Conduct of The Offensive
On September 3, under the threat of the encirclement the Germans started retreating from the salient while maintaining resistance on the flanks. On September 6 Yelnya was retaken. The Soviet offensive continued until September 8, until it was halted at the new German defense line.
This was the most substantial reverse that the Wehrmacht had suffered up to that date and the first successful planned Soviet offensive operation in the Soviet-German war. German losses in the operation are unknown. The Red Army losses are estimated at 31,853 overall casualties. Major General Rakutin was killed during the battle.
Read more about this topic: Yelnya Offensive
Famous quotes containing the words conduct of, conduct and/or offensive:
“... the conduct of an accountable being must be regulated by the operations of its own reason ...”
—Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797)
“Armies, for the most part, are made up of men drawn from simple and peaceful lives. In time of war they suddenly find themselves living under conditions of violence, requiring new rules of conduct that are in direct contrast to the conditions they lived under as civilians. They learn to accept this to perform their duties as fighting men.”
—Gil Doud, U.S. screenwriter, and Jesse Hibbs. Walter Bedell Smith (Himself)
“How much atonement is enough? The bombing must be allowed as at least part-payment: those of our young people who are concerned about the moral problem posed by the Allied air offensive should at least consider the moral problem that would have been posed if the German civilian population had not suffered at all.”
—Clive James (b. 1939)