The SS-Panzerkorps played a key part in the Third Battle of Kharkov, dubbed the Donets Campaign by the Germans. It demonstrated that it was one of the world's foremost armoured formations, holding out against superior odds and then counterattacking with great skill and élan. But the victory in Ukraine was not without its costs. SS-Panzerkorps losses are estimated to 11,500 total casualties during the two-month campaign, including around 160 officers and about 4,300 men killed or missing according to military historian Major General Michael Reynolds. The largest portion of these were borne by the SS-Panzergrenadier-Division Leibstandarte SS but losses within the other two Waffen-SS divisions were as proportionately high, on the other hand, Wehrmacht troops of Heeresgruppe Süd had quite limited losses during the campaign. According to the author Thomas A. Thompson and the military historian David M. Glantz the Donets Campaign had cost the Red Army over 80,000 personnel casualties. Of these troops lost, an estimated 45,200 were killed or went missing, and these from their most mobile forces. Some 52 Soviet divisions were destroyed or rendered combat ineffective during the battles that took place in and around Kharkov. On March 18 1943, the German High Command claimed 19,594 Soviets taken prisoner and 1,140 tanks and 3,000 guns destroyed. Top image: German street signs located at Platz der Leibstandarte advertise locations of the Waffen-SS field hospitals of the Totenkopf, Leibstandarte SS and Das Reich after the retake of Kharkov in March 1943. A field hospital is a small mobile medical unit that temporarily takes care of casualties on-site before they can be safely transported to more permanent facilities. Public domain. Bottom image: captured Soviets awaiting transport to a POW camp guarded by two German StuG III assault guns. Photo believed taken during the Donets Campaign. Eßlinger Zeitung/DPA.
My Grandfather was one of those Russian Soldiers who threw his hands up the first chance he got. He was Ukrainian - he hated the Russians. Following the war he claimed he was Polish - like many of them did, and was lucky enough to get on a ship that left Germany in Winter of 1949/50 and landed in the height of the Australian Summer a few weeks later.
ReplyDeleteStalin pretty much exiled most of the ex-prisoners to the gulags upon their return. As far as he was concerned having spent time at the hands of the enemy they were the equivalent to foreign spies.
DeleteПравильно их в лагерях гноили.
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