a grandiose scale and was extremely tense. Our soldiers repelled attacks by enemy strike forces, showing unprecedented tenacity and courage.

On July 12, Soviet troops on the Kursk Bulge went on the offensive. On this day, in the area of ​​the Prokhorovka railway station, 56 km north of Belgorod, the largest oncoming tank battle of the Second World War took place. About 1,200 tanks and self-propelled guns took part in it. The battle of Prokhorovka lasted all day, the Germans lost about 10 thousand people, over 360 tanks and were forced to retreat. On the same day, Operation Kutuzov began, during which the enemy’s defenses were broken through in the Bolkhov, Khotynets and Oryol directions. Our troops advanced into German positions, and the enemy command gave the order to retreat. By August 23, the enemy was thrown back 150 kilometers to the west, and the cities of Orel, Belgorod and Kharkov were liberated.

Aviation played a significant role in the Battle of Kursk. Air strikes destroyed a significant amount of enemy equipment. The advantage of the USSR in the air, achieved during fierce battles, became the key to the overall superiority of our troops.

On August 5, 1943, when the Soviet army clearly had an advantage in the Battle of Kursk in Moscow, for the first time in 2 years since the beginning of the war, an artillery salute thundered in honor of the liberation of Orel and Belgorod. Subsequently, Muscovites often watched fireworks on the days of significant victories in the battles of the Great Patriotic War.

The victory at Kursk created favorable conditions for an offensive in Ukraine. At the end of August 1943, Soviet troops rushed to the Dnieper.

Using this water barrier, the Nazis tried to stop the advance of the Red Army and inflict serious damage on it in people and equipment. It was on the Dnieper that the fascist German command hoped to delay the rapid advance of Soviet troops, which began in the Battle of Kursk. Hitler's strategists hoped that such a powerful water barrier as the Dnieper would become “an insurmountable barrier for the Russians.” The defensive line created by the Nazis ran mainly along the Dnieper. Behind this “barrier” in mid-September 1943, Hitler’s command, under attacks from Soviet troops, began to withdraw formations of Army Group South, assigning the group the task of holding its position along the Dnieper “until the last man.”

By the time the Red Army reached the Dnieper, the enemy did not have time to complete the construction of defensive structures and fully prepare the defensive line on its right bank. The first to cross the Dnieper in the Mnevo sector, the mouth of the Pripyat River, were the troops of the 13th Army of General N.P. Pukhov. Its advanced detachments reached the Dnieper on September 21 and the next day captured a bridgehead on its right bank. The crossing was carried out using improvised means under heavy blows from enemy aircraft. Success depended on swiftness and determination. Taking this into account, the advanced units acted boldly and quickly, not allowing the enemy to come to their senses and gather their strength.

Many years later, recalling these days, Marshal K.K. Rokossovsky wrote: “Overcoming enemy resistance, using all the boats, rafts, barrels captured on the shore, soldiers, under the leadership of experienced and determined commanders, began to overcome the water barrier on a wide front. The crossing was ensured by well-organized artillery fire from the shore. The guns fired both with mounted fire and direct fire. The tanks that approached the shore also fired. Attack and fighter aircraft supported ground troops with air strikes. The advanced infantry units, quickly crossing to the opposite bank, clung to it, repelling the attacks of the enemy, who tried to throw them into the river. Artillery officers also swam across the Dnieper along with the infantrymen. Now they were adjusting the battery fire from the bridgehead. Under the cover of forward detachments, more and more people were transported to the right bank. The accumulation of our troops on the bridgehead proceeded quickly. Taken by surprise, the enemy did not have time to transfer forces here sufficient to counter the crossing.”

After the advanced detachments clung to the right bank of the Dnieper, special pontoon equipment was put into use. The soldiers and commanders of the engineering troops showed high examples of heroism and self-sacrifice in these decisive days of the Battle of the Dnieper. Under enemy fire, they built crossings, assembled ferries, and built pontoon bridges; Roads were laid through swamps and bogs and temporary crossings were created on numerous branches of the Dnieper. The partisans provided great assistance. By the time the Red Army reached the Dnieper, they had captured several crossings on the Dnieper and Pripyat. By the end of September 22, the troops of the 13th Army had captured a bridgehead 25 km along the front and from 2 to 10 km in depth. The next day they advanced 35 km west of the Dnieper and captured a bridgehead on the right bank of the Pripyat at its mouth.

Throughout the week, from September 24 to 30, there were fierce battles between the Dnieper and Pripyat rivers between the troops of the 13th Army and the German divisions. The enemy concentrated units of four tank divisions here and tried to throw Soviet troops from the bridgehead with persistent counterattacks. However, the formations of the 13th Army, overcoming stubborn enemy resistance, continued to expand the bridgehead. By the end of September, they cleared the Nazis from the interfluve in their offensive zone and captured two bridgeheads on the Pripyat River northwest and southeast of Chernobyl. To the south of the 13th Army, the 60th Army and the 7th Guards Mechanized Division successfully crossed the Dnieper. By the end of September, they captured a bridgehead 20 km along the front and 12 km deep on the western bank of the Dnieper - from the mouth of Pripyat to the Teterev River and a small bridgehead in the Yasnogorodka area. To the north of the 13th Army, part of the forces crossed the Dnieper 61st Army.

At this time, the troops of the right wing of the Central Front (48th and 65th armies), breaking stubborn enemy resistance, launched an offensive in the Gomel direction. They cleared the enemy from the eastern bank of the Sozh River throughout the offensive zone and by the end of the month captured two small bridgeheads on its western bank. Aviation of the 16th Air Army actively supported the offensive of the front ground forces. The most fierce battles in the air broke out during the struggle for our troops to hold bridgeheads on the Desna, Dnieper, and Pripyat rivers. Thus, by the end of September, the Central Front achieved a major operational success. Pursuing the enemy, his troops crossed the Dnieper, Pripyat and Sozh on the move. Several bridgeheads were captured on their western banks, which played a major role in the subsequent struggle for the capture of the Dnieper border and in the defeat of the enemy in Right Bank Ukraine.

Troops of the Voronezh Front successfully crossed the Dnieper. On the night of September 22, the advanced units of the 3rd Guards Tank Army reached the Dnieper and on the same day crossed it southeast of Kyiv, in the Velikiy Bukrin area. They skillfully used fishing boats, logs, and other available means prepared here by the partisan detachment of I.K. Primak. One of the first to reach the opposite bank near the village of Grigorovka was a company of machine gunners of the 51st Guards Tank Brigade. The company was commanded by Lieutenant N.I. Sinashkin. Four brave warriors especially distinguished themselves - privates V.N. Ivanov, N.E. Petukhov, I.D. Semenov and V.A. Sysolyatin. With the help of partisan guide A.N. Shapoval, they were the first to cross to the right bank, quickly dug in there and started a firefight with the enemy’s advanced unit. And at this time, the company and 120 partisans of the detachment named after V.I. Chapaev crossed the Dnieper without losses and with a swift attack drove the enemy out of Grigorovka, and then from the neighboring village of Zarubentsy. This was the beginning of the creation of the important Bukrinsky bridgehead. For valor and courage, V.N. Ivanov, N.E. Petukhov, I.D. Semenov and V.A. Sysolyatin were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

Simultaneously with the 3rd Guards Tank Army, in the area of ​​the Bukrinskaya Bend and to the right of it, troops of the 40th Army began to cross the Dnieper. To the left of the Dnieper bend, formations of the 47th Army crossed. The enemy conducted heavy artillery fire, and its aircraft bombed crossings and bridgeheads in groups of 40-50 aircraft. It was especially difficult for sappers transporting troops and equipment.

To seize a bridgehead on the right bank of the Dnieper, the front command used airborne troops. On the night of September 24, the 3rd Airborne Brigade and part of the forces of the 5th were dropped. But the drop zones were poorly chosen, and the aircraft crews were poorly prepared. As a result, the bulk of the paratroopers unexpectedly found themselves in the center of the German troops. She suffered heavy losses and did not complete her task. Part of the landing party was sent to the battle formations of their troops, to the Dnieper and even to its left bank.

The troops who crossed to the right bank of the Dnieper had a very difficult time. Before they had time to gain a foothold there, fierce battles broke out. The enemy, having brought up large forces, continuously counterattacked, trying to destroy our units and units or throw them into the river. But Soviet soldiers heroically repelled his furious onslaught. Thousands of glorious feats were accomplished by them in those fiery days of the battle for the Dnieper.

Reflecting the fierce attacks of the enemy, the troops of the Voronezh Front in the September battles expanded the Bukrinsky bridgehead to 11 km along the front and 6 km in depth. The main forces of the 27th and 40th armies, as well as motorized rifle units of the 3rd Guards Tank Army, concentrated on it. At the end of September, north of Kyiv, in the Lyutezh region, troops of the 38th Army crossed the Dnieper. One of the first to cross here was a group of 25 soldiers under the command of Senior Sergeant P. P. Nefedov from the 842nd Infantry Regiment of the 240th Infantry Division. For twenty hours, a handful of brave warriors fought an unequal battle with many times superior enemy forces and still retained the captured bridgehead.

The 240th Rifle Division was one of the most distinguished during the crossing of the Dnieper and the capture of the Lyutezh bridgehead by the formations of the 38th Army. By October 10, the Lyutezhsky bridgehead was expanded to 15 km along the front and to 5-10 km in depth. The enemy's repeated attempts to liquidate the bridgehead, despite all his efforts, were unsuccessful. He failed to resettle the troops of the 38th Army into the Dnieper.

From September 22 to 30, the troops of the Voronezh Front fought a fierce battle for bridgeheads on the right bank of the Dnieper and at the same time cleared the left bank of the enemy units remaining on it. After stubborn fighting, the 38th Army eliminated an important enemy bridgehead in the Darnitsa area (a suburb of Kyiv on the left bank of the Dnieper), on which seven German divisions were defending. As our troops crossed the Dnieper, fierce air battles broke out in the sky above it. They were especially tense in the area of ​​the Bukrinsky bridgehead.

During September, pilots of the 2nd Air Army conducted 211 air battles and shot down 198 enemy aircraft. By the end of September, the armies of the Voronezh Front captured 9 small bridgeheads north and south of Kyiv, including Bukrinsky and Lyutezhsky. This significantly disrupted the enemy’s defenses on the right bank of the Dnieper. At the same time, the fascist German command hastily deployed divisions and reserves that had retreated from the left bank of the Dnieper on the right bank, especially in the Kyiv region. The advantage of the enemy in the current situation was that his armies were retreating to their organized rear with bases and warehouses prepared on the Right Bank, a developed road network, and equipped airfields. Its aircraft were able to carry out frequent raids on crossings and bridgeheads of Soviet troops. The Soviet troops, after almost continuous three-month battles, suffered heavy losses. They urgently needed to accumulate forces and resources, to tighten supply bases that were lagging behind by almost 300 km.

The Steppe Front achieved great success in crossing the Dnieper. The first to enter its right bank were the troops of the 7th Guards Army (Lieutenant General M.S. Shumilov). On the night of September 25, its advanced units crossed the Dnieper using improvised means of transport and captured several small bridgeheads northwest of Verkhne-Dneprovsk. By morning, the main forces of the rifle regiments and part of the artillery crossed over to them. Reflecting the fierce attacks of the enemy, in five days the army troops connected the occupied bridgeheads into one common one, expanding it to 25 km along the front and up to 15 km in depth.

By September 30, the Dnieper was crossed by the remaining armies of the front. The introduction of the 37th Army into the battle played a major role in the successful crossing of the Dnieper by the troops of the Steppe Front.

The capture of such a large number of bridgeheads dispersed the attention of the German command, scattering its already depleted reserves on a huge front. The crossing of the Dnieper on the move using improvised means after long and difficult offensive battles is a feat of arms unparalleled in the history of wars. The battle for the Dnieper clearly revealed the high moral and combat qualities of Soviet soldiers. “The battle for the Dnieper,” the Pravda newspaper wrote in those days, “took on truly epic proportions. Never before have so many super-brave stood out from the multitude of brave Soviet soldiers. The Red Army, which has already given the world so many examples of military courage, seems to surpass itself.”

Thus, the capture of bridgeheads by Soviet troops on the western bank of the Dnieper sharply worsened the enemy’s position. The Dnieper as a strategic line of defense was now losing its importance for the Wehrmacht to a large extent.

21.10.2013 21:50:16

Prologue

I thought for a long time about what to call the material, and decided that this title was accurate. I’m not going to write yet another ode to Soviet power and the “talented” commanders of the Red Army who won the war with Germany - lately there have been enough people wanting to do this.

I would like to once again remind those who are proud and nostalgic that the war was not won by Stalin and Zhukov, but by ordinary people who, executing the criminal orders of the then leaders, gave millions of their lives for the victory of one ugly ideology over another.

The height of cynicism in the communist gibberish of the post-war period is the inscription “No one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten” on the monument to the “Unknown Soldier”. Today we have come close to the historical study of this page of the Second World War. It was written in the blood of many thousands of people, whose fate remains unknown to this day.

Stalin's whim to liberate Kyiv on the anniversary of the revolution cost thousands of lives

It is known that the liberation of the capital of Ukraine in 1943 was timed to coincide with the 26th anniversary of the October Revolution. To fulfill Stalin's wishes, the military leaders of that time lost hundreds of thousands of human lives, but they carried out the order of the commander-in-chief.

The bitter truth is that no one will ever be able to calculate how many human lives were actually ruined by Soviet commanders (primarily Marshal Zhukov) in order to “please” the Soviet people and personally the leader Joseph Stalin with the capture of Kiev on November 7 and others victories.

And now, for the next November 7, Zhukov’s faithful students and followers also decided to show their historical memory.

Leaflet from letters distributed through the mailboxes of Dnepropetrovsk residents

As we see, again the same Soviet hysteria and the same pathos in the style of “No one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten.” But what should we take from politicians? Well, at least few people believe them anymore.

But there are people in our city who really haven’t forgotten the truth:

"Black Blazers"

In war there are no losses. But during the crossing of the Dnieper, hundreds of thousands of people died, whom the then government ordered to cross the Dnieper without weapons, military experience and knowledge. That is why we will talk further about those mobilized into the Red Army from liberated settlements, popularly nicknamed “jackets”, “chernosvitniks”, “black infantry” - due to the fact that they often went into battle without military uniforms.

Since the Armed Forces of the USSR fought in a “costly way”, already from 1942 they began to experience difficulties in terms of human resources (17-year-olds began to be drafted into the army, and also the mass mobilization of women began and the reduction of medical requirements for those who were previously considered unsuitable for service).

But they were called up by military registration and enlistment offices, where reporting rules were followed - so now these figures are more or less known. But in the liberated territory everything happened differently. From the end of winter 1942, the command of the advancing troops received the right to conscript people directly into the troops. March reinforcements were not always delivered on time. And, if there were large losses in previous battles, they were replenished at the expense of the men in the settlements that they had just occupied.

Often even those who had not reached conscription age or had already passed it were taken away. In the heat of battle, documentation was not always completed. And even if it was registered, it was often done retroactively, and many of those called up “directly to the troops” died and remained unaccounted for. For this reason, no one now knows exactly how many there were - there are only estimates. Most likely, of course, we are talking about several million.

Immediately after liberation, the field military registration and enlistment offices sent people who lived in the occupied territory into battle, to the front line - without appropriate military training, without uniforms, often even without weapons. They died like real heroes, but are not marked by history. Because of the color of their civilian clothing, they were called "black" infantry.

“Black” infantry, or “black jackets,” were most often used as the first echelons during the Red Army’s offensive on the most difficult sectors of the front. The men liberated from the occupation had to prove their loyalty to the Motherland in this way.

These were the same, mostly untrained in military affairs, powerless “defeatists” and “surroundeds” who, due to various circumstances, fell under German occupation, and therefore, from the official position of the Soviet punitive authorities, they were “second-class” citizens. This is exactly it - one rifle for three, half a brick in hand and, as a parting word: “You will get weapons in battle!” And behind are the NKVD barrage detachments.

No one can count how many “black jackets” were driven into the icy waters of the Dnieper, how many of them sank into Eternity...

300 thousand of such people, who, according to the plan of the then authorities, were to “wash away the shame of being in the occupied territory” with their own blood, were mobilized - approximately 250-270 thousand of them died in the battle for the Dnieper. The total losses in this battle reached 380 thousand.

The mobilization of such people was carried out by field military registration and enlistment offices, which, as a rule, consisted of a platoon of soldiers and several officers. They took away everyone who could hold a weapon, even 16-17 year olds. Everything allegedly took place on legal grounds, because on the eve of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command, by order No. 089 of February 9, 1942, the right to conscript for military service was granted not only to the military councils of the army, but also to the commanders of divisions and units, and in unlimited numbers.

The worst thing is that most of those mobilized had no military experience at all, had not undergone any training, and were immediately thrown into battle without appropriate training. It is clear that most of them died in the first battle.

From the memoirs of General Pyotr Grigorenko:

« By the fall of 1944... there were no more people in the country. The mobilization of 1927, that is, seventeen-year-old youths, was being prepared. But we were not promised this replenishment either. The 4th Ukrainian Front was required to find human resources on the spot - mobilize the fighting ages in Western Ukraine, recruit volunteers in Transcarpathia and return the wounded and sick to their units. The shortage of people was so noticeable that mobilization was essentially turned into catching people, just as slave traders once caught blacks in Africa. Volunteering was organized in Soviet style, approximately the same way as a 100% “voluntary” turnout of Soviet citizens to the ballot boxes is organized».

In total, according to the calculations of military historian B.V. Sokolov, about 46.5 million people served in the Red Army during the war, of which, according to official data, 3.6 million people were recalled to work in industry and in the paramilitary forces of other departments. Thus, the net conscription is 42.9 million people against the net conscription in Germany of 15.9 million people, which is, respectively, 20.5% of the total population of the USSR in 1941 and 19.7% of the population of the Reich in 1939 year.

Of the 42.9 million conscripts about 12 million should be militias and people conscripted locally directly into units. “The fate of these local conscripts from the occupied territories was especially tragic,” writes B.V. Sokolov in the book “Unknown Zhukov: a portrait without retouching in the mirror of the era.”

And indeed, they were looked at as potential traitors to the Motherland and thrown, literally, to slaughter, so that the NKVD after the war would have less work to do to identify the “unreliable.” Although the “fault” of these people was only that they were abandoned along with the entire population during the retreat of the Red Army.

One of the senseless and merciless attacks on his own people, launched in December 1943 in Belarus by reinforcements arriving from the just liberated Oryol region, was well captured by the former platoon commander, Lieutenant Valentin Dyatlov:

« As the message progressed, a chain of people in civilian clothes with huge “sidors” behind their backs passed by. “Slavs, who are you, where are you from? - I asked.

- We are from the Oryol region, new additions.

- What kind of reinforcement is this when in civilian clothes and without rifles?

- Yes, they said that you would get it in battle...»

The artillery strike on the enemy lasted about five minutes. 36 guns of the artillery regiment “hollowed” the front line of the Germans. Visibility became even worse due to shell explosions...

And here comes the attack. The chain rose, wriggling like a black crooked snake. The second one is behind her. And these black wriggling and moving snakes were so absurd, so unnatural on the gray-white earth! Black on the snow is a perfect target.

And the German “poured” these chains with dense lead. Many firing points came to life. Large-caliber machine guns fired from the second line of the trench. The chains are stuck. The battalion commander shouted: “Forward... your mother!” Forward!.. Into battle! Forward! I’ll shoot you!” But it was impossible to get up. Try to tear yourself off the ground under artillery, machine gun and machine gun fire...

The commanders still managed to raise the “black” village infantry several times. But it's all in vain. The enemy fire was so dense that, after running a couple of steps, people fell as if they had been knocked down.

We, the artillerymen, also could not reliably help - there was no visibility, the Germans had heavily camouflaged the firing points and, most likely, the main machine-gun fire was coming from bunkers, and therefore the firing of our guns did not give the desired results».

No one has ever counted the losses among these unknown “soldiers”...

Later, after the war, the writers of that time were the first to try to attract public attention to this problem. In November 1943, Yuri Yanovsky, in his article “The Path of War,” first used the phrase “black infantry.”

23 years later, Mishchenko’s short story “Undressed Battalion” was published, which talked about the mobilized men who died in the fall of 1943.

In 1968, Oles Gonchar touched on this topic in his novel “Cathedral”.

Zakharchenko, Dimarov, Dmitrenko, Astafiev, and Klimov did not ignore this problem in their works.

This is how Grigory Klimov described this process in his autobiographical “Song of the Winner”: “ When the Red Army began to expel the Germans from Ukraine, the “homebodies” were quickly rounded up - this was not even done by the military registration and enlistment offices, but by the commanders of the advanced units themselves - they again shoved rifles into their hands and, without even changing into the overcoats they were wearing - at first battle line! They were called that way - “jackets”. The banks of the Dnieper, like spring flowers, were full of corpses in multi-colored civilian clothes».

Most of those newly drafted into the ranks of the Red Army died during the crossing of the Dnieper, when people, except the Germans, had to fight the water elements. It was decided to deliver the main blow to the enemy at headquarters with the forces of the 1st Ukrainian Front from the Bukrinsky bridgehead, where the right bank of the Dnieper is very high and steep, which was also well fortified by German troops. It was this impregnable bridgehead that unfired and unarmed soldiers had to storm.

According to the recollections of a number of eyewitnesses of those terrible days, often recruits went into battle “in civilian clothes”, in which they were mobilized, and even without any weapons.

The mobilizations and assaults of that time are quite vividly depicted by the famous Ukrainian front-line writer Anatoly Dimarov:

« There were no medical examinations. The crippled and sick were taken to the front. I was already disabled at the age of 20, blind and deaf from shell shock, but they took me anyway.

And they drove us towards the German machine guns, you know what? With half bricks! So there was a second genocide against Ukrainians.

We were not uniformed, not armed. We were driven all day through the bitter cold, and were driven to a place that was destroyed to the ground. They gave us those halves of bricks, showed us a huge reservoir covered with ice, and told us to wait for a signal - a rocket. And when it takes off, pour out onto the ice together and run towards the enemy, who is holed up on the opposite side behind a strong fence, and... knock him out of there with half-bricks. And let him think that these are... grenades. No one could turn back, because we were shown well-equipped trenches, in which every three steps there were Smershev men with machine guns aimed at our backs.

The only thing that saved me was that I had already smelled gunpowder and was running not in the first row, but in the fifth. We reached about a hundred meters from that fence, the Germans let us in. Can you imagine, bare ice, nowhere to hide! And how they struck with dagger fire from machine guns! The guys in front of me fell as if they had been knocked down, I also fell and lay there, and the soldier in front of me was already spinning from the bullets that hit him. It kept creeping up on me... Then the Germans started firing mortars; Have you heard of such mines, which were called “wahs”? It falls, hits the ice, does not explode, but jumps up 4-5 meters, then it explodes and the fragments go down. How did those fragments not kill me?.. And then an explosion - and a black hole into which I fell. That’s how the orderlies picked me up: with a brick tightly clamped in my hands».

An even more terrible picture is described by his colleague Viktor Astafiev, an eyewitness to the crossing of the Dnieper:

« The most terrible thing was the machine guns. Easy-to-carry, quick-firing cartridges with a five-hundred-round belt. All of them had been previously targeted and now, as if from the narrow necks of fire hoses, they were watering the shore, the island, the river, in which a mess of people was boiling.

Old and young, conscious and unconscious, volunteers and those mobilized by military registration and enlistment offices, penalties and guardsmen, Russians and non-Russians - they all shouted the same words: “Mom! My God! God!" and “Guard!”, “Help!”... And the machine guns flogged and flogged, raining down multi-colored deadly streams.

Grasping each other, the wounded and those who had not yet been hit by bullets walked in bundles under the water, the river seethed, shuddered from human convulsions, foamed with red breakers».

The number of dead was such that not everyone could even be given a proper burial. Eyewitnesses of those battles recall eerie details: the water in the Dnieper in those days was brown-red with human blood and tasted salty:

« Corpses floated thickly in the water with their eyes pecked out, beginning to become limp, with faces that were foaming, as if soaped, they were smashed by shells, mines, riddled with bullets... The sappers, who were sent to pull the corpses out of the water and bury them, could not cope with the job - too many people were killed... And then, across the river, the raking of corpses continued, more and more pits were filled with human mess, but many, many of those who fell on the bridgehead could not be found along the beams or buried"- wrote Astafiev.

Fresh reinforcements were rushed to the bridgehead 6 by 11 kilometers, which the Germans methodically mowed down with artillery fire, bombing and machine guns “to zero”, but at night reinforcements arrived, which also “melted” by darkness.

Another eyewitness to the battles for the Dnieper, the famous writer Viktor Astafiev, later wrote: “ When 25 thousand soldiers entered the Dnieper on one side, no more than 5-6 thousand came out on the opposite side».

A picture of the apocalypse on the Dnieper, in the memoirs of the same front-line writer Astafiev: “ We simply did not know how to fight. We covered with our blood, overwhelmed the enemies with our corpses».

In the 1990s, domestic scientists drew attention to the problem of the “black infantry”; one of the first was Doctor of Historical Sciences Koval. According to his calculations, the military mobilized about a quarter of a million 16-17 year olds on the territory of Ukraine. Now researchers Korol, Grinevich, and Rybchenko are working on this topic.

« The first to be transported across the Dnieper under terrible fire were the soldiers of the penal battalions. The soldiers swam holding on to trees, logs, boards - and drowned in thousands“,” wrote the famous Russian historian, Doctor of Historical Sciences Viktor Korol in his work “The Battle of the Dnieper: Heroism and Tragedy.” He pointed out the almost complete lack of means of crossing: as of September 22, 1943, at the height of the crossing, there were only 16 pontoons at the Bukrinsky bridgehead.

According to the evidence that was collected, it turned out that thousands of these “black jackets” died both during the crossing of the Dnieper and during the liberation of Dnepropetrovsk.

“Why the hell should we outfit and arm these crests?”

Since the Armed Forces of the USSR fought in a “costly way,” already in 1942 they began to experience difficulties in terms of human resources (we repeat, 17-year-olds and women began to be drafted into the army, and medical requirements for those who were previously considered unfit for service were reduced). But the main thing is that the losses were replenished by the men in those settlements that the Red Army occupied, and we can talk about several million.

Such huge sacrifices of unarmed people were on the conscience of Soviet military commanders, who treated the mobilized soldiers with disdain, not considering their lives valuable. Indicative in this regard is the statement of Deputy Supreme Commander-in-Chief Zhukov at a meeting before the start of the crossing of the Dnieper, which was witnessed by the officer for special assignments of the commander of the 1st Ukrainian Front Vatutin - Yuri Kovalenko.

When asked by the commanders what to wear for the 300 thousand mobilized, Zhukov replied: “ Like what? What they came in is what they will wear to fight!“When the topic of arming conscripts came up, the marshal’s cynicism crossed all boundaries: “ Do not arm these people with automatic weapons! They have barrage detachments behind them! Give them 300 thousand machine guns - and there will be nothing left of the barrier detachments. They will twist everyone and turn towards the Germans. Three-ruler model 1891!»

But the deputy commander of the 1st Ukrainian Front for rear affairs, General Kuleshov, reported that there were only 100 thousand three-rulers in warehouses. Then the commander of the Belarusian front, General Konstantin Rokosovsky, proposed sending a courier to Moscow to Headquarters, who would report the circumstances and ask for help with weapons and uniforms. And here Zhukov’s signature phrase sounded: “ Why are we, friends, fooling our heads here? Why the hell should we outfit and arm these crests? They are all traitors! The more we sink in the Dnieper, the fewer will have to be exiled to Siberia after the war».

For Zhukov, in general, the life of a soldier did not mean anything, the main thing was to achieve a result, at what cost - this was already secondary. He clearly expressed his position on this matter during a meeting with Allied commander Eisenhower in 1945, sharing with his colleague his experience in clearing fields:

« When we came across a minefield, our infantry attacked it in the same way if it were not there. We consider the losses we suffered from anti-personnel mines to be equal only to those that would have been suffered from machine gun fire and artillery if the Germans had decided to defend this area with a strong military formation instead of minefields. However, attacking infantry does not detonate anti-tank mines. And after it penetrates deep into the minefield and creates a bridgehead, sappers come up and make passages through which our military equipment can pass».

Eisenhower was shocked by this method, because he perfectly understood what awaited the American commander if he showed such ingenuity - shame, condemnation and trial.

Epilogue

I would like to conclude with words from the diary of Alexander Dovzhenko:

« I was at the Victory Parade yesterday... The army and people stood in front of the Mausoleum. Marshal Zhukov read a solemn and formidable Victory speech. When I remembered those who fell in battle in huge numbers unknown in history, I took off my headdress. Looking around, I noticed that no one else had taken off their hats. Thirty, if not forty, million victims and heroes seemed to have sunk into the ground, or did not live at all, they were remembered as a concept... Before the greatness of their memory, before the blood and torment, the square did not kneel, did not think, did not sigh, didn't take off her hat. This is probably how it should be. Maybe not».

Immense losses, the heroic tragedy of the return of Dnepropetrovsk are hardly a reason for all sorts of theatrical performances and political extras, which have recently become so fashionable in our city and surrounding areas on the occasion of this date - the “holiday of the liberation of Dnepropetrovsk.”

Red and salty with blood, the Dnieper looks little like a holiday...

January 24, 2015

The Battle of the Dnieper was one of the bloodiest in the history of wars. According to various sources, losses on both sides, including killed and wounded, ranged from 1.7 to 2.7 million people. This battle represented a series of strategic operations carried out by Soviet troops in 1943. These included the crossing of the Dnieper.

Great River

The Dnieper is the third largest river in Europe after the Danube and Volga. Its width in the lower reaches is about 3 km. It must be said that the right bank is much higher and steeper than the left. This feature significantly complicated the crossing of troops. In addition, in accordance with the directives of the Wehrmacht, German soldiers reinforced the opposite bank with a large number of barriers and fortifications.

Boost options

Faced with such a situation, the command of the Soviet Army thought about how to transport troops and equipment across the river. Two plans were developed, according to which the crossing of the Dnieper could take place. The first option included stopping troops on the river bank and gathering additional units to the places of proposed crossings. Such a plan made it possible to detect shortcomings in the enemy’s defensive line, as well as correctly determine the places where subsequent attacks would take place.

Next, a massive breakthrough was planned, which was supposed to end with the encirclement of the German defense lines and pushing their troops to positions unfavorable for them. In this situation, the Wehrmacht soldiers will be completely unable to provide any resistance to overcome their defensive lines. In fact, these tactics were very similar to those used by the Germans themselves to cross the Maginot Line early in the war.

But this option had a number of significant drawbacks. He gave time to the German command to gather additional forces in the Dnieper area, as well as to regroup troops and strengthen defenses to more effectively repel the growing onslaught of the Soviet Army in the appropriate places. In addition, such a plan exposed our troops to great danger of being attacked by mechanized units of German formations, and this, it should be noted, was almost the most effective weapon of the Wehrmacht since the beginning of the war on the territory of the USSR.

The second option is the crossing of the Dnieper by Soviet troops by delivering a powerful strike without any preparation along the entire front line at once. Such a plan did not give the Germans time to equip the so-called Eastern Wall, as well as to prepare the defense of their bridgeheads on the Dnieper. But this option could lead to huge losses in the ranks of the Soviet Army.

Preparation

As you know, German positions were located along the right bank of the Dnieper. And on the opposite side, Soviet troops occupied an area whose length was about 300 km. Enormous forces were brought here, so there was a catastrophic shortage of standard watercraft for such a large number of soldiers. The main units were forced to cross the Dnieper using literally improvised means. They crossed the river on randomly found fishing boats, homemade rafts made from logs, planks, tree trunks, and even on barrels.

No less a problem was the question of how to transport heavy equipment to the opposite bank. The fact is that at many bridgeheads they did not have time to deliver it in the required quantities, which is why the main burden of crossing the Dnieper fell on the shoulders of the soldiers of the rifle units. This state of affairs led to protracted battles and a significant increase in losses on the part of the Soviet troops.

Forcing

Finally the day came when the military might went on the offensive. The crossing of the Dnieper began. The date of the first crossing of the river is September 22, 1943. Then the bridgehead, located on the right bank, was taken. This was the area at the confluence of two rivers - the Pripyat and the Dnieper, which was located on the northern side of the front. The Fortieth, which was part of the Voronezh Front, and the Third Tank Army almost simultaneously managed to achieve the same success in the sector south of Kyiv.

After 2 days, another position, located on the western bank, was captured. This time it happened near Dneprodzerzhinsk. After another 4 days, Soviet troops successfully crossed the river in the Kremenchug area. Thus, by the end of the month, 23 bridgeheads were formed on the opposite bank of the Dnieper River. Some were so small that their width reached 10 km, and their depth was only 1-2 km.

The crossing of the Dnieper itself was carried out by 12 Soviet armies. In order to somehow disperse the powerful fire produced by the German artillery, many false bridgeheads were created. Their goal was to imitate the mass nature of the crossing.

The crossing of the Dnieper by Soviet troops is the clearest example of heroism. It must be said that the soldiers used even the slightest opportunity to cross to the other side. They swam across the river on any available craft that could somehow float on the water. The troops suffered heavy losses, constantly being under heavy enemy fire. They managed to firmly gain a foothold on the already conquered bridgeheads, literally burying themselves in the ground from the shelling of German artillery. In addition, the Soviet units covered with their fire new forces that came to their aid.

Protection of bridgeheads

German troops fiercely defended their positions, using powerful counterattacks at each crossing. Their primary goal was to destroy enemy troops before the heavy armor reached the right bank of the river.

The crossings were subject to massive air attack. German bombers fired at people on the water, as well as military units located on the shore. At the beginning, Soviet aviation operations were unorganized. But when it was synchronized with the rest of the ground forces, the defense of the crossings improved.

The actions of the Soviet Army were crowned with success. The crossing of the Dnieper in 1943 led to the capture of bridgeheads on the enemy bank. Fierce fighting continued throughout October, but all the territories recaptured from the Germans were retained, and some were even expanded. Soviet troops were accumulating forces for the next offensive.

Mass heroism

Thus ended the crossing of the Dnieper. Heroes of the Soviet Union - this most honorable title was immediately awarded to 2,438 soldiers who participated in those battles. The Battle of the Dnieper is an example of extraordinary courage and self-sacrifice shown by Soviet soldiers and officers. Such a truly massive award was the only one during the entire Great Patriotic War.

Battle of the Dnieper
	Dnieper River, USSR
	Victory of the Red Army
Opponents
Commanders
G. K. Zhukov K. K. Rokossovsky I. V. Konev N. F. Vatutin	Erich von Manstein Gunther Hans von Kluge
Strengths of the parties
2,650,000 soldiers 51,000 guns 2400 tanks 2850 aircraft	1,250,000 soldiers 12,600 guns 2100 tanks 2000 aircraft
Military losses
Irreversible 417,323 people, sanitary 1,269,841 people	From 400,000 people up to 1,000,000 people

Battle of the Dnieper- a series of interconnected strategic operations of the Great Patriotic War, carried out in the second half of 1943 on the banks of the Dnieper. Up to 4 million people took part in the battle on both sides, and its front stretched over 1,400 kilometers. As a result of a four-month operation, Left Bank Ukraine was almost completely liberated by the Red Army from the German invaders. During the operation, significant forces of the Red Army crossed the river, created several strategic bridgeheads on the right bank of the river, and also liberated the city of Kyiv. The Battle of the Dnieper became one of the largest battles in world history.

Description of the battle. Features of the definition

The battle for the Dnieper became one of the bloodiest - according to various estimates, the number of losses on both sides (including killed and wounded) ranged from 1.7 million to 2.7 million. Considering the significant area where the battle took place, some historians refuse to count the battle for the Dnieper in one single battle. In their opinion, the most bloody battle in the history of mankind was the Battle of Stalingrad.

The main battles, the totality of which represents the Battle of the Dnieper, are:

• The first stage of the battle is the Chernigov-Poltava operation (August 26 - September 30, 1943). It includes:
• Chernigov-Pripyat operation (August 26 - September 30, 1943)
• Sumy-Priluki operation (1943) (August 26 - September 30, 1943)
• Poltava-Kremenchug operation (1943) (August 26 - September 30, 1943)
• The second stage of the battle of the Lower Dnieper operation (September 26 - December 20, 1943). It includes:
• Melitopol operation (September 26 - November 5, 1943)
• Zaporozhye operation (1943) (October 10-14, 1943)
• Pyatikhatsky operation (October 15 - December 20, 1943)
• Znamenskaya operation (October 22 - November 5, 1943)
• Dnepropetrovsk operation (October 23 - December 23, 1943)
• Usually they are not divided into stages and are considered independent:
• Dnieper airborne operation (September 1943)
• Kiev offensive operation (1943) (November 3-13, 1943)
• Kiev defensive operation (November 13 - December 23, 1943)

Closely related to the Battle of the Dnieper is the Donbass offensive operation carried out simultaneously with it, which official Soviet historiography sometimes also considers an integral part of the Battle of the Dnieper. To the north, the troops of the Western, Kalinin and Bryansk fronts also conducted the Smolensk and Bryansk offensive operations, preventing the Germans from transferring their troops to the Dnieper.

Before the battle

After the end of the Battle of Kursk, the Wehrmacht lost all hope of a decisive victory over the USSR. The losses were significant, and to make matters worse, the army as a whole was much less experienced than before, as many of its best fighters had fallen in previous battles. As a result, despite significant forces, the Wehrmacht could only realistically hope for tactical success in the long-term defense of its positions from Soviet troops. German offensives from time to time brought significant results, but the Germans were unable to translate them into a strategic victory.

By mid-August, Hitler realized that the Soviet offensive could not be stopped - at least until agreement was reached among the Allies. Therefore, his solution was to gain time by building numerous fortifications to contain the Red Army. He demanded that Wehrmacht soldiers defend positions on the Dnieper at any cost.

On the other hand, Stalin was determined to force the return of the occupied territories. The most important in this regard were the industrial regions of Ukraine, both because of the extremely high population density and because of the concentration of coal and other deposits there, which would provide the Soviet state with sorely lacking resources. Thus, the southern direction became the main direction of attack for Soviet troops, even to the detriment of the fronts to the north.

Start of the battle

German defense preparations

The order to build a complex of defensive structures near the Dnieper, known as the “Eastern Wall,” was given by the German headquarters on August 11, 1943 and began to be carried out immediately.

Fortifications were erected along the entire bank of the Dnieper, but there was little hope of providing reliable and massive defense in such a short period of time. As a result, the “Eastern Wall” was not equally strong along the entire length of the front. The most serious fortifications were concentrated in the places where Soviet troops were most likely to cross: near Kremenchug and Nikopol, as well as in Zaporozhye.

In addition to defensive measures, on September 7, 1943, the SS and Wehrmacht forces were ordered to completely devastate the areas from which they had to retreat, in order to slow down the advance of the Red Army and try to complicate the supply of its formations. This order on the “scorched earth” tactics was carried out strictly, accompanied by the mass extermination of civilians.

On August 26, 1943, Soviet divisions began moving along the entire 1,400-kilometer front stretching from Smolensk to the Sea of ​​Azov. It was a large-scale operation involving 2,650,000 men, 51,000 guns, 2,400 tanks and 2,850 aircraft, divided into five fronts:

• Central Front (20 October renamed 1st Belorussian Front)
• Voronezh Front (20 October renamed 1st Ukrainian Front)
• Steppe Front (20 October renamed 2nd Ukrainian Front)
• Southwestern Front (20 October renamed 3rd Ukrainian Front)
• Southern Front (20 October renamed 4th Ukrainian Front)

In total, 36 combined arms, 4 tank and 5 air armies were involved in the operations.

Despite the significant numerical superiority, the offensive was extremely difficult. German resistance was fierce - fierce battles took place for every city and every village. The Wehrmacht made extensive use of rearguards: even after the withdrawal of the main German units, a garrison remained in every city and at every height, slowing down the advance of Soviet troops. However, by the beginning of September, in the offensive zone of the Central Front, Soviet troops cut through the German front and rushed through the resulting gap to the Dnieper. On September 21, they liberated Chernigov during the Chernigov-Pripyat operation.

Three weeks after the start of the offensive, despite the huge losses of the Red Army, it became clear that the Wehrmacht could not hold back Soviet attacks on the flat, open space of the steppes, where the numerical superiority of the Red Army easily ensured its victory. Manstein requested 12 new divisions as a last hope to stop the advance, but the German reserves were already dangerously depleted. Years later, Manstein wrote in his memoirs:

As a consequence, on September 15, 1943, Hitler ordered Army Group South to retreat to the defensive fortifications on the Dnieper. The so-called “run to the Dnieper” began. Despite all efforts, Soviet troops were unable to forestall the enemy in reaching the Dnieper. However, the German troops did not have time to take up a reliable defense along the western bank of the Dnieper. On September 21, they were the first to reach the Dnieper and the next day, the troops of the 13th Army of the Central Front crossed it on the move in the Chernobyl area. The next day, September 22, the troops of the Voronezh Front achieved the same success in a bend in the Velikiy Bukrin area.

To the south, a particularly bloody battle for Poltava unfolded. The city was well fortified, and the garrison defending it was well prepared. After a number of unsuccessful assaults, which seriously slowed down the advance of the Soviet Steppe Front, its commander, General I. S. Konev, decided to bypass the city and go straight to the Dnieper. After two days of fierce street fighting, on September 23, the Poltava garrison was destroyed. On September 25, the armies of the Steppe Front reached the Dnieper.

So, by the end of September 1943, Soviet troops reached the Dnieper everywhere and captured 23 bridgeheads on it. Only the Nikopol-Krivoy Rog bridgehead on the eastern bank of the Dnieper in Donbass remained in the hands of German troops. On the southernmost section of the front, the opponents were divided by the Molochnaya River. However, the hardest battles were yet to come.

Dnieper airborne operation

In order to weaken resistance on the right bank of the Dnieper, the Soviet command decided to land parachute troops on the right bank. So, on September 24, 1943, the Dnieper airborne operation was launched. The goal of the Soviet paratroopers was to disrupt the approach of German reinforcements to the newly captured bridgeheads on the Voronezh front.

The operation ended in complete failure. Due to the pilots’ poor knowledge of the area, the first wave of troops was dropped on Soviet positions and, partially, on the Dnieper. The second wave of 5,000 paratroopers was scattered over an area of ​​several tens of square kilometers. Moreover, due to poorly conducted reconnaissance of the area, which did not allow detecting the mechanized units of the Germans, most of the landing force, due to the lack of anti-tank weapons, was suppressed soon after the landing. Some groups, having lost radio contact with the center, tried to attack German supply units or joined the partisan movement.

Despite the heavy losses, the Dnieper airborne operation diverted the attention of a significant number of German mechanized formations, which made it possible to carry out the crossing of troops with fewer losses. However, after the failure of the Vyazemsk and Dnieper landing operations, the Supreme High Command Headquarters abandoned the further massive use of landing forces.

Crossing of the Dnieper

Selecting an action scenario

The Dnieper is the third largest river in Europe, after the Volga and Danube. In the lower reaches the river can be up to 3 kilometers wide, and the fact that the river has been dammed in some places only increases the possibility of it overflowing. The right bank is much higher and steeper than the left, which only made the crossing more difficult. In addition to this, the opposite bank was turned by German army soldiers into a huge complex of barriers and fortifications, according to Wehrmacht directives.

Faced with such a situation, the Soviet command had two options for solving the problem of crossing the Dnieper. The first option was to stop the troops on the eastern bank of the Dnieper and gather additional forces to the crossing points, which gave time to discover the weakest point in the German defense line and subsequent attack in that place (not necessarily in the lower reaches of the Dnieper), to begin a massive breakthrough and encirclement of the German defense lines , squeezing German troops into positions where they would be unable to resist overcoming the defensive lines (actions very similar to the Wehrmacht tactics when overcoming the Maginot Line in 1940). This option, accordingly, gave the Germans time to gather additional forces, strengthen their defenses and regroup their troops to repel the onslaught of Soviet forces at the appropriate points. Moreover, it exposed Soviet troops to the possibility of being attacked by German mechanized units - this, in fact, was the most effective weapon of the German forces since 1941.

The second scenario was to launch a massive strike without the slightest delay, and force the Dnieper on the move along the entire section of the front. This option did not leave time for the final equipment of the “Eastern Wall” and for preparing to repel the attack on the German side, but it led to much larger losses on the part of the Soviet troops.

Soviet troops occupied the coast opposite from the German troops for almost 300 kilometers. All the few standard watercraft were used by the troops, but they were sorely lacking. Therefore, the main forces crossed the Dnieper using improvised means: fishing boats, improvised rafts made of logs, barrels, tree trunks and planks (see one of the photographs). A big problem was the crossing of heavy equipment: on many bridgeheads, troops were unable to quickly transport it in sufficient quantities to the bridgeheads, which led to protracted battles for their defense and expansion and increased losses of Soviet troops. The entire burden of crossing the river fell on the rifle units.

Forcing

The first bridgehead on the right bank of the Dnieper was conquered on September 22, 1943 at the confluence of the Dnieper and the Pripyat River, in the northern part of the front. Almost simultaneously, the 3rd Guards Tank Army and the 40th Army of the Voronezh Front achieved the same success south of Kyiv. On September 24, another position on the western bank was recaptured near Dneprodzerzhinsk, and on September 28, another one near Kremenchug. By the end of the month, 23 bridgeheads had been created on the opposite bank of the Dnieper, some of them 10 kilometers wide and 1-2 kilometers deep. In total, 12 Soviet armies crossed the Dnieper by September 30. Many false bridgeheads were also organized, the purpose of which was to simulate a mass crossing and disperse the firepower of German artillery. From an eyewitness account of a reconnaissance tanker:

For his courage and heroism, the commander was awarded the Order of Bohdan Khmelnitsky.

The crossing of the Dnieper is the clearest example of the heroism of Soviet troops. The soldiers, using the slightest opportunity to cross, crossed the river on any floating craft and suffered heavy losses under the fierce fire of German troops. After this, the Soviet troops practically created a new fortified area on the conquered bridgeheads, actually digging themselves into the ground from enemy fire, and covering the approach of new forces with their fire.

Protection of bridgeheads

Soon, German troops launched powerful counterattacks at almost every crossing, hoping to destroy the Soviet troops before the heavy equipment reached the other side of the river and entered the battle.

Thus, the crossing at Borodaevsk, mentioned by Marshal Konev in his memoirs, was subjected to powerful enemy artillery fire. Bombers were almost everywhere, bombing the crossing and military units located near the river. Konev mentioned, in this regard, shortcomings in the organization of air support on the Soviet side, about the establishment of air patrols of the troop crossing area, in order to prevent bombing of approaches to crossings, and about his order to send reinforcement of artillery to the front line so that it would repel enemy tank attacks . When Soviet aviation became more organized and improved the synchronization of its actions with the ground forces of the front, supported by the fire of hundreds of guns and artillery formations of the Katyusha guards mortar, the situation with the defense of the crossings began to improve. Crossing the Dnieper became relatively safer for Soviet soldiers.

Such situations were not isolated, becoming a problem along almost the entire crossing line. Despite the retention of all crossing points in the hands of the Soviet army, the losses on its part were truly colossal - at the beginning of October, most divisions retained only 25-30% of their nominal personnel and weapons. Nevertheless, Soviet efforts were crowned with success - during fierce battles that lasted throughout October, all the bridgeheads on the Dnieper were held, most of them were expanded, and sufficient forces were accumulated on them to resume the offensive.

Right Bank Campaign

Capture of the lower Dnieper (Lower Dnieper operation)

By mid-October, the forces gathered by the command in the area of ​​the lower crossings of the Dnieper were already capable of launching the first massive attack on German fortifications on the opposite bank in the southern part of the front. Thus, a powerful attack was planned on the Kremenchug-Dnepropetrovsk front line. At the same time, large-scale military operations and troop movements were launched along the entire front in order to divert German forces (and the attention of his command) from the southern crossings and from the Kyiv region.

By the end of December 1943, the troops of the 2nd Ukrainian Front, during the Pyatikhatskaya operation, the Znamenskaya operation and the Dnepropetrovsk operation, created and controlled a huge strategic bridgehead in the Dnepropetrovsk-Kremenchug region, with a front width of more than 300 kilometers and in some places up to 80 kilometers deep. To the south of this region, the Soviet command carried out the Melitopol operation, which ended with the cutting off of the Crimean group of German troops from their main forces. All German hopes of stopping the Soviet advance were lost.

Kyiv offensive operation of 1943

In the central sector of the battle, in the Voronezh Front, events developed very dramatically. A front strike group was assembled at the Bukrinsky bridgehead. In October 1943, it twice went on the offensive with the goal of liberating Kyiv with a blow from the south. Both attacks were repulsed by the Germans. Then, by the beginning of November, one tank and one combined arms army, as well as several corps, were secretly withdrawn from this bridgehead and transferred to the Lyutezhsky bridgehead north of Kyiv. The blow from there was a complete surprise for the enemy. On November 6, Kyiv was liberated and a second strategic bridgehead was created around it.

Attempts by the German command to liquidate him and return Kyiv were repulsed by Soviet troops during the Kyiv defensive operation. With its completion, the battle for the Dnieper is considered completed.

Results of the battle

The Battle of the Dnieper was another major defeat for the Wehrmacht forces. The Red Army, which Hitler intended to destroy on the Dnieper, not only was not destroyed, but also forced the Wehrmacht to retreat. Kyiv was liberated, and German forces were unable to resist Soviet troops in the area where the lower crossings were established. The right bank was still largely in the hands of the German command, but both sides clearly understood that this situation would not last too long. The most important industrial areas of Donbass and the metallurgical centers of southern Ukraine, vast territories with a population of tens of millions of people, were liberated. Despite the great destruction, their restoration began immediately, and already at the beginning of 1944, a rapid increase in the output of military products began there.

In addition to this, the Battle of the Dnieper clearly demonstrated the strength and power of the partisan movement. The "Rail War", carried out by Soviet partisans from September to October 1943, greatly interfered with the supply of the warring German divisions, being the source of many problems in the German troops. Already at the beginning of 1944, the Red Army began the liberation of Right Bank Ukraine.

The Battle of the Dnieper is characterized by examples of mass heroism of soldiers and commanders. It is significant that for crossing the Dnieper, 2,438 soldiers were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Such a massive award for one operation was the only one in the entire history of the war. Here are just a few of the many who received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for the successful crossing of the Dnieper River and the courage and courage shown during this(a complete list of Heroes of the Soviet Union for crossing the Dnieper is contained in the book: Dnieper - the river of heroes. - 2nd edition, additional - Kyiv: Publishing House of Political Literature of Ukraine, 1988):

• Avdeenko, Pyotr Petrovich - Major General, commander of the 51st Rifle Corps
• Akhmetshin, Kayum Khabibrakhmanovich - assistant commander of the saber platoon of the 58th Guards Cavalry Regiment of the 16th Guards Cavalry Division, guard foreman.
• Astafiev Vasily Mikhailovich - guard captain
• Balukov, Nikolai Mikhailovich - commander of a machine gun company of the 529th Infantry Regiment of the 163rd Infantry Division of the 38th Army of the Voronezh Front, senior lieutenant.
• Dmitriev, Ivan Ivanovich - pontoon platoon commander, lieutenant
• Zelepukin, Ivan Grigorievich - guard sergeant, commander of the mortar company control section of the 202nd Guards Rifle Regiment of the 68th Guards Rifle Division.
• Zonov, Nikolai Fedorovich - guard lieutenant, commander of a sapper platoon of the 1st Guards separate airborne sapper battalion of the 10th Guards Airborne Division of the 37th Army of the Steppe Front. On the night of October 1, 1943, his platoon transported personnel of the 24th Guards Regiment across the Dnieper, and then participated in repelling enemy counterattacks on the right bank of the river.
• Kiselev, Sergei Semyonovich - assistant platoon commander of the 78th Guards Rifle Regiment of the 25th Guards Red Banner Sinelnikovskaya Rifle Division of the 6th Army of the Southwestern Front, Guard Senior Sergeant.
• Kotov Boris Aleksandrovich - mortar crew commander, sergeant
• Lobanov, Ivan Mikhailovich - section commander of the 20th separate reconnaissance company of the 69th Red Banner Sevsk Rifle Division of the 18th Rifle Corps of the 65th Army of the Central Front, sergeant.
• Fesin, Ivan Ivanovich - Major General
• Budylin, Nikolai Vasilyevich - commander of the 10th Guards Rifle Regiment of the 6th Guards Rifle Division of the 13th Army of the Central Front, guard lieutenant colonel,
• Kolesnikov, Vasily Grigorievich - company commander of the 385th Infantry Regiment of the 112th Infantry Division of the 60th Army of the Central Front, captain.
• Pilipenko, Mikhail Korneevich - junior sergeant, signalman-reconnaissance officer, 1318th Infantry Regiment, 163rd Infantry Division, 38th Army of the Voronezh Front, later Lieutenant General of the USSR in the Signal Corps, Colonel General of Ukraine.
• Ruvinsky, Veniamin Abramovich - Colonel, commander of the 228th separate engineer battalion of the 152nd Infantry Division of the 46th Army of the Southwestern Front.
• Sharipov, Fatykh Zaripovich - senior lieutenant, commander of a tank company of the 183rd tank brigade of the 10th tank corps of the 40th army of the Voronezh Front.
• Kombarov, Egor Ignatievich - sergeant, 25th Guards Mechanized Brigade of the 1st Ukrainian Front.

In the western strategic direction, troops of the Kalinin, Western and Bryansk fronts were preparing for an offensive with the goal of defeating Army Group Center.

The Soviet command did not have a consensus on how to defeat the enemy. The Marshal of the Soviet Union proposed, and in this he was supported by the First Deputy Chief of the General Staff, General of the Army, to carry out operations to cut off and encircle significant enemy groups, in particular in the Donbass. However, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief did not share this point of view. He believed that it would take considerable time to implement such a plan, and the enemy would have time to organize defense on the approaches to the Dnieper. Therefore, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief demanded that the German formations be quickly driven back from the lines they occupied with frontal attacks. This was justified by the fact that, according to intelligence data, German troops were preparing defense along the line of the Narva, Pskov, Vitebsk, Orel rivers, the Sozh, Dnieper and Molochnaya rivers.

As a result, a decision was made to conduct a series of successive operations with strikes in several directions and the deployment of an offensive on a wide front. This led to the dissection of the enemy group into parts, which lost operational communication with each other, which ensured the defeat and destruction of each of them separately.

The High Command of the Wehrmacht, after the defeat at Kursk, decided to go on the defensive on the entire eastern front. German troops were ordered to firmly hold their occupied lines, stop the advance of Soviet troops at any cost and retain the most important economic areas. At the same time, the German command developed a defense plan that provided for the creation of a well-fortified line from the Baltic to the Black Sea - the “Eastern Wall”, which ran north of Lake Peipsi, along the river. Narva, east of Pskov, Nevel, Vitebsk, Orsha, further through Gomel, along the Sozh and Dnieper rivers in its middle course and along the river. Dairy. An engineering-developed defense, rich in anti-tank and anti-personnel weapons, was created. In places where, in the opinion of the German command, Soviet troops could mark a crossing, the most durable multi-line defense was prepared. In a number of areas on the left bank of the Dnieper, the enemy built strong bridgeheads. Particularly powerful fortifications were in the areas of Kremenchug, Zaporozhye and Nikopol.

The “Eastern Wall,” according to the German leadership, was supposed to become an insurmountable barrier for the Red Army and stop its advance to the west. “...It’s more likely that the Dnieper will flow back than the Russians will overcome it...” Hitler said at one of the party meetings in Berlin, after the Red Army, having won a victory at Kursk, launched an offensive to the west on a broad front.

In the southwestern direction, Soviet troops were opposed by a strong enemy group. It consisted of five armies (4 from Army Group South and one from Army Group Center). This group consisted of 1.24 million soldiers and officers, 12 thousand guns and mortars, about 2.1 thousand tanks and assault guns and up to 2 thousand aircraft. Soviet troops here had more than 2.6 million people, over 51.2 thousand guns and mortars, over 2.4 thousand tanks and self-propelled artillery units, about 2.9 thousand aircraft.

Soviet troops outnumbered the enemy in personnel by 2.1 times, in tanks - by 1.1, in aircraft - by 1.4 times, and in guns and mortars alone - by 4 times. The fronts were preparing for a new offensive under very difficult conditions. After 1.5 months of heavy and continuous fighting near Kursk, the troops broke away a great distance from their supply bases, having spent most of the material resources they had during this time. The railway network was just being restored. The troops had to transport everything they needed by motor transport, and there was a chronic shortage of it.

The Battle of the Dnieper began in different directions and consisted of several operations of groups of fronts united by the common plan of the Supreme Command Headquarters.

According to the plan of the Supreme High Command Headquarters, the fronts in the southwestern direction were tasked with delivering frontal cutting blows to the enemy, reaching the Dnieper, crossing it on the move on a wide front, seizing bridgeheads and forestalling the enemy in organizing defense in Right Bank Ukraine. At the same time, the troops of the Western, left wing of the Kalinin, as well as the Bryansk fronts were supposed to attack in the Smolensk and Bryansk-Gomel directions and thereby deprive the enemy of the opportunity to regroup forces to the south.

In close connection with the operations of the Central, Voronezh and Steppe Fronts, the offensive operation of the South-Western and Southern Fronts was carried out in order to liberate Donbass.

Donbass strategic offensive operation of troops The Southwestern and Southern Fronts began at a time when the Voronezh and Steppe Fronts were developing an offensive on Kharkov, creating a serious threat to the flank and rear of the group of German troops defending in the Donbass. The Wehrmacht command made every effort to stop the advance of Soviet troops in the Kharkov direction. 15 divisions were transferred there, including 4 tank divisions from Donbass. The weakening of the enemy group operating there created favorable conditions for the Red Army's offensive on this section of the Soviet-German front.

On August 13, 1943, troops of the Southwestern (Army General) and Southern (Army General) fronts began the liberation of Donbass.

The plan of the operation was to deliver the main blow with the forces of the Southwestern Front in the direction of Barvenkovo, Pavlograd, defeat the enemy and, reaching the Zaporozhye region, cut off the escape route to the west for his Donbass group. The troops of the Southern Front were supposed to strike at Stalino (Donetsk) in order to break through the enemy defenses on the river. Mius. The offensive of the Soviet troops in the Donbass was to be supported by the 8th (Lieutenant General of Aviation) and 17th (Lieutenant General of Aviation) air armies.

On August 13, from the area south of the city of Zmiev, formations of the 1st Guards Army of the Colonel General went on the offensive, and on August 16, from the Izyum area, the main group of the Southwestern Front - the 6th Army of the General and the 12th Army of the Major General. However, its advance developed slowly. On August 22, the 8th Guards Army of Lieutenant General was brought into the battle from the second echelon, but this did not produce the expected results. On August 28, formations of the 6th, 12th and 8th Guards armies consolidated their positions on the achieved lines.

At the same time, the 46th Army of the Lieutenant General, brought into battle in the zone of the 1st Guards Army, advanced only 4 km and on August 30 also received an order to consolidate the line. The greatest success was achieved in the offensive zone of the 3rd Guards Army of the general, which by the end of September 8 had advanced 150-180 km. The German command was forced to begin a systematic withdrawal of its formations to the rear lines. Pursuing the enemy, the main forces of the front's strike group reached the Dnieper. In the period from September 23 to 30, troops of the Southwestern Front eliminated the enemy's bridgehead fortifications in the Dnepropetrovsk area and, having crossed the Dnieper, captured two small bridgeheads south of this city. The troops of the left wing of the front reached the Zaporozhye region, where they were stopped by German troops.

Before crossing the Dnieper. September 1943

The troops of the Southern Front went on the offensive on August 18. The breakthrough of the enemy defenses on Mius was carried out by the 5th Shock (Lieutenant General) and 2nd Guards (Lieutenant General) armies. By the end of the next day, in some directions they had advanced 20 km to the west, and by August 30, with the assistance of the Azov military flotilla of the admiral, they liberated Taganrog. By September 22, the main forces of the front reached the river. Molochnaya and to the Melitopol area, completing the liberation of Donbass in its zone. In general, during the Donbass strategic offensive operation, Soviet troops advanced westward to a depth of 300 km. An important economic region was returned to the country, and favorable conditions were created for the liberation of Northern Tavria, Right Bank Ukraine and Crimea. For the exemplary performance of the command’s combat missions and the courage and heroism shown, 80 soldiers were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, and the pilots of the Heroes of the Soviet Union were awarded the second Gold Star medal. Thousands of soldiers were awarded orders and medals of the Soviet Union.

Even during the Battle of Kursk, the Supreme High Command Headquarters set the task for the Central Front to reach the river. Gum. Subsequently, it was ordered to develop an offensive in the general direction of Konotop, Nizhyn, Kyiv and, under favorable conditions, to cross the Desna River with part of the forces and conduct an offensive along its right bank in the direction of Chernigov. On August 21, 1943, the Army General reported to the Chief of the General Staff an updated plan for carrying out Chernigov-Pripyat offensive operation.

The troops of the Central Front went on the offensive on August 26. The advance of the Soviet troops was slow, and only after stubborn fighting the 65th Army (Lieutenant General) in cooperation with the 2nd Tank Army (Lieutenant General) liberated the city of Sevsk. The greatest result was achieved by the 60th Army of Lieutenant General, whose divisions by August 31 broke through the enemy’s defenses, advanced 60 km and entered the territory of Ukraine. Using this success, the front commander regrouped the 13th Army of the Lieutenant General, two tank and one artillery corps into the 60th Army zone, and also redirected the main efforts of the 16th Air Army to this direction. Despite the fact that the enemy sent large forces of tanks, infantry and aviation to eliminate the breakthrough, the troops of the left wing of the front reached the Desna south of Novgorod-Seversky on September 3 and began to develop an offensive to the southwest along the left bank of the river.

Self-propelled artillery units are moving towards the crossing. September 1943

On September 6, the Supreme Command Headquarters clarified the task of the Central Front and strengthened it with one army and a cavalry corps. She ordered the main forces of the front to attack Chernigov, and part of the forces to attack Gomel. By the end of September 21, the armies of the Central Front, having crossed the Desna on the move, liberating the cities of Nizhyn, Novgorod-Seversky and Chernigov, reached the Dnieper. On September 22, the advanced formations of the 13th Army were the first to cross it. Developing the offensive, the next day they advanced to a depth of 35 km and crossed the river on the move. Pripyat and captured bridgeheads on its right bank. On September 24-29, the Dnieper was crossed by the main forces of the 13th, 60th and 61st armies and the 7th mechanized corps (lieutenant general), which captured seven bridgeheads in a 140 km wide strip. The 48th (Lieutenant General) and 65th (Lieutenant General P.I. Batov) armies operating in the Gomel direction reached the river. Sozh and captured two bridgeheads on its right bank.

Hero of the Soviet Union Guard Senior Sergeant S.D. Dovgopoly was one of the first to cross the Dnieper. September 1943

The successful advance of the troops of the Central Front created favorable conditions for carrying out Sumy-Pryluki offensive operation troops of the Voronezh Front, with the task of reaching the Dnieper and seizing crossings across the river. The commander of the front troops, the army general, decided to deliver the main blow in the direction of Poltava, Kremenchug, and an auxiliary blow - towards Mirgorod. In two days, the front's attack groups advanced 30 km in some areas, but by the end of the month, due to stubborn enemy resistance, they were stopped, and at the end of August a fierce battle broke out on the Zenkov-Krasnokutsk line.

At the same time, as a result of the successful offensive of the Central Front in the Konotop direction, a threat of encirclement was created for the enemy group defending in front of the right wing of the Voronezh Front. To avoid it, German troops began to retreat. Taking advantage of this, the 38th Army (Lieutenant General) of the Voronezh Front began pursuing the enemy and on September 2 liberated the regional center of Ukraine - the city of Sumy.

From September 6, the Voronezh Front was redirected by the Supreme Command Headquarters to the Kiev direction. The 3rd Guards Tank Army and the 1st Guards Cavalry Corps, which later formed the front's mobile group, were transferred to its composition. He delivered the main blow with the right wing (28th, 40th and 3rd Guards Tank Armies) in the Sumy-Priluki direction. The troops of his left wing were supposed to assist the Steppe Front, whose task was to defeat the Poltava enemy group and develop an offensive on Kremenchug. Continuing the offensive, the troops of the Voronezh Front captured the cities of Romny, Lokhvitsa, Gadyach and broke the resistance of German troops on the lines of the Vorskla, Psel, and Sulla rivers. On the night of September 20, Army General N.F. Vatutin brought into the battle a mobile group of the front (the 3rd Guards Tank Army of the Lieutenant General and the 1st Guards Cavalry Corps of the Lieutenant General), which reached the Dnieper by the end of September 21.

On the night of September 22, the advanced units of the 3rd Guards Tank Army reached the Dnieper and on the same day crossed it southeast of Kyiv, in the Velikiy Bukrin area. They skillfully used fishing boats, logs, and other improvised means prepared by the partisans. One of the first to reach the opposite bank near the village of Grigorovka was a company of machine gunners of the 51st Guards Tank Brigade (lieutenant colonel). The company was commanded by Lieutenant N.I. Sinashkin. The four brave warriors especially distinguished themselves - privates, and. They were the first to cross to the right bank, quickly dug in there and began a firefight with the enemy's advanced unit. This was the beginning of the creation of the important Bukrinsky bridgehead. For valor and courage V.N. Ivanov, N.E. Petukhov, I.D. Semenov and V.A. Sysolyatin was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

On the right bank of the Dnieper. September 1943

At the end of September, north of Kyiv, in the Lyutezh region, troops of the 38th Army (Lieutenant General N.E. Chibisov) crossed the Dnieper. One of the first to cross here was a group of 25 soldiers under the command of a senior sergeant from the 842nd Infantry Regiment of the 240th Infantry Division (Colonel). For twenty hours, a handful of brave warriors fought an unequal battle with many times superior enemy forces and still retained the captured bridgehead. For the steadfastness and heroism shown in this battle, all fighters of the unit were awarded orders, and their commander P.P. Nefedov was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. 36 soldiers, sergeants and officers of this division, including its commander, received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for military distinction during the crossing of the Dnieper. By October 10, the Lyutezh bridgehead was expanded, and repeated attempts by the enemy to eliminate it were unsuccessful.

Soviet soldiers on a bridgehead north of Kyiv. September 1943

To assist ground troops in expanding bridgeheads and to combat suitable enemy reserves, the commander of the Voronezh Front, Army General N.F. Vatutin decided to use airborne troops. However, the preparation of the three airborne brigades at his disposal for the task was carried out poorly. The front commander and headquarters did not have a clear idea of ​​the enemy in the intended landing areas. They believed that there was no enemy in them. In reality, units of the 19th Panzer Division were there and at the same time the 10th Motorized and two Infantry Divisions were approaching. On the night of September 24, about two airborne brigades were dropped on 138 landing aircraft. The landing was unsuccessful. Due to disorganization in the landing, some paratrooper units ended up in the location of their troops, and some - directly into the Dnieper. The main landing forces found themselves in areas where the enemy was concentrated, and, having suffered losses, did not fulfill the tasks assigned to them. The surviving units were forced to go into the forests west of Chernigov, where they later successfully operated together with the partisans.
By the end of September, front troops reached the Dnieper in a 300-kilometer strip and captured nine bridgeheads north and south of Kyiv, thereby disrupting the stability of enemy defenses on the right bank of the river.

The troops of the Steppe Front also developed an offensive to the west. On September 20, formations of the 5th Guards (Lieutenant General) and 53rd (Lieutenant General) armies reached the close approaches to Poltava. On the same day, the commander of the front troops assigned them the task of carrying out a new Poltava offensive operation. Its plan was to bypass Poltava from the north and south, surround the enemy group operating there and liberate the city.

On September 21, the forward detachments of the 53rd and 5th Guards armies rushed to the river. Vorskla. By the end of the day, along the entire offensive zone, they reached the river, but were unable to cross it on the move. This task was successfully completed the next morning, and by the end of it, the formations of the two armies had deeply engulfed Poltava from the north and south. On September 23, the city was completely liberated from the enemy. As a result of the Poltava operation, the troops of the Steppe Front advanced 50 km westward and, continuing the offensive, reached the approaches to Kremenchug on September 25.

To develop success, the commander of the front forces ordered frontal attacks by the forces of the 5th Guards and 53rd armies, breaking through enemy defenses, reaching a wide strip to the Dnieper and immediately seizing bridgeheads on its right bank.
Overcoming the powerful water barrier presented great difficulties. The Dnieper is the third largest river in Europe after the Volga and Danube, in its lower reaches its width reaches 3 km, and the fact that the river was dammed in some places only increased the possibility of a spill. The right bank is much higher and steeper than the left, which made the crossing, and especially the crossing, even more difficult. In addition to everything, the opposite bank was turned by German troops into a huge complex of barriers and fortifications.

The advanced Soviet units reached the Dnieper without standard crossing facilities, and the rear units were far behind. The troops had to operate in forested and swampy areas; the onset of rains made the roads impassable for transport. Therefore, it was necessary to organize the crossing of the Dnieper on the move.

On September 9, the Supreme High Command Headquarters sent a directive to the troops, in which it demanded that all personnel who were among the first to cross the river and who showed heroism were nominated for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. In addition, it was indicated that “for crossing a river such as the Desna in the Bogdanovo region (Smolensk region) and below, and rivers equal to the Desna in terms of the difficulty of crossing, nominate” commanders of formations, formations and units to be awarded the Order of Suvorov 1st, 2nd and 3rd degrees respectively.

Commander of the 53rd Army, Lieutenant General I.M. Managarov reports to the representative of the Supreme Command Headquarters, Marshal of the Soviet Union G.K. Zhukov and the commander of the Steppe Front, Army General I.S. Konev about preparations for crossing the Dnieper. September 1943

Already on September 26, Soviet troops completed their immediate task and liberated Kremenchug on September 29. The retreating German units were forced to cross the Dnieper using improvised means, which led to heavy losses on their part. On October 3, front troops began crossing the river and, after fierce fighting, by the end of October 10, they had captured small bridgeheads on its right bank.

On September 30, having completed the Chernigov-Poltava strategic offensive operation, the Central, Voronezh and Steppe Fronts began preparing for a further offensive.

Construction of a bridge across the Dnieper. 60th Army. October 1943

Thus, as a result of the decisive and skillful actions of the Soviet troops, the enemy’s “Eastern Wall” “burst at the seams.” By the end of September, troops of the Central, Voronezh, Steppe and Southwestern Fronts, along a 700-kilometer stretch from Loev to Zaporozhye, captured 23 bridgeheads on the right bank of the Dnieper. Bridgeheads on the Sozh and Pripyat rivers were also conquered. At the same time, the troops of the Southern Front reached the river. Dairy. The plans of the German command to transfer the war to positional forms, using a strategic defensive line along large water barriers, were thwarted.

During the offensive of Soviet troops in Left Bank Ukraine in August-September 1943, major military-political results were achieved. The occupiers were expelled from the rich agricultural areas and the most important industrial center of the country - Donbass. The liberation of almost half of the entire territory of Ukraine was of great importance for further strengthening the economy and strengthening the military power of the USSR. During the offensive in Left Bank Ukraine, the Soviet fronts inflicted a major defeat on the enemy groups operating there. Although the German troops managed to avoid complete defeat, they suffered serious losses in manpower and equipment, retreating to the Dnieper significantly weakened.

Battle of the Dnieper. August - December 1943

After crossing the Dnieper and capturing bridgeheads on its right bank, the Supreme Command Headquarters planned to expand them, liberate Kyiv, Dnepropetrovsk, Krivoy Rog and subsequently begin operations to defeat the enemy in Right Bank Ukraine. Particular attention in her instructions was paid to the complete cleansing of the left bank of the river. Dnieper from the enemy.

At the end of September 1943, the commanders of the fronts of the southwestern direction were given directives to conduct a further offensive as part of the Lower Dnieper strategic offensive operation. At the same time, the Central Front was supposed to break through the enemy’s defenses on the Sozh and Dnieper rivers north and south of Gomel and, in cooperation with the troops of the Voronezh Front, defeat its Kyiv group. The Voronezh Front, which delivered the main blow in the Kiev direction, had to capture Kiev and, no later than October 7, reach the line east and southeast of it. The task of the Steppe Front was to defeat the Kirovograd enemy group and reach the river line. Dniester. The troops of the Southwestern Front were ordered no later than October 3 to liquidate the Zaporozhye bridgehead of German troops and, leading an offensive on Krivoy Rog, defeat their Dnepropetrovsk group. The southern front had to defeat the enemy defending the river line. Molochnaya, liberate Northern Tavria and, by accessing the lower reaches of the Dnieper, cut off the enemy troops operating in Crimea from the rest of the forces of Army Group South and, if possible, break into the peninsula for its complete liberation. The coordination of the actions of the Soviet fronts in Ukraine was carried out by representatives of the Supreme Command Headquarters, Marshals G.K. Zhukov and .

On September 26, the army of the Southern (from October 20 - 4th Ukrainian) Front of Army General F.I. went on the offensive. Tolbukhin. The plan of the Melitopol offensive operation provided for the delivery of two strikes: the main one - by the forces of three armies to the north and the other - by the forces of one army to the south of Melitopol. But until September 30, Soviet troops were able to penetrate the enemy’s defenses only 2-5 km. To avoid major losses, the offensive was suspended and resumed only on October 9 after regrouping and replenishment of supplies. The greatest success was achieved in the secondary direction, where the 28th Army of the Lieutenant General broke through the defenses of the German troops and reached the southern outskirts of Melitopol. To develop the success, the front commander regrouped the 51st Army (Lieutenant General) in the Melitopol area, and on October 23, Melitopol was liberated.

By that time, the armies of the front's right wing had also broken through the enemy's defenses and cut the Zaporozhye-Melitopol railway. The German command, trying to hold the line on the river. Molochnaya, transferred up to nine divisions here from the Crimea and the Taman Peninsula, but could not stop the advance of the Soviet troops. On October 26, the enemy began to withdraw throughout the entire zone. Overcoming the resistance of the retreating enemy, the 2nd Guards Army covered the path from Molochnaya to the Dnieper in just over a month, the 28th Army reached Genichesk, and the 51st Army on November 5, together with the 19th Tank Corps (Lieutenant General) reached the lower reaches of the Dnieper and to the Perekop Isthmus. German troops were able to hold only one bridgehead on its left bank south of Nikopol.

On October 10, the troops of the Southwestern Front began carrying out Zaporozhye offensive operation in order to eliminate the enemy’s heavily fortified bridgehead in the Zaporozhye region. The German command attached great importance to its retention, since it was an important industrial center of Ukraine. Five enemy infantry and one motorized divisions occupied a prepared defense here.

Having launched several simultaneous attacks on directions converging on Zaporozhye, the front troops, during four days of stubborn fighting, broke through the outer and intermediate lines of defense of the German troops, by the end of October 13 they reached the outskirts of the city and captured it during a night assault.

On October 23, the 3rd Ukrainian (formerly Southwestern) Front of Army General R.Ya. went on the offensive. Malinovsky. By design Dnepropetrovsk offensive operation it was planned to cross the Dnieper west and south of Dnepropetrovsk, expand the bridgeheads that existed here and liberate the city. Subsequently, it was planned, in cooperation with the armies of the left wing of the 2nd Ukrainian Front, to defeat the Dnepropetrovsk and Krivoy Rog enemy groups. Going on the offensive, front troops advanced 50 km west of the Dnieper and liberated Dneprodzerzhinsk and Dnepropetrovsk on October 25. To localize the breakthrough, the German command transferred six divisions, including three tank divisions, to the Kirovograd and Krivoy Rog directions from Western Europe and other sectors of the front, and launched a series of counterattacks, as a result of which Soviet troops were forced to retreat to the river. Ingulets and to gain a foothold there. On November 14, after replenishment of material resources, they resumed the offensive and, in two weeks of intense fighting, advanced another 20 km in the southern and southwestern directions.

Taking into account the increased resistance of the enemy, the Supreme Command Headquarters on November 5 clarified the tasks of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Ukrainian Fronts. First of all, they aimed at the defeat of the Krivoy Rog-Nikopol group of German troops. At the same time, the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts were supposed to capture Krivoy Rog, and the 4th Ukrainian Front was supposed to liquidate the enemy’s Nikopol bridgehead and cross the Dnieper in the Nikopol area.

However, in the second half of November, the German troops began advancing from the Nikopol bridgehead, and the operation to capture it had to be postponed. The start of the operation of the 4th Ukrainian Front to liberate Crimea was also postponed. The armies of the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts resumed their offensive on November 14 and 20, but were unable to occupy Krivoy Rog and Kirovograd. By the end of December, the troops of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Ukrainian Fronts reached the line north of Smela, west of Chigirin, north of Krivoy Rog, Zaporozhye, where they were stopped by the troops of the German Army Group South, and the situation on the contact front stabilized.

After the troops of the Voronezh Front (from October 20 - the 1st Ukrainian Front) captured bridgeheads on the Dnieper, Army General N.F. Vatutin decided to conduct an offensive operation with the aim of bilaterally covering Kyiv and capturing the city. The main blow was planned to be delivered from the Bukrin bridgehead by forces of the 40th, 27th and 3rd Guards Tank Armies. The second blow, from the Lyutezh bridgehead, was to be delivered by the 38th Army, reinforced by one tank corps.

Crossing of the Dnieper. 1943

The German command, taking into account the danger of attacks by Soviet troops from the bridgeheads they had captured, concentrated strong groups against them. Considering the enemy’s lack of tactical and operational reserves south of Kyiv, the front commander sought to resume active combat operations without a long operational pause, even before the completion of the full concentration of the main forces of the 40th and 3rd Guards Tank Armies on the Bukrin bridgehead.

The offensive began on October 12. Heavy fighting continued for four days, but all attempts to break through the enemy’s defenses did not produce significant results. The lack of heavy transport means did not allow the bulk of the artillery to be transported to the bridgehead. And its fire from the opposite bank of the Dnieper, due to poor observation conditions, turned out to be ineffective. In addition, the limited size of the bridgehead and the highly rugged terrain on it significantly complicated the use of tank formations, which suffered heavy losses in the fight against German anti-tank artillery and in minefields.

Numerous attacks launched between October 21 and October 24 did not lead to success. The command of the 1st Ukrainian Front and the representative of Headquarters G.K. Zhukov planned to continue the offensive in the same direction at the end of the month after being replenished with people, ammunition and other logistics. However, given the fact that the German command concentrated its main efforts against the grouping of Soviet troops on the Bukrin bridgehead, Headquarters ordered General Vatutin to prepare a new offensive operation, with the main attack being delivered not to the south, but to the north of Kyiv. To create a strong strike group on the right wing of the front, it was ordered to regroup the 3rd Guards Tank Army and the bulk of the reserve artillery of the Supreme High Command into the 38th Army zone from the Bukrin bridgehead. The forces remaining on the Bukrin bridgehead also had to go on the offensive, pin down the enemy forces and prevent them from maneuvering towards the direction of the main attack of the front. The ground forces were supported by large aviation forces of the General's 2nd Air Army.

The fighting of the 40th and 27th armies of the lieutenant general and the lieutenant general in the auxiliary direction began on November 1. They were unable to break through the enemy defenses during the next offensive from the Bukrin bridgehead, but they completed their task of attracting significant enemy forces to this direction.

On November 3, the offensive of the front’s strike group north of Kyiv began. On the very first day, the formations of the 38th Army of the Colonel General broke through the defenses of the German troops to a depth of 7 km. At the same time, the divisions of the 60th Army, Lieutenant General I.D. Chernyakhovsky, broke through the enemy’s defenses at a front of more than 20 km, advanced 12 km, and by the end of the day they began fighting for the regional center of Dymer. The next day, the 3rd Guards Tank Army under Lieutenant General P.S. was introduced into the battle. Rybalko, and on November 5 - the 1st Guards Cavalry Corps and the second echelons of the 38th and 60th armies.

Crossing of the Dnieper. The crew of the DShK heavy machine gun supports those crossing with fire. November 1943

The German command, trying to prevent a breakthrough from developing, regrouped two tank and one motorized divisions in the threatened direction. However, their counterattacks were unsuccessful, and the enemy was forced to begin retreating in the western, southwestern and southern directions. By the evening of November 5, the troops of the 38th Army were already on the outskirts of Kyiv. Street fighting broke out. At midnight, Soviet units broke through into the city center. At 0:30 a.m. on November 6, the Red Banner hoisted over the capital of Ukraine. At the same time, combat vehicles of the 5th Guards Tank Corps of the general broke into the city center.

Member of the Military Council of the 1st Ukrainian Front N.S. Khrushchev talks with residents of liberated Kyiv. November 1943

The first issue of the newspaper “Kievska Pravda” was published. November 1943

Building on their success, the advanced units of the 3rd Guards Tank Army captured a large railway junction and the city of Fastov on November 7, as a result of which the group of German troops was cut into two parts.

The enemy command, trying to stop the advance of the troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front, began to take measures to move reserves to the Kiev direction. It sought not only to stabilize the situation in the Kyiv region, but also, by launching a counteroffensive, to restore the defenses along the Dnieper. By November 8, the enemy had regrouped two additional infantry and two tank divisions in the Kiev direction. With these forces, he began to carry out strong counterattacks in the areas of Kornyn, Fastov, Trypillia with the goal of breaking through to the capital of Ukraine along the Fastov-Kyiv railway and along the right bank of the Dnieper. All of them were repelled by Soviet troops, who, continuing the offensive, liberated Zhitomir on November 12.

By that time, the offensive zones of the front and its armies had expanded significantly. In this regard, the operational density of the advancing troops decreased. At the same time, the German command continued to increase its forces in the areas of Kozatin and Bila Tserkva by transferring reserves from other directions. The Supreme High Command Headquarters, having timely assessed the threat of the enemy inflicting a strong blow on the troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front who were in the offensive group, on November 12 pointed out to General Vatutin that “the tenacity of the enemy and his counterattacks on the Fastov, Tripolie front and the concentration of the main German tank group here speaks that the enemy, giving us the opportunity to advance to the west, is gathering forces to strike at the root, in the direction of Fastov, Kyiv.”

In this regard, the commander of the front forces was ordered to temporarily stop the advance in the center of his zone, repel the attack of German troops and prevent their breakthrough to Kyiv from the south. To strengthen the front, the 1st Guards Army and one tank corps were transferred to its composition. Front troops began to carry out Kyiv defensive operation.

The German command significantly strengthened its groups in the areas southwest of Fastov and south of Zhitomir due to the arrival of new formations from Western Europe. On November 15, the enemy launched two attacks: from the Fastov area to Brusilov and from the Zhitomir area to Radomyshl. Fierce fighting in these directions continued until November 25. By that time, the troops of the center and left wing of the front had retreated to a depth of 35-40 km with fierce fighting. Further advance of the enemy was stopped. Meanwhile, the troops of the right wing of the 1st Ukrainian Front continued their offensive. On November 17, the 60th Army liberated Korosten, and the next day, units of the 13th Army, in cooperation with the general’s partisan unit, drove the enemy out of Ovruch.

During December, the German command made two more attempts to break through to Kyiv. From December 6 to 14, the enemy, with the help of five tank divisions, carried out an offensive from the Chernyakhov area to Malin, and then from December 19 to 22 tried to break through to Malin from the Korosten area. Both of these attempts were repulsed by Soviet troops. And as a result of the introduction into battle on the adjacent flanks of the 60th and 38th armies of one rifle corps from the 1st Guards Army of the Colonel General and counterattacks of the 38th Army formations, the conditions were created for the 1st Ukrainian Front to go on the offensive and liberation together with other fronts of Right Bank Ukraine.

Thus, as a result of the Battle of the Dnieper, the Soviet Armed Forces achieved major military and political results. An attempt by the German command to stop them on the so-called Eastern Wall was thwarted. The Red Army broke through this “wall” and created two important strategic bridgeheads on the right bank of the Dnieper: one in the area of ​​Rechitsa, Korosten and Kyiv, the second in the Kirovograd and Krivoy Rog directions. These bridgeheads created favorable conditions for carrying out operations to liberate Belarus and the entire Right Bank Ukraine from the enemy. The enemy's plans to wage a protracted war on Soviet territory turned out to be untenable.

During the operations carried out in Ukraine, the Red Army inflicted a heavy defeat on the entire southern wing of the enemy front. From the end of August to December 1943, it defeated over 60 enemy divisions, including 11 tank and motorized divisions. The enemy suffered significant losses, especially in tanks, artillery and aircraft. But the losses of Soviet troops in the battle for the Dnieper were great: irrevocable - 417,323 people, sanitary - 1,269,841 people.

The simultaneous offensive of five fronts with the involvement of 500 thousand partisans was a great achievement of Soviet military art. The creation of strong strike groups in selected directions allowed Soviet troops to successfully break through the enemy’s fortified defensive lines. Conducting an offensive on a broad front, they sharply limited its ability to maneuver forces and means from one direction to another. A great achievement of military art was the solution to the problem of crossing water barriers. Even the enemy appreciated this. Thus, the former German general Dorn admits that the German command was always amazed at the ability of the Soviet troops to overcome water obstacles. “Where the positions of the Russians and Germans were separated by a river,” he writes, “a crossing could be expected at any moment... Often the Russians were suddenly discovered in places where they were least expected. They acted with incredible speed; one night was enough for them to turn a small bridgehead into a powerful stronghold, from which it was very difficult to dislodge them.”

The Battle of the Dnieper went down in the history of the Great Patriotic War as a heroic epic. The actions of the Soviet troops in the battle for the Dnieper took place in conditions of great moral and political upsurge and were characterized by mass heroism of soldiers and officers. Many formations and units of the front received honorary names for military successes and heroism: Kievsky - 65, Zhitomir - 13, Fastovsky - 6, Korostensky - 6, Vasilkovsky - 4, Ovruchsky - 1. At the front there was almost no such formation or unit where there was no Hero of the Soviet Union. For example, in the 30th Kyiv Rifle Division, which especially distinguished itself in the battles for Kyiv, 650 soldiers were awarded orders and medals and 23 were nominated for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, in the 240th Rifle Division 2,100 people received orders and medals, 51 were presented to the title of Hero.

Soldiers, officers and generals showed massive heroism when crossing the Dnieper, pursuing the enemy and in the struggle to expand bridgeheads on its western bank. Their courage, bravery, high offensive spirit and combat skill were highly appreciated by the Soviet government. Tens of thousands of Soviet soldiers were awarded orders and medals. And the bravest of the bravest 2438 soldiers were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. These included 47 generals, 1,123 officers and 1,268 sergeants and soldiers. Thus, on the Dnieper, the commander of an anti-tank fighter regiment, Major, became a Hero of the Soviet Union. Having lost both arms, he did not leave the battlefield and continued to command the regiment. The courageous warrior fought until the end of the war, became twice Hero of the Soviet Union, and with the end of the war he continued to serve in the Armed Forces and rose to the rank of colonel general of artillery. Many soldiers wore the Order of Glory of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd degrees, established in the fall of 1943 as special signs of valor for privates and sergeants of the Red Army, on their chests.

On November 8, 1943, by Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the Order of Victory was established to award particularly distinguished commanders. The first Order of Victory was awarded to Marshals of the Soviet Union G.K. Zhukov and A.M. Vasilevsky, who were representatives of the Supreme Command Headquarters on the fronts during the Battle of the Dnieper.

Material prepared by the Research Institute
(military history) Military Academy
General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation