On 7 January 1942 the Soviet Volkhov Front opened the Lyuban offensive, an attempt to break the German siege of Leningrad. Its 2nd Shock Army broke deep into the German rear but never reached Lyuban. Cut off in the forests and swamps, it was destroyed by the end of June, and its commander, Andrey Vlasov, was captured.
Battle of Lyuban
7 January 1942 · 84 years ago
A plan to relieve Leningrad
German Army Group North cut Leningrad off from the rest of the Soviet Union in September 1941, and through the first winter of the siege its people starved. The relief attempt was given to the Volkhov Front under General Kirill Meretskov, made up of the 4th, 52nd and 59th Armies and the new 2nd Shock Army. The 2nd Shock Army was to break through across the Volkhov River and push northwest toward the town of Lyuban, on the railroad from Leningrad to Moscow, while the 54th Army of the Leningrad Front attacked toward the same area from the north. The wider story of the city is told in our article on the siege of Leningrad.1
The armies were not ready. Their troops had not finished assembling, and they had only about a quarter of the ammunition they needed.2
7 January or 13 January?
The offensive began on 7 January 1942, but the first attacks across the frozen river achieved nothing. On 13 January the 2nd Shock Army, now commanded by General Nikolai Klykov, attacked again and broke into the German line. Because the real breakthrough began that day, some accounts date the start of the offensive to 13 January instead.3
A narrow gap and a long pocket
In the second half of January the 2nd Shock Army broke through the German front and drove deep into a vast, almost empty country of frozen forests and swamps. It came within a few miles of Lyuban but never took it. Everything it needed had to come in through a narrow neck in the German line, only a few miles wide.4
On 19 March German attacks from the north and south closed the neck. On 27 March Soviet troops broke through and opened it again, but only as a narrow corridor. On 23 April Moscow removed Meretskov and abolished the Volkhov Front, placing its armies under the Leningrad Front.5
Destruction of the 2nd Shock Army and Vlasov
General Andrey Vlasov, one of the commanders of the Moscow counteroffensive, was sent to the Volkhov Front as Meretskov's deputy in March 1942. Later that month he flew into the pocket, and he led the 2nd Shock Army through its last months. The army was neither reinforced nor allowed to withdraw while there was still time.6
When the order to pull out finally came in May, it was too late. On 30 May the Germans closed the neck of the pocket again. Soviet attacks in late June brought out only some of the wounded and other men. On 28 June the Germans declared the battle over and counted about 33,000 prisoners.7
Vlasov hid in the forests until a German patrol picked him up on 12 July 1942. In captivity he agreed to work with the Germans and lent his name to the so-called Russian Liberation Army. He was later handed over to the Soviets, tried and hanged in Moscow in August 1946.8
The cost was very high. The statistical study of Soviet losses edited by Grigori Krivosheev, which dates the operation from 7 January to 30 April 1942, gives 308,367 casualties for the Volkhov Front and the 54th Army, of which 95,064 were killed, missing or captured. The siege of Leningrad was finally lifted on 27 January 1944. The Eastern Front battles around the city are covered in our guide to the greatest battles of the Eastern Front.9
Also on this day
Battle of Kunfuda Bay
7 January 1912 · 114 years ago
Italian warships cruising the Red Sea found a small Ottoman flotilla of gunboats in the harbor of Kunfuda during the Italo-Turkish War. The engagement ended with the Ottoman squadron destroyed, and Italy then declared a blockade of Ottoman ports on the Red Sea.
