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 obstacles and

Boost options

Faced with such a situation, the command 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 the German command time to gather additional forces, as well as regroup troops and strengthen defenses to more effectively repel the growing onslaught of the Soviet Army in 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 those 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.

Three quarters of a century ago, in 1943, our country won one of the most important strategic victories in the Great Patriotic War - in the Battle of the Dnieper. This is a glorious memorable date in the military history of Russia. Twenty-seven Soviet armies fought the enemy on the outskirts of a huge river, over a kilometer wide.

Alas, today's Russian schoolchildren will not find in their textbooks a full description of the largest water crossing operation in world history. But the curriculum in Ukraine is regularly updated with new amazing facts and details, which often run counter to the traditional interpretation of those events. Why did local residents go to fight? Is it true that unarmed Ukrainians were sent into battle? Why was it necessary to start such a grandiose battle? To understand all these issues, the portal turned to the famous Russian military historian, candidate of historical sciences, recognized expert Alexei Isaev.

- Please tell us about the key events in the Battle of the Dnieper. What was the significance of these battles for the course of the war?

In short, the Germans planned to make the great Dnieper River part of the “Eastern Wall” defensive line. According to their calculations, this would make it possible to stop the advance of the Red Army for a long time and, possibly, in the future, make peace. On the other hand, Soviet troops sought to cross the Dnieper as quickly as possible, before the Germans had time to gain a foothold there, in order to subsequently liberate the territory of Right Bank Ukraine.

At the initial stage of the battle, the plans of the Red Army command were to capture and hold the largest number of bridgeheads with the smallest forces. In promising territories, an offensive was being prepared, including with tanks, further in depth - on the Right Bank of the Dnieper.

An important milestone in the battle for the Dnieper was the liberation of Kyiv. This happened on November 6, 1943, thanks to a maneuver that is widely known to connoisseurs of military history - the transfer of the 3rd Guards Tank Army of Lieutenant General Pavel Semenovich Rybalko and a number of rifle and artillery formations. Then the troops secretly turned from Bukrinsky to the Lyutezhsky bridgehead from the right bank of the Dnieper. The remaining soldiers of the 91st Tank Brigade simulated an attack for a week so that the army transferred during this time could suddenly attack the Germans from the other side. This made it possible not only to liberate Kyiv, but also to move far forward.

The last stage of the struggle for the Dnieper was the encirclement of the Germans near Korsun-Shevchenkovsky, when they were completely pushed back from the Dnieper. Here is a very condensed explanation of what happened there.

- What was the balance of power?

The enemy of the Red Army was Army Group South under the command of Erich von Manstein. The main force in crossing the Dnieper was the troops of the Voronezh Front under the command of General Nikolai Fedorovich Vatutin and the Steppe Front, which was controlled by Ivan Stepanovich Konev. During the battle, these formations were renamed the 1st and 2nd Ukrainian Fronts, respectively. The operation partially affected Rokossovsky's Central Front. And Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov united and coordinated the actions of the fronts.

The main task of the Southwestern Front of Rodion Yakovlevich Malinovsky, later renamed the 3rd Ukrainian Front, was action in the Zaporozhye direction. The Southern Front, which later became the 4th Ukrainian Front, broke through that section of the “Eastern Wall” that ran approximately from the Dnieper floodplains to the Sea of ​​Azov - the German defensive line “Wotan”. Strictly speaking, it did not pass along the Dnieper. The Southern Front waged its main battle on the approaches to Crimea. Under the command of Fyodor Ivanovich Tolbukhin, the troops crushed the German defensive line “Mius-Front”, broke through the “Wotan” line, and then advanced in Northern Tavria. And only after this the Southern Front approached the Dnieper. But still, if we focus on those who mainly decided the fate of the battle for the Dnieper, then these are the 1st and 2nd Ukrainian fronts.

- How long did the battle last?

The main events took place from the end of September until November. The final stage, when the last German units were pushed back from the Dnieper, occurred already in 1944: this was the famous Korsun-Shevchenko operation.

- What losses did the Red Army suffer? Ukrainian historians voice different figures...

The problem with counting losses is that the battle for the Dnieper is difficult to isolate from the liberation operations already on the right bank. In Soviet historiography, it was customary to include many battles in the Battle of the Dnieper, which created a large scale of losses. Well, of course, when they call sky-high numbers, millions, they are definitely distorting the truth.

- Some sources call almost 2 million...

No. This is almost the total number of fronts. Each front of the Red Army is an association of 300-500 thousand people. How can you lose more of your numbers? Moreover, the advanced units - infantry regiments and battalions - made up a minority of the troops. There were many rear servicemen, signalmen, and artillerymen who did not come under enemy attacks directly on the line of contact between the troops, and their losses were significantly lower.

In the army, many people turn the steering wheel of a car, drive horses, drive carts, load cannons, and carry out artillery reconnaissance. Out of 500 thousand people, it would be good if 150 thousand with rifles and machine guns took part in the battle. Therefore, losing a million is simply impossible. The Steppe Front united 547 thousand people, the South-Western - 480 thousand, the Southern - 311 thousand. In total - 1 million 300 thousand people, this is how many were part of the Soviet troops on the approaches to the Dnieper.

Losses for the period from September 26 to December 12, 1943 amounted to 581 thousand people. Sanitary losses are the wounded and sick. These also include people who received pneumonia during the construction of the crossing bridge. 173 thousand people are classified as “irrevocably” - these are dead and missing.

Ukrainian media say that when crossing the Dnieper, the Red Army “bombarded” the Germans with defenseless residents.

Conscription in the liberated territories was widespread and did not begin during the Battle of the Dnieper. If we take the Battle of Kursk, then the replenishment of the Voronezh Front in 1943 consisted half of conscripts from the conquered lands. Everywhere the practice was the same: people were drafted, trained in reserve regiments and corresponding training units that existed even in divisions, and after that they were given a uniform and sent into battle. By the way, the task of crossing the river is very difficult. A non-professional cannot handle it.

- It is periodically said that in order to “strengthen” the Soviet troops, disabled people and children were recruited. He was?

No, he wasn't required. Those who were subject to conscription were called up. The demographic situation in the USSR was not so severe. Here, in my opinion, there is such a thing as a projection of the practice, oddly enough, of Germany onto the Soviet Union. The Third Reich in 1945 was just conscripting 15-year-old teenagers and war veterans. This happened in conditions of a severe shortage of people. And they are trying to project this practice onto the Soviet Union, which had a different ratio of human reserves.

Soviet historians said that people fought out of love for the Motherland, out of a sense of patriotism. Modern Ukrainian publicists say that the residents did not want to fight, they were forced to do so. How to understand where the truth is?

Ukrainian historians probably do not take into account two things. Firstly, the occupation policy of the Germans, which caused great anger among the population of all occupied territories to one degree or another. And Ukraine is no exception here. Local residents were left to their own devices in terms of food and medical care, they were treated cruelly, including being taken to work in concentration camps. Hatred towards the occupiers forced people to join the Red Army. And secondly, most of the territory of the Left Bank and Right Bank, which adjoined the Dnieper, was part of the USSR until 1939. And the Soviet government managed to win many supporters with such things as education, the opportunity to achieve professional success, including in industrial production. And this was also a factor that forced people to liberate their country.

A quotation from the “works” of the Ukrainian historian Vladimir Ginda has been widely circulated, in which Zhukov allegedly rudely says that there is no need to arm Ukrainian soldiers with machine guns.

As the joke says, “the main problem with quotes on the Internet is that people immediately believe in their authenticity (V.I. Lenin).” The soldiers received standard equipment of the Red Army. According to the state, machine guns were issued to a smaller number of soldiers of companies and battalions, since these are still melee weapons that do not allow covering all the distances at which a collision takes place, both in defense and in the offensive. Most of the soldiers in the 1943 state were armed with rifles. This was normal, and this happened among our enemy’s troops. Automatic weapons were represented mainly by light machine guns. The peak of equipment with machine guns in the Red Army occurred at the end of 1944. Then a division of 10 thousand people should have had 3 thousand machine guns. In 1943, there were three times less of them.

What weapon a conscript would receive depended on what he would be taught and what unit he would be sent to. Therefore, the scattered quote from Zhukov is a fiction. This did not happen. People were given what they were supposed to. It was necessary to fill the position of a machine gunner - they gave a machine gun, a machine gunner - they gave a machine gun.

- So it’s not true that people were sent away with bricks?

Yes, this is complete nonsense. And for some reason they write that with halves of brick. I was always very interested in the question of why with halves. That is, we still need to make efforts - to split... If a person is sent into battle with half a brick, then, of course, he will achieve nothing. When a tank of the “Greater Germany” division “Panther” is coming towards you, let alone a brick - a rifle will not help. Requires artillery and mines.

And again, the transfer devices are not rubber, they have a certain capacity. If we transport professionals with weapons and some other incomprehensible individuals with bricks, then we will overload our crossings. Why do this? This will also work against completing the most difficult task - to cross and gain a foothold as quickly as possible. The Germans would have dispersed the crowd of peasants with bricks within 24 hours, the task would not have been completed, and the Dnieper would have turned into an impregnable fortress. I think that any of our military commanders would twist his finger at his temple and would not carry out such orders, even if they suddenly appeared.

Perhaps this version appeared due to the fact that the rear could not keep up with the troops and reduced the weapons requested by Zhukov?

Well, yes, they cut back, but this does not mean that they left nothing at all. In general, huge fronts of hundreds of thousands of people carried everything with them. They had cars and tractors that transported ammunition. Again, they couldn’t have done it without weapons. Such legends look completely idiotic against the background of the fact that we had a very strong, dangerous enemy. The German army of 1943 was far from a corpse. The Germans were still holding off the Allies in Italy on the defensive lines they had built. The Allied troops, possessing colossal material resources, could not overcome them.

It turns out that if professionals with such combat experience built a line of defense along the Dnieper and the Red Army overcame it, then it means that, in general, it acted using quite effective methods, and not using crazy crowds of villagers with half bricks.

A number of Ukrainian publications generally question the need for the battle for the Dnieper. It is portrayed as Stalin's bloodthirsty whim rather than a deliberate strategic decision.

As I already said, the essence of the battle for the Dnieper was the need to overcome the “Eastern Wall” before the Germans gained a foothold on it. Because if you hesitate and don’t rush to the Dnieper, the Germans will settle on it, dig trenches and turn the river into an impregnable line. This would lead to colossal losses when trying to force it and overcome it. Moreover, the western coast rises above the eastern. Therefore, they tried to quickly break through the river on the shoulders of the enemy, before the Germans themselves had time to completely retreat beyond it. Bypassing the columns of Germans going to the crossing, our troops crossed the river, on which no one had yet really managed to gain a foothold, and repelled attacks, performing a difficult task. And, let me emphasize, an untrained person, without combat experience, simply cannot cope with this. And having repelled the attacks, having gained a foothold, they expanded the bridgehead and moved on from there. And in general, the plan worked.

- What is the historical significance of the Battle of the Dnieper?

I have already partially answered this question, saying that the battle made it possible to overcome the “Eastern Wall” and move on to military operations in Left Bank Ukraine. I note that, contrary to popular belief, the Red Army coped well with maneuverable tank operations. The liberation of a large territory, of course, raised the morale of the army. The rapid advance, when road signs were just flashing, instilled significant enthusiasm in the fighters. In general, overcoming such a serious milestone as the Dnieper ensured truly tremendous successes at the beginning of 1944, and also created the preconditions for the liberation of Crimea.

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Fenyutin Igor

The great Russian front-line writer Viktor Astafiev had a different opinion about the crossing of the Dnieper, since he himself participated there. His position can be found in the book “Cursed and Killed.”

Lapa Gen

“- A number of Ukrainian publications generally question the need for the battle for the Dnieper. It is portrayed as a bloodthirsty whim of Stalin, rather than a deliberate strategic decision.”

If you remove the emotional and political accents from this statement, then there is a lot of truth in it.

1. Modern Ukrainian nationalist publications have a negative attitude towards the crossing of the Dnieper in 1943.
2. The crossing of the Dnieper in 1943 was a “child of luck”, and not the plan of the brilliant Marshal Zhukov.
3. There were no strategic and, especially, tactical plans for conducting a campaign on the right bank of the Dnieper in the fall of 1943, which “casts a shadow” on the brilliant Marshal Zhukov.

The question of the strategic plans of the parties after the Battle of Kursk is generally very interesting and has not been studied at all. The available information, including in Soviet literature, in every possible way avoids the moment of surprise, and, therefore, the undesirability of a violation of the military-strategic balance that was established after the Battle of Kursk. Apparently, the Western allies expected stabilization of the Eastern Front for an indefinite period along the Eastern Wall, while the Soviet General Staff could well be thinking along the same lines.
The successful landing of Allied forces in Sicily in the summer of 1943 (establishing control over the Mediterranean Sea) and stabilization in the East created conditions for the “allies” to put political pressure on Hitler, but in fact allowed Hitler to restore and increase his strength, complete the development of “secret weapons”, successfully complete the campaign to the East, establishing a puppet regime on the territory of the USSR.

The crossing of the Dnieper in 1943 was not a strategic operation planned by the General Staff or the brilliant Marshal Zhukov. The forcing took place in the form of front-line operations (planned by fronts “on the ground”). The success of the crossing was due to the successful crossing of the Steppe Front of Marshal Konev in the Borodaevka area by the 25th Army Corps of the 7th Guards Army of the Stalingrader General Shumilov on September 25, 1943. Fierce unequal battles for two weeks and the heroism of Soviet soldiers made it possible to expand the bridgehead to a size sufficient for the crossing of large tank and army formations with the subsequent dismemberment of the Nazi group “South” into two (southern and northern) parts, loss of communication between these two parts and, as a consequence, a stampede and the loss of a huge amount of Nazi military equipment (tanks and artillery).

It was quite rightly said here that the further advance of Soviet troops of all fronts along the right bank of Ukraine was often a “flash of kilometer posts” and the contemplation of many kilometers of columns of abandoned German equipment along the railways (they did not have time to dive). By the end of 1943, Soviet troops reached the right bank of the USSR state border. At the end of 1943, the government of Czechoslovakia in exile declared war on Nazi Germany on the side of the USSR. In the fall of 1943, the Tehran Conference was urgently convened, at which the USSR could potentially conduct business on equal terms. How it really happened is another historical “little studied” moment.

Along with the defense of Moscow, the Battle of Stalingrad and the Kursk Bulge, the crossing of the Dnieper in 1943 is one of the most significant and turning points of the Second World War. In the battle, which lasted about 4 months, over an extended area of ​​700 km, several million soldiers and officers, tens of thousands of tanks, aircraft, artillery pieces and other pieces of equipment were involved on both sides.

The significance of the local success, despite the large losses of Soviet troops, can hardly be overestimated, since a significant part of the occupied territories was liberated, and a powerful springboard was created for the further advance of the Red Army to the west. It is noteworthy that this is the largest operation in world history to force water boundaries.

Preparation

At the Supreme Command Headquarters there was no unanimous idea on how to defeat the enemy. , who was supported by the Chief of the General Staff A.I. Antonov, intended to cut through, encircle and subsequently destroy the main part of the defending Wehrmacht forces in the Donbass region. But I.V. Stalin insisted on immediately crossing the water barrier and further increasing the bridgehead. According to the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, this maneuver deprived the enemy of time to regroup. As a result, it was decided to carry out successive attacks along the entire front line against enemy positions, followed by advancing forward and destroying the encircled German troops.

The situation was complicated by the fact that, despite the numerical superiority, the right bank of the river occupied by the Nazis was higher and steeper than the left, and a huge number of soldiers and equipment had to be transported, using ships, rafts and improvised means.

The well-fortified “Eastern Wall,” according to Hitler, was supposed to become an insurmountable barrier to the attacking troops. “The Dnieper would sooner change its course than the Russians would cross it...” the Fuhrer boastfully declared.

Battle of the Dnieper

The beginning of the operation is considered to be August 26, 1943. After intensive artillery preparation, the advanced forces of five fronts (Central, Voronezh, Steppe, Southern and Southwestern), under the command of talented Soviet military leaders (Zhukov G.K., Rokossovsky K.K., Konev I.S., Tolbukhina F.I., Vatutina N.F.).

German troops resisted fiercely, counterattacking whenever possible on each line of the defensive fortifications. That is why the losses of manpower on both sides amount to hundreds of thousands.

Historians divide the battle into two main stages:

• Chernigov-Poltava operation (26.08-30.09.1943);
• Lower Dnieper operation (09.26-12.20.1943).

In some historical reference books, it is also customary to refer to the Battle of the Dnieper:

• the Dnieper airborne operation, which began in September and, unfortunately, did not bring the desired success;
• Kyiv offensive (03.11-13.11. 1943)
• Kyiv defensive (13.11-23.12. 1943) operation.

Feeling that the territory could not be held by the Nazis, they began to use “scorched earth” tactics, destroying or sending local residents to concentration camps, mining plants, factories, and often entire city blocks.

As a result, after long, bloody battles for every village, city, and sometimes even street, the Red Army was able to liberate left-bank Ukraine almost completely by the end of December.

November 6, 1943 - Day of the liberation of Kyiv from the Nazi invaders, an official holiday. On this day, soldiers of the Red Army entered the capital of Ukraine, crossing the Dnieper with fighting.

Battle of the Dnieper

The Kiev offensive operation, which lasted from November 3 to November 13, 1943, was an integral part of the Battle of the Dnieper - the so-called series of related military operations of the USSR troops (which included the allied First Czechoslovak Brigade of Transcarpathian Ukrainians in its composition) against the armies of the Third Reich and Romania.

In total, the Battle of the Dnieper lasted from August to December 1943, becoming one of the largest military operations in world history.

About four million people on both sides were involved in the fighting. The front line was approximately 1,400 km, the total losses (killed, wounded and prisoners) ranged from 1 to 2.7 million people.

An employee of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories distributes flags with swastikas to Kiev residents during the celebration of the second anniversary of the entry of German troops into the city. September 19, 1943. In a month and a half, Soviet power will return to Kyiv. Photo: gazeta.ua

In the summer of 1943, after the grueling Battle of Kursk, the Germans finally lost the strategic initiative. The Red Army launched a powerful offensive along the entire front.

On August 11, Hitler issued an order to accelerate the construction of a strategic defensive line (the so-called “Eastern Wall” or the “Panther-Wotan Line”), which ran north of Lake Peipsi, along the Narva River, east of Pskov, Nevel, Vitebsk, Orsha, then through Gomel, along the Sozh and Dnieper rivers (in its middle reaches), then along the Molochnaya River (Zaporozhye region) to the Sea of ​​Azov.

The right bank of the Dnieper, much higher than the left, was especially convenient for defense. By the end of September, an engineering-developed, ramified defense, rich in anti-tank and anti-personnel weapons, had been created here.

German machine gun point on the right bank of the Dnieper (apparently in Kyiv) - part of the Eastern Wall

The liberation of Left Bank Ukraine and the crossing of the Dnieper was an important military-political task for the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command of the USSR, headed by Stalin.

This task was entrusted to the troops of five fronts:

• Central (commander Konstantin Rokossovsky),
• Voronezhsky (Nikolai Vatutin),
• Stepnogo (Ivan Konev),
• South-Western (Rodion Malinovsky),
• Yuzhny (Fedor Tolbukhin).

The actions of the fronts were coordinated by Marshals Georgy Zhukov and Alexander Vasilevsky. The troops of these fronts included 2,630,000 soldiers and officers, 51.2 thousand guns and mortars, 2,400 tanks and self-propelled artillery units, 2,850 combat aircraft.

Against five Soviet fronts, the German command concentrated the 2nd German Army from Army Group Center and the entire Army Group South, commanded by Field Marshal General Erich von Manstein.

Changes in the front lines and the direction of action of the Soviet fronts during the Battle of the Dnieper

The main group of German troops was concentrated against the Voronezh, Steppe, Southwestern and Southern fronts. It consisted of 1,240,000 soldiers and officers, 12,600 guns and mortars, about 2,100 tanks and assault guns and 2,000 combat aircraft.

Rokossovsky's central front thus had fewer enemy forces against it, but its actions were complicated by forests, rivers and swamps.

The offensive of Rokossovsky and Vatutin

On August 23, after fierce fighting, Kharkov was liberated, and on August 26, the fronts launched a series of offensive operations in order to capture bridgeheads on the right bank of the Dnieper.

The northernmost of the five fronts mentioned above - the Central - immediately got bogged down in the German defense, having covered only 20-25 km in the first few days of the offensive. Rokossovsky tried to carry out an auxiliary strike - on Glukhov. The blow fell at the junction of the German armies “Center” and “South”.

At the forefront of the attack was the 60th Army under the command of Ivan Chernyakhovsky, a native of the Cherkasy region. She moved forward, and Rokossovsky allocated other forces to support her, strengthening the breakthrough. Glukhov - Konotop - Bakhmach - Nizhyn - the German defense crumbled.

Meanwhile, Vatutin’s Voronezh Front was still making its way through the German defenses near Romny (Sumy region) and Lokhvitsa (Poltava region). A gap formed between the troops of the Central and Voronezh fronts, which Rokossovsky tried to bridge.

On September 22, soldiers of the Central Front crossed to the right bank of the Dnieper - in the interfluve with Pripyat, south of Chernobyl. On September 23 there was already a considerable bridgehead here, 35 by 35 km. Chernyakhovsky's army also captured a bridgehead, closer to Kyiv - at the mouth of the Teterev and Dymer rivers.

The path to Kyiv from the north was partially open.

Scheme of the Chernigovo-Pripyat (Central Front) and Chernigovo-Prilutsk (Voronezh Front) offensive operations

However, on September 28, by decision of the Headquarters, Rokossovsky’s Central Front was sent not to Kyiv, but in the opposite direction - to Gomel. Allegedly, until the end of his life, Rokossovsky (who after the war became the Minister of Defense of socialist Poland) regretted this decision of Stalin, which did not allow him to liberate Kyiv.

The hero of the breakthrough, commander of the 60th Army Chernyakhovsky later became commander of the Third Belorussian Front. He was the youngest army general and the youngest commander of the Soviet armed forces.

In February 1945, Ivan Chernyakhovsky was killed by a German shell during fighting in East Prussia (now Penenzhno, Poland). In February 2012, the National Defense University of Ukraine was named after Chernyakhovsky.

Other Soviet fronts were also approaching the Dnieper. The Voronezh Front, at first bogged down near Poltava, nevertheless broke through the German defenses and on September 22 also crossed to the right bank in the area of ​​the southern Kiev and Cherkassy regions.

Based on the name of the village of Bolshoi Bukrin (Mironovsky district, Kyiv region), the bridgehead was named Bukrinsky.

On September 15, German troops received an order for a general withdrawal and crossing to the right bank of the Dnieper. They retreated in the direction of permanent crossings near Kyiv, Kanev, Kremenchug, Cherkassy, ​​Dnepropetrovsk.

With the beginning of the general retreat of Army Group South, the first stage of the Battle of the Dnieper ended. Before the Soviet fronts, which forced the Germans to retreat from the Left Bank, the Headquarters set new tasks - to disrupt the retreat plan, destroying as many enemy forces as possible, cross the river and capture powerful bridgeheads on the right bank.

Bridgeheads in the Kyiv area

The main forces of the Central and Voronezh Fronts were concentrated in the Kiev direction, the Steppe Front - in the Kremenchug direction, the South-Western Front - in the Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporozhye directions, and the Southern Front - in the Melitopol and Crimean directions.

By the end of September, Soviet troops reached the left bank of the Dnieper on a 700-kilometer front from Loev to Zaporozhye.

Taking advantage of the inconsistency and indecisiveness of the actions of the Soviet command, Manstein began crossing troops across the Dnieper, which was carried out almost without losses. The bulk (up to 90%) of the German troops managed to cross to the right bank of the Dnieper and position themselves along it in well-fortified positions.

With access to the Dnieper on September 21-22, 1943, the troops of the Central and Voronezh Fronts immediately began to cross it and seize bridgeheads on the right bank. Later, the bridgeheads on the right bank were captured by troops of the Steppe and Southwestern Fronts.

By September 30, 23 bridgeheads had been created, including those important for the liberation of Kyiv - the already mentioned Bukrinsky and Lyutezhsky (the latter to the north of Kyiv, in the Vyshgorod district of the Kyiv region).

This ended the second stage of the battle for the Dnieper. Headquarters plans to cross the Dnieper in the main direction - Kiev and further rapid development of the offensive by the troops of the Voronezh Front, exhausted by heavy battles, could not be fulfilled.

Bukrinsky bridgehead

“The failure of the offensive on the Bukrinsky bridgehead occurred because the terrain conditions, which hampered the offensive operations of the troops here, especially the tank army, were not taken into account in a timely manner,” stated the directive signed by Stalin.

This was the official version of the defeat at the Bukrinsky bridgehead, which justified the colossal human losses.

Since it was impossible to capture Kyiv, located on the high bank of the Dnieper, with a direct blow, it was planned to launch two strikes: the main one from the Bukrinsky bridgehead and Shchuchinsky, located slightly higher to the north, bypassing Kyiv from the southwest, and the second - from the Lyutezhsky bridgehead in a southerly direction along the Irpen River, bypassing Kyiv from the northwest.

At the end of the fifth day of the offensive, it was planned to capture Kiev, cut the Kyiv-Zhitomir highway and prevent the enemy from retreating to the west.

This is what the current Maidan of Independence looked like in 1943. Taken from the current hotel "Ukraine". In the middle of the square stands the former city council, now in its place there are fountains

According to participants in the battles on the Bukrinsky bridgehead, such bloody clashes have not happened since the beginning of the war. In September-October 1943, the main bridgehead of the offensive methodically “grinded” human reinforcements - penalty soldiers, newly mobilized Ukrainians from the Left Bank, paratroopers, regular troops...

Doctor of Historical Sciences (Kiev Shevchenko University) Viktor Korol pointed out the almost complete absence of crossings: as of September 22, 1943, at the height of the crossing, there were only 16 pontoons at the Bukrinsky bridgehead.

“The first to be transported across the Dnieper under terrible fire were the soldiers of the penal battalions,” writes the King in his work “The Battle of the Dnieper: Heroism and Tragedy.” The soldiers swam holding on to trees, logs, boards, and drowned in the thousands.

Crossing of Soviet troops, 1943

“Among those who crossed the Dnieper in the Bukrin area was the famous Soviet front-line writer Viktor Astafiev, who recalled that “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 writer’s memoirs: “Corpses with their eyes pecked out were floating thickly in the water, they had begun to become limp, with faces that were foaming, as if they had been soaped, broken by shells, mines, riddled with bullets. The sappers who were sent to pull the corpses out of the water and bury them, they couldn’t cope with the work - too many people were killed...

And then, across the river, the raking of corpses continued, more and more pits were filled with human mush, but many, many of those who fell on the bridgehead could not be found along the beams in order to bury them.”

The troops that captured the section of the Dnieper from the village of Trakhtemirov to the village of Grigorievka faced resistance from the enemy, and the fighting was so fierce that the water in the Dnieper was dark bloody in color and tasted salty.

“We simply didn’t know how to fight. We covered our enemies with our blood, overwhelmed our enemies with our corpses” - this is also Viktor Astafiev.

Crossing of Soviet troops

Until September 29, none of the armies of the Voronezh Front had pontoon bridges on the Dnieper, which did not allow the necessary transfer of troops, ammunition, equipment and fuel to the Bukrinsky bridgehead. Due to a lack of fuel, the front armies were not provided with effective air support.

While the front troops were trying to expand the Bukrinsky bridgehead and were preparing an offensive, the German command, by the end of September, transferred three tank and three infantry divisions and thousands of reinforcements from Western Europe to the Kiev direction with the intention of liquidating the bridgehead and throwing its defenders into the Dnieper.

On September 29, 1943, the enemy, with two tank and two infantry divisions, with fire support from artillery and mortars, struck the Bukrinsky bridgehead, and on October 2, infantry and tank divisions began an offensive north-west of Rzhishchev on the Shchuchinsky bridgehead. Heavy bloody battles continued until October 4.

Within ten days from the beginning of the crossing of the Dnieper by Soviet troops, the enemy significantly strengthened its positions and redeployed fresh forces to the threatening directions of the Bukrinsky and Lyutezhsky bridgeheads.

Khreshchatyk, destroyed by Soviet saboteurs and German occupiers

In fierce battles on the front from Rzhishchev to Kyiv, both sides suffered huge losses. The German command brought all its forces into battle and began to transfer tank divisions from other sectors of the front to this direction. On October 13, the fighting continued with renewed vigor and in even more difficult conditions.

The fighting on the Bukrinsky and Lyutezhsky bridgeheads continued without success until October 15-16 and then were temporarily suspended.

The Bukrin bridgehead was too expensive. How expensive it is has not yet been established. It is not possible to accurately name the actual losses in that battle.

In particular, in the mass grave of the village of Balyko-Shchuchinki, where the memorial complex of the Bukrinsky bridgehead was built, 3,316 soldiers of the Soviet army were buried.

Memorial and mass grave in the village of Balyko-Shchuchinka (Bukrinsky bridgehead)

The bodies of other victims are still buried in local towns and courtyards, in the surrounding forests and ravines, or ended up under the water of the Kanevsky reservoir created in the 70s.

The Bukrin bridgehead never became key in the operation. The Soviet authorities did not really want to remember the fate of those who died there, unlike the successful Lyutezhsky. Soon after the end of the war, a memorial complex was created and a museum was opened on the territory of the Lyutezh bridgehead, in the village of New Petrivtsi (now the former residence of Yanukovych is nearby).

But the Bukrinsky bridgehead, on the contrary, was passed over in silence for a long time. The decision to create a memorial in the village. Balyko-Shchuchinka (in the area of ​​the Bukrinsky bridgehead) was adopted only during the time of Brezhnev, and the memorial was opened in 1985 - almost 40 years after the liberation of Kyiv.

Another tragic and heroic page of the Battle of the Dnieper is connected with the Bukrinsky bridgehead - the so-called “Death Landing”.

According to the participants in the battles on the Bukrinsky bridgehead, who were faced with the task of suddenly seizing a bridgehead on the Kanevsky steeps, gaining a foothold on it, and then going on the offensive, such bloody battles have not happened since the beginning of the war. The soldiers sailed through the “wide and mighty” under heavy enemy fire, as best they could: on the boats of local residents, holding on to trees, logs, boards, raincoats filled with straw... and drowned in the thousands.

One of the participants in these events was the famous film director, People's Artist of the USSR Grigory Chukhrai, who also left his memories of the terrible battles of 1943 near the village. Buchaka: “They jumped out of the plane in the sector of anti-aircraft fire. Before that, I had to drink a lot of military hardships: I was wounded twice, fought in Stalingrad, but I had never tried anything like this - falling towards the shining paths of bullets, through the flames of my comrades’ parachutes burning in the sky...” That bloody autumn, thousands of paratroopers burned in the sky under the canopies of parachutes, and for those who managed to land, death awaited them on the ground and in the waters of the gray Dnieper.

The Bukrin bridgehead was too expensive. How expensive it is has not yet been established. The announced figure for human losses during the Battle of the Dnieper is 417,000 people, and about 250,000 people died in the battles for the Bukrinsky bridgehead (some historians suggest much more). German losses at Bukrin amounted to 55,000 people. But it is not possible to accurately name the real losses in that battle.

Dnieper landing operation

At dawn on September 24, the enemy concentrated several divisions, including one tank, against the Bukrinsky and Rzhishchevsky bridgeheads.

To support and facilitate the crossing of the Dnieper, the creation and retention of a bridgehead on its right bank, and the further advance of troops in the Bukrinsky direction, by order of Headquarters, airborne troops entered the battle.

It was planned that 10,000 paratroopers would take control of significant parts of the territory in the German rear between Rzhishchev (Kiev region) and Kanev (Cherkasy region) and hold them for 2-3 days until the main forces arrived.

However, due to miscalculations in preparation (poor reconnaissance and navigation, lack of transport and communications, excessive secrecy), only 4,600 soldiers were able to land, only 5% of them in a certain zone. Others were scattered over many tens of kilometers.

Soviet paratroopers, 1943

Despite the heroism of the paratroopers, 3,500 of them died or were captured, most of them in the first hours after the landing on September 25. However, those who landed near the forests near Kanev united in groups and continued to fight.

Lieutenant Colonel Prokop Sidorchuk assembled an entire brigade from such groups, got in touch with the main forces and raided behind German lines for two months, supporting the crossing of the Dnieper by Soviet troops in the Cherkassy region.

The Dnieper landing operation was the last mass use of paratroopers by the USSR during World War II. The Kremlin has lost faith in the airborne troops.

Human sacrifices. "Chernosvitochniki", they are also "black jackets"

If we talk about the Bukrinsky bridgehead, then it was here that the largest number of dead Soviet soldiers were concentrated during the Battle of the Dnieper.

They put the figure at 200-250 thousand people. Let us remind you: German losses on Bukrin amounted to 55,000 people. But it is not possible to accurately name the real losses in that battle.

It is also impossible to name the exact losses in the entire Battle of the Dnieper. Historians claim that the total losses of the Red Army during the Battle of the Dnieper were 300-400 thousand. Germany, together with its Romanian allies, lost almost the same amount - about 400,000 soldiers. The fighting was tough, the initiative often changed hands.

In any case, this issue still requires work with archives.

As a result of a deep breakthrough, the Red Army found itself in territories that had been under German occupation for a relatively long time without interruption - it was not even the military, but the civil administration of the Reichskommissariat "Ukraine" that operated here.

It was then that those who remained under occupation began to be considered “traitors to the motherland.” Another “meme” of those times was “to atone for the guilt [of being under occupation] with blood.”

And it was then that what after the war was called “field military registration and enlistment offices” appeared. In conditions of stretched communications and lagging rear lines, the advancing armies mobilized the local population, often all in a row - from 16 to 60 years old. "Was under occupation? Redeem with blood!"

This Soviet practice was first recorded in early 1943, during the first liberation of Kharkov from the Germans. The Germans called newly mobilized civilians who died en masse during hostilities “trophy soldiers.” The Germans mistakenly perceived the appearance of young men and old men in the Red Army as evidence that the USSR was exhausting its mobilization capabilities.

On the newly liberated Left Bank, the spacecraft had a good opportunity to replenish its ranks with such newcomers who were not trained in military affairs. These were young men who had reached mobilization age (and often simply looked like adults), these were also “defeatists” and “encircled people” of 1941-42, who remained in the occupied territory.

Among them was 21-year-old Pavel Solodko, the future grandfather of the editor of Historical Truth. Shell-shocked during the Kharkov operation of 1942, he was captured, escaped from a camp near Uman and reached his native Bakhmach. In September 1943, Bakhmach was released.

“When, after the occupation, we were lined up at the recruiting station, the officer said: “Those who served in the artillery, two steps forward.” I left,” recalled Pavel Solodko. “And of those who remained, many died two months later - during the crossing of the Dnieper. There were rumors that they weren’t even given uniforms.”

Without uniform, often without weapons, often untrained, these people died in the thousands. Because of their civilian clothes, they were nicknamed “Chernosvitniks” or “Black Jackets.”

So the villages and cities of the Left Bank lost most of their men in a few weeks - they were crushed by the Dnieper bridgeheads in September-October.

“He complained that the majority died because of their lack of training even in the simple rules of combat,” writes Vladimir. “Nobody did this, they were simply driven to machine guns like cattle. Until the end of his life, my father was sure that Stalin wanted to exterminate Ukrainian youth in this way who learned life without communists."

Grigory Parkhomenko, two months after being drafted, was finally sworn in. And the dead brothers-in-arms died just like that, without an oath, “unofficially.”

In November 1943, film director Alexander Dovzhenko wrote in his diary:

“Today V. Shklovsky told me that many liberated citizens mobilized in Ukraine are dying in battles. They are called, it seems, Chernosvitkas. They fight in home clothes, without any preparation, like penalties. They are looked at as if they are guilty.” One general looked “I cried at them in battle,” Victor told me.”

The myth about Zhukov, who wanted to “drown crests in the Dnieper”

There is one mythical quote associated with the “Chernosvitniki”, which has been regularly popping up on the Internet for several years now. Allegedly, Georgy Zhukov wanted to drown more Ukrainians in the Dnieper: “Why... uniform 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.”

No matter what “butcher” Marshal Zhukov is, this quote is an invention of the last few years. Its source is the memoirs of veteran Yuri Kovalenko, who calls himself “an officer for special assignments at the headquarters of General Vatutin.”

An inquisitive reader who wishes to familiarize himself with other memoirs of the 80-year-old captain Kovalenko will learn that intelligence officer Kovalenko personally captured Field Marshal Paulus, received a bullet right in the heart and was invited to a reception with Stalin, who consulted him in a friendly manner in the Kremlin for glass of Saperavi.

And after the liberation of Kyiv, Vatutin whispered to his adjutant that he was in fact a Ukrainian named “Vatutya”, and ordered him to go over to Roman Shukhevych in order to agree on a joint struggle against Stalinism and Hitlerism.

Later, during the war in the Far East, pilot Yuri Kovalenko, in his own words, was shot down by a “Japanese kamikaze” at an altitude of six thousand meters, after which he made friends in Alaska with American pilots - who, of course, turned out to be Ukrainians and sincere patriots .

You don’t have to be a professional historian or a candidate of science to be convinced that we are talking about the inappropriate chatter of an elderly person. But this nonsense, covered up by candidate titles of historians, is readily taken away for convenient sensational quotes by not at all marginal publications of Ukraine.

The fact that Zhukov’s quote is a myth does not deny the fact of the death of tens of thousands of mobilized “black jackets.”

But Zhukov, most likely, did not care whose nationality he drowned in the Dnieper - before that, for a year he had mediocrely stormed German positions near Rzhev [now the Tver region of the Russian Federation], putting hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers in swampy ground.

It was an ordinary and terrible mechanism of the Stalinist totalitarian state, which recklessly destroyed its own citizens.

The result of the action of this mechanism in the Dnieper water was described by the above-mentioned Viktor Astafiev: “Old and young, conscious and unconscious, volunteers and those mobilized by military registration and enlistment offices, penal officers and guardsmen, Russians and non-Russians - they all shouted the same words: “Mom! Oh my God! God!" and “Guard!”, “Help!” And the machine guns flogged and flogged..."

The brutal practice of using local civilian resources in combat operations allegedly led to the order of the Headquarters of October 15 “On the procedure for conscripting those liable for military service in areas liberated from German occupation.”

The implementation of field mobilization and the number of dead “Black Swirls” - these topics require professional scientific work in the archives.

New offensive. The emergence of four Ukrainian fronts

So, the battles on the Bukrinsky and Lyutezhsky bridgeheads continued without success until October 15-16 and were temporarily suspended.

On October 20, 1943, the fronts that fought for the Dnieper on the territory of Ukraine were renamed. Since October 21, Voronezh began to be called the 1st Ukrainian, Stepnoy, South-Western and Southern - respectively, the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Ukrainian. Rokossovsky's central front became Belorussian.

On October 21, a new offensive began on the Bukrinsky bridgehead, which lasted several days without much success. At Lyutezhsky, the Germans aggressively counterattacked, but the Red Army even slightly expanded the bridgehead.

Crossing of Soviet troops. Reconstruction of the Battle of Kyiv, 2013. Photo: LJ 15A18

After the October battles, the 1st Ukrainian Front reliably secured three operational bridgeheads: Bukrinsky (40th, 27th and 3rd Guards Tank Armies), Lyutezhsky (38th Army) and a bridgehead at the mouth of the Pripyat River (13th me and the 60th Army).

And only then, after two months of attempts to storm from the Bukrinsky bridgehead, Stalin decided to change the direction of the main attack. The Lyutezhsky bridgehead now seemed most suitable for an attack on Kyiv.

For the successful implementation of this plan, it was necessary to ensure operational surprise - to secretly strengthen the troops, transferring them along the left bank of the Dnieper from near Bukrin to Troieshina.

The beginning of the battle for Kyiv - the continuation of the battle for the Dnieper

Meanwhile, the “southern” Ukrainian fronts resumed pressure. On October 23-14, two armies of the Third Ukrainian Front crossed the river, broke through the enemy’s defenses, strengthened the bridgehead and liberated Dnepropetrovsk on October 25.

In those same days, the Fourth Ukrainian broke through the enemy’s defenses on the Molochnaya River and in early November reached the Dnieper in its lower reaches, isolating the enemy’s Crimean group.

On October 24, late at night, the Headquarters issued a directive to the fronts, according to which the First Ukrainian Front was to immediately begin transferring its troops from the left wing to the right and complete their concentration by November 1-2. The 60th Army of Chernyakhovsky, mentioned at the beginning, was also involved in the offensive - Rokossovsky handed it over to Vatutin.

The operation was prepared in a hurry - according to Soviet traditions, Kyiv was stormed “on time.” They were in a hurry to liberate the capital of the Ukrainian SSR from the Nazis by November 7, the main Soviet holiday, the 26th “anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution.” This haste led to the “storming”.

Sappers make a crossing, 1943. There's obviously a dogfight going on in the sky

In 8-10 days, troops from the Bukrin bridgehead had to carry out a forced march at a distance of 150-200 km, cross the Desna and again across the Dnieper to the Lyutezh bridgehead.

Among these tasks, the most difficult was associated with the subsequent regrouping of troops. On the Bukrinsky bridgehead, false firing positions of artillery batteries were set up, some radio stations remained in place and continued normal radio traffic, mines and barbed wire were laid, false crossings were built on the Dnieper, and the transfer of troops from the left bank to the bridgehead was simulated.

To camouflage crossings, smoke screens were widely used, which were placed where troop crossings were not carried out. The German command was unable to find out about the scale and nature of the regrouping of Soviet troops and it was at this time that it withdrew the 7th Tank Division from near Kyiv to the Kagarlyk area.

The success of the regrouping was greatly facilitated by the work of Soviet engineering units, which, in very difficult conditions, built a pontoon bridge across the Dnieper, built two wooden bridges with a deck below the water level, which made them almost invisible, and deployed two ferry crossings.

The battle directly for Kyiv began on November 1, 1943 with the offensive of Soviet troops on the Bukrinsky bridgehead - after 40 minutes of artillery and air preparation. The enemy, who had retained a strong group here since the October battles, stopped the offensive with crushing fire, tanks and counterattacks.

From November 3 to 5, Soviet troops demonstrated the concentration of operational reserves on Bukrin, diverting significant enemy forces from the northern direction, where the fate of Kyiv was being decided.

Kyiv offensive operation

On November 3, 1943, the strike group of troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front on the Lyutezh bridgehead delivered a powerful blow from the north of Kyiv. From eight o'clock in the morning, for 40 minutes, the artillery inflicted crushing fire on the enemy's defenses.

In the offensive zone of the 38th Army (commander - Donbass native Konstantin Moskalenko), which delivered the main blow, more than 2,000 guns and mortars, 500 rocket artillery installations were concentrated in a six-kilometer breakthrough area, which made it possible to create here a density of artillery unprecedented in wars - more 300 units per 1 km of the breakthrough section.

The powerful blow destroyed defensive structures, the enemy suffered significant losses in manpower, weapons, and military equipment. The first echelon of Soviet troops went on the attack. In the afternoon, the enemy launched the first counterattack from Pushcha-Voditsa, which was repulsed with heavy losses. The offensive continued, with heavy fighting continuing well into the night.

Street fight in Kyiv. November 1943

The strike force was covered from the west by the 60th Army, in whose zone the enemy offered stubborn resistance. Great assistance to the offensive troops was provided by the 2nd Air Army, which attacked enemy reserves moving from the areas of Bila Tserkva and Korsun-Shevchenkovsky.

On the morning of November 4, the troops resumed their offensive; the enemy launched a powerful counterattack, especially in Pushcha-Voditsa. Fierce fighting on the outskirts of Kyiv continued throughout the night. The 7th Guards Tank Corps cut the Kyiv-Zhitomir highway and headed towards Kyiv - from the western side of the city, along what is now Pobeda Avenue.

The tanks drove with their lights and sirens on, firing intensely. The enemy could not stand it and began to withdraw troops towards Fastov, while simultaneously transferring troops from the Bukrinsky bridgehead to the Kyiv area.

On November 5, the first tank to break into the center of Kyiv was a native of the Vyshgorod region, guard sergeant major Nikifor Sholudenko. He was a scout and his car was at the head of a column of equipment. Before the war, Sholudenko studied in absentia at the fourth year of the KPI and knew the western part of Kyiv well.

At one of the intersections between Shulyavka and Borshchagovka, the foreman was mortally wounded during a battle with a German self-propelled gun. Kerosinnaya Street, the former main highway from Lukyanovka to the south, is named after him.

The grave of Guard Sergeant Major Sholudenko in the Park of Glory in Pechersk

Fighting on the streets of Kyiv continued all night on November 6 - especially in the area of ​​Borshchagovka and Syrts. The enemy was retreating to the southwest.

At four o'clock in the morning on November 6, General Moskalenko, having personally visited Khreshchatyk and making sure that the troops had completely captured the city, reported to front commander Vatutin about the liberation of the capital of Ukraine.

The Germans tried to eliminate the breakthrough by pulling large forces, mainly tanks, to the south and southwest of Kyiv, which were transferred from France, the Bukrin bridgehead and from near Kremenchug.

Already on November 6, the troops of the First Ukrainian Front continued a powerful offensive, covering more than 50 km per day. The enemy was pursued in diverging directions towards Korosten, Zhitomir, Fastov, and Bila Tserkva.

On November 7, the 3rd Guards Tank Army captured an important railway junction and a powerful enemy stronghold - the city of Fastov. This made it possible for the front troops to develop an attack on Kazatin and Belaya Tserkov and help bring about a turning point in the actions of the troops on the Bukrinsky bridgehead.

Soviet tanks on Khreshchatyk. The facade of the Central Department Store is visible behind

But on November 10-12, in the Kozyatinsky and Belotserkovsky directions, the enemy actually stopped the Soviet offensive. The previously captured settlements of Popelnya and Pavoloch were lost. The main efforts of the army were concentrated on holding the achieved line in the Fastov area. Heavy fighting east of Fastov continued continuously for several days, but the enemy did not achieve success.

After crossing the Teterev River and breaking through the Soviet front, the Nazis cut the Zhitomir-Kyiv highway on November 16 and captured Korostyshev on November 17. From November 19 to 20, Zhitomir was captured. Enemy tanks headed along the current Kyiv-Chop highway to the east - towards the capital of Ukraine.

On a small strip of the front of the 38th and 3rd Guards Tank Armies, the German command concentrated almost as many tank (9) and motorized (2) divisions as they acted against the main forces of the entire Voronezh Front in the battles on the Kursk Bulge.

After fierce fighting, the German offensive wore down, finally ending on 25 November. The troops moved towards the autumn-winter campaign of 1943-44.

End of the Battle of the Dnieper

On December 15, the Second Ukrainian Front captured Cherkassy, ​​expanding the bridgehead in the Dnepropetrovsk area to a strategic one.

Bridgeheads in the Dnepropetrovsk region and their expansion. When Brezhnev from Dnepropetrovsk came to power in the USSR, these battles began to be given great importance

Near Kiev, meanwhile, the Germans renewed their attempts to push Soviet troops beyond the Dnieper. But by the end of December their offensive fizzled out.

Map of the Zhitomir-Berdichev offensive operation (December 1943 - January 1944) of the First Ukrainian Front. Green indicates the front line on December 23

A small bridgehead in the Lyutezh area was expanded to a strategic one - up to 400 km along the front and 150 km in depth. Other bridgeheads were also expanded. Soviet troops crossed the Dnieper, now they could only be stopped in front of the Carpathians.

The Battle of the Dnieper lasted four months, becoming one of the largest operations in world history. About four million people on both sides were involved in the fighting. The front line was approximately 1,400 km, the total losses (killed, wounded and prisoners) ranged from 1 to 2.7 million people.

Of the 300 - 400 thousand Soviet soldiers who died during these four months, the majority died in September-October at the Bukrinsky bridgehead. A significant part of them were the so-called “Chernosvitochniki” - civilians from settlements that had just been taken by the Red Army, who were forcefully mobilized into units of military units.

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Messages in topic: 9

• City old Nikolaevka

68 years ago, on the night of April 12-13, 1944, the crossing of the Dniester River began.

Combat order of the commander of the 68th Rifle Corps No. 17 dated April 11, 1944 for the corps to cross the river. Dniester on the move.

Battle order
commander
68th Rifle Corps
№ 17
to force the hull
R. Dniester on the move
(April 11, 1944)
Series "G"
COMBAT ORDER No. 17 SHTAKOR 68 11.4.44
Map 100,000 – 41 g.

1. The enemy, covering the crossings across the river. The Dniester, with strong rearguard units, withdraws the main forces to the right bank and continues to stubbornly resist at pre-prepared intermediate lines.

The Dniester River will undoubtedly be used by the enemy as an advantageous intermediate line.

2. 68th Rifle Corps with the 374th Anti-Tank Artillery Regiment, a company of the 251st Army Motorized Engineering Battalion

• City old Nikolaevka

On the morning of May 10th, General A.D. Shemenkov set the task for the commanders of the 172nd and 174th Guards Rifle Regiments to cross the Dniester River west of the village of Butory and, in cooperation with units of the 28th Guards Rifle Corps, to capture an advantageous terrain line in the bend of the Dniester River, as ensuring further expansion of the bridgehead into the depths of the enemy’s defense and to his flanks.
The Dniester River near the village of Butory was a powerful water line and a serious obstacle for the advancing troops. The enemy organized a strong defense on the western bank of the Dniester River, taking advantage of favorable terrain conditions - commanding heights above a flat floodplain overgrown with sparse bushes to a depth of three kilometers.
The commander of the first pontoon regiment received an order from the chief of the engineering troops of the 8th Guards Army immediately after crossing the Dniester River by guards riflemen in the area of ​​the village of Butory to organize the crossing of tanks and self-propelled guns on a ferry with a load of 60 tons to ensure the expansion of the bridgehead.
The next day, the second battalion of the regiment began organizing a ferry crossing, concentrating property on a steep bank. The left bank of the Dniester River at the chosen crossing point rose high above the river floodplain and sank steeply down. If this place was favorable and surmountable for lowering tanks to the river, then for lowering vehicles with pontoon equipment it presented the danger of the vehicles being torn apart.
The battalion commander decided to manually lower the property down to the river along the bank slopes. The pontoons dragged the half-pontoons to the cliff of the shore and lowered them down the steep slope using ropes. The half-purlins and flooring were carried by hand, sliding and often falling on the crumbling sandy cliff.
Usually, pontooners are pleased with cloudy, foggy, cloudy or rainy days, which in their vocabulary is called “favorable weather,” but here, as luck would have it, it turned out to be a clear sunny and even hot day.
The enemy easily noticed the pontooners on the steep bank and, in the midst of work, launched a series of artillery attacks. The work had to be stopped, and time is running out.
The battalion commander turned to the regiment commander with permission to move the crossing point to another location. The regiment commander listened to the report of Senior Lieutenant A.A. Panchenko. and said:
“Well, let’s go, I’ll take a look myself and talk to the people,” and added, turning to the assistant chief of staff, “Andreev, take your suitcase with you.”
Getting up, he put his belt and tunic in order, pushed his cap slightly to the side and walked along the street of the village of Butory, littered with the rubble of broken huts, straight to the cliff of the shore. Behind him are two senior lieutenants, a battalion commander and a deputy chief of staff.
The pontoons, seeing the regiment commander, shouted “Dad!”, “Dad is coming!” they came out of the shelters where they were hiding during the enemy’s just-made artillery attack, first with a cautious eye, then more boldly ran over to the abandoned property.
The regiment commander called the first brave souls to him and said:
- Follow me, my friend! - and he continued to walk further along the cliff. When more than a dozen soldiers and sergeants gathered near him, he ordered the officers to build their units right on the edge of the cliff. At the command of the officers, pontooners quickly began to run out from all the shelters and get into formation.
The lieutenant colonel walked expectantly along the line along the very edge of the cliff.
In a matter of minutes, the companies were formed into platoons, and Senior Lieutenant Panchenko reported to the commander.
“Let’s wait,” said the regiment commander, “there’s another brave man looking out of the shed.” Come on, hero, come, come here, straight to me!
The soldier approached, stood in front of the line and reported to the commander:
- Private Malin!
He was a strong soldier of average height. He was very embarrassed and color flooded his face.
The commander approached him, put his hand on his shoulder, looked into his face from above and asked:
- What, scary? – the soldier blushed even more, but did not answer.
“Don’t be shy and don’t even think of lying to me, it’s not scary,” and turning to the line, he said, “Honestly, it’s scary.” You just don’t need to think about it and it won’t be scary. It's war. And I know that you are all well done and brave, and I am sure that now you will all work together to spite the “Fritz”. And it can kill you in those sheds and crevices where you were hiding. You see, you need to overcome this slope together and at the same time, but there is already dead space and “he” cannot see the very shore. – and turning to the group that stood in front of the formation, he said, “Andreev, open your suitcase.” I am not Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin and I am not authorized to award other than these two signs of soldier’s valor, but the richer I am, the more I reward the bravest.
He took the medal “For Courage” from the open suitcase and pinned it on Private Malin’s chest before the formation.
With joy and excitement, the soldier blushed even more and, shouting “I serve the Soviet Union,” froze in place, indecisive, not knowing what to do: get into formation or run to the pontoons.
The commander pushed him towards the line and said quietly:
- This is for you in advance. – Then he began pinning medals to the tunics of the soldiers and sergeants standing near him, saying, “This is for those who were the first to rush into the “battle” at the sight of the regiment commander.
Senior Lieutenant Andreev barely had time to write down the names of those awarded for subsequent registration with an order for the regiment.
Having pinned the last medal, he said to the two remaining sergeants:
- That's it, you didn't have enough. He will follow me when you make the crossing. Now everyone get to work, quickly!
Platoon commanders, sergeants and their crews all rushed to the pontoons, and in less than a quarter of an hour all the property was near the shore. Everyone worked together, harmoniously, with enthusiasm, laughter and jokes.
Passing by one of the crews of the senior staff, I heard:
“Here’s Dad, even the Krauts are afraid of him, wow, the whole time he appeared at the crossing, they didn’t fire a single shot,” one soldier said admiringly.
At the same moment, the howl of a flying mine was heard.
- Get down! – the senior lieutenant gave the command.
Everyone lay down. A mine exploded nearby, but did not hit anyone.
- Well, it's begun! - said the same soldier, - Dad must have left the crossing.
- No, what are you talking about, there they are! – answered the second elderly corporal.
The crossing operated uninterruptedly, despite continuous artillery and mortar fire, without reaching the target.
Five days after receiving the medal, Private Malin, while on duty on the ferry, when three half-pontoons were damaged by fragments of an exploding shell, rushed into the water towards the ferry and, under a hail of fragments from mines and shells, sealed the holes, ensuring the safety of the ferry afloat.
When the ferry approached the shore, the company commander, who was observing its actions, said:
- Well done Malin, he acted bravely.
The pontooner proudly stroked the medal “For Courage” hanging on his wet tunic and turned to the company commander:
- Comrade senior lieutenant, report to Bata that Malin did not disappoint and justified his trust.
In the evening of the same day, the battalion commander reported to the regiment commander that during the next enemy artillery attack on the crossing, Private Malin died the death of a brave man.

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• Tiraspol city

I decided to support the topic.

Extract from the ZhBD 9th Guards. VDD for 04.1944
TsAMO, f. 328, op. 4852, d. 188, l. 301

04/12/1944 To select a crossing point and clarify the position of the units, the chief of staff of the Guards division went to the banks of the Dniester. Colonel Goryachev A.Ya., who, together with the unit commanders, walked the entire east. river bank in the Grigoriopol area, marking the place for crossing the west. the suburb of Delakeu, where they began to concentrate all the crossing facilities built by parts of the division and glanders. battalion. By 20.00 2 A-3 boats were prepared and brought to the glanders crossing. battalion of the division, 3 fishing boats and 8 rafts with a carrying capacity of 4-5 people. All transportation facilities were concentrated to the east. bank of the river, opposite the church of the Delakeu suburb, where for crossing and seizing a bridgehead to the west. The landing detachment of the 26th Guards was preparing on the shore. VDSP, under the general command of the commander of the company of machine gunners of the Guards. (Art.) Lieutenant Klimentyev.

04/13/1944 Having prepared the landing detachment and brought up the regimental artillery for direct fire of the 26th Guards. At 01.00 the airborne forces began crossing the river. Dniester on the site of the Delakeu suburb. Having boarded the A-3 boats, the advance detachment under the command of Klementyev began to swim across the river, but discovered by the enemy, they were subjected to heavy machine-gun and mortar fire from the west. shores. Despite the intense enemy fire, a group of brave men under the command of Klimentyev persistently approached the shore occupied by the enemy. The boats, riddled with bullets, began to lose air and slowly fill with water, the water approached the level of the sides of the boat, and the boats rowed and rowed towards the enemy shore, shelling its defenses with machine-gun fire. The high water slowed down the pace of the crossing and only after 45 minutes. after the start of the crossing, the boats, half filled with water, moored to the west. shore. As soon as the boats approached the shore, 45 guardsmen jumped ashore and without shouting “HURRAY!” boldly burst into the enemy's front trenches, located 40-50 meters from the water. A hand-to-hand battle ensued, during which the airborne detachment destroyed up to 25 enemy soldiers and officers. Unable to withstand the rapid attack, the Germans abandoned the forward trench, retreated 100-120 meters from the shore, and took up defensive positions in depth.
Having occupied the enemy's advanced trenches, the detachment entrenched itself in them, continuing to support the crossing of the remaining units of the regiment with machine gun fire. Having loaded onto small rafts, the remaining units of the regiment began to sail away from the shore, but under strong enemy rifle, machine gun and mortar fire they were unable to control the small rafts, which were spinning disobediently on the fast flow of the high-water Dniester. After a 2-hour struggle with the elements, the rafts, one by one, began to moor to our shore 600-800 meters below the departure point.

All attempts to transfer reinforcements to the crossed detachment did not produce positive results, and 45 brave men who occupied the enemy’s advanced trenches remained on its bank, fighting off counterattacks. 23rd and 28th Guards. During the day, the airborne forces continued to occupy their previous position, conducting a firefight with the enemy, and preparing transportation means. On the night of April 14, 1944, the division, fulfilling its assigned task, again tried to cross the river. The Dniester in front of the front of each regiment, but met by strong machine-gun and artillery-mortar fire from the enemy, was unable to transport the units to the west. shore, and having lost 8 people. wounded, remained to the east. shore, continuing to prepare crossing facilities.

The right neighbor /214 SD/ on the night of April 14, 1944 also tried to transfer units to the west. river bank, but encountering organized enemy fire from the west. shore, did not complete the assigned task. Three hours after the crossing began, Red Army soldiers of the 23rd Guards. The airborne forces began to catch boats and rafts near their shore with wounded soldiers and officers of the 214th SD, carried away by the current after a failed crossing.

04/14/1944 Having made sure that during the night of April 14, 1944, parts of the division were not able to be transferred to the west. shore additional forces, the enemy decided at all costs to deal with the group of brave men who crossed to its shore and occupied the first line of trenches. After a powerful artillery attack, a group of enemy infantry of up to 150 people launched a decisive offensive against the positions of 45 guardsmen, and a fierce hand-to-hand battle ensued. Shooting at point-blank range with rifles and machine guns, a group of soldiers under the command of Guards. (Art.) Lieutenant Klimentyev continued to fight an unequal battle, remaining in the enemy trenches. For 40 minutes, rifle and machine-gun fire and cries of struggle were heard in the airborne detachment's defense area. As dawn broke, the fighting began to subside, and then everything fell silent. And only on the bank of the river, right next to the water, was it visible from the east. shore, 2 people fled, one of whom was a guard. (Art.) Lieutenant Klimentyev, and the second is his messenger. Towards the east On the bank of the river in the area of ​​​​the Delakeu suburb, the soldiers who remained alive from the landing detachment began to swim out one by one, and throughout the day they continued to arrive at the regiment one by one. In just one day, 14 people arrived in the unit from the airborne detachment destroyed by the enemy, and the fate of 31 guardsmen remained unknown.
Having failed and having become convinced that it was impossible to cross the river on primitive rafts, units of the division were given the task of preparing 5 fishing boats for each regiment. Collecting boards, tow and resin around the city, the carpenters energetically set to work. By the end of the day, the units had made 3 flat-bottomed boats with a capacity of 8-10 people each.

04/15/1944 Having received a new task, the division began to carry it out, for which a reconnaissance group under the general command of the Guards left for the Tashlyk area. Colonel M.V. Grachev, and the units began to withdraw from their sites and set out along the Grigoriopol-Tashlyk route. The fishing boats manufactured in parts were loaded onto carts and transported to the new crossing area. To save Guards. (Art.) Lieutenant Klimentyev, who remained in the west. bank of the river, a team of fighters was allocated under the general leadership of the company's Komsomol organizer, which on the night of April 15, 1944 was supposed to cross the river and bring the wounded officer to our shore. But the group did not complete the task assigned to it, arriving in the Tashlyk area on April 15, 1944, they reported that there was no one on the river bank in the place where Klimentyev lay, and that the enemy was defending along the very bank of the river.

Extract from the ZhBD 26 Guards. Vdsp for 1944
TsAMO, f. 6971, op. 204695, building 1, l. 1

04/13/1944 On the night of April 13, 1944, under the cover of fire from a heavy machine gun, light machine guns, artillery and mortars of the regiment, as well as with the support of divisional artillery of the 26th Guards. VDSB began crossing to the right bank of the Dniester River. Under heavy enemy fire, on a dark April night, 39 brave volunteers, under the command of the commander of a machine gun company of the Guards. Lieutenant Klimentyev and adjutant senior 3rd Sat Guards. Lieutenant Cherchenko, crossed the Dniester in three boats with a telephone set. The second group was not transported because The boats, broken in several places, required immediate repairs. During the crossing, 2 soldiers were wounded, who, together with the boats, returned to the left bank of the Dniester. The landing group fought to occupy enemy trenches dug 20-30 meters from the shore, with the task of gaining a foothold and holding the captured bridgehead during the day, until reinforcements arrived on the night of April 14. At dawn, the enemy launched four counterattacks, which were repulsed with the support of fire from the left bank. Having used up 3/4 of their ammunition reserves to repel the first four counterattacks, the group that crossed experienced an acute shortage of cartridges and grenades, which could not be replenished due to strong mortar and machine gun fire from the enemy. During the day, the enemy infantry did not show any active actions and conducted targeted fire on the left bank of the Dniester River, preventing the crossing of reinforcements by landing forces and ammunition. With the onset of darkness, enemy fire intensified, at times turning into heavy fire.
At 20.00 the enemy again launches counterattacks. With large infantry forces, supported by armored personnel carriers and artillery and mortar fire, the enemy pressed on the heroic guardsmen. Preferring death to captivity, shouting patriotic slogans, the guards and paratroopers courageously repelled enemy attacks. The regiment's artillery, experiencing an acute shortage of ammunition, could not have an effective fire impact on the enemy.
By 22.30, there were 9 people left in the landing group, including the lightly wounded, who could still resist the enemy. The cartridges were all spent, there were 2-3 grenades left per soldier, 5-6 cartridges in pistols and machine guns. The situation became more complicated every minute, the enemy crawled to the trenches, taking them into a semi-ring. Commander of a company of machine gunners of the Guards. Lieutenant Klimentyev calls artillery fire on himself on the phone in a calm, firm voice. The regiment's artillery and mortars open fire with their last rounds of ammunition.
Under enemy fire, two boats with ammunition and reinforcements were equipped on the left bank. The enemy opened powerful cutting fire. Before reaching the middle, both boats were shot in many places, and wounded appeared in the boats. One boat sank, the other returned to the left bank of the Dniester in a dilapidated state.
By 23.00 the enemy broke into the trenches. Hand-to-hand combat continued. Screams and single shots were heard until dawn on April 14.
39 people crossed to the right bank of the Dniester, 2 people returned with boats, and 7 people returned by swimming. In the landing operation, the regiment lost wounded - 1 officers, 10 privates; killed privates and sergeants - 26, missing - 11, among them Guards. Lieutenant Klimentyev, Guards. Lieutenant Cherchenko, Guards. Lieutenant Tishchenko*. Up to 70 Nazis and 4 machine gun points were destroyed. 2 dugouts were destroyed by artillery fire.

Note:
* - senior adjutant of the 3rd Sat Guards. Lieutenant Cherchenko and rifle platoon commander of the Guards. Lieutenant Tishchenko, after the Germans captured the trenches, disappeared into the forest and returned to the regiment on the 8th day. Fate of Guards Lieutenant Klimentyev has not been identified; according to unverified information, he was seen wounded in one of the hospitals.

List of landing party (not complete):
1) Guards (older) Lieutenant Klimentyev Timofey Ivanovich, born in 1915, commander of a rifle company, went missing;
2) Guards. Lieutenant Cherchenko Vasily Pavlovich, born in 1908, senior adjutant of the 3rd brigade, was listed as killed in battle on April 14, 1944, but in fact was listed as missing, and on April 23, 1944 he returned to his previous place of service wounded. Evacuated to hospital for treatment;
3) Guards. Lieutenant Tishchenko Ivan Nikolaevich, born in 1920, commander of a rifle platoon, was listed as killed in battle on 04/14/1944, but in fact was listed as missing, and on 04/23/1944 he returned to his previous place of service wounded;

List of those who retired from the 26th Guards. Airborne Forces for April 13-14, 1944 (probably from the same detachment):
4) Guards. Private Khludeev Oleg Pavlovich, born 1924, machine gunner, died of wounds on April 14, 1944. Primary burial place - urban settlement. Grigoriopol;
5) guards Sergeant Kovalenko Nikolai Danilovich, born in 1920, commander of a rifle squad, was listed as killed in battle on April 14, 1944, but in fact he was listed as missing, but in reality he returned to his previous place of service. There are a number of questions about it... In the report of the 9th Guards. The VDD for May 1944 is listed as buried in the Grigoriopol region, on the right bank of the river. Dniester. But in the award list for the medal “For Courage”, which he was awarded on October 19, 1944, it is indicated on April 14, 1944 in the region of the village of Tashlyk, with a group of 3 people, acting in a night search to capture the “language” ", crossed the river. The Dniester was under heavy fire and was the first to enter the village of Pugacheny, where he personally killed 2 German soldiers with a machine gun, whose soldier’s books were delivered to the division headquarters. He went through the entire war, was awarded orders and medals;
6) Guards foreman Nekipelov (Nikipelov) Maxim Stepanovich, born in 1919, company foreman, died of wounds on April 14, 1944. The primary burial place was in the area of ​​the urban settlement. Grigoriopol, right bank of the river. Dniester;
7) Guards Art. Sergeant Perepilitsa (Perepelitsa) Yakov Ivanovich, born in 1919, battalion clerk, killed on April 14, 1944. The primary burial place is in the area of ​​the urban settlement. Grigoriopol, right bank of the river. Dniester / Grigoriopol district, Krasnaya Bessarabka village;
8) Guards Private Galustyan Begbash (Begbish) Anrezovich, born in 1923, machine gunner of the 3rd Battalion, killed on April 14, 1944. The primary burial place is in the area of ​​the urban settlement. Grigoriopol, right bank of the river. Dniester;
9) Guards Sergeant Medvedev Alexander Timofeevich, born 1917, commander of the telephone department, listed as killed on April 14, 1944. In the report of the 9th Guards. The VDD for May 1944 is listed as buried in the Grigoriopol region, on the right bank of the river. Dniester. It is noteworthy that according to the headquarters of the Volga Military District for 09.1945, he is listed as captured on 04/13/1944 in Grigoriopol on the Dniester, and later released from captivity. In the anniversary card index of awards he is listed as awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, II degree, on 04/06/1985;
10) Guards Private Vishegorodsky Konstantin Iosifovich, born 1913, shooter, listed as killed on April 14, 1944. In the report of the 9th Guards. The VDD for May 1944 is listed as buried in the Grigoriopol region, on the right bank of the river. Dniester. The OBD has a guard. ml. sergeant Vyshegorodsky Konstantin Iosifovich, born in 1913, cook 2nd battalion, awarded the medal "For Military Merit" on August 10, 1944 for participation in battles on Polish territory in August 1944. In the anniversary awards card he is listed as awarded the Order of the Patriotic War I degree 04/06/1985;
11) Guards Sergeant Bessudov Dmitry Ivanovich, born in 1919, commander of a rifle squad, killed on April 14, 1944. The primary burial place is in the area of ​​the urban settlement. Grigoriopol, right bank of the river. Dniester;
12) Guards Private Dukhan Grigory Kharitonovich, born in 1914, machine gunner, killed on April 14, 1944. The primary burial place is in the area of ​​the urban settlement. Grigoriopol, right bank of the river. Dniester;
13) Guards Sergeant Sakharov Vladimir Platonovich, born 1919, commander of the telephone department, is listed as killed on April 14, 1944. In the report of the 9th Guards. The VDD for May 1944 is listed as buried in the Grigoriopol region, on the right bank of the river. Dniester. In the report of the 5th Guards. And for 1952 he is listed as having died from wounds on April 14, 1944, and the place of burial is Grigoriopol district, village of Krasnaya Bessarabka. It is noteworthy that according to the data of the 4th Guards unit. And for 08/1945 he is listed as captured on 04/13/1944 and was in captivity in Austria, and later released from it;
14) Guards Private Skvortsov Anatoly Aleksandrovich, born in 1924, telephone operator, killed on April 14, 1944. The primary burial place is in the area of ​​the urban settlement. Grigoriopol, right bank of the river. Dniester. In the report of the 5th Guards. And for 1952 he is listed as having died from wounds on April 14, 1944;
15) Guards Private Gladkov Saveliy Yakovlevich, born 1900, machine gunner, listed as killed on 04/13/1944. In reports of the 9th Guards. VDD for May 1944 and 5th Guards. And for 1952 it was listed as buried in the Grigoriopol region, on the right bank of the river. Dniester. It is noteworthy that, according to the data of the 21st WHSD for 07.1945, he is listed as captured in April 1944 on the Dniester River, and later released from captivity;
16) Guards Private Ermakov Alexander Vasilievich, born in 1922, machine gunner, killed on April 13, 1944. The primary burial place is in the area of ​​the urban settlement. Grigoriopol, right bank of the river. Dniester;
17) Guards Private Georgy Georgievich Avolyan, born in 1912, machine gunner, killed on April 13, 1944. The primary burial place is in the area of ​​the urban settlement. Grigoriopol, right bank of the river. Dniester;
18) Guards Sergeant Kublo Nikolai Ivanovich, born in 1922, machine gunner, killed on April 14, 1944. In the report of the 5th Guards. And for 1952, the primary burial place was indicated - in the region of the urban settlement. Grigoriopol, right bank of the river. Dniester. In the report of the 9th Guards. VDD for May 1944, the burial place is indicated - the village of Pugacheny, the right bank of the river. Dniester.

Taking into account the discrepancies in the reinforced concrete structure of the 26th Guards. Airborne Forces and 9th Guards. Airborne Forces, the exact number of personnel of the airborne detachment of the 26th Guards is not clear. Airborne Forces under the command of Lieutenant Klimentyev. One document lists 45 guardsmen, another - 39. Hence the list is not complete, but approximate. It is known for sure that 2 people. returned with boats, 7 people. returned by swimming, 2 more people. - Guards Lieutenants Tishchenko and Klimentyev got out of the ring wounded. I don’t know whether everyone listed above was part of this detachment, but judging by the reports, they all left on the right bank of the river. Dniester, then we can assume that they are part of the detachment, because other groups were unable to cross.

While I was working with the reports, a number of questions arose. The division reported in May that the soldiers were buried in the Grigoriopol area, on the right bank of the river. Dniester. But, as can be seen from the analysis, some were captured and survived. Then who was buried instead of them??? It’s one thing when the report states that he went missing, but it’s another thing when he died and was buried. For such reports there should have been at least eyewitness accounts... And when did they have time to bury on the right bank of the Dniester in the area of ​​Grigoriopol, if the division went in the direction of Tashlyk - Pugacheny, and the enemy was defending along the very bank of the river in the area of ​​Grigoriopol?! The work of the headquarters, which kept records of reports, is also not clear. An elementary example with guards. Sergeant Kovalenko N.D., who took part in the battles on April 14, delivered the soldier's books of two enemy soldiers he killed to headquarters. And the same headquarters reports in May that he died.
I would like to clarify the fate of the commander of the airborne detachment of the Guards. Lieutenant Klimentyev T.I. Everyone saw him on the river bank near the water, as he fled with a messenger, but for some reason no one from among those who swam out (survivors from the detachment) in the area of ​​​​the Delakeu suburb helped him move to the left bank. It is also noteworthy that the other 2 officers disappeared into the forest and later returned to the regiment. Why didn’t he disappear with them? There are many questions, no answers. One can only guess. Apparently, he was a brave officer if he called artillery fire on himself. This is evidenced by the Order of the Red Star, which he was awarded for the battles in Poltava and Kremenchug. It’s sad.. The detachment held the first line of trenches on the right bank of the Dniester until the last round, participating in battles. And the team of fighters that went for the wounded Klimentyev was allocated only on the night of April 15, 1944. If the group reported that there was no one on the river bank in the place where Klimentyev lay, and the enemy was defending along the very bank of the river, then the conclusion obvious... Either he was captured or died. It is strange why, when leaving for Tashlyk, they did not leave a cover group for their wounded on the right bank. It was possible to leave snipers or machine gunners. This is all rhetoric, of course. I just feel sorry for the guys who died a heroic death without receiving help...

Whoever has lists of brothers in the Pugacheny-Delakeu-Grigoriopol area, take a look, you might see Guards somewhere among them. Lieutenant Klimentyev T.I. If you have time, then check the lists of the rest of the above-mentioned fighters, especially those who, according to some reports, are listed as dead and buried, but in reality were captured. This mistake could be included on memorial plaques, on lists in village councils/military registration and enlistment offices, etc.
Maybe someone wants to add information or express their opinion on the above described.

When I have time, I’ll rummage through the documents of the 214 SD, which were neighbors of the 9th Guards. Airborne Forces also tried to cross to the right bank in the Grigoriopol area. I'll post it here as a continuation of the topic. Otherwise, many people don’t even know about such heroic battles, about attempts to force the battle. Basically, they write about larger-scale ones.

The division's privates, sergeants and officers strive to cross the river as quickly as possible. Dniester and the liberation of Soviet Bessarabia. During the day of the battle, the enemy suffered damage: 18 soldiers and officers were killed. Our losses - 3 wounded, 1 killed.

04/13/1944 The enemy, defending to the west. bank of the river Dniester, conducting machine-gun fire and sniper fire. The most careful observation did not notice any enemy movements along the shore.
When approaching single soldiers and groups of 4-5 people. They do not open machine-gun fire; individual riflemen and snipers fire. When leaving groups of more than 5 people. strong machine-gun fire opens towards the water. The enemy's trenches and trenches lie right next to the cliff; individual soldiers were discovered in the trenches and trenches by observation. Units of the division, fulfilling the assigned task, crossed the river at 3.00 with one company of 24 people. Dniester and consolidated on the western bank. The rest of the rifle regiments are being prepared for the crossing on April 14, 1944.
During the day of defensive battle, 13 people were wounded by enemy sniper fire, among them pom. beginning headquarters 788 joint venture captain Egorov, wounded from a machine gun. 1 person killed. At 12.30 the 2nd assistant was killed. Chief of Staff of the 776th joint venture, Captain Reshetnikov K.A. and was buried in Grigoriopol in the civil cemetery.

04/14/1944 Defending to the west. bank of the river Dniester, during the day the enemy fired at the battle formations of the regiments with rifle-machine-gun fire and the fire of one heavy mortar from the Dorotskoye area.
The division, continuing to fulfill its assigned task, transported it to the west on the night of 13-14. river bank Dniester 114 people, 1 heavy and several light machine guns, 2 radio stations. The personnel transported on 14 rafts with officers, during 04/14/1944 there were no signs of life to the west. I didn’t show it to the shore.
There was no contact with the group; the most careful observation did not reveal any soldiers who had crossed to the right bank. The rafts did not arrive to the eastern shore. The fate of the landing party remained unknown. When crossing the river. Dniester units of the division suffered heavy losses in personnel. Only one of the regiments of the division /788 joint venture/ was wounded - deputy. com. regiment captain Belokon, deputy. com. regiment for political affairs, Lieutenant Colonel Zotikov, chief of staff of the regiment, Major Arkhipov, com. battalion captain Bolgov, deputy. com. b-at st. Lieutenant Yaskevich. A total of 11 people were injured. officers. Damage was caused to the enemy: an infantry platoon was destroyed, fire from 3 machine gun points was suppressed.

conclusions
The choice of crossing area was tactically correct, but the crossing operation was not successful for the following reasons:
a) the enemy, his forces, composition, intentions, defense and fire systems were not sufficiently explored;
b) the regime of the water barrier, which is of exceptional importance during the crossing, was also not explored;
c) the crossing took place on a narrow front, which made it possible for the enemy to concentrate fire on the landing force to destroy it on the water, and to bombard it and the crossing facilities with grenades near its shore;
d) the heterogeneous training of the rowers and helmsmen on the rafts did not allow the landing party to simultaneously moor to the enemy’s shore and bring down their fire on him;
e) crossing a water barrier at night could not ensure the suppression of enemy firing points by fire from the shore of those crossing.

Description of combat operations 788 joint venture 214 SD
TsAMO, f. 7445, op. 159837, no. 8, l. 1

04/13/1944 The enemy takes up defensive positions on the right bank of the river. Dniester. With all his might and means he strives to hold an advantageous line of defense and does not allow our advancing units to cross during the day.
During the night and day, sparse artillery and targeted rifle and machine-gun fire is conducted on the battle formations of rifle companies. In total, 6-8 enemy points were detected.
The regiment fulfills its assigned task. Since 1.00 he has been conducting offensive battles. At 3.00 one company of 24 people with 2 heavy machine guns crossed the river on improvised boats. Dniester and is located on the right bank of the southwest. Grigoriopol, where she dug in. Currently, they are conducting rifle and machine gun fire and improving trench work.
The regiment's artillery is located at the river crossing. The Dniester is in the battle formations, firing at spotted enemy targets.
Damage was caused to the enemy: 25 soldiers and officers, 2 machine guns, 2 vehicles were destroyed; machine gun fire suppressed 1.
The regiment lost: 4 were wounded, of which PNSh-1 captain Egorov was seriously wounded.

04/14/1944 The enemy firmly holds the previously prepared defense area on the bank of the river. Dniester. Conducts strong rifle and machine gun fire on our advancing units. It interferes with our crossing of the Dniester. But despite the strong resistance of the enemy, the regiment, under cover of darkness, successfully crossed the water line and started a battle with the enemy on the move; due to heavy fire and an insufficient number of rafts, it was not particularly successful. The senior commanders on the rafts were the middle commanders.
47 people were transported to the right bank: 40 riflemen, 5 machine gunners, 2 light machine gunners; materiel - 1 heavy machine guns, 1 light machine guns, 22 rifles, 18 PPSh.
Damage was caused to the enemy: more than 40 soldiers and officers were killed, 2 light machine guns were knocked out.
The regiment lost: 5 soldiers killed, 10 wounded, 11 command personnel.
Of these, it’s hard:
1. Deputy com. regiment by page captain Belokon
2. Battalion 2 Captain Bolgov
3. Adjutant Senior 2nd Sat Art. Lieutenant Rosenberg
easily:
4. Beginning headquarters Major Arkhipov /in service/
5. Deputy com. regiment for political affairs Lieutenant Colonel Zotikov
6. Deputy com. for political department 2nd Sat, Lieutenant Zhukov
7. Beginning art. regiment captain Glushchenko
8. Pulse crew commander Lieutenant Redkin /recuperating in Sanrot/
9. Party organizer 2nd Sat Lieutenant Kipatov
10. Com. baht 45 mm battery st. Lieutenant Gribkov
11. Deputy battalion commander 2 according to page part of art. Lieutenant Yaskevich
Contacts with those who crossed to the right bank of the river. There is no Dniester, due to the fact that all the signalmen teams sent were out of order. The radio failed and was returned.

04/15/1944 The regiment redeployed to another crossing, 10 km south of Grigoriopol. Very scary.

Combat log 780 sp 214 SD
TsAMO, f. 7437, op. 166487, no. 10, l. 1

04/13/1944 The enemy, defending on the right bank of the river. The Dniester actively conducts sniper fire and illuminates the river area with rockets at night. Sappers and units of the regiment are preparing means of crossing.

04/14/1944 The enemy, defending the right bank of the river. The Dniester conducts sniper fire during the day and illuminates the river area with rockets at night. To support the 788th rifle crossing, fire weapons were allocated - 3 heavy machine guns, 2 light machine guns and 18 riflemen. The crossing, carried out by 788 joint ventures at night, ended unsuccessfully. The crossing was carried out on rafts and boats, with the support of infantry fire and mines. batteries The enemy, who had not previously detected his fire system, when the rafts of 788 SP arrived on the right bank, opened hurricane machine-gun and machine gun fire on the infantry floating on the rafts. Of the small groups that crossed back to the left bank, none returned.

Officers (the list is not complete):
1) captain Belokon Taras Zosimovich, born in 1908, deputy. commander of the 788th combat unit;
2) Guards. captain Bolgov Stepan Petrovich, born in 1921, commander of the 2nd battalion 788th rifle regiment. The wound on the Dniester was the 3rd in a row;
3) art. Lieutenant Rosenberg Isaac Isaevich, born in 1920, senior adjutant of the 2nd battalion of the 788th rifle regiment, was admitted with a spinal injury to KhPG 5154, died of urosepsis on 05/07/1944. The primary burial place was Grigoriopolsky district, village. Glinoe;
4) Major Alexey Andreevich Arkhipov, born in 1908, beginning. headquarters 788 sp. He did not live to see the end of the war; he was killed on 02/03/1945;
5) captain Glushchenko Andrey Ivanovich, born in 1922, beginning. artillery 788 joint venture;
6) Lieutenant Redkin Pavel Dmitrievich, born in 1916, commander of the machine gun crew of the 2nd 788th rifle regiment;
7) art. Lieutenant Gribkov Mikhail Petrovich, born in 1923, commander of a battery of 45 mm guns 788 sp;
8) Guards (senior) Lieutenant Yaskevich Sergei Antonovich, born in 1920, deputy. battalion commander 788 joint venture;
9) captain Egorov Alexander Vasilievich, born in 1918, PNSh in ShShS 788 joint venture;
10) Captain Reshetnikov Konstantin Andreevich, born in 1916, PNSh for reconnaissance of the 776th joint venture, killed on April 13, 1944. Primary burial place - urban settlement. Grigoriopol, civil cemetery.
Note: Those who do not have a retirement date indicated on the list means they survived and continued to serve.

It’s a disaster with the privates and sergeants; things with the lists there are even worse than in the 9th Guards. VDD. There are a lot of death notices, lists of missing used vehicles, lists of those buried who ultimately turned out to be alive, etc. A thorough analysis needs to be done, because... There were quite a few 214 SDs who left on April 13 and 14, 1944. The further into the forest, the more firewood. If I have time, I’ll post at least some of the information here, if, of course, someone else is interested. I see the topic is not particularly popular among forum users.

• Tiraspol city

Map of defensive battles of the 4th Wehrmacht Mountain Division on the Dniester (April - July 1944)

From the map we can conclude that in the Delakeu area the landing detachment of the 26th Guards. Vdsp 9th Guards The Airborne Forces were opposed by parts of the 4th Wehrmacht Mountain Division, namely III./13 - 3rd Battalion of the 13th Mountain Jaeger Regiment (commander major Fritz Gustav Backhauss) and A.A. 94 - 94 reconnaissance abtailung (commander rittmeister Andreas Thorey, died in battles on the Dniester on April 18, 1944). In turn, units of the 214 SD were opposed by I./13 - 1 battalion of the 13th mountain-jaeger regiment (commander hauptmann Herbert Fritz), I./91 - 1 battalion of the 91st mountain-jaeger regiment (commander hauptmann Wegscheider) and, presumably, III. /91 - 3rd battalion of the 91st Mountain Jaeger Regiment (commander hauptmann Seebacher).