Difficulties of liberation: battles for Krasnodar in early 1943

The offensive operation of the Red Army in the North Caucasus in 1943 was one of the turning points of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. During this battle, on February 12, Krasnodar, the administrative center of the Kuban and an important transport hub in southern Russia, was liberated from German occupation. According to the tradition established in historiography, the struggle for this city is associated with the events of the first half of February 1943, when the fighting took place within the city and on the outskirts of Krasnodar. The aim of the publication was a comprehensive study of the course of the struggle for Krasnodar between the Red Army and the Wehrmacht in early 1943. The article used the data presented in the works of A.S. Zavyalov, A.S. Kalyadin, A.A. Grechko, V. Tike, S.V. Janusz, R. Forzik. The main sources for the study were Soviet and German operational documents of the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation and the National Archives and Documentation Administration of the United States. Along with them, the memories of the participants in the hostilities near Krasnodar were used. In the course of the study, the author relied on historical-comparative and historical-genetic methods. The planning and preparation of the operation in the Krasnodar direction are analyzed, the Soviet and German-Romanian forces are characterized, the main stages of the battles for Krasnodar are identified, the operations of the Red Army combat units in the course of the struggle for the city are studied and systematically described. Particular emphasis is placed on studying the difficulties that the Soviet troops encountered during the first large-scale offensive operation in the North Caucasus. Considerable attention is paid to determining the motives that guided the Soviet and German military commanders during the struggle for Krasnodar. The Red Army failed to implement the full-scale offensive plans near Krasnodar. Victories near Stalingrad and the Middle Don allowed counting on the defeat of the troops of Germany and its allies in the North Caucasus. But the Soviet troops did not have enough strength and time to implement this plan. The command of the German Seventeenth Army managed to escape encirclement and divert its forces to the line prepared for defense-the Kuban bridgehead. Nevertheless, the winter campaign of 1943 ended with a retreat, which means the defeat of the Wehrmacht in the Caucasus and the entire south of Russia, the beginning of a turning point in the struggle on the Soviet-German front.