Battle of Uman

Prelude

In the initial weeks of Operation Barbarossa, Army Group South had rapidly advanced East, capturing Lviv, Ternopil and Vinnytsia, and destroying four mechanized corps that Kirponos used in a counterattack at the Battle of Brody.

In mid July the Soviet 22nd and 15th Mechanized Corps engaged the German 3rd Motorized Corps near Kiev, and was decimated. The 1st Panzerarmee bypassed much of the remaining forces, leaving the German 6th Army's 297th Infantry Division to defeat the remnants with anti-tank and Luftwaffe attacks. On June 26th, the Soviets launched a second counter-attack on the 1st Panzerarmee from the north and south. The attack comprised elements of the Red 8th, 9th and 19th Mechanized Corps, altogether fielding about 1600 tanks. An intense battle took place over four days, ending in a Soviet defeat.

A third counter-attack was attempted by Marshal Budyonny, from north of Uman in the direction of Berdychiv to prevent the 1st Panzerarmee from encircling the rest of the Red 12th Army and cutting off his lines of communication. All action by Soviet forces failed as advance guard elements of the German 17th Field Army were reinforced by the 16th Panzer Division and the Hungarian Mechanized Corps.

In mid-July German troops cut the rail road at Talnoye and captured bridges over the Gorniy Tikich, and Sinucha rivers. By 29 June 1941, the German advance was temporarily halted, as the Soviet forces started to retreat and leaving the remnants of the 6th Army and the 12th Army behind; 103,000 troops were taken prisoner and about 100,000 were killed in the following encirclement.

As the Axis victory at Uman was secured, 1st Panzerarmee turned north to assist the 2nd Panzerarmee in operations at Kiev in September, and Kharkov in October.

Orders of battle

Most of the Soviet forces were severely depleted having withdrawn under heavy assaults from the Luftwaffe from the Polish border, and the mechanised units were virtually reduced to a single "Corps" after the Brody counter-offensive, its mechanised infantry now fighting as ordinary rifle troops.

The Axis forces were divided into those of 1st Panzerarmee that had suffered significant losses in matériel, but retained combat effectiveness, and the large infantry formations of the German and Romanian armies that attempted to advance from the West to meet the armored troops north of Crimea, the initial strategic objective of Army Group South.

Red Army

Wehrmacht

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 1st Panzerarmee 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. Budyonny was under strict orders from Joseph Stalin, who micromanaged the war early on, not to retreat under any circumstances.

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.

After the encirclement

As the pocket was eliminated, the tanks of 1st Panzerarmee turned north, and attacked toward Kiev on the orders to assist 2nd Panzerarmeein closing another encirclement around that city. The Crimean objective was for a time left to the field armies; the first of many times when Hitler would change his mind about strategic objectives of the Army Groups.

The Stavka used the respite offered by the German refocusing of 1st Panzerarmee to re-establish its front using the 9th Coastal Army (independent) and either reforming the destroyed armies, or bringing into line reserve 37th and 56th armies from the interior military districts, with the 38th Army eventually left to hold an over-stretched Kharkov sector of the Front.