First Battle of Kharkov

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First Battle of Kharkov

Part of World War II

Date	October 20, 1941 — October 24, 1941
Location	Kharkov, USSR
Result	Axis Victory

Belligerents

Nazi Germany

Soviet Union

v • d • e Operation Barbarossa

Brest – Bialystok-Minsk – Raseiniai – Brody – Smolensk – Uman – 1st Kiev – Yelnya – Odessa – Leningrad – 1st Kharkov – 1st Crimea – 1st Rostov

v • d • e

Eastern Front

Barbarossa – Baltic Sea – Black Sea – Finland – Leningrad and Baltics – Crimea and Caucasus – Moscow – 1st Rzhev-Vyazma – 2nd Kharkov – Blue – Stalingrad – Velikiye Luki – 2nd Rzhev-Sychevka – Kursk – 2nd Smolensk – Dnieper – 2nd Kiev – Battle of Narva – Korsun – Hube's Pocket – Baltic – Bagration – Lvov-Sandomierz – Lublin-Brest – Balkans (Iassy-Kishinev) – Budapest – Vistula-Oder – East Prussia – East Pomerania – Silesia – Vienna – Berlin – Prague

The 1st Battle of Kharkov so named by Wilhelm Keitel^[1] was the 1941 tactical Wehrmacht battle for the city of Kharkov during the final phase of Operation Barbarossa by the German 6th Army of the Army Group South (now Kharkiv, Ukraine) on October 20, 1941. The Soviet 38th Army was ordered, as part of the to defend the city while its factories were dismantled for relocation farther east.

By October 21, all of the factory equipment had been loaded on to rail trains. On this day the Germans closed to within 11 km of the railway yards.

The German 6th Army executed a northern envelopment of the city while the 17th Army did the same from the south of the Soviet defensive positions on October 24.

Although the city was taken by German troops on the same day, most of the rail transport was evacuated by the Soviet authorities.

[edit] References

^ see The memoirs of Field-Marshal Keitel. Edited with an introd. and epilogue by Walter Gorlitz. Translated by David Irving, William Kimber, London (1965)