Second Rzhev-Sychevka Offensive

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The eastern front at the time of the Second Rzhev-Sychevka Offensive.

Axis-Soviet War
Barbarossa – Finland 1941-44 – Leningrad and Baltics 1941-1944 – Crimea and Caucasus – Moscow – 1st Rzhev-Vyazma – 2nd Kharkov – Stalingrad – Velikiye Luki – 2nd Rzhev-Sychevka – Kursk – 2nd Smolensk – Dnieper – 2nd Kiev – Korsun – Hube's Pocket – Bagration – Lvov-Sandomierz – Balkans 1944 – Hungary 1944-1945 – Vistula-Oder – Königsberg – Berlin – Prague – Manchuria 1945

Axis-Soviet War
Barbarossa – Finland 1941-44 – Leningrad and Baltics 1941-1944 – Crimea and Caucasus – Moscow – 1st Rzhev-Vyazma – 2nd Kharkov – Stalingrad – Velikiye Luki – 2nd Rzhev-Sychevka – Kursk – 2nd Smolensk – Dnieper – 2nd Kiev – Korsun – Hube's Pocket – Bagration – Lvov-Sandomierz – Balkans 1944 – Hungary 1944-1945 – Vistula-Oder – Königsberg – Berlin – Prague – Manchuria 1945

The Second Rzhev-Sychevka Offensive (codenamed Operation Mars) was a strategic offensive launched by Soviet forces against German forces during World War II. It took place between 25 November-December, 1942 in a salient in the vicinity of Moscow. The offensive was one in a series of particularly bloody and mostly futile engagements collectively known as the Battles of Rzhev, which occurred near Rzhev, Sychevka and Vyazma between January 1942 and March 1943. The Battles became known as the "Rzhev meat grinder" ("Ржевская мясорубка") for their huge losses, particularly on the Soviet side.

The offensive was a joint operation of the Soviet Western Front and Kalinin Front coordinated by Georgy Zhukov. Many details of the offensive are virtually unknown, largely due to Soviet efforts to expunge any account of the extremely costly operation from historical accounts of fighting on the Eastern Front.

However, the American historian David Glantz consider that the offensive was more important in STAVKA planning than the near-simultaneous Operation Uranus, on the basis that despite mounting losses, the objective was to prevent possible Army Group Center reinforcement of Army Group South at Stalingrad.

Casualties

Soviet: 70,400 men and 1,366 tanks.
German: 40,000 men

References

Glantz, David M. Zhukov's Greatest Defeat: The Red Army's Epic Disaster in Operation Mars, 1942 (1999). ISBN 070060944X.

External links

[Operation "Mars" - The Second Offensive in Rzhev Vicinities. November-December 1942]

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