The Nikopol Bridgehead

After the Germans had suffered multiple defeats at the hands of the Russians during the Summer of 1943, the Germans held only two positions on the east bank of the Dnieper River. The Nikopol and Kanev Bridgeheads were the last …

1944-01-13

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After the Germans had suffered multiple defeats at the hands of the Russians during the Summer of 1943, the Germans held only two positions on the east bank of the Dnieper River. The Nikopol and Kanev Bridgeheads were the last footholds, and the Germans intended to utilize these positions to regain the lost territory and to reopen land communications with the isolated XVII Army on the Crimean Peninsula. The Russian High Command, Stavka, had no intentions of allowing the Germans to regroup for a spring offensive. The Russian renewed their assault on December 24, 1943, in IV Panzer Army's Kiev sector. Within a few days, the Germans were quickly failing back. German forces had to be pulled from the other three armies in the area to stop the Russian surge. VI Army, the controlling force in the Nikopol area, was required to provide troops it could ill afford to lose. Additional Russian offensives were launched against the other three armies in early January as the Germans were slowing the Russians in the Kiev offensive. The Nikopol Bridgehead was attacked on January 10. The Russians hurled unit after unit at the German defenders, but were only able to advance a few miles. The Russians were forced to regroup and renew the attack on January 31. This time, however, the Russians succeeded in capturing Apostolovo, west of Nikopol, thus splitting the VI Army in half. Counterattacks could not oust the Russians, and Nikopol fell on February 9, 1944. The Russians had now totally cleared the east bank of the Dnieper River.

Nikopol, Ukraine

The Nikopol–Krivoi Rog Offensive was an offensive by the Red Army's 3rd Ukrainian Front and elements of the 4th Ukrainian Front against the German 6th Army in the area of Nikopol and Krivoi Rog in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast in central Ukraine between 30 January and 29 February 1944. It took place on the Eastern Front of World War II and was part of the wider Dnieper–Carpathian offensive, a Soviet attack against Army Group South to retake the rest of Ukraine that fell to Germany in 1941. Following the Soviet advance to the Dnieper in the Battle of the Dnieper during late 1943, German forces managed to hold to the Nikopol bridgehead on the left bank of the Dnieper, the area of manganese ore mines of crucial importance to German war production that Adolf Hitler insisted on holding.

Wikipedia: Nikopol-Krivoi Rog Offensive

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