Brody, Battle of

Brody, Battle of. A series of defensive engagements fought by the Ukrainian Division Galizien, attached to the 13th German Army Corps, against the advancing Soviet Army during the Lviv–Sandomierz operation (13–22 July 1944). The Soviet forces, several times stronger in men and material, began their offensive against Lviv with advances in the direction of Ternopil–Zolochiv to the south and Radekhiv–Busk to the north of the town of Brody. During the battle individual regiments of the division—then stationed on the second line of the front—were dispatched to the areas of heaviest fighting to close gaps. On 18 July Soviet forces surrounded the corps and destroyed it. On 21–22 July the survivors broke out of the encirclement near the villages of Kniazhe and Pochany and moved south towards the Podolian Upland (Holohory–Peremyshliany). Of the division's 11,000 soldiers, 3,000 returned from Brody and regrouped in Serednie, Transcarpathia. After the battle some members of the division joined up with the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. Many were taken as prisoners of war.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Lysiak, O. (ed). Brody: Zbirnyk (Munich 1951)
Polushkin, M. Na sandomirskom napravlenii: L’vovsko-Sandomirskaia operatsiia (iiul’–avgust 1944 g.) (Moscow 1969)
Heike, W.-D. Sie wollten Die Freiheit: Die Geschichte der Ukrainischen Division 1943–1945 (Dorheim 1973)
Lysiak, O.; Veryha, V.; Livyns’kyi, R.; Drazhevs’kyi, R. (eds). Bii pid Brodamy: Zbirnyk (New York 1974)

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984).]