Battle of Kiev (1941): The Largest Encirclement of the War

The Battle of Kiev in the summer of 1941 was the German encirclement and destruction of the Soviet Southwestern Front around Kyiv, the capital of Soviet Ukraine. When German armoured pincers met east of the city in mid-September, they trapped several Soviet armies, and the Germans claimed about 665,000 prisoners. By number of prisoners it is usually described as the largest encirclement of the Second World War.

Background: Barbarossa and the Ukrainian front

Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 in Operation Barbarossa. Army Group South under Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt advanced into Ukraine more slowly than the armies further north, facing the strongest Soviet forces, the Southwestern Front under Colonel General Mikhail Kirponos.

By early August German troops had reached the fortified zone around Kyiv on the west bank of the Dnieper, while further south they won a separate encirclement at Uman. Kyiv’s defenders, including militia units raised from the city’s workers, held out against direct assaults by the German 6th Army. This left a large Soviet salient bulging westwards along the Dnieper, with its northern flank facing the open country of the Desna and Seym rivers.

The Soviet position looked strong on a map but was dangerous. Most of the Southwestern Front was concentrated west and south of Kyiv, and its flanks hundreds of kilometres to the north and south-east were held by weak, exhausted forces.

Hitler’s turn to the south

Hitler and his generals disagreed about what to do next. The army high command wanted to continue towards Moscow with Army Group Centre. Hitler preferred to seize Ukraine’s farmland and industry and eliminate the Soviet forces at Kyiv. On 21 August he issued an order making the south the priority.

Heinz Guderian’s Panzer Group 2 was turned south from Army Group Centre and drove deep behind the Soviet lines from 25 August. Meanwhile Ewald von Kleist’s Panzer Group 1 broke out of a bridgehead at Kremenchuk on the Dnieper on 12 September and advanced north.

On the Soviet side, Marshal Semyon Budyonny, overall commander in the south-west, and his staff warned of the danger and asked to withdraw. Stalin refused. General Georgy Zhukov had already been removed as chief of the General Staff in late July after proposing that Kyiv be abandoned. Budyonny himself was replaced by Marshal Semyon Timoshenko on 13 September.

The encirclement

On 14–15 September the spearheads of Guderian and Kleist met near Lokhvytsia, about 200 km east of Kyiv. Four Soviet armies and parts of others were trapped. Soviet commanders inside the pocket begged for permission to retreat, and Kirponos’s chief of staff warned that disaster was only days away. Permission to break out came only on 17 September, by which time the pocket was being cut into pieces. Columns of men, horses and vehicles trying to move east were attacked from the air and broken up by German motorised units.

German troops entered Kyiv on 19 September. Kirponos was killed on 20 September while trying to break out with his staff near Lokhvytsia. Organised resistance in the pocket ended by 26 September, although small groups fought their way east or went into hiding.

Many of the prisoners died in the following months from hunger, disease and exposure in German camps, part of the wider catastrophe in which several million Soviet prisoners of war perished in German captivity.

Aftermath in Kyiv

In late September Soviet mines left behind in the city exploded in central Kyiv, causing large fires. The German occupiers used this as a pretext for the Babi Yar massacre of 29–30 September, when 33,771 Jews were shot at a ravine on the city’s edge.

Consequences

German losses were also heavy, and the campaign further wore down an army that had been fighting without pause since June. The battle was a huge tactical victory for Germany and opened the way to eastern Ukraine, the Donbas and Crimea. But the diversion of Guderian’s armour delayed the attack on Moscow until October. The resulting Battle of Moscow was fought in autumn mud and winter cold, and historians still debate whether Kiev helped cost Germany the war in the East.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1941, 22 June: Germany invades the Soviet Union.
• 1941, early August: German forces reach the Kyiv fortified region.
• 1941, 21 August: Hitler orders the main effort shifted south.
• 1941, 25 August: Guderian’s panzer group begins its drive south.
• 1941, 12 September: Kleist attacks north from the Kremenchuk bridgehead.
• 1941, 14–15 September: The pincers meet near Lokhvytsia.
• 1941, 19 September: German troops enter Kyiv.
• 1941, 20 September: General Kirponos is killed.
• 1941, 26 September: Resistance in the pocket ends.

Why it matters

Kiev showed both the striking power of the German army and the cost of Stalin’s refusal to allow retreat. The loss of an entire front was one of the worst disasters in Soviet military history, yet it did not end the war, and the time it took helped give the Red Army the chance to defend Moscow.