Soviet evacuation of Odessa, split from discussion on Historia magazine

Some "old news" on the Historia front: the October issue has a story called "Odessa was not conquered by the Romanians, it was evacuated by the Soviets", from the memories of a certain Dumitru Arapu, artilerry lieutenant. Finally, I've seen the awful truth printed in bold letters!

This sentence has some truth (un simbure de adevar)...

Gen. Dénes

The evacuation was ordered when it was clear that Odessa was going to fall after a long and bloody fight. If the sentence is given as a summary, it's simply false as it implies that Odessa fell without fighting.

I doubt the Soviets would have given the title of Hero City to a city that was served on a plate to the enemy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero_city

There is a saying: "When you wrestle a gorilla, you do not stop when you get tired, you stop when it gets tired." The Odessans got tired first.
That applies to any siege.
Radu

It's not that simple! Odessa was evacuated due to the German threat to Crimeea; otherwise, as it was seen, the Romanian troops (with the small German help they had) would have just bled to death in the trenches! The proof is the succesful counter-attack issued by the Red Army to mask the retreat intention.
Nobody ever implied that Odessa fell without a fight! Simply there wouldn't have been any use for maintaining it and let Sebastopol fall - which didn't happen until July 1942, more than half a year AFTER Odessa's conquest. And without the Soviet reinforcements used there, perhaps Odessa would have fallen from September or so; in the meantime, the Romanian reinforcements were almost absent!
About the gorilla, Radu, it seems that in this particular case it managed to pull out an arm (and a leg) of the Romanian assailant; so, before getting tired, perhaps it (the gorilla, that is) would have ripped the head of, as well!

Not necessarily. The evacuation was ordered when priorities of the Stavka shifted (i.e., the defence if Crimea became strategically more important). The Soviet decision makers were not particularly reknown for evacuating a key city just because pressure by the enemy was mounting.

Gen. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on December 10, 2011 09:58 am

So, in other words, the Wehrmacht finally conquered Odessa when it entered the Crimea!!!!!!
When we look at the number of victims from each side, questions begin (well, they begun back then, actually...) to rise. Yet few were found responsible, as the main reason for this "Romanian-only" siege was Antonescu's will to proove to Hitler the worthiness of the Romanian army, to "wash" the shame of 1940's retreats and so on...

Not necessarily. The evacuation was ordered when priorities of the Stavka shifted (i.e., the defence if Crimea became strategically more important). The Soviet decision makers were not particularly reknown for evacuating a key city just because pressure by the enemy was mounting.

Gen. Dénes

I did not say that the evacuation was ordered because it was going to fall, but when it was clear it was going to fall, under the simultaneous pressure on Odessa itself and on Crimea. Indeed, Soviets estimated that they could not defend both Crimea and Odessa in the same time, and given the fact the home of Soviet Black Fleet base was then Crimea, the decision to evacuate Odessa came on 30 September / 1 October.

This decision came after a long siege, but the Romanian troops were slowly closing in and outcome was predictable.

The evolution of many battles was related to fronts elsewhere, so it's like saying that the Battle of Kursk was lost by the Germans because Hitler cancelled the offensive due to Allied landings in Sicily, although more honest is to say that the offensive was progressing miserably and was going nowhere.

And yet the counter-attack mounted by the Red Army was quite succesful - so, given the rate of Romanian losses (some divisions remained at less than 20% fighting capacity from June), given the fact that both on sea and in the air we (Romanians) did not have the superiority much-needed, given the fact that the besieged received far more supplies and reinforcements than the Romanian Army, well, I wouldn't be so sure about the outcome!

This post has been edited by MMM on December 10, 2011 07:06 pm

The main defense belt was penetrated and the Odessa harbor was in range of Romanian heavy artillery, so it was a matter of time. The last strong Soviet counter-attack was to divert attention from the evacuation.

It's hard to believe OKW would have allowed such a obstacle behind for an undetermined amount of time, looking how the events unfolded in 1942. So even if it took German units being redeployed there, the mop up was necessary to secure the Fall Blau operation.

We can speculate a lot but the fact remains that over the entire operation the Romanian army progressed constantly towards Odessa albeit with stalls and heavy losses. The situation was not changing at the moment the evacuation was decided.

This post has been edited by dragos on December 10, 2011 07:05 pm

I do not disagree, but:
1) there was some German support, which was about to increase if Odessa didn't fell;
2) the Romanian troops would have simply waned away if no replacements were issued in a matter of weeks;
3) the Romanian army (and its operations) was just a fragment of OKW's plans for the Eastern Front, so the ultimate decision was not in our hands.

What do you base this affirmation on?

On 25 September three new divisions have been put at the disposition of the 4th Army and the ratio of forces was constantly favorable to Romanian troops and increasing throughout the operation from 2.8/1 at the beginning to 3.1/1 in the end.

First of all, I shall address this issue in a more documented manner in the next days; right now, from what I recall, most of the divisions were at about 25 to 35% of their fighting capacity (L.E. - in the moment of "conquering"). Above all, Odessa shown the severe limitation of the Romanian Army logistics' department, because supplies and reinforcements were too scarce for such a close destination (compared to what followed the next year...)!

This post has been edited by MMM on December 13, 2011 11:43 am

First of all, I shall admit that "waning away" was quite an overstatement, based on a confusion of mine: the "Situation of the monthly effectives of the army starting from 01.09.1940", whose copy I have, has a drop in numbers from 703.055 (total effectives) to 668.380, from July to September 1941; I inadvertently remember the drop as going to 509.180, which was the case in December, after demobilisation...
Second, the losses among officers were really high, the losses at 4-th Army alone being (from June 22) of 4.599 frrom a total of 4.821!
The numbers were as follows:
324.647 involved, of which 98.156 losses:
17.729 KIA
63.345 WIA
11.471 MIA
Quite a lot... at least until Stalingrad!

BTW,in the recent russian movie " Jajda" { dir. A. Kolmogorov,2011 ),which depicts the siege of Odessa,the moment when the soviet command realized that the fate of the city is sealed, is the start of romanian artilery bombardments of the port.
Well,its a movie...but..