The Viaz'ma Catastrophe, 1941: The Red Army's Disastrous Stand against Operation TyphoonThis book describes one of the most terrible tragedies of the Second World War and the events preceding it. The horrible miscalculations made by the Stavka of the Soviet Supreme High Command and the Front commands led in October 1941 to the deaths and imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of their own people. Until recently, the magnitude of the defeats suffered by the Red Army at Viaz'ma and Briansk were simply kept hushed up. For the first time, in this book a full picture of the combat operations that led to this tragedy are laid out in detail, using previously unknown or little-used documents. The author was driven to write this book after his long years of fruitless search to learn what happened to his father Colonel N.I. Lopukhovsky, the commander of the 120th Howitzer Artillery Regiment, who disappeared together with his unit in the maelstrom of Operation Typhoon. He became determined to break the official silence surrounding the military disaster on the approaches to Moscow in the autumn of 1941. In the present edition, the author additionally introduces documents from German military archives, which will doubtlessly interest not only scholars, but also students of the Eastern Front of the Second World War. Lopukhovsky substantiates his position on the matter of the true extent of the losses of the Red Army in men and equipment, which greatly exceeded the official data. In the Epilogue, he briefly discusses the searches he has conducted with the aim of revealing the circumstances surrounding the deaths of Soviet soldiers, who to this point have been listed among the missing-in-action - including his own father. The narrative is enhanced by numerous photographs, color maps and tables. Lev Nikolaevich Lopukhovsky graduated from the prestigious Frunze Military Academy in 1962 and spent the next ten years serving in the Soviet Union's Strategic Rocket forces, rising to the rank of colonel and a regiment commander, before transferring to a teaching position in the Frunze Military Academy in 1972 due to health reasons. Lopukhovsky is a professor with the Russian Federation's Academy of Military Sciences (2008), and has been a member of Russia's Union of Journalists since 2004. Since 1989 he has been engaged in the search for those defenders of the Fatherland who went missing-in-action in the Second World War, including his own father Colonel N.I. Lopukhovsky, who is now known to have been killed while breaking out of encirclement in October 1941. Motivated by his father's disappearance, he had previously taken up the intense study of the Viaz'ma defensive operation and wrote the initial manuscript of the present book. In 1980 this manuscript was rejected by military censors, because it contradicted official views. Lopukhovsky is the author of several other books about the war, including Prokhorovka bez grifa sekretnosti [Prokhorovka without the seal of secrecy] (2005), Pervye dni voiny [First days of the war] (2007) and is the co-author of Iiun' 1941: Zaprogrammirovannoe porazhenie [June 1941: A Programmed Defeat] (2010). For his active search work, he was awarded the civilian Order of the Silver Star. Stuart Britton is a freelance translator and editor residing in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He has been responsible for making a growing number of Russian titles available to readers of the English language, consisting primarily of memoirs by Red Army veterans and recent historical research concerning the Eastern Front of the Second World War and Soviet air operations in the Korean War. Notable recent titles include Valeriy Zamulin's award-winning 'Demolishing the Myth: The Tank Battle at Prokhorovka, Kursk, July 1943: An Operational Narrative ' (Helion, 2011), Boris Gorbachevsky's 'Through the Maelstrom: A Red Army Soldier's War on the Eastern Front 1942-45' (University Press of Kansas, 2008) and Yuri Sutiagin's and Igor Seidov's 'MiG Menace Over Korea: The Story of Soviet Fighter Ace Nikolai Sutiagin' (Pen & Sword Aviation, 2009). Future books will include Svetlana Gerasimova's analysis of the prolonged and savage fighting against Army Group Center in 1942-43 to liberate the city of Rzhev, and more of Igor Seidov's studies of the Soviet side of the air war in Korea, 1951-1953. |
Contents
List ofphotographs | |
List oftables | xi |
Introduction | 12 |
Instead ofa Prologue | 18 |
Supreme Commander I V Stalin | 23 |
Colonel N I Lopukhovsky the commander ofthe 120th Howitzer Artillery Regiment | 39 |
Before the Storm | 67 |
The commander ofArmy Group Center Field Marshal Fedor von Bock | 68 |
German infantry on the march | 208 |
MajorGeneral S V Vishnevsky commander of the 32nd Army | 214 |
Evacuation of the wounded aboard S2 aerial ambulances | 220 |
Part 5 | 231 |
German Ju87 Stuka divebombers prepare to takeofffrom a dirt airfield | 241 |
M Sandalov deputy chief of staffofBriansk Front | 251 |
Part 6 | 257 |
F Lukin commander of the 19th Army | 264 |
S Konev commander of the Western Front | 87 |
Moscow citizens at work on building a defensive line | 94 |
The Typhoon Gathers Strength | 105 |
ColonelGeneral Hermann Hoth commander ofthe Third Panzer Group | 118 |
A German halftrack mounting a 37mm gun on the left and a 47mm gun | 129 |
Field Marshal Günther von Kluge commander of the Fourth Army | 142 |
Commander ofthe 4th from 11 November 1941 the 1st Guards Tank | 163 |
The Retreat | 176 |
V Boldin deputy commander of the Western Front | 178 |
Division Commissar K F Telegin member of the Moscow Theater | 184 |
G Starchak chiefofthe Western Fronts Paraborne Service | 193 |
LieutenantGeneral K K Rokossovsky commander ofthe 16th Army | 202 |
Catastrophe | 325 |
The 19th Armys breakout attempt on 11 October fails | 340 |
The fighting southwest ofViazma | 367 |
Von Bock is compelled to suspend the offensive | 388 |
Epilogue | 431 |
Appendices | 451 |
Comparative Technical and Performance Characteristics of Soviet | 464 |
The 19th Army commanders operational instruction that | 477 |
| 514 | |
| 523 | |
| 541 | |
Other editions - View all
The Viaz'ma Catastrophe, 1941: The Red Army's Disastrous Stand Against ... Lev Lopukhovsky,Stuart Britton No preview available - 2016 |
Common terms and phrases
120th Howitzer Artillery 19th Army 19th Army’s 24th Army 32nd Army 43rd Army 7th Panzer Division According aircraft anti-tank armored Army commander Army Corps Army Group Center aviation axis battalion battle breakthrough Briansk Front bridgehead Budenny Cavalry Division combat command post commander ofthe counterattack destroyed direction Dnepr River Dorogobuzh east echelon El’nia encirclement enemy grouping enemy tanks enemy’s equipment Eremenko fighting fire Front commander Front headquarters G. K. Zhukov German Group Boldin Guderian’s Gzhatsk highway Howitzer Artillery Regiment Infantry Division Iukhnov kilometers Konev losses Lukin Military Council mortars Moscow Motorized Corps Motorized Division Mozhaisk October offensive ofViaz’ma Operation Typhoon Orel prisoners rear reconnaissance Red Army reported Reserve Front retreat Rifle Division’s Rifle Regiment Russian sector seized Semlevo September 1941 Shaposhnikov situation Smolensk Soviet staff Stalin Stavka Sychevka Tank Brigade Third Panzer Group troops TsAMO RF units ofthe vehicles Viaz’ma River Western Front withdrawal Zhukov