However, some sources quoted in the articles on Soviet spies Richard Sorge and Willi Lehmann, say they had sent warnings of an attack on 20 or 22 June, which were treated as "disinformation". [71], This decision caused a severe leadership crisis. With Germany crushed, there is no power in Europe to oppose her tremendous military forces. In part because of the unexpected degree of German success in the Battle of France (despite the warnings of the professional military) Hitler believed himself a military genius, with a grasp of the total war-effort that eluded his generals. Meanwhile, the 6th Army was driving towards Stalingrad, for a long period unsupported by 4th Panzer Army, which had been diverted to help 1st Panzer Army cross the Don. On 8 September 1944 the Red Army began an attack on the Dukla Pass on the SlovakPolish border. Hitler's armies advance into the Soviet Union to conquer Lebensraum in the East. Infractions by military and politruks were punished with transferral to penal battalions and to penal companies which carried out especially hazardous duties, such as serving as tramplers to clear Nazi minefields. They assumed the Red Army would not attack again, with the spring approaching, but on 3 March the Soviet Ukrainian Front went over to the offensive. However, on Christmas Eve the retreat began anew when the First Ukrainian Front (renamed from the Voronezh Front) struck them in the same place. By 24 April, elements of the 1BF and 1UF had completed the encirclement of the German capital and the Battle of Berlin entered its final stages. The battles on the Eastern Front of the Second World War constituted the largest military confrontation in history. In present-day German historiography the name German-Soviet War is typically used. [citation needed] Another viewpoint is that Stalin expected war in 1942 (the time when all his preparations would be complete) and stubbornly refused to believe it would come early. 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. Hitler as early as 1917 had referred to the Russians as inferior, believing that the Bolshevik Revolution had put the Jews in power over the mass of Slavs, who were, in Hitler's opinion, incapable of ruling themselves and had thus ended up being ruled by Jewish masters. To save the position in the south, the Germans decided to abandon the Rzhev salient in February, freeing enough troops to make a successful riposte in eastern Ukraine. Soviet tank-output remained the largest in the world. The 1st Panzer Group turned away from Kiev for the moment, advancing into the Dnieper bend (western Dnipropetrovsk Oblast). Operation Winter Storm, with three transferred panzer divisions, got going briskly from Kotelnikovo towards the Aksai river but became bogged down 65km (40mi) short of its goal. The Free French forces also contributed to the Red Army by the formation of the GC3 (Groupe de Chasse 3 or 3rd Fighter Group) unit to fulfil the commitment of Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French, who thought that it was important for French servicemen to serve on all fronts. [13] Wehrmacht officers told their troops to target people who were described as "Jewish Bolshevik subhumans", the "Mongol hordes", the "Asiatic flood" and the "red beast". ISBN978-0700617890. 4 (Zemskov V.N. In his will, Hitler appointed Grand Admiral Karl Dnitz as new President of the Reich and Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels as new Chancellor of the Reich; however, Goebbels also committed suicide, along with his wife Magda and their children, on 1 May 1945. Battle was joined on 12 July, with about one thousand tanks being engaged. However, the German lines were over-extended and the Soviet defenders counterattacked the 1st Panzer Army's spearhead from the north, forcing them to pull out of the city and behind the Mius River; the first significant German withdrawal of the war. 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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. These results and missed opportunities contributed to the defeat of the Wehrmacht. The VT-line was breached on 14 June and after a failed counterattack in Kuuterselk by the Finnish armoured division, the Finnish defence had to be pulled back to the VKT-line. Memorandum for the President's Special Assistant Harry Hopkins, Washington, D.C., 10 August 1943: In War II Russia occupies a dominant position and is the decisive factor looking toward the defeat of the Axis in Europe. Although plans were made to attack Moscow again, on 28 June 1942, the offensive re-opened in a different direction. [citation needed]. 28 (3): 567587. For the majority of people of the Soviet Union, the Nazi invasion was viewed as a brutal act of unprovoked aggression. Army Group South took the initiative, anchoring the front with the Battle of Voronezh and then following the Don river southeastwards. In the second week of January 1944 they swung north, meeting Vatutin's tank forces which had swung south from their penetration into Poland and surrounding ten German divisions at KorsunShevchenkovsky, west of Cherkassy. [120] The order stipulated to capture or shoot "cowards" and fleeing panicked troops at the rear where blocking detachments were ordered to be set up. This battle also enabled Army Group South to recapture Korosten and gain some time to rest. During the period it lasted (13 January 25 April), it cost the Red Army 584,788 casualties, and 3,525 tanks and assault guns. A Soviet parachute drop by two battalions of the 201st Airborne Brigade and the 250th Airborne Regiment on 18 and 22 January was designed to "cut off enemy communications with the rear." 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. [154], According to a report prepared by the General Staff of the Army issued in December 1944, materiel losses in the East from the period of 22 June 1941 until November 1944 stood at 33,324 armoured vehicles of all types (tanks, assault guns, tank destroyers, self-propelled guns and others). [167] The other main group of men joining the German army were citizens of the Baltic countries annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940 or from Western Ukraine. |Glantz, David M. (2005). This force was joined by additional paratroopers of the 8th Airborne Brigade at the end of January. During the first two weeks of April, the Red Army performed their fastest front redeployment of the war. While this redeployment was in progress, gaps were left in the lines and the remnants of the German 2nd Army, which had been bottled up in a pocket near Danzig, managed to escape across the Oder. Operation Barbarossa. [131] A month after the German invasion in 1941, an offer was made for a reciprocal adherence to Hague convention. The Germans, on the other hand, could rely on a large slave workforce from the conquered countries and Soviet POWs. The 4th and 9th armies and 3rd Panzer Army still held their own east of the upper Dnieper, stifling Soviet attempts to reach Vitebsk. But it turned out to be a fatal mistake. In 1941, thousands of trains evacuated critical factories and workers from Belarus and Ukraine to safe areas far from the front lines. Their next target was Smolensk, which fell on 16 July, but the fierce Soviet resistance in the Smolensk area and slowing of the Wehrmacht advance by the North and South Army Groups forced Hitler to halt a central thrust at Moscow and to divert the 3rd Panzer Group north. [80], However, by 6 December it became clear that the Wehrmacht did not have the strength to capture Moscow, and the attack was suspended. Over 11.4million Soviet civilians within pre-1939 Soviet borders were killed, and another estimated 3.5million civilians were killed in the annexed territories. To establish air supremacy, the Luftwaffe began immediate attacks on Soviet airfields, destroying much of the forward-deployed Soviet Air Force airfield fleets consisting of largely obsolescent types before their pilots had a chance to leave the ground. [50]:135, Stalin noted in 1944, that two-thirds of Soviet heavy industry had been built with the help of the United States, and the remaining one-third, with the help from other Western nations such as Great Britain and Canada. German production of explosives from 1940 to 1944 was 1.595million tons, along with 829,970 tons of powder. [69][70], Army Group Centre's two panzer groups (the 2nd and 3rd), advanced to the north and south of Brest-Litovsk and converged east of Minsk, followed by the 2nd, 4th, and 9th Armies. [citation needed], The Soviets lost 96,500 tanks, tank destroyers, self-propelled guns and assault guns, as well as 37,600 other armoured vehicles (such as armoured cars and semi-tracked trucks) for a total of 134,100 armoured vehicles lost. Whenever the Allies open a second front on the Continent, it will be decidedly a secondary front to that of Russia; theirs will continue to be the main effort. [22][25] The Soviet Union negotiated treaties of mutual assistance with France and with Czechoslovakia with the aim of containing Germany's expansion. "[83]:5962, By April 1942, the Soviet Supreme Command agreed to assume the defensive so as to "consolidate the captured ground." To the north, the Red Army surrounded a German garrison in Demyansk, which held out with air supply for four months, and established themselves in front of Kholm, Velizh, and Velikie Luki. 227, issued on 28 July 1942, threatened commanders who retreated without orders with punishment by court-martial. Romania's oil production amounted to approximately 6,000,000 tons annually. [165] According to Soviet claims, the Germans lost 75,700 aircraft on the Eastern front.[166]. The frontline ran from the Baltic states to the Black Sea, a distance of more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometres). [36][37] In the spring of 1940, Germany had mobilised 5,500,000 men. Most of the fighting on the Eastern Front took place between German, Russian and Austro-Hungarian forces. [101], The offensive to capture central Germany and Berlin started on 16 April with an assault on the German front lines on the Oder and Neisse rivers. Reinhard Gehlen (3 April 1902 - 8 June 1979) was a German lieutenant-general and intelligence officer. 2,450 other armoured vehicles, 21,880 armoured personnel carriers, 36,703 semi-tracked tractors and 87,329 semi-tracked trucks,[163] estimated 2/3 were lost on the Eastern Front. The Eastern Front, October 1943-April 1944 By the end of the first week of October 1943, the Red Army had established several bridgeheads on the right bank of the Dnieper River. It may also be likely that "Swedish ore formed the raw material of four out of every ten German guns" during the Hitler era'. Aside from the ideological conflict, the mindframe of the leaders of Germany and the Soviet Union, Hitler and Stalin respectively, contributed to the escalation of terror and murder on an unprecedented scale. To divert the rescue attempt, the Red Army decided to smash the Italians and come down behind the relief attempt if they could; that operation starting on 16 December. [63], While German historians do not apply any specific periodisation to the conduct of operations on the Eastern Front, all Soviet and Russian historians divide the war against Germany and its allies into three periods, which are further subdivided into eight major campaigns of the Theatre of war:[64], Operation Barbarossa began just before dawn on 22 June 1941. This opened up their places to the promotion of many younger officers that Stalin and the NKVD regarded as in line with Stalinist politics. US Strategic Bombing Survey "Appendix D. Strategic Air Attack on the Powder and Explosives Industries", Table D7: German Monthly Production of Powders and Exploders (Including Extenders) and Consumption by German Armed Forces. Charles Long, 1965: Materialien zum Vortrag des Chefs des Wehrmachtfhrungsstabes vom 7.11.1943 "Die strategische Lage am Anfang des fnften Kriegsjahres", (referenced to KTB OKW, IV, S. 1534 ff. [104] Altogether, the Berlin operation (16 April 2 May) cost the Red Army 361,367 casualties (dead, wounded, missing and sick) and 1,997 tanks and assault guns. On 5 May, the 2nd [Russian] Guard Army went on the offensive on the west side of Sevastopol. BERLIN -- A court in eastern Germany has sentenced a 28-year-old woman to five years and three months in prison for taking part in a series of attacks on neo-Nazis and other right-wing extremists . All these factors resulted in tremendous brutality both to combatants and civilians that found no parallel on the Western Front. Adolf Hitler had a lot of bad ideas in the course of World War II, but perhaps the worst was his decision to create "strongholds" (feste Pltze) on the Eastern Front: individual towns or cities that he declared to be fortresses, and where, he commanded, German defenders should fight till the death rather than retreat or surrender.In general, the "stronghold" was Hitler's response to . The next objective was to cross the Dnieper river, which was accomplished by 11 July. To carry out that order, destruction battalions were formed in front-line areas, having the authority to summarily execute any suspicious person. Despite a ferocious attack at the Sinimed Hills, Estonia, the Soviet Leningrad Front failed to break through the defence of the smaller, well-fortified army detachment "Narwa" in terrain not suitable for large-scale operations. The enormous territorial gains of 1941 presented Germany with vast areas to pacify and administer. [2] The German armed forces suffered 80% of its military deaths in the Eastern Front. [65] Panicky transmissions from the Soviet front-line units to their command headquarters were picked up like this: "We are being fired upon. At crucial periods in the war he held daily situation-conferences at which he used his remarkable talent for public speaking to overwhelm opposition from his generals and from the OKW staff with rhetoric. By 1946, 80 per cent of civilians and 20 per cent of POWs were freed, others were re-drafted, or sent to labour battalions. They fought in their own Waffen-SS units, including the Latvian Legion and the Galicia Division. Deaths of POW were 450,600 including 356,700 in NKVD camps and 93,900 in transit. . As the Red Army withdrew behind the Dnieper and Dvina rivers, the Soviet Stavka (high command) turned its attention to evacuating as much of the western regions' industry as it could. More than 2.3million Soviet troops went into action against German Army Group Centre, which had a strength of fewer than 800,000 men. [44], British historians Alan S. Milward and M. Medlicott show that Nazi Germanyunlike Imperial Germanywas prepared for only a short-term war (Blitzkrieg). Soviet numbers for 1945 are for the whole of 1945, including after the war was over. The Soviet Union started a process of militarisation with the first five-year plan that officially began in 1928, although it was only towards the end of the second five-year plan in the mid-1930s that military power became the primary focus of Soviet industrialisation.[20]. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. 3,878,000 were deployed in eastern Europe, 311,000 in Norway/Denmark, 1,873,000 in western Europe, 961,000 in Italy, and 826,000 in the Balkans. According to Zhukov, "During the winter offensive, the forces of the Western Front had advanced from 70 to 100km, which somewhat improved the overall operational and strategic situation on the Western sector. ), "Strategische Lage im Frhjahr 1944", Jodl, Vortrag 5 May 1944. "Contemporary Historiography on the Eastern Front in World War II". [34][35], For nearly two years the border was quiet while Germany conquered Denmark, Norway, France, the Low Countries, and the Balkans. The German Army found itself facing a massive challenge in the spring of 1944, just months before its total disaster at the Battle of Brody they were facing the possibility of a war on three fronts. Local insurgents seized the moment and controlled most of Lithuania, northern Latvia and southern Estonia prior to the arrival of the German forces. Immediately after the start of the German invasion, the NKVD massacred large numbers of inmates in most of their prisons in Western Belarus and Western Ukraine, while the remainder was to be evacuated in death marches.[133]. Universal History Archive/Getty Images The Schlieffen Plan, devised a decade before the start of World War I, outlined a strategy for Germany to avoid fighting at its eastern and western fronts. [132], Soviet repressions also contributed into the Eastern Front's death toll. Buy on Amazon Rate this book A German General on the Eastern Front: The Letters and Diaries of Gotthard Heinrici 1941-1942 Johannes Hrter 4.15 13 ratings2 reviews The Eastern Front, 1941. On 31 January 1943, the 90,000 survivors of the 300,000-man 6th Army surrendered. Soviet Generals Prepare Four-Front Assault. Keep in mind his initial command may have been on another front or at a lower level. Because of Stalin's suspicions about the intentions of the Western Allies to hand over territory occupied by them in the post-war Soviet sphere of influence, the offensive was to be on a broad front and was to move as rapidly as possible to the west, to meet the Western Allies as far west as possible. [77], Army Group South pushed down from the Dnieper to the Sea of Azov coast, also advancing through Kharkov, Kursk, and Stalino. ISBN978-0-7006-1353-3. During the first week of October, while Soviet forces were regrouping for an assault across the Dneper, Malinovsky's Southwest Front and Tolbukhin's . [50]:122 In addition, the USSR received wartime innovations including penicillin, radar, rocket, precision-bombing technology, the long-range navigation system Loran, and many other innovations. Finally, early in November the Red Army broke out of its bridgeheads on either side of Kiev and captured the Ukrainian capital, at that time the third largest city in the Soviet Union. This refusal to take necessary action was instrumental in the destruction of major portions of the Red Air Force, lined up on its airfields, in the first days of the German-Soviet war. 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. Skorobogatkin, et al, "50 Let Voorezhennyk sil SSR" (Moscow: Voyenizdat, 1968), p. 457. On 30 March the Red Army entered Austria and captured Vienna on 13 April. The Nazis imposed a brutal regime, deporting some 380,000 young people for slave labour, and killing hundreds of thousands (civilians) more. While not a part of the Eastern Front operations, it is included here because the commanders and much of the forces used by the Red Army came from the European Theatre of operations and benefited from the experience gained there. Beginning in autumn 1941, units that had proved themselves by superior performance in combat were given the traditional "Guards" title. [170][159] About 5% of the Soviet prisoners who died were of Jewish ethnicity. The Soviet attack was supported by a heavy artillery barrage, air bombardments and armoured forces. Soviet intelligence reported that Germany would rather invade the USSR after the fall of the British Empire[47] or after an unacceptable ultimatum demanding German occupation of Ukraine during the German invasion of Britain.[48]. The multiple battles and the use of scorched earth tactics destroyed agricultural land, infrastructure, and whole towns, leaving much of the population homeless and without food. UK: Cambridge University Press. Dt. 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. Debate among the General Staff was polarised, with even Hitler nervous about any attempt to pinch off the Kursk salient. But if we speak today in Europe of new land, we can primarily only to Russia and the border states subjects him think." [82], The Soviet counter-offensive during the Battle of Moscow had removed the immediate German threat to the city. When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army stopped Hitler. The meeting engagement at Prochorovka was a Soviet defensive success, albeit at heavy cost. North of the Arctic Circle, a GermanFinnish force set out for Murmansk but could get no further than the Zapadnaya Litsa River, where they settled down. Journal of Slavic Military Studies. Others say that Stalin was eager for Germany to be at war with capitalist countries. This figure represents a total of 4557% of all Soviet POWs and may be contrasted with 8,300 out of 231,000 British and U.S. prisoners, or 3.6%. The above figures includes all personnel in the German Army, i.e. [50]:1223, The total Lend-Lease aid provided during the Second World War had been estimated between $4250billion. The Red Army then launched a counter-offensive, Operation Kutuzov. |Glantz, David; House, Jonathan (1995). Romania and the Soviet Union signed an armistice on 12 September. This included the terrorisation of their own people, as well as mass deportations of entire populations. The Kursk offensive was the last on the scale of 1940 and 1941 that the Wehrmacht was able to launch; subsequent offensives would represent only a shadow of previous German offensive might. On 25 April the 2BF broke through the German 3rd Panzer Army's line south of Stettin. The combined panzer force reached the Beresina River in just six days, 650km (400mi) from their start lines. Under shellfire and pursued by Soviet tanks, the surrounded German troops, among whom were the 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking, fought their way across the river to safety, although at the cost of half their number and all their equipment. In February 1936 the Spanish general election brought many communist leaders into the Popular Front government in the Second Spanish Republic, but in a matter of months a right-wing military coup initiated the Spanish Civil War of 19361939. The German forces on the Mius, now comprising the 1st Panzer Army and a reconstituted 6th Army, were by August too weak to repulse a Soviet attack on their own front, and when the Red Army hit them they retreated all the way through the Donbas industrial region to the Dnieper, losing half the farmland that Germany had invaded the Soviet Union to exploit. Ulrich Herbert, "Forced Laborers in the 'Third Reich'", Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Supplement A, ("- " ("Military-Historical Magazine"), 1997, 5. To the south General Ivan Konev shifted the main weight of the 1st Ukrainian Front (1UF) out of Upper Silesia north-west to the Neisse River. At the end of August Romanian mountain troops joined the Caucasian spearhead, while the Romanian 3rd and 4th armies were redeployed from their successful task of clearing the Azov littoral. They were accompanied by ten Romanian divisions, three Italian divisions, two Slovakian divisions and nine Romanian and four Hungarian brigades. The Red Army achieved a ratio of ten to one in tanks and seven to one in aircraft over their enemy. The extent of warnings received by Stalin about a German invasion is controversial, and the claim that there was a warning that "Germany will attack on 22 June without declaration of war" has been dismissed as a "popular myth". [136] From 1941 to 1945, the USSR produced only 505,000 tons of explosives and received 105,000 tons of Lend-Lease imports. Two months later, the Soviet forces won the battle and entered Slovakia. [143] Germany on the other hand had the resources of conquered Europe at its disposal; those numbers are however not included into the tables above, such as production in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, and so on. Five thousand tanks were provided by the British and Canada. ISBN0-7006-0899-0. [134], 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.[135]. The Soviet advance in the south continued into Romania and, following a coup against the Axis-allied government of Romania on 23 August, the Red Army occupied Bucharest on 31 August. Ullstein., 2000 Page 246. They were now free to move west towards the British 21st Army Group and north towards the Baltic port of Stralsund. Soon after that, the Soviet Union demanded significant territorial concessions from Finland, and after Finland rejected Soviet demands, the Soviet Union attacked Finland on 30 November 1939 in what became known as the Winter War a bitter conflict that resulted in a peace treaty on 13 March 1940, with Finland maintaining its independence but losing its eastern parts in Karelia.[8]. Erich Ludendorff was a German general who gained renown during the First World War, primarily for his efforts on the eastern front. The island was returned to the Danish government four months later. "[83]:64. And the army is staying at the front.". the prevalence of tank-only groups vs. mixed unit groups) world-war-two tanks combat Share Improve this question asked Apr 24, 2016 at 20:33 I Like Computurs The combined German and Romanian forces moved into the Crimea and took control of all of the peninsula by autumn (except Sevastopol, which held out until 3 July 1942). A strategic air offensive by the United States Army Air Force and Royal Air Force played a significant part in damaging German industry and tying up German air force and air defence resources, with some bombings, such as the bombing of the eastern German city of Dresden, being done to facilitate specific Soviet operational goals. On 21 November, the Wehrmacht took Rostov, the gateway to the Caucasus. [42] About 1520% of total German strength were foreign troops (from allied countries or conquered territories). Instead, the Nazi ideologues saw the future of the East as one of settlement by German colonists, with the natives killed, expelled, or reduced to slave labour. Mass repression occurred in the occupied portions of Poland as well as in the Baltic states and Bessarabia. |Braun, Hans-Joachim (1990). Of these, 3,900,000 were deployed in eastern Europe, 180,000 in Finland, 315,000 in Norway, 110,000 in Denmark, 1,370,000 in western Europe, 330,000 in Italy, and 610,000 in the Balkans. Tank losses on both sides have been the source of controversy ever since. Overall, Germany imported 20% of its food and 33% of its raw materials from conquered territories and Axis allies. Both sides practised widespread scorched earth tactics, but the loss of civilian lives in the case of Germany was incomparably smaller than that of the Soviet Union, in which at least 20million were killed. In areas such as Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania (which had been annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940) the Wehrmacht was tolerated by a relatively more significant part of the native population. The question was: where? Operation Barbarossa. The Eastern Front, 1941. . The German high water mark was just before the Battle of Kursk, in early July 1943: 3,403,000 German troops and 650,000 Finnish, Hungarian, Romanian and other countries' troops. This idea of holding territory led to another failed plan, dubbed[by whom?] Washington, 1947. These losses are for the entire territory of the USSR including territories annexed in 193940. Opening an eastern front in Europe by invading the Soviet Union in June 1941, Hitler expanded World War II and started a battle that would consume massive amounts of German manpower and resources. [54] Axis allies such as Romania and Italy, Hungary, Finland, Croatia and Bulgaria benefited from Germany's net imports. Some recent reports raise the number of Belarusians who perished in the war to "3 million 650 thousand people, unlike the former 2.2 million. The nascent national liberation movements among Ukrainians and Cossacks, and others were viewed by Hitler with suspicion; some, especially those from the Baltic States, were co-opted into the Axis armies and others brutally suppressed. The German army group "Narwa" included Estonian conscripts, defending the re-establishment of Estonian independence.[89][90]. As part of this, Operation Shamil was executed, a plan whereby a group of Brandenburger commandos dressed up as Soviet NKVD troops to destabilise Maikop's defences and allow the 1st Panzer Army to enter the oil town with little opposition. 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. German General Friedrich Paulus went against . On 13 May 1945, all Soviet offensives ceased and the fighting on the Eastern Front of World War II came to an end. "Fighting a Lost War: The German Army in 1943": "How the Red Army Defeated Germany: The Three Alibis": This page was last edited on 4 June 2023, at 12:37. [162] Overall, Germany produced 3,024 reconnaissance vehicles,[unreliable source?] After a 120-kilometre (75mi) advance in January and February, the Leningrad Front had reached the borders of Estonia. [98], In Slovakia, the Slovak National Uprising started as an armed struggle between German Wehrmacht forces and rebel Slovak troops between August and October 1944. [78][79], The onset of the winter freeze saw one last German lunge that opened on 15 November, when the Wehrmacht attempted to encircle Moscow. The toll was high: 20,000 Red Army soldiers died, plus several thousand Germans, Slovaks and Czechs. To fulfill demands, the USSR depended on American assistance, both in finished products and TEL. Micheal Clodfelter, "Nazi Foreign Legions History Learning Site", The Eastern Front: Barbarossa, Stalingrad, Kursk and Berlin (Campaigns of World War II), At Leningrad's Gates: The Story of a Soldier with Army Group North, Adolf Hitler's Letter to Benito Mussolini Explaining the Invasion of the Soviet Union, The Fhrer to the German People: 22 June 1941, Adolf Hitler's Order of the Day to the German Troops on the Eastern Front (2 October 1941), Adolf Hitler Explains His Reasons for Invading the Soviet Union, Adolf Hitler's Proclamation to the German Army on His Assumption of Direct Command, Adolf Hitler's Speech at the Berlin Sportpalast (30 January 1942), Prof Richard Overy writes a summary about the eastern front for the BBC, Rarities of the USSR photochronicles. In September 1941, Erich Koch was appointed to the Ukrainian Commissariat. [g] In many towns, the battles were fought within towns and cities with trapped civilians caught in the middle. In wartime, the German forces had brought into the Reich 6.5million civilians in addition to Soviet POWs for unfree labour in factories. The Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of conflict between the European Axis powers against the Soviet Union (USSR), Poland and other Allies, which encompassed Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Northeast Europe (Baltics), and Southeast Europe (Balkans) from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945. Stalin's five-year plans of the 1930s had resulted in the industrialisation of the Urals and central Asia. The Soviet Union offered support to the anti-Axis partisans in many Wehrmacht-occupied countries in Central Europe, notably those in Slovakia and Poland. [50]:135 The shipment of aluminium not only represented double the amount of metal that Germany possessed, but also composed the bulk of aluminium that was used in manufacture of Soviet aircraft, that had fallen in critically short supply. Although the 5th Guards Tank Army did not attain its objectives, the German advance had been halted. The official Polish government report of war losses prepared in 1947 reported 6,028,000 victims out of a population of 27,007,000 ethnic Poles and Jews; this report excluded ethnic Ukrainian and Belarusian losses. "We National Socialists consciously draw a line under the direction of our foreign policy war. A map outlining the Eastern Front sometime in 1915. Overall, France made the largest contribution to the German war effort. It included the phrase All forces under German control to cease active operations at 2301 hours Central European time on 8 May 1945. Based on Soviet sources Krivosheev put German losses on the Eastern Front from 1941 to 1945 at 6,923,700 men: including killed in action, died of wounds or disease and reported missing and presumed dead 4,137,100, taken prisoner 2,571,600 and 215,000 dead among Soviet volunteers in the Wehrmacht. During the three-year occupation of Belarus, more than 200 cities and about 9,000 villages were destroyed. The Soviet advance continued along the railway line until the 1939 PolishSoviet border was reached on 3 January 1944. Stalin and Hitler both disregarded human life in order to achieve their goal of victory. S2CID142875289. However, Soviet society as a whole was hostile to the invading Nazis from the very start. How was the Eastern Front different from the Western Front? The fairly limited scope of the Soviet offensive, although still eventually targeted on Rostov, also allowed Hitler time to see sense and pull Army Group A out of the Caucasus and back over the Don.[85]. In 194344, French payments to Germany may have risen to as much as 55% of French GDP. The Soviets outnumbered the Germans on average by 56:1 in troops, 6:1 in artillery, 6:1 in tanks and 4:1 in self-propelled artillery. [164], The Soviets also lost 102,600 aircraft (combat and non-combat causes), including 46,100 in combat. Sweden had access to internal German communications through breaking the crypto used in the Siemens and Halske T52 crypto machine also known as the Geheimschreiber and informed Stalin about the forthcoming invasion well ahead of June 22, but did not reveal its sources. [71] 400,000 Soviet prisoners were captured as Kiev was surrendered on 19 September.[71]. [15], Hitler referred to the war in radical terms, calling it a "war of annihilation" (Vernichtungskrieg) which was both an ideological and racial war. It was centered at Bansk Bystrica. GERMAN GENERAL OFFICER CASUALTIES. Joseph Stalin bore the greatest responsibility for some of the disasters at the beginning of the war (for example, the Battle of Kiev (1941)), but equally deserves praise for the subsequent success of the Soviet Red Army, which depended on the unprecedentedly rapid industrialisation of the Soviet Union, which Stalin's internal policy had made the first priority throughout the 1930s. Adolf Hitler had argued in his autobiography Mein Kampf (1925) for the necessity of Lebensraum ("living space"): acquiring new territory for Germans in Eastern Europe, in particular Russia. The Germans' final strategic offensive in the Soviet Union ended with their defence against a major Soviet counteroffensive that lasted into August. The 2BF moved into the positions being vacated by the 1BF north of the Seelow Heights. Thus, all of Hitler's allies were involved including a Slovakian contingent with the 1st Panzer Army and a Croatian regiment attached to 6th Army. Among the corps commanders is General Gotthard Heinrici, a career soldier, a highly decorated First World War veteran, who observed and recorded in his diary and letters the unprecedented harshness of the German conduct of the campaign. On repatriation of Soviet citizens. Without Russia in the war, the Axis cannot be defeated in Europe, and the position of the United Nations becomes precarious. 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). Werner Sderstrm Osakeyhti. [57], Rolf Karlbom estimated that Swedish share of Germany's total consumption of iron may have amounted to 43% during the period of 193343. The Nazi vision for the future of Eastern Europe was codified most clearly in the Generalplan Ost. At this time Hitler agreed to a general withdrawal to the Dnieper line, along which was meant to be the Ostwall, a line of defence similar to the Westwall (Siegfried Line) of fortifications along the German frontier in the west. Having suffered a major defeat the German striking forces of Army Group Centre were retreating." However, access to (and control of) the resources, raw materials and production capacity required to entertain long-term goals (such as European control, German territorial expansion and the destruction of the USSR) were limited. The Soviet Union finally entered Warsaw on 17 January 1945, after the city was destroyed and abandoned by the Germans. [6], The MolotovRibbentrop Pact signed in August 1939 was a non-aggression agreement between Germany and the Soviet Union. Germany had been assembling very large numbers of troops in eastern Poland and making repeated reconnaissance flights over the border; the Soviet Union responded by assembling its divisions on its western border, although the Soviet mobilisation was slower than Germany's due to the country's less dense road network. Some historians like Bevin Alexander in How Hitler Could Have Won regard this decision as a missed opportunity to win the war. ), 5080% of rolled steel, cable, lead, and aluminium, 43% of garage facilities (building materials and blueprints), 50% of TNT (19421944) and 33% of ammunition powder (in 1944), 16% of all explosives (From 1941 to 1945, the USSR produced 505,000 tons of explosives and received 105,000 tons of Lend-Lease imports.). 11501162. They were supplied by air until April when they were given permission to regain the Soviet main lines. This production represents 35% of the total fuel production of the Axis, including synthetic products and substitutes, and 70% of the total production of crude oil. Many generals had several commands, thus if one comes across an officer whose name simply has the dates of the command, that officer likely held a previous army command and appears somewhere else on the list. Among the corps commanders is General Gotthard Heinrici, a career soldier, a highly decorated First World War veteran, who observed and recorded in his diary and letters the unprecedented harshness of the German conduct of the campaign. The southern offensive, spearheaded by 4th Panzer Army, led by Gen. Col. Hoth, with three Tank Corps made more headway. Differences in German armored tactics between the fronts Differences in how each front utilized anti-tank weaponry Differences in how often forces combined infantry and armor (i.e. The German Economy in the Twentieth Century. A leap across the Don brought German troops to the Volga on 23 August but for the next three months the Wehrmacht would be fighting the Battle of Stalingrad street-by-street. ISBN978-1107020795. American exports and technical expertise also enabled the Soviets to produce goods that they wouldn't have been able to on their own. The success of this hedgehog defence outside Moscow led Hitler to insist on the holding of territory when it made no military sense, and to sack generals who retreated without orders. [41] According to a presentation by Alfred Jodl, the Wehrmacht was up to 7,849,000 personnel in April 1944. [106] Rapidly advancing Allied forces limited the jurisdiction of the new German government to an area around Flensburg near the Danish border, where Dnitz's headquarters were located, along with Mrwik. ISBN978-0-375-41086-4. While the German 6th and 4th Panzer Armies had been fighting their way into Stalingrad, Soviet armies had congregated on either side of the city, specifically into the Don bridgeheads, and it was from these that they struck in November 1942. . Initially this made some progress; however, it was unsupported, and by June a German counterattack cut off and destroyed the army. Although intense battles of movement throughout late July and into August 1943 saw the Tigers blunting Soviet tank attacks on one axis, they were soon outflanked on another line to the west as the Soviet forces advanced down the Psel, and Kharkov was abandoned for the final time on 22 August. I am expecting from you the utmost severity towards the native population. Another consideration was that Berlin itself held strategic assets, including Adolf Hitler and part of the German atomic bomb program. The Red Army advanced from the Don 500km (310mi) to the west of Stalingrad, marching through Kursk (retaken on 8 February 1943) and Kharkov (retaken 16 February 1943). A second attempt by the Red Army to gain land using parachutists, mounted at Kaniv on 24 September, proved as disappointing as at Dorogobuzh eighteen months previously. The populations of occupied Central Europe and the Soviet Union were to be partially deported to West Siberia, enslaved and eventually exterminated; the conquered territories were to be colonised by German or "Germanized" settlers. They took up position on either side of Stalingrad to free German troops for the main offensive. [38] 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). "[50]:123. For example in February 1940, Johannes Blaskowitz, German military commander for the eastern territories, complained about the SS policy of slaughtering some 10,000 Jews and Poles, which he believed would hurt Germany. After Germany's initial success at the Battle of Kiev in 1941, Hitler saw the Soviet Union as militarily weak and ripe for immediate conquest. The Lucy spy ring in Switzerland also sent warnings, possibly deriving from Ultra codebreaking in Britain. 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. [60] Counting deaths and turnover, about 15million men and women were forced labourers at one point during the war. |Bellamy, Chris (2007). [100], The Soviet offensive had two objectives. That is to say not every fourth inhabitant but almost 40% of the pre-war Belarusian population perished (considering the present-day borders of Belarus). Having already isolated the Crimea by severing the Perekop isthmus, Malinovsky's forces advanced across the mud to the Romanian border, not stopping on the river Prut. German figures for 1941 and 1942 include tanks only. 1, p. 508. [50]:128 The Soviet Union received shipments in war materials, military equipment and other supplies worth of $12.5billion, about a quarter of the American Lend-Lease aid provided to other Allied countries. [142] The British supplied aircraft including 3,000 Hurricanes and 4,000 other aircraft during the war. Manstein understood modern mobile operationsparticularly the employment of tanksas well as anyone in the business. Mindful of the continuing antagonism between Axis allies Romania and Hungary over Transylvania, the Romanian army in the Don bend was separated from the Hungarian 2nd army by the Italian 8th Army. Source: L. E. Reshin, "Year of 1941", vol. The massacres of Jews and other ethnic minorities were only a part of the deaths from the Nazi occupation. [citation needed] The character of the war was thus determined by the political leaders and their ideology to a much greater extent than in any other theatre of World War II. The advance into the Caucasus bogged down, with the Germans unable to fight their way past Malgobek and to the main prize of Grozny. But the over-riding objective was to capture Berlin. The OKW - Oberkommando der Wehrmacht or High Command of the German Army - claimed German losses of 77,000 killed, 334,000 wounded and 192,000 missing, with a total of 603,000 men, on the Eastern Front during January and February 1945.[99]. The German Army Group Centre initially refused to surrender and continued to fight in Czechoslovakia until about 11 May. However, if one last great blitzkrieg offensive could be mounted, then attention could then be turned to the Allied threat to the Western Front. 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). Certainly, the peace negotiations in April had gone nowhere. One final move in the south completed the 194344 campaigning season, which had wrapped up a Soviet advance of over 800 kilometres (500mi). On 25 January 1945, Hitler renamed three army groups. [117], The combined damage consisted of complete or partial destruction of 1,710 cities and towns, 70,000 villages/hamlets, 2,508 church buildings, 31,850 industrial establishments, 64,000 kilometres (40,000mi) of railroad, 4,100 railroad stations, 40,000 hospitals, 84,000 schools, and 43,000 public libraries; leaving 25million homeless. [50]:1334, Prof. Dr. Albert L. Weeks concluded, "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. For those interested here goes a briefing of the Maj USA French Maclean's thesis on that topic. Kansas: University Press of Kansas. According to the Narkomat of Defence order (No. Stalin's objective in January 1942 was "to deny the Germans any breathing space, to drive them westward without let-up, to make them use up their reserves before spring comes"[83], The main blow was to be delivered by a double envelopment orchestrated by the Northwestern Front, the Kalinin Front and the Western Front. The German troops in East Africa were to surrender; the German armies in eastern Europe were to withdraw to the prewar German frontier; the treaties of Brest-Litovsk and Bucharest were to be annulled; and the Germans were to repatriate all prisoners of war and hand over to the Allies a large quantity of war materials, including 5,000 pieces of . [161] According to Soviet claims, the Germans lost 42,700 tanks, tank destroyers, self-propelled guns and assault guns on the Eastern front. In fact, they were former factory workers, school girls and clerks. After the defeat at Stalingrad, Germany geared completely towards a war economy, as expounded in a speech given by Joseph Goebbels (the Nazi propaganda minister), in the Berlin Sportpalast, increasing production in subsequent years under Albert Speer's (the Reich armaments minister) direction, despite the intensifying Allied bombing campaign. Soviet production and upkeep was assisted by the Lend-Lease program from the United States and the United Kingdom. [76] This began the 900-day Siege of Leningrad. Yet victory came at a price: 180,040 Soviet soldiers killed or missing, 590,848 sick or wounded, and 2,957 tanks and 822 aircraft lost. He knew that in the intervening six months the Soviet position at Kursk had been reinforced heavily with anti-tank guns, tank traps, landmines, barbed wire, trenches, pillboxes, artillery and mortars.[86]. According to Time magazine: "By measure of manpower, duration, territorial reach and casualties, the Eastern Front was as much as four times the scale of the conflict on the Western Front that opened with the Normandy invasion. At the end of World War II, Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz (1891-1980) was hand-picked to succeed Adolph Hitler as reich president and supreme commander of the armed forces. The overall objective according to Zhukov was the "subsequent encirclement and destruction of the enemy's main forces in the area of Rzhev, Vyazma and Smolensk. Greenhill Books. Source: L. E. Reshin, "Year of 1941", vol. Once these facilities were reassembled east of the Urals, production could be resumed without fear of German bombing. Whether Stalin was unable or unwilling to come to the aid of the Polish resistance is disputed. International Military Tribunal at Nurnberg, Germany. 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