page_title: First Battle of Kharkov
section_title: Occupation of Kharkiv
hierarchical_section_title: First Battle of Kharkov / Occupation of Kharkiv
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. An der Sowjetfront: Deutsche Sturmgeschütze und Panzerspähwagen fahren in den Hauptstrassen umher, um etwa aufflackernden Widerstand niederzukämpfen. PK-Aufnahme: Kriegsberichter: Mittelstaedt 10133-41 "Fr." "Fr.OKW" Okt.41 Information added by Wikimedia users.Площадь Розы Люксембург, 10, угол пл. Тевелева, гостиница "Астория", октябрь (после 25) 1941.
context_page_description: The 1st Battle of Kharkov, so named by Wilhelm Keitel, was the 1941 battle for the city of Kharkiv during the final phase of Operation Barbarossa between the German 6th Army of Army Group South and the Soviet Southwestern Front. The Soviet 38th Army was ordered to defend the city while its factories were dismantled for relocation farther east.
  The German 6th Army needed to take the city in order to close the widening gap to the German 17th Army. By 20 October the Germans had reached the western edge of the city, it was taken by the 57th Infantry Division by 24 October. At that time, however, most of Kharkiv's industrial equipment had been evacuated or rendered useless by the Soviet authorities.
context_section_description: The city was subject to its first occupation during the war, which lasted until 16 February 1943. The city never became part of Reichskommissariat Ukraine because of its proximity to the front. The staff of the LV Army Corps acted as the occupational authority, using 57. ID as an occupation force. Generalmajor Anton Dostler was Stadtkommandant until 13 December, when he was succeeded by Generalleutnant Alfred von Puttkamer, and Kharkiv was transferred to the Heeresgebiet of the 6th Armee and put under the joint authority of the Stadtkommandant and Field Command 757.
  German troops acting under the authority of the Reichenau-Befehl of 10 October (effectively an order to kill anybody associated with communism) terrorized the population that was left after the battle. Many of the Soviet commanders' corpses were hung off balconies to strike fear into the remaining population. Many people began to flee, causing chaos.
  In the early hours of 14 November, multiple buildings in the city center were blown up by time-fuses left by the retreating Red Army. Casualties included the commander (Generalleutnant Georg Braun) and staff of the 68th Infantry Division. The Germans arrested some 200 civilians (mostly Jews) and hanged them from the balconies of large buildings. Another 1,000 were taken as hostages and interned in the Hotel International on Dzerzhinsky Square. All of these war crimes were committed by frontline Heer commanders, and not by SS troops.
  On 14 December, the Stadtkommandant ordered the Jewish population to be concentrated in a hut settlement near the Kharkiv Tractor Factory. In two days, 20,000 Jews were gathered there. Sonderkommando 4a, commanded by SS-Standartenführer Paul Blobel, of Einsatzgruppe C started shooting the first of them in December, then continuing to kill them throughout January in a gas van. This was a modified truck that fitted 50 people in it; the van drove around the city and slowly killed the people that were trapped in it with carbon monoxide that was emitted from the vehicle itself and channeled into an airtight compartment. The victims died by a combination of carbon monoxide poisoning and suffocation.
  The German Army confiscated large quantities of food to be used by its troops, creating acute shortages in the Ukraine. By January 1942 around one-third of the city's 300,000 remaining inhabitants suffered from starvation. Many would die in the cold winter months.
  As a result of the battles in Kharkiv, the city was left in ruins. Dozens of architectural monuments were destroyed and numerous artistic treasures taken. One of the Soviet Unions's best known authors, Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy wrote: "I saw Kharkiv. As if it were Rome in the 5th century. A huge cemetery…"
caption: German armored vehicles in Kharkiv
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