Battle of Uman - The Battles of Encirclement

The Battles of Encirclement

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 troops under his command in two strategic sectors of the front to defend: at Kiev (37th and 26th armies), and Vinnytsia-Uman. No sooner had he taken up his command than he was advised of the continued Army Group South three-pronged offensives deep into the breach created between the Kiev sector's 26th Army and the 6th Army to its south as General Ewald von Kleist’s Panzergruppe 1 drove a wedge between the two Soviet sectors of the front south of Kiev and north of Vinnytsia, capturing Berdychiv on 15 July and Koziatyn on 16 July. General Karl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel’s 17th Field Army advanced to the South of Uman and General Eugen Ritter von Schobert’s 11th Field Army advanced northward from the Romanian border.

Stavka and the Southern Front's command staff mistakenly assumed that the Germans were striving to reach the crossing of the Dnieper between Kiev and Cherkasy for a further offensive toward Donbass, and underestimated the danger of encirclement for the 6th and 12th armies. On 28 July, an order was given to the Southwestern and Southern Fronts to stop the Germans from crossing the Dnieper and to retreat only in the Eastern direction. As a result, an opportunity to avoid the danger of encirclement by retreating in the Southeastern direction was lost.

The effect of the closing Axis forces was to slowly force the concentration of the two Soviet Armies in an ever reduced area, with the combined HQs of the armies located in the town of Podvisokoye (Подвысокое).

On 2 August, the encirclement was closed by the meeting of Panzer Group 1 and advance guard elements of the German 17th Field Army. This encirclement was reinforced the next day by a second joining formed when the German 16th Panzer Division met with the Hungarian Mechanized Corps (Gyorshadtest). By 8 August, the Soviet resistance had generally stopped. Remnants of 20 divisions from the 6th Army and the 12th Army were trapped. German sources after the war reported about 103,000 troops were taken prisoner. Included among officers taken prisoner were commanders of both the 6th and 12th armies, four corps commanders, and 11 division commanders.