the soviet partisan movement 1941-1944 by edgar m. howell

GERMAN-RUSSIAN OPERATIONS FOLLOWING THE FALL OF STALINGRAD 129
perioding the period 10 July through 10 August the two army groups lost
163,158 officers and men killed, wounded, or missing. 13
During the latter part of August other sectors of the front also
became active. In the extreme south Gen. F. I. Tolbukhin with his Fourth
Ukrainian Front attacked the Mius River positions and forced a
breakthrough in the area of the reconstituted Sixth Army. Taganrog, at
the mouth of the Mius River and the southernmost anchor of the German
line, fell on 30 August, while Gen. R. Ya. Malinovski with his Third
Ukrainian Front forced a large bridgehead over the Donets east of Izyum.
In the meantime, Gen. K. K. Rokossovski continued his offensive west of
Kursk and Orel. With the elimination of the Orel and Kharkov salients
and the forcing of the German southern defenses along the Mius and the
Donets, the Russians were in excellent position for a concerted drive all
along the front.
The Drive Across the Dnepr
With their line broken at three strategic points, Orel, Kharkov, and
in the Donets bend, and with the Red Army moving powerfully with
seven army fronts from the Smolensk area to the Sea of Azov, the Germans
had no choice but to withdraw from the Ukraine and to attempt
to stabilize the situation at the line of the Dnepr. Driving relentlessly,
by mid-September Malinovski and Tolbukhin had forced the Germans
to completely abandon the Donets line and before the end of the month
were attacking Melitopol and Zaporozhye on the Dnepr. Vatutin and
Konev quickly exploited their breakthrough at Kharkov and, despite a
desperate counterattack by Von Manstein to cover his bridgehead at
Kremenchug over which his units were trying to withdraw, reached the
river on 28 September. Two days later Vatutin put units over the
river near the mouth of Pripyat and below Kiev, Konev was across
southeast of Kremenchug, and Malinovski had a bridgehead south of
Dnepropetrovsk. Meanwhile Rokossovski had continued his drive in
the Orel-Kursk sector. By 1 October he had reached the upper Dnepr,
and was threatening the German strong point at Gomel. With the few
German reserves concentrated in the south, Sokolovski opened a strong
offensive in the central sector aimed at the key city of Smolensk. Using
nine armies on a front of some 110 miles he broke through strong
German fortifications in the face of desperate resistance by the Fourth
Army and entered Smolensk and Roslavl on 25 September. Under this
pressure Von Kluge pulled back his line to defensive positions east of
Orsha and Vitebsk and held there.
In the south, the Soviets, never relaxing their pressure, gave the
Germans no time to consolidate any sort of a line along the Dnepr. The
13
Gefechtsausfaelle Sowjetfeldzug, ObdH/GenQu, vont 22.VI.41. bis 10.V11.43.,
Der Heeresarzt b. Nr. 1/4451/43 g. Kdos., OKH, den 14.VII.43. H 17/189.