In the battle, the 1st and 2nd Ukrainian Fronts, commanded, respectively, by Nikolai Vatutin and Ivan Konev, encircled German forces of Army Group South in a pocket near the Dnieper River.

[17] This, coupled with the Soviet capacity to hold large formations in reserve gave the Red Army the ability to drive deep behind German defenses again and again.

General Konev held a conference at his headquarters at Boltushki on 15 January with his commanders and their political commissars to pass on the orders received from Stavka.

General Hermann Breith, commander of the III Panzer Corps, requested the relief formations be united to attempt to force a corridor to the encircled Gruppe Stemmermann.

As they drove deeper into the Soviet positions, Zhukov ordered Vatutin to assemble four tank corps with the goal of cutting off the attacking German spearhead.

The III Panzer Corps' penetrations toward the Gniloy Tikich River made the supply lines for Soviet formations such as Vatutin's 6th Tank Army much longer.

[33] Red Army emissaries presented letters for both Stemmermann and Lieb signed by Marshal Zhukov and Generals Konev and Vatutin.

The encircled forces aimed to capture the villages of Novo-Buda, Komarovka, Khilki and Shanderovka at the southwestern perimeter of the pocket to reach a favorable jump-off line for the breakout.

[51] Despite the failure to alter the fighting resolution of the German Commander at Cherkassy, this operation raised the profile of the NKFD and BDO among both the Allies and Axis.

[52] The northward thrust toward the pocket by the III Panzer Corps had been halted by Red Army determination, terrain and fuel shortages.

After several failed attempts by German armored formations to seize and hold Hill 239 (49°15.42′N 30°49.38′E / 49.25700°N 30.82300°E / 49.25700; 30.82300 Lysyanka, Cherkasy Oblast, Ukraine) and advance on Shanderovka, Soviet counterattacks by the 5th Guards Tank Army forced the III Panzer Corps into costly defensive fighting.

"[53] The message did not specify that Zhurzintsy and the hill were still firmly in Soviet hands—a failure that caused Group Stemmermann severe casualties during the German breakout of the pocket.

On 16 February 1944, Manstein, without waiting for a decision by Hitler, sent a radio message to Stemmermann to authorize the breakout: "Password Freedom, objective Lysyanka, 2300 hours.

"[citation needed] With extreme reluctance, Stemmermann and Lieb decided to leave 1,450 non-ambulatory wounded at Shanderovka, attended by doctors and orderlies.

With no anti-tank weapons in the field, T-34s commenced to wade into support troops, headquarters units, stragglers and Red-Cross identified medical columns.

[66][67] Under the yellow sky of early morning and over ground covered with wet snow Soviet tanks made straight for the thick of the column, ploughing up and down, killing and crushing with their tracks.

The killing in this human hunt went on for several hours and a new round opened on the banks of the river Gniloy Tikich, where the survivors of the first collision of the German column with Soviet troops dragged and fought their way.By mid-day, the majority of the now intermingled divisions had reached the Gniloy Tikich stream, 15 meter wide and two meters deep due to melting snow.

Since the main body was away and south of the bridgeheads, the last tanks, trucks and wagons were driven into the water, trees were felled to form makeshift bridges and the troops floundered across, with hundreds of men drowning, being swept downstream with horses and military debris.

[68] Toward the end phase of the breakout, engineers had built several more bridges and rear guard units of the 57th and 88th Infantry Divisions crossed the river "dry", including 20 horse-drawn wagons with about 600 wounded.

[69] That many escaped back to the German lines at Lysyanka was due in great measure to the exertions of the III Panzer Corps as it drove in relief of Group Stemmermann.

The escaped wounded were transported from collection points near Uman to rehabilitation areas and hospitals in Poland, and were then sent on leave to their home towns.

In a U.S. Army brief written following the war, Lieb commented that when he assumed command of Force Stemmermann: The 72nd and Wiking Divisions were completely intermingled.

To the south, the 3rd and 4th Ukrainian Fronts (Generals Malinovsky and Tolbukhin) attacked along the bend of Dnepr River, capturing Kryvyi Rih.

[3] At the same time, the Soviets underestimated German capability for a counterattack and hurriedly moved more forces forward to bolster the strength of their encircling rings.

[78] German sources differ on total losses, holding that of the 60,000 men originally inside the pocket, the number had shrunk to less than 50,000 by 16 February.

However, General von Vormann, who commanded the relief attempt of the XLVII Panzer Corps, bitterly noted that "the troops who took part were astonished and unbelieving when they were told they had won a great victory at Cherkassy in the Ukraine in 1944."

[84] One of the initial historiographical works on the fighting at Korsun was a 1952 U.S. Army publication, DA Pamphlet 20–234, Operations of Encircled Forces: German Experiences in Russia.

John Erickson's 1983 The Road to Berlin and David Glantz's 1995 (2015) When Titans Clashed covered events on the entire Eastern Front from a German and Soviet perspective, and devoted several pages to the fighting in the Korsun Pocket.

More recently, the 2002 work by U.S. Army historian Douglas Nash, Hell's Gate: The Battle of the Cherkassy Pocket, January–February 1944, took issue with Soviet claims that Korsun was another Stalingrad.

[89] In 2011 author and historian Jean Lopez published, on Economica Edition (ISBN 978-2717860290 ) a book named "Le chaudron de Tcherkassy-Korsun ", covering the battle.