When was the Smolensk operation?

From 7 August to 2 October 1943. Smolensk itself was retaken on 25 September.

Who commanded at Smolensk in 1943?

Vasily Sokolovsky led the Soviet West Front and Andrei Yeremenko the Kalinin Front, with Nikolai Voronov coordinating them. Günther von Kluge commanded the German Army Group Center.

Why was the Smolensk offensive so slow at first?

The Germans held several defensive belts in forest and swamp and counterattacked constantly. On the first day the West Front advanced only about 4 km, and the Stavka paused the offensive in mid August to regroup.

What does Smolensk 1943 have to do with Katyn?

Katyn Forest lies near Smolensk. After the area was retaken, the Soviets set up the Burdenko commission in January 1944, which falsely blamed the murder of Polish officers on the Germans.

Smolensk operation, 1943: the Red Army breaks open the road west

Quick answer

What was the Smolensk operation of 1943?

The Smolensk operation, code-named Suvorov, was the Soviet offensive of 7 August to 2 October 1943 in which the West Front and the left wing of the Kalinin Front attacked the German Army Group Center around Smolensk. After weeks of slow fighting in forest and swamp the Germans fell back, Smolensk and Roslavl were retaken on 25 September, and by early October the Red Army stood on the approaches to Vitebsk, Orsha and Mogilev.¹

After the German offensive at Kursk failed in July 1943, the Red Army attacked almost everywhere from the Baltic to the Black Sea. One of these offensives was aimed at Smolensk, the old fortress city on the upper Dnieper that guards the land bridge between the Dvina and the Dnieper on the road from Moscow to Minsk. The Stavka gave it the code name Suvorov.²

The plan, in the account of the Russian Historical Encyclopedia published by the Russian Military Historical Society, was for Colonel General Vasily Sokolovsky's West Front to strike the main blow toward Spas-Demensk, Yelnya and Roslavl and then wheel on Smolensk, while the left wing of Colonel General Andrei Yeremenko's Kalinin Front advanced on Dukhovshchina from the north. Marshal of Artillery Nikolai Voronov coordinated the two fronts, and Stalin visited their command posts on 3 to 5 August.³

Two very different counts

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia gives the two fronts 1,253,000 men, some 20,640 guns and mortars, 1,430 tanks and self-propelled guns and over 1,000 combat aircraft. Against them, it says, stood more than 40 divisions of the German 3rd Panzer and 4th Armies, up to 850,000 men under Field Marshal Günther von Kluge, dug into four or five defensive belts up to 130 km deep in wooded, swampy ground.⁴

The German records tell a thinner story. Earl Ziemke, the US Army historian who worked from them, gives the German Fourth Army 11 divisions and 7 battle groups at the end of August, and he describes an army group that had been sending its divisions south all summer to prop up Army Group South. Army Group Center was strong on paper and short of men in the line.⁵

Four kilometers on the first day

The West Front attacked at 6:30 on 7 August after a heavy bombardment. It went badly. The Germans counterattacked without pause and used the forests and marshes well, and by evening the Soviets had gained only about 4 km; Sokolovsky had to commit his second echelon early. Fighting on the Yartsevo axis began on 8 August. Only by 13 August, according to the Russian Historical Encyclopedia, did the attackers reach a line up to 25 km forward, and Spas-Demensk was taken that day. The Stavka then halted the offensive to regroup.⁶

Ziemke's German sources confirm that the Fourth Army barely held its line that month. Around 20 August, he writes, the Stavka told Voronov to give up the thrust on Roslavl and regroup for an attack through Yelnya toward Smolensk.⁷

The door to Smolensk

The second blow came on 28 August. Two armies of the West Front, the 10th Guards and the 21st, attacked at the boundary between the German Ninth and Fourth Armies and in two days drove a wedge about 20 miles deep to Yelnya, which fell on 30 August; Dorogobuzh followed on 1 September. On 11 September Kluge told the army high command, in Ziemke's quotation, that the door to Smolensk now stood open.⁸

Hitler agreed on 15 September to a general retreat to the Panther position, the line through Vitebsk, Orsha and the Dnieper, but told Kluge to go slowly. The pause let the Red Army press on. Yartsevo fell on 16 September and Dukhovshchina on the 19th, and between 20 and 23 September the Kalinin Front broke through north of Smolensk and took Demidov while the Fourth Army line southeast of the city began to crack.⁹

On 25 September Soviet troops entered Smolensk and Roslavl. The Russian Historical Encyclopedia names Captain P. K. Klepach as the officer who raised the red banner over the Hotel Smolensk on what is now Victory Square. By early October the fronts had crossed into Belarus and dug in west of Velizh and Rudnya and along the Pronya river.¹⁰

What Suvorov achieved

Soviet and Russian accounts give the advance as up to 225 km (the Great Soviet Encyclopedia) or 250 km on a front up to 400 km wide (the Russian Historical Encyclopedia). The first counts 5 infantry, 1 panzer and 1 motorized German divisions destroyed and 15 more defeated; the second, 7 destroyed and 14 badly beaten. Both stress that the offensive pinned German forces that might otherwise have gone south, where the main Soviet effort was crossing the Dnieper.¹¹

For Poland the recapture of the Smolensk region had a grim sequel. In April 1943 the Germans had announced the discovery of the graves of murdered Polish officers in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk. Once the area was back in Soviet hands, the Soviets began their own investigation there, and on 13 January 1944 they set up a commission under Nikolai Burdenko, which within two weeks published a report blaming the Germans. The Institute of National Remembrance describes it as the construction of the Katyn lie.¹²