Password: Freiheit, Objective: Lysianka, February 16 1944 at 23:00 – 5.ϟϟ-Panzerdivision „Wiking“ and Battle in Korsun Cherkassy Pocket (I)

Wehrmacht troops on the Eastern Front

Whitewashed Panzerkampfwagen Tiger

Die Deutsche Wochenschau 1944

Trapped in the Korsun-Cherkassy pocket, a defensive position along the Dnieper river in Ukraine in January 1944, were 60,000 men, at approximately 55 percent of their authorized strength. Among the trapped German forces were the multinational 5.SS-Panzer-Division Wiking under command of SS-Gruppenführer Herbert Otto Gille and the Belgian 5.SS-Freiwilligen-Sturmbrigade Wallonien under command of SS-Hauptsturmführer Léon Degrelle and 6,000 Russian auxiliaries. Despite repeated warnings from Feldmarschall Erich von Manstein and others, Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler refused to allow the exposed units to be pulled back. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin expected and was promised a second Stalingrad. The Soviets was already triumphantly proclaiming in their news broadcasts the destruction of the Cherkassy pocket and with it, division Wiking. Yet very few German soldiers and no Waffen-SS men in the cauldron had surrendered despite heavy Soviet propaganda inducements to do so. With great hardship, the front held. General Wilhelm Stemmermanns answer would be in the form of continued, bitter resistance. Erich von Manstein ordered III Panzerkorps to attempt to relieve the beleaguered forces. Led by the 1.SS-Panzer-Division Leibstandarte SS and the 16.Panzer-Division the attack soon encountered heavy resistance from four Soviet Tank Corps. After heavy fighting, the exhausted force reached the Gniloy Tikich stream and established a small bridgehead on the eastern bank. The III Panzerkorps could advance no further, Group Stemmermann would have to fight its way out. Under shellfire and pursued by Soviet tanks, the surrounded German troops fought their way across the Gniloy Tikich to safety, although at the cost of 19,000 dead, captured or missing and all their equipment. Stabswache de Euros: Battle in Korsun Cherkassy Pocket (II). Credit: Peter Straßner, European Volunteers and Douglas E. Nash, Hell's Gate. Bottom clips: according to some unconfirmed accounts, a Tiger of 13./SS-Panzer-Regiment 1 of the Leibstandarte SS between Petrivka and Korsun during the break-out from the Cherkassy cauldron. Die Deutsche Wochenschau - the official Nazi German war newsreel from 1940 until March 1945.