Winter campaign of 1941–1942
| Winter campaign of 1941–1942 | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of Eastern Front (World War II) | |||||||||
Map of the Soviet 1941–1942 winter counteroffensive. | |||||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
| Germany | Soviet Union | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
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Erich Hoepner Adolf Strauss Ludwig Kübler Walter Model |
Georgy Zhukov Ivan Konev Vasily Sokolovsky Dmitry Lelyushenko | ||||||||
The winter campaign of 1941–1942 was the name given by Soviet military command to the period from 5 December 1941 to 7 May 1942 that marked the commencement of Soviet counter-offensives following the Operation Barbarossa. The campaign began with the Moscow Strategic Offensive Operation (5 December 1941 – 7 January 1942) with the simultaneous Kerch-Feodosia Amphibious Operation (25 December 1941 – 2 January 1942). Although the Red Army counter-offensives forced the German army into the retreat and led to the recapture of important sites such as Tikhvin, Klin and Rostov in December 1941, the Red Army mostly failed to encircle the German units there and Germans managed to avoid significant casualties.
The operations in central and northern European Russia began with the conclusion of the Moscow counter-offensive almost simultaneously with the Oboyan–Kursk Offensive Operation (3 January 1942 – 26 January 1942), the Lyuban Offensive Operation (7 January 1942 – 30 April 1942), the Demyansk Offensive Operation (7 January 1942 – 20 May 1942), the Orel–Bolkhov Offensive Operation (8 January 1942 – 28 April 1942), and the Rzhev-Vyazma Strategic Offensive Operation (8 January 1942 – 20 April 1942). (not to be confused with Operation Mars, which refers to another Soviet operation in the same area, during November and December 1942).
The campaign concluded with the Barvenkovo-Lozovaya Offensive Operation (18 January 1942 – 31 January 1942), a renewed attempt to retake Crimea during the Crimean Offensive Operation (27 January 1942 – 15 April 1942) and the Bolkhov Offensive Operation (24 March 1942 – 3 April 1942).