Battle of the Korsun–Cherkassy Pocket

Battle of the Korsun–Cherkassy Pocket
Part of the Dnieper–Carpathian Offensive on the Eastern Front of World War II
Red Army assault force on T-26 light tank in Korsun-Shevchenkovski region.
Date 24 January 1944 – 16 February 1944 Location Cherkasy / Korsun, USSR Result Soviet victory and successful encirclement.
Belligerents
Germany	Soviet Union
Commanders and leaders
Erich von Manstein Otto Wöhler Hermann Breith Wilhelm Stemmermann  † Theobald Lieb	Georgy Zhukov Nikolai Vatutin Ivan Konev
Strength
60,000 men in pocket 59 tanks in pocket 242 artillery pieces in pocket 80,000 men (reinforcement) III Panzer Corps (201 tanks) (reinforcement) XLVII Panzer Corps (58 tanks) (reinforcement)	336,700 men 524 tanks (initially) 400 tanks (reinforcement) 1,054 aircraft 5,300 artillery pieces and mortars
Casualties and losses
Frieser, Zetterling and Frankson: 30,000 killed, missing and wounded 156 tanks 50 aircraftErickson, Glantz and House: 55,000 killed and wounded, 18,000 prisoners	24,286 killed or missing and 55,902 wounded and sick 728 tanks

The Korsun–Shevchenkovsky Offensive led to the Battle of the Korsun–Cherkasy Pocket which took place from 24 January to 16 February 1944. The offensive was part of the Dnieper–Carpathian Offensive. In it, the 1st and 2nd Ukrainian Fronts, commanded, respectively, by Nikolai Vatutin and Ivan Konev, encircled German forces of Army Group South in a pocket near the Dnieper River. During weeks of fighting, the two Red Army Fronts tried to eradicate the pocket. The encircled German units attempted a breakout in coordination with a relief attempt by other German forces, resulting in heavy casualties, estimates of which vary.

The Soviet victory in the Korsun–Shevchenkovsky Offensive marked the successful implementation of Soviet deep operations. Soviet Deep Battle doctrine envisaged the breaking of the enemy's forward defences to allow fresh operational reserves to exploit the breakthrough by driving into the strategic depth of the enemy front. The arrival of large numbers of U.S. and British built trucks and halftracks gave the Soviet forces much greater mobility than they had in the earlier portion of the war. This, coupled with the Soviet capacity to hold large formations in reserve gave the Red Army the ability to drive deep behind German defenses again and again.

Though the Soviet operation at Korsun did not result in the collapse in the German front that the Soviet command had hoped for, it marked a significant deterioration in the strength available to the German army on that front, especially in heavy weaponry, nearly all of which was lost during the breakout. Through the rest of the war the Red Army would place large German forces in jeopardy, while the Germans were stretched thin and constantly attempting to extract themselves from one crisis to the next. Mobile Soviet offensives were the hallmark of the Eastern front for the remainder of the war.

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