Nonetheless, by mid-July, the Sixth Army had advanced to within ten miles of Kiev, even as ferocious Soviet resistance, attacks from the Pripet area, and worsening supply problems meant that Reichenau had insufficient force to take the city. Still, Rundstedt planned to press ahead to the south, hoping to cross the Dnieper at Cherkassy, Dnepropetrovsk, or Zaporozhye in order to capture the key Donets industrial area in a vast encirclement operation. Because of stout Soviet resistance along the Rumanian frontier west of the Bug River, which accentuated Hitler’s ever-present worries about the security of his oil supply, both he and Halder favored a tighter envelopment. They insisted that Rundstedt turn forces south from Zhitomir along the Bug River in the direction of Odessa on the Black Sea in order to trap Soviet forces in that area. The ensuing encirclement at Uman resulted in the first great German victory in the south as, after weeks of grinding battles, Rundstedt’s forces destroyed some twenty Soviet divisions and bagged over 100,000 prisoners as well as large quantities of equipment and supplies. Nonetheless, the skillful Soviet defense, poor roads, and rain that hindered German movement enabled large enemy forces to escape to the east. Thus, even though Stalin regarded the battle at Uman to be little short of a disaster and, in response, issued his notorious Order No. 270 that declared surrender a form of treason and allowed the arrest of the families of commanders who capitulated or retreated, the Germans had not accomplished their goal.9
For the Soviets, however, something far worse than Uman was brewing. By 20 August, having reached Kremenchug, 180 miles to the southeast of Kiev, the Germans controlled virtually all the territory west of the Dnieper. Over 300 miles straight north, the leading spearheads of Army Group Center had occupied Yelnya. In between these two powerful pincers, whose apex was roughly 300 miles to the west at Kiev, lay the entire Soviet Southwest Front, comprising six armies with well over fifty divisions. Intense Soviet attacks from the Pripet Marshes against the northern wing of the Sixth Army had prompted increasing German concern for the viability of any further advance east and southeast into the vital Ukrainian industrial areas as well as stretching Hitler’s patience to its limit. His directive on the twenty-first for Army Groups Center and South to cooperate sprang as much from his frustration at continued enemy resistance in the Pripet area, which also made any further move on Moscow impossible, as it did from any larger strategic consideration. Guderian’s Second Panzergruppe would have to be diverted to the south despite his reservations about the road and fuel situation as well as the need for his units to be replenished. With many of his divisions reduced to little more than reinforced regiments, with barely 30–50 percent of the normal complement of tanks, and seriously low on gasoline and oil, supply officers estimated that it would take eight to ten days just to bring his forces up to 60 percent of normal strength. Halder, concerned as ever about the need to conserve resources for the attack on Moscow, also undermined Hitler’s directive by limiting the number of units of the Second Panzergruppe assigned to this new operation.10 At the outset, then, even though the conditions existed for a great encirclement battle, neither the Germans nor the Soviets seem fully to have recognized the possibilities (and dangers) in the situation. Stalin, in fact, rejected Zhukov’s suggestions that Soviet troops be withdrawn to more defensible positions, transferring the troublesome general to the Leningrad front.
Despite his doubts about the operation, Guderian received orders to begin a southerly push on 25 August. At 5:00 A.M. on what would prove to be a blisteringly hot day, General Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg’s Twenty-fourth Corps, with only about one-third of its tank strength operational, set off for the Desna River. Initially, it made rapid gains, even capturing a key bridge at Novgorod-Seversk intact. The primitive, sandy roads that limited progress to forty miles before the columns had to be refueled as well as the habitual ferocious Soviet resistance quickly slowed the advance. By the twenty-seventh, the Third Panzer and the Tenth Motorized Divisions had been so weakened that they had to go on the defensive, with only the Fourth Panzer capable of offensive operation. At that point, Army Group Center relented and released another two and a half mobile divisions to Guderian, but it took another four days for resupply sufficient to allow the resumption of the offensive. Bock admitted on the thirty-first that, with both his flanks under attack, Guderian was “in a difficult situation.” On 1 September, the Twenty-fourth Corps continued its advance, but strong enemy resistance, poor roads, rainy weather, damaged bridges, and inadequate provisions slowed the German advance to a crawl. The next day, following the loss of a bridgehead south of the Desna, a sense of crisis pervaded the German High Command. “Guderian’s description of the situation was so pessimistic,” Bock noted, “that I had to decide if I should propose… that the armored group be pulled back across the Desna.” On the fourth, an anxious and dissatisfied Hitler intervened, demanding that Guderian concentrate his forces for the drive south. The latter requested still more reinforcements, a demand that led Bock seriously to consider dismissing him. On the sixth, torrential rains turned the roads into a muddy quagmire that ground all movement to a halt.11 Despite later images of a swift encirclement operation, by the end of the first week of September the Second Panzergruppe struggled to maintain any momentum at all.
At roughly the same time, to the south, units of the Seventeenth Army and the First Panzergruppe of Army Group South had reached their assembly areas for the crossing of the Dnieper. In a series of engagements between 30 August and 2 September, the Seventeenth Army seized river crossings at Kremenchug. Although the original intention had been for these forces to continue to advance eastward once the river had been breached, the stiffening of enemy resistance and the realization that the Soviets were throwing units from other areas into the battle for Kiev caused a fundamental German reassessment. As it became clear that Stalin had ordered the Dnieper line to be held at all costs, the OKW now saw a chance to inflict a disastrous defeat on the Soviets. Already on 1 September, the chief of staff of Army Group South, General Sodenstern, had contacted his counterpart at the Second Army to the north in order to discuss the possibility of an encirclement of Soviet forces east of Kiev that would clear the way for the Moscow operation. On the sixth, the OKW ordered the Seventeenth Army and the First Panzergruppe to turn north and, in conjunction with the Second Army and the Second Panzergruppe, trap the bulk of Soviet forces gathering to the east of Kiev, while the next day Halder and Rundstedt conferred to hammer out the details of the destruction of all enemy forces in the Kiev-Dnieper-Desna bend. Although this meant that the mobile units of Panzergruppe 1 would be tied down in protracted operations in closing and holding the ring and, thus, would be unable to exploit a breakthrough to the east, the lure of a giant envelopment that would free the danger to the southern flank of the Moscow attack proved alluring. In the north, Guderian’s forces were to drive on Sumy, and the Second Army was to aim for Romny, while the southern wing would advance on Lubny.12