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| The '''Eastern Front''' of ] was the ] |
The '''Eastern Front''' of ] was the ] in eastern Europe, in which fighting began in June ] and ended in May ]; the two principal ] nations were ] and the ]. Fighting on this front, along with other ] on other fronts, led to the defeat of ], the the rise of the Soviet Union as a military and industrial ], the Soviet occupation of ], and the ]. | ||
| ] over the ] |
] over the ] during the ], May 1945]] | ||
| In ], the conflict is referred to as the '''Great Patriotic War''' (Великая Отечественная Война, ''Velikaya Otechestvennaya Voyna)'', a name which alludes to the ]–]ic '']'' on Russian soil in ]. The Russo-Finnish ] may be considered the northern flank of the Eastern Front. Some scholars of the conflict use the term '''Russo-German War''', while others use '''Soviet-German War''' or '''German-Soviet War'''. In the Soviet Union the end of war is considered to be ], when the surrender took effect ] time. This date is celebrated as a ], ], or День Победы in the ] and some other post-Soviet countries. | |||
| Some German armies initially refused to surrender and continued to ] until about ]. | |||
| In ], the conflict is referred to as the '''Great Patriotic War''' (Великая Отечественная Война, ''Velikaya Otechestvennaya Voyna)'', a name which alludes to the ]–]ic '']'' on Russian soil in ]. The Russo-Finnish ] may be considered the northern flank of the Eastern Front. Some scholars of the conflict use the term '''Russo-German War''', while others use '''Soviet-German War''' or '''German-Soviet War'''. | |||
| ==Overview== | ==Overview== | ||
| ] poster ''Mother Russia Is Calling You to the Front''.]] | ] poster ''Mother Russia Is Calling You to the Front''.]] | ||
| The war between Germany and the Soviet Union began on ] ], when Germany invaded |
The war between Germany and the Soviet Union began on ] ], when Germany invaded Soviet teritory on a broad front. Details of the initial invasion campaign can be seen at ]. Causes of the war are available in the ] article. In the initial period of the war, German forces defeated large Soviet forces and inflicted staggering casualties. However, they did not achieve their objectives of destroying the ] and causing a collapse of the ]. | ||
| The unexpected survival of the Red Army and Soviet state led to a long, brutal series of campaigns. In the winter of 1941-42, the Red Army took the offensive and drove the German forces back up to 100 miles in a broad attack that left both sides exhausted. In the spring of 1942, Soviet forces again took the offensive around Kharkov. This was defeated. In the summer of 1942, Germany again launched a massive offensive operation, this time aimed at the oil-rich Caucasus region. This led to the Stalingrad campaign. The stunning defeat of the Germans at Stalingrad, coming within a few months of western Allied victories at ] and the ], led to a sense that the tide of the war had turned against the Germans. | |||
| After Stalingrad, there was an unusual pause on the Eastern Front while both sides recovered their strength and considered their next moves. In the summer of 1943 at the ] the Red Army inflicted a decisive defeat on the Germans. Thereafter, in a series of increasingly large offensives, the Red Army drove the Germans out of the USSR, then out of the rest of Eastern Europe, and finally to Berlin. The fighting on the Eastern Front ended on ] ], when Germany's armed forces ] following the ]. | |||
| The Eastern Front was by far the largest and bloodiest ] of World War II, and generally accepted as the most costly conflict in human history at anywhere from 25-30 million dead as a result. It involved more land combat than all other World War II theatres combined. The Eastern front resulted in such staggering losses and disregard for human life almost entirely on the ] premise for the war. To hardline Nazis in Berlin, the war against the Soviet Union was one of a struggle of ] against ], and the ] against the "]" ]. From the beginning of the conflict, Hitler referred it as a "war of annihliation". Aside from the ideological conflict, the sheer mindframe of Germany and the Soviet Union's leaders, ] and ] respectively, helped attribute to the escalation of terror and murder on an unprecedented scale. Hitler sought to enslave the Slavic race and wipe out the large Judeo population of Eastern Europe. Stalin disregarded human life in order to achieve his goal of victory. This included terrorization of his own people, as well as ] of entire races. All these factors resulted in tremendous brutality both to combatants and civilians, which was not paralleled on the ]. | |||
| == Belligerents== | |||
| The war inflicted huge losses and suffering onto the civilian populations of the affected countries. Behind the front lines, ] against civilians in German-occupied areas were routine, including the ]. German and German-allied forces treated civilian populations with exceptional brutality, massacring villages and routinely killing civilian hostages. Both sides practiced widespread ] tactics. After the war, following the ] agreements between the Allies, the ] of ] and ] were ] of the ], in what became one of the largest ]s of people in world history. | |||
| The ] was allied informally with the British Empire and United States of America during most of the conflict. By mid-war, the Soviet Union had help from an increasing ] movement in the USSR and other countries in ], notably those in Poland and ]. In addition the ] and ] Polish armies, armed and trained by the Soviets, fought alongside the ] at the front. Smaller contributions came from ], ](after switching sides late in the war) and Bulgaria. | |||
| Germany was able to call on the manpower of other satellite or ] nations, including ] ], ], ], and ] with some assistance from anti-communist ] as well as a volunteer ] from nominally neutral Fascist Spain. | |||
| Much of the combat took place in or close by populated areas, and the actions of both sides contributed to massive loss of civilian life. | |||
| == Major Campaigns == | |||
| ==Background== | |||
| The ] of August 1939 had established a ] between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and a secret ] described how ], ], ], ], ] and ] would be divided between them. In the ] of 1939 the two powers invaded and partitioned Poland, and in June 1940 the Soviet Union, threatening to use force if her demands are not fulfilled, won the diplomatic wars against ] and three ] which '']'' allowed it to peacefully ] '']'', and to return the ], ], and ]n territories in the North and North-Eastern regions of Romania (Northern ] and ]). | |||
| ] | |||
| For nearly two years the border was quiet while Germany conquered ], ], and the ]. | |||
| ] | |||
| ] | |||
| ] | |||
| ] | |||
| ] (including fighting in the caucasus) | |||
| ] | |||
| ] | |||
| ] | |||
| ] | |||
| ] | |||
| ] | |||
| ] | |||
| ] | |||
| ] | |||
| ] | |||
| ] | |||
| ==Industrial Management and Output== | |||
| Adolf Hitler had always intended to renege on the pact with the Soviet Union and invade. He had argued in '']'' of the necessity of ] (''Lebensraum'') in Eastern Europe. He envisaged settling Germans as a master race in western Russia, while deporting most of the Russians to ] and using the remainder as ]. After ] of the ], Hitler saw the Soviet Union as militarily weak and ripe for conquest: "We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down." | |||
| World War Two was a war of materiel. The differences in the economic management of the belligerents had a major impact on the course of the fighting. | |||
| In general, the Soviet state was more highly centralized, and was able to make better use of the industrial base to produce weapons. The USSR was aided in this effort by substantial ] shipments of key materials and goods. Civilian standards of living were quite low and declined further during the war. | |||
| ] was fearful of war with Germany, thereby being reluctant to do anything to provoke Hitler. Even though Germany had been assembling very large numbers of troops in eastern Poland and making clandestine ] flights over the border, Stalin ignored the warnings of his own as well as foreign intelligence. Moreover, on the very night of the invasion, Soviet troops received a directive undersigned by ] ] and ] ] that commanded (as it was demanded by Stalin): "do not answer to any provocations" and "do not undertake any actions without specific orders". The German invasion therefore caught the Soviet military and leadership largely by surprise. | |||
| Germany was less centralized; although Hitler had dictatorial powers, the German economy operated in 'fiefs' with little coordination. Starting with a much larger industrial base, with the economies of much of Europe under their control, the Germans did not equal the Soviet output of key weapons or supplies. | |||
| ==Operations== | |||
| ===Invasion: Summer 1941=== | |||
| ]: the German invasion of the ], ] ] to ] ] | |||
| {{legend|#fff8d5|to 9 July 1941}} | |||
| {{legend|#ffd2b9|to 1 September 1941}} | |||
| {{legend|#ebd7ff|to 9 September 1941}} | |||
| {{legend|#ccffcd|to 5 December 1941}} | |||
| ]] | |||
| ''Main article: ]'' | |||
| See ] for details. | |||
| At 04:45 on ] ], four million German, Italian, Romanian and other ] troops burst over the borders and stormed into the Soviet Union. For a month the three-pronged offensive was completely unstoppable as the '']'' forces ] hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops in huge pockets that were then reduced by slower-moving ] divisions while the panzers charged on, following the '']'' ]. | |||
| == Human Cost == | |||
| Army Group North's objective was ] via the Baltic States. Comprising the 16th and 18th Armies and 4th Panzer Group, this formation drove through ], ], ] and the Russian cities of ] and ]. | |||
| The Eastern Front was by far the largest and bloodiest ] of World War II, and generally accepted as the most costly conflict in human history at anywhere from 25-30 million dead as a result. It involved more land combat than all other World War II theatres combined; much of this combat took place in populated areas including major cities. There was tremendous brutality both to combatants and civilians, which was not often paralleled on the ]. | |||
| Army Group Centre comprised two Panzer groups (2nd and 3rd), which rolled east from either side of ] and converged ahead of ], followed by 2nd, 4th and 9th Armies. The combined Panzer force reached the ] in just six days, 650 km (400 miles) from their start lines. The next objective was to cross the ], which was accomplished by ]. Following that, their next target was ], which fell on ], but the ] blocked the German advance until mid-September, effectively disrupting the ''blitzkrieg''. | |||
| See ] for details. | |||
| Army Group South, with 1st Panzer Group, 6th, 11th and 17th Armies, was tasked with advancing through ] and into ]. Their progress, however, was rather slow, with only the corridor towards ] secure by mid-July. 11th Army, aided by two Romanian armies, fought its way through ] towards ]. The 1st Panzer Group turned away from Kiev for the moment, advancing into the Dnieper bend. When it joined up with the southern elements of Army Group South at ], the group ] in a huge pocket. | |||
| The war inflicted huge losses and suffering onto the civilian populations of the affected countries. Behind the front lines, ] against civilians in German-occupied areas were routine. Much of the ] took place in areas of eastern Europe occupied by the Nazis. German and German-allied forces treated civilian populations with exceptional brutality, massacring villages and routinely killing civilian hostages. Both sides practiced widespread ] tactics. After the war, following the ] agreements between the Allies, the ] of ] and ] were ] of the ], in what became one of the largest ]s of people in world history. | |||
| As the ] withdrew behind the Dnieper and ] rivers, the Soviet hierarchy turned its attention to moving as much of the region's heavy industry as it could, dismantled and packed onto flatcars, away from the ], re-establishing it in more remote areas behind the ] and in ]. Most civilians could not be evacuated along with the equipment and were left behind to the mercy of the invading forces. | |||
| See ] for details. | |||
| With the capture of Smolensk and the advance to the ], Army Groups Centre and North had completed their first major objective: to get across and hold the "land bridge" between the Dvina and Dnieper. The route to ], now only 400 km (250 miles) away, was wide open. | |||
| == Irregular Warfare == | |||
| The German generals argued for an immediate drive towards Moscow, but Hitler overruled them, citing the importance of Ukrainian grain and heavy industry if under German possession, not to mention the massing of Soviet reserves in the ] area between Army Group Centre's southern flanks and the bogged-down Army Group South to the south. The order was issued to 2nd Panzer Group to turn south and advance towards Kiev. This took the whole of August and into September, but when 2nd Panzer Group joined up with 1st Panzer Group at ] on ] 665,000 Soviet prisoners were taken and ] on ]. | |||
| See ] for details. | |||
| A variety of partisan groups carried out ] in the rear areas of the belligerents. In the initial period of the war, irregular warfare was very limited. However, the seeds of later partisan operations were sown as thousands of Red Army personnel, cut off from their retreating units and bypassed by fast-moving German units, dispersed into the forests or small towns of occupied areas. A combination of pre-war planning and wartime insertion of Soviet special operations troops provided leadership, direction and resources to the partisan movement. By mid-war, particularly when it became clear that the Germans might not win, the partisan movement gained power and succeeded in tying down substantial Axis units policing their own rear areas. Partisans provided intelligence to Soviet forces and occasionally were able to disrupt German logistics. | |||
| ===Moscow and Rostov: Autumn 1941=== | |||
| ''Main articles: ] and ]'' ] poster reminding Russians about the traditions of ], ], and ].]] | |||
| Some smaller partisan movements grew up in the uncertainty of war. In Ukraine, the nationalist OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) fought both sides for an independent Ukraine. This group fought Red Army units until about 1950. | |||
| Hitler then decided to resume the advance to Moscow, renaming the Panzer Groups to Panzer Armies for the occasion. ], which was set in motion on ], saw 2nd Panzer Army rush along the paved road from ] (captured ]) to the ] at ], 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 ] and ]. Army Group North positioned itself in front of ] and attempted to cut the rail link at ] to the east. Thus began the 900-day ]. North of the ], a German-Finnish force set out for ] but could get no further than the Litsa river, where they settled down. | |||
| In Poland, a very large and higly-organized 'Home Army' fought the Germans at the ] in 1944. The Red Army, located in the Warsaw suburb of Praha at the time, did nothing to aid these partisans to fight the Nazi German forces. | |||
| Army Group South pushed down from the Dnieper to the ] coast, also advancing through ], ] and ]. The 11th Army moved into the ] and had taken control of all of the ] by autumn (except ], which held out until ] ]). On ] the Germans ], the gateway to the ]. 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 ]; the first significant German ] of the war. | |||
| == Controversies of the Eastern Front == | |||
| "Preemptive war"? | |||
| Warsaw Uprising | |||
| German treatment of conquered people | |||
| Stalin's war leadership | |||
| Hitler's war leadership | |||
| == Historiography == | |||
| Just as Operation Typhoon got going, the Russian weather struck. For the second half of October it rained solidly, turning what few roads there were into endless mud that trapped German vehicles, horses and men alike. With 160 km (100 miles) still to go to Moscow, there was worse to come when the temperature plunged and snow started falling. The vehicles could move again, but the men could not, freezing with no winter clothing. The German leadership, expecting the campaign to be over in a few months, had not equipped their armies for winter fighting. | |||
| Postwar German source bias | |||
| One last lunge on ] saw the Germans attempting to throw a ring around Moscow. On ] the 4th Panzer Army got within 30 km (19 miles) of the ] when it reached the last tramstop of the Moscow line at ], while the 2nd Panzer Army, try as it might, could not take ], the last Russian city that stood in its way of the capital. After a meeting held in ] between the head of the ], ] ], and the heads of three ] and armies, it was decided to push forward to ] since it was better, as argued by head of ], ] ], for them to try their luck on the battlefield rather than just sit and wait while their opponent gathered more strength. | |||
| problems with the German sources | |||
| Postwar Soviet sources | |||
| - Stalin era | |||
| - Krushchev era | |||
| - Post-Krushchev | |||
| - New views since the collapse of the USSR | |||
| Other sources | |||
| However, by ] it became clear that '']'' was too weak to capture Moscow and the attack was put on hold. ] ] thus began his ], employing fresh, well-trained Siberian ] transfered from the east following the guarantee of neutrality from Japan. | |||
| ===Soviet counter-offensive: Winter 1941=== | |||
| ] ] to ] ]]] | ] ] to ] ]]] | ||
| ''Main article: ], ]'' | |||
| During the autumn, Zhukov had been transferring fresh and well-equipped Soviet forces from Siberia and the far east to Moscow (these troops had been stationed there in expectation of a Japanese attack, but ] master ] ] indicated that the Japanese had decided to attack ] and ] instead). On ] ], these reinforcements attacked the German lines around Moscow, supported by new ]s and ]s. The new Soviet troops were prepared for winter warfare, and they included several ]. The exhausted and freezing Germans were routed and driven back between 100 and 250 km (60 to 150 miles) by ] ]. | |||
| ], December 1941]] | ], December 1941]] | ||
| A further Soviet attack was mounted in late January, focusing on the junction between Army Groups North and Centre between ] and ], and drove a gap between the two German army groups. In concert with the advance from ] to the south-west of Moscow, it was intended that the two offensives converge on Smolensk, but the Germans rallied and managed to hold them apart, retaining a ] at Rzhev. A Soviet ] on German-held ] was spectacularly unsuccessful, and those paratroopers who survived had to escape to the partisan-held areas beginning to swell behind German lines. To the north, the Soviets surrounded a German ] in ], which held out with air supply for four months, and established themselves in front of ], ] and ]. | |||
| In the south the Red Army crashed over the ] at ] and drove a 100-km (60-mile) deep salient. The intent was to pin Army Group South against the ], but as the winter eased the Germans were able to counter-attack and cut off the over-extended Soviet troops in the ]. | |||
| ===Don, Volga, and Caucasus: Summer 1942=== | |||
| ]: German advances from ] ] to ] ] | |||
| {{legend|#fff8d5|to 7 July 1942}} | |||
| {{legend|#ffd2b9|to 22 July 1942}} | |||
| {{legend|#ebd7ff|to 1 August 1942}} | |||
| {{legend|#ccffcd|to 18 November 1942}} | |||
| ]] | |||
| ''Main articles: ], ], ]'' | |||
| Although plans were made to attack Moscow again, on ] ], the offensive re-opened in a different direction. Army Group South took the initiative, anchoring the front with the ] and then following the ] southeastwards. The grand plan was to secure the Don and ] first and then drive into the Caucasus towards the ]s, but operational considerations and Hitler's vanity made him order both objectives to be attempted simultaneously. Rostov was recaptured on ] when 1st Panzer Army joined in, and then that group drove south towards ]. As part of this, Operation Shamil was executed, a plan whereby a group of ]s dressed up as Soviet ] troops to destabilise Maikop's defenses and allow the 1st Panzer Army to enter the oil town with little opposition. | |||
| ] | |||
| Meanwhile, 6th Army was driving towards ], for a long period unsupported by 4th Panzer Army who had been diverted to help 1st Panzer Army cross the Don. By the time 4th Panzer Army had rejoined the Stalingrad offensive, Soviet resistance (comprising the 62nd Army under ]) had stiffened. A leap across the Don brought German troops to the Volga on ] but for the next three months the '']'' would be fighting the ] street-by-street. | |||
| Towards the south 1st Panzer Army had reached the Caucasian foothills and the ]. 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 ]. They took up position either side of Stalingrad to free German troops for the proper fighting. Mindful of the continuing antagonism between Axis allies Romania and ] over ], the Romanian army in the Don bend was separated from the Hungarian 2nd army by the Italian 8th Army. Thus all of Hitler's allies were in it — including a ]n contingent with 1st Panzer Army and a ]n ] attached to 6th Army. | |||
| The advance into the Caucasus bogged down, with the Germans unable to fight their way past ] and to the main prize of ]. Instead they switched the direction of their advance to come at it from the south, crossing the Malka at the end of October and entering North ]. In the first week of November, on the outskirts of ], the 13th Panzer Division's spearhead was snipped off and the Panzer troops had to fall back. The offensive into Russia was over. | |||
| ===Stalingrad: Winter 1942=== | |||
| ], ] and ]: Soviet advances on the Eastern Front, ] ] to March ]]] | |||
| ''Main articles: ], ], ], ], ]'' | |||
| While the German 6th Army and 4th Panzer Army had been fighting their way into Stalingrad, Soviet armies had congregated on either side of the city, specifically into the Don ]s that the Romanians had been unable to reduce, and it was from these that they struck on ] ]. In ], two Soviet fronts punched through the Romanians and converged at ] on ], trapping 300,000 Axis troops behind them. A simultaneous offensive on the Rzhev sector known as ] was supposed to advance to Smolensk, but was a failure, with German tactical flair winning the day. | |||
| ]]] | |||
| The Germans rushed to transfer troops to Russia for a desperate attempt to relieve Stalingrad, but the offensive could not get going until ], by which time the 6th Army in Stalingrad was starving and too weak to break out towards it. ], with three transferred Panzer divisions, got going briskly from ] towards the ] but bogged down 65 km (40 miles) short of its goal. To divert the rescue attempt the Soviets decided to smash the Italians and come down behind the relief attempt if they could, that operation starting on ]. What it did accomplish was to destroy many of the aircraft that had been transporting relief supplies to Stalingrad. 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. | |||
| On ] ], the 90,000 survivors of the 300,000-man 6th Army surrendered. By that time the Hungarian contingent had also been wiped out. The Soviets advanced from the Don 500 km (300 miles) to the west of Stalingrad, marching through ] (retaken on ] ]) and ] (retaken ] ]). In order to save the position in the south, the decision was taken in February to abandon the Rzhev salient, freeing enough German troops to make a successful ] in eastern Ukraine. ]'s counteroffensive, strengthened by a specially trained SS Panzer Corps equipped with ]s, opened on ] ], and fought its way from ] ] in the third week of March, upon which the spring thaw intervened. This had left a glaring bulge in the front centered on Kursk. | |||
| ===Kursk: Summer 1943 === | |||
| ] and ], ] ] to ] ]]] | |||
| ''Main article: ]'' | |||
| After the failure of the attempt to capture Stalingrad, Hitler had deferred planning authority for the upcoming campaign season to the ] and reinstated ] to a prominent role, this time as Inspector of Panzer Troops. Debate among the general staff was polarised, with even Hitler nervous about any attempt to pinch off the Kursk salient. He knew that in the intervening six months the Russian position at Kursk had been reinforced heavily with ] guns, ]s, ], ], ], ]es, ] and ]. But if one last great '']'' offensive could be mounted, just maybe the Soviets would ease off and attention could then be turned to the Allied threat to the ]. The advance would be executed from the Orel salient to the north of Kursk and from ] to the south. Both wings would converge on ], and by that means restore the lines of Army Group South to the exact points that it held over the winter of 1941–1942. | |||
| Although the Germans knew that the Red Army's massive reserves of manpower had been bled dry in the summer of 1941 and 1942, the Soviets were still re-equipping, simply by drafting the men from the regions recaptured. | |||
| Under pressure from his generals, Hitler bit the bullet and agreed to the attack on Kursk, little realising that the '']'''s intelligence on the Soviet position there had been undermined by a concerted '']'' misinformation and ] campaign mounted by the ] in ]. When the Germans began the operation, it was after months of delays waiting for new tanks and equipment, by which time the Soviets had reinforced the Kursk salient with more anti-tank firepower than had ever been assembled in one place before or since. | |||
| In the north, the entire 9th Army had been redeployed from the Rzhev salient into the Orel salient and was to advance from Maloarkhangelsk to Kursk. But its forces could not even get past the first objective at ], just 8 km (5 miles) into the advance. The 9th Army blunted its spearhead against the Soviet ], frustratingly so considering that the high ground there was the only natural barrier between them and flat tank country all the way to Kursk. The direction of advance was then switched to ], to the west of Olkhovatka, but the 9th Army could not break through here either and went over to the defensive. The Soviets simply soaked up the German punishment and then struck back. On ] the Red Army ploughed through the demarcation line between the 211th and 293rd Divisions on the ] and steamed towards ], right behind them and behind Orel. | |||
| ]s'' of the 3rd SS-Panzer-Division '']'' at the start of the ]]] | |||
| The southern offensive, spearheaded by ], led by ], with three Tank Corps made more headway. Advancing on either side of the upper Donets on a narrow corridor, the ] and the ] battled its way through minefields and over comparatively high ground towards ]. Stiff resistance caused a change of direction from east to west of the front, but the tanks got 25 km (15 miles) before encountering the reserves of the ] outside ]. Battle was joined on ], with about one thousand tanks doing battle. After the war, the battle near Prochorovka was idealized from the soviet ]s as the biggest tank battle of all time. Newer investigations show a different picture. The "tank battle" of Prochorovka was an unsuccessful and chaotic attack from parts of the soviet 5. Guards Tank Army, appr. 250 tanks, against the defensive positions of the II. SS corps. The fierce frontal attack was unexpected, but lacked a good plan and was smashed by the german defenders. Nearly all attacking soviet tanks - appr. 400 on the whole southern sector on the 12. - were destroyed. The germans lost only a handful of tanks, but personal losses in the infantery units, battling in furious infights against the attacking ], were noticeable. At the end of the day both sides had fought each other to a standstill, but regardless of the standstill in the north ] intended to continue the attack with the 4. tank army. But all in all the Soviets could absorb the fearful losses of men and equipment that they did, and even though German casualties were much lower their strategic advance in Operation Citadel had been halted. Under the impression of the unsuccesful ] operations in the south the Red Army started the strong offensive operation in the northern Oriel salient and achieved a breaktrough in the back of the german 9. army. Also worried by the Allies' ] on ], Hitler took fright and withdrew the II. SS Panzer Corps from the southern face of the Kursk salient, and that was the end of the Germans' final attack in Russia. | |||
| The ] represented a scaled-up version of the battles of ] — infantry advancing under ] fire, and tanks advancing on batteries of anti-tank guns. Much of the German equipment was new and untested, with undertrained crews. The new ] units, though sporting a highly effective ], had no hull mounted machine gun to protect against infantry, and were quickly targeted by the Soviet anti tank guns, which were positioned in hemispherical concave bulges, forming semicircles of high velocity crossfire. Moreover, these positions were protected by small two-man ]s armed with ] tank mines, machine gun nests, and mortar fire, ensuring than the ''Wehrmacht'' infantry could not effectively defend the tanks. The Kursk offensive was the last on the scale of 1940 and 1941 the ''Wehrmacht'' was able to launch, and subsequent offensives would represent only a shadow of previous German offensive might. Following the defeat, Hitler would not trust his generals to the same extent again, and as his own mental condition deteriorated the quality of German strategic decision fell correspondingly. | |||
| ===Eastern Front in Fall and Winter 1943=== | |||
| ''Main articles: ], ]'' | |||
| ] ] to ] ] | |||
| {{legend|#fff8d5|to 1 December 1943}} | |||
| {{legend|#ffd2b9|to 30 April 1944}} | |||
| {{legend|#ebd7ff|to 19 August 1944}} | |||
| {{legend|#ccffcd|to 31 December 1944}} | |||
| ]] | |||
| The Soviet juggernaut got rolling in earnest with the advance into the Germans' Orel salient. The diversion of Hitler's favourite '']'' from Belgorod to Karachev could not halt the tide, and a strategic decision was made to abandon Orel (retaken by the Red Army on ] ]) and fall back to the Hagen line in front of ]. To the south, the Soviets blasted through Army Group South's Belgorod positions and headed for Kharkov once again. Though intense battles of movement throughout late July and into August 1943 saw the ]s blunting Soviet tanks on one axis, they were soon outflanked on another line to the west as the Soviets advanced down the ], and Kharkov had to be evacuated for the final time on ]. | |||
| The German forces on the ], now constituting the 1st Panzer Army and a reconstituted 6th Army, were by August too weak to sustain a Soviet onslaught on their own front, and when the Soviets hit them they had to fall back all the way through the ] industrial region to the Dnieper, losing the industrial resources and half the farmland that Germany had invaded the Soviet Union to exploit. 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 ] of fortifications along the West German frontier. Trouble was, it hadn't been built yet, and by the time Army Group South had evacuated eastern Ukraine and begun withdrawing across the Dnieper during September, the Soviets were hard behind them. Tenaciously, small units paddled their way across the 3-km (2-mile) wide river and established ]s. A second attempt by the Soviets to gain land using parachutists, mounted at ] on ], proved as luckless as at Dorogobuzh eighteen months previously, and the paratroopers were soon repelled — but not before still more Red Army troops had used the cover they provided to get themselves over the Dnieper and securely dug in. As September proceeded into October, the Germans found the Dnieper line impossible to hold as the Soviet bridgeheads grew and grew, and important Dnieper towns started to fall, with ] the first to go, followed by ]. Finally, early in November the Soviets broke out of their bridgeheads on either side of Kiev and captured the Ukrainian capital, at that time the third largest city in the Soviet Union. | |||
| Eighty miles west of Kiev, the 4th Panzer Army, still convinced that the Red Army was a spent force, was able to mount a successful riposte at ] during the middle of November, blunting the Soviet bridgehead via a daring outflanking strike mounted by the SS Panzer Corps along the river Teterev. This battle enabled Army Group South also to recapture Korosten and just gain some time to rest - but on ] the retreat began anew when First Ukrainian Front (renamed from Voronezh Front) struck them in the same place. The Soviet advance continued along the railway line until the 1939 Polish-Soviet border was reached on 3 January 1944. To the south, Second Ukrainian Front (ex ]) had crossed the Dnieper at ] and continued westwards. In the second week of January 1944 they swung north, meeting Vatutin's tank forces who had swung south from their penetration into Poland and surrounding ten German divisions at Korsun-Shevenkovsky, west of ]. Hitler's insistence on holding the Dnieper line was now, even when facing the prospect of catastrophic defeat, was compounded by his conviction that the Cherkassy pocket could break out and even advance to Kiev, but Manstein was more concerned about being able to advance to the edge of the pocket and then implore the surrounded forces to break out. By 16 February the first stage was complete, with panzers separated from the contracting Cherkassy pocket only by the swollen Gniloy Tikich river. Under furious shellfire and pursued by Soviet tanks and cavalry, the surrounded German troops, among whom were the ], fought their way across the river to safety, losing half their number and all their equipment. Surely the Russians would not attack again, with the spring approaching - but in March 3rd Ukrainian Front went over to the offensive. Having already isolated the Crimea by severing the neck of the ], Malinovsky's forces advanced across the mud to the ]n border, not stopping on the river ]. | |||
| One final move in the south completed the 1943-44 campaigning season, which had wrapped up an advance of over 500 miles. In March, 20 German divisions of '']'' ]'s ] were encircled in what was to be known as ] near Kamenets-Podolskiy. After two weeks hard fighting, the 1st Panzer managed to escape the pocket, suffering only light to moderate casualties. At this point, Hitler sacked several prominent generals, Manstein included. April saw the capture of ] in April 1944, followed by 4th Ukrainian Front's campaign to recapture the Crimea, which culminated with the recapture of ] on 10 May. | |||
| Along Army Group Centre's front, August 1943 saw this force pushed back from the Hagen line slowly, ceding comparatively little territory, but the loss of Bryansk and more importantly, Smolensk, on ] cost the Wehrmacht the keystone of the entire German defensive system. The 4th and 9th Armies and 3rd Panzer Armies still held their own east of the upper Dnieper, stifling Soviet attempts to reach Vitebsk. On Army Group North's front, there was barely any fighting at all until January ], when out of nowhere Volkhov and Second Baltic Fronts struck. In a lightning campaign, Leningrad was liberated and ] was recaptured; by February the Red Army had reached the borders of ] after a 75-mile advance. | |||
| ===Eastern Front in Summer 1944=== | |||
| ''Main articles: ], ], ], ]'' | |||
| ''Wehrmacht'' planning was convinced that the Soviets would attack again in the south, where the front was fifty miles from ] and offered the most direct route to ]. Accordingly they denuded of troops Army Group Centre, whose front still protruded deep into the Soviet Union. Starting on ] ], a massive Soviet attack, ], consisting of four Soviet army groups totaling over 120 divisions smashed into the thinly-held German line. The Germans had transferred units to France to counter the ] two weeks before. The Red Army achieved a ratio of ten to one in tanks and seven to one in ] over the enemy. At the points of attack, the numerical and quality advantages of the Soviets were overwhelming. More than 2.5 million Soviet troops went into action against the German Army Group Centre, which could boast a strength of less than 800,000 men. The Germans crumbled. The capital of ], ], was taken on ], trapping 50,000 Germans. Ten days later the Red Army reached the prewar ] border. The rapid progress cut off and isolated the German units of ] fighting in ]. ''Bagration'' was by any measure one of the largest single operations of the war. It cost the Red Army 765,815 dead, missing, wounded and sick, as well as 2,957 tanks and assault guns. The Germans lost approximately 445,000 casualties, a large part of whom were captured. | |||
| The neighbouring ] was launched on ] ], rapidly routing the German forces in the western Ukraine. The Soviet advance in the south continued into ] and following a coup against Axis-allied government of Romania on ], the Red army occupied ] on ]. In Moscow on ], Romania and the Soviet Union signed an ] on terms Moscow virtually dictated. The Romanian surrender tore a hole in the southern German Eastern Front causing the loss of the whole of the ]. | |||
| In Poland, as the Red Army approached the ] launched the ]. During the ], the Soviet Army halted at the ], unable or unwilling to come to the aid of the Polish resistance. An attempt by the communist controlled ] to relieve the city was unsupported by Red Army and thrown back in September with heavy losses. Despite assistance from Polish Home Army towards USSR, in territories taken over by the Soviet ], Polish units who followed behind would either be shot or sent to ]s. Most Polish officers and Polish soldiers who could not or would not join the Red Army were ]. | |||
| In ], the ] started as an armed struggle between German ''Wehrmacht'' forces and rebel Slovak troops in August to October 1944. It was centered at ]. | |||
| On 8 September 1944 the Red Army begun an attack on the ] on the Slovak-Polish border. Two months later, the Russians won the battle and entered Slovakia. The toll was high: 85,000 Red Army soldiers lay dead, plus several thousand Germans, Slovaks and ]. | |||
| ===Eastern Europe: January–March 1945=== | |||
| ] ] to ] ]]] | |||
| ''Main article: ]'' | |||
| The Soviet Union finally entered ] in January ], after it was destroyed and abandoned by the Germans. Over three days, on a broad front incorporating four army ]s, the Red Army began an offensive across the ] River and from Warsaw. The Soviets outnumbered the Germans on average by nine to one in troops, ten to one in artillery, and ten to one in tanks and ]. After four days the Red Army broke out and started moving thirty to forty kilometres a day, taking the Baltic states, ], ], ], and drawing up on a line sixty kilometres east of ] along the ] River. During the full course of the Vistula-Oder operation (23 days), the Red Army forces sustained 194,000 casualties and lost 1,267 tanks and assault guns. | |||
| On ] ], Hitler renamed three army groups. ] became ]; Army Group Centre became Army Group North and ] became Army Group Centre. Army Group North (old Army Group Centre) was driven into an ever smaller pocket around ] in ]. | |||
| A ] by the newly created ], under the command of '']'' ], had failed by ], and the Soviets drove on to ] and cleared the right bank of the Oder River. In the south, three German attempts to relieve the encircled ] failed and the city fell on ] to the Soviets. Again the Germans counter-attacked, ] insisting on the impossible task of regaining the ] River. By ] the attack had failed and the Red Army counterattacked the same day. On ] they entered ] and captured ] on ]. | |||
| On ], ], ] finally fell to the Red Army, although the shattered remnants of Army Group North continued to resist on the ] and ] beachheads until the end of the war in Europe. The East Prussian operation, though often overshadowed by the Vistula-Oder operation and the later battle for Berlin, was in fact one of the largest and costliest operations fought by the Red army through the war. During the period it lasted (13 January - 25 April), it cost the Red Army 584,788 casualties, and 3,525 tanks and assault guns. | |||
| By early April, the ] freed up General ]'s ] (2BF) to move west to the east bank of the Oder river. During the first two weeks of April the Soviets performed their fastest front redeployment of the war. General ] concentrated his ] (1BF) which had been deployed along the Oder river from ] in the south to the Baltic, into an area in front of the ]. The 2BF moved into the positions being vacated by the 1BF north of the Seelow Heights. 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 ] managed to escape across the Oder. To the south General ] shifted the main weight of the ] (1UF) out of ] north-west to the ] River. The three Soviet fronts had altogether 2.5 million men (including 78,556 soldiers of the ]); 6,250 tanks; 7,500 aircraft; 41,600 ] pieces and ]; 3,255 ]-mounted ]s ], (nicknamed "Stalin Organs"); and 95,383 motor vehicles, many manufactured in the USA. | |||
| ===End of War: April–May 1945=== | |||
| ''Main articles: ], ]'' | |||
| All that was left for the Soviets to do was to launch an offensive to capture what was to become ]. The Soviet offensive had two objectives. Because of ]'s suspicions about the intentions of the ] to hand over territory occupied by them in the post war Soviet ], 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. But the overriding objective was to capture Berlin. The two were complementary because possession of the zone could not be won quickly unless Berlin was taken. Another consideration was that Berlin itself held strategic assets, including Adolf Hitler and the ] program. ] performed for Soviet soldiers on the doorsteps of the smouldering '']''.]] | |||
| The ] started on ] with an assault on the ]. After several days of heavy fighting the Soviet 1BF and 1UF had punched holes through the German front line and were fanning out across East Germany. By the ] elements of the 1BF and 1UF had completed the ] of Berlin and the ] entered its final stages. On ] the 2BF broke through the German 3rd Panzer Army's line south of ]. They were now free to move west towards the ] and north towards the Baltic port of ]. The ] of the ] made contact with the ] of the ] near ], Germany at the ] river. | |||
| On ], as the Soviet forces fought their way into the centre of Berlin, Adolf Hitler married ] and then ] by taking ] and shooting himself. ], defence commandant of Berlin, surrendered the city to the Soviets on ]. Altogether, the Berlin operation (16 April - 8 May) cost the Red Army 361,367 casualties (dead, missing, wounded and sick) and 1,997 tanks and assault guns. German losses in this period of the war remain impossible to determine with any reliability. | |||
| At 02:41 on the morning of ], ], at the ] headquarters, German Chief-of-Staff General ] signed the ] documents for all German forces to the Allies. It included the phrase ''All forces under German control to cease active operations at 2301 hours Central European time on ] ]''. The next day shortly before midnight, Jodl repeated the signing in Berlin at Zhukov's headquarters. ]. | |||
| In the Soviet Union the end of war is considered to be ], when the surrender took effect ] time. This date is celebrated as a ], ], or День Победы in the ] and some other post-Soviet countries. | |||
| Some German armies initially refused to surrender and continued to ] until about ]. | |||
| ==Leadership== | |||
| The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were ideologically driven ] states in which the leader had near-absolute power. The character of the war was thus determined by the leaders and their ideology to a much greater extent than in any other theatre of World War II. | |||
| ] led the armed forces of Germany during World War II]] | |||
| ] exercised a tight control over the war, spending much of his time in his command bunkers (most notably at ] in ], at ] in ], and under the garden of the ] in ]). 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 the OKW staff with rhetoric. | |||
| He believed himself a military genius, with a grasp of the total war effort that eluded his generals. In August 1941 when ] (commander-in-chief of the ]) and ] were appealing for an attack on Moscow, Hitler instead ordered the encirclement and capture of Ukraine, in order to acquire the farmland, industry, and natural resources of that country. Some historians believe that this decision was a missed opportunity to win the war. | |||
| In the winter of 1941–1942 Hitler believed that his obstinate refusal to allow the German armies to retreat had saved ] from collapse. He later told ], | |||
| :I had to act ruthlessly. I had to send even my closest generals packing, two army generals, for example … I could only tell these gentlemen, "Get yourself back to Germany as rapidly as you can — but leave the army in my charge. And the army is staying at the front." | |||
| The success of this ] 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. Officers with initiative were replaced with yes-men or fanatical Nazis. The disastrous encirclements later in the war — at ], ] and many other places — were the direct result of Hitler's orders. Many divisions became cut off in "fortress" cities, or wasted uselessly in secondary theatres, because Hitler would not sanction retreat or abandon voluntarily any of his conquests. | |||
| Frustration at Hitler's leadership of the war was one of the factors in the attempted ] of ], but after the failure of the ] Hitler considered the army and its officer corps suspect and came to rely on the ] and Nazi party members to prosecute the war. His many disastrous appointments included that of ] to command ] in the defence of Berlin in 1945 — Himmler suffered a mental breakdown under the stress of the command and was quickly replaced by ]. | |||
| Hitler's direction of the war was disastrous for the German army, though the skill, loyalty, professionalism and endurance of officers and soldiers enabled him to keep Germany fighting to the end. However, the Allied commanders who read the decrypted German command signals were always happier when Hitler was in charge. ] wrote of Hitler's signal to ] to continue the attack to the west during the ]: | |||
| :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. | |||
| ] led the Soviet Union during World War II]] | |||
| ] bore the greatest responsibility for the disasters of the first two years of the war. | |||
| The ] of the ] in the ] on Stalin's orders had killed or imprisoned the majority of the senior command, including ], the brilliant proponent of armoured ]. Stalin promoted obscurantists like ], who opposed the mechanization of the army and the production of ]s. Distrust of the military led to a system of "dual command", in which every high-ranking officer was paired with a ], a member of the ] who ensured that the officer was loyal and implemented Party orders. | |||
| Following the Soviet occupation of eastern ], the Baltic states and ] in 1939–1940, Stalin insisted that every fold of the new territories should be occupied: this move westward left troops far from their depots in salients that left them vulnerable to encirclement. There was an assumption that the coming war would be fought outside the borders of the Soviet Union and few plans were made for defence. As tension heightened in Spring 1941, Stalin was desperate not to give Hitler any provocation that could be used as an excuse for an attack; this caused him to refuse to allow the military to go onto the alert even as German troops gathered on the borders and German reconnaissance planes overflew installations. This refusal to take the necessary action was instrumental in the destruction of the Soviet air force, lined up on its airfields, in the first days of the war. | |||
| Stalin's insistence on repeated counterattacks without preparation led to the loss of almost the whole of the Red Army's tank corps in 1941 — many tanks simply ran out of fuel on their way to the battlefield through faulty planning or ignorance of the location of fuel dumps. | |||
| ], considered by many as one of the most successful field commanders]] | |||
| Unlike Hitler, Stalin was able to learn lessons and improve his conduct of the war. He gradually came to realise the dangers of inadequate preparation and built up a competent command and control organization — the ] — under ], ] and ]. | |||
| At the crisis of the war, in autumn 1942, Stalin made many concessions to the army: unitary command was restored, as were insignia such as shoulderboards — stripped from tsarist officers after the ]. Elite divisions were given the traditional "Guards" title. But these concessions were combined with ruthless discipline: ], issued on ] ], threatened commanders who retreated without orders with punishment by ]. Infractions by military and '']s'' were punished with transferal to ]s and penal ], and the ]'s ] would shoot soldiers who fled. | |||
| As it became clear that the Soviet Union would win the war Stalin ensured that propaganda always mentioned his leadership of the war; the victorious generals were sidelined and never allowed to develop into political rivals. After the war the Red Army was once again purged: many successful officers were demoted to unimportant positions (including ], ] and ]); a few were tortured into confessions of treason and sent to the ]. No-one was allowed to detract from Stalin's ]. An exception being the appointment of Zhukov to the post of Deputy Defence Minister. | |||
| ==Occupation and repression== | |||
| ], in 1942.]] | |||
| The enormous territorial gains of 1941 presented Germany with vast areas to ] and administer. Some Soviet citizens, especially in the non-Russian republics, greeted their conquerors as liberators from Stalinist repression. But they were soon to learn that their new masters were every bit as repressive and brutal as the old. Nascent national liberation movements among ] and ]s, and other were viewed by Hitler with suspicion; some were co-opted into the Axis armies and others brutally suppressed. None of the conquered territories gained any measure of self-rule. Instead, the ] ] saw the future of the East as one of ], with the natives killed, expelled, or reduced to slave labour. | |||
| Some captured regions, like the Baltic states, were incorporated into Greater Germany; in others Commissariats were established to extract the maximum in loot. In September 1941, ] was appointed to the Ukrainian Commissariat. His opening speech was clear about German policy: "I am known as a brutal dog … Our job is to suck from Ukraine all the goods we can get hold of … I am expecting from you the utmost severity towards the native population." | |||
| Atrocities against the Jewish population in the conquered areas began almost immediately, with the dispatch of '']'' (task groups) to round up Jews and shoot them. Local ]s were encouraged to carry out their own ]s. In July 1941 ]'s SS unit began to carry out more systematic killings, including the massacre of 30,000 at ]. By the end of 1941 there were more than 50,000 troops devoted to rounding up and killing Jews. The gradual industrialization of killing led to adoption of the ] and the establishment of the ] extermination camps: the machinery of the ]. In three years of occupation, between one and two million Soviet Jews were killed. Other ethnic groups were targeted for extermination, including the ] and ]; see ]. | |||
| The massacres of Jews and other ] were only a part of the deaths from the Nazi occupation. Many thousands of Soviet civilians were executed, but millions died from ] as the Germans requisitioned food for their armies and fodder for their draft horses. As they retreated from Ukraine and Belarus in 1943–1944, the German occupiers systematically applied a ] policy, burning towns and cities, destroying infrastructure, and leaving civilians to starve or die of exposure. Estimates of total civilian dead in the Soviet Union in the war range from seven million (]) to seventeen million (Overy). | |||
| The Nazi ideology and the maltreatment of the local population and Soviet POWs encouraged ]s fighting behind the front, 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 ]). These results and missed opportunities contributed to the defeat of the ''Wehrmacht''. | |||
| ==Industrial output== | |||
| ] tank rolls off the line at the ''Krasnoye Sormovo'' Factory No. 112 in Gorki. The Soviet Union manufactured 58,000 T-34s during the war.]] | ] tank rolls off the line at the ''Krasnoye Sormovo'' Factory No. 112 in Gorki. The Soviet Union manufactured 58,000 T-34s during the war.]] | ||
| The Soviet victory owed a great deal to the ability of her war industry to outperform the German economy, despite the enormous loss of population and land. The Stalinist ]s of the 1930s had resulted in the industrialization of the Urals and central Asia. In 1941, the trains that shipped troops to the front were used to evacuate thousands of factories from Belarus and Ukraine to safe areas far from the front lines. | |||
| As the Soviet Union's manpower reserves ran low from 1943 onwards, the great Soviet offensives had to depend more on equipment and less on the expenditure of lives. The increases in production of war materiel were achieved at the expense of civilian living standards — the most thorough application of the principle of ] — and with the help of ] supplies from the ] and the ]. The Germans, on the other hand, could rely on a large slave workforce from the conquered countires and Soviet ]. | |||
| Germany's raw material production was higher than the Soviets', but the Soviets were more efficient at using what resources they had and chose to build low cost, low maintenance vehicles whilst the Germans built high cost, high maintenance vehicles. | |||
| Germany chose to build very expensive and very complicated vehicles and even though Germany produced many times more raw materials she could not compete with Soviets on quantity of military production (in 1943, the ] to ]). The Soviets incrementally upgraded existing designs, and simplified and refined manufacturing processes to increase production. Meanwhile, German industry was forced to engineer more advanced but complex designs such as the ], the ] or the ]. | |||
| {| {{prettytable}} | |||
| |+ Summary of German and Soviet raw material production during the war.<sup><small>1</small></sup> | |||
| |- | |||
| !rowspan="2"|Year | |||
| !colspan="2"|Coal<br/>(million tonnes) | |||
| !colspan="2"|Steel<br/>(million tonnes) | |||
| !colspan="2"|Aluminium<br/>(thousand tonnes) | |||
| !colspan="6"|Oil<br/>(million tonnes) | |||
| |- | |||
| !style="background:#eeeeff"|German | |||
| !style="background:#ffeeee"|Soviet | |||
| !style="background:#eeeeff"|German | |||
| !style="background:#ffeeee"|Soviet | |||
| !style="background:#eeeeff"|German | |||
| !style="background:#ffeeee"|Soviet | |||
| !style="background:#eeeeff"|German | |||
| !style="background:#ffeeee"|Soviet | |||
| !style="background:#00ffff"|Italian | |||
| !style="background:#6a5acd"|Hungarian | |||
| !style="background:#ffa500"|Romanian | |||
| !style="background:#00ced1"|Japanese | |||
| |- | |||
| !1941 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#eeeeff"|315.5 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#ffeeee"|151.4 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#eeeeff"|28.2 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#ffeeee"|17.9 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#eeeeff"|233.6 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#ffeeee"|– | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#eeeeff"|5.7 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#ffeeee"|33.0 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#00ffff"|0.12 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#6a5acd"|0.4 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#ffa500"|5.5 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#00ced1"|- | |||
| |- | |||
| !1942 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#eeeeff"|317.9 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#ffeeee"|75.5 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#eeeeff"|28.7 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#ffeeee"|8.1 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#eeeeff"|264.0 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#ffeeee"|51.7 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#eeeeff"|6.6 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#ffeeee"|22.0 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#00ffff"|0.01 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#6a5acd"|0.7 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#ffa500"|5.7 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#00ced1"|1.8 | |||
| |- | |||
| !1943 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#eeeeff"|340.4 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#ffeeee"|93.1 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#eeeeff"|30.6 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#ffeeee"|8.5 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#eeeeff"|250.0 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#ffeeee"|62.3 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#eeeeff"|7.6 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#ffeeee"|18.0 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#00ffff"|0.01 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#6a5acd"|0.8 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#ffa500"|5.3 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#00ced1"|2.3 | |||
| |- | |||
| !1944 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#eeeeff"|347.6 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#ffeeee"|121.5 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#eeeeff"|25.8 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#ffeeee"|10.9 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#eeeeff"|245.3 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#ffeeee"|82.7 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#eeeeff"|5.5 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#ffeeee"|18.2 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#00ffff"|- | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#6a5acd"|1 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#ffa500"|3.5 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#00ced1"|1 | |||
| |- | |||
| !1945<sup><small>2</small></sup> | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#eeeeff"|– | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#ffeeee"|149.3 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#eeeeff"|– | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#ffeeee"|12.3 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#eeeeff"|– | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#ffeeee"|86.3 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#eeeeff"|1.3 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#ffeeee"|19.4 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#00ffff"|- | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#6a5acd"|- | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#ffa500"|- | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#00ced1"|0.1 | |||
| |} | |||
| {| {{prettytable}} | |||
| |+ Summary of Axis and Soviet Tanks and self-<br/>propelled gun production during the war.<sup><small>1</small></sup> | |||
| |- | |||
| !rowspan="2"|Year | |||
| !colspan="5"|Tanks and self-<br/>propelled guns | |||
| |- | |||
| !style="background:#ffeeee"|Soviet | |||
| !style="background:#eeeeff"|German | |||
| !style="background:#00ffff"|Italian | |||
| !style="background:#6a5acd"|Hungarian | |||
| !style="background:#00ced1"|Japanese | |||
| |- | |||
| !1941 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#ffeeee"|6,590 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#eeeeff"|5,200<sup><small>3</small></sup> | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#00ffff"|595 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#6a5acd"|- | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#00ced1"|595 | |||
| |- | |||
| !1942 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#ffeeee"|24,446 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#eeeeff"|9,300<sup><small>3</small></sup> | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#00ffff"|1,252 | |||
| !style="background:#6a5acd" rowspan="3"|500 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#00ced1"|557 | |||
| |- | |||
| !1943 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#ffeeee"|24,089 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#eeeeff"|19,800 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#00ffff"|336 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#00ced1"|558 | |||
| |- | |||
| !1944 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#ffeeee"|28,963 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#eeeeff"|27,300 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#00ffff"|- | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#00ced1"|353 | |||
| |- | |||
| !1945<sup><small>2</small></sup> | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#ffeeee"|15,400 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#eeeeff"|– | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#00ffff"|- | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#6a5acd"|- | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#00ced1"|137 | |||
| |} | |||
| {| {{prettytable}} | |||
| |+ Summary of Axis and Soviet Aircraft production during the war.<sup><small>1</small></sup> | |||
| |- | |||
| !rowspan="2"|Year | |||
| !colspan="6"|Aircraft | |||
| |- | |||
| !style="background:#ffeeee"|Soviet | |||
| !style="background:#eeeeff"|German | |||
| !style="background:#00ffff"|Italian | |||
| !style="background:#6a5acd"|Hungarian | |||
| !style="background:#ffa500"|Romanian | |||
| !style="background:#00ced1"|Japanese | |||
| |- | |||
| !1941 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#ffeeee"|15,735 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#eeeeff"|11,776 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#00ffff"|3,503 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#6a5acd"|- | |||
| !style="background:#ffa500" rowspan="5"|1,000 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#00ced1"|5,088 | |||
| |- | |||
| !1942 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#ffeeee"|25,436 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#eeeeff"|15,556 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#00ffff"|2,818 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#6a5acd"|6 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#00ced1"|8,861 | |||
| |- | |||
| !1943 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#ffeeee"|34,845 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#eeeeff"|25,527 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#00ffff"|967 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#6a5acd"|267 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#00ced1"|16,693 | |||
| |- | |||
| !1944 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#ffeeee"|40,246 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#eeeeff"|39,807 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#00ffff"|- | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#6a5acd"|773 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#00ced1"|28,180 | |||
| |- | |||
| !1945<sup><small>2</small></sup> | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#ffeeee"|20,052 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#eeeeff"|7,544 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#00ffff"|- | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#6a5acd"|- | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#00ced1"|8,263 | |||
| |} | |||
| Notes: | |||
| # Figures from Richard Overy, ''Russia's War'', page 155. And from "Campaigns of World War II : Day By Day" written by Chris Bishop and Chris Mcnab, page | |||
| # If numbers are not stated then they are unknown . Soviet numbers for 1945 are for the whole of 1945 even after the war was over. | |||
| # German figures for 1941 and 1942 includes tanks only. (Self-propelled guns cost 2/3 of a tank (mainly because they have no turret), and they more appropriate in a defensive role. Therefore the Germans favored their production in the second half of the war.) | |||
| It should be noted that the Axis allies Italy, Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria added to the German numbers. ], much needed for German military production, was provided in 2/3 by ]. Soviet production and upkeep was assisted by the ] program from the United States and Britain. After the defeat at Stalingrad, Germany geared completely towards a war economy, as expounded in ]' ], increasing production in subsequent years, despite the intensifying ]. | |||
| ==Casualties== | |||
| The Eastern Front was unparalleled for its high intensity, ferocity, and brutality. The fighting involved millions of German and Soviet troops along a broad front. It was by far the deadliest single ] in World War II, with over 5 million deaths on the Axis Forces, Soviet military deaths were about 8.7 million (out of which 4 million Soviets died in German captivity), and civilian deaths were about 14 to 17 million. The genocidal death toll was attributed to several factors, including brutal mistreatment of POWs and captured partisans by both sides, multiple atrocities by the Germans and the Soviets against the civilian population and each other, the wholesale use of weaponry on the battlefield against huge masses of infantry. The multiple battles, and most of all, the use of ] tactics destroyed ], infrastructure, and whole towns, leaving much of the population homeless and without food. | |||
| {| {{prettytable}} | |||
| |+ Military Losses On The Eastern Front During World War 2.<sup><small>1</small></sup> | |||
| |- | |||
| !colspan="4"|Forces Fighting FOR the Soviet Union | |||
| |- | |||
| ! | |||
| !style="background:#0000ff"|Total Dead | |||
| !style="background:#008000"|POW Taken By The Axis | |||
| !style="background:#008080"|POW That Died In Captivity | |||
| |- | |||
| !Soviet | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#0000ff"|8,668,000 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#008000"|6,000,000 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#008080"|4,000,000 | |||
| |- | |||
| !Poland<sup><small>2</small></sup> | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#0000ff"|40,000 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#008000"|Unknown | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#008080"|Unknown | |||
| |- | |||
| !Romania<sup><small>3</small></sup> | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#0000ff"|17,000 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#008000"|Unknown | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#008080"|Unknown | |||
| |- | |||
| !Total | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#0000ff"|8,725,000 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#008000"|Unknown | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#008080"|Unknown | |||
| |- | |||
| |} | |||
| {| {{prettytable}} | |||
| |+ Military Losses On The Eastern Front During World War 2.<sup><small>1</small></sup> | |||
| |- | |||
| !colspan="4"|Forces Fighting FOR the Axis | |||
| |- | |||
| ! | |||
| !style="background:#0000ff"|Total Dead | |||
| !style="background:#008000"|POW Taken By The Soviets | |||
| !style="background:#008080"|POW That Died In Captivity | |||
| |- | |||
| !Greater Germany | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#0000ff"|2,415,960 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#008000"|4,500,000 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#008080"|500,000 | |||
| |- | |||
| !Soviet Turncoats<sup><small>4</small></sup> | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#0000ff"|2,000,000 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#008000"|Unknown | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#008080"|Unknown | |||
| |- | |||
| !Romania | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#0000ff"|381,000 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#008000"|Unknown | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#008080"|Unknown | |||
| |- | |||
| !Hungary | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#0000ff"|136,000 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#008000"|Unknown | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#008080"|Unknown | |||
| |- | |||
| !Italy | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#0000ff"|84,830 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#008000"|Unknown | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#008080"|Unknown | |||
| |- | |||
| !Bulgaria | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#0000ff"|32,000 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#008000"|Unknown | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#008080"|Unknown | |||
| |- | |||
| !Total | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#0000ff"|5,049,790 | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#008000"|Unknown | |||
| |align="right" style="background:#008080"|Unknown | |||
| |- | |||
| |} | |||
| 1 All nummbers are taken from | |||
| A: The Swedish Translation of "Campaigns of World War II : Day by Day" which is written by Chris Bishop and Chris Mcnab, pages 244-252 | |||
| B: Russia's War by Prof. ] , page 238 | |||
| 2 Polish Forces Joined with The Soviets after Poland was liberated in Januari 1945 | |||
| 3 When the eastern european countries were liberated by the Soviets they were forced to change sides and declare war on the Germans | |||
| 4 Some Soviets would side with the Germans and join ] ]. Most of those who joined were from the Baltic countries or from the Ukraine but some POW also joined in ]. Most who joined hated communism and actually saw the Nazies as liberators who hade come to free them from communism. Some were even placed on the beaches of Normadie and to the suprise of the Americans who found men running of of fox holes shouting "Russki "Russki" | |||
| ==See also== ] in ].]] | ==See also== ] in ].]] | ||
| Line 567: | Line 111: | ||
| * ], '']'', ], New York, 2001. | * ], '']'', ], New York, 2001. | ||
| * ], ''History of the Second World War'', Cassel & Co; Pan Books, 1973. | * ], ''History of the Second World War'', Cassel & Co; Pan Books, 1973. | ||
| * ], ''Hitler's War'', Hodder & Stoughton, 1977. | |||
| * | * | ||
| * ]''Deutsche militarische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg'' | * ]''Deutsche militarische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg'' | ||
| * ], ''Russia's War: A History of the Soviet Effort: 1941–1945'', Penguin, 1997. | * ], ''Russia's War: A History of the Soviet Effort: 1941–1945'', Penguin, 1997. | ||
| * ], ''The Russo-German War 1941–45'', Praeger, 1971. | * ], ''The Russo-German War 1941–45'', Praeger, 1971. | ||
| * F. W. Winterbotham, ''The Ultra Secret'', Orion, 1974. | |||
| ==External links== | ==External links== | ||
Revision as of 20:32, 25 January 2006
The Eastern Front of World War II was the theatre of war in eastern Europe, in which fighting began in June 1941 and ended in May 1945; the two principal belligerent nations were Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Fighting on this front, along with other Allies on other fronts, led to the defeat of Nazi Germany, the the rise of the Soviet Union as a military and industrial superpower, the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, and the partition of Germany.
In Russian, the conflict is referred to as the Great Patriotic War (Великая Отечественная Война, Velikaya Otechestvennaya Voyna), a name which alludes to the Russo–Napoleonic Patriotic War on Russian soil in 1812. The Russo-Finnish Continuation War may be considered the northern flank of the Eastern Front. Some scholars of the conflict use the term Russo-German War, while others use Soviet-German War or German-Soviet War. In the Soviet Union the end of war is considered to be 9 May, when the surrender took effect Moscow time. This date is celebrated as a national holiday, Victory Day, or День Победы in the Russian Federation and some other post-Soviet countries.
Some German armies initially refused to surrender and continued to fight in Czechoslovakia until about 11 May.
Overview
The war between Germany and the Soviet Union began on 22 June 1941, when Germany invaded Soviet teritory on a broad front. Details of the initial invasion campaign can be seen at Operation Barbarrossa. Causes of the war are available in the World War 2 article. In the initial period of the war, German forces defeated large Soviet forces and inflicted staggering casualties. However, they did not achieve their objectives of destroying the Red Army and causing a collapse of the Soviet Union.
The unexpected survival of the Red Army and Soviet state led to a long, brutal series of campaigns. In the winter of 1941-42, the Red Army took the offensive and drove the German forces back up to 100 miles in a broad attack that left both sides exhausted. In the spring of 1942, Soviet forces again took the offensive around Kharkov. This was defeated. In the summer of 1942, Germany again launched a massive offensive operation, this time aimed at the oil-rich Caucasus region. This led to the Stalingrad campaign. The stunning defeat of the Germans at Stalingrad, coming within a few months of western Allied victories at Midway and the North African campaign, led to a sense that the tide of the war had turned against the Germans.
After Stalingrad, there was an unusual pause on the Eastern Front while both sides recovered their strength and considered their next moves. In the summer of 1943 at the Battle of Kursk the Red Army inflicted a decisive defeat on the Germans. Thereafter, in a series of increasingly large offensives, the Red Army drove the Germans out of the USSR, then out of the rest of Eastern Europe, and finally to Berlin. The fighting on the Eastern Front ended on 8 May 1945, when Germany's armed forces surrendered unconditionally following the Battle of Berlin.
Belligerents
The Soviet Union was allied informally with the British Empire and United States of America during most of the conflict. By mid-war, the Soviet Union had help from an increasing partisan movement in the USSR and other countries in Eastern Europe, notably those in Poland and Yugoslavia. In addition the 1st and 2nd Polish armies, armed and trained by the Soviets, fought alongside the Red Army at the front. Smaller contributions came from Czechoslovakia, Romania(after switching sides late in the war) and Bulgaria.
Germany was able to call on the manpower of other satellite or Axis Powers nations, including Fascist Italy, Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania with some assistance from anti-communist partisans as well as a volunteer Spanish division from nominally neutral Fascist Spain.
Major Campaigns
Operation Barbarossa Battle of Moscow Siege of Leningrad Soviet Winter Counteroffensive of 1941 Battles of Kharkov Stalingrad Campaign (including fighting in the caucasus) Spring battles of 1943 Battle of Kursk Battle of the Korsun Pocket Operation Bagration Battle of the Crimea Lvov-Sandomir Offensive Vistula-Oder Offensive Battles in East Prussia Battles around Budapest and Lake Balaton Battle of Berlin Liberation of Prague
Industrial Management and Output
World War Two was a war of materiel. The differences in the economic management of the belligerents had a major impact on the course of the fighting.
In general, the Soviet state was more highly centralized, and was able to make better use of the industrial base to produce weapons. The USSR was aided in this effort by substantial Lend Lease shipments of key materials and goods. Civilian standards of living were quite low and declined further during the war.
Germany was less centralized; although Hitler had dictatorial powers, the German economy operated in 'fiefs' with little coordination. Starting with a much larger industrial base, with the economies of much of Europe under their control, the Germans did not equal the Soviet output of key weapons or supplies.
See World War Two Industrial Management for details.
Human Cost
The Eastern Front was by far the largest and bloodiest theatre of World War II, and generally accepted as the most costly conflict in human history at anywhere from 25-30 million dead as a result. It involved more land combat than all other World War II theatres combined; much of this combat took place in populated areas including major cities. There was tremendous brutality both to combatants and civilians, which was not often paralleled on the Western Front.
See World War 2 Casualties for details.
The war inflicted huge losses and suffering onto the civilian populations of the affected countries. Behind the front lines, atrocities against civilians in German-occupied areas were routine. Much of the Holocaust took place in areas of eastern Europe occupied by the Nazis. German and German-allied forces treated civilian populations with exceptional brutality, massacring villages and routinely killing civilian hostages. Both sides practiced widespread scorched earth tactics. After the war, following the Yalta conference agreements between the Allies, the German populations of East Prussia and Silesia were displaced to the west of the Oder-Neisse Line, in what became one of the largest forced migrations of people in world history.
See Eastern Front Atrocities for details.
Irregular Warfare
See Eastern Front Partisan Warfare for details.
A variety of partisan groups carried out guerrilla warfare in the rear areas of the belligerents. In the initial period of the war, irregular warfare was very limited. However, the seeds of later partisan operations were sown as thousands of Red Army personnel, cut off from their retreating units and bypassed by fast-moving German units, dispersed into the forests or small towns of occupied areas. A combination of pre-war planning and wartime insertion of Soviet special operations troops provided leadership, direction and resources to the partisan movement. By mid-war, particularly when it became clear that the Germans might not win, the partisan movement gained power and succeeded in tying down substantial Axis units policing their own rear areas. Partisans provided intelligence to Soviet forces and occasionally were able to disrupt German logistics.
Some smaller partisan movements grew up in the uncertainty of war. In Ukraine, the nationalist OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) fought both sides for an independent Ukraine. This group fought Red Army units until about 1950.
In Poland, a very large and higly-organized 'Home Army' fought the Germans at the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. The Red Army, located in the Warsaw suburb of Praha at the time, did nothing to aid these partisans to fight the Nazi German forces.
Controversies of the Eastern Front
"Preemptive war"? Warsaw Uprising German treatment of conquered people Stalin's war leadership Hitler's war leadership
Historiography
Postwar German source bias problems with the German sources Postwar Soviet sources - Stalin era - Krushchev era - Post-Krushchev - New views since the collapse of the USSR Other sources
==See also==
.jpg){kind=link}
- Timeline of the WWII Eastern Front.
- Military history of Germany during World War II.
- Operation Silberfuchs, Axis attack on the Soviet Arctic.
- Operation August Storm, the Soviet campaign against Japan in Manchuria.
- Historiography of World War II.
- Captured German equipment in Soviet use in Eastern front
References
- Antony Beevor, & Artemis Cooper, Stalingrad, Viking, 1998.
- Antony Beevor, Berlin: The Downfall 1945, Penguin, 2002.
- John Erickson, The Road to Stalingrad, Harper & Row, 1975.
- John Erickson, The Road to Berlin, Harper & Row, 1982.
- John Erickson and David Dilks, Barbarossa, the Axis and the Allies, Edinburgh University Press, 1994.
- David Glantz and Jonathan House, When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army stopped Hitler, University Press of Kansas, 1995.
- Heinz Guderian, Panzer Leader, Da Capo Press, New York, 2001.
- Basil Liddell Hart, History of the Second World War, Cassel & Co; Pan Books, 1973.
- Rolf-Dieter Müller and Gerd R. Ueberschär. Hitler's War in the East, 1941-1945: A Critical Assessment (1997)
- Rudiger OvermansDeutsche militarische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg
- Richard Overy, Russia's War: A History of the Soviet Effort: 1941–1945, Penguin, 1997.
- Albert Seaton, The Russo-German War 1941–45, Praeger, 1971.
External links
- Russian veterans of World War II memories(In English and Russian)
- OnWar maps of the Eastern Front
- Erinnerungen des Leutnants d.R. Wilhelm Radkovsky 1940-1945
- Pobediteli: Eastern Front flash animation (photos, video, interviews, memorials. Written from a Russian perspective)
- Feldgrau.com The German Armed Forces 1919-1945
da:Østfronten de:Russlandfeldzug 1941 - 1945 es:Frente Oriental ja:独ソ戦 ko:독소 전쟁 it:Fronte Orientale (Seconda guerra mondiale) he: מלחמת המולדת הגדולה ro:Frontul de răsărit (al doilea război mondial) Template:Link FA ru:Великая Отечественная война 1941-45 sr:Источни фронт (Други светски рат) zh:东方战线 sv:det stora fosterländska kriget
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