Tikhvin Offensive | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Part of Eastern Front (World War II) - World War II | |||||||
Maximum German advance (November 12) | |||||||
| |||||||
Belligerents | |||||||
Germany | Soviet Union | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb Georg von Küchler Ernst Busch |
Vsevolod Yakovlev Kirill Meretskov[note 1] Nikolai Klykov Mikhail Khozin Ivan Fedyuninsky[note 2] | ||||||
Units involved | |||||||
Army Group North
Leningrad Area:
|
Red Army[note 3]
Leningrad Front:
| ||||||
Strength | |||||||
|
| ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
45,000 casualties[1] | 190,000 casualties (of which 80,000 are dead, imprisoned or missing)[1] |
The Tikhvin Offensive was a military operation undertaken by the German army in October 1941 during World War II in the course of Operation Barbarossa. The offensive, conducted entirely around the Volkhov River, was launched by Adolf Hitler with the primary objective of cutting off the supply routes supplying Leningrad. In addition, the German high command intended the deployment of troops in the region to cover the northern flank of the parallel offensive that the Third Reich was launching towards Moscow at that time and also to link up with the allied forces in Finland. The powerful Soviet counteroffensives, added to the accumulated attrition of the German army and the overextension of its logistic network, led to the collapse of the Army Group Norths and the German withdrawal from the occupied ground in the succession of combats.[2]
The Soviet victory at Tikhvin marked their first successful counteroffensive in the sector and allowed Leningrad to continue to hold out in what would become one of the bloodiest sieges in history. The German Army Group North would henceforth not execute any further offensives in the region, being relegated to a defensive role.[1][3]
Cite error: There are <ref group=note>
tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=note}}
template (see the help page).