On 17 November 1941 the Soviet South Front counterattacked General Ewald von Kleist's First Panzer Army north of Rostov-on-Don, while Kleist's panzers drove on into the city. The Germans took Rostov on 21 November but gave it up about a week later and fell back to the Mius River. Hitler then relieved Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt.
Battle of Rostov
17 November 1941 · 84 years ago
Two offensives at once
By November 1941 Army Group South had overrun most of Ukraine, and Kleist's panzer army was pushing east toward Rostov, on the lower Don, the gateway to the Caucasus. The South Front under General Yakov Cherevichenko was ordered to strike back, both to protect the Caucasus and to tie down German forces while the Red Army prepared its counterblow before Moscow.1
On 17 November two things happened at once. The First Panzer Army renewed its drive on Rostov against the Soviet 56th Army, and the Soviet 37th Army, with elements of the 9th and 18th Armies, hit Kleist's northern flank about fifty miles north of the city.2
Rostov taken and lost
The German III Panzer Corps under General Eberhard von Mackensen broke the 56th Army's line and took Rostov on 21 November. But the Soviet attack in the north now threatened its flank and rear, and the city was attacked from the south across the frozen Don and from the north. Kleist's armies, as Britannica puts it, captured the city only to lose it a week later. On 28 November Kleist ordered Rostov given up, and Soviet troops entered it on 29 November.3
When Hitler returned to his East Prussian headquarters on 29 November, Ziemke and Bauer write, he found the rarest kind of news thus far in the war: German troops were retreating. Kleist pulled his right flank back behind the Mius River, where the Soviet advance stopped at the beginning of December.4
A field marshal dismissed
Hitler wanted the retreat stopped short of the Mius. Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, commander of Army Group South, backed Kleist, refused to countermand the withdrawal and offered his resignation; in the first days of December Hitler relieved him and gave the army group to Field Marshal Walther von Reichenau. The withdrawal to the Mius went ahead all the same.5
The Rostov counteroffensive pinned down German forces in the south as the Red Army opened its counteroffensive before Moscow in early December, told in our article on the Battle of Moscow.6
Second Battle of Heligoland Bight, 1917: a chase through the minefields
17 November 1917 · 108 years ago
British light cruisers, backed by battlecruisers, attacked German minesweepers clearing paths through British minefields in the Heligoland Bight in World War I. German battleships came out, HMS Calypso was hit on the bridge, and the clash ended without a clear result.
Read the full story of Second Battle of Heligoland Bight, 1917: a chase through the minefields ›
