Talk:Battle of Sevastopol

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	Germany Portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Germany, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to articles related to Germany on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please join the project and help with our open tasks.
Start	This article has been rated as start-Class on the Project's quality scale. (If you rated the article please give a short summary at comments to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses.)

	This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.
Start	This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale.
Additional information: This article has been checked against the following criteria for B-Class status: Referencing and citation: not checked Coverage and accuracy: not checked Structure: not checked Grammar: not checked Supporting materials: not checked To fill out this checklist, please add the following to the template call: <!-- 1. It is suitably referenced, and all major points are appropriately cited. --> |B-Class-1=yes/no <!-- 2. It reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain major omissions or inaccuracies. --> |B-Class-2=yes/no <!-- 3. It has a defined structure, including a lead section and one or more sections of content. --> |B-Class-3=yes/no <!-- 4. It is free from major grammatical errors. --> |B-Class-4=yes/no <!-- 5. It contains appropriate supporting materials, such as an infobox, images, or diagrams. --> |B-Class-5=yes/no Related task forces (nations and regions): German military history task force Russian and Soviet military history task force Related task forces (periods and conflicts): World War II task force

Can someone explain how this was a strategic victory for the Russians? They lost Sevastopol and its garrison. They lost the relief force sent to relieve them (Kerch Peninsula). The fall of Sevastopol, then the strongest fortress in the world was a huge military and political blow to the Russians. --Pelladon 02:22, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

 This is quite clear. For a long time this battle was distracting large number of German troops, while being of secondary value.

Sevastopol wasn't "fortress" from the land side. It was well-defended against naval assault, but not well protected from the land army actions. Defenses were largely improvised. Also it's loss, while being very bitter for Russians, wasn't any military or political blow. Holding for 250 days against enemy, while deep behind main front line was a thing to be proud of. It's considered an example of Soviet courage in modern Russia, not a humiliating defeat.

Contents 1 Schwerer Gustav 2 Russian: оборона Севастополя, literally, "defense of Sevastopol" 3 German 11th Army 4 More detail in Manstien Article 5 The numbers of forces and losses in the infobox

[edit] Schwerer Gustav

The main article on this gun contradicts the account given on this page. It claims that the gun was first used at Sevastopol on 5 June, 1942, not in November 1941 as stated in this article. -- Drogo Underburrow 07:43, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Russian: оборона Севастополя, literally, "defense of Sevastopol"

Please explain why an article in the English Wikipedia should give the Russian name of this battle in the introduction. -- Drogo Underburrow 06:30, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

• Presumably so that we English speakers have an idea what the battle is referred to in Russian? Lisiate 04:56, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

What about Japanese? Or Chinese? What's it called in Swahili? Drogo Underburrow 06:46, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Well the Japanese wikipedia article is entitled セヴァストポリ要塞攻略戦 which Google translates as "セヴァストポリ fortress capture game" - presumably the first characters are a transliteration of Sevastapol. In any event, given that this was a battle in the former Soviet Union its reasonable to give the Russian name of the battle as there are bound to be many Russian histories and studies of the events. Interested readers may wish to be able to find them, and with this information they can. Lisiate 21:14, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] German 11th Army

"However, this had been a great waste of time for the Germans: the assault on Stalingrad, Operation "Blau", was just beginning, and the Sixth Army (under Friedrich Paulus) would not have the German 11th Army to support them."

The German 11th Army was diverted to the northern sector of the Russian front by Hitler. This diversion was opposed by Manstien and Hadler. The article gives the impression the German 11th Army was not avaiable to assist in the drive toward Stalingrad due to the battle of Sevastopol. This impression is incorrect. The German 11th Army was avaiable to be used in the southern sector but was diverted by Hitler. The battle of Sevastopol had nothing to do with Operation Blue.

[edit] More detail in Manstien Article

Oddly there seems to be a more detailed description of the battle on von Manstien's page: [[1]] perhaps someone would like to try and incorporate some of it (it might need some clean-up as well). I think some campaign maps of the area would also be helpful. Tomgreeny 13:55, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Done. Trimmed the von Manstein article considerably and moved the material here. Abel29a 06:49, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The numbers of forces and losses in the infobox

Can't get the numbers to add up. Looks like the numbers listed (forces avaiable and causalties) are for the whole campaign for the Germans and only the actual last assault on Sevastopol for the Russians. Is this a correct interpretation? If one look at the whole campaign the Russian numbers should be much higher - 200,000 initially in the Crimea, the landing at Kerch with 150,000 troops in all. At least 250,000 captured all told. Anywho - I don't know squat about this battle, but hopefully somebody more in the know can fix the numbers. Abel29a 06:49, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

You seem to have a point. The numbers in this article doesn't match up at all. The last estimate of 90.000 captured and 11.000 killed seems strange, when it states, that 25.000 were evacuated (making it 126.000 total) when their strength is set at 106.000. Where did those 20.000 people come from? And the figure of 24.000 casualties on the german side dosen't sound too far off. The fact-box stating 100.000 casualties seems awfully high (if we're talking taking Sevastopol only) as it would count as many divisions entirely wiped out. And the german strength of 350.000 - where does that number come from? That's something like 30 divisions or 2-3 entire armies. The 11th army had 9 or ten divisions at it's disposal. None of these held 30000+ men.--Nwinther 12:52, 18 March 2007 (UTC)