Ever since the German war machine occupied the Crimea in 1942, Hitler had been obsessed with the peninsula. In his eyes, the Crimea was the gateway to the Black Sea and the Romanian oilfields, on which his armies depended, and which were within distance of Crimean airbases. Hitler often referred to the Crimea as an “unsinkable aircraft carrier,” and for that reason, he said it was imperative to hold on to the peninsula at all costs

The Crimean Campaign was fought by German and Romanian forces as a part of Operation Barbarossa in late September 1941. While most Soviet forces were defeated, the Siege of Sevastopol lasted until early July 1942. The German 17^th Army garrisoned Crimea with assistance from Romanian troops until the 4^th Ukrainian Front recaptured Crimea beginning in November 1943 and ending in May 1944.

The Crimean Offensive, 1944 - The Russian Battle for the Crimea is the story of the Soviet onslaught and is composed of the following chapters:

• Timeline of Events
• Introduction: Barbarossa
• Battle of the Dnieper, August 26 – December 23, 1943
• Kerch-Eltigen Operation, November 1943
• Hiatus, December 1943 – March 1944
• The Crimean Offensive, April 8 – May 12, 1944
• Aftermath
• Further Reading
• Index

Author Ian Baxter does his usual great job of providing the reader with succinct histories, details on units, and in color profiles (based on photographs used in this book), with the main strength being the period photographs. Curiously enough, there are two errors in this otherwise very impressive book. The first is what appears to be a screenshot from a video game published in black and white of KV-85s advancing with Soviet infantry on page 17; the second is the color In Profile presentation of a Soviet T-34-85 tank that is clearly a T-34-76 on page 89. Other than those mistakes, this is an outstanding book on the Soviet Crimean Offensive.

The Germans and Romanians held out against the Soviet tide for as long as possible. A last-minute order to evacuate saved a lot of the army from annihilation during four days of evacuation, but more lives could have been spared had the order been given earlier. While 113,000 Axis troops were evacuated, over 31,700 Germans and 25,800 Romanians were killed or wounded, with over 20,000 lost in action and almost 10,000 captured. The Red Army losses were 84,331.

The Soviets had met their goal of retaking the Crimea, but took their time to do so.

As for the Soviets, the liberation of the Crimea was a great success, despite the fact that many thousands of enemy soldiers had managed to evade capture by being evacuated by sea. Stavka had not been in any rush to take the Crimea. One Soviet officer who had been interrogating a captured German officer openly admitted to him that ‘we were in no hurry to take the Crimea. After all, it was our biggest POW cage. The Germans have been virtually prisoners on the peninsula since November 1943. They guarded themselves. They supplied themselves. They went on leave and even returned by their own account.’

In the Aftermath,

The reverberations caused by the loss of the Crimea had little effect on the way operations were fought out during the summer of 1944 on the Eastern Front. Strategically, the Wehrmacht was already withdrawing through the Ukraine while the Red Army hounded them. Even before the Crimean Offensive was launched in April, Stavka was drawing up plans for a massive summer offensive – Operation Bagration – to annihilate the German Army Group Center. The offensive would be so destructive it would disrupt the whole German position in southern Russia and the Ukraine on a magnitude far greater than any other Soviet offensive launched to date.

Modelers cannot help but have a lot of inspiration for their models, vignettes, and dioramas from this book. While there are tanks and other equipment, there is naturally a large focus on soldiers, fortifications, and various landscapes where the fighting took place. Color In Profile pages are provided for extra details on colors. This was a brutal campaign fought over unforgiving terrain that included marshes, swamps, forests, mountains, and amphibious operations.

Profuse thanks to Casemate and IPMS/USA for providing the review sample.