Hitler's 17th Army Erased in Crimea: 61,000 Prisoners, Sevastopol Fell in 4 Days, 1944

Comments · 13

• CO

  @colder5465 · 3 weeks ago

  Some more things. Soviet troops in Crimea were in a very tense situation.<br>First of all, they lack ordinary field artillery including heavy artillery. Yes, they had the support of Black Sea Fleet navy guns from several shore batteries but they couldn&apos;t substitute field artillery. And munitions for these navy guns were very short. In the end, Soviet &nbsp;navy guns were firing blank shells not even practical shells.<br>Manstein on the other hand had plenty of heavy artillery including very effective Chech made 305 mm guns. He had a super mega gun, too, but it wasn&apos;t very effective. Chech guns were very effective.<br>In the first half of the war the Soviets were trying to offset German superiority in heavy artillery with their T-34 and KV-1 tanks. Few people understand that.<br>General Kozlov was asking to send him a couple dozen T-34 and several KV-1 tanks but again the answer was negative. Soviet High Command needed them elsewhere.<br>Second, anti-tank artillery. Soviet troops in Crimea had standard Soviet 45 mm anti-tank guns of early modifications. Manstein didn&apos;t have tanks, yes, but he had StuG-IIIs which were much more valuable and had 80mm frontal armour which made them invincible against Soviet 45 mm anti-tank guns.<br>Third, logistics. Theoretically, Soviet Black Sea Fleet had full superiority on the Black Sea. Germans had no big ships there. But they more than offset that with their air superiority with their 8. Air Corps there which was specially trained for air support and was very good bombing &quot;point&quot; targets.<br>The Soviets quickly lost all their merchant vessels for supplying and supplies went to Sevastopol only onboard destroyers which weren&apos;t good for this role. And after loss of several destroyers and one light cruiser all day operations were strictly forbidden. Supplies were being delivered only at nights. Actually, that meant that these supplies were only for small arms and machine guns, no heavy shells. Additionally, some navy guns in Sevastopol were of French origin and in the whole Soviet Union there weren&apos;t any more shells for them.<br>Fourth, the quality of the troops. The Crimean Front had only one infantry (rifle) division of pre-war formation which was trained well. Until this division was in more or less good form, Crimean Front was holding. But there were losses and new replacements were of very poor quality and morale.<br>There was one caveat, however. Marines. The Soviet Union didn&apos;t have &quot;true&quot; marines, these were ordinary sailors of the Black Fleet who were transferred to the infantry. They had no infantry training at all but they had the highest morale. Soviet sailors served 5 years instead of 3 in the army, the ship teams were very close knit and supported each other.<br>That&apos;s why Germans hated them and all those sailors who got in German captivity were killed - sometimes very brutally. And Manstein was just a warrior, yeah.

  4

• AL

  @alexanderleo8947 · 3 days ago

  The &quot;Battles for Sevastopol&quot; offer a lens through which to study the Soviet-German War.<br>The capture of Sevastopol took 250 days, spanning from October 30, 1941, to July 2, 1942; during this time, German and allied forces lost approximately 300,000 soldiers and officers.<br>The Red Army liberated Sevastopol from German-Romanian troops in just two days, between May 7 and May 9, 1944.<br>The entire Crimean Peninsula was liberated in 35 days.<br>Irrecoverable losses for German-Romanian forces totaled 140,000 soldiers and officers.<br>Irrecoverable losses for the Red Army totaled 17,754 personnel.<br>The balance of forces was essentially symmetrical—roughly equal on both sides.<br>It took Manstein 250 days to capture the city of Sevastopol.<br>Army General Fyodor Tolbukhin liberated the city in two days (and the Crimea in 35 days).

• TO

  @TonyAscott-p9t · 8 days ago

  Nemesis after the hubris

• CO

  @colder5465 · 3 weeks ago

  A couple more details. Soviet troops defending Sevastopol in 1942 were commanded by General Kozlov who wasn&apos;t &nbsp;&quot;a very sharp knife on the table&quot;. Stalin&apos;s personal envoy to the Crimean Front Mekhlis repeatedly asked for his replacement but Stalin was far more preoccupied with situation around Stalingrad and each time he answered &quot;I don&apos;t have enough Hindenburgs for you!&quot;.<br>What was even worse maybe: Kozlov was unlucky general. Bad luck is very bad for a general.<br>How luck works: Mekhlis had another strong conflict with another general - Rodion Malinovskiy - who was dismissed in the end and sent to the Stalingrad front. There he showed himself extremely well, he rose to the top and became Marshal and a Front commander (a.k.a. army group commander). If he were left in Crimea he&apos;d certainly fell to oblivion.

  1

• TH

  @TheUnheardFront · 3 weeks ago

  The true irony lies not in the time contrast, but in the strategic inflexibility that permeated the Wehrmacht&apos;s high command. The 17th Army&apos;s fate was sealed by a refusal to adapt to the changing operational reality, prioritizing symbolic holding actions over the preservation of vital combat power. It was a failure of grand strategy, not just tactical defeat.

• LA

  @lastofthe4horsemen279 · 3 weeks ago (edited)

  Really love your channel,appreciate the work you put in,Hitler sabotaged all the men he forbade to tactically withdraw.The worst man possible to command.

  1

• ID

  @Idcanymore510 · 3 weeks ago

  Why use images from the Pacific campaign? It detracts from an otherwise very good video.

  4

• AL

  @aliensojourner · 12 days ago

  Hitler was such an evil man.

• CU

  @curiousmonster8221 · 3 weeks ago

  Terrible maps