“Fortress Stalingrad” had a grandiose sound to it, but the title was deceiving. German General Friedrich Paulus knew that his 6th Army was in serious trouble. What a difference 5 days made! Back then he believed his Soviet enemies had their backs against the proverbial wall and that Stalingrad was nearly his.
But a massive Soviet counterattack [...]
Archive for the ‘Russia’ Category
Operation Uranus: The Noose is Set
Posted in Russia, World War II (1939-1945), tagged 1942, Field Marshall Friedrich Paulus, Fortress Stalingrad, Hermann Goering, Marshal Georgy Zhukov, Operation Uranus, Stalingrad, Volga River, Wolfram von Richthofen on November 23 | Leave a Comment »
Operation Uranus: Turnabout in Stalingrad
Posted in Russia, World War II (1939-1945), tagged 1942, Case Blue, Fall Blau, Field Marshall Friedrich Paulus, Marshal Georgy Zhukov, Operation Uranus, Stalingrad on November 19 | 1 Comment »
Case Blue, launched in late June of 1942, got off to a smashing start for both the Soviets and the German aggressors…sort of. The Red Army got smashed a lot, and the Wehrmacht did a lot of smashing.
By mid-August, the Germans were knocking on the doors of Stalingrad, having reached the Volga River north of [...]
The Great Gate of Kiev
Posted in Russia, World War II (1939-1945), tagged 1943, Kiev, Operation Citadel on November 6 | 1 Comment »
When Operation Citadel was abandoned by Adolf Hitler in July of 1943, it left in its wake the scattered bit of destroyed aircraft, the hulks of thousands of tanks, the burned out remains of more artillery pieces, and the still, quiet corpses of even more Russian and German soldiers.
While not marking the eastern-most advance of Germany’s territorial conquests (those [...]
Kharkov: Fifth Time’s a Charm
Posted in Russia, World War II (1939-1945), tagged 1943, Kharkov, Operation Citadel, Red Army, Ukraine, Wehrmacht on August 23 | Leave a Comment »
If ever there was a city that experienced the changing fortunes of warfare, it is Kharkov. Today, it’s the second largest city in the Ukraine. During the Second World War, it was a Soviet-German battleground no less than 5 times.
In 1941, it was captured in late October by the Wehrmacht in that early onslaught we remember so well. [...]
The Battle of Prokhorovka
Posted in Russia, World War II (1939-1945), tagged 1943, Battle of Prokhorovka, Kursk, Operation Citadel on July 12 | 1 Comment »
It wouldn’t right to have talked about the Battle of Kursk without at least mentioning its final, and most memorable, engagement. If you recall, Operation Citadel (as the Germans called it) had begun the previous week, and was Germany’s attempt to straighten out the westward loop in its front lines.
The Russian strategy was to layer [...]
Alexander Gorovets: Russian Gunslinger
Posted in Russia, World War II (1939-1945), tagged 1943, Bell P-39 Airacobra, Focke-Wulf Fw 190, Hero of the Soviet Union, Junkers Ju-87 Stuka, Kursk, Lavochkin La-5, Lt. Alexander Gorovets, Operation Citadel on July 6 | Leave a Comment »
I came across the story of Alexander Gorovets some time ago in a book I was reading. But of course, I didn’t write down which book, so when it came time to talk about him, I had lost my main reference. I figured an Internet search would turn up all the info I needed. I was [...]
The Battle of Kursk: Tanks a Lot
Posted in Russia, World War II (1939-1945), tagged 1943, Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, Kursk, Operation Citadel on July 5 | 1 Comment »
The spring of 1943 saw a growing disquiet among Germany’s Generals and Field Marshals. North Africa had been lost, and an invasion of Italy via Sicily was looking more and more like a possibility.
In the east, Stalingrad, after nearly being captured, had been lost, together with nearly a million men and massive amounts of equipment. [...]
Stalin Down with a Case of the Blau’s
Posted in Russia, World War II (1939-1945), tagged 1942, Case Blue, Fall Blau, Moscow, Siege of Leningrad on June 28 | Leave a Comment »
Today’s History Lesson won’t take too long, because it’s late…and I’m tired. Plus some of the background information we covered just last week. The massive German offensive in southern Russia was being prepared when plans for “Fall Blau” (Case Blue) fell into Russian hands. Stalin received the plans and then believed them to be part [...]
Stalin Ignores “Bundle of Joy” From the Storch
Posted in Russia, World War II (1939-1945), tagged 1942, Case Blue, Fall Blau, Fieseler Fi 156 Storch, Joseph Stalin, Major Joachim Reichel on June 19 | 1 Comment »
As spring gave way to summer in 1942, the German High Command prepared to launch another major offensive against its bitter enemy…Russia. Having been checked at the gates of Moscow the following winter and pushed back in the brutal cold, German leadership considered it a mere “consolidation” of their forces.
But the time to push had [...]
Leningrad: Where Oil and Water Mixed
Posted in Russia, World War II (1939-1945), tagged 1942, Joseph Stalin, Lake Ladoga, Nikolai Baibakov, Oil, Russian Defense Committee on April 25 | Leave a Comment »
Nikolai Baibakov lived to be 98 years old. That’s a pretty uncommon occurance and, without any additional embellishment, would probably stand on its own merits. But Baibakov lived in the Soviet Union, was an important oil minister, and served under Joseph Stalin. Living to be 98 and having Stalin for a boss meant he was [...]
Sometimes It’s Not Even Who You Know
Posted in Russia, World War II (1939-1945), tagged 1943, Field Marshall Friedrich Paulus, Joseph Stalin, Katyn Forest, Sachsenhausen, Smolensk, Yakov Dzhugashvili on April 14 | 1 Comment »
I’ve discussed Operation Barbarossa on several different occasions, so regular readers of my musings have, at the least, a vague idea of how that massive campaign initially played out. It was the Germans running roughshod over their Russian enemy until stalling “within sight of the spires of Moscow.”
On the way to Moscow was the city of [...]
Have Oil, Will Travel
Posted in Russia, World War II (1939-1945), tagged 1940, Adolf Hitler, German-Soviet Commercial Aggreement, Josef Stalin, Nazi-Soviet Pact on February 11 | Leave a Comment »
When Germany signed its non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union in August of 1939, it caused a huge stir in the capital cities of many countries, not the least of which were London, Paris, and Warsaw. There the reactions were those of shock and dismay, as the British and French had been trying to negotiate [...]
Hitler Meets His Waterloo in Stalingrad
Posted in Russia, World War II (1939-1945), tagged 1943, Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus, Operation Blue, Operation Uranus, Stalingrad on January 31 | Leave a Comment »
Let’s head back to the Russian Front for just a couple minutes. The German army, having been halted (and even pushed back a little) in the winter of 1941, came storming back the following spring. Adolf Hitler’s generals recommended a renewed assault on Moscow, where victory had been just a few miles away the previous December. Hitler instead focused [...]
The First Ice Road Truckers
Posted in Russia, World War II (1939-1945), tagged 1941, Ice Road, Lake Ladoga, Siege of Leningrad, The Road of Life on November 19 | Leave a Comment »
When Germany’s war machine was turned loose in the Soviet Union, one of its primary targets was Leningrad. Its status as a port city on the Baltic Sea (specifically the Gulf of Finland) made it important militarily. But more than that, Leningrad was the former capital of Russia and was home to the Russian Revolution that brought Lenin, [...]
Babi Yar
Posted in Russia, World War II (1939-1945), tagged 1941, Babi Yar, Jews, Kiev, War and Remembrance on September 29 | Leave a Comment »
I first heard of Babi Yar when watching the mini-series “War and Remembrance” back in the 1980’s. As a teenager, it was a particularly difficult portion for me to watch because of the violence it portrayed, but producer Dan Curtis was determined to remain as true as possible to the events that transpired while still maintaining [...]
Smolensk: Last Stop to Moscow
Posted in Russia, World War II (1939-1945), tagged 1941, Army Group Centre, Joseph Stalin, Minsk, Semyon Timoshenko, Smolensk on August 5 | Leave a Comment »
The German invasion of the Soviet Union in June of 1941 came as a surprise to almost no one…except Joseph Stalin. Hoping against hope that his pact with Hitler would hold up, he ignored numerous warnings from the British, the Americans, and his own spy agencies.
So it probably goes without saying that Stalin’s armies were largely caught [...]
No Stepping Back on the Steppes
Posted in Russia, World War II (1939-1945), tagged 1942, Josef Stalin, Moscow, Order No. 227, Soviet Union on July 28 | 2 Comments »
For more than a year, the Russian Steppes had been home to the bloodiest and hardest-fought battles of the Second World War. The German onslaught, started on June 22, 1941, had continued largely unchecked for nearly six months, halting in early December just 15 miles from downtown Moscow. One intrepid German soldier reportedly ripped through [...]
