One of a series of silent films made for the home market in Germany during WWII, “Europe’s Fight Against Bolshevism” shows German activities on the Eastern Front, with a focus on the Battle of Kiev. At :20 Werner Molders is shown, a World War II Ger…
One of a series of silent films made for the home market in Germany during WWII, “Europe’s Fight Against Bolshevism” shows German activities on the Eastern Front, with a focus on the Battle of Kiev. At :20 Werner Molders is shown, a World War II German Luftwaffe pilot, wing commander, and the leading German fighter ace in the Spanish Civil War. At :25 the head of the Luftwaffe, Hermann Wilhelm Göring, is seen along with Ernst Udet. At :46 the strategic situation in the Ukraine is shown with German forces pushing against Nikolayevsk near the Volga. At :51 German bicycle and motorcycle troops push by. At 1:00 a halftrack towing an artillery piece rumbles through the mud. At 1:14 German forces cross a levee. At 1:22 aerial views of Russian docks are seen with railroad trains loaded on cargo ships. At 1:37 artillery blasts Russian positions and grenades are thrown as troops rush forward into Soviet lines. A flamethrower is used. At 2:06 German forces reach the Dnieper River and cross in boats. The road to Kiev now appears open and armored vehicles and tanks move forward at 2:24. At 2:40 horses pull German artillery into battle. At 2:57 German mortars strike near Chernihiv. The onslaught continues. At 3:28 a well-thrown potato masher grenade destroys a building. At 3:32 the beginnings of a salient are seen as German forces rush to encircle Kiev. At 3:38 a motorcycle with sidecar races past and the assault on the ring around Kiev begins. At 3:56 Heinz Wilhelm Guderian is shown. At 4:04 a white flag of surrender is seen and thousands of Russian prisoners are shown marching past. At 4:18 the assault on Kiev reaches a climax. The city burns at 4;50. At 5:00 the Romanian army, part of the Axis, march towards Odessa. Odessa falls as the film ends.
The First Battle of Kiev was the German name for the operation that resulted in a very large encirclement of Soviet troops in the vicinity of Kiev during World War II. This encirclement is considered the largest encirclement in the history of warfare (by number of troops). The operation ran from 7 August to 26 September 1941 as part of Operation Barbarossa, the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union.In Soviet military history, it is referred to as the Kiev Strategic Defensive Operation, with somewhat different dating of 7 July – 26 September 1941.
Much of the Southwestern Front of the Red Army (Mikhail Kirponos) was encircled but small groups of Red Army troops managed to escape the pocket, days after the German panzers met east of the city, including the headquarters of Marshal Semyon Budyonny, Marshal Semyon Timoshenko and Commissar Nikita Khrushchev. Kirponos was trapped behind German lines and killed while trying to break out.
The battle was an unprecedented defeat for the Red Army, exceeding even the Battle of Białystok–Minsk of June–July 1941. The encirclement trapped 452,700 soldiers, 2,642 guns and mortars and 64 tanks, of which scarcely 15,000 escaped from the encirclement by 2 October.
