Orsha offensives (1943)

Coordinates: 54°30′N 30°25′E / 54.50°N 30.42°E

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Orsha offensives

Part of The Eastern Front of World War II

Date	October 12, 1943 – November 19, 1943
Location	Orsha region, Belarus, Soviet Union 54°30′N 30°25′E / 54.50°N 30.42°E / 54.50; 30.42
Result	German defensive victory

Belligerents

Soviet Union

Germany

Commanders and leaders

Vasily Sokolovsky

Gotthard Heinrici

Strength

Western Front
310,900 men, with steady reinforcements

4th Army
193,510 men; heavy fortifications

Casualties and losses

530,537

35,056

Eastern Front

Naval warfare

1941

Barbarossa
- Brest
- Białystok–Minsk
- 1st Baltic
- Brody
- Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina
- 1st Smolensk
- Uman
- Odessa
- 1st Kiev
- Tallinn
- Leningrad
- Sea of Azov
- 1st Kharkov
- 1st Crimea
- Sevastopol
- Rostov
- Gorky
- Moscow
Finland
Kerch
Chechnya
Air war 1941

1942

1943

1944

1945

The Orsha offensives were a series of battles fought in Belarus between the Red Army and the Wehrmacht during the autumn of 1943, and into the following winter. Orsha was a main road junction with the north–south route from Leningrad to Kiev and the east–west route from Minsk to Moscow. After the failure of Operation Typhoon in the winter of 1941, Army Group Centre had spent the most part on the defensive in the central sector of the front. The time afforded to them in 1942, a distinct period of inactivity in this area, allowed the Wehrmacht to build formidable defensive positions.

Prelude

After their defeat in the Battle of Smolensk, the Wehrmacht retreated on a broad front to the Panther-Stellung line. The German 4th Army (Heinrici)—part of Army Group Centre—took defensive positions near Orsha. To the north, the 3rd Panzer Army (Reinhardt) took up defensive lines around Vitebsk, and to the south the 9th Army (Model) held the area east of Bobrujsk. The Soviet Stavka saw the liberation of Ukraine as their primary goal, so the Lower Dnieper Offensive had priority in equipment and reinforcements.

The battles

The 4th Army was in retreat to the Panther-Wotan line, pursued by the Soviets. Troops from the Soviet Western Front then launched a heavy attack on both sides of the Minsk-Moscow highway. One thrust was directed at Orsha, a main road junction, and another at Bogushevsk.^[1]

References

^ Glantz D.M. (1995) The failures of historiography: Forgotten battles of the German‐Soviet war (1941–1945), Journal of Slavic Military Studies 8(4): 768–808

Literature

Frieser K-H., Schmider K. & Schönherr K. (2007) Das deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, Vol. 8, Die Ostfront 1943/44, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart: 1350 pp.

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