Soviet Storm: WWII in the East

Just a few officers of the Soviet Command doubted that there would be war with Germany. But what was the timing? The scout reports were controversial. In April 1940 Hitler signed the operation Barbarossa, and heavy war machinery started making its way to the boundaries of the USSR. However, the very first battles in June 1941 at the border at the Brest Fortress, near Kiev and Minsk broke the German design of Blitzkrieg, a ‘lightning war’. Massive losses sustained by the retreating Red Army could well be explained but the mistakes had to be paid for by both the soldiers and generals. And German panzer groups were dashing to reach Moscow.

From the very first days of the war the USSR capitol had been preparing its defense. Institutions and plants, embassies and ministries were evacuated. In order to organize the defense of Moscow and stifle the fascist offensive, Marshal Zhukov was called from Leningrad to Moscow.

The takeover of Leningrad was of strategic importance for the German Command. On the 8th of September 1941 the Germans reached Lake Ladoga and the city turned out to be cut off from the 'mainland'. Death from starvation began to threaten the population of Leningrad. The ships of the Baltic Fleet, anti-aircraft guns, artillery and troops of the Red Army defended the city and the 'life road' that became operable after the frosts. Multiple attempts of the Soviet Command to break though the encirclement failed one after another.

On the 28th of June 1943 German troops launched Case Blue. They dashed towards Voronezh, Stalingrad, and Rostov-on-Don. The insufficiently embattled south sector of the Soviet-German front was breached. The retreat of the Soviet troops Eastward was going on when a famous order later called “Not a Step Back!” was issued. Special anti-retreat detachments were supposed to stop fleeing military units.

It was April 1943. The frontline froze, but the Soviet Command was already designing plans for the Summer, paying special attention to the Kursk region. Here the troops of the Central Front had deeply bucked in the German defenses. The Germans planned to cut off the Kursk bulge with a double blow during Operation Citadel. Army Group Center was supposed to attack from the North and troops of Army Group South were to attack from the south.

As September ended, the Germans found the Dnieper line impossible to hold as the Soviet bridgeheads grew and important Dnieper towns started to fall. Finally, early in November the Soviets broke out of their bridgeheads on either side of Kiev and captured the Ukrainian capital.

Hitler’s 1941 invasion of the USSR ran into some its fiercest resistance at the Black Sea ports of Odessa and Sevastopol, where Soviet elite naval infantry brigades fought doggedly to hold back German and Romanian troops. At Sevastopol, a long and bloody siege unfolded, causing the Germans to bring in some of the biggest artillery guns ever used.

The German conquests of 1941 left Hitler’s troops perilously close to the Soviet capital, Moscow. Around Rzhev terrible fighting raged as the Red Army attacked again and again to drive back the invader. Soviet troops, who suffered appalling casualties, grimly referred to these battles as ‘the Rzhev meat-grinder’.

In 1942 Hitler launched his great summer offensive against the Soviet oil fields in the Caucasus. If he could seize control of this vital resource, the war might be lost. But bitter fighting in the Caucasus Mountains, and in the streets of Stalingrad, would thwart Hitler’s dream.