The Capture of Balta

The 11th Army, advancing on the right side of Army Group South, skirted the Rumanian border with the Black Sea port of Odessa as its primary objective. The small town of Balta, located 120 miles northwest of Odessa, had changed …

1941-08-03

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The 11th Army, advancing on the right side of Army Group South, skirted the Rumanian border with the Black Sea port of Odessa as its primary objective. The small town of Balta, located 120 miles northwest of Odessa, had changed hands several times during recent fighting, but was currently held by the Russians in battalion strength. As the German 239th Infantry Division attacked to the east of the town, and the Rumanian 6th Infantry attacked to the west, the 744th Engineer Regiment, less one company, was ordered to take Balta, preparatory to building a 24 ton highway bridge across the Kodyma River just south of the town. At the time, Company C, 744th Engineers under command of First Lt. Ehrhart, was temporarily attached to the 239th, repairing vehicular bridges east of Balta. Upon learning that his parent unit was encountering difficulty in reaching Balta, Lt. Ehrhart, on his own initiative, decided to take the town with a surprise attack by Company C from the east.

Balta, Ukraine

Operation Barbarossa was the code name for the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union, which started on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II. The operation put into action Nazi Germany's ideological goal of conquering the western Soviet Union so as to repopulate it with Germans. The German Generalplan Ost aimed to use some of the conquered people as slave labour for the Axis war effort while acquiring the oil reserves of the Caucasus as well as the agricultural resources of various Soviet territories. Their ultimate goal included the eventual extermination, enslavement, Germanization and mass deportation to Siberia of the Slavic peoples, and to create more Lebensraum for Germany.

Wikipedia: Operation Barbarossa

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