The offensive led to staggering losses for the Red Army.
Here s What You Need to Know: The remains of some of the dead Red Army soldiers still turn up today.
On February 23, 1942, Red Army Day, the People’s Commissar of Defense, Josef Stalin, issued Order No. 55. It read in part as follows: “But the enemy’s efforts have been in vain. The initiative now is in our hands and the futile attempts of Hitler’s out of tune, rusted machine are unable to withstand the pressure of the Red Army. The day is not far when a powerful blow of the Red Army will hurl back the enemy beasts from Leningrad, clear from them the towns and villages of Byelorussia and Ukraine, Lithuania and Latvia, Estonia and Karelia, liberate the Soviet Crimea, and all over the Soviet land the red banners will again soar victoriously.”
Weeks of heavy fighting produced the first Red Army victory of the war on the Eastern Front.
Here s What You Need to Know: Although Yelnya became nothing more than a footnote in the history of the war on the Eastern Front, it showed what a determined Red Army could accomplish.
The smell of victory was in the air as the forces of Field Marshal Fedor von Bock’s Army Group Center continued to drive deep into the Ukraine during the final week of June 1941. To most of the young soldiers of the army group it seemed that this would be another unstoppable blitzkrieg. Their commander, however, saw things differently.
World War II History: How the Soviets Failed at Operation Gallop
The combination of Soviet ambition and von Manstein’s brilliant handling of the battle culminated in a bloody defeat for the Red Army. The stage was now set for one of von Manstein’s greatest accomplishments the recapture of Kharkov which would take place in mid-March.
As Adolf Hitler’s vaunted Sixth Army lay in its death throes in the ruins of Stalingrad, German forces to the west of the city faced their own kind of hell. The inner ring of the Russians’ iron grip at Stalingrad was tasked with the total destruction of German and other Axis troops within the city, but Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin wanted more. In conjunction with the Soviet High Command (STAVKA), Stalin set forth an ambitious plan designed to liberate the Don Basin from Kursk in the north to the Sea of Azov in the south, bringing the vital agricultural and mineral-rich area once more under Russian control.