The Third Crushing Blow: Odesa and Crimea offensives

2025-04-13

In 1944, the Red Army delivers its third crushing blow on the Axis forces in eastern Europe: two major offensives to recapture the rest of Ukraine, and the Crimean peninsula. Map 1: Northern Black Sea coast and southern Ukraine The range where the two mighty blows were delivered. Ploesti, Romania is to the far left of the map, just north of Bucharest. Map 2: Map by Scott Bury Map 3: The Red Army’s Crimean offensive, 1944 Image 1: Issa Pliyev, Commander, Cavalry-Mechanized Group

In 1944, the Red Army delivers its third crushing blow on the Axis forces in eastern Europe: two major offensives to recapture the rest of Ukraine, and the Crimean peninsula.

Map 1: Northern Black Sea coast and southern Ukraine

The range where the two mighty blows were delivered. Ploesti, Romania is to the far left of the map, just north of Bucharest.

Map 2:

Map by Scott Bury

Map 3: The Red Army’s Crimean offensive, 1944

Image 1: Issa Pliyev, Commander, Cavalry-Mechanized Group

The Red Army, 4th Guards Cavalry Corps advancing across southern Ukraine, 1944

Miklós Horthy, Regent of Hungary, with Adolf Hitler in Budapest, 1938

The Red Army marches into “liberated” Odesa, 1944

Note the women soldiers in the ranks.

Sources:

Prit Buttar, The Reckoning: The Defeat of Army Group South, 1944. Oxford, UK: Osprey Publishing, 2020.