From then on it would be Germany that traded land for time, until it ran out of both. By January 1944 Soviet forces had reached the southeast corner of prewar Poland and lifted the siege of Leningrad. Germany sustained further losses during the spring, and on June 23, Marshal Georgi K. Zhukov launched a great offensive that took him into the rear of Army Group Center and cost the Germans 350,000 men. In August the Soviets reached Warsaw, pausing (deliberately, some believed) to allow German forces to crush an uprising in the city of the Polish Home Army. The Poles had hoped to install a national government there before the Soviets arrived, which would have been awkward for Stalin, who had formed a communist government of Poland in Lublin.

 

However, while Stalin certainly welcomed the destruction of a potential rival, the main reason why the Red Army stopped short of Warsaw seems to have been that it was worn out by its long advance. In any case, the last Polish resistance ended on October 2, by which time Warsaw had been leveled and its entire population of 700,000 were either in concentration and death camps (the vast majority) or else had become slave laborers in Germany.

 

On September 12 Romania surrendered to the invading Soviets. As part of the terms, it contributed upwards of 16 divisions which fought on the Soviet side for the rest of the war. On September 19, Finland made peace with the Soviet Union, giving up the territories the USSR had first seized in 1940 but had never occupied. By the end of 1944, the Balkans had been largely cleared of Germans and the Baltic states retaken.

 

Then, on January 12, 1945, Stalin launched the single greatest offensive of World War II, sending almost 4 million troops against German forces that were frequently outnumbered 10 to 1.

 

Although they fought desperately and at times slowed the Soviets, the necessary miracle did not take place. Berlin fell on May 2. The last German troops laid down their arms in the former Czechoslovakia on May 11.

 

It is not sufficiently recognized that the largest battles of World War II were fought on the eastern front. Millions of men and hundreds of divisions were employed by each side. To appreciate the difference in scale, on the western front the largest separate command was the army group, consisting of two or more field armies. At their peak the Western Allies deployed three such groups. The Soviet equivalent of an army group was a front, of which the Soviets fielded no fewer than 37 at various times. The distances in the east dwarfed those of the western front as well.

 

The fighting on the eastern front involved a level of viciousness never exceeded in modern times. This was, for the most part, Germany’s fault. Admittedly, Soviet troops committed atrocities at times, and once they reached German soil they developed a reputation for crimes against captured civilians, particularly women. But the Wehrmacht—not just the SS units but the German Army as a whole—pursued a “scorched earth” policy (in which the military destroys property and murders civilians while in retreat) in Russia that defies description.

 

On the western front, German troops by and large observed the rules of the Geneva convention governing captors’ conduct toward prisoners. There, prisoners of war were correctly treated as a rule. Atrocities were rare, almost always committed by Nazi fanatics in the SS and similar formations. But on the eastern front, sadistic violence was commonplace. Villages were torched for no apparent reason, and prisoners and civilians were murdered by the millions, with the Wehrmacht behaving like a barbarian horde rather than a civilized army.

 

Taught from childhood to regard Jews and Slavs as subhuman, and deprived of their own humanity by Nazi doctrine and the primitive conditions under which they fought, German soldiers behaved worse than beasts. The Holocaust of the death camps is vividly remembered today; the other holocaust, in the East, is not. But it was just as homicidal and equally deserving of remembrance.

 

FURTHER READING Bartov, Omer. Hitler’s Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Erickson, John. The Road to Stalingrad. New York: Harper & Row, 1975. Salisbury, Harrison. The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad. New York: Avon, 1969. Werth, Alexander. Russia at War, 1941–1945. New York: Avon, 1970.

In the spring Germany attacked again, aiming to win the war. For this drive, called Operation Blue, which Hitler had planned himself, he had some 2.5 million troops stretched along a 1,500-mile front. Over the winter he sent only 7,500 new vehicles to replace 75,000 that had been lost. Equally serious for an army that still relied on draft animals to transport its infantry, of 180,000 horses and oxen that had been lost, Germany could replace only 20,000. And, because German industry was still on a peacetime footing, Nazi aircraft and tank shortages were also acute.

 

Meanwhile, Soviet production was booming. Factories—often without heat or even roofs, and staffed by women, old men, and children—were churning out weaponry. By the end of 1942, the Soviet assembly lines were producing 2,000 tanks a month and 30,000 planes per year, whereas Germany would build only 4,000 planes in all of 1942. The aircraft were good, too; the tanks even better. More than half the Soviet tank production consisted of the excellent T-34, which Germany would not match until its Panther was deployed in 1943. And even then, the Panthers would be produced in small numbers compared to T-34s.

 

Despite these shortages, the German offensive went well at first, resulting in the expected victories. The Crimea, in the Black Sea, fell at last, and the Germans seized additional territory elsewhere in southern Russia and the Caucasus, between the Caspian and Black seas. But the main German thrust came to grief in the city of Stalingrad.

 

With 500,000 inhabitants when the war broke out, Stalingrad commanded the Volga River basin and produced more than a quarter of all Soviet tanks and mechanized vehicles. German General Friedrich Paulus and his Sixth Army reached Stalingrad in November 1942, but, although he nearly destroyed the city, he succeeded only in taking part of it. The Soviets launched flanking attacks to the Sixth Army’s rear and, on November 23, completely encircled it. Paulus requested permission to break out, but Hitler, relying on Reich Marshal Goering’s promise to supply the Sixth Army by air, refused to permit a retreat. The Luftwaffe, or German Air Force, took heavy losses and could not meet the minimum needs of the embattled Sixth Army. Paulus surrendered to the Soviets on January 31, 1943. In a few more days, the Battle of Stalingrad was over. Later in February, the Caucasus was cleared of Germans for good.

 

Stalingrad proved to be the turning point of the European war. The Red Army emerged from it as a first-class fighting force that would never again suffer a strategic defeat. The Wehrmacht was now forced to fight defensively for the rest of the war. It did launch one last great eastern front assault in 1943, aimed at Kursk in the Soviet heartland. On July 5 the Wehrmacht pushed 700,000 troops, 2,400 tanks and assault guns, and 1,800 aircraft into the Kursk salient, or bulge. It was defended by a Soviet force that included 1.3 million men, 3,400 tanks and assault guns, and 2,100 aircraft. Hitler had not hoped to win the war in the East with so small a force, but rather to slow the Soviet tide. However, with the Red Army well dug in, well-armed, and well led, and under attack by a smaller force, the outcome was never in doubt.

 

On July 12, 1943, the German II SS Panzer Corps met the Soviets’ Fifth Guards Tank Army. In the resulting battle the panzers, outnumbered three to one by 900 Soviet tanks, were decisively beaten. This, the greatest single tank fight of World War II, was the end of Germany’s last serious offensive. In late July and August, Soviet forces made further advances. A total of 4 million men, 13,000 armored vehicles, and 12,000 aircraft (three-quarters of them Soviet) fought in these engagements, making Kursk one of the largest battles of World War II.

Barbarossa

At first it seemed as if the experts who predicted an easy victory were right. Germany attacked with overwhelming force—some 3.2 million men—including troops from other Axis states, 3,600 tanks, and 2,700 aircraft. Against them stood 2.9 million Soviet troops, 10,000 to 15,000 tanks, and about 8,000 aircraft. But the Soviet troops were unready, Stalin having insisted, despite plenty of warnings from Britain, the United States, and, more importantly, his own spies, that his forces remain on a peacetime footing. Furthermore, nearly all the Soviet tanks were obsolete, as were Soviet aircraft— most of which were destroyed on the ground in any case. As a result, Soviet soldiers—outnumbered, outgunned, and with the Germans breaking through their lines at will, surrendered by the millions.

 

All the same, victory eluded the Wehrmacht. No doubt it could have taken Moscow had not Hitler insisted on establishing three separate fronts. He divided his troops into Army Groups North, South, and Center, none of them strong enough to achieve their aims. Army Group North was stopped at Leningrad, Army Group South at the Donets Basin, north of the Sea of Azov and between the Dnieper and Donets rivers. When Army Group Center was finally reinforced and allowed to move in strength against the Soviets, fall rains made the roads useless—and then came winter. Despite the usual victories and mass Soviet surrenders, Army Group Center ground to a halt in December with the spires of Moscow’s Kremlin in sight. It was then thrown back by troops from Siberia, which had been kept in reserve for this purpose.

 

During the winter of 1941–42, Germany held its ground, but the troops suffered greatly. They had been issued no winter gear and were unprepared for days when the temperature dropped to 40 degrees below zero. Water froze in locomotive boilers, oil in crankcases, grease in the army’s guns. Wounded German troops died where they fell, victims of shock and frostbite. One hundred thousand horses died over the winter and were eaten by starving troops. The Soviet forces, which were trained and equipped for such weather, were also much closer to their sources of supply and made it through the winter easily.

 

Although Germany was still far from beaten, apart from its battlefield victories little had gone according to plan. The Soviets’ resistance had proven stronger than expected, and the Germans could not take advantage of the anticommunist feelings that ran high in the territories they were occupying. Hitler had ordered that these Slavic peoples be treated brutally as future slaves of the Third Reich. These ethnic minorities, already unwilling Soviet citizens, had believed that no rule could be worse than Stalin’s, which, given their experience to date with the Soviets, was perfectly reasonable. On that basis many had welcomed the German troops as liberators at first. But Hitler’s forces were even worse than the devil they knew, forcing the Soviet people to fight for their lives, even if this also meant fighting for Stalin.

 

If Hitler had taken a softer line, which is to say if he had not been a Nazi, the conquered anticommunist ethnic groups might have become German allies and the war would have turned out quite differently. Hitler’s racial prejudices, which were central to Nazi ideology, were also his greatest weakness and would bring him down in the end. Stalin cleverly exploited the Nazis’ weaknesses, downplaying his own communist ideology and declaring Russia’s fight for survival to be the “Great Patriotic War.” Hitler had been right in believing that the Soviet Union was politically weak, but by his racial policies, he made it stronger.

 

Moreover, the German strategists had failed to allow for the vast distances in European Russia and the Soviet Union’s enormous manpower reserves. Stalin could, and did, trade land for time, drawing the Wehrmacht deeper and deeper into what would finally become a trap. While he did so, he had many Soviet factories dismantled on the run and relocated behind the Ural Mountains, where Germany could not get them. This feat, which was the equivalent of moving the industrial cities of Detroit and Pittsburgh to California, would have been an incredible accomplishment even in peacetime. Only a people made desperate by the Nazis’ savagery could have accomplished such a thing while fighting a terrible war.

 

But more important than Hitler’s political and military errors was his one overwhelming strategic mistake. He failed to see that the Soviet Union was just too enormous to be beaten by military means alone. Even if Moscow had fallen, as it nearly did, Stalin could have retreated to strongholds in and beyond the Urals and continued the war indefinitely.

 

By the end of 1941 the Soviet Union remained unconquered, even though Germany had won nearly every battle. In doing so, it had sustained almost 1 million casualties, nearly a third of the attacking force. The Soviets’ suffering was even worse, with more than 3 million men having become prisoners of war and additional millions killed or wounded. But the Soviet Union could afford its losses; Germany could not. Thus, while the Red Army would grow and improve, the Wehrmacht would never be as strong again as when it had first invaded Russia.

The eastern front opened on June 22, 1941, when the Wehrmacht, Germany’s armed forces, swept over the country’s border into the Soviet Union. Operation Barbarossa, the code name for this assault, was designed to seize European Russia with its coal, oil, and grain fields. These newly conquered territories were to provide Germany with unlimited raw materials and living room (in German, lebensraum) beyond what anyone previously had thought possible.

 

Yet, despite Germany’s early successes there, the eastern front would become the graveyard of that army and cost Hitler the war. A single statistic tells it all: In World War II, German forces are believed to have taken more than 13 million casualties (dead, wounded, missing, and captured). Of these, more than 10 million were sustained on the eastern front.

 

Hitler and most of his generals underestimated the difficulties they would face in Russia. For one thing, they believed—with good reason—that the Red Army would be easy to beat. Stalin had murdered most of his senior officers during the purges of the 1930s. Then, too, the Red Army had performed badly in its Winter War with Finland in 1939–40. As part of the Stalin-Hitler Pact of August 23, 1939, the Soviets were allowed to invade Finland in that year. Stalin wanted to strengthen Russia’s security at Finnish expense by seizing various territories, notably lands north of Leningrad and west of Murmansk. When the Finns refused to give in to Soviet demands, the Red Army attacked on November 30.

 

The Soviets won in the end, but only at a remarkable cost. Although Finland had some 200,000 troops and the Soviets 1.2 million, the Finns were highly motivated, well trained, and ably led. Leaderless and demoralized, the Red Army floundered, then ground to a halt. A new offensive that began on February 1, 1940, did better, after the Soviet forces had been reorganized and reequipped. They broke the Mannerheim line across Finland’s Karelian Peninsula and destroyed the Finns’ fallback positions as well.

 

The armistice concluded on March 12, 1940, gave Stalin just what he had asked for. Even so, 200,000 Russian troops had been killed, while Finnish losses were only one-eighth as great. Understandably, military experts around the world concluded that the Red Army was far more feeble than its huge numbers of men and weapons suggested.

 

Besides the issue of military might, Germany believed that the Soviet Union was politically fragile. Stalin’s rule was based on terror, and many of the Soviet “republics,” such as Ukraine and the former Baltic states, were known to want independence. Then, too, the German blitzkrieg (literally, “lightning war”) had been so effective against Britain and France, with their much more modern forces, that Germany did not believe the Red Army could stand up to a similar assault.

 

These arguments inspired Germany to go east, although Britain still remained unconquered on Germany’s western front. There would be time enough to deal with Britain later, Hitler thought, which turned out to be another serious mistake.

 

Soviet infantry units went through a huge transformation between 1941 and mid 1943. In October 1941 Soviet infantry consisted of units which had survived or avoided the initial German assault and subsequent encirclements. The majority of new infantry units arriving in the front lines were the last of the mobilization of prewar trained reservists and untrained militia. The Japanese attack on the US reduced the threat to the Soviet Far East. This allowed Stalin to redeploy some well trained first line units from central and eastern Siberia to bolster the western defense.

 

 

Both the quality and size of Soviet infantry units varied greatly in late 1941 and early 1942. Prewar divisions and division fragments with current combat experience were mixed with newly mobilized regular reserve units and raw militia levies with no combat experience and often little or no training. The prewar (April 1941) Soviet Table of Organization & Equipment (TOE) called for a fully equipped infantry division to have three rifle regiments (9 infantry Bn) two artillery regiments (5 artillery Bn) and a large complement of specialist battalions including antitank, antiaircraft, engineers and support services (medical, signals, maintenance). Fully manned, this unit would have 14,454 officers and enlisted. Three months later and after the opening German attack the official Soviet infantry division TOE called for three rifle regiments one artillery regiment and reduced support units totaling 10,790 officers and enlisted. Nevertheless the average size of Soviet infantry divisions facing the Germans on the Moscow front on 1 October 1941 was only 7000 men.

 

Mobilization of manpower, training and equipment for rebuilt and new infantry units was a problem for the Soviet Army but the most severe shortage was experienced officers. The combination of prewar Stalinist purges of the officer corps and the destruction of units in encirclement battles left a desperate shortage of officers.

 

 

The Soviet Army tried several expedients to increase the number of infantry formations for front line duty. The earliest expedient was raising untrained militia units. Soviet Army high command quickly realized that these units were ineffective and militia units were converted to regular units or used to provide manpower for damaged units starting in late 1941. Infantry units were also raised from other Soviet security and military branches primarily NKVD and Soviet Navy.

 

 

The next expedient was infantry brigades which appeared in front line armies starting with the first Soviet winter counter offensive in Dec 41—Jan 42. Infantry brigades were used to counter the shortage of officer cadre, especially field grade officers who usually commanded and staffed regiments and divisions. The Soviet infantry brigade was highly variable in composition but nominal TOE was 3 infantry battalions, light and heavy mortar battalions, 1 artillery battalion, antitank battalion and a limited number of support and service units usually company sized. Such a brigade contained 4,350 officers and enlisted. These units were equivalent to many infantry divisions currently in combat. The biggest problem with the Soviet infantry brigade was lack of staying power. Support organizations in the brigades, especially logistic services, were small in size and poorly trained. Infantry brigades went into the line or into attacks in late 41 and early 42 and melted away because they could not supply and support their combat units. In late 1942 the Soviet Army was reorganizing surviving infantry brigades to full divisions and disbanding others to provide replacements for damaged infantry divisions.

 

 

The first Guards infantry divisions started appearing in late 1941. Guards designation was most often awarded to units which conducted successful offensive operations.

Soviet military commander marshal of the Soviet Union (1944). Of peasant origins, from northern Dvina Province, Konev joined the Russian army (1916), saw little action, but emerged an NCO. A Bolshevik supporter, he returned home after the October Revolution, becoming Nikol’sk District military commissar. He ended the Russian Civil War as an armored-train political commissar, serving in the east against Kolchak, Semenov, and Japanese forces until 1922, and in suppression of the Kronstadt Revolt (March 1921).

 

He graduated from Frunze Military Academy staff training courses (1926, 1934) and somehow survived Stalin’s purges to gain rapid promotion. He commanded 57th Special Corps in Mongolia (1937) and Second Separate Red Banner Army in the Far Eastern, Transbaikal, and Northern Caucasus Military Districts.

 

After mixed fortunes, Konev emerged as one of the most original, capable Soviet World War II commanders. As Nineteenth Army commander, he counterattacked at Smolensk to delay the Germans, but as Western Front commander in September 1941, he was partly responsible for the Viazma- Briiansk encirclement, wherein 500,000 Russians were taken prisoner. Escaping trial for this, he was given the Kalinin Front, counterattacking with Zhukov in December to halt Operation BARBAROSSA before Moscow.

 

He commanded the Western Front from August 1942, Northwestern Front from March 1943, the Steppe (later 2d Ukrainian) Front from June 1943, and the 1st Ukrainian Front (May 1944–May 1945), playing a leading role in Soviet Operations at Kursk, Korsun’-Cherkassy, Vistula-Oder, Berlin, and Prague.

 

 

Postwar, Konev served as Soviet commander in Austria (1945–1946), chief inspector of the Soviet Army (1950– 1951), commander in chief of Soviet Land Forces and deputy minister for war (1946–1950, 1955–1956), and Carpathian Military District commander (1951–1955). Benefiting under Khrushchev at Zhukov’s expense, Konev became first deputy minister for defense and commander in chief of Warsaw Pact forces (1956–1960). He commanded Soviet forces in suppressing the 1956 Hungarian uprising and in Germany during the construction of the Berlin Wall, all actions which Stalin would have approved.

 

Konev remained an adviser in retirement, wrote his memoirs, and died of cancer in Moscow.

 

References and further reading:

Bystrov,V. E. Sovetskie polkovodtsy I voenachal’niki. Sbornik (Soviet

Leaders and Military Chiefs. Collection). Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1988.

Kolesnikov,A.A. Marshaly Rossii (Marshals of Russia). Iaroslavl’: Izdat.Niuans, 1999.

Konev, I. S. Zapiski komanduiushchego frontom 1943–45 (Notes of a Front Commander, 1943–45). Moscow: Voenizdat, 1982 and 1991.

Shukman, H., ed. Stalin’s Generals. London:Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1993.

Recognized as one of the military theorists and practitioners of blitzkrieg, involved in the defeat of Poland, France, and Operation BARBAROSSA during World War II. Guderian was born on 17 June 1888 in Kulm. He attended cadet schools and was commissioned second lieutenant on 27 January 1908. During World War I, Guderian served in technical and staff positions. On 1 April 1922, General Staff officer Guderian was transferred to the Motorized Troops Department of the Defense Ministry. Involved in tank development, he advocated the creation of independent armored formations with air and motorized infantry support.

 

Guderian’s intention was to increase battlefield mobility by rapid penetration of enemy lines, resulting in encircling movements. He requested that the army reorganize into divisions built around armor, publishing these views in Actung! Panzer in 1937.Hitler sanctioned the creation of three Panzer divisions to test Guderian’s ideas, and on 20 November 1938, Guderian was made general of Panzer Troops and chief of Mobile Troops.

 

During the Polish and French campaigns of World War II, Guderian commanded the Nineteenth Army Corps. In France, his success was more striking in that British and French tanks were in many respects superior to those of the Wehrmacht, but theirs were basically deployed as infantry support rather than in the Blitzkrieg format of independently acting armored divisions.

 

He led the Second Panzer Group (renamed Second Panzer Army) in Operation BARBAROSSA but was relieved of command on 26 December 1941 and cited for insubordination to General von Kluge of the Fourth Army.

 

On 1 March 1943, Hitler recalled Guderian, making him inspector general of Panzer Troops with the authority to establish priorities for armored vehicle production and their employment within a revised force structure. Guderian became army chief of staff on 21 July 1944. He was dismissed on 28 March 1945 for contradicting Hitler’s idea of how to organize the defense of the Reich. Guderian was not compelled to appear before the Nuremberg tribunal. He died on 14 May 1954.

 

References and further reading:

Guderian,Heinz. Panzer Leader. London:M. Joseph, 1952.

Macksey, Kenneth. Guderian, Creator of the Blitzkrieg. London: Macdonald & Jane’s, 1976.

Rothbrust, Florian. Guderian’s XIXth Panzer Corps and the Battle of France. New York: Praeger, 1990.

Walde, Karl. Guderian. Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1977.