What is history: it is the echo of the past to the future, the reflection of the future on the past. - Hugo
As we all know, the Battle of Stalingrad was a turning point in World War II, with soviet losses of more than 1.1 million and German losses of more than 840,000, with nearly 2 million casualties on both sides, a huge war. A lot of manpower and material resources were invested, and it was a very tragic war. However, there was a bigger battle than the Battle of Stalingrad, the Battle of the Dnieper, the most expensive war between the Soviets and Germans, with casualties estimated at between 1.7 million and 2.7 million people on both sides, no less than the Battle of Stalingrad. It's even more miserable.
In August 1943, after the defeat at the Battle of Kursk, the German army retreated and turned to the defensive, stepping up fortifications along the Narva River, Vitebsk, Orsha, Sozh River, Dnieper River, and Molochinaya River, establishing a strategic defensive line called the "Eastern Barrier", in an attempt to use the river barrier in the middle area to carry out tenacious resistance to control some important economic zones east of the Dnieper River.
The Soviet High Command planned to carry out a major strategic assault in the southwestern direction during the summer and autumn of 1943, in order to liberate Ukraine, Donbass and Kiev on the left bank of the Dnieper River and seize the landing fields on the right bank of the Dnieper River. The Soviets decided to launch the Dnieper Offensive campaign in mid-August. The Paratroopers are elite units that carry out daunting tasks. But when the Red Army threw airborne troops into a massive operation on the banks of the Dnieper in 1943, a deadly chain reaction led to disaster.
The 1941 airborne landing on Crete took so much damage to German paratroopers that Hitler did not dare to conduct airborne operations against Malta. In the race between the Wehrmacht and the Red Army to seize the Dnieper, the vanguard of the Soviet 3rd Guards Tank Army succeeded in constructing a bridgehead with a depth of 6 km on the west side of the Buklin region, 80 km south of Kiev. In order to preserve and expand this bridgehead, 3 Soviet paratrooper brigades will be put into battle.
The original plan was to airdrop on the night of September 23, the number of 10,000 paratroopers, to the opposite shore for infiltration operations, but the German troops on the other side are not paper paste, at the time the Soviet army made plans, the German 4th Panzer Army has laid out the defensive line. However, the Soviet army did not know anything about this matter, in the airdrop area originally formulated by the Soviet army, this matter has been occupied by the German army, due to the lack of reconnaissance, the Soviet army has always thought that the airdrop area is safe, resulting in a catastrophe.
On the night of September 24, only 4,500 of the 10,000 paratroopers who had planned to fight were dispatched. Others were unable to enter the war because of insufficient capacity. Many landed directly into german-ready positions, while others were swept away by the river and about 2,300 fled into the forest. The survivors were in the rear of the German army, and they continued to fight for more than 50 days, until November 28, when the main force attacked and was rescued, which had to be regretted, and it was a shame that 5,000 paratroopers were completely destroyed. More than 500,000 Soviet troops were killed in this battle, and the casualty ratio almost surpassed the battle of Stalingrad, becoming one of the bloodiest battlefields on the Eastern Front.