Winter campaign of 1941–1942
| Winter campaign of 1941–1942 | |||||||||
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| Part of Eastern Front (World War II) | |||||||||
 Map of the Soviet 1941–1942 winter counteroffensive. | |||||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
 Germany |
 Soviet Union | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
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Erich Hoepner Adolf Strauss Ludwig Kübler Walter Model |
Georgy Zhukov Ivan Konev Vasily Sokolovsky Dmitry Lelyushenko | ||||||||
The winter campaign of 1941–1942 was the name given by Soviet military command to the period from 5 December 1941 to 7 May 1942 that marked the commencement of Soviet counter-offensives following the Operation Barbarossa. The campaign began with the Moscow Strategic Offensive Operation (5 December 1941 – 7 January 1942)[1] with the simultaneous Kerch-Feodosia Amphibious Operation (25 December 1941 – 2 January 1942).[2] Although the Red Army counter-offensives forced the German army into the retreat and led to the recapture of important sites such as Tikhvin, Klin and Rostov in December 1941, the Red Army mostly failed to encircle the German units there and Germans managed to avoid significant casualties.[3]
The operations in central and northern European Russia began with the conclusion of the Moscow counter-offensive almost simultaneously with the Oboyan–Kursk Offensive Operation (3 January 1942 – 26 January 1942), the Lyuban Offensive Operation (7 January 1942 – 30 April 1942), the Demyansk Offensive Operation[4] (7 January 1942 – 20 May 1942), the Orel–Bolkhov Offensive Operation (8 January 1942 – 28 April 1942), and the Rzhev-Vyazma Strategic Offensive Operation (8 January 1942 – 20 April 1942).[5] (not to be confused with Operation Mars, which refers to another Soviet operation in the same area, during November and December 1942).
The campaign concluded with the Barvenkovo-Lozovaya Offensive Operation (18 January 1942 – 31 January 1942), a renewed attempt to retake Crimea during the Crimean Offensive Operation (27 January 1942 – 15 April 1942) and the Bolkhov Offensive Operation (24 March 1942 – 3 April 1942).
References
- ^ Erickson 2003, p.249.
- ^ Erickson 2003, p.288–291.
- ^ Forczyk, Robert (2014). Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front 1941–1942: Schwerpunkt. Pen and Sword. ISBN 978-1-78159-008-9.
The Red Army came close to encircling large German panzer formations at Tikhvin, Klin and Rostov in the December counter-offensive, but lacked the strength and skill to pull this off. Indeed, despite the recovery of terrain, the Red Army failed to destroy any major German units. By the end of December 1941, the NKVD reported only 10,602 German prisoners in Soviet captivity, whereas the Germans had captured 3,355,000 Soviet soldiers in the previous six months.147 Yet the Red Army's own tank forces were in very poor shape by the end of 1941 and only able to play a supporting role in the Winter Counteroffensive. By Christmas 1941, the armoured forces of both the Wehrmacht and the Red Army had been virtually demolished and they each had very few operational medium or heavy tanks left after six months of sustained combat. Neither side was left with any substantial armoured reserve and consequently operations degenerated into First World War-era tactics.
- ^ Erickson 2003, p.305.
- ^ Erickson 2003, p.297.
Sources
- Erickson, John (2003) [1975]. The Road to Stalingrad: Stalin's War with Germany: Volume One. London: Cassell. ISBN 0-304-36541-6.
- Stahel, David (2019). Retreat from Moscow: A New History of Germany's Winter Campaign, 1941-1942. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0-374-71425-3.