Last time we spoke about the continued Soviet counteroffensive. The Red Army, under Zhukov and Rokossovsky, resisted heavy German pressure toward Moscow and Rostov, while STAVKA reshuffled commands to sustain pressure and tie down Army Group Center. A new Volkhov Front under Meretskov was instructed to break through the western Volkhov river line and encircle German forces around Leningrad. In Leningrad, the siege deepened as famine worsened. Food rationing collapsed to near starvation, cannibalism emerged in extreme cases, and NKVD records documented thousands of cannibalism arrests, though mass murder for ration cards remained more common. Despite dire logistics, the city’s Kirov Tank Factory continued producing; about 490 tanks rolled out by December, bolstering defenses. On the German side, Guderian’s forces withdrew under pressure, with navigable lines contracting and leadership friction escalating. In Sevastopol, Manstein intensified the siege even as Kerch landings loomed for a broader Soviet counter-offensive.
This episode is The End of the First Year
Well hello there, welcome to the Eastern Front week by week podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945.
As the new year approached, the Wehrmacht and the Red Army were locked in brutal combat from the Arctic Circle to the shores of the Black Sea. Millions had already perished in the fighting, and there was no indication of an end in sight. Moscow had been spared from conquest for the year, and the Nazi War Machine had been pushed back onto the defensive. As winter deepened, Stalin’s advisors worked feverishly to assemble plans for the next phase of operations, schemes they hoped would liberate the rest of their beleaguered country. In the meantime, the Red Army continued to press men and materiel against German defenses, hoping for a breakthrough that would end the war. Zhukov and his comrades were not the only enemies the Germans had to contend with. They also faced the increasingly irrational demands of their Führer. And the worsening winter weather continued to take its toll, causing casualties and limiting operations. Both sides were affected by the harsh weather, but many German units remained poorly equipped with cold-weather gear and suffered accordingly. Frostbite cases were recorded for tracking, even as the OKH excluded medical casualties from their accounting. Nevertheless, estimates suggested that as many as 130,000 men became frostbite cases during the December fighting, with varying degrees of severity.
For Army Group North, the paramount issue was keeping Leningrad encircled. To achieve this, Shisselburg had to be held. It formed the end of what was known as the Shisselburg Corridor. The town sat at the mouth of the Neva where it flows into Lake Ladoga. Even at the height of the German advance beyond the Volkhov River, the corridor had never been more than about thirty kilometers wide. The Soviet 54th Army had been battered and driven back, but it managed to hold the southern shore of Lake Ladoga. This prevented the Germans from gaining anything more than a precarious foothold on the lake. Nevertheless, the Germans had demonstrated their defensive skill throughout November and December in the area, fending off several small-scale attacks and two large-scale offensives designed to break the corridor. The last week of the year saw both sides nursing their wounds after the Volkhov–Tikhvin offensive, which had pushed the Germans back behind the Volkhov River. The Germans were still pulling forces back to their lines behind the river.
Through Christmas Day, the situation remained relatively quiet. It wasn’t until 28 December that the Germans learned of the Volkhov Front’s existence. Meretskov had been ordered to begin his counter-offensive to liberate Leningrad on Christmas Day. Despite reinforcements, he knew the operation would be a disaster without more time to prepare. His field armies had suffered terribly in the Tikhvin–Volkhov operations. The least he could do was press with the Stavka for additional time to rest and refit. He attempted this, but was quickly overruled. Only in the moments before he was to start his attack was he able to convince them of the need for more time. Stalin’s representative was Colonel General Voronov. He went to inspect the readiness of the Volkhov Front. He was shocked by what he found: many guns lacked sights, limbers, or radios for battery control. The poor state of the rail lines east of Tikhvin contributed, with much of the equipment stranded mid-shipment. Voronov reported this to Stalin, skillfully shielding Meretskov from blame. The new Volkhov Front had not been given enough time to assemble a proper supply apparatus, and this was part of the fault. Additionally, the occupation meant that many rail lines lay partly in German-controlled areas, rendering them unusable. Stalin, up to that point, had tended to treat every numbered field unit as fully operational, with all its equipment and personnel. He often failed to recognize that units required time to stand up; men and material did not pre-exist in the places where armies and divisions were formed. In Meretskov’s case, Stalin accepted reality. He granted an extension, but warned that no further delays would be tolerated. The new attack date was set for 4 January 1942. Meanwhile, local units tried another attack west of the Neva into the German lines at Shisselburg. These attacks failed, but the pressure nearly broke Army Group North. Casualties were high, and the under-strength infantry divisions bore the brunt of the beating.
Unlike the First World War, the German rear areas were never sanctuaries of rest and refit. Einsatzgruppe A reported as early as August that rail lines behind German lines were being attacked nearly every night. They urgently needed reinforcements to cope with the partisan threat, and by winter they had received them. The OKH was keenly aware that if the railroads could not be kept safe, the armies in the field could not be supplied or fed. Even with operable rail lines, there was a struggle to keep up with the demands of the front-line forces. There was not enough rolling stock or engines to move supplies to the army properly. For Army Group North, one of the best ways to alleviate this shortage was sea transport along the Baltic coast. Beyond supplying forces around Leningrad, there was the vital task of shipping raw materials from Sweden and Norway to Germany. The Soviet Red Banner Baltic Fleet had to be kept bottled up. The fleet was not in a position to contest the Kriegsmarine in a full-scale battle, but any engagement would risk reducing German strength needed to keep the Allied fleet out of the Baltic. The Germans and Finns had mined the Gulf of Finland from Helsinki to Tallinn. This kept the Red Banner Fleet from venturing out in large numbers. However, it could not prevent Soviet submarines from conducting anti-shipping patrols.
The Soviet Submarine Arm had been particularly well developed before the war; at the outbreak, it boasted the largest submarine fleet in the world. Yet the Red Navy had played a secondary role to the VVS and the Red Army. It had not received the necessary training, and some of its equipment was in poor shape. As covered in the prelude to this series, the Navy had settled on a doctrine for its use. The Jeune d’Ecole school of thought favored light ships doing commerce raiding, but this doctrine had not been fully developed before the war. Soviet sailors had to learn on the job, just as their counterparts in the Army and Air Force were doing.
It wasn’t until late autumn 1941 that the Soviet submarines of the Red Banner Fleet had the chance to prove themselves. As winter closed in, large portions of the sea froze and ice became a serious operational hazard. Still, successes were possible. By the end of the year, Red Banner submarines had sunk five transports, one submarine, and two fuel tankers. This wasn’t overwhelming, but every ship lost represented a heavy burden on Germany’s limited shipbuilding capacity. These limited successes encouraged the Red Navy’s leadership. On 18 December, the submarine K-21 sailed out of Kronstadt behind an ice breaker. K-21 was an example of the K-class cruiser submarines.
These were massive boats for their time, displacing about 2,600 tons when submerged. By comparison, a German Type IXC displaced about 1,178 tons when submerged. This contrast illustrated an early tendency within the Soviet navy toward larger submarines with extra room and spare displacement. The K class had an overall length at nearly 100 meters with a beam measuring 7.4 meters and a draught running down 4.5 meters. They were powered from a diesel-electric arrangement in which the diesel engines provided 8400 horsepower for surface running and the electric motors ran around 2400 horsepower for undersea travel. This gave them an impressive range of 14,000 nautical miles and the double hull design was tested to depths of 230 feet. She typically carried a crew of 67 men including 10 officers. They were armed with 2 100mm deck guns, 2 45mm anti aircraft guns, a few naval mines and two pair torpedo tubes facing the stern and a further 2 torpedo launchers were fitted externally to face the stern. The K-21 aimed to break out and conduct an unprecedented five-month anti-shipping patrol in the southern Baltic. However, K-21 was damaged en route when a stray piece of ice struck the submarine’s superstructure. The ambitious mission was halted before it could begin, and K-21 had to turn back. The Soviet Navy’s submarines would never have a decisive effect on German shipping in the Baltic, though not for a lack of effort. It was these efforts that cost the Soviet Navy twenty-seven submarines before the end of 1941. Inexperience among sailors and officers consistently contributed to this high rate of loss.
For Army Group Center, a period of relative clarity emerged once Hitler had issued his orders to halt the retreats. Yet withdrawals continued under the cover of local command decisions about the best positions for their units, and senior commanders implicitly sanctioned these moves by shielding them from higher levels of command. Hitler remained unaware of these actions, and the Army as a whole tended to operate under the belief that what he did not know could not hurt him. This aligned with the traditions of the modern German Army, which encouraged small-unit leaders to act independently to achieve the mission’s objectives. Despite these unauthorized retreats, Hitler’s order had been firm, and the corps and army commanders were given the excuse they needed to establish a line of resistance. Bock had been relieved of command because of illness, and in the final days he had been unable to exercise effective control over Army Group Center. With Kluge now in charge, Halder and Hitler expected him to turn things around.
The northern flank was in poor shape after the eviction of the 9th Army from Kalinin. Conditions were so dire that its commander, Colonel General Strauss, flew to Kluge’s headquarters for a meeting on the twenty-second. He pressed to pull his army back to Rzhev, but this was unacceptable to both Kluge and Hitler. Strauss was ordered to hold the line at Staritsa. The Kalinin Front would continue its attacks, and Strauss would have to endure without armor support, the panzers too busy defending their own lines. Konev continued to pour manpower into relatively small engagements, turning them into life-or-death struggles that the 9th Army struggled to contain. They had no reinforcements and were denied any chance to retreat. The result was countless skirmishes that drained hundreds, and eventually thousands, of lives from the rolls. The 9th Army paid dearly for Hitler’s refusal to countenance large-scale retreats. Strauss and Kluge pressed for permission to withdraw through the end of the month. The commander of 8th Fliegerkorps, General Richthofen, actively influenced the denial. He fed Hitler reports that countered those from the 9th Army, arguing that his reconnaissance found no enemy concentrations matching Strauss’s reports. Richthofen sought to maneuver into Hitler’s inner circle by feeding him information that aligned with Hitler’s preconceived notions. Hitler, for his part, was not only inclined to underestimate the situation on the ground but also deeply distrusted the Army leadership at this stage. Richthofen skillfully exploited both traits. In a twist of fate, he was granted a Corps command within the 9th Army before the year’s end. The assignment was short-lived, but the aristocrat did not leave humbled by the experience.
The best that Strauss could muster came on the last day of the year. Kluge berated and cajoled Reinhardt into sending a single battalion of panzers north. This Kampfgruppe consisted of only a few tanks and some ragtag infantry with limited mobility. It offered little help. Throughout the week, the 9th Army was forced to retreat or risk total destruction. Konev knew the 9th Army was on its last legs, and he was egged on by Stalin’s insistence on continued assault. Had he paused to concentrate his forces, he might have achieved a decisive breakthrough of the German lines. But the Stavka could not see this, believing that unrelenting pressure was the only path to victory. Reinhardt did not have much to spare and faced his own problems. He had only just managed to escape the Klin bulge with his panzer army intact, and if that is being frank, perhaps not entirely intact. Almost every division was rendered combat ineffective. They struggled to conduct even limited defensive operations, and everything was done on a shoestring budget. As he attempted to hold his lines, he continually had to adjust them to maintain contact with the retreating 9th Army. Hoepner’s 4th Panzer Army was in better shape than Reinhardt’s. He had not been caught in as exposed a position and had been able to pull his units back in good order. Things were quiet on his front lines during the last week of the month. The Stavka’s resources were then redirected to exploit the gains they had made with the 9th Army to the north, as well as to pressure the southern flank of Army Group Center.
The 4th Army remained under Kluge’s command, balancing his responsibilities for the army with those of Army Group Center. After pushing back the extended wings of the Panzer armies, Zhukov turned his attention to the 4th Army. German infantry lined the main east-west highway into Moscow, creating a bulge in the Army Group Center front. The northern wing, comprising the 3rd and 4th Panzer Armies and the 9th Army, had pulled back, while the 2nd Army and 2nd Panzer were in a full-blown crisis as well. Unlike the northern wing, Guderian was in complete disorder; cavalry had wrought havoc among his formations, and Zhukov was prepared to exploit the gap between the right wing of the 4th Army and the left of the 2nd Panzer Army. During the week, General Blumentritt assumed command of the 4th Army. He had previously served as Kluge’s Chief of Staff in that army and now faced corps commanders who were shaken by Zhukov’s hammering of the right flank. This was a nerve-wracking period for many men and officers. Blumentritt was said to have spent more time visiting troops at the front than in his headquarters, and at least one fellow officer reported that his nerves were completely shot, with some hoping for relief through death. On the twenty-sixth, a new commanding officer arrived. General of Infantry Kuebler had been appointed on the nineteenth, but his arrival had been delayed.
The attack against the 4th Army intensified in the last days of the third week, yet the German positions held firm along the Nara River. The only notable weakness lay with General of Infantry Heinrici’s 43rd Infantry Corps, which formed the army’s southeastern flank and had been flailing since Guderian broke contact. The gap had already been exploited by the 1st Guards Cavalry the previous week, and Soviet forces were pressing it again with renewed momentum. The Red Army moved quickly and efficiently. On 21 December, the General Staff was not even aware of a penetration south of Kaluga. Meanwhile, the 50th Army stormed into the gap, with the 1st Guards Cavalry leading the way and the 10th Army not far behind. Heinrici faced the real danger of encirclement and appealed to Kluge and Blumentritt for permission to retreat. After a harrowing delay, permission was granted, late on 23 December. Heinrici was allowed to pull back to Kaluga, though this was insufficient, unknown to the Germans at the time. Kluge then pulled the 19th Panzer Division from the northern line and redirected it south, the only substantial counter to the Soviet penetrations available. To the left of the 43rd Infantry, the 13th Infantry Corps fought a desperate, attritional battle against attacks from the 43rd and 49th Armies. By the morning of 27 December, it was clear they could not hold. They attempted to retreat in good order, but losses were heavy regardless. The 49th Army penetrated south of the 13th Corps, and once Heinrici became aware of this, he understood that holding Kaluga would be impossible without substantial support. On 29 December, he received permission to abandon the city. The year ended with continued attacks as the Soviets pressed their advantage.
The gap between the 2nd Panzer and the 4th Army was being exploited primarily by the 1st Guards Cavalry Corps, again rampaging across the front. The cavalry provided the Red Army with a level of tactical mobility that the pre-war German forces had largely destroyed earlier in Minsk, Smolensk, and Kyiv. They fought mainly as dismounted infantry, using their horses to gain better positioning and to break off engagements that were turning unfavorably. Yet the cavalry’s nature meant they often fought without heavy weapons and outside the supporting reach of better-equipped forces, resulting in extraordinarily high casualties. As the 1st Guards Cavalry Corps advanced with speed, Guderian’s forces were rapidly pushed back. The panzer commander requested permission to withdraw to avoid further losses, but the request was denied. The 1st Guards Cavalry crossed the Oka River early in the week, and the Germans were unaware until Guderian pulled back behind the river without permission. This retreat was discovered on the 25th, provoking outrage from Halder, Kluge, and Hitler. Kluge requested Guderian’s relief, and Hitler assented. Hitler summoned Guderian back to the Wolfsschanze in East Prussia on 20 December and relieved him of command on 25 December 1941. In this engagement, the cavalry corps reportedly subdued and repelled the previously formidable 2nd Panzer Group, once led by the pioneer of modern armored warfare, sweeping across the Russian steppe. This period is often cited as one of the Soviet Union’s notable achievements in the campaign. As the leadership crisis within Army Group Center continued, the 1st Guards Cavalry pressed toward Sukhinichi. Sukhinichi was a crucial rail junction and a key node between Kaluga and Bryansk. The OKH, near panic, designated the Oka Gap as the highest priority on the entire front. With the 9th Army falling back in the north, the danger of a full encirclement of Army Group Center loomed as more than a theoretical concern for Stalin’s strategists. On either the 28th or 29th, the 8th Airborne Brigade parachuted behind the German lines. Their objective was to rendezvous with the cavalry, but the landing was chaotic, poorly supported, and familiarly costly. Many paratroopers were lost, separated from the main force, and they would not link up with the 1st Guards Cavalry until the first week of January.
2nd Army entered the week of the 22nd still perched in a precarious position, resembling the situation they faced in mid-December. Over the week, Red Army units managed several penetrations, and the German lines could only be patched late on the 29th. From Rzhev in the north to Kursk in the south, the Wehrmacht was being pushed back. The Red Army, while not yet the equal of the German military in skill, benefited from German exhaustion, poor positioning, and a lack of reserves. Many infantry formations had not enjoyed a rest period since the invasion began—roughly 193 days of continuous warfare. In the balance, numbers on both sides had converged to something close to parity, though this felt unsettling to the German side. Until the year’s end, they clung to the idea that the Soviet forces were on their last legs. Halder attempted to bolster the resolve of field commanders, but his words clashed with the frontline soldiers’ hard-won experience. Army Group Center had been driven into a difficult struggle in December. They were not destroyed, but they were suffering and stretched to their limits.
In Army Group South, conditions were not as dire as on other sectors. The relative stability stemmed from how the autumn offensives had been conducted by the three main army groups. Army Group South had largely aimed to reach the Donbas, rather than push deeper eastward. The 1st Panzer Army overreached in its attempt to seize Rostov, a singular miscalculation, while the 17th and 6th Armies had remained largely in place for several weeks, allowing them to build stronger defensive positions and to improve their logistics. Their sustained posture enabled better supply management than Army Groups Center and North had managed. The continuous pressure from the front without immediate relief, however, dragged the South's forces further from established supply bases. The 17th Army faced attacks on its northern flank, with the 4th Corps acting as the connecting link to the 6th Army. They endured several assaults before it appeared the Soviets might be running out of steam. Then, on the 25th, the Southwestern Front shifted its focus and attacked the southern flank of the 17th Army, where the Italians connected with Kleist’s Panzer Army. Although there were some local breakthroughs, the shortened front allowed mobile reserves to counter-attack and restore the lines before the end of the month.
In Crimea, the situation grew more dramatic as the Sevastopol assault intensified under Lieutenant General Hansen’s 54th Infantry Corps. He had spent the third week hammering Petrov’s defenses. A brief pause on the 21st was followed by a renewed push on the 22nd, when Hansen sent the 22nd Infantry Division into Sector Four again. This time they breached defenses, brushing aside the exhausted 241st and 773rd Rifle Regiments and advancing nearly a mile. Mamashay had to be abandoned, and Coastal Battery Number 10 was destroyed to deny its use to the Germans. The landside flank of the defense also pulled back. The Germans were making significant progress, and Petrov felt he was hanging on by a thread. There was nowhere to retreat to, and his men had little to hold onto. The German pounding continued, driving them toward collapse. Petrov pressed the Stavka for more aid. Before the end of the 22nd, the 388th Rifle Division had already been shattered by an attack from the 32nd Infantry Division. Hansen, satisfied with his gains, ordered the 23rd to be used for regrouping and rest for the men.
Petrov’s relief at the pause on the morning of 23 December was short-lived. Vice Admiral Oktyabrsky arrived in port with a five-ship convoy that delivered the complete 345th Rifle Division. The division brought a full complement of artillery, radios, and trucks, exactly what the defenders needed. In addition, the ships offloaded the 81st Tank Battalion, delivering sixty T-26 light tanks to bolster the defense. The extent of the aid delivered to Sevastopol underscored Stalin and the Stavka’s determination to hold the city. Petrov proved himself a capable commander and clearly wielded significant influence in the highest levels of power. Unaware of the arrival, the Germans planned to renew the assault. Manstein and Hansen granted themselves one more day of regrouping before recommitting to the attack on 25 December. They were stunned to encounter fresh troops from the 345th Rifle Division where only shell-shocked, battle-worn remnants of the 388th Rifle Division had stood a mere forty-eight hours earlier. The 4th sector line had been rebuilt along the Bel’bek River, and to Hansen’s dismay, the line now appeared virtually impenetrable. Nothing the 22nd Infantry could throw at the Soviets broke through. As the 22nd Infantry pressed forward again and again, they came under the fire of Coastal Battery Number 30, which boasted two twin mounts of 30.5 cm guns and began hammering the German infantry.
As Hansen’s corps continued to grind down in front of Sevastopol, fresh information reached Manstein from his other formations. Lieutenant General Sponeck’s 42nd Infantry Corps had been holding the Kerch Peninsula, and on the morning of the 26th he reported a Soviet amphibious landing at Kerch. Manstein dismissed it as little more than a raid. This reaction stood in sharp contrast to Stavka’s intent. They were landing substantial forces at Kerch and expected Manstein to recognize the gravity of the threat. If Sponeck were overwhelmed, the danger to the Kerch defences would compel Manstein to divert from Sevastopol. Yet he did not yield to the alarm. He dismissed the threat and, on the morning of the 28th, unleashed everything he had at Sevastopol again. On the soviet side, their Group 2 disembarked at Cape Khroni to the northeast of Kerch. The assembly included gunboat Don, transports Krasny Flot and Pyenay, a tugboat, two motor barges with three T-26 light tanks and a few artillery pieces, and 16 fishing trawlers. Whaleboats substituted for landing craft, making landings tediously slow and causing drownings of men and equipment. By 0630 hours on 26 December, 697 men from the 2nd Battalion, 160th Rifle Regiment, had landed at Cape Khroni, with many drowned or incapacitated by hypothermia. Another rifle battalion followed later that day with a platoon of T-26s and light artillery. At Cape Zyuk, 290 troops landed in six hours, though a few vessels foundered on the rocky beach. At Cape Tarhan only 18 of Group 3’s 1,000-man landing force reached the beach due to a lack of whaleboats. West of Khroni, in Bulganak Bay, the Azov flotilla landed 1,452 men, three T-26 tanks, two 76mm howitzers, and two 45mm anti-tank guns. Two more landings at Kazantip Point and Yenikale were aborted due to stormy weather. By noon, the Red Army held five beachheads north of Kerch with about 3,000 lightly armed men ashore. German resistance was initially light, but by 1050 hours He 111 bombers and Ju 87 Stuka dive bombers began attacking the Soviet landing forces. The cargo ship Voroshilov at Tarhan was bombed and sunk with 450 troops aboard. A vessel carrying 100 men from Group 2 was sunk off Cape Zyuk. Lacking radios, the lightly armed Soviet formations north of Kerch crept inland only about a kilometer and dug in, waiting for reinforcements that were delayed by three days due to bad winter weather and never arrived.
The 302nd Mountain Rifle Division landed at Kamysh Burun and faced fierce German resistance. Two German battalions from Colonel Ernst Maisel’s 42nd Infantry Regiment held high ground and halted the first wave. The 2nd Battalion of the 42nd Regiment devastated a Soviet landing at Eltigen. A Soviet naval infantry company at Stary Karantin was annihilated by Major Karl Kraft’s 1st Battalion/42nd Infantry. The second wave landed at 0700 hours and was repelled as well. Soviet troops seized Kamysh Burun docks, enabling a foothold by afternoon. The Luftwaffe sank several ships offshore; only 2,175 of 5,200 men of Kamysh Burun’s landing force got ashore. Lieutenant General Kurt Himer, aware of the landings by 0610 hours, sought to determine the main Soviet effort amid dispersed forces. He ordered the destruction of the Khroni force with Colonel Friedrich Schmidt’s 72nd Infantry Regiment but lacked the troops to counter Bulganak Bay and Cape Zyuk. He improvised by moving a headquarters company, 3rd Battalion/97th Infantry, and an artillery battery to Cape Zyuk. By midnight, IR 97 had its first and third battalions and two artillery batteries in position for a counterattack the next day. At 1350 hours on 26 December, IR 72 learned of a captured Soviet officer’s briefing that the plan called for 25,000 troops at Kerch. Himer then brought up 2nd Battalion/IR 97 from Feodosia to crush the Zyuk force, with IR 97’s full strength. IR 42 would hold Kamysh Burun until northern Soviet forces were eliminated. A mixed alarm unit would counter Bulganak Bay, and Army Corps commander Sponeck sought permission to use the Romanian 8th Cavalry Brigade to reinforce Himer.
The counterattack on Zyuk began at 1300 hours on 27 December due to muddy roads. Soviet naval infantry at Zyuk and Khroni fought back with three T-26 tanks and several infantry companies. A 3.7 cm Pak 36 knocked out all three Soviet tanks. German bombers supported the infantry and drove the Soviet forces back, with the main assault held until the next day. The 79th Marine Brigade had stood firm, but was forced to fall back. The 345th Rifle Division was outflanked along the Bel’bek, with some of Hansen’s troops reaching the approaches to Coastal Battery Number 30. The tide appeared to turn against the defenders once more. Reinforcements arrived at nearly the same pace as losses, draining the pool at the front. The Soviet position collapsed under air bombardment, and by 1200 hours the Germans had reached the shore. Many Soviet troops fought on waist-deep in water; by evening, hundreds were captured or killed, and IR 97 suffered minimal casualties in its two days of action against the beachhead at Cape Zyuk. Khroni’s Soviet beachhead was also eliminated by IR 72 on 28 December, leaving only Bulganak Bay’s force and the Kamysh Burun beachhead. Himer’s division took 1,700 prisoners, with only the 1,000-strong Soviet force at Bulganak Bay remaining, along with Kamysh Burun and scattered inland pockets of resistance.
At 0350 hours on 29 December, Soviet destroyers Shaumyan and Zhelezniakov appeared at Feodosia, firing star shells for illumination and following up with a 13-minute barrage on the German defenses. Four MO-class small guard ships carrying 60 naval infantry secured the harbor mole, led by Lieutenant Arkady F. Aydinov. The naval infantry captured two 3.7 cm Pak anti-tank guns and signaled the all-clear with green flares for the follow-up forces. The German II./AR 54 gunners engaged the patrol boats without scoring a hit. Beginning at 0426 hours, Shaumyan landed a company of naval infantry inside the harbor in 20 minutes. Zhelezniakov and Nyezamozhnik landed additional reinforcements soon after. Shaumyan itself was later damaged by German artillery fire. At 0500 hours, the Soviet cruiser Krasnyi Kavkaz began unloading 1,853 soldiers from the 633rd Rifle Regiment of the 157th Rifle Division at the mole. The Germans concentrated all fire on the cruiser, hitting it 17 times and setting its No. 2 gun turret on fire. Krasnyi Kavkaz replied with its 180 mm batteries, landed its troops in three hours, and then departed the harbor. The Luftwaffe arrived over Feodosia, sinking a minesweeper and a patrol boat in the morning, but it failed to halt the main landing. By 0730, the Soviets were in control of the port and began landing artillery and vehicles. They fought their way through the town, and by 1000 hours the German forces had fled after a brief engagement. In a rapid operation, the Soviets landed 4,500 troops in the morning, with parts of three divisions ashore by day’s end. Sponeck immediately ordered the Romanian 8th Cavalry Brigade and the 4th Mountain Brigade to fortify the Soviet bridgehead at Feodosia. He pressed for permission from 11th Army commander General der Infanterie Erich von Manstein to withdraw the 46th Infantry Division from Kerch to avert encirclement, but Manstein refused. Instead, he ordered Sponeck to throw the enemy back into the sea with reinforcement from Gruppe Hitzfeld of the 73rd Infantry Division and the entire 170th Infantry Division, aimed at crushing the Soviet landing force at Feodosia. Sponeck then disobeyed orders, cut contact with 11th Army headquarters, and at 0830 hours on 29 December ordered the 46th Infantry Division to retreat west from Kerch to avoid encirclement. This decision was highly controversial: German forces at Feodosia were insufficient to stop further Soviet gains, while 20,000 Romanian troops were in the vicinity and strong German reinforcements were en route. Two Romanian brigades launched a counterattack on 30 December but were largely defeated due to inadequate air and artillery support. Fighting at Sevastopol persisted through the 30th and 31st. Only then did Manstein realize that victory was unattainable and ordered a halt to further attempts. The 11th Army had now twice tried to seize the city and failed on both occasions. Against all odds, Petrov held the defenders’ line.
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Zhukov and Rokossovsky press against Army Group Center; Meretskov’s Volkhov Front prepares a Leningrad breakout, though supply issues and rail disruptions hinder progress. The Red Navy, though hampered by ice and limited ships, sinks a few transports as Soviet submarines suffer heavy losses but gain morale. In the north, Hitler’s strategic inertia and German command chaos undermine defense around Kalinin and Staritsa, while Soviet cavalry strikes threaten the Oka Gap. Sevastopol endures under Petrov, reinforced by new Soviet divisions and ships, as Manstein’s siege stalls.
