БИТВА ЗА РОСТОВ. ПОЧЕМУ ЗАСАДНАЯ ТАКТИКА КАТУКОВА НЕ СРАБОТАЛА ПОД РОСТОВОМ?

Kleist's mobile groups were named unpoetically, simply using corps numbers, and perhaps that's why everything worked out so well for the first two weeks. The German general was choosing between Kharkov, with its tank factories, and the south, where two Soviet armies were stationed, and he chose the south, leaving the factories for later. It didn't work. The Eighteenth Army was trapped in the Melitopol pocket, Army Commander Smirnov died in the final attack, and was buried by the enemy with full military honors, a guard and a stone cross. Kharkov fell a month after Kyiv, and on November 14, a radio mine, planted two weeks earlier, killed the German General von Braun right in his own headquarters—the signal was transmitted by radio from three hundred kilometers away. The Soviet command did what its own experience at Mtsensk had warned against: instead of a single force, it scattered a hundred tanks from the 6th Brigade in small ambushes along the entire front, creating a smooth line—but a line that had nothing to patch when the Germans struck right at the seam. On November 18, the defense collapsed. The city was retaken with fighters hastily assembled in two weeks, with 203-millimeter guns, and ice built up by hand, pouring water over straw. On November 29, the city was Soviet again. The Germans themselves acknowledged this with a phrase that will go down in history: "Our troubles began in Rostov." The field marshal who ordered a retreat without Hitler's permission was dismissed the next day. This is a story about how the same tactic—an ambush—could save the front at Mtsensk and destroy a brigade at Rostov, if used without reserves and without a single soldier. #rostovoperation #1941 #rostovondon #greatpatrioticwar #militaryhistory #kleist #melitopol #kharkov #starinov #rundstedt #southernfront #easternfront #mtsensk #counteroffensive #lenbstandarte #tankbrigade #nintharmy #meatgrinder #donriver #winterwar