This week, seventy years ago, the Battle of Kiev began, pitting the German Wehrmacht against the Red Army.
    The ancient city of Kiev, located on the Dnieper River, is the largest in the Ukraine, serves as its capital and currently has a population of approximately three million. Before the war, its population was approximately 1,000,000.
    As the summer of 1941 wore on and the Wehrmacht churned east, extending its lines of communication and supply ever further, some on the German side began to be concerned with what they were facing.  The Army Chief, General Franz Halder, who the previous month had thought the war all but won, began to reconsider, saying,
    “The whole situation makes it increasingly plain that we have underestimated the Russian Colossus. The Soviet Divisions are not armed and equipped according to our standards, and their tactical leadership is often poor. But there they are, and if we smash a dozen of them, the Russians simply put up another dozen.  They are near their own resources while we are moving further and further away from ours. And so our troops, sprawled over an immense front line, without any depth, are subjected to the excessive attacks of the enemy.”
    By August 2nd, the Wehrmacht had suffered 179,500 casualties but received only 47,000 replacements. Of greater concern than the men were the machines, which were wearing out and not being replaced. Meanwhile, the advance was halted while the Germans argued amongst themselves about the next objective.  
    Facing Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt’s Army Group South and the Romanian Army Group Antonesqu, was the Soviet Southwestern Front commanded by Colonel-General Mikhail Kirponos and the smaller Southern Front, commanded by, first, Ivan Tyulenev, and from August 30, Dmitri I. Ryabyshev.  All Soviet forces facing Axis forces were placed under the command of Marshal Semyon M. Budyonny on July 11. By now the Soviet 6th and 12th Armies, commanded by Ivan N. Muzychenko and Pavel G. Ponedelin and most of the Soviet armor in that area had been destroyed. Both Generals Muzychenko and Ponedelin were captured. Upon their release after the war, both were accused of treason and arrested. General Muzychenko was released but General Ponedelin was executed.
    Army Group South had not advanced as far as Army Group Center. The Fronts facing AGS had been allocated more armor than the other Fronts and its commanders had reacted quicker, more energetically and more competently, and had therefore responded better to the Axis assault. In addition, Army Group South had more allied troops (Slovakian, Romanian, Hungarian, and Italian), with soldiers and equipment of inferior quality than the Germans, than the other two army groups.
    Therefore, Hitler saw an opportunity, by peeling off the armor from Army Group Center and directing it behind the Soviet Southwestern Front, to encircle and destroy a significant amount of the enemy as well as conquer the resource-rich Ukraine. In addition, the corresponding danger to Army Group Center would also be eliminated. Hitler was determined that, even though he had repeated Napoleon’s mistake of invading Russia, he was not going to repeat the Emperor’s mistake of leaving the enemy’s field armies intact. It also had the further benefit of protecting the Rumanian oil fields of Ploiesti from bombing by the Soviet Air Force, by putting more distance between the two. This decision was taken against the advice of the Panzer commanders, Generals Heinz Guderian and Hermann Hoth, who wished to continue the drive on Moscow with Army Group Center. In addition to being the Soviet capital, Moscow was also the communications and transportation hub of the country.
    Of course, this, effectively, stalled Army Group Center’s drive on Moscow, and has left historians debating the wisdom of the strategy. Though the Germans achieved a stunning victory over the Red Army, it undoubtedly cost them the opportunity to capture the Soviet capital. As the Germans were occupied in the Ukraine, the Soviets were busy strengthening the defenses of the city - while Russia’s historical ally, “General Winter,” was rapidly approaching.
    Army Group Antonesqu, under the nominal command of the Conducator of the Kingdom of Romania, Marshal Ion Antonesqu, consisted of the Third and Fourth Romanian Armies and Eleventh German Army commanded by Petre Dumitrescu, Nicolae Ciuperca and Baron Eugene von Schobert. Eleventh Army also contained two Romanian Corps, commanded by Gheorghe Avramescu and Florea Mitranescu. In addition to Army Group Antonesqu, Army Group South included Sixth and Seventeenth Armies and First Panzergruppe, commanded by, respectively, Field Marshal Walther von Reichnau and Generals Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel and Ewald von Kleist. In addition to its German soldiers, Seventeenth Army also contained a Hungarian Corps, commanded by Béla Miklós and General von Kleist’s Panzergruppe contained the Italian Expeditionary Corps commanded by Giovanne Messe. General Messe would later be named a Marshal and given command of all Axis forces in Tunisia. According to General Franco Lo Sardo (ret.), who was a lieutenant in a field artillery unit with the Ariete Armored Division which was a part of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s Panzerarmee Afrika, Marshal Messe was the best Italian commander at that level.
    When General Georgii Zhukov spotted the danger of encirclement, and suggested withdrawal, he was replaced, as Chief-of-Staff, by Marshal Boris Shaposhnikov and sent to Leningrad on August 5th, where he replaced Marshal Kliment I. Voroshilov as commander of the forces defending the beleaguered northern city. Marshal Shaposhnikov is credited with saving the Soviet Union by rebuilding the Red Army after it had been shattered by Stalin’s maniacal Purges. Although the rebuilding was not complete, it was just far enough along to allow the Red Army to survive the Axis onslaught, rebuild and successfully counterattack. Marshal Shaposhnikov would, literally, work himself to death in defense of his country.
    As ordered by der Führer, General Guderian’s Second Panzergruppe peeled off, to the right, from Army Group Center and sliced behind the Soviet armies, to the east of Kiev. Meanwhile, Colonel-General von Kleist’s First Panzergruppe was coming from the opposite direction.
    By September 11, the danger to the Southwestern and Southern Fronts was apparent. General Kirponos, Marshal Budyonny and Commissar Nikita Khrushchev all told Stalin that Kiev must be evacuated. Stalin’s response was delivered to General Kirponos by Marshal Shaposhnikov on the evening of the 11th: “A retreat along the entire Front is not so simple. It is a very complicated and delicate matter. Apart from the fact that any retreat reduces the unit’s fighting capacity, in this particular war the enemy moves its motorized groups in-between theretreating units, involving them in fighting when they are least prepared for it, that is when artillery is on the move and not in combat position. The supreme command believes it necessary to go on fighting in the same positions the troops of the Southwestern Front now occupy.”  
    Marshal Budyonny was replaced by Marshal Semyon Timoshenko on September 13th. Three days later, elements of the First and Second Panzergruppes met near Lokhvitsa - behind the Soviet forces.  Nearly 50 divisions from five Red armies - 5th, 21st, 26th, 37th, 40th , commanded by, respectively, Ivan Sovetnikov, Vasili Kuznetsov, Fedor Kostenko, Andrei Vlasov and Kuzma Podlas -  were trapped. Finally, late the next day, authorization arrived from Moscow to withdraw.  By then it was too late for most. General Kirponos paid the ultimate price, when he stepped on a mine, while the two Marshals and Commissar Khrushchev were barely able to escape.  Another 665,000 Soviet soldiers were not so lucky, and marched into German captivity. Less than 1/6 of these prisoners would survive the year. It was the largest battle of annihilation in the history of the world. It had been a stunning success.    
    In June 1942, General Vlasov was captured leading the Second Shock Army in an abortive attempt to lift the siege of Leningrad. He then began assisting the Germans and in 1945 actually commanded troops against the Red Army. When the war ended, he was repatriated to the Soviet Union, where he was tried and convicted of treason. He was hung on August 1, 1946.
    German troops occupied the Ukranian capital on September 19, 1941. But before the occupation, the Red Army had sown 10,000 mines throughout the city. They were detonated on September 24th, setting fires which raged for five days, killing more than 1,000 Germans.
    Behind Army Group South came SS Einsatzgruppe C, commanded by Otto Rasch, and SS Einsatzgruppe D, commanded by Otto Ohlendorf. Their mission was to kill Jews, Gypsies, Communists, and undesirable Slavs. After the fire, SS Einsatzgruppe C herded 33,771 Jews to a place known as Babi Yar, where over a two-day period, from September 29th to September 30th, they were all murdered. It was the largest single massacre in the war and the Holocaust. Dr. Rasch died in prison, in 1948, awaiting trial. SS Einsatzgruppe D operated in Moldova, the Crimea and the south Ukraine.
    The Red Army liberated Kiev in December 1943.
    Kiev was named a “Hero City” on June 22, 1961 - the 20th anniversary of the beginning of Operation Barbarossa - by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R.

NEXT WEEK: MURMANSK
Mr. Wimbrow writes from Ocean City, Maryland, where he practices law representing those persons accused of criminal and traffic offenses, and those persons who have suffered a personal injury through no fault of their own.