Eastern Front · Soviet Union vs Germany
Battles of Rzhev
8 January 1942 – 31 March 1943
A series of Soviet offensives against the German salient at Rzhev, 200 km west of Moscow, that cost the Red Army over a million casualties for little ground. The Germans finally withdrew from the salient in March 1943 to shorten their line.
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Day by day
— Rzhev-Vyazma
Six weeks after the counter-offensive before Moscow, Stalin orders the Kalinin and Western Fronts to encircle Army Group Centre. The 39th Army is to break through west of Rzhev towards Sychevka and Vyazma, the 33rd Army and Belov's cavalry to come up from the south to meet it.
— Two pockets
The 39th and 29th Armies are through the gap west of Rzhev and at the edge of Sychevka, but on 23 January Model closed the gap behind them. Today the Germans cut the road behind the 33rd Army south of Vyazma. The encirclers are encircled, and the city is not taken.
— First Rzhev-Sychevka
The winter pockets were destroyed by June, and the Germans hold a salient 150 kilometres deep with Rzhev at its tip and Vyazma at its base. The 30th Army attacks Rzhev from the north and the 20th and 31st Armies from the east in torrential rain; the guns fire 300,000 rounds on the first day.
— Operation Mars
The August fighting took Zubtsov and Karmanovo and reached the eastern edge of Rzhev, at a cost of 300,000 men. Now Zhukov attacks all four faces of the salient at once, the same week as Uranus at Stalingrad: the 20th Army across the Vazuza, the 41st Army at Bely, the 22nd up the Luchesa and the 39th from the north.
— Bueffel
Mars failed by mid-December for another 300,000 casualties, the 20th Army's tanks destroyed on the Vazuza and the 41st Army cut off at Bely. With Stalingrad lost, Hitler at last lets Model go: Operation Bueffel walks Ninth Army out of the salient over three weeks, mining the roads and burning the villages behind it.
— The salient gone
Vyazma fell on 12 March and the pursuit stops on the new line from Velizh through Dukhovshchina to Spas-Demensk, 130 kilometres shorter and held by twenty-one fewer divisions. Fourteen months of attacks on the salient cost the Red Army over a million casualties; the Germans gave it up in three weeks.
