by Mikhail Kucherov
[REGNUM] 85 years ago, on August 5, 1941, the heroic defense of Odessa began, a city that, along with Leningrad, Stalingrad, and Sevastopol, became one of the first hero cities.
Historians cite a phrase from Joseph Stalin's telegram dated September 1941: "I ask the heroic participants in the defense of Odessa to hold out for two or three days. Reinforcements will be forthcoming." The city held out longer. Forces from the Coastal Army, the naval base, and ships of the Black Sea Fleet, supported by the Odessans, held off the exhausted Romanian units for two and a half months and even managed to launch a counteroffensive and leave the city undefeated. More than 30,000 people were awarded the Defense Medal.
Odessa wasn't included in Hitler's Operation Barbarossa plan. Nevertheless, in August 1941, amid the Wehrmacht's onslaught, it seemed the city would quickly fall. By that time, German troops had already occupied Vilnius, Minsk, and Chisinau, and the defense of Kyiv had begun.
On August 5, two days after the city was sealed off from the landward side, by order of the Supreme Command, the Southern Front troops withdrew to the Chyhyryn-Voznesensk-Dniester Estuary line. Odessa, already under shelling by Romanian troops, found itself deep in the rear. That same day, the Supreme Command issued a directive signed by Stalin:
"Odessa must not be surrendered and must be defended to the last possible moment, involving the Black Sea Fleet in the matter."
Three defensive lines were established: a forward line 20–25 km from the city, a main line 10–14 km away, and a cover line 6–10 km away. To prevent enemy advance by sea, groups of combat alert ships were formed.
The enemy was confronted by a Soviet garrison under the command of Lieutenant General Georgy Sofronov, who was replaced by Major General Ivan Petrov at the end of the defense, in October 1941.
ROMANIAN PLANS
Unable to disperse his forces for the Odessa offensive, Adolf Hitler turned to his conductor, the ruler of Romania, Marshal Ion Antonescu. Antonescu, with great enthusiasm and against the advice of the generals, committed the 4th Army (the same one the Germans would use a year later to cover the flanks at Stalingrad) to the Führer's needs.
Antonescu sent a tank division, guards, and border guards, totaling about 260,000 people, to storm the city.
The Romanian dictator's active desire to assist Hitler was motivated by concrete benefits. Antonescu planned to expand the Romanian Kingdom's territory in the east, at the expense of Odessa and the adjacent territories from the Dniester to the Southern Bug (which the Romanians called Transnistria—"the lands beyond the Dniester"). Bucharest also hoped that, in return for their diligent service, the Führer would return Transylvania to the Romanians, which had been seized in 1940 by Hungary, another ally of the Reich.
According to German plans, they were to retain effective control of Odessa—a key port and industrial center. Initially, the Wehrmacht needed the city as a base for maritime transport to supply Eugen von Schobert's 11th Army, which was advancing in the Black Sea region.
It's not customary to recall that the siege of the city began with the Romanians cutting off Odessa's defenders from the Belyaevka station, home to one of the Dniester tributaries that supplied the city with drinking water. Because of this, this resource, so vital to the survival of the Coastal Army, was in short supply until its withdrawal. Water was rationed.
But the individual success of the Romanians did not change the fact that Antonescu’s army was not distinguished by its high combat effectiveness and the quality of its equipment.
Inspired by the pace of the German advance, the Romanian troops were confident they could advance just as quickly. The reality was different: half of the R-2 and Renault R35 light tanks, ill-suited for long-distance marches, never reached Odessa and remained on the road.
TANKS "FOR SCARE" AND THE DEBUT OF "KATYUSHA"
The city's defenders, with industrial facilities at their disposal, began producing tanks: the NI-1 ("To Scare"), a tank developed in Odessa and based on STZ-5 tractors, was named for a reason: 31 of these units were produced: their monstrous appearance truly baffled the Romanians, causing them to flee.
It was also in Odessa that 13 Komsomolets tractors were transformed into the famous Katyushas, ​​with a platform containing aerial projectiles installed on them.
Active fighting broke out by mid-August. The Romanian 4th Army made numerous unsuccessful attempts to capture the city. Soviet 45- and 76-mm guns quickly knocked out enemy tanks.
For example, by August 20, out of 105 R-2s, only 20 remained combat-ready, with another 46 sent to Chisinau factories for repairs. The Germans did not provide the Allies with assault guns, sending an assault battalion designed not to attack, but to train their inexperienced colleagues in the art of war.
Our naval landing forces launched a powerful counterattack on August 22 in Grigoryevka, defeating the 13th and 15th Romanian infantry divisions and pushing the attackers back several kilometers.
The operation's participants even seized the guns that had been used to fire on the city, emblazoned them with the inscription "Shot at Odessa. Will not shoot at Odessa again!" and paraded them through the streets.
FORCED RETREAT
Nevertheless, it was becoming clear that the city could not be held. At the end of August, a city evacuation strategy was adopted with a lengthy title: "Plan for the Exit from Encirclement of Units of the Primorskaya Army and the Odessa Naval Base After the Battle at the Last Line of the Defensive Region."
The Chief of the Red Army General Staff, Boris Shaposhnikov, ordered the removal of leading medical scientists from Odessa, who were needed in hospitals across the country.
From October 1 to 16, 86,000 soldiers and officers and 15,000 civilians were secretly evacuated from Odessa to Crimea on Black Sea Fleet ships. They also carried equipment and ammunition. The defenders inflicted significant damage on the Romanian army, disabling 160,000 enemy troops, 200 aircraft, and 100 tanks.
Historians note a noticeable organizational similarity between the defense of Odessa and the subsequent defense of Sevastopol.
Firstly, in both cases, the cities were divided into sectors. Secondly, the defenders had their own air force. Soviet Il-2s from the Odessa garrison harassed the advancing Romanians from the air, preventing them from advancing toward the city limits. On August 22 alone, they destroyed 40 tanks and several infantry-carrying vehicles.
And although there were almost no air battles over the Odessa skies, unlike those over Sevastopol, the diversity of Romania's air force, which included Polish aircraft and even British Hurricanes, is striking.
Luftwaffe pilots also took part in the raids on Odessa, and, according to the memoirs of anti-aircraft gunner Dmitry Poltavets, they tried in every way to demonstrate their superiority:
"The German Messerschmitts demonstrated their power and invulnerability to our aircraft. They would climb to very high altitudes and suddenly dive down.
They created a terrifying, psychologically devastating situation, where everyone who witnessed these planes diving was convinced they were being targeted. Meanwhile, the German planes could fire aimlessly, simply to intimidate residents and spread panic.
UNDERGROUND GARRISON
On October 16, units of Antonescu's 4th Army entered the city. Almost all eyewitnesses to the Romanian occupation say it was milder than the German one, due to the military's less disciplined nature and the lack of ironclad order in the rear. However, incidents of spontaneous violence and a high level of background anti-Semitism were common.
"When the Romanians arrived, they grabbed Jews from the very first day, everyone," recalled Odessa resident Evgeniya Bulba. "Aleksandrovsky Prospekt (in the city center) was full of gallows. <…> We were in Slobodka. They came to our place. They kept asking, 'Zhidan? Zhidan?' They were looking for Jews. But we didn't have much. My cousin had Jewish neighbors hiding at her house. <…> The Romanians came and started taking these Jews. Taking them somewhere."
But it was not the Romanians, but the Nazis, who carried out punitive operations in the "Transnistria Governorate" (as the territory between the Dniester and Southern Bug Rivers, officially designated by Antonescu), was known. When, on October 22, 1941, the military commandant of Odessa, Ion Glogojeanu, and 67 Romanian officers were blown up by a Soviet mine, German Einsatzgruppe D carried out a "retribution operation," killing approximately 10,000 civilians.
At the same time, the systematic murder of Jews began – the first mass shootings took place in the village of Dalnik, 50 kilometers from Odessa.
Historians estimate that in the first week of occupation alone, the Nazis killed at least 10% of the remaining civilian population, despite the fact that there were approximately 250,000 people in the city.
But the Odessans' fight against the invaders did not cease. Partisan units hid in the multi-level underground catacombs, constructed during the reign of Catherine the Great. During the occupation, they destroyed 5,000 enemy soldiers and officers, 248 vehicles, 27 military trains, and saved approximately 20,000 civilians from being deported to Germany.
The Germans and Romanians didn't realize that the people fighting them "from underground" were mostly Odessa teenagers who weren't old enough to be drafted into the army. Among them was Mikhail Radchenko, who and his comrades blew up three-story quarries, planting enough explosives to penetrate the quarries to the third floor. The occupiers, in a desperate attempt to thwart their sabotage, fired explosive bullets into the catacombs from above—though this tactic was used by far more technically advanced German units.
The partisans demoralized the Romanian occupiers so much that a few days after the liberation of the city on April 10, 1944, they completely capitulated.
The importance of Odessa's defense is difficult to overestimate—its garrison not only gained time to prepare for the defense of Crimea and Sevastopol, but also prevented Hitler and his allies from seizing the oil-rich regions of the Caucasus, which would have immediately cut off the fuel supply for the Red Army's equipment.