Operation Saturn was the battle of the Soviet Red Army to recover the North Caucasus and the Don River Plain from 1942 to 1943 during the Soviet-German War in World War II.

The Uranus mission from1942165438+10/9 was very successful. More than 300,000 soldiers of the German Sixth Army and the Fourth Armored Army under the command of friedrich paulus were surrounded in Stalingrad. In order to expand the results, the Soviet high command planned the winter offensive code-named Operation Saturn.

The first stage-trying to cut off the German Road A in the Caucasus-was quickly revised because of the winter storm operation in Erich von Manstein on June 5438+February 12, which rescued the Germans trapped in Stalingrad. When the Second Guards of the Soviet Union attached to Rodin Yakovlevich Malinowski prevented the Germans from advancing on Stalingrad, a revised Little Saturn operation was launched on 16 February 16.

This action included a pincer attack on the German clearing forces. The German clearing forces were attacked from the north by Soviet troops 1 and guards No.3, surrounded the Italian Army No.8 with130,000 soldiers in the Don River Valley, and advanced to Mirilov (Manstein ordered the German Armored Division No.6 to rescue about130,000 soldiers, with 45,000 Italian troops).

The 28th Soviet Army advancing southward may surround the German 1 Panzer Army and the Soviet's 5 1 Army and directly attack the clearing troops. 12 On February 24th, the tanks of the 24th Army of the Soviet Union arrived in Tasinskaya, which was the main base for the German Air Force to airlift the 6th Army besieged in Stalingrad. Soviet tanks captured the airport under the cover of ice and snow, when some German transport planes were parked at the airport.

Because the liberated troops might be surrounded, Manstein had no choice but to withdraw his troops to Kotnikov on February 29th, 65438. Far from the besieged German army in Stalingrad, he had to resign himself to fate (only 90,000 of the 300,000 besieged soldiers were captured, and only 5,000 survived and returned to Germany). The narrowing of the scope of action also enabled the A Army commanded by paul ludwig ewald von kleist to evacuate.

The second phase was put into operation on 10, 0943+ 13, and went online at 65438+65438. Gorikov's four army groups of Voronezh Japanese army surrounded and destroyed the Hungarian Second Army stationed near swoboda on the Don River, threatening the German Second Army commanded by Wedges. Therefore, the second army retreated, and the Japanese army in Voroney entered Kursk and Kharkov on February 5.

When the German army retreated across southern Ukraine without organization, in the third stage, the Japanese army in Voroney attacked the Dnieper River and surrounded the Second Army, while the Southwest Army and the Confederate Army captured Lugansk, advanced to the Azov Sea in the south, and surrounded the A Army Group of Kleist and the Don Army Group of manstein.

The operation started very smoothly. Kursk was liberated on February 8, 1943, Kharkov was liberated on February 6, and Rostov was abandoned by the Germans on February 8, 1943. There is a gap between Army Group A (occupying a small bridgehead opposite Kerch Peninsula) and Army Group Tang.

The Soviet Union 1 Guards threatened another gap between the Don Army Group and the German Central Army Group under the command of Gü nther von Kluge through Dnepropetrovsk in the attack. The Germans in Stalingrad surrendered on February 2, 1943, so that Constantine rokossovsky's Don Army Group could put into new action.

With the victory of Kursk, an ambitious plan was made to attack the prominent part of the Central Army Group in orel and push forward to Bryansk.

But at this time, the hope of the Soviet high command exceeded the ability of the exhausted attacking troops. Supply difficulties delayed the action of the troops that had already advanced 650 kilometers (about 400 miles) from Stalingrad to the west until February 25th, and the strong German defense made the action only a little successful in the west of Kursk, even less successful in orel.

At the same time, in order to ensure the security of the south, the high command of the national defense forces decided to abandon the Lezhev projection near Moscow, with the aim of straightening the defense line and sending more troops to counter the Soviet troops in eastern Ukraine. Manstein's counterattack became stronger because of the deployment of well-trained Waffen SS equipped with tiger tanks. 1943 started the counterattack in poltava on February 20th, and recovered Kharkov in the third week of March (see Kharkov's counterattack).