Where the Iron Crosses Grow: The Crimea 1941-44

CHAPTER 9 German Defeat in the Crimea, 1944

Once spring weather arrived, the German goose in the Crimea was pretty well cooked. Tolbukhin and Eremenko had met with Stalin in Moscow during March to discuss the Crimea, and the basic plan of attack had been decided. Zakharov’s 2nd Guards Army would mount a strong deliberate offensive against Gruppe Konrad’s defenses at Perekop, while Kreizer’s 51st Army would stage a breakout attack from its Sivash bridgehead. Once the German front was broken, Vasil’ev’s 19th Tank Corps would exploit southward to Simferopol. Eremenko’s Coastal Army was intended merely to fix Allmendinger’s V Armeekorps at Kerch during the first phase of the Crimean Offensive and then exploit the situation as circumstances permitted.[1] Compared to previous Soviet offensives, the 1944 Crimean Offensive was very well planned and coordinated. Zakharov’s troops had spent the winter months training intensively on breach operations, and were well provided with wire cutters, sapper platoons, and plenty of support weapons. On the Perekop front, the 2nd Guards Army had been busy digging approach trenches, which narrowed the width of no man’s land from 700–1,000 yards to just 150–200 yards. From their trenches, the Germans watched apprehensively as the distance narrowed.

Gruppe Konrad had prepared a defense in depth, consisting of three lines across the Perekop Isthmus. Indeed, this was a luxury that the Germans rarely enjoyed on the Eastern Front, but here the narrowness of the isthmus allowed them to concentrate their forces. Sixt’s 50. Infanterie-Division deployed in a standard “two up, one back” style, with Grenadier-Regiments 121 and 122 still holding the eastern and western ends of the Tatar Ditch, and the town of Armyansk in the center turned into a fortified Stützpunkt. Further back, two batteries of StuG III assault guns from Major Gerhard Hoppe’s Sturmgeschütz-Brigade 279 waited in reserve. Sixt’s other regiment, Grenadier-Regiment 123, was positioned even further back, where it could either reinforce at Armyansk or act as a reserve for the defenses on the Sivash. Oberstleutnant Willy Marienfeld, the former schoolteacher who was awarded the Ritterkreuz for being one of the first German officers into Sevastopol in 1942, was commander of Grenadier-Regiment 123. Hauptmann Walter Salzmann, another veteran company commander and Ritterkreuz recipient from the 1942 campaign in the Crimea, commanded Füsilier-Bataillon 50. Sixt’s division might have been badly depleted from losses, but it still had very capable tactical leaders. The German front line consisted of a continuous row of trenches, surmounted by rows of barbed wire and antipersonnel mines – reminiscent of the last year of World War I. The second and third lines of defenses were built at Ishun, but manned only by Romanian troops. The Axis defenses on the Sivash front were broken into three distinct groups by the lake terrain: a western group (consisting of the Romanian 38th Infantry Regiment), a central group (the Romanian 23rd and 33rd Infantry Regiments, the German 336. Pionier Bataillon, and a battery of StuG III assault guns), and an eastern group (the Romanian 94th and 96th Infantry Regiments, supported by two StuG IIIs). In all these sectors, the terrain was flat and constricted by water, which favored the defense.

Tolbukhin knew that airpower would be the crucial element of this operation, and he wanted to take the Luftwaffe out of the battle as quickly as possible. Hoping for a knockout blow, Tolbukhin decided to begin his Crimean offensive with a massive air attack by 8th Air Army on April 7 against the Luftwaffe bases and German artillery positions on the Perekop. Having learned the value of a specialist close-air-support unit from Fliegerkorps VIII, the 8th Air Army was provided with General-Major Vasiliy Filin’s 7th Ground Attack Aviation Korps (7 ShAK), which possessed 108 Il-2 Sturmoviks. Barkhorn was away on leave at the start of the Soviet offensive and II./JG 52 was apparently caught off guard by the scale of the Soviet onslaught; it got only a few fighters in the air in time. Protected by dozens of Yak-7 fighters, groups of Soviet Sturmoviks came in low over the treeless Perekop Isthmus, shooting up artillery positions and anything else that was visible. Although the Germans claimed that flak inflicted heavy losses on the raiders, the VVS raids were not seriously disrupted.[2]

The next morning, April 8, 1944, the artillery of both the 2nd Guards Army and the 51st Army opened fire at 0800hrs. The Soviet artillery delivered a punishing 2½-hour-long prep fire against the Axis positions, from tube and rocket artillery, as well as heavy mortars. The 8th Army also returned again in strength, strafing and bombing the German positions. This time, II./JG 52 was able to intercept some of the Soviet bombers, although it made little difference. Soviet aircraft were everywhere over the Crimea. At 1030hrs, both Soviet armies commenced their ground attacks.

The 51st Army put its main effort against the center of the Axis perimeter around their Sivash lodgment, with the 91st Rifle Division and 32nd Guards Tank Brigade (32 GTB) attacking the Romanian 10th Infantry Division. The Romanian positions were well protected by mines and artillery, which broke up the Soviet attack. German StuG IIIs supporting the Romanian defense knocked out 27 of the 32nd Guards Tank Brigade’s 53 tanks. Surprisingly, a supporting attack made by Koshevoi’s 63rd Rifle Corps’ 267th Rifle Division and the 22nd Guards Tank Regiment against the Romanian 19th Infantry Division on the eastern end of the lodgment was more successful. Upon Tolbukhin’s specific recommendation, Koshevoi sent the 2nd Battalion/848th Rifle Battalion to wade across the shallow Lake Aygulskoe to outflank the Romanian positions. Although German sources claim that the Romanian 94th Infantry Regiment panicked and ran, Koshevoi notes that the enemy fell back slowly to a second line of defense and that only 550 prisoners were taken.[3] When Kreizer realized that he was achieving no success in the center but that the Romanian 19th Division was buckling, he shifted the depleted 32 GTB and more infantry to reinforce this sector.

At the Perekop Isthmus, Zakharov’s 2nd Guards Army used relatively novel tactics. Instead of relying upon mass, as in previous offensives, Zakharov used only General-Major Porfiri G. Chanchibadze’s 13th Guards Rifle Corps in the initial attack. Like Stalin, Chanchibadze was a Georgian and he had a similar tough outlook, which made him well suited for a breakthrough operation. While the 126th Rifle Division and the 87th Guards Rifle Division launched supporting attacks on the flanks, the heavily reinforced 3rd Guards Division (3 GRD), under General-Major Kantemir A. Tsalikov, made the main effort in the center. Rather than just futilely throwing tank brigades at the enemy front, as in the past, Zakharov kept Vasil’ev’s 19th Tank Corps in reserve. The Soviet ground assault was preceded by artillery-delivered smoke rounds to reduce the accuracy of German automatic weapons, then the infantry rose up from the trenches and assaulted the enemy frontline trenches around Armyansk.[4] Another Soviet innovation was the use of the 512th Separate Tank Battalion equipped with 16 TO-34 flamethrower tanks and the 1452nd Self-Propelled Artillery Regiment with a mix of KV-85 tanks, JSU-152 howitzers, and Su-76 assault guns to support the infantry attacks. The 3 GRD concentrated all its effort against a single German battalion, II./Grenadier-Regiment 122. This time, German mortars and automatic weapons failed to stop the Soviet infantrymen from reaching the first line of trenches, which were quickly taken in a frenetic moment of hurled grenades and submachine-gun bursts. Soviet flamethrower tanks burned out German machine-gun nests and antitank guns in the rubble of Armyansk, which was quickly overrun. Indeed, the Soviet breakthrough was going better than expected until the supporting armor ran into a very large field of antitank mines located behind the German HKL, which knocked out eight tanks. As the Soviet attack bogged down in the minefield, Panzerjägers engaged the stalled tanks, knocking out five more. German artillery was also directed onto the Soviet penetration corridor, destroying two JSU-152s with direct hits. Yet despite these losses, the 13th Guards Rifle Corps had torn a large hole in the German front line that could not be repaired, and Zakharov fed more troops into the breach. Sixt scraped some infantry platoons together to counterattack the flanks of the Soviet breakthrough and committed Hauptmann Karl-Otto Leukefeld’s I./Grenadier-Regiment 123 from reserve, but could not regain any ground. Konrad then sent the two batteries of assault guns forward and they were able to stem the Soviet advance, but lost a number of their vehicles. By the end of the first day of the ground offensive, Tolbukhin’s two armies had achieved local penetrations, but had not yet achieved a true breakthrough. Nevertheless, Gruppe Konrad had very little in the way of reserves left to influence the battle.

The next morning, both of Tolbukhin’s armies continued to pound away at Gruppe Konrad. Even after the loss of Armyansk, the 50. Infanterie-Division still had a front line of sorts across the Perekop Isthmus, but it was crumbling on the western side. Zakharov simply kept attacking with infantry and artillery until the German line finally broke around 1600hrs. With the help of massed Sturmovik attacks and a brigade of BM-31 multiple rocket launchers, Koshevoi’s reinforced 63rd Rifle Corps overwhelmed the Romanian 19th Infantry Division as well, and by late afternoon a small group of tanks were heading south.[5] Konrad alerted Jaenecke that his forces could only delay the enemy and that he should activate plan Adler as soon as possible. After several hours of hesitation, Jaenecke activated Adler at 1900hrs on April 9 – without informing the OKH – and ordered Allmendinger’s V Armeekorps to abandon its positions at Kerch and retreat immediately toward Sevastopol. Eremenko was quick to note the German preparations to retreat, which included destruction of the harbor facilities in Kerch, and immediately ordered his ground forces to advance and the 4th Air Army to attack German convoys heading westward. Tolbukhin also spotted preparations by Gruppe Konrad to withdraw to its second line of defenses at Ishun and ordered Vasil’ev’s 19th Tank Corps to cross the bridge across the Sivash and enter the battle through the 51st Army’s breakthrough zone. Although the crossing was slow, it caught the Germans completely by surprise.

While Gruppe Konrad was struggling to maintain its positions on the Perekop Isthmus, Zakharov decided to increase the pressure on the German defense by conducting an amphibious landing behind the German lines on the Black Sea. Before dawn on April 10, 512 troops from Captain Filipp D. Dibrov’s 2nd Battalion/1271st Rifle Regiment were landed on the coast. As usual, the troops landed without heavy weapons and could hold only a small beachhead. Gruppe Konrad soon counterattacked with a company of infantry and several assault guns, but the Germans could not spare sufficient troops to eliminate the beachhead. Consequently, Dibrov’s battalion was the final straw that convinced Konrad to abandon his remaining positions on the Perekop Isthmus and retreat to the second line of defense at Ishun. This retreat proved difficult, since some sub-units of Sixt’s 50. Infanterie-Division were already bypassed and a number of artillery pieces and flak guns had to be abandoned. Indeed, Gruppe Konrad put up only token resistance at Ishun for a few hours, since the breakout of the 51st Army from the Sivash lodgment threatened to cut them off. Konrad, whose headquarters was in Dzhankoy, directed his forces to pull back to the Gneisenau Line.

Hauptmann Werner Dörnbrack’s Fw-190F fighter-bombers from II./SG2 made every effort to stem the enemy breakthrough, and mercilessly attacked Soviet troops crossing into the Sivash lodgment. At 1000hrs on April 10, General-Major Nikolai V. Gaponov, commander of the 26th Artillery Division, was killed by a German air attack.[6] Vasil’ev went forward to personally reconnoiter the route that his 19th Tank Corps would have to follow, whereupon his vehicle was also strafed by German fighter-bombers and he was severely wounded. Nevertheless, his deputy took over and moved the 19th Tank Corps into forward-assembly areas on the evening of April 10. The 19th Tank Corps was heavily reinforced for the exploitation mission, with four tank brigades with a total of 221 tanks and assault guns (including 58 T-34s, 34 TO-34 flamethrower tanks, 44 Su-76s, and 63 Valentines) at the start of the operation. At dawn on April 11, the 19th Tank Corps advanced south between two lakes and pushed against weak resistance to Tomashevka. Overhead, the 8th Air Army provided excellent close air support, despite tenacious efforts by the Experten of II./JG 52. Fearful of being outflanked, the rest of the Axis units on the Sivash line fell back, along with those units defending the Chongar sector. By 1100hrs, the vanguard of the 19th Tank Corps reached Dzhankoy, capturing Konrad’s supply dumps. It was apparent that Tolbukhin’s front had achieved a successful breakthrough. All of Gruppe Konrad was now falling back toward the Gneisenau Line, although the lack of transport and incessant Soviet air attacks caused a great deal of material to be abandoned. In particular, the 50. Infanterie-Division suffered heavy losses in the retreat, since a number of its units were already cut off. Hauptmann Karl-Otto Leukefeld, commander of I./Grenadier-Regiment 123, was captured, along with some of his troops.

On the Kerch Peninsula, Allmendinger’s V Armeekorps began retreating from its positions during the night of April 9/10. His troops had to retreat over 100 miles to reach relative safety around Sevastopol, and Eremenko’s Coastal Army was hard on his heels. Eremenko had three rifle corps – the 3rd Mountain, 16th, and 11th Guards – comprising ten rifle divisions and two naval infantry brigades. His armor force was relatively small – just Colonel Aleksandr Rudakov’s 63rd Tank Brigade, three independent tank regiments, and a self-propelled artillery unit – with a total of 204 tanks and assault guns. The German retreat was relatively sloppy, with no effort at deception, and Eremenko launched a hasty attack that destroyed FEB 85 and wiped out company-size rearguards from the 73. and 98. Infanterie-Divisionen. It was clear that Axis morale in the Crimea was collapsing and that no one wanted to be left behind – all thoughts were on getting to Sevastopol and the evacuation ships. In contrast, Soviet morale was sky-high, and Eremenko’s Coastal Army had not suffered heavy losses. On the morning of April 11 Eremenko’s troops entered Kerch to occupy an empty and devastated city. Meanwhile, the bombers of the 4th Air Army viciously attacked Allmendinger’s retreating columns. Since there was only a single main road leading west, Allmendinger’s entire corps was stretched out along it – making easy targets for low-level strafing. Most of the German artillery was horse-drawn, which could not retreat very fast. Oberst Karl Faulhaber’s Grenadier-Regiment 282 formed the rearguard, reinforced with motorized flak guns and some antitank guns. Allmendinger was able to get his corps to the Parpach Narrows by April 12, but he could not remain at this position. With the 19th Tank Corps and 2nd Guards Army heading for Simferopol, it was clear that they would soon cut off Allmendinger’s retreat path, so Jaenecke ordered him to instead head for Feodosiya or Sudak, where the Kriesgmarine could evacuate him by sea.

Despite the fact that AOK 17 was in full retreat on all fronts and suffering heavy losses, Hitler would still not authorize a full-scale evacuation of the Crimea. However, he did allow Jaenecke to begin evacuating wounded, as well as non-essential support personnel, but no able-bodied combat troops. In Hitler’s mind, AOK 17 should be able to hold out in Festung Sevastopol for many months, just as Petrov’s army had in 1941–42, although he ignored the fact that the defenses were in very poor condition. Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe to slow the Soviet advance in order to buy time for AOK 17 to organize a defense of the port, but Soviet tanks had already overrun German airfields at Bagerovo and Karankut, which seriously disrupted Luftwaffe air operations at a critical moment. All German air units in the Crimea were forced to relocate to the small airfields at Sevastopol. Fritz Morzik’s transport fleet hurriedly brought in ammunition to replace the stocks lost in the Perekop and Sivash fighting, while evacuating hundreds of wounded troops. Hitler also order the Fliegerkorps I headquarters to return to the Crimea to control air operations, while directing Luftflotte 4 to provide air support from its bases in Romania. The He-111 bombers of KG 27 and Bf 110 fighters of II./ZG 1 intervened in an effort to stem the Soviet armored pursuit, but it was too little and too late.

On April 13 the Soviet pursuit reached its flood tide, as the 19th Tank Corps liberated Simferopol and Yevpatoriya. Jaenecke evacuated his headquarters from Simferopol just 12 hours before the Soviet tanks arrived. Eremenko pursued Allmendinger’s V Armeekorps with the 227th Rifle Division and 257th Independent Tank Regiment in the lead. After liberating an abandoned Feodosiya, Eremenko’s advance guard caught up with the tail end of Allmendinger’s V Armeekorps near Stary Krim. Antitank gunners from Panzerjäger-Abteilung 198 ambushed and destroyed several T-34s, but the Soviets would soon overwhelm the rearguard unless something was done. Major Walter Kopp’s Gebirgs-Jäger-Regiment Krim, relatively unengaged up to this point, was ordered to make a stand in the hilly terrain in order that the rest of the corps could escape unmolested to Sudak. Kopp’s mountain troops put up a desperate resistance that temporarily halted Eremenko’s pursuit, but most of Kopp’s regiment was sacrificed in the process. The Germans also deliberately left supply dumps intact, knowing that the Soviet penchant for looting would slow their pursuit. At Sudak, MFPs from the 1. Landungs-Flotille arrived and began transfering troops from V Armeekorps to Balaklava. However, it was not long before the VVS-ChF detected the Kriegsmarine operation and sent its bombers to disrupt the evacuation. The Luftwaffe was too preoccupied relocating to alternate airbases, so they failed to protect the evacuation and Soviet bombers had a field day, ripping apart the slow-moving MFPs with bombs and cannon. About 10,000 troops from Allmendinger’s corps were evacuated to Balaklava by sea, but the rest would have to retreat through the partisan-infested Yaila Mountains.

Surprisingly, the partisans did not seriously interfere with Allmendinger’s retreat, after a few displays of firepower. This was a chance for the Crimean partisans to make a decisive contribution to victory, by delaying the retreat of V Armeekorps, but they missed it. Instead, they waited for the Red Army’s tanks to appear, then emerged to join in the numerous photo opportunities that liberation afforded. Had the partisans inflicted delay upon Allmendinger’s retreating corps, there is a good possibility that AOK 17 would have been unable to make even a brief stand at Sevastopol and that the city would have been overrun before a naval evacuation could occur.

Instead, Lieutenant-General Hugo Schwab, commander of the Romanian Mountain Corps, deployed two battalions to help cover the retreat of V Armeekorps along the coast road and to prevent sabotage by partisans. By the morning of April 14, V Armeekorps reached Alushta and continued to move through the town as the Romanian battalions formed blocking positions. Many of the remaining horses were shot in Alushta because they were slowing the retreat, and artillerymen removed the breechblocks from their guns and threw them into the sea. The Germans promised to evacuate the two Romanian rearguard battalions with MFPs from Alushta, but in the confusion of the retreat the Romanians were abandoned. At dawn on April 15, Eremenko’s vanguard struck the Romanians in force, and, after several hours of a delaying fight, they began retreating toward the perceived safety of naval evacuation from Alushta. However, upon reaching the town, the Romanians found the Germans gone and Soviet troops blocking the coast road. The two Romanian battalions attempted to infiltrate westward along secondary roads in the mountains, but they were eventually encircled and destroyed – only three survivors made it to Sevastopol. Schwab was incensed that the Germans had allowed his rearguard battalions to be destroyed, and Axis relations began to deteriorate during the retreat. Meanwhile, the German V Armeekorps reached Yalta on April 15, and Eremenko’s pursuit had fallen behind due to the sacrifice of the Romanian battalions. Allmendinger apparently felt safe enough in Yalta to pause for a good meal and a night’s sleep in the officer’s rest home, which had served as an R & R area for Axis troops since 1942. Generalleutnant Alfred Reinhardt, the commander of the 98. Infanterie-Division, had to remonstrate with Allmendinger to keep moving, lest the Soviet pursuit catch them bunched up on the coast road.[7] Schwab was further angered that the Germans found time to rest while the Romanian rearguard was being annihilated. Finally, after five days of retreating, V Armeekorps reached the eastern outskirts of Sevastopol on April 16. However, the cost of this successful retreat was very high, with over 70 percent of Allmendinger’s artillery and heavy weapons lost, as well as thousands of troops – the survivors were in no shape to conduct defensive operations.

Meanwhile, Gruppe Konrad had fallen back precipitously from the Ishun position, but a good part of the artillery was saved thanks to the rearguard fought by two batteries of the Sturmgeschütz-Brigade 279. Elements of the Soviet 19th Tank Corps actually got ahead of the retreating Germans – just as Brigade Ziegler had done to Petrov’s retreating army in 1941. German columns were forced to form all-around defensive hedgehogs at nightfall, lest they be surprised and attacked by marauding Soviet mechanized units. One Romanian battalion that did not form a hedgehog was caught by Soviet tanks and opted to surrender. In another ambush, the Soviets managed to knock out two StuG III assault guns, but the rest of Sturmgeschütz Brigade 279 fought its way out of the enemy ambush.[8] By the time that Gruppe Konrad reached the Gneisenau Line on April 12/13, it found its retreat route blocked by Soviet forces and was obliged to fight its way through the Kessel forming around them. Gruppe Konrad succeeded in fighting through the Soviet pincers, but only by retreating as fast as possible. The Romanian 19th Infantry Division was hard pressed by the Soviet tankers, and some of its battalions were destroyed.

Contrary to what Hitler thought, Sevastopol was not prepared for another siege. A total of seven Romanian mountain-infantry battalions were manning a thin outer perimeter, which was much weaker than the Soviet positions of 1942. German naval engineers had repaired a few flak positions and built some additional bunkers, but very little had actually been done to prepare the naval base for a ground attack. The man on the spot was Oberst Paul Betz, an engineer officer, who had been designated as commander of Festung Sevastopol just two weeks prior. Betz had spent six months with the Afrikakorps in North Africa, then spent much of 1942–43 as a senior pioneer leader for AOK 17 in the Caucasus. Upon the activation of Adler, he formed a Kampfgruppe from Feldausbildungs Regiment 615 (FAR 615), six flak batteries from Pickert’s 9. Flak-Division, and the Luftwaffe’s armored flak train “Michael.” Betz moved his Kampfgruppe to block the main road to Sevastopol, just south of Bakhchisaray. When the lead elements of Gruppe Konrad arrived late on April 13, Betz was given six of the last operational StuG III assault guns to reinforce his position. At dawn on April 14 the vanguard of the 19th Tank Corps arrived at Bakhchisaray, but Kampfgruppe Betz was able to delay them for 12 critical hours, while Gruppe Konrad withdrew into Sevastopol. Then, Betz broke contact and fell back under the cover of a barrage from Gruppe Konrad’s artillery.

While the Germans retreated, Schwab deployed all three of his mountain divisions on Sevastopol’s perimeter, with the 1st and 2nd Mountain Division barring the direct routes in from the north. On the morning of April 15, the 19th Tank Corps began probing attacks against the Romanian defenses, but the mountain-infantry battalions continued to display combat effectiveness and they knocked out 23 Soviet tanks. It took Konrad 24 hours or more to get the disorganized 50. and 336. Infanterie-Divisionen into the perimeter lines, which meant that it was the Romanians who defeated the initial Soviet attacks on their own. Tolbukhin continued probing the Romanians for the next week, but not in great strength. Tolbukhin apparently believed that the Axis defenses of Sevastopol were much stronger than they really were and that a deliberate attack was necessary, so he decided to wait for his artillery to arrive before mounting a serious offensive. In fact, Jaenecke had fewer than 20,000 organized combat troops left after the retreat. In just nine days, AOK 17 had suffered 29,873 casualties, as well as losing a great deal of its equipment. Allmendinger, who had begun to display odd behavior during the retreat, decided to go on leave for a week, and left V Armeekorps under temporary command of a Romanian mountain-infantry officer – a bizarre action for a German general. The two most effective German units, the assault-gun brigades, were reduced to only a handful of operational vehicles. Luftwaffe air support dwindled after the loss of 70 aircraft, and fewer than 50 aircraft remained operational in the Crimea, including 16 Bf-109s and 21 ground-attack aircraft. Simply put, AOK 17 was no longer capable of effective resistance.

The first phase of the Axis evacuation from the Crimea began on April 12, but was ostensibly restricted to non-combat personnel. The Germans initially committed nine merchant ships and all their remaining Kriesgmarine assets in the Black Sea to the operation, while the Romanians committed a good part of their merchant marine as well. For the first time in the war, the Romanian Navy also decided to risk its best warships on the Constanta–Sevastopol run, the Italian-built destroyers Regina Maria and Regele Ferdinand. Despite frequent Soviet air and submarine attacks, the evacuation was able to operate for nearly a week without loss. Most of the convoys consisted of two or three merchant ships with robust escort and sometimes fighter cover from Bf-110s based in Romania. By the time that Gruppe Konrad and V Armeekorps reached the perimeter of Sevastopol, the Kriesgmarine and Romanian Navy – as well Morzik’s air transports – had already transferred more than 20,000 people from the Crimea to Romania, and the operation was in full swing.

Yet it was not until April 18 that the Soviets achieved any success against the Axis convoys. The VVS-ChF committed two units equipped with US-made A-20G Havoc bombers to the interdiction mission – the 36th Mine-Torpedo Aviation Regiment (MTAP) and 13th Guards Bomber Regiment (GDBAP). A two-ship Romanian convoy that was returning to Constanta was spotted by the Soviet submarine L-6 about 90 miles southwest of Sevastopol around 1100hrs. The Soviet submarine fired a torpedo at the convoy but missed, and was apparently sunk by depth charges from the counterattacking escort UJ-104. However, four A-20G Havoc bombers from the 36th MTAP found the convoy at 1237hrs and put two bombs into the freighter Alba Iulia (5,700 GRT). Ironically, the freighter was loaded mostly with Soviet POWs, and about 500 of them died in the attack. Although the vessel was abandoned, it was recovered the next day and towed back to Constanta by the destroyer Regele Ferdinand. Although Hitler had decreed that no combat troops would be evacuated from the Crimea, the Romanians ignored him and proceeded to evacuate considerable numbers of their own combat troops, including mountain infantry. On April 22 both A-20 bomber groups mounted separate attacks against another convoy, which crippled the small German tanker Ossag I (3,950 GRT), and scored a lucky hit – which did not explode – on the destroyer Regele Ferdinand. Although the escorting German R-Boats tried to shepherd the crippled Ossag I and its vital cargo of fuel into Sevastopol, they were forced to scuttle it 17 miles southwest of the port. Three Soviet A-20G bombers were lost in the attacks.

Soviet submarines made repeated attacks on the convoys but failed to achieve any hits. The two A-20G bomber-equipped regiments continued to attack daily convoys, inflicting light damage but suffering regular losses. Once Soviet forces reached the perimeter of Sevastopol, the VVS also committed Il-2 Sturmovik ground-attack aircraft to attack the convoys when they were close to the coast. On April 23, Il-2s sank an MFP that was overcrowded with 1,000 troops – but due to prompt rescue efforts by the escort two-thirds of the men were saved. On April 27 two large convoys left Sevastopol with a strong escort, but were attacked 11 miles southwest of Sevastopol by five Soviet MTBs. The Soviets managed to torpedo the escort UJ-104, but two S-Boats from the 1. Schnellbootsflottille sank one of the Soviet boats and the rest retreated. The first phase of the Axis evacuation from the Crimea lasted from April 12 to 27, 1944, and succeeded in evacuating almost 72,000 personnel, including 28,394 German and 20,779 Romanian troops. Interestingly, fewer than a fifth of the military evacuees were wounded, indicating that many unauthorized personnel were leaving. A number of German combat troops from the assault-gun units and artillery battalions that had lost much of their equipment in the retreat were evacuated as well. The Axis also evacuated all the Slovak and Caucasian volunteer troops, as well as Hiwis, POWs, and civilians. The initial Axis evacuation from the Crimea was a staggering accomplishment, and was achieved with less than 2 percent losses.

Meanwhile, Jaenecke found himself in command of an army that was badly battered and shrinking daily. He was exasperated with Hitler’s unwillingness to evacuate the entire army or to recognize that Sevastopol was a trap, not a fortress. Nevertheless, Jaenecke continued to toe the Führer’s line, and on April 24 he issued a bombastic and inaccurate proclamation to his troops:

There was little truth in Jaenecke’s proclamation, and it is doubtful that he believed it himself. The Red Army lost a total of only 171 tanks during the period from April 7 to May 12, 1944, and overall Soviet losses in the Crimea had been relatively light, while Axis losses had been extremely heavy. Nor was Hitler going to send any more substantial reinforcements to the Crimea. The idea that the Soviets were diverting critical resources to liberate the Crimea was the converse of the fact that Hitler had consigned the AOK 17 to hold an untenable position in the Crimea, while the Wehrmacht was desperately short of troops all along the Eastern Front. The Soviets were in no hurry to liberate the Crimea before spring 1944 because they did not want AOK 17 evacuated and transferred to more critical parts of the Eastern Front; Soviet officers joking referred to the Crimea as “an ideal prison camp” where the inmates fed and guarded themselves. Rather than fighting for king and country, the German and Romanian troops in the Crimea were now fighting simply due to Hitler’s unwillingness to face military logic.

Once inside Sevastopol’s perimeter, the German and Romanian troops went underground in order to avoid enemy artillery and air attacks. Large stockpiles of food had accumulated in Sevastopol, and these were freely distributed to the troops in order to maintain morale. One German artillery officer from III./AR 117 stated that “we could not complain about our creature comforts. Chocolate, candy, canned food – as much as we would like. I drank a bottle of wine every evening in my cave.” Some senior German officers still enjoyed sleeping on clean sheets in Sevastopol, despite incessant Soviet bombing and artillery fire.

Gerhard Barkhorn was in Germany for an extended period, and did not return to the Crimea until late April 1944. In the interim, II./JG 52 continued its daily combat with the VVS and inflicted painful losses, despite being badly outnumbered. On the morning of April 17, General-Major Ivan P. Vilin, deputy commander of the 214th Assault Aviation Division (Shad), personally led a low-level raid by four Il-2s against the Chersonese airstrip, but ran into a gaggle of Bf-109 fighters. Three of the Il-2s were shot down, but Vilin managed to reach Soviet lines before crashing; he was rescued but died of his wounds.[9]

On April 16 Eremenko was transferred to the Baltic front and the Coastal Army, now under General-Lieutenant Kondrat S. Mel’nik, was subordinated to Tolbukhin’s 4th Ukrainian Front. Three days later, the Maritime Army launched a strong attack against the V Armeekorps positions around Balaklava while the 51st Army attacked the center of the Axis line, but neither made progress. Soviet artillery ammunition was still in short supply in the Crimea. On April 23 the Soviets attacked again, and the 2nd Guards Army seized ground on Mekenzievy Mountain, but the tanks of the 19th Tank Corps were stopped by dense minefields. After these attacks were repulsed, Jaenecke was given enough of a respite to reorganize his forces. Gruppe Konrad (XXXXIX Gebirgs-Korps), now consisting of the 50. and 336. Infanterie-Divisionen and the Romanian 1st and 2nd Mountain Divisions, was assigned to defend the northern sector of Sevastopol, including the area around Mekenzievy Mountain. Allmendinger’s V Armeekorps, consisting of the 73., 98., and 111. Infanterie-Divisionen and Romanian 3rd Mountain Division, were assigned to defend the southeast approaches. Only small detachments of the Romanian infantry and cavalry divisions were still left, and they were rolled into the three mountain divisions. All five of the German divisions were reduced to about 30 percent of their authorized strength in personnel and equipment and both corps had only limited artillery left. Hitler made a token gesture of trying to replenish AOK 17’s losses in men and equipment by sending 1,300 replacements, 15 antitank guns, and four howitzers, but this was a drop in the ocean.[10]

Despite his bombastic proclamation, Jaenecke knew that AOK 17 could not withstand a determined enemy assault, so he demanded to know when more reinforcements would arrive in the Crimea and requested “freedom of action” in the event that Tolbukhin launched an all-out offensive. This was too much for Hitler, and he ordered that Jaenecke personally report to him at Berchtesgaden on April 29. Once in Hitler’s presence, Jaenecke argued that the rest of AOK 17 had to be withdrawn immediately or face destruction. Hitler was infuriated that a general would talk to him in this manner and began screaming at him. Jaenecke simply turned and left the room, slamming the door. Striding past Hitler’s adjutant, Jaenecke said, “Tell the Führer I have left” and drove off to the airfield.[11] Jaenecke did not get far. Hitler had his plane stopped in Romania and ordered the Generaloberst placed under arrest. Hitler ordered that Generaloberst Heinz Guderian conduct a formal inquiry into Jaenecke’s behavior and hold a formal court martial; Guderian obeyed the letter of the order, but in a deliberately slow manner. Meanwhile, General der Infanterie Karl Allmendinger was ordered to take command of AOK 17. Apparently believing that AOK 17 needed leaders made of firmer stuff, Hitler ordered that Generalleutnant Friedrich-Wilhelm Müller would fly from Crete to take over V Armeekorps. Müller had distinguished himself in the Crimea as a regimental commander in the 72. Infanterie-Division in 1942, but subsequently had earned a reputation as “the Butcher of Crete,” which was the kind of man Hitler wanted in a tight spot. Müller did not arrive in the Crimea until May 4.

Tolbukhin steadily increased the pressure on Festung Sevastopol. On May 1, a major attack was launched by the 2nd Guards Army against the German defenses on the south side of the Bel’bek River. During the fighting, Generalleutnant Friedrich Sixt, commander of the 50. Infanterie-Division, was wounded by artillery fire while inspecting forward defenses on the Ölberg. Sixt was evacuated and Oberst Paul Betz took over the division. Mel’nik’s Coastal Army also succeeded in liberating Balaklava. By this point, AOK 17 had only 64,000 troops left in the Crimea, against over 400,000 Soviet troops. On May 5, Tolbukhin commenced his final offensive at 0930hrs with a massive two-hour barrage by 400 artillery pieces concentrated against the XXXXIX Gebirgs-Korps front in the north. Generalmajor Wolf Hagemann’s 336. Infanterie-Division managed to repulse attacks by five Soviet rifle divisions for the next two days, but Hagemann was badly wounded and was flown out.

While the attacks of the 51st Army focused German attention toward the center of their perimeter around Sevastopol, Mel’nik moved up General-Major Konstantin I. Provalov’s 16th Rifle Corps and a large quantity of artillery into assault positions west of Balaklava. Provalov was an experienced infantry commander who had been awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union for leading a rifle regiment during the battle of Lake Khasan in 1938. On the morning of May 7, Provalov’s 16th Rifle Corps attacked V Armeekorps after a heavy-artillery bombardment and quickly achieved a penetration in the center of the sector held by Generalleutnant Hermann Böhme’s 73. Infanterie-Division. II./Grenadier-Regiment 170 was pummeled by volleys of rocket artillery then overrun by a massive assault spearheaded by the 83rd Naval Infantry Brigade. By evening, Provalov’s troops had penetrated 1,500 yards into the German defense and reached their artillery positions near the village of Karan. V Armeekorps was so badly hurt by this attack that there was no option but to begin withdrawing to its second line of defense. On the same day, Zakharov’s 2nd Guards Army reached the edge of Sevastopol’s Severnaya Bay while Kreizer’s 51st Army pushed back the northern part of the V Armeekorps’ front line and reached the foot of Sapun Mountain with two rifle corps.

Kreizer attacked the German positions around the Sapun Heights with his 63rd Rifle Corps and 1st Guards and 11th Guards Rifle Corps, supported by a strong artillery concentration and considerable close air support. Starting at 0900hrs on May 7, Soviet artillery blasted the top of the heights – held mostly by the 98. and 111. Infanterie-Divisionen – with tube and rocket artillery. At 1030hrs, the Soviet infantry attacked but encountered very strong automatic-weapons and mortar fire from the still-intact German positions. One Soviet rifle-platoon leader, Lieutenant Mikhail Y. Dzigunsky from the 1372nd Rifle Regiment, succeeded in knocking out three German positions, but was killed attempting to knock out a stone machine-gun bunker; he was the first of six men to earn a Hero of the Soviet Union on the Sapun Heights. General-Major Peter K. Koshevoi’s 63rd Rifle Corps attacked all day long, fighting its way through German barbed wire and trenches. By 1800hrs his troops were within 100–200 yards of the crest of the Sapun Heights, but his rifle and artillery units were almost out of ammunition. This was one of those moments where the enemy – not knowing that the attack had actually exhausted itself – made the mistake of pulling back to regroup. Koshevoi’s troops surged forward and overran some of the German positions atop the ridge, and even captured the commander of Grenadier-Regiment 117. Nevertheless, the Soviet foothold was tenuous and Kreizer quickly brought up the 10th Rifle Corps to solidify the Soviet hold on the Sapun Heights. Tolbukhin also ordered the 19th Tank Corps deployed to support the Coastal Army’s attack on May 8.[12]

During the night of May 7/8, Allmendinger scraped together Kampfgruppe Marienfeld and Kampfgruppe Faulhaber, supported by the last assault guns, to counterattack the flanks of the Soviet forces atop the Sapun Heights. The German counterattack began around 1000hrs and reached its climax around 1200hrs. Despite regaining some ground, the German counterattack was smothered under a barrage of Soviet artillery and Sturmovik attacks. Once it was clear that the counterattack had failed and that his last reserves were exhausted, Allmendinger reported to Generaloberst Ferdinand Schörner, the commander of Heeresgruppe Südukraine, that Sevastopol could no longer be held. The report was forwarded to the OKH, and at 2300hrs on May 8, Hitler grudgingly authorized the evacuation of AOK 17. One hour later, the Bradul 1 convoy left Sevastopol with 2,887 troops aboard, followed soon thereafter by the Bradul 2 convoy. Soviet artillery bombarded the harbor area, sinking the small German tanker Prodromos and several light craft. Two German battalions from the 50. Infanterie-Division had been isolated by Zakharov’s 2nd Guards Army north of Severnaya Bay, but managed to cross the bay in small boats during the night of May 8/9. Oberst Paul Betz, commander of the 50. Infanterie-Division, personally led a counterattack to link up with these isolated units, which enabled them to escape southward.

On the morning of May 9, Mel’nik’s Coastal Army continued its offensive with the added impetus of the 19th Tank Corps. Up to this point, Soviet armor had played little part in the battle, but now the tanks crashed through the retreating 73. Infanterie-Division and broke up the German front line. Provalov’s 16th Rifle Corps and the tankers pursued these broken fragments back to the Chersonese Peninsula. In anticipation of a last stand, Jaenecke had ensured that the Chersonese Peninsula was well stocked with supplies of food, water, and ammunition. Sevastopol’s last airfield was located here, and Axis ships could still load personnel from several beaches. With the defensive line collapsing, all elements of AOK 17 began retreating to the Chersonese Peninsula in the hope of evacuation. By 1600hrs the last German troops abandoned the ruins of Sevastopol, and Soviet troops from the 51st Army quickly moved in and reached the inner city. During the retreat, Major Willy Marienfeld, commander of Grenadier-Regiment 123, was badly wounded by a shell splinter and was flown out, but he later died of his wounds in Romania. Later that night, Oberst Paul Betz was also killed trying to make his way to the Chersonese Peninsula.

Once it was clear that Sevastopol had been liberated, Tolbukhin realized that he could no longer employ all three armies against the narrowing enemy front, and he gave Mel’nik’s Coastal Army the mission of eliminating the remnants of AOK 17 in the Chersonese Peninsula. The Axis troops retreated to a final line of defense near the old Coastal Battery No. 35, where the peninsula’s neck was only 875 yards wide. Provalov’s 16th Rifle Corps could employ only the 383rd Rifle Division and 32nd Guards Rifle Division, supported by a tank brigade, against this narrow sector. Nevertheless, Tolbukhin’s artillery could strike everywhere on the Chersonese Peninsula, including the airfield. Once Soviet artillery began impacting on the airfield, the Luftwaffe decided to withdraw its last fighters from JG 52 late on May 9, thereby depriving AOK 17 of air cover. Morzik’s transports flew their last missions from Sevastopol on the night of May 9/10, and succeeded in flying out 1,000 wounded from the Chersonese.[13] After that, the skies over the Chersonese belonged to the VVS.

Despite Hitler’s late endorsement of the evacuation option, the Kriegsmarine and Royal Romanian Navy had prepared as well as they could for this operation. Vizeadmiral Helmuth Brinkmann – who had commanded the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen during the sortie of the Bismarck in 1941 – was Admiral Schwarzes Meer, commander of all Kriegsmarine forces in the Black Sea. Brinkmann, whose headquarters had moved from Simferopol to Constanta in February 1944, coordinated with the Romanian Navy to ensure that there was more than enough merchant shipping available to evacuate 60,000 troops from the Crimea within a few days. He also put Konteradmiral Otto Schulz, nominally in charge of the Kriegsmarine coastal defenses in the Crimea, in charge of coordinating between AOK 17 and the naval forces involved in the evacuation operation. On the morning of May 9 the first evacuation convoys left from Constanta, with the Patria convoy sailing, and four more later in the day, involving 11 merchant ships and ten MFPs. It normally took a convoy 24 hours to cross the 250 miles from Constanta to Sevastopol, at an average speed of 9 knots. The Patria convoy, escorted by two Romanian destroyers, arrived off the Chersoneses Peninsula around 0200hrs on May 10 and began loading troops onto the merchantmen Teja and Totila (2,760 GRT). Small craft were used to ferry troops from the beaches out to the waiting merchantmen, while the warships kept alert for aerial, surface, and sub-surface threats. Soviet air attacks began at dawn, but did not score any hits, and the convoy set sail for Constanta at 0830hrs. Three German R-Boats escorted the Teja and Totila, which were loaded with 5,000 German and 4,000 Romanian troops. However, at 0930hrs 21 Il-2 Sturmoviks from the 8th Guards Ground Attack Regiment (GshAP) attacked and scored three hits with 100kg bombs on the Totila, which sank in a matter of minutes. The Teja and her escorts continued on, but five hours later 11 A-20G bombers from 13 GDBAP attacked and sank her. The R-Boats managed to rescue about 400 troops, but over 8,000 Axis troops were lost on the Teja and Totila.

The situation only grew worse for the other convoys approaching the Chersonese Peninsula on the night of May 10/11. Once the sun came up the VVS-ChF appeared in force, and Il-2s attacked and sank the Romanian minelayer Romania (3,152 GRT) and the freighter Danubius (1,489 GRT), while the German freighter Helga ran aground and was later destroyed. Lieutenant Commander Titus Samson’s destroyer Regele Ferdinand attempted to protect the freighters with its 40mm Bofors antiaircraft guns, but it was itself targeted by numerous air attacks. One bomb struck the hull and killed 11 crewmembers, but did not explode. A Soviet 152mm howitzer battery also engaged the Regele Ferdinand, and Samson returned fire with his 120mm guns. By 1030hrs Samson was forced to quit the area due to damage and running low on antiaircraft ammunition – Axis ships could no longer survive in daylight hours in Crimean waters. The Romanians dispatched more merchant ships from Constanta and the evacuation continued on the night of May 11/12. Soviet artillery fired illumination rounds to light up the beach areas, which were then pounded with high explosives. The Romanian destroyer Regina Maria escorted the convoys back from the Chersonese on the morning of May 12, but the merchantman Durostor was attacked by 12 Pe-2 bombers and sunk. German and Romanian soldiers on the decks of the merchantmen were exposed to strafing, bombing, and artillery fire, which caused numerous casualties.

The German divisions held the narrow neck of the Chersonese Peninsula as long as they could, but were under constant attack. Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 191 still had eight operational StuG III assault guns that made it to the Chersonese, but they were the target of constant air and artillery attacks. Meanwhile, the Soviets were already rejoicing in the liberation of Sevastopol and Marshal Aleksandr Vasilevsky, who had coordinated operations between Tolbukhin’s 4th Ukrainian Front and the Coastal Army, was eager to tour the shattered city. However, Sevastopol was still littered with unexploded ordnance, and as Vasilevsky’s staff car moved down the road across Mekenzievy Mountain on May 10 he had the ill luck of driving over a German mine.[14] Marshal Vasilvesky was wounded and evacuated to Moscow for military treatment – not an auspicious start to the liberation. However, the German troops isolated on the Chersonese Peninsula were unaware that they had succeeded in wounding a Soviet marshal and were instead focused on their fight to survive until they could be evacuated.

The Axis defense began to crumble late on May 11, as Tolbukhin’s forces launched attack after attack. Some Romanian mountain troops were still in the fight, but the bulk of the 3rd Mountain Division had already been evacuated. By 2300hrs, all units were ordered to retreat to pre-designated embarkation points. However, this signal resulted in a disorderly race for the boats, and order and discipline began to collapse even in German units. The Soviet 19th Tank Corps was hard on the heels of the retreating Axis units, followed by the 383rd Rifle Division and 32nd Guards Rifle Division. Generalmajor Alfred Reinhardt, leading the remnants of his 98. Infanterie-Division, managed to load all his troops in an ordered manner by 0300hrs on May 12 and get away, but other units were less fortunate. In any evacuation operation, troops fear being forgotten or left behind. At this critical moment, Konteradmiral Schulz, who was operating from an S-Boat offshore, suffered communications problems that interfered with his ability to direct shipping to the right embarkation point at the right time. Insufficient transports arrived to pick up either the 50. or 336. Infanterie-Divisionen, and none at all for the 111. Infanterie-Division. Only about 2,800 troops from the 50. Infanterie-Division, including Hauptmann Walter Salzmann, commander of Füsilier-Bataillon 50, managed to escape. A 2,756-man Romanian detachment, with five mountain battalions from the 1st and 2nd Mountain Divisions, was also left behind. Some transports returned empty to Constanta, having failed to find the correct embarkation beaches. The remaining troops were left with their backs to the sea, often in tactically indefensible positions. Some officers committed suicide rather than face capture, while others tried to disguise themselves as enlisted men. On the morning of May 12 the Soviets rushed into the Chersonese Peninsula with tanks and infantry, crushing resistance nests. By 0945hrs, a large concentration of Axis troops was surrounded at the airstrip by the 19th Tank Corps. Flushed with victory, many Soviet troops shot surrendering German troops out of hand. Thousands of Germans and Romanian troops were captured, but the exact numbers are uncertain.

Generalmajor Erich Grüner, who had distinguished himself as a regimental commander during the second battle of Kharkov in May 1942, led the final stand of the abandoned 111. Infanterie-Division. When Soviet T-34s began overrunning his positions at the water’s edge, he stood up and died on his feet, with his Ritterkreuz at his throat. Many of the rest of his troops surrendered. A group from the 50. Infanterie-Division managed to hold out for hours, until they were overwhelmed by Soviet OT-34 flamethrower tanks and heavy artillery. Generalleutnant Hermann Böhme’s 73. Infanterie-Division managed to hold its positions throughout the day, expecting that more rescue ships would appear at nightfall. Lieutenant Commander Anton Foca’s Amiral Murgescu, a modern 812-ton minelayer armed with 40mm and 20mm antiaircraft guns, was the last Romanian warship to arrive off the Chersonese, and it was able to take off about 1,000 troops, including General der Artillerie Walter Hartmann, the commander of the XXXXIX Gebirgs-Korps. Several other ships loitered in the waters off the Chersonese in the early morning hours of May 13, dodging artillery and air attacks, and collecting troops who paddled out to them in life rafts or swam. At 0330hrs, Konteradmiral Otto Schulz, aboard an S-Boat from the 1. Schnellbootsflottille, decided to terminate further rescue efforts and head out to sea before the sun rose. Generalleutnant Böhme remained in his command post to the end, until it was overrun by Soviet troops on the morning of May 13. He was captured, but would eventually return to Germany many years later.

Between May 10 and May 13 the Kriegsmarine and Royal Romanian Navy evacuated another 47,825 personnel from the Crimea, including 28,992 German and 15,078 Romanians. Approximately 5,000 German and 3,000 Romanian personnel were lost at sea during the evacuation. Although the Romanians complained that the Germans favored their own troops in the evacuation, all three of the Romanian mountain divisions survived the debacle in the Crimea in better shape than any of the German divisions did. Of the five German division commanders, two were killed, one was wounded, and one was captured. Although detachments from each had been evacuated, these units had lost virtually all their vehicles and artillery and would require complete rebuilding. Although AOK 17 had not been destroyed as completely as AOK 6 was at Stalingrad, it was reduced to little more than a collection of poorly armed refugees. Thousands of trained troops were sacrificed just to hold the strategically useless Crimea for a few more months.

Soviet losses in the Crimea between April and May 1944 totaled 84,819, including 17,754 dead or missing.[15] As Soviet victories went, the liberation of the Crimea was a relatively cheap triumph, which inflicted heavier losses on the enemy. With the Crimea liberated, the 4th Ukrainian Front was disbanded and Tolbukhin was sent to spearhead the invasion of Romania.

Four days after the evacuation ended, Vizeadmiral Brinkmann and Konteradmiral Schulz were both awarded the Ritterkreuz for their role in organizing the evacuation. Wehrmacht leaders, particularly Allmendinger, were acrimonious about these awards and claimed that the Kriegsmarine had fouled up the evacuation because of the abandonment of some units. These protests need to be taken with a grain of salt, since Allmendinger’s own performance in the Crimea had been far from stellar, and the senior leaders of AOK 17 had committed their own fair share of mistakes in the final week of the fighting around Sevastopol. Faced with defeat, Wehrmacht leaders were quick to point to the Kriegsmarine and the Romanians as scapegoats. German–Romanian relations deteriorated rapidly after the final campaign in the Crimea, and Romania was moving toward making an accommodation with Stalin before the Red Army crossed its borders.

Altogether, the fighting in the Crimea between 1941 and 1944 cost the Red Army something like 700,000 casualties. Five Soviet armies and numerous reputations were demolished in the Crimea. Axis losses in the Crimea were over 250,000, including at least 60,000 German and 15,000 Romanian dead or missing. Nevertheless, these horrendous military casualties have scant mention in the history of World War II. During their occupation of the Crimea, the Germans constructed elaborate cemeteries in Feodosiya, Yalta, and other locations for their soldiers killed in the 1941–42 campaign, but these were all eradicated after the Soviet liberation in 1944. Local Russians refused to bury German war dead in the Crimea, and either sent them back to Germany or dumped them in the Black Sea. Decades later, a warehouse near Sevastopol was found with the boxed remains of about 10,000 German military casualties. Finally, as German–Russian economic ties increased after the fall of the Soviet Union, a new German military cemetery was established near Sevastopol in 1998, where the remains of 11,000 Germans were re-interred.

Just two days after the liberation of Sevastopol, Stalin signed a top secret document, State Defense Committee (GKO) Decree No. 5859ss, which authorized a massive operation to punish the Crimea Tatars. The document stated that:

Stalin put Lavrentiy Beria, the sadistic head of the NKVD, in charge of the operation against the Crimea Tatars. Beria assembled a force of 32,000 NKVD troops in the rear of Tolbukhin’s 4th Ukrainian Front and waited for German resistance in the Crimea to be extinguished. On May 18, Beria’s NKVD troops moved to major Crimean Tatar settlements and began rounding up all the inhabitants at gunpoint. Most were given just a few minutes to gather a few items and then forced on to waiting trucks. In just three days, Beria’s troops rounded up more than 150,000 Crimean Tatars, who were assembled at the rail stations at Simferopol and Dzhankoy for rail transport to Uzbekistan. Simultaneously, all ethnic Crimean Tatar troops serving in either the Red Army or Crimean partisan brigades were separated and dispatched to forced-labor camps in the Soviet Gulag system. Some remote Tatar settlements were not rounded up until later in the month, and some people hid in the mountains, but by the end of May 1944 the NKVD reported rounding up 183,155 Crimean Tatars. Another 10,000 were found in subsequent operations. Stalin intended to “Russify” the Crimea and remove the Tatar presence once and for all, and their collaboration with the Germans became the pretext for massive ethnic cleansing. The Tatars referred to their forced deportation as the Sürgün (exile).[16]

A few Tatars escaped the Soviet dragnet. The Tatar leader Edige Kirimal was in Germany when the Crimea was liberated by the Red Army, and had the good fortune to fall into the hands of the Western Allies in 1945. A few others made their way to Turkey or the Near East. Yet the bulk of the Crimean Tatar population was removed from the Crimea, and their deportation was conducted under very harsh conditions, little different from German round-ups of targeted groups. At least 6,400 Crimean Tatars perished en route to the labor camps in Uzbekistan, and 30,000 died within the first year. Within 30 months, more than half of those deported – 109,000 Crimean Tatars – were dead from illness, starvation, and mistreatment in NKVD-run camps.

However, Beria’s ethnic-cleansing operations in the Crimea continued after the main operation against the Crimean Tatars. In June 1944 he received authorization from Stalin to round up Armenians, Bulgars, Greeks, and other non-Russian minorities; they too were put on trains and sent eastward. In mid-July, Beria was chagrined to learn that his NKVD troops had neglected to search the Arabat Spit, and that a number of Crimean Tatars were still there. Apparently, he had already reported to Stalin that all of the Crimean Tatars had been removed, and the discovery of these “un-persons” was an embarrassment. He hastily sent troops to round up the villagers on the Arabat Spit, but instead of loading them onto trains, they were loaded onto barges left over from the amphibious landings of 1943. Around July 20, 1944, the barges were towed out into the Sea of Azov and scuttled, drowning hundreds of civilians. Details of this event are still obscure. The Soviet ethnic-cleansing operations in the Crimea were a heinous crime that bore a striking similarity with the German “special actions” in the Crimea. Oddly, both Jews and Muslims in the Crimea faced persecution and extermination by the opposing sides, but as is well known, it is the victors who write history, so the German crimes in the Crimea have been exposed to the world, while Soviet crimes both before and after World War II have been hidden.

As if to reinforce their point that they were the victims, the Soviet regime decided to hold war-crimes trials in Sevastopol in November 1947. Generaloberst Erwin G. Jaenecke, the former commander of AOK 17, was the most senior German officer indicted by the Soviet tribunal, but it is interesting that the specific charges against him related to his use of the “Taifun” weapon system near Kerch in November 1943.[17] The Soviets claimed that “Taifun” was a chemical weapon, and Jaenecke was charged with authorizing its use. He was convicted by the Soviet tribunal and spent eight years in a Soviet work camp until released in 1955. The Soviets also tried and convicted a number of other Germans for offenses committed in the Crimea, but usually for reprisals against Soviet POWs or partisans, not for the ethnic-cleansing operations of 1941–42. While Stalin was alive, and even for many years afterwards, Soviet historians were reticent to raise the subject of the Holocaust, since it was too close a subject to other Soviet-era crimes.