Battle of Uman

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Battle of Uman

The eastern front at the time of the Battle of Uman.

Date	July 1941-August 8, 1941
Location	Western Ukraine
Result	Axis Victory

Combatants

Axis Powers

Soviet Union

Commanders

General Gerd von Rundstedt

Commander-in-Chief Marshal Semyon Budyonny,
Colonel General Mikhail Kirponos,
Army General Ivan Tyulenev

Casualties

unknown

200,000 KIA or WIA, 100,000 captured

Eastern Front
Barbarossa – Baltic Sea – Finland – Leningrad and Baltics – Crimea and Caucasus – Moscow – 1st Rzhev-Vyazma – 2nd Kharkov – Stalingrad – Velikiye Luki – 2nd Rzhev-Sychevka – Kursk – 2nd Smolensk – Dnieper – 2nd Kiev – Korsun – Hube's Pocket – Belorussia – Lvov-Sandomierz – Balkans – Hungary – Vistula-Oder – Königsberg – Berlin – Prague

Operation Barbarossa
Bialystok-Minsk – Brody – Smolensk – Uman – 1st Kiev – Yelnya – Odessa – Leningrad – 1st Kharkov – 1st Crimea – 1st Rostov

The Battle of Uman (July 1941 – August 8, 1941) was a battle on the Eastern Front of World War II in the summer of 1941. The battle was fought in Western Ukraine between the German Army Group South commanded by General Gerd von Rundstedt and the Soviet Forces in the Southwestern Direction, Commander-in-Chief Marshal Semyon Budyonny, which included Soviet Southwestern Front commanded by Colonel General Mikhail Kirponos) and Soviet Southern Front commanded by Army General Ivan Tyulenev.

1 Background
2 Three Assaults
3 Soviet Losses
4 See also

[edit] Background

In the initial weeks of Operation Barbarossa, Army Group South had driven rapidly east, capturing Lvov, Tarnopol and Vinnitsa, and destroying four mechanised corps that Kirponos led in a counterattack. This episode was the largest engagement of tank forces before the Battle of Kursk. The Soviet tanks outnumbered Germans, but their activities were poorly coordinated. The Soviet forces tried to cut off the advancing German columns, but they were hit both from North and South in the area of Dubno. By June 29 1941, the German advance was temporarily halted, but the Soviet forces were exhausted and started to retreat.

[edit] Three Assaults

On 10 July 1941, Budyonny was given the general command of the troops operating in the Southwestern direction, to coordinate the actions of Southwestern and Southern Fronts. Budyonny had 1.5 million soldiers under his command in two large concentrations at Uman and Kiev. No sooner had he taken up his command than Army Group South launched three assaults deep into Ukraine. General Ewald von Kleist’s Panzer Group 1 drove a wedge between the two Soviet concentrations south of Kiev and north of Uman, capturing Berdichev on 15 July 1941 and capturing Kazatin on 16 July 1941. General Karl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel’s Seventeenth Army advanced to the south of Uman and General Ritter von Schobert’s Eleventh Army advanced northwards from the Romanian border (Schobert was killed 11 September 1941 when his plane landed in a minefield).

STAVKA and the command of the Southern Front mistakenly assumed that the Germans were striving to reach the crossing of the Dnieper between Kiev and Cherkassy for a further march towards Donbass and underestimated the danger of the encirclement of the 6th Soviet Army and the 12th Soviet Army. On 28 July 1941, an order was given to the Southwestern and Southern Fronts to block the Germans from the Dnieper and to retreat only in the Eastern direction. As a result, an opportunity to avoid the danger of enciclement by retreating in the Southeastern direction was lost.

On 2 August 1941, the encirclement loop was closed by the meeting of the German 1st Panzer Group and German 17th Field Army. This encirclement was reinforced the next day by a second loop formed when the German 16th Panzer Division met with the Hungarian Mechanized Corps (or Gyorshadtest). By 8 August 1941, the Soviet resistance was generally stopped. Twenty divisions from the 6th Soviet Army and the 12th Soviet Army were smashed. Reportedly about 100,000 troops were captured. Those captured included the commanders of both the 6th Soviet Army and the 12th Soviet Army, four corps commanders, and eleven division commanders.

[edit] Soviet Losses

The total Soviet losses during the operation are difficult to estimate. But a reasonable number would be 200,000 killed and wounded and 100,000 prisoners.