Russia at war 1941-1945

Russian forces striking from the east; losses were very heavy on both sides, but within a week the Germans were on the run, and did not stop until they reached Pskov and the

borders of Estonia. There was immense rejoicing among the 600,000 people who were

still living in Leningrad after the fearful thirty-months' siege. In retreating, the Germans had destroyed many historic buildings, among them the palaces of Pushkin (Tsarskoie

Selo) and Pavlovsk, south of Leningrad.

2. In February and March the troops of the 2nd Ukrainian Front under Konev (assisted by those of the 1st Ukrainian Front under Vatutin) first encircled several German

divisions in the Korsun Salient on the Dnieper, and then, in their famous "Mud

Offensive", crashed right through into Rumania, after forcing the Bug, the Dniester and the Pruth. They were then held up for a few months outside Jassy in Northern Rumania.

3. In April Odessa was liberated, and in May the Crimea was completely cleared.

4. In June Finland was knocked out by the Russian breakthrough to Viborg (Viipuri)

across the Karelian Isthmus. Then, having reached the 1940 Finnish border, the Red

Army stopped of its own accord, without pursuing its advance on Helsinki.

5. No less spectacular than Konev's offensive across the Ukraine into Rumania in March was the liberation of Belorussia, after the Russians had broken through the powerful German Bobruisk-Mogilev-Vitebsk fine. Nearly thirty German divisions were trapped,

chiefly around Minsk, and the Russians advanced almost as far as Warsaw, where the

Armija Krajowa insurrection had by then begun.

[ The Armija Krajowa (or A.K.) was the Polish underground resistance movement

directed from London.]

In the course of this offensive the Red Army liberated a large part of Eastern Poland (including the new provisional capital of Lublin), nearly the whole of Lithuania, and, after forcing the Niémen, reached the frontiers of East Prussia.

6. In July, in a parallel offensive, the Red Army liberated the Western Ukraine, including Lwow, forced the Vistula and, after an abortive attempt to break through to Cracow,

established the important bridgehead of Sandomierz on the west bank of the Vistula,

south of Warsaw. But after its failure to take Warsaw, the Red Army did not pursue its task of breaking through to Germany at any price. Here, in Poland, the concentration of German forces was, indeed, heavier than anywhere else.

7. Instead, in August, the Red Army struck out in the south—in Moldavia and Rumania

—and, after trapping fifteen or sixteen German divisions as well as several Rumanian divisions in the Jassy-Kishenev "pockets", swept into Rumania, precipitated Rumania's surrender, overran Bulgaria, reached the borders of Hungary, and established contact with the Yugoslavs.

8. In September Estonia and most of Latvia were freed of the Germans. Thirty German divisions remained, however, in Kurland peninsula, and remained there, as a "nuisance"

force, till the capitulation of Germany in May 1945.

9. In October, the Red Army broke into Hungary and Eastern Czechoslovakia, joined up with the Yugoslavs and took part in the liberation of Belgrade. In Hungary the fighting was exceptionally fierce, and the fight for Budapest at the end of the year lasted several months. The city was not captured until the following February.

10. In October also, the Red Army attacked in the extreme north, threw the Germans out of Petsamo, in the Finnish salient running to the Arctic, and broke into Northern Norway.

The victories of 1944 were spectacular, but very few of them were easy victories. The Germans fought with extreme stubbornness in Poland (especially in August, when the

Russians were stopped outside Warsaw), at Ternopol in the Western Ukraine (which,

with its three weeks' intensive street fighting, was reminiscent of Stalingrad); and, later, in Hungary and Slovakia. German resistance was also particularly fierce in all areas on the direct road to Germany, notably in the areas adjoining East Prussia and, later, in East Prussia itself.

The Germans were, at last, obviously outnumbered. The Allies had been advancing in the west since June, and by September Germany had lost all her allies, except for a few

Hungarian divisions.

Yet the German tendency to resist the Russians at any price, and to resist the Western Allies less strongly, became more and more pronounced as the war was moving to its

close. The Vistula line opposite Warsaw; Budapest; East Prussia; and, later, the Oder Line, were defended more desperately by the Germans than any line or position in the west. Apart from the sweep across the southern Ukraine in March, and the sweep across Rumania in August (both following an encirclement of large German forces), and the

minor operation in northern Norway, none of the Russian offensives in 1944 were in the nature of a walkover, and the nearer the Russians got to Germany, the more desperate became German resistance.