Zaporizhzhia Liberated from Nazi Occupation in 1943

Dragon Media Newsroom

The Red Army liberated Zaporizhzhia on Oct. 14, 1943, during the Battle of the Dnieper. The advance came as the front line moved toward the river during the Second World War, known in the Soviet Union as the Great Patriotic War.

Before the war, Zaporizhzhia was a major industrial and transport hub. Nazi German forces occupied the city in the early months of the war. According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, more than 40,000 civilians and prisoners of war were killed there during the two-year occupation.

The German forces had turned the city, which held strategic importance on the lower Dnieper, into a major stronghold. On Oct. 4, the Red Army’s Southwestern Front, commanded by Rodion Malinovsky, began an offensive in the Zaporizhzhia sector. Soviet troops breached the city’s outer defences on Oct. 13 and entered the city. After fierce fighting in its streets and residential buildings, they liberated Zaporizhzhia by the end of Oct. 14.

The German forces’ withdrawal deprived them of a strategic foothold on the eastern bank of the Dnieper. The Russian Foreign Ministry’s account says the German command ordered the Dnieper Hydroelectric Power Plant dam to be blown up as its forces retreated.

During an interrogation in 1947, Kurt Hans Steffen, a former driver with the 520th Engineer Regiment, testified that explosives had been concealed at five locations in the power station and four locations on the dam. He said they had been ordered to leave “nothing but scorched earth” in their path of retreat.

The four-day Zaporizhzhia Offensive opened the way for the Red Army to advance toward Kryvyi Rih and helped outflank German forces in the Melitopol area. Melitopol was liberated on Oct. 23, 1943.