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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| July 13, 1941: The first Soviet Counterattack |
| 2023-07-13 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. From the V Kontakte page of THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR, Sergey Veter Note that in the first summer, the Red Army had corps for all of its units on the western front. After this time, corps were eliminated and, replaced with armies, which function as corps to this day. [VK] The counteroffensive of the Soviet troops began in the area between the Dnieper and Berezina rivers.Bobruisk, occupied Zhlobin and Rogachev. In August, as a result of a German counterattack, the corps was surrounded. On August 13, 1941, Leonid Grigorievich was appointed commander of the 21st Army of the Central Front (the order was delivered to him by plane), but he appeals to the command with a request to postpone his appointment until the corps is withdrawn from the encirclement. During a breakthrough from the encirclement on August 17, 1941, Petrovsky died. He was buried in a mass grave near the village of Staraya Rudnya, Zhlobin District. Having completed the encirclement of eleven Soviet divisions of the Western Front in the Bialystok and Minsk pockets, the Germans at the end of June 1941 resumed the offensive with the forces of some tank units, since all the infantry units were pinned down by the surrounded Soviet units. So, on June 28, 1941, the 3rd German Panzer Division of Lieutenant General Walter Model occupied the city of Bobruisk, located on the Berezina River. The capture of this important junction of railways and highways gave the enemy the opportunity to advance unhindered on the southern flank of our Western Front. The enemy was not slow to take advantage of this opportunity, and four days later his tank units reached the cities of Rogachev and Zhlobin located on the Dnieper: at dawn on July 2, Nazi motorcyclists and tanks of the advanced units of the 3rd Panzer Division of the 24th Panzer Corps appeared on the western bank of the river. However, here the Germans ran into stubborn resistance from the 63rd Rifle Corps under the command of Commander Petrovsky. At that time, the corps included: 117, 167, 61 Rifle Divisions and other separate corps units. Only on July 5, at 1 pm, after artillery shelling and air strikes, did the enemy manage to cross the Dnieper northeast of Rogachev, in the area of ​​​​the village of Zborovo near the bend of the river, which juts out far to the north. However, after our counterattacks, the enemy, leaving 256 corpses and eight wrecked Pz.III tanks on the battlefield, was forced to return to the western bank, after which the front stabilized for another week. However, despite the fact that the 63rd Rifle Corps successfully defended this line. The general situation in the western direction worsened: on July 10, the enemy crossed the Western Dvina and the Dnieper and began to develop an offensive against Smolensk. In this situation, on July 12, 1941, the commander of the troops of the Western Front ordered the troops of the 22nd, 19th and 20th armies to destroy the enemy that had broken through and capture the city of Vitebsk by joint actions. The troops of the 21st Army were tasked with the forces of the 63rd and 66th Rifle Corps to deliver concentric attacks on Bobruisk, and the 67th Rifle Corps to advance north of Shapchitsy along the western bank of the Dnieper in order to eliminate the enemy grouping that had broken through to the eastern bank of the Dnieper in the area Bykhov. On July 13, the 21st Army, under the command of the former commander of the North-Western Front, Colonel General Fyodor Isidorovich Kuznetsov, went on the offensive with the task of capturing Bykhov and Bobruisk, to go behind enemy lines in the Mogilev-Smolensk direction. In the morning, with the beginning of an intensive twenty-minute artillery preparation, units of the 63rd Corps began crossing the Dnieper. In these July days there was a sweltering heat that subsided little even at night. The Nazis, not at all expecting our offensive, carelessly hid from the heat in their homes in Rogachev and Zhlobin. They took off their weapons, and sometimes their uniforms. In this position, our first fire raid found them. The divisions of the 63rd Rifle Corps successfully crossed the Dnieper, captured the cities of Rogachev and Zhlobin, and continued their offensive towards Bobruisk. To the south, the 232nd Rifle Division of the 66th Rifle Corps advanced up to 80 km and captured the crossings on the Berezina and Ptich rivers. At the same time, the 67th Rifle Corps of the 21st Army and units of the 13th Army detained the divisions of the 2nd German Panzer Group in the Roslavl direction. By the end of the day, the divisions had to conduct an offensive battle, in the full sense of the word uprooting with a bayonet and a grenade, shooting at point-blank range the Nazis who had settled in houses and dugouts. In these battles, many soldiers and units distinguished themselves. The battalion of the 437th Infantry Regiment was the first to break into Zhlobin. When the next morning the enemy made an attempt to encircle the battalion, our soldiers not only did not retreat, but again put the Nazis to flight. Six times Captain Batalov raised his battalion to attack, twice it came to bayonet strikes, and the enemy fled. As a result of such perseverance, the battalion diverted significant enemy forces, contributed to the advancement of our units and the complete liberation of Zhlobin. For the German command, this blow was a complete surprise. It hastily sent against the 21st Army from its 2nd Army the 43rd and 53rd Army Corps, which hardly stopped the offensive of the Soviet troops. Nevertheless, on July 25, the 63rd Rifle Corps, having regrouped, resumed the offensive in the direction of Bobruisk, and by 1900 hrs reached the line of Verichev, Zabolotye, Great Forest, Rudnya Malaya, Lesan. The enemy fiercely resisted. Especially heavy fighting took place on 28 July. The Nazis launched a counterattack on the night of July 29, although at that time they still observed their habit of resting at night. The counterattack was repulsed with heavy losses for them. By the end of July 1941, units of the 63rd Corps wedged into the depth of the enemy’s location up to 30 km and moved forward, especially in relation to the neighbor on the right (67 sk). In connection with the concentration of fascist troops in this direction, the commander of the troops of the 21st Army on July 30 ordered the 63rd Rifle Corps to go on the defensive. Thus ended the first successful counterattack of the Soviet troops during the Great Patriotic War. |
| Posted by:badanov |