{
 "slug": "korsun-cherkassy",
 "title": "Battle of the Korsun–Cherkassy Pocket",
 "status": "draft",
 "era": "WWII and later",
 "date_text": "24 January – 16 February 1944",
 "start": "1944-01-24",
 "end": "1944-02-16",
 "war": "World War II",
 "cdb90_war": "WORLD WAR II (EASTERN FRONT)",
 "place": {
  "name": "Korsun-Shevchenkivskyi and Cherkassy, Dnieper bend, Ukraine",
  "lat": 49.42,
  "lon": 31.27,
  "wikidata": "Q509417"
 },
 "lede": "In January 1944 two Soviet fronts closed a ring round two German corps on the Dnieper bend. After failed relief attempts, the survivors broke out on the night of 16–17 February through snow, mud and fire, leaving their heavy equipment behind.",
 "result": "Soviet victory (most of the encircled force escaped, without its heavy equipment)",
 "result_cdb90": "attacker win",
 "belligerents": [
  {
   "role": "attacker",
   "name": "Soviet 1st Ukrainian Front and 2nd Ukrainian Front",
   "commanders": [
    "General Nikolai Vatutin (1st Ukrainian Front)",
    "General Ivan Konev (2nd Ukrainian Front)",
    "Marshal Georgy Zhukov (coordinating)"
   ],
   "strength": {
    "value": 336700,
    "low": 336700,
    "high": 336700,
    "source": "s1"
   },
   "casualties": {
    "value": 80188,
    "low": 80188,
    "high": 80188,
    "source": "s1"
   }
  },
  {
   "role": "defender",
   "name": "German XI and XLII Corps (the pocket), with III and XLVII Panzer Corps attempting relief",
   "commanders": [
    "General Wilhelm Stemmermann (XI Corps, pocket commander)",
    "Field Marshal Erich von Manstein (Army Group South)",
    "General Hermann Breith (III Panzer Corps)",
    "General Otto Wöhler (8th Army)"
   ],
   "strength": {
    "value": null,
    "low": null,
    "high": null,
    "source": "s1"
   },
   "casualties": {
    "value": 31000,
    "low": 30000,
    "high": 100000,
    "source": "s1"
   }
  }
 ],
 "sections": {
  "background": "By the end of 1943 the Red Army had crossed the Dnieper in force, and the Germans had fallen back towards a Panther–Wotan line that had barely been built. Two German corps, XI and XLII, together with Corps Detachment B, held a salient about 100 kilometres deep that reached west of Cherkassy towards Kanev, with Korsun near its centre. Hitler refused to allow a withdrawal, despite warnings from Manstein and others, and the salient was an obvious target.\n\nGeorgy Zhukov proposed a double encirclement modelled on Stalingrad: an inner ring to destroy the pocket and an outer ring to block any relief. Ivan Konev held a conference at Boltushki on 15 January, and Soviet deception measures were claimed to have been successful, although the German 8th Army's war diary shows concern about the threat. The two fronts that would carry it out were Nikolai Vatutin's 1st Ukrainian Front to the west and Konev's 2nd Ukrainian Front to the east.\n\nThe operation is known in Soviet writing as the Korsun–Shevchenkovsky operation, and part of the Dnieper–Carpathian offensive. CDB90 codes it as KORSUN-SCHEVCHENKOVSKIY (501), 24 January to 18 February, in the UKRANIAN CAMPAIGN. The page follows that engagement, with the relief attempts and the breakout, and takes its title from the German name for the pocket.",
  "forces": "The pocket held about 56,000 to 60,000 men of six divisions at about 55 per cent of establishment, including the 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking, which had around 11,400 men and 30 operational Panzer III, Panzer IV and assault guns, as well as the SS Wallonien assault brigade. Estimates in the literature range up to 100,000 or more. Wilhelm Stemmermann commanded XI Corps and the whole force. Outside, Manstein assembled III Panzer Corps with 201 tanks and XLVII Panzer Corps with 58, about 80,000 men in all.\n\nThe Soviet side had some 336,700 men in the two fronts, with 524 tanks at the start and about 400 more as reinforcements, 1,054 aircraft and some 5,300 guns and mortars. The inner ring was formed by the 27th, 52nd and 4th Guards Armies, and the 5th Guards Tank Army of Konev's front and the 6th Tank Army of Vatutin's did the encircling. Douglas Nash has argued against the Stalingrad comparison, and Zetterling and Frankson call the Soviet General Staff study of the battle completely unreliable.",
  "course": "**Encirclement, 24–28 January.** Konev's 2nd Ukrainian Front attacked from the south-east on 24 January, and its 5th Guards Tank Army exploited the breakthrough. The 1st Ukrainian Front's newly formed 6th Tank Army took longer than expected but reached Lysyanka and linked up with the 20th Tank Corps near Zvenyhorodka by 28 January, closing the outer ring, as Zhukov's Stalingrad-style plan had intended. An inner ring of the 27th, 52nd and 4th Guards Armies completed the pocket. The Luftwaffe flew over 800 transport aircraft and about 480 bombers on 28 January, losing 32 transports, 13 bombers and five fighters; the airlift never met more than half the daily need.\n\n**Relief attempts, early to mid February.** Manstein assembled III and XLVII Panzer Corps, but Hitler ordered a counter-encirclement instead of a straight relief. The XLVII Panzer Corps' attack stalled, with its 11th Panzer Division having only 27 tanks and 34 assault guns operational. III Panzer Corps wasted about a week before being ordered to relieve the pocket directly, and regrouping took three days. Soviet attacks on 5–6 and 7–10 February were halted by Wiking and the 72nd Infantry Division, but the pocket shrank to about six by seven miles. On 11 February the 16th and 17th Panzer Divisions advanced towards the Gniloy Tikich, slowed by mud and their wheeled vehicles. The Korsun airfield was abandoned on 12 February, after which supplies were dropped by parachute.\n\n**Surrender demands, 10–11 February.** Zhukov sent envoys with demands that the pocket surrender, and they were refused. Members of the National Committee for a Free Germany and the League of German Officers, including Seydlitz-Kurzbach, visited the front on 10 February; Hitler authorised Sippenhaft, the punishment of kin, against Seydlitz's family.\n\n**The breakout, 16–17 February.** Stemmermann shifted the line of escape south, towards Novo-Buda, Komarovka, Khilki and Shanderovka, the last of which became known as Hell's Gate. Manstein authorised the breakout without waiting for Hitler, and about 1,450 non-ambulatory wounded were left at Shanderovka. At dusk three assault columns formed, with the Lieb detachment leading. Soviet T-34s held Hill 239, forcing the columns to veer south towards the Gniloy Tikich, and Soviet tanks and Cossack cavalry attacked them. Hundreds drowned crossing the river. III Panzer Corps reached Lysyanka, where many survivors got through. Stemmermann is said to have stayed with a rearguard of about 6,500 men, and was killed when his command car was hit by an anti-tank gun.",
  "aftermath": "Most of the trapped men got out, but they left nearly all their heavy equipment behind. The six divisions needed rest and almost complete re-equipment, and wounded were taken to hospitals in Poland through collection points near Uman. The figures are contested. German records show 40,423 escapees, 27,703 Germans and 1,063 auxiliaries breaking out unscathed, and Zetterling and Frankson put the dead or wounded at almost a third. Soviet accounts give about 55,000 German dead and 18,000 prisoners, but Konev's claim of 130,000 casualties was rejected by German official history. David Glantz found the Soviet account far more credible than German claims of 30,000 escapees. Soviet losses, according to Krivosheev, were 80,188 including 24,286 killed or missing, and 728 tanks.\n\nThe battle drew German armoured reserves to Korsun, which helped Soviet offensives elsewhere, including the Battle of Rovno and advances towards Lutsk and Kryvyi Rih. Vatutin was shot by UPA insurgents on 29 February and died on 15 April, and Konev was made a Marshal of the Soviet Union. Zhukov complained that official honours announced on 18 February went to the 2nd Ukrainian Front and not the 1st, calling it an unforgivable error.\n\nWhether it was a 'Stalingrad on the Dnieper', as the Soviet historian Sergey Smirnov called it, is argued over. Nash disputes it, and the German view, as the commander Vormann recalled, was that his men were astonished to hear that they had won a great victory.",
  "wargaming": "Korsun suits an operational-level game at division and brigade scale, with a map of about five kilometres to the hex covering the salient from Kanev to Zvenyhorodka, and one turn per day for the three weeks. It is a pocket battle with three distinct phases, each of which plays differently: a fast Soviet encirclement, a relief race through mud, and the breakout.\n\nThe Soviet player's problems are the speed of the tank armies and the strength of the inner ring against a pocket that shrinks to six by seven miles. The German player must decide whether to hold, to break out early, or to wait for relief that depends on the mud, the fuel and whether III Panzer Corps is released in time. A supply rule for the air bridge (about half the need, ending with the loss of the Korsun airfield on 12 February) and a mud rule that cuts wheeled movement in half fit the sources well.\n\nThe breakout itself is a separate small scenario, at battalion level, covering the night of 16–17 February: three columns, Hill 239, the Gniloy Tikich river and Lysyanka. A what-if where Hitler allows the corps to withdraw before the ring closes, or where III Panzer Corps is committed a week earlier, is an obvious variant."
 },
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   "file": "File:OEF-map-6.jpg",
   "kind": "map",
   "caption": "Double envelopment west of Cherkassy: the Soviet encirclement, January 1944.",
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   "caption": "The breakout to Lysyanka, 16–17 February 1944.",
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  },
  {
   "file": "File:Generalleutnant Wilhelm Stemmermann.jpg",
   "kind": "portrait",
   "caption": "General Wilhelm Stemmermann, commander of the encircled force, in November 1941.",
   "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/Generalleutnant_Wilhelm_Stemmermann.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original",
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   "artist": "Armee Oberkommando 2",
   "credit": "Dokument: Armee Oberkommando 2, Ia, Anlage zum Kriegstagebuch Russland, Lichtbilder, 21. August 1941 - 12. April 1942",
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  },
  {
   "file": "File:Nikolai Vatutin 3.jpg",
   "kind": "portrait",
   "caption": "General Nikolai Vatutin, commander of the 1st Ukrainian Front.",
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  {
   "file": "File:Ivan Konev 1945.jpg",
   "kind": "portrait",
   "caption": "Ivan Konev, commander of the 2nd Ukrainian Front, in 1945.",
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   "artist": "Unknown author Unknown author",
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  },
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   "file": "File:Bundesarchiv Bild 141-1280, Russland, Kessel Tscherkassy.jpg",
   "kind": "photo",
   "caption": "A Junkers Ju 52 landed at Korsun airfield in the Cherkassy pocket, January 1944, with Stukas overhead.",
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 "sources": [
  {
   "id": "s1",
   "title": "Battle of the Korsun–Cherkassy Pocket (English Wikipedia)",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Korsun%E2%80%93Cherkassy_Pocket",
   "kind": "web"
  },
  {
   "id": "s2",
   "title": "Niklas Zetterling and Anders Frankson, The Korsun Pocket (Casemate, 2008), seen only as cited in s1 and via the HistoryNet article",
   "url": null,
   "kind": "book"
  },
  {
   "id": "s3",
   "title": "Douglas E. Nash, Hell's Gate: The Battle of the Cherkassy Pocket, January–February 1944 (RZM Publishing, 2002), seen only as cited in s1",
   "url": null,
   "kind": "book"
  },
  {
   "id": "s4",
   "title": "Ludwig H. Dyck, 'Battle of Korsun–Cherkassy: Breaking Out of Hell', Warfare History Network",
   "url": "https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/battle-of-korsun-cherkassy-breaking-out-of-hell/",
   "kind": "article"
  },
  {
   "id": "s5",
   "title": "Karl-Heinz Frieser et al., Die Ostfront 1943/44, Vol. VIII (Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2007), seen only as cited in s1",
   "url": null,
   "kind": "book"
  },
  {
   "id": "s6",
   "title": "G. F. Krivosheev, Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century (Greenhill, 1997), p. 109, seen only as cited in s1",
   "url": null,
   "kind": "book"
  }
 ],
 "cdb90": [
  501
 ],
 "order": 208,
 "url": "https://battles.georgewyrd.com/korsun-cherkassy/",
 "oob": [],
 "oob_lwtv": [],
 "scenarios": [],
 "orbat": null,
 "orbat_lwtv": null,
 "reading": {
  "prose": [],
  "history": [],
  "fiction": [],
  "poetry": []
 },
 "reading_lwtv": {
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  "poetry": []
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 "photos": [],
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}