How did Taganrog escape the devastation of the Stalingrad batlle of WW2?

Upvote:4

Mostly luck - though at about 450 km distance from Stalingrad/Volgograd it was well behind the main lines for most of that conflict.

Twice, in December 1941 and March 1943, Taganrog happened to be roughly where the furthest extent of German and Soviet advance halted from supply exhaustion. Then when hostilities resumed:

  • Russian counter attacks in December 1941 as well as the German responses centred around Moscow.
  • The German offensive in Spring 1942 was launched further north, aimed through Voronezh with (mostly successful) intent of encircling Soviet forces around Taganrog and Rostov-on-Don.
  • The German offensive in Spring 1943 was exclusively focused on Kursk, much further north.
  • The Soviet offensive in Spring 1943 did, at its southernmost extent, run straight through Taganrog; however when this occurred in August (1) the local German defenders were too weak to mount a strong defense; and (2) Taganrog itself was on a backwater peninsula peripheral to the nearby conflict. enter image description here

Upvote:6

Taganrog never saw the city fighting Stalingrad or other sites of major battles did. Both times it changed hands the defenders were too weak to hold it, and most fighting was done in the vicinity of the city, but not inside. Nevertheless, according to damage assesment commission, which worked in the city after it was retaken by Red Army in 1943, damage to the city really was extensive: for example, the city lost 1300 residential buildings - 15% of available housing; out of 31 schools 13 were completely destroyed, and all of the rest were damaged to some extent. All in all, the commission registered 4082 material damage acts, and assessed the damage to the city to ~778.5 million rubles - about 203 million of 2018 USD, if we take the value of dollar in 1946 (53 rubles) and account for inflation.

By the way, the steel mill was amongst the factories listed as damaged in the report. In the years after the war, USSR directed a large-scale restoration effort on the territories damaged by the war. Thus, the steel mill was likely restored to working condition amongst hundreds of other factories elsewhere.

And the hotel? Probably just lucked out to not be amongst those 1300 residential buildings.

Source: Донскова Л. А., "Цена победы: о материальном ущербе и демографических потерях СССР в годы Великой Отечественной войны (общесоюзный и региональный аспекты)" // "Вестник Таганрогского института имени А. П. Чехова", 2010, специальный выпуск № 2, стр. 207, retrieved @ https://cyberleninka.ru/journal/n/vestnik-taganrogskogo-instituta-imeni-a-p-chehova#/967218

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