Second Battle of Kharkov 1942
Recorded location from Wikidata; battle sites are often approximate.
Key facts
| Year | 1942 | Wikidata P580 (start time) |
|---|---|---|
| Era | World War II era (1939–1945) | derived from year |
| Location | Ukraine | Natural Earth (modern borders) |
| Continent | Europe | Natural Earth |
| War / conflict | Eastern Front | Wikidata P361 |
| Coordinates | 49.2300, 37.1281 | Wikidata P625 |
About the battle
The Second Battle of Kharkov or Operation Fredericus was an Axis counter-offensive in the region around Kharkov against the Red Army Izium bridgehead offensive conducted 12–28 May 1942, on the Eastern Front during World War II. Its objective was to eliminate the Izium bridgehead over Seversky Donets or the "Barvenkovo bulge" (Russian: Барвенковский выступ, romanized: Barvenkovsky vystup) which was one of the Soviet offensive's staging areas. After a winter counter-offensive that drove German troops away from Moscow but depleted the Red Army's reserves, the Kharkov offensive was a new Soviet attempt to expand upon their strategic initiative, although it failed to secure a significant element of surprise.
On 12 May 1942, Soviet forces under the command of Marshal Semyon Timoshenko launched an offensive against the German 6th Army from a salient established during the winter counter-offensive. After a promising start, the offensive was stopped on 15 May by massive airstrikes. Critical Soviet errors by several staff officers and by Joseph Stalin, who failed to accurately estimate the 6th Army's potential and overestimated their own newly raised forces, facilitated a German pincer attack on 17 May which cut off three Soviet field armies from the rest of the front by 22 May.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Second Battle of Kharkov (revision 1380973967), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; shortened by selecting paragraphs and trimming at a sentence boundary; formatting and citations removed. No text added.
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Other battles of the Eastern Front
- Defense of Brest Fortress 1941
- First Battle of Kharkov 1941
- Siege of Leningrad 1941
- Siege of Odessa 1941
- Siege of Sevastopol (1941–1942) 1941
- Barvenkovo–Lozovaya offensive 1942
- Battle of Kalach 1942
- Battle of Stalingrad 1942
- Defense of the Adzhimushkay quarry 1942
- Kholm Pocket 1942
All 33 battles of the Eastern Front →
Browse more: battles in Ukraine · Europe · World War II era battles