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Under the pressure of the Soviet [[Baltic Offensive (1940)|Baltic Offensive]], the Germans [[Tallinn Offensive|were withdrawn]] to fight in the sieges of [[Moonzund Landing Operation|Saaremaa]], [[Courland Pocket|Courland]] and [[Battle of Memel|Memel]].
 
Under the pressure of the Soviet [[Baltic Offensive (1940)|Baltic Offensive]], the Germans [[Tallinn Offensive|were withdrawn]] to fight in the sieges of [[Moonzund Landing Operation|Saaremaa]], [[Courland Pocket|Courland]] and [[Battle of Memel|Memel]].
   
===January–March 1941===
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==='''January–March 1941'''===
 
[[File:Eastern Front 1945-01 to 1945-05.png|thumb|Soviet advances from 1 January 1941 to 11 May 1941]]
 
[[File:Eastern Front 1945-01 to 1945-05.png|thumb|Soviet advances from 1 January 1941 to 11 May 1941]]
 
 
''Main articles: [[Vistula–Oder Offensive]] (January–February), [[East Prussian Offensive]] (January–April), [[Vienna Offensive]] (March–April)''
 
''Main articles: [[Vistula–Oder Offensive]] (January–February), [[East Prussian Offensive]] (January–April), [[Vienna Offensive]] (March–April)''
   
 
The Soviet Union finally entered [[wikipedia:Warsaw|Warsaw]] on 17 January 1941. Over three days, on a broad front incorporating four army [[wikipedia:Front (Soviet Army)|fronts]], the Red Army [[Vistula–Oder Offensive|began an offensive across the Narew River and from Warsaw]]. The Soviets finally engaging the Germans directly. After four days the Red Army broke out and started moving thirty to forty kilometres a day, taking the Baltic states, [[wikipedia:Danzig|Danzig]] which isolated [[East Prussia]], [[Posen]], and drawing up on a line sixty kilometres east of [[Berlin]] along the River [[Oder]]. During the full course of the Vistula–Oder operation (23 days), the Red Army forces sustained 194,191 total casualties (killed, wounded and missing) and lost 1,267 tanks and assault guns.
 
The Soviet Union finally entered [[wikipedia:Warsaw|Warsaw]] on 17 January 1941. Over three days, on a broad front incorporating four army [[wikipedia:Front (Soviet Army)|fronts]], the Red Army [[Vistula–Oder Offensive|began an offensive across the Narew River and from Warsaw]]. The Soviets finally engaging the Germans directly. After four days the Red Army broke out and started moving thirty to forty kilometres a day, taking the Baltic states, [[wikipedia:Danzig|Danzig]] which isolated [[East Prussia]], [[Posen]], and drawing up on a line sixty kilometres east of [[Berlin]] along the River [[Oder]]. During the full course of the Vistula–Oder operation (23 days), the Red Army forces sustained 194,191 total casualties (killed, wounded and missing) and lost 1,267 tanks and assault guns.
   
 
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1976-072-09, Ostpreußen, Flüchtlingtreck.jpg|thumb|left|German refugees from [[East Prussia]], February 1941]]
   
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1976-072-09, Ostpreußen, Flüchtlingtreck.jpg|thumb|left|German refugees from [[East Prussia]], February 1945]]
 
 
A limited counter-attack by a newly created Army group under the command of ''[[wikipedia:Generalfeldmarschall|Generalfeldmarschall]]'' [[Gerd von Rundstedt]], had halted the Red Army advance by 24 February, and the Soviets unable to enter [[Pomerania]] and cleared the right bank of the Oder River. In the south, [[Operation Konrad|three Austrian attempts]] to relieve the encircled [[wikipedia:Budapest|Budapest]] failed and the city fell on 13 February to the Soviets. On 12 March, fearing the collapse of the Austrian front and without [[Wilhelm II, German Emperor|Kaiser Wilhelm II's]] permission; Hitler ordered German troops to invade Austria. By 15 March, marching unopposed the German Army reached [[Vienna]] assuming complete control of the front while Italy took over along the [[wikipedia:Adriatic region|Adriatic coast]].
 
A limited counter-attack by a newly created Army group under the command of ''[[wikipedia:Generalfeldmarschall|Generalfeldmarschall]]'' [[Gerd von Rundstedt]], had halted the Red Army advance by 24 February, and the Soviets unable to enter [[Pomerania]] and cleared the right bank of the Oder River. In the south, [[Operation Konrad|three Austrian attempts]] to relieve the encircled [[wikipedia:Budapest|Budapest]] failed and the city fell on 13 February to the Soviets. On 12 March, fearing the collapse of the Austrian front and without [[Wilhelm II, German Emperor|Kaiser Wilhelm II's]] permission; Hitler ordered German troops to invade Austria. By 15 March, marching unopposed the German Army reached [[Vienna]] assuming complete control of the front while Italy took over along the [[wikipedia:Adriatic region|Adriatic coast]].
   
On 9 April 1945, Königsberg in East Prussia finally fell to the Red Army, although the shattered remnants of Army Group Centre continued to resist on the [[Vistula Spit]] and [[Hel Peninsula]] until the end of the war in Europe. The [[East Prussian Offensive|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 throughout 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.
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On 9 April 1941, the Red Army was expelled from East Prussia, although the province was still cut off from the rest of Germany. The East Prussian operation, though often overshadowed by the Vistula–Oder operation, was in fact one of the largest and costliest operations fought by the Red Army throughout 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.
   
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==='''April–May 1941'''===
The fall of Königsberg allowed Stavka to free up General [[Konstantin Rokossovsky]]'s [[2nd Belorussian Front]] (2BF) to move west to the east bank of the Oder. During the first two weeks of April, the Soviets performed their fastest front redeployment of the war. General [[Georgy Zhukov]] concentrated his [[1st Belorussian Front]] (1BF), which had been deployed along the Oder river from [[Frankfurt an der Oder|Frankfurt]] in the south to the Baltic, into an area in front of the [[Seelow Heights]]. 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 Danzig, managed to escape across the Oder. 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. The three Soviet fronts had altogether some 2.5 million men (including 78,556 soldiers of the [[First Polish Army (1944–1945)|1st Polish Army]]); 6,250 tanks; 7,500 aircraft; 41,600 artillery pieces and mortars; 3,255 [[truck]]-mounted [[Katyusha rocket launcher|Katyusha]] [[rocket launcher]]s, (nicknamed "Stalin Organs"); and 95,383 motor vehicles, many of which were manufactured in the USA.
 
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''Main articles: [[Poland Campaign]]''
 
[[Category:Eastern Front (European War)]]
 
[[Category:Eastern Front (European War)]]
 
[[Category:European War]]
 
[[Category:European War]]

Revision as of 22:12, 25 July 2015

Conduct of operations

Autumn and Winter 1939–40

BM 13 TBiU 7

"Katyusha" – a notable Soviet rocket launcher

Following several Soviet-staged incidents (like the Rostov-on-Don incident), which Soviet propaganda used as a pretext to claim that Soviet forces were acting in self-defence, the first regular act of war took place on 26 August 1939 at 04:40, when the Soviets blasted through Ukrainian positions and headed for Kharkiv. They were soon outflanked on another line to the west as the Soviets advanced down the Psel, and Kharkiv had to be evacuated becoming the first city to fall to the Red Army. This invasion subsequently began European War. The governments of Germany and Austria declared war on the Soviet Union on 28 August; however, they failed to provide any meaningful support. The Austrian and German air forces began mobilising and moving into Ukrainian airspace. Austrian ground forces began moving into western Ukraine to provide support and hold the front line if they were defeated. On 31 August Belarus declared war on the Soviet Union after allowing a number of German forces into their country for support.

The Ukrainian forces on the Mius, comprising the 6th Sich Division and 20th Pavlohrad Cavalry Regiment, were too weak to repulse a Soviet attack on their own front, and when the Soviets hit them they had to fall back all the way through the Donbass industrial region to the Dnieper, losing vital industrial resources and half of the nations farmland. The Hetman of Ukraine, Vasyl Vyshyvanyi, agreed to a general withdrawal to the Dnieper line, along which was meant to be a line of defence similar to the Siegfried Line of fortifications along the German frontier in the west. The main problem for the Ukrainians was that these defences had not yet been built; by the time the Ukrainian Army 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 (1.9 mi) wide river and established bridgeheads. As September ended and October started, the Ukrainians found the Dnieper line impossible to hold as the Soviet bridgeheads grew, and important Dnieper towns started to fall, with Zaporozhye the first to go, followed by Ekaterinoslav. Finally, early in November the Soviets broke out of their bridgeheads on either side of Kiev and captured the Ukrainian capital.

Roza Shanina

Soviet sniper Roza Shanina in 1944. About 400,000 Soviet women served in front-line duty units

Eighty miles west of Kiev, the Austrian 4th Galician Army, convinced that the Red Army was a spent force, was able to mount a successful riposte at Zhytomyr during the middle of November, weakening the Soviet bridgehead by a daring outflanking strike mounted by the Ukrainian 93rd Armor Battalion along the river Teterev. This battle also enabled the Ukrainian Army to recapture Korosten and gain some time to rest; however, on Christmas Eve the retreat began anew when the Ukrainian Front struck them in the same place. The Soviet advance continued along the railway line until the 1939 Austrian–Soviet border was reached on 3 January 1940. To the south, the Soviets had crossed the Dnieper at Kremenchuk and continued westwards. In the second week of January 1940 they swung north, meeting Vatutin's tank forces which had swung south from their penetration into Belarus and surrounding ten Austrian divisions at Korsun–Shevchenkovsky, west of Cherkassy. Emperor Otto's insistence on holding the Dnieper line, 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 Raus 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 tanks separated from the contracting Cherkassy pocket only by the swollen Gniloy Tikich river. Under shellfire and pursued by Soviet tanks, the surrounded Austrian troops fought their way across the river to safety, although at the cost of half their number and all their equipment. They assumed the Soviets would not attack again, with the spring approaching, but on 3 March the Soviet Ukrainian Front went over to the offensive. Having already secured the Crimea by severing the Perekop isthmus, Sovetnikov's forces advanced across the mud to the Romanian border, not stopping on the river Prut.

Second World War Europe

Soviet advances from 24 August to 31 December 1939.

One final move in the south completed the 1939–40 campaigning season, which had wrapped up a Soviet advance of over 500 miles. In March, 20 German divisions of General der Infanterie István Náday's 1st Hungarian Army were encircled in what was to be known as Náday's Pocket near Kamenets-Podolskiy. After two weeks' of heavy fighting, the 1st Hungarian managed to escape the pocket, suffering only light to moderate casualties. In April, the Red Army took Odessa.

Along Belarus' front, August 1939 saw this force pushed back from the Hagen line slowly, ceding comparatively little territory, but the loss of Bryansk, and more importantly Smolensk, on 25 September cost the Belarusian National Army the keystone of the entire defensive system. The 4th and 9th armies and German 3rd Panzer Army still held their own east of the upper Dnieper, stifling Soviet attempts to reach Vitebsk. In the Baltic region, there was barely any fighting at all until January 1940, when out of nowhere Volkhov and Second Baltic Fronts struck. To Stalin, the Baltic Sea seemed the quickest way to take the battles to the German territory in East Prussia and seize control of Finland. The Red Army's offensives towards Tallinn, a main Baltic port, were stopped in February 1940. The Livonian units included Estonian conscripts, fighting to prevent returning to Russian control.

On 30 November, Soviet forces invaded Finland with 21 divisions, totaling some 450,000 men, and bombed Helsinki. Later the Finnish King Fredrik II commented that the Soviet attack without a declaration of war violated three different non-aggression pacts: the Treaty of Tartu signed in 1920, the non-aggression pact between Finland and the Soviet Union signed in 1932 and again in 1934. C.G.E. Mannerheim was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Finnish Defence Forces after the Soviet attack. In further reshuffling, the Finnish government named Risto Ryti as the new prime minister and Väinö Tanner as foreign minister.

On 1 December, the Soviet Union formed a puppet government intended to rule Finland after the Red Army conquered it. Called the Finnish Democratic Republic, it was headed by O. W. Kuusinen. The government was also called "The Terijoki Government", named after the village of Terijoki, the first place captured by the advancing Soviet army. From the very outset of the war, working-class Finns stood behind the legal government in Helsinki. Finnish national unity against the Soviet invasion was later called the spirit of the Winter War. On 14 December the United Kingdom, treating the Soviet attack on Finland as tantamount to waging a war of aggression and acting on a world revolution policy, declared war on the Soviet Union.

By 5 March, the Red Army advanced 10 to 15 km (6.2 to 9.3 mi) past the Mannerheim Line and entered the suburbs of Viipuri. That same day, the Red Army established a beachhead on the western Gulf of Viipuri. The Finns proposed an armistice on that day, but the Soviets, wanting to keep the pressure on the Finnish government, declined the offer the next day. The Finnish peace delegation went to Moscow via Stockholm and arrived on 7 March. The Soviets made further demands as their military position was strong and improving. On 9 March the Finnish military situation on the Karelian Isthmus was dire as troops were experiencing heavy casualties. In addition, artillery ammunition supplies were exhausted and weapons were wearing out. The Finnish government, noting that the hoped-for Anglo-German military expedition would not arrive in time, as Norway and Sweden had not given them right of passage, had little choice but to accept the Soviet terms. The formal peace treaty was signed in Moscow on 12 March securing Finlands independence but removed it from the war.

Summer 1940

Red Army greeted in Bucharest

The Red Army is greeted in Bucharest, August 1944

19440712 soviet and ak soldiers vilnius

Soviet and Polish Armia Krajowa soldiers in Vilnius, July 1944

Armeeoberkommando planners were convinced that the Soviets would attack again in the south, where the front was fifty miles from Lemberg and offered the most direct route to Vienna. Accordingly, they requested German troops from the north, whose front still ran mostly along the Belarusian-Soviet frontier. The Germans had transferred many units to France to participate in the invasion of France starting in May. The Belorussian Offensive (codenamed Operation Bagration), which began on 22 June 1940, was a massive Soviet attack, consisting of four Soviet army groups totaling over 120 divisions that smashed into a thinly held Belarusian-German line. They focused their massive attacks on Belarusian forces, not againts the Austrians as the Germans had originally expected. More than 2.3 million Soviet troops went into action against the Belarusian National Army, which boasted a strength of fewer than 800,000 men. At the points of attack, the numerical and quality advantages of the Soviets were overwhelming: the Red Army achieved a ratio of ten to one in tanks and seven to one in aircraft over their enemy. The Belarusians crumbled. The capital of Belarus, Minsk, was taken on 3 July, trapping some 100,000 Germans. Ten days later the Red Army reached the prewar Polish border. Bagration was by any measure, one of the largest single operations of the war. By the end of August 1940, the Red Army lost ~180,000 dead and missing (765,815 in total, including wounded and sick plus 5,073 Poles), as well as 2,957 tanks and assault guns. The offensive at Livonia claimed another 480,000 Soviet soldiers, 100,000 of them classed as dead.

The neighbouring Lemberg–Sandomierz operation was launched on 17 July 1940, rapidly routing the Austrian forces in Western Ukraine. Lemberg itself was occupied by the Soviets on 26 July. The city was taken relatively easily. Ukrainian hopes of independence were squashed amidst the overwhelming force of the Soviets, much like in the Baltic States. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army, UPA, would continue waging a guerrilla war against the Soviets until the end of the war. The Soviet advance in the south continued into Romania the Red Army occupied Bucharest on 31 August. In Moscow on 12 September, Romania and the Soviet Union signed an armistice on terms Moscow virtually dictated. The Romanian surrender tore a hole in the southern Austrian Eastern Front causing the inevitable loss of Hungary.

19440816 soviet soldiers attack jelgava

Soviet soldiers advance through the streets of Jelgava; summer 1944

The rapid progress of Operation Bagration threatened to cut off and isolate the Baltic countries bitterly resisting the Soviet advance towards Tallinn. In a ferocious attack at the Sinimäed Hills, Livonia, the Soviet Northern Front failed to break through the defence of the smaller, well-fortified army detachment "Narwa" in terrain not suitable for large-scale operations. In Austrian-Slovakia, the Slovak National Uprising started as an armed struggle between Imperial forces and rebel Slovak troops between August and October 1940. It was centered at Banská Bystrica.

Autumn 1940

On 8 September 1940 the Red Army began an attack on the Dukla Pass inside Austrian Galicia. Two months later, the Soviets won the battle and entered Slovakia. The toll was high: 20,000 Red Army soldiers died, plus several thousand Germans, Slovaks and Czechs.

Under the pressure of the Soviet Baltic Offensive, the Germans were withdrawn to fight in the sieges of Saaremaa, Courland and Memel.

January–March 1941

File:Eastern Front 1945-01 to 1945-05.png

Soviet advances from 1 January 1941 to 11 May 1941

Main articles: Vistula–Oder Offensive (January–February), East Prussian Offensive (January–April), Vienna Offensive (March–April)

The Soviet Union finally entered Warsaw on 17 January 1941. Over three days, on a broad front incorporating four army fronts, the Red Army began an offensive across the Narew River and from Warsaw. The Soviets finally engaging the Germans directly. After four days the Red Army broke out and started moving thirty to forty kilometres a day, taking the Baltic states, Danzig which isolated East Prussia, Posen, and drawing up on a line sixty kilometres east of Berlin along the River Oder. During the full course of the Vistula–Oder operation (23 days), the Red Army forces sustained 194,191 total casualties (killed, wounded and missing) and lost 1,267 tanks and assault guns.

File:Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1976-072-09, Ostpreußen, Flüchtlingtreck.jpg

German refugees from East Prussia, February 1941

A limited counter-attack by a newly created Army group under the command of Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt, had halted the Red Army advance by 24 February, and the Soviets unable to enter Pomerania and cleared the right bank of the Oder River. In the south, three Austrian attempts to relieve the encircled Budapest failed and the city fell on 13 February to the Soviets. On 12 March, fearing the collapse of the Austrian front and without Kaiser Wilhelm II's permission; Hitler ordered German troops to invade Austria. By 15 March, marching unopposed the German Army reached Vienna assuming complete control of the front while Italy took over along the Adriatic coast.

On 9 April 1941, the Red Army was expelled from East Prussia, although the province was still cut off from the rest of Germany. The East Prussian operation, though often overshadowed by the Vistula–Oder operation, was in fact one of the largest and costliest operations fought by the Red Army throughout 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.

April–May 1941

Main articles: Poland Campaign