33rd Guards Rifle Division

The 3rd Airborne Corps had been formed for the second time in October, 1941 in the North Caucasus Military District and had stayed there in reserve until it was converted to the 33rd Guards on May 30, 1942. Airborne corps were roughly divisional-sized units made up of three brigades of about 3,000 men each. Since they were considered elite light infantry the STAVKA decided they could be assigned Guards status upon reformation. The artillery regiment and many of the other subunits had to be formed from scratch.[1] After the subunits received their designations the division's order of battle was as follows:

• 84th Guards Rifle Regiment (from 5th Airborne Brigade)
• 88th Guards Rifle Regiment (from 6th Airborne Brigade)
• 91st Guards Rifle Regiment (from 212th Airborne Brigade)
• 59th Guards Artillery Regiment[2]
• 31st Guards Antitank Battalion
• 35th Guards Antiaircraft Battery (until April 25, 1943)
• 21st Guards Mortar Battalion (until October 20, 1942)
• 21st Guards Reconnaissance Company
• 40th Guards Sapper Battalion
• 45th Guards Signal Battalion
• 37th Guards Medical/Sanitation Battalion
• 32nd Guards Chemical Defense (Anti-gas) Company
• 42nd Guards Motor Transport Company
• 32nd Guards Field Bakery
• 22nd Guards Divisional Veterinary Hospital
• 1916th Field Postal Station
• 146th Field Office of the State Bank

Col. Fyodor Aleksandrovich Afanasev remained in command of the division after redesignation. Along with the 32nd Guards Rifle Division it was immediately assigned to 47th Army in North Caucasus Front, but by July 1 the 33rd had been moved to the 7th Reserve Army in the Reserve of the Supreme High Command. Later that month this would be redesignated as the 62nd Army.[3]

By July 12 the situation facing the Soviet armies in the Caucasus region was becoming increasingly grim under the impact of the German Case Blue. Early that morning Stalin had the STAVKA issue a directive that renamed Southwestern Front as Stalingrad Front and added the 1st, 5th and 7th Reserve Armies and the 21st Army to its composition. 62nd Army was directed to occupy a line west of the Don River with 64th Army and other forces. 62nd Army was under command of Maj. Gen. V. Ya. Kolpakchi and had six rifle divisions under command, including the 33rd Guards.[4]

German 6th Army was ordered to continue its eastward advance as soon as possible after July 17, but this was delayed by heavy rains; it was not until the 20th that LI Army Corps' lead divisions were able to engage and defeat the forward elements of 62nd Army on the Tsutskan River. By late on the next day five of the Army's divisions were deployed uniformly south to north across the Great Bend of the Don from Surovikino on the Chir River to Kletskaya on the Don. 33rd Guards was responsible for a sector 18 km wide roughly in the center of this line. On July 22 the XIV Panzer Corps and VIII Army Corps caught up and by the evening Kolpakchi reported that his divisions were engaging German tanks and infantry all along the line. The 3rd and 60th Motorized and 16th Panzer Divisions advanced rapidly the next day, tearing through 62nd Army's forward security belt and advancing 24-40km, about halfway to the crossing points over the Don at Trekhostrovskaya and Kalach. By this time the 6th Army commander, Army Gen. F. Paulus, was planning to encircle 62nd Army west of the Don with his XIV Panzer and VIII Corps as a preliminary to an advance on Stalingrad.[5]

During this fighting Guards Jr. Sgt. Pyotr Osipovich Boloto, an anti-tank rifleman of the 84th Guards Rifle Regiment, led three of his men with two PTRS rifles to a height between the 2nd and 3rd Battalions where a group of 30 German tanks were beginning to break through at the boundary. In the ensuing action the group knocked out 15 panzers, with Boloto himself accounting for eight, and the remainder withdrew. The news of this feat was soon broadcast and published around the USSR and a full-page photo of Boloto appeared on a motivational leaflet entitled "Learn to Fight With the Stalingraders!" On November 5 Boloto became the division's first Hero of the Soviet Union.[6]

The next objective for Group Kreizer was the town of Nizhne-Gurov on the way to the Tsimla. From here the 33rd Guards would join up to help take Tsimlyanskaia and Konstantinovskii, while also seeking to isolate and destroy elements of Corps Mieth as they fell back. One such opportunity came on January 5 when the division attempted to smash the defenses of Group Basson along the Belaya River. The German group fell back just as the 11th Panzer was moving east to take up positions along the Kagalnik River. The 33rd Guards was tasked with the capture of Kargalsko-Belianskii Farm. Overnight the 84th Guards Regiment, supported by two artillery battalions, penetrated into the farm but was met with a counterattack led by 15 tanks and was pushed back. Subunits of the 91st Guards Regiment arrived to assist and the fight lasted through the next day, during which the two regiments repelled 10 counterattacks by 1-2 infantry battalions backed by as many as 30 tanks, and claimed 12 of the latter destroyed by artillery. By the end of the day the farm was still in Soviet hands. Meanwhile the rest of the division, along with the 387th and 24th Guards Rifle Divisions engaged in fierce fighting with 11th Panzer and 336th Infantry for the populated points of Suvorov, Kargalsko-Belianski and Mariinski in front of the Kagalnik. By day's end on the 7th these points were taken, but an immediate attempt to force the river was unsuccessful. At this point Group Kreizer was disbanded.[19]

At this time a powerful German reinforcement, in the form of the fresh and nearly-complete 7th Panzer Division, was beginning to arrive by rail at Rostov and Shakhty, the latter of which was the immediate objective of 1st Guards Corps. According to the operational summary of 1st Guards Corps for January 9 the 33rd Guards "captured Ermilov, Kalinin, and the northeastern outskirts of Savalev and is fighting on the northern outskirts of Galpin." A further report from 2nd Guards Army indicated that on the same date the Corps faced a heavy German counterattack from "up to 100 tanks, 30 APCs, and up to three regiments of infantry." 11th Panzer had struck 24th Guards with roughly 35 tanks and its panzer reconnaissance battalion, "bowling it over" and advancing about 10 km, capturing Kostyrochnyi and reaching Bogoiavlinskaia before being halted by the 387th Division at 1900 hours. The 33rd, meanwhile, managed to advance to a line 2km west of Ermilov and Galpin. Overnight the 7th Panzer concentrated to the immediate rear while the weaker 11th and 22nd Panzer Divisions were subordinated to its command. On January 10 the combined force struck three divisions of 5th Shock Army in a bridgehead west of the Kagalnik and forced them to withdraw with serious losses. Having fulfilled its mission the 7th Panzer withdrew to the north at dawn on January 12. This counterstrike forced Southern Front to abandon its plan to advance on Rostov from the north. Nevertheless, Corps Mieth pulled back west to the Northern Donets during January 15-17.[20]

1st Guards Corps began its pursuit on January 16 and during the day the 33rd Guards took Lisichkin with forward detachments operating toward Nagolnaia Balka, Nizhnyi Zhukovskii and Talovskii. On the 19th the division seized a bridgehead 5km wide and 7km deep over the Donets; at 1000 hours the 84th Guards Regiment was attacked by a company of infantry and five tanks which forced it to withdraw to the southern outskirts of Nizhne Kudriuchenskaia. By the end of the day the division was still fighting there and south and southeast of Khriashchevskii. On January 21 it remained in much the same positions largely owing to the fact they were dominated from high ground held by elements of the German 336th Infantry. At this point the advance stalled and on January 22-23 the division regrouped its forces. By this time it was clear that the decision to operate 2nd Guards Army on both sides of the Don had been a mistake and since German forces had a strong line along the Donets, the best route to Rostov was south of the Don. On January 25-26 the 33rd Guards and 387th moved south of the river; due to Soviet supply difficulties both divisions had to leave part of their artillery behind because of the absence of fuel.[21]

By 0700 hours on January 27 the division had finished concentrating in Susatskaia, Karpovka and Kalinin, 20-25km north of the Manych River. The next day it attacked towards Manychskaia and Samodurovka without success due to strong enemy resistance from up to two German infantry battalions and 20-25 tanks of the 16th Motorized Division. Despite this failure it continued its attacks for these villages through the next three days. In a report late on February 1 the 2nd Guards Army confirmed the general stalemate existing on its front. It also reported that the 33rd Guards had a total strength of 4,811 personnel, of which 1,895 were "bayonets" (riflemen and sappers). From January 15 to 31 the division lost 1,016 men killed and 2,245 wounded. A further report for February 2 stated:

33rd Gds. RD fought its way forward, with 84th Gds. RR fighting intense street battles with the enemy in the center of Manychskaia, 91st Gds. RR fighting to clear the northeastern outskirts of Manychskaia, and 88th Gds. RR fighting in the vicinity of Lake Kuzminka to protect 91st and 84th Gds. RRs' main forces.

The village was finally cleared by 1100 hours the next day. The 84th and 91st went on to attack Arpachin along with the 387th Division while the 88th took Samodurovka with the help of the 5th Guards Mechanized Corps. On February 4 the 2nd Guards and 51st Armies began an intense drive to overcome 16th Motorized and during the day the division liberated Arpachin and advanced towards Alitub, which was taken on February 5. Between February 6 - 8 the last German forces south of the Don, 111th Infantry and 16th Motorized, withdrew, blowing the bridges behind them, although one bridge at Rostov was only half destroyed. Although Rostov would not be liberated until February 14, it was understood by both sides that the next German defense line would be along the Mius River, as it had been after the first liberation of the city in 1941. Given the heavy casualties to date on both sides, what followed would be a race to the Mius by "cripples."[22]

Soviet soldiers near Saur-Mogila

The 33rd Guards spent the spring of the year rebuilding along the Mius front. On April 17 General Utvenko was assigned to command of the 31st Guards Rifle Corps and was replaced three days later by Maj. Gen. Nikolai Ivanovich Seliverstov. On July 17 the Southern and Southwestern Fronts began a new offensive against the German positions on the Mius but the initial gains were soon lost to counterattacks. The defenses here had been well-organized and strengthened off-and-on since December, 1941 and were very difficult to break. On July 30, as the offensive was winding down, General Seliverstov's observation point near Hill 277.9 (called Saur-Mogila) was discovered by German artillery observers and heavily shelled. Seliverstov was mortally wounded in the attack and died during air evacuation to a hospital.[26] He was briefly replaced in command by Lt. Col. Mitrofan Afanasevich Kuzenkov on August 2, then by Col. Dmitrii Vasilevich Makarov on the 14th. At about this time 30 percent of the division's personnel were noted as being of Bashkir nationality.[27]

On August 16 Southern Front again attacked the rebuilt German 6th Army along the Mius and finally broke through. Over the next month the 2nd Guards Army drove west through the southeastern Ukraine. On September 17 Col. Nikolai Stepanovich Ugriumov took command of the division from Colonel Makarov; Ugriumov had been made a Hero of the Soviet Union in 1939 for his exploits on the first day of the Winter War with Finland. On October 30 elements of the renamed 4th Ukrainian Front reached the entrance to the Perekop Isthmus and the Axis 17th Army was soon isolated by land in the Crimea. Over the following months the two sides sparred for the several crossing points and the 56th Army created a bridgehead in the Kerch area. At the start of April, 1944 the 2nd Guards Army was given command of all the forces in the Perekop sector in preparation for the final assault into the peninsula.[28]

The offensive began at 0800 hours on April 8 with a two-and-a-half hour artillery preparation by 2nd Guards and by 51st Army from its bridgehead across the Syvash. The 2nd Guards commander, Army Gen. G. F. Zakharov made the assault using relatively novel tactics. He led with just his 13th Guards Corps, with artillery-delivered smoke rounds, flame-throwing tanks and heavy self-propelled guns in support. Despite losses the attack tore a large hole in the German line, and 1st Guards Corps was fed into the breach. By 1600 hours the next day the German line finally broke. After an outflanking landing by elements of the 387th Rifle Division the German Gruppe Konrad began a costly retreat to its second line at Ishun, which was already untenable and soon fell, giving the Soviet forces complete access to the Crimea.[29] On April 14, as the 33rd Guards took part in the pursuit of the Axis forces towards Sevastopol, Colonel Ugriumov was wounded and had to be hospitalised; two days later Col. Pavel Mikhailovich Volosatykh was moved from command of the 263rd Rifle Division of 51st Army to take over command. This officer would be made a Hero of the Soviet Union on May 16 and was promoted to the rank of major general the following day. Another soldier of the division, Sr. Sgt. Gabdelahat Gabdelganeevich Valiev, a squad leader of the 1st Company of the 91st Guards Regiment, would be posthumously made a Hero of the Soviet Union on the same day for his gallantry in the fighting near Belbek.[30]

As of July 1 the division was in the Reserve of the Supreme High Command, in 11th Guards Corps with the 2nd and 32nd Guards Rifle Divisions.[36] 2nd Guards Army was soon assigned to 1st Baltic Front, which was pushing into the gap between Army Groups North and Center created by the ongoing collapse of the latter under the impact of Operation Bagration. By July 5 it had advanced as far as Hlybokaye. As of the beginning of August it had pushed westward as far as the outskirts of Šiauliai in Lithuania. On August 16 the division was about 15km northwest of that city when Operation Doppelkopf began but it saw little action.[37] On August 29 General Volosatykh was moved to the Front headquarters before being reassigned as deputy commander of 40th Rifle Corps; he was replaced by Maj. Gen. Konstantin Vladimirovich Vvedenskii. By the first week of October the division was on the Dubysa River southeast of Raseiniai, preparing to join the attack through to the Baltic Sea.[38]

During October and November the 2nd Guards Army played a relatively minor role in the Memel Offensive Operation. On November 29 the STAVKA sent the following order to the commanders of 1st Baltic and 3rd Belorussian Fronts:

The 2nd Guards Army, consisting of the 13th Guards Rifle Corps... 11th Guards Rifle Corps (2nd, 32nd and 33rd guards rifle divisions) and the 22nd Guards Rifle Corps... along with army reinforcements, service establishments and rear services, is to move to concentrate in the Jurburgas area, where it is to be included in the Third Belorussian Front. The army's movement is to begin... on 3 December of this year, and its arrival in the Jurburgas area is to be completed by the morning of 13 December...[39]

General Vvedenskii was hospitalized on December 8; while he was recovering he handed over his command to Col. Nikolai Ivanovich Krasnov on January 4, 1945.

The Front's plan for the offensive, which began on January 14 on this sector, called for the 39th, 5th and 28th Armies to attack from the first echelon along a line from Tilsit to Insterburg with 11th Guards Army in second echelon. Taking advantage of 28th Army's breakthrough towards Insterburg the 2nd Guards attacked on at 1430 hours on January 16 with three divisions of its 11th and 13th Guards Corps following a one-and-a-half hour artillery preparation; 33rd Guards was in 11th Guards Corps' second echelon. The German forces put up heavy resistance and the lead divisions had to beat off 12 infantry and tank counterattacks before capturing the first trench line and parts of the second and pausing to consolidate. The next day the advance remained slow, but the Front committed its armored formations on January 18 and secured a breakthrough north of Gumbinnen. In the following days 2nd Guards Army advanced in the direction of Angerapp in support of 28th Army.[40]

As the drive into East Prussia continued the division was transferred to the 13th Guards Corps, which was now in 39th Army. It would remain in this Corps for the duration of the war. On January 31 the Corps reached the Frisches Haff from the north along a 10km front, cutting off the German forces in and around Königsberg from contact to the west, but heavy counterattacks soon re-opened a corridor.[41] In February the 13th Guards Corps was reassigned to 43rd Army, which was now part of the Zemland Group of Forces.[42] At the beginning of April the Front made preparations for the final assault on Königsberg. The heavily-reinforced Army deployed six divisions in the first echelon along a 5km-wide front from Trenk to Amalienhof with the task of breaking through the external perimeter, advancing to the southeast, and clear the city as far as the Pregel River along with units of the 50th Army. The attack, which faced two regiments of the 561st Infantry Division, began on April 6 and proceeded largely as planned. On April 8 the Army committed its second echelon into the fighting and the next day the garrison surrendered.[43]

After the fall of Königsberg the 43rd Army was redeployed to the west to take part in the Samland Offensive. It was assigned to a front 7-8km wide on the south flank on the north shore of the Frisches Haff as a support for the three armies (5th, 39th, and 11th Guards) operating in the center. The attack began at 0800 hours on April 13 following an hour-long artillery preparation and on the first day the Army advanced 5km and captured 1,500 prisoners. It continued its advance on April 14, capturing a major strongpoint at Gross Heidekrug. The German forces, squeezed into an increasingly restricted space, put up stubborn resistance the next two days but on April 17 the 43rd assisted the 39th Army in capturing the town of Fischausen in a night attack. The Samland had by now been cleared apart from the Vistula Spit and the town of Pillau, which fell to the 11th Guards Army on April 25.[44] At about this time the 33rd Guards, still in 13th Guards Corps, returned to 2nd Guards Army where it remained for the duration.[45]

On April 19 the division came under the command of Col. Ivan Mironovich Novikov. Novikov had been made a Hero of the Soviet Union in October, 1943 for his leadership of the 1031st Rifle Regiment of the 280th Rifle Division in the crossing of the Dniepr River in September of that year.[46] He would remain in command until July, 1946. On May 17 the 33rd Guards was decorated with the Order of Suvorov, 2nd Degree, for its part in battle for Königsberg.[47] While Colonel Novikov was still in command the division was reorganized as the 8th Separate Guards Rifle Brigade. This unit was disbanded in March, 1947.

• Aleksandr Ivanovich Utvenko
• Nikolai Ivanovich Seliverstov
• Nikolai Stepanovich Ugriumov
• Pavel Mikhailovich Volosatykh
• Konstantin Vladimirovich Vvedenskii
• HSU Nikolai Stepanovich Ugriumov
• HSU Pavel Mikhailovich Volosatykh
• HSU Ivan Mironovich Novikov
• Motivational leaflet: "Learn to Fight With the Stalingraders!"