The April 2 directive, from which we have just quoted, showed Hitler’s resolution to defend the Crimea at all costs. Less than a week later, the storm clouds which Kleist and Manstein had seen gathering burst with irresistible force. Within Army Group "A”, it was the German 17th Army, under the command of Colonel-General C. Jaenecke, and comprising V and IL Corps and the Rumanian I Mountain Corps, themselves made up of five German divisions and seven Rumanian divisions, which had the task of defending the peninsula. It must, however, be said that two of the Rumanian divisions were in action against the partisans who, since November 1943, had held the Krimskiye massif, whosepeaksdominatethesouthern coast of the Crimea. The key to the Crimea,
The Kamenskoye isthmus, was held by IL Corps (General R. Konrad), who had established his 50th, 111th, and 336th Divisions in soundly fortified positions defending this tongue of land, whilst the Rumanian 9th Cavalry Division kept watch on the Black Sea, and the Rumanian 10th and 19th Divisions performed the same task on the shore of the Sivash Lagoon. V Corps (General K. Allmendinger) kept an eye on the small bridgehead which the Russians had taken the previous autumn beyond the Kerch’ Strait, a task in which it was helped by the 73rd and 98th Divisions, and the 6th Cavalry Division and 3rd Mountain Division of the Rumanian Army.
Stavka’s plan
Stavka's plan to reconquer the peninsula meant the simultaneous action of the 4th Ukrainian Front and a separate army, known as the Independent Coastal Army. The first, with 18 infantry divisions and four armoured corps, would storm the Kamenskoye isthmus, whilst the second, 12 divisions strong, would break out of the Kerch’ bridgehead, and they would then together converge upon Sevastopol’. As will be noted, the Russians had ensured a massive superiority in men and materiel.
On April 8, General Tolbukhin unleashed the offensive, the 4th Ukrainian Front attacking under an air umbrella as large as it was powerful.
On the right, the 2nd Guards Army, under Lieutenant-General G. F. Zakharov, was hard put to it to storm the Kamenskoye defences, and took 48 hours to reach the outskirts of Armyansk. On the left, breaking out of the small bridgehead on the Sivash Lagoon, which it had succeeded in linking to the mainland by means of a dike, the 51st Army, commanded by Lieutenant-General Ya. G. Kreizer, which had the main task, had in fact a much easier j oh, faced as it was by only the two Rumanian divisions. By midday on April 9, the 10th Division was submerged, and its collapse enabled the Soviet tanks to capture two days later the important junction of Dzhanskoy, where the railway leading to Sevastopol’ divides from that leading to the town of Feodosiya and the port of Kerch’.
On April 11, in the Kerch’ peninsula, the Independent Coastal Army, under General Eremenko, attacked in its turn; and when one realises that Hitler, a prey to hesitation, thought he could conduct the Crimea campaign from Obersalzberg, it was little short of a miracle that General Jaenecke was able to withdraw his troops to their Sevastopol’ positions without being intercepted by the combined forces of Tolbukhin and Eremenko, who had linked up on April 16 near Yalta. To defend its 25-mile long front before Sevastopol’, the 17th Army could now count only upon the five German divisions already mentioned above. But they had been reduced, on average, to something like a third of their normal strength and were already tired. Therefore Schorner flew to see the Fiihrer personally and put the case for the evacuation of his troops. In vain, however, and when Jaenecke, in his turn, went to Berchtesgaden to put the same arguments, he was even refused permission to return to Sevastopol’, and was succeeded as head of the 17th Army, on April 27, by General Allmendinger.
On May 7, after artillery had softened up the positions for 48 hours, the 2nd Guards Army attacked the northern flank, as Manstein had done in 1942; but the Germans were too few to rival the
V German rolling stock destroyed by the Russians’ tactical air forces. These, combined with the increasing success of partisans behind the German lines, made supply a constant problem for the army.
> May 8, 1944: Soviet sailors enter Sevastopol’.
> > An exhausted German soldier rests on the trail of a destroyed gun.
Heroic exploits of General Petrov’s men. Thus, when General Allmendinger finally received a message on May 9 from the Fiihrer authorising evacuation, it was already too late for it to be properly organised, especially since the Soviet Air Force, completely dominating the air, fired at anything that tried to take to the sea. On May 13, all resistance ceased in the region around the Khersonesskiy (Chersonese) peninsula, now (as in 1942) the last defence position.
The evacuation of the Crimea gave rise to dramatic scenes such as those described by Alexander Werth:
"For three days and nights, the Chersonese was that 'unspeakable inferno’ to which German authors now refer. True, on the night of May 9-10 and on the following night, two small ships did come and perhaps 1,000 men were taken aboard. This greatly encouraged the remaining troops.” But the Russians had no intention of letting the Germans get away by sea:
"And on the night of May 11-12 the katyusha mortars ('the Black Death’ the Germans used to call them) came into action. What followed was a massacre. The Germans fled in panic beyond the second and then the third line of their defences, and when, in the early morning hours, Russian tanks drove in, they began to surrender in large numbers, among them their commander. General Bohme, and several other staff officers who had been sheltering in the cellar of the only farm building on the promontory.
"Thousands of wounded had been taken to the tip of the promontory, and here were also some 750 S. S.-men who refused to surrender, and went on firing. A few dozen survivors tried in the end to get away by sea in small boats or rafts. Some of these got away, but often only to be machine-gunned by Russian aircraft. These desperate men were hoping to get to Rumania, Turkey, or maybe to be picked up by some German or Rumanian vessel.”
The 17th Army’s losses were very heavy. On April 8 it had comprised 128,500 German and 66,000 Rumanian troops; of these, 96,800 Germans and 40,200 Rumanians were evacuated, leaving behind 31,700 German and 25,800 Rumanian dead or missing. But it must be remembered that of the 137,000 evacuated, more than
39,000 were wounded and all their equipment lost. This was the terrible price of Hitler’s intransigence.
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