Yelnya Offensive

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Yelnya Offensive
Part of World War II, Battle of Smolensk
Date August 30, 1941 - September 8, 1941 Location Soviet Union Result Soviet tactical success
Combatants
Axis Powers	Soviet Union
Commanders
	Major General Konstantin Rakutin
Strength
?	?
Casualties
45,000 KIA or WIA or Captured	unknown

Operation Barbarossa
Bialystok-Minsk – Smolensk – Uman – 1st Kiev – Yelnya – Odessa – Leningrad – 1st Crimea – 1st Rostov

The Soviet Army's Yelnya Offensive (August 30, 1941- September 8, 1941) was part of the Battle of Smolensk during the Great Patriotic War.

The offensive was against the semi-circular Yelnya salient which the Germans had extended 50km East of Smolensk forming a launching place for an attack on Moscow. On August 26 Stavka ordered the 24th Army (commander: Major General Konstantin Rakutin) to start an offensive on August 30 against the salient. On September 3, under the threat of the encirclement the Germans started retreating from the salient while maintaining resistance on the flanks. On September 6 Yelnya was retaken. The Soviet offensive continued until September 8, when it was stopped at the new German defense line.

This was the most substantial reverse that the Wehrmacht had suffered up to that date and the first successful planned Soviet offensive operation in the Soviet-German war. German losses in the operation were 45,000 killed, wounded or captured.

The Yelnya Offensive is also associated with the creation of the elite Soviet Guards units.

[edit] Reference

• Voyenno-Istorichesky Zhurnal (Military History Journal), # 10, October 1986.