Eastern Front · Soviet Union vs Germany
Second Battle of Kharkov
12 May 1942 – 28 May 1942
Timoshenko's Southwestern Front attacked from the Izyum salient to retake Kharkov. A German counterattack from the south, Operation Fridericus, cut the salient off and destroyed three Soviet armies, clearing the way for the summer offensive.
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Day by day
— Timoshenko attacks
Two pincers go for Kharkov: the 28th Army from the Staryi Saltov bridgehead north-east of the city, and the 6th Army with two tank corps from the Barvenkovo salient to the south. The salient was won in January; its southern face, forty kilometres from Kharkov, is held by the 9th and 57th Armies with Kleist's panzers in front of them.
— Fridericus
The northern pincer has been stopped twenty kilometres from Kharkov; the southern is past Krasnograd and the tank corps, committed only today, are within reach of Merefa. At dawn Kleist attacks the southern face of the salient with First Panzer Army and Seventeenth Army and breaks the 9th Army in a morning.
— Too late to stop
Kleist's panzers are in Barvenkovo and on the Donets at Izyum, forty kilometres behind the Soviet spearheads, which are still attacking towards Kharkov because Stalin will not let Timoshenko stop. Tonight he does. The tank corps turn round; the 6th Army is already two days' march from safety.
— The pocket closes
III Panzer Corps, driving north along the west bank of the Donets, meets Sixth Army's 44th Division coming south from Balakleya. The 6th and 57th Armies and Bobkin's group, some 250,000 men, are inside a pocket forty kilometres across with no bridges left over the river.
— The end in the pocket
Break-out attempts on the nights of the 25th and 26th got a few thousand men over the Donets; Kostenko, Podlas and Bobkin are dead. Around 240,000 prisoners are taken and the front is back on the river. Six weeks later the Germans go over the same ground on their way to Stalingrad.
