The Reserve Front’s (24th Army’s) El’nia Offensive, 8–21 August
The First Phase, 8–17 August
When the Stavka initially formulated its offensive plans in mid-August, it fully intended to conduct offensive operations along the Moscow axis with both Timoshenko’s Western and Zhukov’s Reserve Fronts. In fact, in the wake of Group Kachalov’s defeat and the destruction of much of 28th Army during the first week of August, Zhukov, the Reserve Front’s commander, did all in his power to have Rakutin’s 24th Army, then containing German forces in the El’nia bridgehead, support Kachalov by striking hard at the German-occupied salient around the city.
Both before and after Group Kachalov’s defeat and destruction, the Germans and the Soviets alike agreed that the El’nia bridgehead was key terrain for one basic reason – it represented an important jumping-off position for a German advance on Moscow. Therefore, because it seemed so important to the Germans, the Stavka made it one of its prime targets as it prepared its counteroffensives to halt the German advance. In addition, like the Soviet’s famous Kursk Bulge in the summer of 1943, which the Germans saw as an opportunity to destroy a large Soviet force, although in miniature compared with Kursk, the El’nia bridgehead in the late summer of 1941 appeared to offer the Soviet command an excellent opportunity to smash and destroy at least three German divisions, a feat the Red Army had never before accomplished.
See Map 99. The El’nia Bridgehead, 8 August 1941.
By 8 August, the German-occupied El’nia bridgehead on the eastern bank of the Desna River was 22 kilometers wide and up to 12 kilometers deep. It extended from the town of Ushakovo, 12 kilometers north of El’nia, southward along the Desna River’s eastern bank to just south of the village of Lipnia, 10 kilometers south of El’nia, and then eastward in a rough arc to a distance of 10-12 kilometers. The bridgehead’s eastern extremity was anchored on the villages of Klematina, 12 kilometers east-northeast of El’nia, and Pronino, 10 kilometers east of the city, both of which the Germans converted into strongpoints bristling with weapons.
By this time the bridgehead was defended by 15th and 268th Infantry Divisions of General of Infantry Friedrich Materna’s XX Army Corps, which had just relieved the original occupants of the salient, XXXXVI Motorized Corps’ 10th Panzer and SS “Das Reich” Motorized Divisions, both of which were subordinate to Armeegruppe Guderian. In fact, on 8 August, SS “Das Reich” was still in the process of turning its sector of perimeter along the bridgehead’s eastern front to XX Corps’ 292nd Infantry Division, a process it completed the next day.1 The SS Division then moved northwestward to assume control of the front between El’nia and the Dnepr River. Throughout the entire relief operation, heavy fighting raged around the El’nia perimeter and along the slightly more than 40-kilometer front from El’nia to the Dnepr River, as the Western Front’s 20th Army and the Reserve Front’s 24th Army tried to crush the bridgehead and sever its communications with Smolensk.2