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It also contributed to the mass extermination of populations in German-occupied Europe. However, on Christmas Eve the retreat began anew when the First Ukrainian Front (renamed from the Voronezh Front) struck them in the same place. WebDeaths by Country Worldwide Casualties* *Worldwide casualty estimates vary widely in several sources. 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. When the Red Army invaded Germany in 1944, many German civilians suffered from reprisals by Red Army soldiers (see Soviet war crimes). 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. Top. The disastrous encirclements later in the war at Stalingrad, Korsun and many other places resulted directly from Hitler's orders. Many divisions became cut off in "fortress" cities, or wasted uselessly in secondary theatres, because Hitler would not sanction retreat or voluntarily abandon any of his conquests. The meeting engagement at Prochorovka was a Soviet defensive success, albeit at heavy cost. [54] Axis allies such as Romania and Italy, Hungary, Finland, Croatia and Bulgaria benefited from Germany's net imports. II, p. 245. 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. WebWe would like to show you a description here but the site wont allow us. [122][123], As it became clear that the Soviet Union would win the war, Stalin ensured that propaganda always mentioned his leadership of the war; he sidelined the victorious generals and never allowed them to develop into political rivals. Wolves and foxes fleeing westward from the killing zone, as the Soviet army advanced between 1943 and 1945, were responsible for a rabies epidemic that spread slowly westwards, reaching the coast of the English Channel by 1968. Deaths of POW were 450,600 including 356,700 in NKVD camps and 93,900 in transit. [161] According to Soviet claims, the Germans lost 42,700 tanks, tank destroyers, self-propelled guns and assault guns on the Eastern front. The Eastern Front was the largest and bloodiest theatre of World War II. 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]. However, if one last great blitzkrieg offensive could be mounted, then attention could then be turned to the Allied threat to the Western Front. The Caucasian Front and Black Sea Fleet were to take back the Crimea. Existing sources suggest that some 5.7 million Soviet army personnel fell into German hands during. On 25 January 1945, Hitler renamed three army groups. It may also be likely that "Swedish ore formed the raw material of four out of every ten German guns" during the Hitler era'. On 27 November, the 4th Panzer Army got to within 30km (19mi) of the Kremlin when it reached the last tramstop of the Moscow line at Khimki. After nearly four years of intense fighting, Soviet forces finally launched their assault on Berlin on 16 April 1945. During the Warsaw Uprising, the Red Army were ordered to halt at the Vistula River. Behind the front lines, atrocities against civilians in German-occupied areas were routine, including those carried out as part of the Holocaust. Critically, Guderian's 2nd Panzer Group was ordered to move south in a giant pincer manoeuvre with Army Group South which was advancing into Ukraine. This battle also enabled Army Group South to recapture Korosten and gain some time to rest. [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. Seven million horses, 17million cattle, 20million pigs, 27million sheep were also slaughtered or driven off. [citation needed], Soviet intelligence was fooled by German disinformation, so sent false alarms to Moscow about a German invasion in April, May and the beginning of June. 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. [8] The MolotovRibbentrop Pact ostensibly provided security to the Soviets in the occupation both of the Baltics and of the north and northeastern regions of Romania (Northern Bukovina and Bessarabia, JuneJuly 1940), although Hitler, in announcing the invasion of the Soviet Union, cited the Soviet annexations of Baltic and Romanian territory as having violated Germany's understanding of the pact. According to Zhukov, "the success of the December counter-offensive in the central strategic direction was considerable. [6][43], Some historians say Stalin was fearful of war with Germany, or just did not expect Germany to start a two-front war, and was reluctant to do anything to provoke Hitler. 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. Advancing on either side of the upper Donets on a narrow corridor, the II SS Panzer Corps and the Grodeutschland Panzergrenadier divisions battled their way through minefields and over comparatively high ground towards Oboyan. 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. The two principal belligerent powers were Germany and the Soviet Union, along with their respective allies. Stalin and Hitler both disregarded human life in order to achieve their goal of victory. Military Analysis Division, U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey- European War, Volume 3, page 144. This date is celebrated as a national holiday Victory Day in Russia (as part of a two-day 89 May holiday) and some other post-Soviet countries. The southern offensive, spearheaded by 4th Panzer Army, led by Gen. Col. Hoth, with three Tank Corps made more headway. Army Group North (old Army Group Centre) was driven into an ever-smaller pocket around Knigsberg in East Prussia. Both wings would converge on the area east of Kursk, and by that means restore the lines of Army Group South to the exact points that it held over the winter of 19411942. 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. What it did accomplish was to destroy many of the aircraft that had been transporting relief supplies to Stalingrad. Over 30,000 Soviet soldiers died compared to the 10,000 soldiers lost by the Germans. 2, p. 152. The above figures includes all personnel in the German Army, i.e. [151] The Nazis exterminated one to two million Soviet Jews (including the annexed territories) as part of the Holocaust. [11], The Nazi leadership, including Heinrich Himmler,[12] saw the war against the Soviet Union as a struggle between the ideologies of Nazism and Jewish Bolshevism, and ensuring territorial expansion for the Germanic bermensch (superhumans), who according to Nazi ideology were the Aryan Herrenvolk ("master race"), at the expense of the Slavic Untermenschen (subhumans). WebWorld War II losses of the Soviet Union were about 27,000,000, both civilian and military from all war-related causes, [1] although exact figures are disputed. The 1st Panzer Group turned away from Kiev for the moment, advancing into the Dnieper bend (western Dnipropetrovsk Oblast). 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 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. This death toll was neither an accident nor an automatic result of the war. Axis troops who captured Red Army soldiers frequently shot them in the field or shipped them to concentration camps to be used as forced labourers or killed. 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. WebIn 1993 a study by the Russian Academy of Sciences estimated total Soviet population losses due the war at 26.6 million, [1] [2] [3] including military dead of 8.7 million calculated by the Russian Ministry of Defense. [170][159] About 5% of the Soviet prisoners who died were of Jewish ethnicity. We begin where we ended six centuries ago. "[83]:5962, By April 1942, the Soviet Supreme Command agreed to assume the defensive so as to "consolidate the captured ground." Battle was joined on 12 July, with about one thousand tanks being engaged. Among the most prominent volunteer army formations was the Spanish Blue Division, sent by Spanish dictator Francisco Franco to keep his ties to the Axis intact.[32]. After several days of heavy fighting the Soviet 1BF and 1UF punched holes through the German front line and were fanning out across central Germany. Throughout the 1930s the Soviet Union underwent massive industrialisation and economic growth under the leadership of Joseph Stalin. [34][35], For nearly two years the border was quiet while Germany conquered Denmark, Norway, France, the Low Countries, and the Balkans. WebOf the estimated 7085 million deaths attributed to World War II, around 30 million occurred on the Eastern Front, including 9 million children. [165] According to Soviet claims, the Germans lost 75,700 aircraft on the Eastern front.[166]. A figure of 20 million was considered official during the Soviet era. [118], The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were both ideologically driven states (by Soviet communism and by Nazism respectively), in which the foremost political leaders had near-absolute power. Soviet tank-output remained the largest in the world. 28 (3): 567587. Although Adolf Hitler had congratulated himself on the 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. By 16 February the first stage was complete, with panzers separated from the contracting Cherkassy pocket only by the swollen Gniloy Tikich river. Soviet But the over-riding objective was to capture Berlin. The two were complementary because possession of the zone could not be won quickly unless Berlin was taken. Army Group Centre's infantry divisions were left relatively unsupported by armour to continue their slow advance to Moscow. 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. Anti-Soviet Finland, which had fought the Winter War against the Soviet Union, also joined the offensive. Ulrich Herbert, "Forced Laborers in the 'Third Reich'", Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Supplement A, ("- " ("Military-Historical Magazine"), 1997, 5. Important Dnieper towns started to fall, with Zaporozhye the first to go, followed by Dnepropetrovsk. [142] The British supplied aircraft including 3,000 Hurricanes and 4,000 other aircraft during the war. Lt.-Gen. Mikhail Grigoryevich Yefremov's 33rd Army aided by Gen. Belov's 1st Cavalry Corps and Soviet partisans attempted to seize Vyazma. The combined panzer force reached the Beresina River in just six days, 650km (400mi) from their start lines. The German invasion therefore caught the Soviet military and civilian leadership largely by surprise. Updated December 27, 2021 | Infoplease Staff Military Losses in WWII This page provides information about the number of deaths among servicemen in World War II, including how many were wounded or killed in action battle among the Allied and Axis forces. The advance into the Caucasus bogged down, with the Germans unable to fight their way past Malgobek and to the main prize of Grozny. 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. Following bloody encirclement battles, all of the present-day Belarus territory was occupied by the Germans by the end of August 1941. [112] It involved more land combat than all other World War II theatres combined. The destruction battalions burned down villages, schools, and public buildings. 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. "Heaven-bound Missions", which involved fortifying even the most unimportant or insignificant of cities and the holding of these "fortresses" at all costs. As they retreated from Ukraine and Belarus in 194344, the German occupiers systematically applied a scorched earth policy, burning towns and cities, destroying infrastructure, and leaving civilians to starve or die of exposure. Stalin ordered the retreating Red Army to initiate a scorched-earth policy to deny the Germans and their allies basic supplies as they advanced eastward. By February 1942, 2,000,000 of the 3,300,000 Soviet soldiers in German custody up to that point had died from starvation, exposure, disease, or shooting. [88] The Leningrad Front's offensives towards Tallinn, a main Baltic port, were stopped in February 1944. For the campaign against the Soviet Union, the Germans allotted almost 150 divisions containing a total of about 3,000,000 men. They were accompanied by ten Romanian divisions, three Italian divisions, two Slovakian divisions and nine Romanian and four Hungarian brigades. At the crisis of the war, in the autumn of 1942, Stalin made many concessions to the army: the government restored unitary command by removing the Commissars from the chain of command. He later told Erhard Milch: I had to act ruthlessly. Over three days, on a broad front incorporating four army fronts, the Red Army launched the VistulaOder Offensive across the Narew River and from Warsaw. In the operation, the Red Army lost ~180,000 dead and missing (765,815 in total, including wounded and sick plus 5,073 Poles),[91] as well as 2,957 tanks and assault guns. 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. [31] The separate Tripartite Pact between what became the three prime Axis Powers would not be signed until some four years after the Anti-Comintern Pact. According to a summary, presented by Lieutenant General Roman Rudenko at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, the property damage in the Soviet Union inflicted by the Axis invasion was estimated to a value of 679billion rubles. as part of their program aiming to exterminate all European Jews.[18]. Debate among the General Staff was polarised, with even Hitler nervous about any attempt to pinch off the Kursk salient. Stalin's five-year plans of the 1930s had resulted in the industrialisation of the Urals and central Asia. [108], At 2:41 am on 7 May 1945, at SHAEF headquarters, German Chief-of-Staff General Alfred Jodl signed the unconditional surrender documents for all German forces to the Allies at Reims in France. This left a glaring Soviet bulge (salient) in the front centered on Kursk. 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). In March, 20 German divisions of Generaloberst Hans-Valentin Hube's 1st Panzer Army were encircled in what was to be known as Hube's Pocket near Kamenets-Podolskiy. We finally put the colonial and commercial policy of the pre-war and go over to the territorial policy of the future. Skorobogatkin, et al, "50 Let Voorezhennyk sil SSR" (Moscow: Voyenizdat, 1968), p. 457. [67] On the same day, the Baltic, Western and Kiev Special military districts were renamed the Northwestern, Western and Southwestern Fronts respectively.[65]. 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. The German Economy in the Twentieth Century. The war in Europe was over.[109]. 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. [169] Additionally, millions of Soviet civilians were captured as POWs and treated in the same manner. 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. Russians consider it to be one of the greatest battles of their Great Patriotic War, and most historians consider it to be the greatest battle of the entire conflict. 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. From the foundation of the Red Army in 1918, political distrust of the military had led to a system of "dual command", with every commander paired with a political commissar, a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. After nearly four years of intense fighting, Soviet forces finally launched their assault on Berlin on 16 April 1945. The East Prussian operation, though often overshadowed by the VistulaOder operation and the later battle for Berlin, was in fact one of the largest and costliest operations fought by the Red Army throughout the war. Colossus reborn: the Red Army at war: 1941-1943. Web. 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. In addition, the SovietFinnish Continuation War is generally also considered the northern flank of the Eastern Front. 227 was promulgated 1,000 retreating troops were shot and 24,993 were sent to penal battalions. The massacres of Jews and other ethnic minorities were only a part of the deaths from the Nazi occupation. 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. [citation needed]. The Red Army and the Second World War. They were supplied by air until April when they were given permission to regain the Soviet main lines. [50]:129 Without Lend-Lease aid, Soviet Union's diminished post invasion economic base would not have produced adequate supplies of weaponry, other than focus on machine tool, foodstuff and consumer goods. Those lessons were subsequently applied first to Soviet POWs and then to Jews. The 2BF moved into the positions being vacated by the 1BF north of the Seelow Heights. WebA method was thereby found that would kill millions of people with minimal effort. [citation needed], In Poland, as the Red Army approached, the Polish Home Army (AK) launched Operation Tempest. [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 war was fought between Germany, its allies and Finland, against the Soviet Union and its allies. Under the pressure of the Soviet Baltic Offensive, the German Army Group North were withdrawn to fight in the sieges of Saaremaa, Courland and Memel. [40] In all, the scale of human losses during World War II was vast. 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. After four days the Red Army broke out and started moving thirty to forty kilometres a day, taking the Baltic states, Danzig, East Prussia, Pozna, and drawing up on a line sixty kilometres east of Berlin along the River Oder. 023, 4 February 1944), the irretrievable casualties include killed, missing, those who died due to war-time or subsequent wounds, maladies and chilblains and those who were captured. During the first two weeks of April, the Red Army performed their fastest front redeployment of the war. Hitler's direction of the war ultimately proved 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. 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. 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. Regions closer to the front were managed by military powers of the region, in other areas such as the Baltic states annexed by the USSR in 1940, Reichscommissariats were established. Top. The Lucy spy ring in Switzerland also sent warnings, possibly deriving from Ultra codebreaking in Britain. [citation needed]. Moscow partitioned the annexed Romanian territory between the Ukrainian and Moldavian Soviet republics. [g] In many towns, the battles were fought within towns and cities with trapped civilians caught in the middle. German forces invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 and had advanced to the suburbs of Stalingrad (now Volgograd) by the summer of 1942. The Soviet invasion of Manchuria began on 8 August 1945, with an assault on the Japanese puppet states of Manchukuo and neighbouring Mengjiang; the greater offensive would eventually include northern Korea, southern Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands. The data is divided by each nation that participated in the war. Once these facilities were reassembled east of the Urals, production could be resumed without fear of German bombing. 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]. WebBattle of Berlin 67 languages For the RAF bombing campaign, see Battle of Berlin (air). [83]:53, The 20th Army, part of the Soviet 1st Shock Army, the 22nd Tank Brigade and five ski battalions launched their attack on 10 January 1942. "Fighting a Lost War: The German Army in 1943": "How the Red Army Defeated Germany: The Three Alibis": This page was last edited on 27 June 2023, at 04:15. Estimated civilian deaths range from about 14 to 17million. The German Army Group Centre initially refused to surrender and continued to fight in Czechoslovakia until about 11 May. Vadim Erlikman has detailed Soviet losses totalling 26.5million war related deaths. Bodies of U.S. Marines on the beach of Tarawa. 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]. The intent was to pin Army Group South against the Sea of Azov, but as the winter eased the Wehrmacht counter-attacked and cut off the over-extended Soviet troops in the Second Battle of Kharkov. 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. [citation needed]. The cruel and brutally inhumane treatment of Soviet civilians, women, children and elderly, the daily bombings of civilian cities and towns, Nazi pillaging of Soviet villages and hamlets and unprecedented harsh punishment and treatment of civilians in general were some of the primary reasons for Soviet resistance to Nazi Germany's invasion. [45] According to Edward Ericson, although Germany's own resources were sufficient for the victories in the West in 1940, massive Soviet shipments obtained during a short period of NaziSoviet economic collaboration were critical for Germany to launch Operation Barbarossa.[46]. A figure of 20 million was considered official during the Soviet era. [82], The Soviet counter-offensive during the Battle of Moscow had removed the immediate German threat to the city. |Braun, Hans-Joachim (1990). [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. After the war the Soviets once again purged the Red Army (though not as brutally as in the 1930s) and demoted many successful officers (including Zhukov, Malinovsky and Koniev) to unimportant positions. Meanwhile, Germany had been cut off from foreign trade for years by the time it invaded the USSR, was in the middle of two extended and costly theatres at air and sea that further limited production (Battle of the Atlantic and Defence of the Reich), and was forced to devote a large segment of its expenditures to goods the Soviets could cut back on (such as trucks) or which would never even be used against the Soviets (such as ships). Germany and the Soviet Union remained unsatisfied with the outcome of World War I (19141918). However, in early February, the Germans managed to cut off this force, separating the Soviets from their main force in the rear of the Germans. Romania supplied Germany and its allies with roughly 13million barrels of oil (about 4million per year) between 1941 and 1943. On 13 May 1945, all Soviet offensives ceased and the fighting on the Eastern Front of World War II came to an end. Werner Sderstrm Osakeyhti. 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. [50]:129 The massive transfer of equipment and skilled personnel from occupied territories helped further to boost the economic base. These results and missed opportunities contributed to the defeat of the Wehrmacht. 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 Germans crumbled. German production of explosives from 1940 to 1944 was 1.595million tons, along with 829,970 tons of powder.

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