What was the Second Battle of Kharkov?

A Soviet offensive toward Kharkov in eastern Ukraine, launched on 12 May 1942 by Marshal Semyon Timoshenko's Southwestern Front, which ended in a German counterstroke that trapped and destroyed the Soviet armies in the Izium salient.

Why did the Soviet offensive fail?

It was launched from a narrow salient whose base the Germans were already planning to cut off. After early gains the Soviet command hesitated to commit its reserves, and when the Germans struck the southern flank on 17 May the offensive was kept going too long.

How many Soviet soldiers were lost at Kharkov in 1942?

The Germans reported about 240,000 prisoners. The Great Russian Encyclopedia gives Soviet losses of 171,000 dead, missing and captured, plus 106,000 sick and wounded.

Why was the battle important?

It destroyed much of the Soviet strength in the south just before the German summer offensive of 1942, which then drove toward Stalingrad and the Caucasus.

12 May in military history: the Second Battle of Kharkov begins, 1942

Quick answer

On the morning of 12 May 1942 the Soviet Southwestern Front under Marshal Semyon Timoshenko attacked the German Sixth Army around Kharkov in eastern Ukraine. The first days went so well that the German commander in the south said his Sixth Army was fighting for its life. Then a German counterstroke cut through the base of the salient the Soviets had attacked from, and by the end of May the armies inside it had been destroyed. It was one of the worst Soviet defeats of the war, and it cleared the way for the German drive on Stalingrad.

Two plans for one salient

After the winter fighting of 1941 to 1942 the front south of Kharkov bulged deep into the German lines around the town of Izium, on the Donets River. Both sides wanted to use it. The Soviet plan, put forward by Timoshenko, was to strike at Kharkov from two directions, from the northwest corner of the Izium bulge and from a smaller salient at Volchansk, and to trap much of the German Sixth Army. The historians Earl Ziemke and Magna Bauer, in the U.S. Army's official history of the campaign, write that the chief of the General Staff, Boris Shaposhnikov, warned against attacking out of a pocket like the Izium bulge, but that Timoshenko persuaded Stalin the operation would be a complete success.¹

The Germans had their own plan, Operation Fridericus, to pinch the bulge off with thrusts from the north and south meeting at Izium. It was set for about 18 May. The Great Russian Encyclopedia puts the Soviet edge at 1.2 to 1 in artillery and 1.6 to 1 in tanks, with the Germans stronger in men and aircraft.²

Twelve days in May

The Soviet attack opened on 12 May. Within three days the attacking armies had broken through the German defenses to a depth the Great Russian Encyclopedia gives as 18 to 50 kilometers. Ziemke and Bauer write that on the first evening Soviet tanks from the Volchansk salient were ranging within eleven miles of Kharkov, and that Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, commanding Army Group South, told Franz Halder, chief of the Army General Staff, that Sixth Army was fighting for its life. Both sources say the Soviet front command then hesitated and held back its mobile reserves on 14 May, waiting for a better moment.³

Bock used the pause. On 17 May the German Kleist group struck the southern face of the bulge, from the area held by the Soviet Southern Front, and broke through. Britannica notes that the Soviet attack had provoked an immediate counterstroke against its southern flank, where the Germans broke into the salient and reached the Donets near Izium. The Soviet command kept the offensive toward Kharkov going for two more days. The Great Russian Encyclopedia says Timoshenko ordered a switch to the defensive only on 19 May, and Ziemke and Bauer describe the long dispute in Soviet memoirs over whether Stalin, Timoshenko or Khrushchev was to blame for the delay.⁴

The trap closes

The German pincers met near Balakleya on 22 and 23 May, closing the mouth of the bulge. The Great Russian Encyclopedia puts the meeting on 23 May south of Balakleya. The trapped Soviet forces tried to break out again and again. Ziemke and Bauer write that by 26 May all that was left was a pocket about ten miles by two in the valley of the Bereka River, and that the battle ended on the morning of 28 May; the Great Russian Encyclopedia has the fighting go on to 29 May.⁵

The losses are counted in different ways. The Germans reported 240,000 prisoners, a figure given by both Britannica and Ziemke and Bauer, who add more than 1,200 tanks and 2,000 guns captured. The Great Russian Encyclopedia puts the total losses of the two Soviet fronts at 171,000 dead, missing and captured and 106,000 sick and wounded.⁶

The road to Stalingrad

Britannica judges the Soviet offensive premature and says it actually served German purposes, since it used up the Soviet reserves before the main German summer offensive began. The Great Russian Encyclopedia agrees that the defeat changed the whole southern wing of the front: by cutting off the Barvenkovo salient the Germans seized the strategic initiative and won a good starting position for their summer advance on Stalingrad and the Caucasus. That campaign is told in our article on the Battle of Stalingrad, and the wider war in the greatest battles of the Eastern Front.⁷

Also on this day

1809: Second Battle of Porto. In the Peninsular War, Wellesley's British and Portuguese troops slipped across the Douro near Porto, where Marshal Soult's French were not watching.