The Battle of Kiev is called the largest battle of annihilation in the world. What was the process?

(Destroyed Soviet equipment and vehicles in the Kiev encirclement)

(Gudri's armored group inserted behind the enemy's rear during the Battle of Kiev)

(German troops entering the city of Kiev)

(Soviet troops surrendering to the German troops in the encirclement)

(A group of Soviet prisoners of war walking towards the prison camp)

( IV tank belonging to the Chrysler 1st Armored Group of Army Group South)

(General Kilponos, Commander-in-Chief of the Southwestern Front)

(Guderian inspecting the front line in Kiev )

The strength comparison between the two sides is:

Soviet Southwest Front, commander General Kilponos. It has jurisdiction over the Fifth Group Army, the 12th Group Army, the Sixth Group Army, the 26th Group Army, and the 37th Group Army. Later, the 21st Army was reinforced, totaling more than 670,000 people

German Army: Second Armored Group (General Guderian), Second Army under Army Group Center. The 1st Armored Group (General Chrysler), the 6th Army (Reichenau), and the 17th Army (Stuernagel) under Army Group South, totaling approximately 800,000 people

1941 In early August, the situation on the southern front of the Soviet-German battlefield was that the German Army Group South's offensive stopped after reaching the Dnieper River line. Kiev, the capital of Ukraine and the important town on the Dnieper River, has not become the main target of the German army for the time being. The German army's target is the lower reaches of the Dnieper River. Kremenchug is located on the southern flank of Army Group. In the middle of the Soviet-German battlefield, the 2nd Army Group on the southernmost wing of Army Group Center moved southward, followed by the 2nd Armored Group (Gudritan Armored Corps) also moved southward in an attempt to attack the heavily fortified Soviet Army Group Southwest Front on the southern line. Hitler hoped Taking this as an opportunity, the two army groups in the center and the south were coordinated to complete the large-scale encirclement operation of the Soviet troops around Kiev and in the rear, annihilating the Soviet troops to the greatest extent possible. At the same time, due to the overly optimistic estimates of Stalin and the Soviet Supreme High Command, the Southwest Front not only did not receive the order to retreat in time, but instead still stood firm and received a considerable number of additional troops, which was equivalent to attacking the hungry wolf of the German army. There is a lot of fat stuffed into the sharp teeth that have not yet been closed.

At the end of August, the Second Army, affiliated with Army Group Center, forcibly crossed the Desna River and launched a fierce battle with the Soviet Fifth Army, located northwest of Kiev and affiliated with the Southwest Front. A solid bridgehead was established near Welski, which laid a good foundation for the Central Army Group to attack southward, echoing with the Southern Army Group to form an encirclement circle. Guderian's armored group was prepared to use the 46th Motorized Corps, 24 The Motorized Corps and other units led the way south. At this time, Stalin made an extremely wrong decision. He believed that since the German army did not make a long march into Moscow as its top priority goal, the Southwest Front Army should stick to its original position, protruding from the Desna River and the Dnieper River. The front line of the troops must not retreat and launch a counterattack at any time.

On September 1, Army Group South issued a situation report, determining that there was a huge Soviet army group along the Desna River, and that there would be no signs of transfer in the short term, including the 5th Army Group of the Southwest Front. , 21, 26, and 38 armies, if the coordination goes well, they will be annihilated by Army Group Center and their own flanking attack. For this reason, General Chrysler's First Armored Group under Army Group South should immediately turn to Romney and try to win here and The 2nd Armored Group of Army Group Center joined forces. On the 7th, Halder came to the Southern Army Group headquarters in Uman. After listening to the report, he issued the final order "to launch a two-wing encirclement operation against the Soviet troops in the middle reaches of the Dnieper River and the lower reaches of the Desna River, striving to Annihilate them in the area between Kremenchug and Konoto."

With an order, the German central and southern army groups gathered 3 armies and 2 armored groups, and the *** plan 581 tanks, as well as 203 bombers, 166 fighters, and 80 dive bombers of the Fourth Air Force, were used to deal with the seven Soviet armies in the encirclement.

On September 6, the offensive began. The Gudri armored group on the northern flank began. Although only one corps (24th Motorized Corps) participated in the encirclement, the German army made rapid progress. Soldiers of the 6th Armored Regiment of the 3rd Armored Division captured a senior Soviet field fortress. Engineer, he carried the Soviet army's detailed combat plan and fortification distribution map in the Ukraine, which meant that the deployment of the Southwest Front was fully controlled by the German army.

By September 4, the 24th Motorized Corps had been fully grasped. Approaching Kralowitz, during the 11 days of fighting, more than 13,700 Soviet prisoners were captured, 100 Soviet artillery pieces and more than 80 tanks and armored vehicles were destroyed and captured. From the captured Soviet documents and maps, Gudry An discovered that the leading force, the 3rd Armored Division, was right at the junction of the Soviet 13th and 21st Group Army defense lines.

In view of this, in the early morning of the 5th, Guderian ordered that the entire army must attack forward as quickly as possible, open a hole from this weak point, and completely separate the connections between the Soviet army's heavy military groups. The 3rd and 4th Armored Divisions and the Waffen-SS Imperial Division advanced hand in hand and pounced toward the southwest. The Imperial Division's "Führer" Grenadier Regiment took the lead and entered Markosh. The 4th Company Commander, Second Lieutenant Frank, led four soldiers Seizing the bridge across the Desna River in the city ensured that armored vehicles of the backup troops could continuously pass through here. In order to strengthen the strength of the 24th Motorized Corps and avoid being surrounded by the Soviet troops on both sides of the breach, Guderian urgently mobilized the Grossdeutschland Motorized Infantry Regiment and the 10th Motorized Division. The German offensive continued, and on the 7th the assault Arrived between Snopya and Popovka.

Only then did the Soviet Fifth Army wake up from a dream. German armored forces appeared behind them. Commander Potapov immediately asked his superiors to retreat eastward, but was stopped by Stalin and The Soviet Supreme Command refused, but at the same time the Soviet army mobilized Kuznetsov's 21st Army to try to prevent Guderian's group from continuing to advance in the direction of Bryansk.

However, most of the backbone of the 21st Group Army were new soldiers. They lacked tanks and transport vehicles and moved slowly. Guderian asked his troops to push southward at all costs and strive to cross the Romain River and occupy Romain. After Munney established contact with Army Group South, the soldiers also knew that their task was to form an unprecedented large pocket and trap the main force of the Soviet Southwest Front in it. Therefore, morale was high, and the 3rd Armored Division almost abandoned the infantry. and logistics, advancing sleeplessly with armored vehicles, tanks and assault guns, and on September 10, the occupation of Romney was announced.

At the same time, the Second Army of Army Group Center also forcibly crossed the Desna River and occupied Meyer. The Soviet Fifth Army began to collapse and its morale was low. As the Soviet defense line continued to move back, it was The number of abandoned weapons and equipment, vehicles and prisoners of war continued to increase. In early September, the Fifth Army was defeated and organized resistance no longer existed. At the end of the month, in order to support the Second Army, the Sixth Army also launched an offensive in an attempt to establish a bridgehead at Gnostepol, north of Kiev. Due to the dangerous location, the Soviet army dispatched 28,124,135 Infantry Divisions and 19,41 Tank Divisions to continuously attack the Germans. A counterattack was launched, but due to very poor command coordination, the mission of destroying this bridgehead was not completed. In addition, after the collapse of the Fifth Army, the Soviet 37th Army sent the 20th Tank Division and the 35th Infantry Division to reinforce the Dnieper River line, but it was too late.

On September 8, the 20th Tank Division began to attack the German 262nd and 62nd Infantry Divisions near Morovsk. However, due to the lack of infantry coordination, although it caused some damage to the Germans, it was stopped here. The offensive stalled, and the 262nd Infantry Division launched a counterattack the next day to capture Ojebin.

On September 12, the 1st Armored Group of Army Group South, with the cooperation of the 4th Air Force, launched a fierce attack on Kremenchug, trying to go north to form contact with the Gudriyan Armored Group. That day In the headquarters of the Soviet Southwest Front, the new commander-in-chief, Marshal Timoshenko, in view of the deteriorating current situation, once again asked Stalin to agree to abandon Kiev and withdraw the entire army eastward, but was rejected again....

During this period, the German 17th Army established the Kremenchug bridgehead and launched a fierce battle with the Soviet 17th Army and the 5th Cavalry Army on the front. In 10 days of fierce fighting, the German 52nd Army destroyed 172 Soviet vehicles. military tanks, including the new T34 medium and KV1 heavy tanks. After the Engineer Regiment quickly built a bridge over the Dnieper River, the armored vehicles of the First Armored Group formed a mighty iron flow and headed north towards Romny. The leading force, the 16th Armored Division, advanced rapidly. When occupying Karpisha, they almost captured Major General Feklenko, commander-in-chief of the Soviet 38th Army, in a nearby train station. Three days after the attack, the First Armored Group announced that it had captured 13,000 Soviet troops, destroyed 78 tanks and armored vehicles, and 118 artillery pieces.

At the same time, as the weather improved, the Guderian cluster decided to continue southward after a brief respite. It was still led by the 3rd Armored Division commanded by the mighty General Model, and then by General Huber's 16th Armored Division. In coordination with the Imperial Division, Lochvita was captured. On September 14, Lieutenant Waterman of the 6th Armored Regiment of the 3rd Armored Division led several Panzer III tanks and a few half-track armored personnel carriers from Lochvita. Vicha set off and headed south through the nearby fields and shrubs. Finally at dusk, they arrived near Lubne. By a small stream, they saw several comrades wearing German field gray uniforms walking out of the other side. This is a reconnaissance engineer from the 17th Army Group of the Southern Army Group. The two armies announced their rendezvous. At noon on September 15, east of the city of Lochvita, armored vehicles and half-track vehicles from the 394th Motorized Infantry Regiment of the 9th Armored Division of Army Group South also arrived successfully, marking the official closure of the Kiev encirclement.

At this time, the five Soviet armies were surrounded by the German army in a huge triangular area with Kiev as the western section, Kremenchug as the southern section, Roslauer as the eastern end, and the ancient Derrian's 2nd Armored Group, 6th Army, to the south were 1st Armored Group and 17th Army.

By then, the Soviet 5th and 21st Army Groups in the northern part of the encirclement had been fragmented. It was difficult for the various units to maintain contact and coordinate actions, and could only carry out sporadic resistance. The 37th Army surrounded Kiev and defended the ring defense circle. The 26th Army was on the Dnieper River. On the front line, the 38th Army was in the northwest of Kremenchug. Although from the 18th, the 38th and 40th Army tried to reinforce from the outside and open the German encirclement, but they all failed.

Finally, On September 17, Moscow telegraphed Major General Bagramyan, Chief of the Operations Department of the Southwest Front, to withdraw the entire army and break out to the east. The specific strategy was that the 21st Army Group would assault in the direction of Romny, and the 5th Army Group would attack in the direction of Lochvita. Assault, the 37th Army followed up, and the 26th and 38th Army attacked in the direction of Rubne. However, at this time, the overall morale of the Soviet army had collapsed, and most of the troops lost contact with their superior command. The breakout operation quickly turned into a rout, and the German army quickly encircled the large area. Narrowed down to Priluki, Kiev, Shovnin line.

Despite this, the Soviet army’s desperate and deadly assault still put huge pressure on the German army. In Filipovich, on the 19th, the soldiers of the 16th Armored Division repulsed the Soviet army for nearly In 20 waves of desperate breakout offensives, the Soviet army led with tanks and armored vehicles, followed by infantry on trucks, and then even larger groups of infantry, constantly attacking the German defense lines, some even after drinking vodka until they were drunk. Participating in the war, the anti-tank artillery and field artillery responsible for fire suppression even ran out of their artillery shells. They described the battle as like hunting in the wild. They only needed to reload their ammunition, roughly aiming at the vehicles and the sea of ​​people coming from the Soviet army, and shooting. After the infantry ran out of ammunition, they were forced to use bayonets and sapper shovels to engage in hand-to-hand combat with the incoming Soviet troops. The next day, after receiving reinforcements from the 64 and 79 Motorized Infantry Regiments, the 16 Armored Division managed to maintain its defense line without being breached by the Soviet army

From that day to September 22, the Soviet army once again At the mouth of the Orszasi River, repeated attacks were launched again in an attempt to break through the German encirclement. The Soviet tanks once opened a gap near Petrich, but were immediately blocked by the urgent anti-aircraft artillery troops with 88mm anti-aircraft guns adjusted to horizontal fire. .

The next day, the Soviet army once again tried to break out from the forest area from Pilyakin to Lochvita, but was once again defeated by the 3rd Armored Division and the 25th Motorized Division. Potapov, commander of the Fifth Army The major general was captured, and a soldier of the 3rd Armored Division Reconnaissance Battalion recorded that “the entire forest showed a horrifying scene, with countless Soviet soldiers and horses lying dead among the vehicles in various positions, and there were burning trucks everywhere. Some of the armored vehicles and ambulances collided with each other, some tilted and fell on the roadside, and some panicked and sank in the swamp with the driver.

On September 19, the commander of Army Group South. The Ministry of Defense ordered all troops to launch a full-scale attack on the enemy in view of the weakening of the Soviet resistance in the encirclement. In Romney, the 88mm heavy anti-aircraft guns of the Hermann Göring Anti-aircraft Artillery Regiment destroyed more than 30 enemy units in one day. A Soviet tank, Guderian received the order on the 20th, and the troops of the Second Armored Group gradually broke away from the Kiev encirclement and prepared to participate in the Central Army Group's attack on Moscow.

Starting from September 15th, The German Sixth Army officially began its urban assault on Kiev. The Soviet troops in the city were unable to continue to resist the offensive of German dive bombers and heavy artillery. On the 18th, Stalin issued an order to abandon Kiev. Soldiers of the German 296th, 71st, and 294th Infantry Divisions followed. On the afternoon of the 19th, it was announced that Kiev had been completely occupied.

Starting from the 19th, the German army officially carried out a final sweep of the remaining Soviet troops around Kiev, especially in the east. At this time, the Southwest Front Command had already begun. Unable to contact the various units, the commander, General Kilponos, disbanded the staff and turned the Fifth Army headquarters personnel, headquarters guard units and 289th Infantry Division into two battle groups and attempted a breakout eastwards on the same day. The High Command of the Wehrmacht issued an announcement that the Soviet Southwest Front ceased to exist on the 22nd. During the breakout process, Kirponos and Chief of Staff General Tupikov were killed in German shelling on September 24th. , the roar of guns and artillery in the entire encirclement stopped. Among the 677,085 soldiers of the entire Southwest Front, 15,041 people broke out of the encirclement. More than 650,000 Soviet troops became prisoners of war. In addition, the Soviet army also lost 884 tanks and 3,718 guns. Artillery.

On June 22, 1941, Germany tore up the "Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact" and dispatched 500,000 troops to invade the Soviet Union. After successfully launching a northern assault on Leningrad, the German army began a large-scale attack on Moscow and Moscow. In the direction of Kiev. At that time, the Soviet Red Army in Kiev was still under the command of Marshal Semyon Budyonny. Although it had suffered heavy casualties in the "Battle of Uman", the Red Army in the southwest still numbered millions. However. What is surprising is that the Soviet Red Army, which was so large in number, was completely defeated by the Germans in just over two months in the face of the German troops coming from afar. In the end, more than 600,000 people were captured.

▲Old photos of the German Army during World War II

In Ziyuan’s view, there are five main reasons. The first is the lack of sufficient armor and mobility.

In the "Battle of Uman", the Soviet army's mechanized troops were basically lost under the fierce attack of the German army. Therefore, in the "Battle of Kiev", there was a lack of armored force cover, and a large number of Soviet troops were completely exposed to enemy artillery fire. , it is difficult to resist the well-equipped German army with just flesh and blood. In fact, once there is a lack of mechanized troops, whether it is troop deployment, retreat, or transportation of supplies, it will become a major headache for commanders. Many fighter planes on the battlefield come and go quickly. Whether they are attacking or retreating, without enough mechanized troops, it is impossible to guarantee the speed of action of this million-strong army.

▲Stills of the Soviet Army from World War II

Secondly, the Soviet army coach Budyonny failed to make a more accurate prediction of the German army’s movements in advance. After the "Battle of Uman", the Soviet army was still immersed in depression and unable to extricate itself. However, the German Central and Southern Army Groups had held many discussions to consider whether to take the Soviet capital first or to concentrate and eliminate a large number of Red Army forces in the southwest. Later, the German Supreme Army Headquarters decided to mobilize some troops of the Central Army to go south and encircle the Red Army in the southwest with the southern army. At this time, although Budyonny's command lost a large number of armored units and their combat effectiveness was greatly reduced, fortunately they had sufficient troops. As long as they prepared for defense in advance, it would not be easy for the German army to easily take over. Unfortunately, the Soviet intelligence agency failed to detect the movements of the German Central Army in time, so it was not until the entire Southwest Front was surrounded that Budyonny suddenly woke up.

▲Stalin’s old photos

The third is the wrong command from superiors. After Stalin learned of the German attack, he immediately ordered everyone to hold on to Kiev and did not agree to any form of retreat. On July 11 of the same year, seeing the German mechanized troops being blocked by the Red Army on the outside of the fortifications outside Kiev, Chief of the General Staff Zhukov believed that this was a good time to retreat, so he asked Stalin for instructions to abandon Kiev and seize the time to withdraw the Southwest Front to the other side of the Dnieper River. to avoid being surrounded by German troops. Unexpectedly, Stalin still disagreed with the retreat at this time and once again ordered the defense of Kiev. He also dismissed Zhukov from his post as Chief of General Staff and demoted him to Commander of the Reserve Front.

▲Dnieper River

The fourth is to replace the main military generals at a critical time. During the Battle of Kiev, veteran General Budyonny called Stalin to request a retreat in order to save the encircled army, despite Stalin's previous order not to take a step back. For this reason, he lost Stalin's trust and was dismissed from his post as commander of the Southwest Theater. He was replaced by Marshal Timoshenko, Commander of the Western Theater and Commander of the Western Front. On this ever-changing battlefield, the commander-in-chief suddenly changed, and the chief of general staff Zhukov was demoted. The Red Army around Kiev was suddenly leaderless, causing the German army to take advantage of the situation and advance.

Fifth, the equipment gap between the Soviet and German armies was too great. In the "Battle of Kiev", the German army had an advantage in equipment. The number of artillery and other ordnance was fully twice that of the Soviet Union, and there were even half as many aircraft. The Soviet Red Army originally lacked enough armored troops for cover, and its other equipment was not as good as the German army, so it was even more difficult to match.

▲Old photos of Budyonny

In this battle, the Soviet Red Army, which lacked mechanized troops, was difficult to escape from the encirclement, but it was not always without opportunities. Unfortunately, before the battle began, due to the Soviet Union's carelessness, the entire Southwest Front Army was surrounded. Later, because of Stalin's stubbornness, the Southwest Front Army missed several opportunities to break out. In the end, 667,000 Red Army troops were captured, and Kiev unfortunately fell to the enemy. . At this time, no matter how much Stalin blamed himself and regretted it, it would not help.

Reference materials:

"Battle of Kiev"

1. Background of the Battle of Kiev:

Since the implementation of the German Barbarossa Plan, the Soviet Union The army was in dire straits under the attack of the blitzkrieg. German Marshal Rundstedt's Southern Army captured Zhitomir. Three German armies and two armored groups formed a pincer attack on the Soviet Southwest Front Army in Kiev. Buchan, commander of the Southwest Front Army Marshal Ni asked Stalin to withdraw, but was reprimanded and removed from his post. Marshal Timoshenko was responsible for the defense of Kiev. Frankly speaking, Budyonny, Timoshenko, and Voroshilov, three of Stalin's confidants, who started their careers by commanding cavalry, were all ruthlessly eliminated by modern warfare.

Kiev is the first auxiliary in Ukraine, located at the confluence of the Desna River and the Dnieper River. Rundstedt plans to capture Kiev and encircle and annihilate the Southwest Group Army. It is led by the 1st Armored Corps of the German Army Group South, The 6th Army, the 17th Army, the Second Armored Corps and the Second Army of Army Group Center have a strength of 1 million, 581 tanks, and 481 combat aircraft. The Soviet army participated in the war with seven armies of the Southwest Front, with a total strength of 870,000, 4,528 tanks, and 1,672 combat aircraft, commanded by Marshal Budyonny.

2. Passage

On July 5, 1941, Lun Shuai began to attack. On July 7, with the tank corps as the first echelon, he broke through the Soviet defenses in the north of Novi Miropor. , advancing towards Kiev, the four Soviet armies carried out tenacious resistance and multiple counterattacks, which delayed the German left-wing attack. The German High Command transferred the Second Army and the Second Armored Corps from the direction of Moscow to deal with the Southwest Front.

On August 25, Guderian led the Second Armored Corps to turn around and go south. On the 31st, it fought fiercely with the Subrianks Front defending the Desna River. On September 9, the German Armored Corps crossed the river and broke through the 40th Army's defense line, occupying Romney, on the 14th, the two German armored divisions met behind the Soviet army and completed the encirclement of Kiev.

On September 15, the two powerful armored brigades of Guderian and Kleist met in Rochwice, 210 kilometers east of Kiev, and encircled the Soviet 5th, 21st, 26th, and 38th Group Armies. Stalin finally agreed to retreat, but it was too late. When the order came, the troops were in chaos. Timoshenko successively mobilized several armies to attack the peripheral German forces, but was stubbornly blocked by the German 17th Army. The Soviet army had no hope of breaking through. Soviet military and political officials in Kiev escaped by plane. On the same day, the German army launched an encirclement and annihilation campaign. On the 19th, Kiev was captured. The 6th Army captured, and on September 26, the last Soviet army surrendered east of Kiev.

3. Battle Assessment

During the battle, 665,000 Soviet troops were captured. Only a small group of Red Army troops broke out of the encirclement, including Marshal Budyonny, Marshal Timoshenko, Political Commissar Khrushchev, the Soviet army was defeated, and the German army gained the fertile Ukraine and Donets Basin. However, from a strategic point of view, Germany invested the huge Army Group Center in Kiev, delaying the plan to attack Moscow for four weeks, giving the Soviet army time to fight in Moscow. If the veteran Marshal Tukhachevsky were there, there would never be such a defeat. After this battle, the three teachers gradually withdrew from the stage of history. Younger talents such as Zhukov, Vasilevsky, Konev, and Chuikov gradually moved to the center of the Soviet-German battlefield and became the mainstay of the Soviet Union.

The Battle of Kiev was the battle in which the Soviet Red Army was surrounded and annihilated with the largest number of people during World War II. The reasons were multifaceted. The Soviet Red Army deployed various Soviet military districts in southern Russia and the newly occupied Bessarabia region of Romania. The military configuration with the largest number of troops. General J, with the exception of Stalin's crony, the elderly Budyonny, was a relatively powerful general in the Soviet army at that time.

Hitler had long suspected that Stalin’s heavily deployed 650,000 Soviet troops on the front lines of the Balkan Peninsula posed a threat to the Romanian oil fields, the German sphere of influence. The military airport on the Crimean Peninsula was close to the oil refineries and oil wells. So close.

Hitler's ambition and the success of the war in Western Europe harmed him. The front line of Barbarossa's battle plan was too long, the Germans and the client countries were not equipped with the troops they expected, the Italians and the Romanian Army and the Spanish Franco The "Blue Division h" organized by the organization all fought on the southern front. In the battle against the Kiev Military District of the Soviet Red Army, the Germans could not be as effective as the double-pronged encirclement of Guderian and Huot's two armored columns in the middle.

< p> Only General Chrysler single-handedly defeated the million-strong army in the Kiev Military District. This is why the performance of the German southern front was not as good as the other two fronts.

However, Stalin's great purge still saw results in Ukraine. The defense battles between Man and Odessa were not fought well. The one side attacking Odessa was all Romanian legions. In this way, the Soviets still lost Odessa, an important base of the Black Sea Fleet.

The Soviet Kiev Military District was still there. The Kiev area on the banks of the Dnieper River was temporarily defended, but at that time the Soviet supply line was extremely difficult to replenish under the blockade of the Luftwaffe, and the heavy weapons were severely damaged!

However, they suddenly gave the Soviet Central Military District (formerly the West West Military District) The person who struck a blow at the junction of the Front Army) and the Kiev Military District was General Timoshenko of the Soviet Red Army. He did not agree with Zhukov's "conservative" plan of steadily advancing and short-range assaults, and promised the people's leader Stalin to defeat the gangster Gude on the opposite side.

Everyone knows the result. Not only did Guderian defeat Timoshenko's troops, he also broke through the Soviet garrison on the Jenas River without sleep for several days. It posed a serious threat to the 650,000-strong Soviet Red Army in Ukraine. Chief of General Staff Zhukov saw the problem and proposed to Generalissimo Stalin to abandon Kiev, but he was immediately dismissed and decentralized by Stalin, who did not know much about military affairs at the time. Exercise!

The God of Armor, Guderian, acted freely under Hitler's instructions like a chicken blood. General Yeremenko did not hold the Dnieper and Desna River defense lines, and the German 47 Armor The army broke through the junction between the Western Front and the Kiev Military District. Guderian successively asked the Central Army for the 46th Armored Corps. In mid-September, he successively closed the northern section of the encirclement. On the 18th, Guderian finally occupied Robne. Seeing the shadow of victory. The southern Chrysler Armored Division finally joined forces in Lochwitz, and the fierce battle did not change the fate of the 650,000 Soviet prisoners.

From then on, Stalin learned his lesson. Learned to listen to the suggestions of the staff, but Hitler failed to learn and only listened to his own intuition!

The principles of Sun Tzu's Art of War were experienced here!

Barbarossa of the German Army at that time! The operation progressed very smoothly, and a large number of Soviet troops were annihilated by the Germans. The Germans advanced rapidly in the Soviet Union.

The German troops advanced rapidly on the northern and central fronts, but left a huge protrusion in the southern part of the Soviet Union. Although the Soviet Southwest Front suffered certain losses, its overall strength still existed and was still stationed in the Kiev area. For the German army, the Southwest Front was a very threatening threat to the German flanks. If the German army did not eliminate the Southwest Front before attacking Moscow, it would be a disaster. There will be huge risks.

At the same time, there were other reasons that forced Hitler to attack Kiev to annihilate the Soviet army.

First, the Soviet Union could use the southern part of the Soviet Union and the Crimean Peninsula to attack the Ploiesti oil fields in Romania. This would threaten the German army's fuel supply, so it was necessary to capture the area to eliminate the threat. Then there is the huge economic value of the Ukrainian region. Ukrainian grain, the Donets industrial zone, and local coal mines and other resources were equally attractive to Hitler.

The German Army Group South advanced rapidly, and the Soviet commander Budyonny planned to retreat due to the lack of actual combat effectiveness of the Soviet army. However, Stalin did not allow it and could only stick to Kiev. As a result, the armored groups of Guderian and Kleist quickly crossed the river and joined forces behind the Soviet army, completing the encirclement of the Kiev garrison. At this time, Stalin ordered a retreat, but it was too late.

The Soviet troops in the encirclement were quickly divided and annihilated by the German army. Up to 660,000 Soviet troops were annihilated, and only a very small number of Soviet troops broke out of the encirclement.

First of all, let’s analyze the development of the overall situation of the Eastern Front battlefield at that time. Since the German army’s main offensive direction was placed in the center, while the Soviet army’s main defense was placed on the south flank, this resulted in the German army’s center The Army Group's advance was the fastest, forming a huge protrusion on the front, which had already posed a threat to the Soviet Southwest Front's flank on the southern flank. In other words, the left half of the pincer offensive against the Soviet forces in Kiev has been formed.

Since the German Army Group South in the south has only one armored group, it cannot conduct rapid encirclement battles one after another like Army Group Center. In addition, the Soviet army has the strongest strength on the southern flank. Large, especially in terms of armored units, these will make the progress of the German Army Group South not smooth. However, Army Group South still completed a small-scale encirclement battle, namely the Uman Encirclement Battle. Three Soviet army groups were annihilated. Although they failed to completely defeat the main force of the Soviet Southwest Front, it opened the way for the German army to move down to the third. At the gate of the meander of the Nieper River, the German First Armored Group advanced to the left rear flank of the Kiev Soviet army, thus forming the right half of a large-scale encirclement battle.

In this way, the 2nd Armored Group of Army Group Center turned from Smolensk to the south, while the 1st Armored Group of Army Group South turned from the meander of the Dnieper River to the north, launching a large-scale The pincer offensive, the German army's encirclement war against nearly 1 million Soviet troops on the Southwest Front in the Kiev area, was launched under this strategic situation.

Everyone basically knows the results of this siege. Five Soviet armies were completely annihilated, two armies were severely damaged, and 665,000 Soviet troops, 3,718 artillery pieces, and 884 tanks were captured. Countless other military supplies, plus the loss of more than 1 million Soviet troops who were killed, wounded, and disorganized, the Southwest Front essentially no longer existed. The commander of the front, General Kilponos, and his chief of staff, Tu Lieutenant General Pikov was killed during the breakout. The siege of Kiev went down in history as the largest siege in history.

The Battle of Kiev began on July 7, 1941. At that time, the Soviet Union had 800,000 defenders and 600,000 to 700,000 troops in the rear. Germany's 1 million troops launched an attack. At that time, Zhukov suggested withdrawing from Kiev, but Stalin was He was dismissed. The war lasted until August 20. The German Guderian led an armored force to attack. The Soviet side sent troops to rescue the siege and was repulsed. On the 26th, Stalin ordered a retreat. In a hurry, the order was chaotic. On the same day, Germany captured Kiev and the Soviet Union was captured 65 Ten thousand, 150,000 people escaped. Timoshenko, Khrushchev and others fled by plane.

This battle was called a "textbook battle."