[101], The Soviet offensive had two objectives. The Lucy spy ring in Switzerland also sent warnings, possibly deriving from Ultra codebreaking in Britain. Deaths of POW were 450,600 including 356,700 in NKVD camps and 93,900 in transit. From there Hungary became a. Army Group North (old Army Group Centre) was driven into an ever-smaller pocket around Königsberg in East Prussia. The German army group "Narwa" included Estonian conscripts, defending the re-establishment of Estonian independence.[90][91]. The Germans’ strength was further increased by more than 30 divisions of Finnish and Romanian troops. Jatkosodan pikkujättiläinen (in Finnish) (1st ed.). Romania supplied Germany and its allies with roughly 13 million barrels of oil (about 4 million per year) between 1941 and 1943. By the end of August 1944, it had cost the Germans ~400,000 dead, wounded, missing and sick, from whom 160,000 were captured, as well as 2,000 tanks and 57,000 other vehicles. Soviet resistance made possible a successful Allied invasion of France, and ensured the final Allied victory over Germany. The 58th Guards Rifle Division of the 5th Guards Army made contact with the US 69th Infantry Division of the First Army near Torgau, Germany at the Elbe river. Ulrich Herbert, "Forced Laborers in the 'Third Reich'", CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (, harvnb error: multiple targets (5×): CITEREFKrivosheev1997 (, sfn error: no target: CITEREFGlantz2005 (, ("Военно-исторический журнал" ("Military-Historical Magazine"), 1997, №5. [59], The use of foreign forced labour and slavery in Nazi Germany and throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II took place on an unprecedented scale. In part because of the unexpected degree of German success in the Battle of France (despite the warnings of the professional military) Hitler believed himself a military genius, with a grasp of the total war-effort that eluded his generals. [89], In a lightning campaign, the Germans were pushed back from Leningrad and Novgorod was captured by Soviet forces. 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. German figures for 1941 and 1942 include tanks only. [64], While German historians do not apply any specific periodisation to the conduct of operations on the Eastern Front, all Soviet and Russian historians divide the war against Germany and its allies into three periods, which are further subdivided into eight major campaigns of the Theatre of war:[65], Operation Barbarossa began just before dawn on 22 June 1941. [58], Rolf Karlbom estimated that Swedish share of Germany's total consumption of iron may have amounted to 43% during the period of 1933–43. It was in effect the largest and most powerful invasion force in human … Werner Söderström Osakeyhtiö. [66] Panicky transmissions from the Soviet front-line units to their command headquarters were picked up like this: "We are being fired upon. While it is important to note that not all parts of Soviet society viewed the German advance in this way, the majority of the Soviet population viewed German forces as occupiers. The Wehrmacht forces were also assisted by anti-Communist partisans in places like Western Ukraine, and the Baltic states. Advancing armoured divisions of the Army Group South met with Guderian's 2nd Panzer Group near Lokhvytsa in mid September, cutting off large numbers of Red Army troops in the pocket east of Kiev. But the over-riding objective was to capture Berlin. [60] It was a vital part of the German economic exploitation of conquered territories. Germany, which was an anti-communist régime, formalised its ideological position on 25 November 1936 by signing the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan. 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Adolf Hitler exercised tight control over the German war-effort, spending much of his time in his command bunkers (most notably at Rastenburg in East Prussia, at Vinnitsa in Ukraine, and under the garden of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin). Bock’s renewed advance on Moscow began on October 2, 1941. [130], Soviet repressions also contributed into the Eastern Front's death toll. Nevertheless, having dismissed Brauchitsch and appointed himself army commander in chief in December, Hitler persisted in overruling the tentative opposition of the general staff to his strategy. In June 1941, German armoured divisions roll deep into the Soviet Union, but by winter they find their supply lines stretched thin and the Soviets determined to fight. The offensive into Russia was over. Walter Dunn, "The Soviet Economy and the Red Army", Praeger (30 August 1995), page 50. Stalin's central tenet, "Socialism in One Country", manifested itself as a series of nationwide centralised Five-Year Plans from 1929 onwards. [12] [40] By the time of the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Wehrmacht consisted of c, 3,800,000 men of the Heer, 1,680,000 of the Luftwaffe, 404,000 of the Kriegsmarine, 150,000 of the Waffen-SS, and 1,200,000 of the Replacement Army (contained 450,400 active reservists, 550,000 new recruits and 204,000 in administrative services, vigiles and or in convalescence). [16] The vast majority of German soldiers viewed the war in Nazi terms, seeing the Soviet enemy as sub-human. Paul Winter, Defeating Hitler, states "these figures are undoubtedly too low". This conflict soon took on the characteristics of a proxy war involving the Soviet Union and left wing volunteers from different countries on the side of the predominantly socialist and communist-led[23] Second Spanish Republic;[24] while Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and the Portuguese Republic took the side of Spanish Nationalists, the military rebel group led by General Francisco Franco. [124] More than 600 villages like Khatyn were burned with their entire population. [141] Germany on the other hand had the resources of conquered Europe at its disposal; those numbers are however not included into the tables above, such as production in France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Denmark, and so on. The Soviet Union finally entered Warsaw on 17 January 1945, after the city was destroyed and abandoned by the Germans. 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.[86]. Norway lost 20% of its national income in 1940 and 40% in 1943. Joseph Stalin bore the greatest responsibility for some of the disasters at the beginning of the war (for example, the Battle of Kiev (1941)), but equally deserves praise for the subsequent success of the Soviet Red Army, which depended on the unprecedentedly rapid industrialisation of the Soviet Union, which Stalin's internal policy had made the first priority throughout the 1930s. Soviet defector, Viktor Suvorov in his groundbreaking book Chief Culprit goes so far as to credit Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union as saving Western … During the Warsaw Uprising, the Red Army were ordered to halt at the Vistula River. With Germany crushed, there is no power in Europe to oppose her tremendous military forces. In areas such as Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania (which had been annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940) the Wehrmacht was tolerated by a relatively more significant part of the native population. German and German-allied forces treated civilian populations with exceptional brutality, massacring whole village populations and routinely killing civilian hostages (see German war crimes). The attack breached the Finnish front line of defence in Valkeasaari on 10 June and the Finnish forces retreated to their secondary defence line, the VT-line. Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century. According to Zhukov, "the success of the December counter-offensive in the central strategic direction was considerable. Romania and the Soviet Union signed an armistice on 12 September. Their progress, however, was rather slow, and they took heavy casualties in a major tank battle. The Soviet armies were clumsily handled and frittered their tank strength away in piecemeal action like that of the French in 1940. The Soviet advance in the south continued into Romania and, following a coup against the Axis-allied government of Romania on 23 August, the Red Army occupied Bucharest on 31 August. Click to enlarge Formulating the plan in this way violated one of the principles of warfare, one sacred to the German high command: the concentration of forces. The Nazis imposed a brutal regime, deporting some 380,000 young people for slave labour, and killing hundreds of thousands (civilians) more. camps in the Soviet Union. Rendulic fearing an encirclement of his forces ordered the 19th Mountain Corps to fall back into Norway. 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.[10]. When the Axis countries of Central Europe were occupied by the Soviets, they changed sides and declared war on Germany (see Allied Commissions). In the south the Red Army lunged over the Donets River at Izyum and drove a 100 km (62 mi) deep salient. The Soviet multi-stage summer offensive started with the advance into the Orel salient. 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. Riverine forces, of all these, were probably the most heavily involved into the fight due to the abundance of large rivers and tributaries from where they can o… The 2BF moved into the positions being vacated by the 1BF north of the Seelow Heights. 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. The Nazi vision for the future of Eastern Europe was codified most clearly in the Generalplan Ost. The invasion, codenamed Operation Countenance, was largely unopposed by the numerically and technologically inferior Iranian forces. A strategic air offensive by the United States Army Air Force and Royal Air Force played a significant part in reducing German industry and tying up German air force and air defence resources, with some bombings, such as the bombing of the eastern German city of Dresden, being done to facilitate specific Soviet operational goals. The ceremonial Victory parade was held in Moscow on 24 June. In 1939, during the Russian invasion of Poland, some 14,500 Polish officers were captured and interned in three P.O.W. OKW claim German losses of 77,000 killed, 334,000 wounded and 292,000 missing, with a total of 703,000 men, on the Eastern Front during January and February 1945.[100]. "[67], At 03:15 on 22 June 1941, 99 of 190 German divisions, including fourteen panzer divisions and ten motorised, were deployed against the Soviet Union from the Baltic to the Black Sea. [145][146], Included in this figure of German losses is the majority of the 2 million German military personnel listed as missing or unaccounted for after the war. It was centered at Banská Bystrica. ), CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of January 2021 (. Battle was joined on 12 July, with about one thousand tanks being engaged. It contained a secret protocol aiming to return Central Europe to the pre–World War I status quo by dividing it between Germany and the Soviet Union. Apart from the Battles of Khalkhin Gol, it marked the only military action of the Soviet Union against Imperial Japan; at the Yalta Conference, it had agreed to Allied pleas to terminate the neutrality pact with Japan and enter the Second World War's Pacific theatre within three months after the end of the war in Europe. It was also reflected in the ideological premise for the war, which also saw a momentous clash between two directly opposed ideologies. The two principal belligerent powers were Germany and the Soviet Union, along with their respective allies. It included the phrase All forces under German control to cease active operations at 2301 hours Central European time on 8 May 1945. Meanwhile, the 2nd Panzer Army failed to take Tula, the last Soviet city that stood in its way to the capital. Germany's military production was tied to resources outside its area of control, a dynamic not found amongst the Allies. In the course of the war the US supplied $11 billion of materiel through Lend-Lease. Adolf Hitler had declared his intention to invade the Soviet Union on 11 August 1939 to Carl Jacob Burckhardt, League of Nations Commissioner, by saying: Everything I undertake is directed against the Russians. [24][27] Soviet Union negotiated treaties of mutual assistance with France and with Czechoslovakia with the aim of containing Germany's expansion. Ring in the new year with a Britannica Membership, Forces and resources of the European combatants, 1939, The Baltic states and the Russo-Finnish War, 1939–40, The war in the west, September 1939–June 1940, The invasion of the Low Countries and France, Italy’s entry into the war and the French Armistice, The Atlantic and the Mediterranean, 1940–41, Pearl Harbor and the Japanese expansion, to July 1942, Developments from autumn 1941 to spring 1942, Allied strategy and controversies, 1940–42, The Germans’ summer offensive in southern Russia, 1942, The Solomons, Papua, Madagascar, the Aleutians, and Burma, July 1942–May 1943, Montgomery’s Battle of el-Alamein and Rommel’s retreat, 1942–43, Stalingrad and the German retreat, summer 1942–February 1943, The invasion of northwest Africa, November–December 1942, The Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and the North Sea, 1942–45, The Eastern Front, February–September 1943, The Southwest and South Pacific, June–October 1943, The Allied landings in Europe and the defeat of the Axis powers, Developments from autumn 1943 to summer 1944, Sicily and the fall of Mussolini, July–August 1943, The Allies’ invasion of Italy and the Italian volte-face, 1943, The western Allies and Stalin: Cairo and Tehrān, 1943, The Eastern Front, October 1943–April 1944, The war in the Pacific, October 1943–August 1944, The Burmese frontier and China, November 1943–summer 1944, Developments from summer 1944 to autumn 1945, The Allied invasions of western Europe, June–November 1944, Allied policy and strategy: Octagon (Quebec II) and Moscow, 1944, The Philippines and Borneo, from September 1944, The German offensive in the west, winter 1944–45, The Soviet advance to the Oder, January–February 1945, The end of the Japanese war, February–September 1945. It was by far the deadliest single theatre of the European portion of World War II with up to 8.7 - 10 million military deaths on the Soviet side (although, depending on the criteria used, casualties in the Far East theatre may have been similar in number). 2,450 other armoured vehicles, 21,880 armoured personnel carriers, 36,703 semi-tracked tractors and 87,329 semi-tracked trucks,[162] estimated 2/3 were lost on the Eastern front. Ivan Ivanovich Vernidub, Boepripasy pobedy, 1998, A History of Romanian Oil, Vol. [69] For a month the offensive conducted on three axes was completely unstoppable as the panzer forces encircled hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops in huge pockets that were then reduced by slower-moving infantry armies while the panzers continued the offensive, following the Blitzkrieg doctrine. The effects of the miscalculations were increased because much of August was wasted while Hitler and his advisers were having long arguments as to what course they should follow after their initial victories. During the war, as Germany acquired new territories (either by direct annexation or by installing puppet governments in defeated countries), these new territories were forced to sell raw materials and agricultural products to German buyers at extremely low prices. [citation needed]. [51]:133–4, Prof. Dr. Albert L. Weeks conclude: 'As to attempts to sum up the importance of those four-year-long shipments of Lend-Lease for the Russian victory on the Eastern Front in World War II, the jury is still out – that is, in any definitive sense of establishing exactly how crucial this aid was.'[51]:123. They still had ample time to make decisive gains before the onset of winter, but they lost the opportunity, primarily because of arguments throughout August between Hitler and the OKH about the destination of the next thrusts thence: whereas the OKH proposed Moscow as the main objective, Hitler wanted the major effort to be directed southeastward, through the Ukraine and the Donets Basin into the Caucasus, with a minor swing northwestward against Leningrad (to converge with Leeb’s army group). 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 1936–1939. His decision exposed his troops to awful sufferings in their advanced positions facing Moscow, for they had neither the clothing nor the equipment for a Russian winter campaign; but if they had once started a general retreat it might easily have degenerated into a panic-stricken rout. Another factor in the Germans’ calculations was purely political, though no less mistaken; they believed that within three to six months of their invasion, the Soviet regime would collapse from lack of domestic support. As September ended and October started, the Germans found the Dnieper line impossible to hold as the Soviet bridgeheads grew. [citation needed], In Poland, as the Red Army approached, the Polish Home Army (AK) launched Operation Tempest. [citation needed]. In the Ukraine, meanwhile, Rundstedt and Kleist had made short work of the foremost Soviet defenses, stronger though the latter had been. [11] He envisaged settling Germans there, as according to Nazi ideology the Germanic people constituted the "master race", while exterminating or deporting most of the existing inhabitants to Siberia and using the remainder as slave labour. We stop the perpetual Germanic march towards the south and west of Europe, and have the view on the country in the east. [163], The Soviets also lost 102,600 aircraft (combat and non-combat causes), including 46,100 in combat. The Free French forces also contributed to the Red Army by the formation of the GC3 (Groupe de Chasse 3 or 3rd Fighter Group) unit to fulfil the commitment of Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French, who thought that it was important for French servicemen to serve on all fronts. Soviet numbers for 1945 are for the whole of 1945, including after the war was over. To divert the rescue attempt, the Red Army decided to smash the Italians and come down behind the relief attempt if they could; that operation starting on 16 December. Indeed, the Soviets viewed Germany's invasion as an act of aggression and an attempt to conquer and enslave the local population. In Operation Uranus started on 19 November, two Soviet fronts punched through the Romanian lines and converged at Kalach on 23 November, trapping 300,000 Axis troops behind them. Winter was approaching, and Hitler stopped Leeb’s northward drive on the outskirts of Leningrad. Overall, France made the largest contribution to the German war effort. The Germans' final strategic offensive in the Soviet Union ended with their defence against a major Soviet counteroffensive that lasted into August. The above figures includes all personnel in the German Army, i.e. [68] On the same day, the Baltic, Western and Kiev Special military districts were renamed the Northwestern, Western and Southwestern Fronts respectively.[66]. Romanian forces attacked into … Five thousand tanks were provided by the British and Canada. Two-thirds of all French trains in 1941 were used to carry goods to Germany. Hitler's only real concern was that a sudden German invasion of Poland might alarm Stalin and trigger a war with the Soviet Union. 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. Many hundreds of thousands of Soviet civilians were executed, and millions more died from starvation as the Germans requisitioned food for their armies and fodder for their draft horses. Also worried by the Allies' landing in Sicily on 10 July, Hitler made the decision to halt the offensive even as the German 9th Army was rapidly giving ground in the north. By 16 February the first stage was complete, with panzers separated from the contracting Cherkassy pocket only by the swollen Gniloy Tikich river. In addition, the Polish Armed Forces in the East, particularly the First and Second Polish armies, were armed and trained, and would eventually fight alongside the Red Army. [119] By October 1942 the idea of regular blocking detachments was quietly dropped, By 29 October 1944 the units were officially disbanded. 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