November 21 is considered the date of the first capture of Rostov-on-Don by the Wehrmacht troops. Despite thousands of losses on both sides, the Nazis held the Don capital for eight days, and this period went down in history as the "bloody week".
From the very beginning of the war, tens of thousands of Rostovites built defensive structures and fortifications around the city, removing 10 million cubic meters of soil. They made anti-tank ditches and escarps, trenches and shelters for military equipment, dugouts and observation posts. These fortifications stretched 115 km from the Don River through Novocherkassk and along the Tuzlov River to the village of Generalskoye, along the Donskoy Kamenny Chulek gully reached the Khapry station.
The battles with the elite 1st Panzer Army of General Ewald von Kleist lasted for about a month, from October 20 to November 21, 1941. The first attack on Rostov from Taganrog lasted ten days. In the course of repelling the first German offensive on Rostov in the last decade of October, the soldiers of the 343rd Stavropol, 353rd Novorossiysk infantry and 68th Kushchevsk cavalry divisions stood up against the tanks and motorized infantry of the 3rd motorized corps of General Eberhard August von Mackensen. As a result, the selected German 3rd Motorized Corps, consisting of two tank and two motorized divisions, suffered significant losses, was forced to abandon the offensive on Rostov and shifted its efforts to the Novoshakhtinskoe direction, bypassing from the north.
The Nazis launched a new offensive on the city on November 17, inflicting a tank attack from the north, through the village of Bolshiye Saly, against Colonel Ivan Seredkin's 317th Baku Rifle Division, which had not yet been fired upon in battles. At the cost of their lives, 16 gunners repulsed the attack of 50 tanks, 12 of which were burned and 18 were knocked out. The artillery heroes were posthumously awarded orders and medals, and Sergei Oganov and Sergei Vavilov were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. The streets of Rostov are named after them, and a majestic memorial has been erected at the place of death.
Hurrying to the rescue of a heroic battery with a company of anti-tank rifles, the divisional commander, Colonel Seredkin, was killed. In three days of the battle, the Baku division lost 8,971 soldiers and commander and all guns and machine guns. The regiments of the 31st, 353rd, 343rd divisions, battalions of the 6th tank brigade, cadets of military schools, and militias also thinned out. By 16 o'clock on November 21, 1941, the formations and units of the 56th Separate Army withdrew to the left bank of the Don.
The temporary capture of Rostov was also not cheap to the German troops: up to 3,500 soldiers and officers were killed, more than 5,000 were wounded and frostbitten, 154 wounded and burned tanks, hundreds of cars and motorcycles, many other military equipment and weapons. The offensive power of the 13th and 14th Panzer, 60th and 1st "Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler" motorized divisions that stormed the Don capital was so undermined that they were not in a position to conduct a further offensive into the Caucasus.
Candidate of Historical Sciences, Associate Professor Natalia Bakulina, who worked for more than 40 years at the Faculty of History of Rostov State University and who at the time of the capture of the city was 25 years old, in the article "Cloudy Days", published in 2006 in the publication "Donskoy Vremennik", recalls: " I went into the city on the very first day of the appearance of the German troops on the streets. That our victory was inevitable, I did not doubt even in the most bitter moments of the second six-month occupation of the city.
Burning buildings in the city center, streets strewn with rubble and broken glass, corpses of soldiers remain in my memory. I remember the dead Cossack near the current main department store, not far from his dead horse; people walked by indifferently and for some reason diligently and far bypassed the horse.
There's also a truck with a dead chauffeur in the cab. Burnt into the memory of the German field kitchen, into which the Russian peasant was harnessed. And one more scene at the corner of Bolshaya Sadovaya and Gazetny Lane: a group of German officers stopped and an elderly Jew approached them. In German, he asked one of the officers, apparently senior in rank: is it true that the Germans exterminate Jews. He answered in the negative, and then the Jew, bending obsequiously, extended his hand to him. In response, the officer gave the Jew a contemptuous glance, put his hands behind his back in a demonstrative manner and left.
We did not have to see the military equipment of the Germans. We were surprised by the horse-drawn carts - solid wooden wagons with rubber spikes, and the horses of fantastic beauty: huge, red, with white mane and shaggy legs. I thought with envy: we would like this. The uniforms of soldiers and officers were adjusted in size and height and surprised by their neatness, as if they had not been in battles either. The overcoats of green cloth seemed solid. However, according to the Germans themselves, they were made aus Holz - "from wood", from some kind of synthetic fiber that did not keep warm and was not at all suitable for our climate."
The first occupation of the city lasted eight days and went down in history as the "bloody week". SS men of the "Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler" division shot and tortured hundreds of civilians: old people, women, children, especially in the Proletarsky district of the city. On 1st Sovetskaya Street, near house No. 2, there was a pile of 90 corpses of the inhabitants of this house; on the 36th line, near the orphanage, 61 people were killed; at the corner of the 40th line and Murlychev street, the Nazis opened fire one by one for bread, killing 43 people: old people, women and children; at the Armenian cemetery, the Nazis shot up to 200 local residents with machine guns.
During the counteroffensive of the Southern Front troops near Rostov-on-Don from November 17 to December 2, 1941, formations and units of the 56th Army from November 27, three operational groups went on the offensive and, in cooperation with the Novocherkassk group of forces of the 9th Army, were liberated on November 29 city from the enemy.
According to a study by historians of the Southern Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, everyone around was talking about the fact that the city was visited by cruel aggressors. Observations of the Red Army were recorded in the almanac "Atrocities of the German fascist invaders."
“We, Captain Samogorsky, battalion commissar Pelipenko, military doctor of the 3rd rank Barabash, lieutenant Belov, foreman Bragin and a group of Red Army men picked up the corpse of battalion commissar Volosov, brutally tortured by the German fascists, on the battlefield. torture and atrocities of the Germans. The liberators of the native city of Rostov who died a heroic death were buried by us with military honors, says one of the acts of the almanac.
In a semi-encirclement, the Germans could not withstand the concentric attacks of our troops and by the end of November 29 left the city.
The troops that liberated Rostov-on-Don received a greeting telegram from Supreme Commander-in-Chief Joseph Stalin on the evening of November 29: “I congratulate you on the victory over the enemy and the liberation of Rostov from the Nazi invaders. with Generals Kharitonov and Remezov, who hoisted our glorious Soviet banner over Rostov!"
At Rostov, the Wehrmacht suffered its first major defeat, and its 1st Panzer Army was driven back 70-80 km to the west. The 14th and 16th Panzer Divisions, the 60th and Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler motorized divisions, and the 49th Mountain Rifle Corps were defeated. The enemy lost over 5,000 grenadiers killed, about 9,000 wounded and frostbitten, destroyed and captured as trophies 275 tanks, 359 guns, 4,400 vehicles of various brands and purposes, 80 combat aircraft and many other military equipment and weapons.
As a result of a successful counterattack by the troops of the Southern Front and the 56th Army, Rostov-on-Don was liberated, and the elite tank and motorized divisions of the army of Baron von Kleist were defeated and thrown back 80-100 km, to the line of the Mius River. In the battles for Rostov, fighters and commanders of the Rostov regiment of the people's militia distinguished themselves, the security officers of the 230th regiment of Lieutenant Colonel Pavel Demin, divisions and brigades of the 56th Army. The victory at Rostov will remain in history as the first strategic success of Soviet troops in the Great Patriotic War.
