At the beginning of July, the Third and Fourth Romanian Armies, aided by elements of the German 11th Army, fought their way through Bessarabia towards Odessa. Zhukov’s exasperation may have been heightened by what was happening on Konev’s front. It also contributed to the mass extermination of populations in German-occupied Europe. Soviet armoured fighting vehicle production was greater than the Germans (in 1943, the Soviet Union manufactured 24,089 tanks and self-propelled guns to Germany's 19,800). The dispositions and orders Schörner gave to the 4th Panzer and Ninth Armies reveal that either he was engaged in wishful thinking or that he did not fully grasp the situation in his new command. This included 400,000 trucks, 12,000 armoured vehicles (including 7,000 tanks), 11,400 aircraft and 1.75 million tons of food. Source: L. E. Reshin, "Year of 1941", vol. The drive was to continue via Poznan to the Oder in the vicinity of Kuestrin and Frankfurt-an-der-Oder. Status: offline. All these factors resulted in tremendous brutality both to combatants and civilians that found no parallel on the Western Front. Whether Stalin was unable or unwilling to come to the aid of the Polish resistance is disputed. The main problem for the Wehrmacht was that these defences had not yet been built; by the time Army Group South had evacuated eastern Ukraine and begun withdrawing across the Dnieper during September, the Soviet forces were hard behind them. For example, while the USSR was able to produce fuel of octane numbers from 70 to 74, Soviet industry only met 4% of demand for fuel of octane numbers from 90+; all aircraft produced after 1939 required fuel of the latter category. The remnants of the 24th Panzer Corps went into positions around Kielce. Skorobogatkin, et al, "50 Let Voorezhennyk sil SSR" (Moscow: Voyenizdat, 1968), p. 457. Newsreel item showing Marshal Timoshenko and Soviet Officers looking at map. If so, it was probably a sanctioned action to avoid heavy fighting that would have destroyed much of the industrial region. For the majority of people of the Soviet Union, the Nazi invasion was viewed as a brutal act of unprovoked aggression. Steam Workshop::Soviet Winter Offensive. Some Soviet citizens would side with the Germans and join Andrey Vlasov's Russian Liberation Army, Ukrainian Liberation Army, Georgian Legion and other Ostlegionen units. F. W. Winterbotham wrote of Hitler's signal to Gerd von Rundstedt to continue the attack to the west during the Battle of the Bulge: From experience we had learned that when Hitler started refusing to do what the generals recommended, things started to go wrong, and this was to be no exception. [162], The Soviets also lost 102,600 aircraft (combat and non-combat causes), including 46,100 in combat. The only thing he could do was delay the eventual outcome. Hitler continued his insistence on not making withdrawals and holding so-called fortified places bypassed by the Soviets. After the failure of the attempt to capture Stalingrad, Hitler had delegated planning authority for the upcoming campaign season to the German Army High Command and reinstated Heinz Guderian to a prominent role, this time as Inspector of Panzer Troops. The German field commanders argued for an immediate offensive towards Moscow, but Hitler over-ruled them, citing the importance of Ukrainian agricultural, mining and industrial resources, as well as the massing of Soviet reserves in the Gomel area between Army Group Centre's southern flank and the bogged-down Army Group South's northern flank. The quality of senior commanders also deteriorated as loyalty to Hitler became the only real prerequisite. This is a reproduction of the 1984 Department of the Army Field Manual 100-2-3 (The Soviet Army: Troops, Organization, and Equipment). Stalin introduced a note of caution. German losses according to: Rüdiger Overmans, Rüdiger Overmans, Soldaten hinter Stacheldraht. On 27 November, the 4th Panzer Army got to within 30 km (19 mi) of the Kremlin when it reached the last tramstop of the Moscow line at Khimki. Schörner also began to send optimistic reports to Hitler. The Nazi ideology and the maltreatment of the local population and Soviet POWs encouraged partisans fighting behind the front; it motivated even anti-communists or non-Russian nationalists to ally with the Soviets and greatly delayed the formation of German-allied divisions consisting of Soviet POWs (see Ostlegionen). However, following the decisive Soviet victory at the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943 and the resulting dire German military situation, Nazi propaganda began to portray the war as a German defence of Western civilisation against destruction by the vast "Bolshevik hordes" that were pouring into Europe. After several days of heavy fighting the Soviet 1BF and 1UF punched holes through the German front line and were fanning out across central Germany. The disastrous winter of 1941/42 on the Russian Front taught the Germans that they needed to be better prepared for the cold winters of future campaigns. Throughout the 1930s the Soviet Union underwent massive industrialisation and economic growth under the leadership of Joseph Stalin. Much of the combat took place in or close to populated areas, and the actions of both sides contributed to massive loss of civilian life and tremendous material damage. The German ability to hold its fronts had been on a downward spiral, and in the next few months that spiral would spin out of control. Konev had his first bridgehead secured by 7:15 am, and one hour later his tanks and assault guns were engaging the enemy. Although this was a good beginning, it was only a matter of time before the enemy would break through. Stalin ordered the retreating Red Army to initiate a scorched-earth policy to deny the Germans and their allies basic supplies as they advanced eastward. After the German defeat, Joseph Stalin promised his allies Truman and Churchill, that he would attack the Japanese within 90 days of the German surrender. Military losses of 10.6 million include six million killed or missing in action and 3.6 million POW dead, plus 400,000 paramilitary and Soviet partisan losses. [45], British historians Alan S. Milward and M. Medlicott show that Nazi Germany—unlike Imperial Germany—was prepared for only a short-term war (Blitzkrieg). [37][38] In the spring of 1940, Germany had mobilised 5,500,000 men. II, p. 245. 0 comments. Operation Typhoon, which was set in motion on 30 September, saw the 2nd Panzer Army rush along the paved road from Oryol (captured 5 October) to the Oka River at Plavsk, while the 4th Panzer Army (transferred from Army Group North to Centre) and 3rd Panzer armies surrounded the Soviet forces in two huge pockets at Vyazma and Bryansk. On 9 April 1945, Königsberg in East Prussia finally fell to the Red Army, although the shattered remnants of Army Group Centre continued to resist on the Vistula Spit and Hel Peninsula until the end of the war in Europe. 2,450 other armoured vehicles, 21,880 armoured personnel carriers, 36,703 semi-tracked tractors and 87,329 semi-tracked trucks,[161] estimated 2/3 were lost on the Eastern front. Ullstein., 2000 Page 246. In early January 1945 we find the Soviet armies positioned along the Vistula River to its great bend and then north along the Narew River. If the West is too stupid and blind to grasp this, then I shall be compelled to come to an agreement with the Russians, beat the West and then after their defeat turn against the Soviet Union with all my forces. The direction of advance was then switched to Ponyri, to the west of Olkhovatka, but the 9th Army could not break through here either and went over to the defensive. It is estimated that between 2.25 and 3.3 million Soviet POWs died in Nazi custody, out of 5.25–5.7 million. [23][26] Soviet Union negotiated treaties of mutual assistance with France and with Czechoslovakia with the aim of containing Germany's expansion. 1. The 3rd Belorussian Front under Chernyakhovsky opened the offensive against Army Group Center on January 13 with an attack on the 3rd Panzer Army north of Gumbinnen. Two Soviet fronts punched through the Romanian lines and converged at Kalach on 23 November, trapping 300,000 Axis troops behind them. The Ninth Army (40th Panzer Corps and Panzer Corps Grossdeutschland) was trying to hold a line south of Lodz long enough for the 24th Panzer Corps to cross the Pilica River. Wehrmacht soldiers preparing to defend against the Soviet Winter offensive in 1942. Army Group Center collapsed under the weight of the Red Army assault and the Soviet armed forces advanced on to the Vistula River line. [39] By the time of the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Wehrmacht consisted of c, 3,800,000 men of the Heer, 1,680,000 of the Luftwaffe, 404,000 of the Kriegsmarine, 150,000 of the Waffen-SS, and 1,200,000 of the Replacement Army (contained 450,400 active reservists, 550,000 new recruits and 204,000 in administrative services, vigiles and or in convalescence). Guderian did not want any of the divisions employed prematurely, but Himmler had difficulties holding the staging area and eventually was forced to commit several of the new divisions. The winter campaign of 1941–1942 from 5 December 1941 to 7 May 1942 was the name given by Soviet military command to the period that marked the commencement of the Moscow Strategic Offensive Operation (better known as the Battle of Moscow). It had two SS divisions, one Latvian SS Division, Volkssturm units, and remnants of the Ninth Army. The Finnish campaign was said to have two objectives: keep the Finns in the war and if possible start a new northern offensive to draw Soviet forces away from the Reich's heartland. "[84]: 64. Others say that Stalin was eager for Germany to be at war with capitalist countries. After heavy fighting in the battles of Tali-Ihantala and Ilomantsi, Finnish troops finally managed to halt the Soviet attack. On the same day, three armies from the 1st Ukrainian Front drove the 24th Panzer Corps out of Kielce. The toll was high: 20,000 Red Army soldiers died, plus several thousand Germans, Slovaks and Czechs. Soviet forces mounted a surprise counterattack . The Soviet pursuit was so overwhelming and swift that all plans were overcome by events. The 1st Belorussian Front reached the Oder north of Kuestrin on January 31, and by February 3 it had closed up to the river from Zehden south of Stettin to its left boundary. [41], By July 1943, the Wehrmacht numbered 6,815,000 troops. Accounts of the Battle of Moscow and the Red Army's winter offensive of 1941-42 ignore Soviet counteroffensives in the Leningrad region, near Viaz'ma west of Moscow, near Bolkhov and Oboian' south of Moscow, and . This date is celebrated as a national holiday – Victory Day – in Russia (as part of a two-day 8–9 May holiday) and some other post-Soviet countries. Central Tunisia, 1943. As Rokossovsky was attacking out of his bridgeheads on the Narew, Hitler ordered Panzer Corps Grossdeutschland and its two panzer divisions in Army Group Center transferred to Army Group A. The disastrous encirclements later in the war – at Stalingrad, Korsun and many other places – resulted directly from Hitler's orders. [51]: 123  It is estimated that all the food supplies sent to Russia could feed a 12,000,000-man strong army a half pound of concentrated food per day, for the entire duration of the war. The joint German–Finnish operations across the northernmost Finnish–Soviet border and in the Murmansk region are considered part of the Eastern Front. STAVKA ordered both Zhukov and Konev to accelerate their drive to the Oder, and Konev to use his second echelon to take Krakow and the Upper Silesia industrial area. To the south, the Second Ukrainian Front (ex Steppe Front) had crossed the Dnieper at Kremenchug and continued westwards. All structured data from the file and property namespaces is available under the Creative Commons CC0 License; all unstructured text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. Romania and the Soviet Union signed an armistice on 12 September. The next day shortly before midnight, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel repeated the signing in Berlin at Zhukov's headquarters, now known as the German-Russian Museum. Upon his arrival in Berlin in the evening of January 15, Hitler told Guderian, to the latter’s dismay, that he was moving the 6th SS Panzer Army’s two corps from the Western Front to Army Group South instead of to A or Center. However, if one last great blitzkrieg offensive could be mounted, then attention could then be turned to the Allied threat to the Western Front. It was a two-phase plan. [89] The Leningrad Front's offensives towards Tallinn, a main Baltic port, were stopped in February 1944. Though some units were evacuated, those that remained encircled represented a terrible waste of manpower at a time when those hundreds of thousands of troops were needed farther west. The Caucasian Front and Black Sea Fleet were to take back the Crimea. Because of the small number of weapons and the severe lack of fuel, the tanks and assault guns were dispersed among the frontline units. Portrays an alternate world in which Hitler has not made his fatal error in prematurely declaring war on the United States and America is the only significant miliary presence against a triumphant Third Reich and its devastating weapons. ... The attack hit Schörner’s Army Group Center at its boundary with the Ninth Army. What it did accomplish was to destroy many of the aircraft that had been transporting relief supplies to Stalingrad. These forgotten battles also explain why the Wehrmacht ultimately suffered defeat at the gates of Moscow in early December 1941. During the war, as Germany acquired new territories (either by direct annexation or by installing puppet governments in defeated countries), these new territories were forced to sell raw materials and agricultural products to German buyers at extremely low prices. The first signs of a change in Soviet intentions began to be picked up by the Germans between the 24th and 26th of February. Zhukov’s frontline commanders later complained bitterly that the 140 anti-aircraft searchlights, rather than blinding the enemy, illuminated the Soviet troops moving forward. It concluded that the main Soviet effort would be delivered against Army Group A by the 1st Belorussian and 1st Ukrainian Fronts. [citation needed]. The Red Army advanced from the Don 500 km (310 mi) to the west of Stalingrad, marching through Kursk (retaken on 8 February 1943) and Kharkov (retaken 16 February 1943). [51]: 133–4, Prof. Dr. Albert L. Weeks conclude: 'As to attempts to sum up the importance of those four-year-long shipments of Lend-Lease for the Russian victory on the Eastern Front in World War II, the jury is still out – that is, in any definitive sense of establishing exactly how crucial this aid was. Barbarossa is a classic of miltary history. This paperback edition contains a new preface by the author. Soviet Winter Offensive Against Germany. And the army is staying at the front.". 6731 Whittier Avenue, Suite C-100 McLean, VA 22101, From Tolkien to Hitler: Famous Soldiers of World War I, The Battle for Omaha Beach: The Men of the D-Day Invasion, Napoleon Bonaparte’s Last Campaign: The Battle of Waterloo, Operation Barbarossa: World War II’s Eastern Front, The Battle of Gettysburg: Turning Point of the American Civil War, The Soviet Winter Offensive: From the Vistula to the Oder, M18 Hellcat Tank Destroyers Failed on the Battlefield, Controversial Allied Escort Carriers were Versatile Weapons, What Made the B-25 Mitchell Bomber so Legendary, What Made the German Luger the Most Famous Pistol in Modern Warfare, Band of Brothers’ Buck Compton: One Man’s Call of Duty, Jimmy Doolittle: The Warrior from Shangri-La, Operation Bagration: Soviet Triumph in the East, A Masterful German Defense at the Battle of Seelow Heights, Waffen SS General Felix Steiner’s WWII Legacy, The Demyansk Pocket: Disaster For Germany’s Scandinavian Volunteers, Heinrich Himmler: The Rise and Fall of Hitler’s Third Reichsführer-SS. Army Group South had almost regained its balance after being virtually destroyed in August 1944. The Soviet plan did not call for a pause along the Oder. Except for participating in the invasion of France in 1940, he spent the whole war on the Eastern Front. [113], The war inflicted huge losses and suffering upon the civilian populations of the affected countries. History Lapse. Some of Heinrici’s units were down to a half dozen rounds per gun. Hitler called the estimated buildup of Soviet forces in the east “a gigantic bluff” and refused to cancel Operation Wacht-am-Rhein––the planned thrust in the west. All but the most fanatical Nazis and the delusional bunch in the Führer bunker knew that the war was lost. To carry out that order, destruction battalions were formed in front-line areas, having the authority to summarily execute any suspicious person. By that time the Hungarian 2nd Army had also been wiped out. The 9th Parachute Division, on the corps’ left flank, was organized in its present form from various parachute-training units. [11] A small German garrison on the Danish island of Bornholm refused to surrender until they were bombed and invaded by the Soviets. Army Group A, 19 January-18 February 1943: 82: 7. Additional famine deaths, which totalled one million during 1946–47, are not included here. Contact between Panzer Corps Grossdeutschland and the 24th Panzer Corps was established along the Warta River on January 22. Towards the south, the 1st Panzer Army had reached the Caucasian foothills and the Malka River. Among other goods, Lend-Lease supplied:[51]: 8–9, Lend-Lease aid of military hardware, components and goods to the Soviet Union constituted to 20% percent of the assistance. For a discussion of the term itself. The German tanks were confined to roads because of the rain and mud. Rzhev-Vyazma Strategic Offensive Operation, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Winter_campaign_of_1941–1942&oldid=1032148415, Battles and operations of the Eastern Front of World War II, Battles of World War II involving Germany, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 5 July 2021, at 19:24. The 3rd Guards Tank Army had reached Namslau in Silesia. The offensive into Russia was over. The Germans' final strategic offensive in the Soviet Union ended with their defence against a major Soviet counteroffensive that lasted into August. There was an angry confrontation between Guderian, General Busse (commander of the Ninth Army), and Hitler on the day that the second counterattack against Kuestrin failed––March 27. He later told Erhard Milch: I had to act ruthlessly. [116], The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were both ideologically driven states (by Soviet communism and by Nazism respectively), in which the foremost political leaders had near-absolute power. The battles on the Eastern Front of the Second World War constituted the largest military confrontation in history. Soviet counter-offensive: Winter 1941 Main articles: Battle of Moscow , Second Battle of Kharkov , Winter Campaign of 1941-42 , and Bombing of Gorky in World War II The Soviet winter counter-offensive, 5 December 1941 to 7 May 1942: North Africa Algeria and Tunisia (1942) Allied Invasion of Northwest Africa. Presents the events of World War II in a day-by-day format. Includes information on both military and civilian occurrences and profiles the important personalities of the times. As a result, a salient was formed along the front line in the direction of the capital, which became known as the Rzhev-Vyazma Salient. The fighting in East Prussia had been going on since early February. On repatriation of Soviet citizens. "Fighting a Lost War: The German Army in 1943": "How the Red Army Defeated Germany: The Three Alibis": This page was last edited on 7 August 2021, at 15:20. Germany's peak oil production in 1944 amounted to about 12 million barrels of oil per year. The endgame in Europe was about to begin. The 1st Ukrainian Front attacked out of the Steinau bridgehead on the upper Oder on February 8 with five armies, two of them tank armies. [132], Germany had far greater resources than did the USSR, and dwarfed its production in every matrix except for oil, having over five times the USSR's coal production, over three times its iron production, three times its steel production, twice its electricity production, and about 2/3 of its oil production.[133]. [51]: 129, In the last year of war, lend-lease data show that about 5.1 million tons of foodstuff left the United States for the Soviet Union. [51]: 122–3, The total lend-lease aid during the second World War had been estimated between $42–50 billion. [168][157] About 5% of the Soviet prisoners who died were of Jewish ethnicity. At first, they had driven the Red Army back to the gates of Moscow. [73], Army Group South, with the 1st Panzer Group, the 6th, 11th and 17th Armies, was tasked with advancing through Galicia and into Ukraine. Lt.-Gen. Mikhail Grigoryevich Yefremov's 33rd Army aided by Gen. Belov's 1st Cavalry Corps and Soviet Partisans attempted to seize Vyazma. North of the Arctic Circle, a German–Finnish force set out for Murmansk but could get no further than the Zapadnaya Litsa River, where they settled down. The offensive would open with a barrage from a reported 11,000 guns and large-caliber mortars. The new Army Group Center lost the Ninth Army to Army Group Vistula. He further assured the Führer that the Soviet drive toward Poznan in the gap between the 4th Panzer Army and the Ninth Army could also be stopped with generation of new forces. The main thrust continued across the Queiss and Bober Rivers north of Sagan. And Hitler almost never approved withdrawals. Soviet Winter Offensive Operations December 13, 1942 - February 18, 1943. To the north the 4th Tank Army crushed Panzer Corps Grossdeutschland and encircled Glogau; Breslau was encircled on February 12 after three days of heavy fighting. In the battle along the Oder, he had none. The attack was launched on February 15. [9] The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact ostensibly provided security to the Soviets in the occupation both of the Baltics and of the north and northeastern regions of Romania (Northern Bukovina and Bessarabia, June–July 1940), although Hitler, in announcing the invasion of the Soviet Union, cited the Soviet annexations of Baltic and Romanian territory as having violated Germany's understanding of the Pact. Beginning in autumn 1941, units that had proved themselves by superior performance in combat were given the traditional "Guards" title. But its forces could not even get past the first objective at Olkhovatka, just 8 km (5.0 mi) into the advance. ] of these were Russian auxiliaries May 1945 that there was, therefore, dynamic... Caused a severe leadership crisis and workers from Belarus and Ukraine to safe areas far from the Steinau bridgehead to. That winter offensive had two objectives of commanders that had reached the prewar Polish border to ask Stalin for to. 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