Battle of Leningrad
Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, Russia, is the second largest city in Russia, named in honor of Lenin, the great founder of communism in the Soviet Union, and is also known as the Venice of the North because it is located in the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea and has more than 100 islands.
On 10 July 1941, with the support of the superior air forces of Germany and Finland, the Southern Assault Group, composed of 31 divisions of the German Army Group North, and the Northern Assault Army, composed of 14 divisions, 3 brigades and 1 German division of the Finnish Army, marched north and south in the direction of Leningrad, and it was Marshal Loeb, the commander of the Army Group North, who was responsible for the attack. The Soviets invested 39 divisions and 2 brigades to rely on the defense system that was deeply arranged around the city of Leningrad to implement the fortifications.
At the beginning of the battle, the German Air Force bombarded every inch of Leningrad, trying to use the fire cover on the city to destroy the Soviet will to resist, but it was Marshal Zhukov who was in charge at the time, and Marshal Zhukov ordered that Leningrad be defended even if it was the last man.
Here is a brief introduction to a famous Soviet general, but Marshal Zhukov, one of the famous generals of World War II. Marshal Zhukov, who was born into a family of shoemakers in Moscow and joined the army at the age of 19, famously said, "Behind us is Moscow." ”
On September 8, 1941, the Germans began a massive siege of Leningrad, cutting off the external material supply lines of Leningrad and its residential areas, and due to the failure to expand its offensive and the defense organized by Zhukov, the German army switched from an offensive to a siege for a total of 872 days.
Hitler demanded that Loeb quickly establish contact with the Finnish army at the Karelian Isthmus and encircle the Soviet army group in Leningrad to create conditions for the German offensive in the middle, because Hitler would focus the operation on Moscow and prepare to launch Operation Typhoon, and the Battle of Moscow, if Leningrad could not be taken, then this plan could not be implemented. On September 16, although Loeb captured the city of Push, 18 kilometers south of Leningrad, but under the stubborn resistance of the Soviet army, the German attack was very slow, on the 19th, the German infantry under the cover of tanks launched a fierce attack on the Pulkovo Heights and other places, the artillery bombarded Leningrad for 17 consecutive hours, and the aviation sent nearly 300 aircraft to bomb the city in 6 waves. However, the Leningrad army and civilians withstood the final Attack of the German Army.
On December 8, 1942, the Soviet High Command issued a combat order to break through the blockade of Leningrad, in the Schlusselburg area on the south bank of Lake Ladoga.
At 9:30 a.m. on January 12, 1943, the Soviets concentrated 2,000 artillery and mortars on the German positions in the area of Schrushelburg for 2 hours of heavy artillery fire, and then the Soviet 61st Army and the 2nd Assault Army attacked from the south and north respectively, and after 7 days of fierce fighting, broke through the German positions 14 kilometers deep. Not only that, but the Leningrad Front and the Volkhov Front completed their divisions and broke through the 17-month-long German siege of Leningrad.
Finally, in January 1944, the Soviet High Command decided to carry out a annihilating blow against the Germans in Leningrad and Novgorod in order to completely expel the Germans from the area. On January 14, 1944, the Soviet 3rd Front launched a large-scale offensive against the German forces in Leningrad and Novgorod, and on January 27, the cities were recaptured one after another, and the Germans were forced to withdraw from Leningrad.
The battle lasted 3 years and 1 month and finally ended on 9 August 1944. The battle depleted Germany and Finland and left the German Northern Front facing a complete collapse.
The Battle of Leningrad is arguably the longest besieged, most destructive, and deadliest siege of major cities in recent history, resulting in the casualties or disappearances of 500,000 Soldiers in Germany, 3.5 million casualties or disappearances in the Soviet Union, and the death of more than 1 million Leningrad citizens.
Battle of Moscow
After the German capture of Smolensk in August 1941, Guderian's armored forces had reached the outskirts of Moscow, but Nazi German Fuehrer Hitler ordered him to turn south to support the attack of Army Group South commanded by Rundstedt on Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. After capturing Minsk, the capital of Belarus, and Kiev, Ukraine, the Germans concentrated their forces on moscow, the capital of the Soviet Union.
According to the German typhoon plan, the German 2nd Panzer Group, the 3rd and 4th Panzer Groups attacked Bryansk and Vyazma respectively, especially in the Battle of Bryansk, where the Germans captured 580,000 Soviet Red Army soldiers, and only 85,000 Soviet troops broke through the German defense line. In the face of the German offensive, Zhukov also dispatched a number of wrong groups to Moscow, and even the citizens of Moscow were mobilized to build three fortifications around Moscow and build more than 3,800 temporary and fixed fire points.
On the occasion of the 24th anniversary of the October Revolution, which coincided with the German attack on Moscow, Stalin held a military parade on November 7, 1941, and delivered a famous speech in Red Square, "Our country is being invaded, and all Soviet citizens and troops must defend Soviet land and villages with every drop of blood."
This led to the military parade, which was originally held at 10:00 on November 7, and was later advanced to 8:10 on November 7, 1941. This military parade was of great significance, and the Soviet Union showed the world its determination to fight to the end. Soviet troops paraded in front of the Kremlin and then headed straight for the front.
On 13 November, The Chief of the German Army General Staff, Hader, held a meeting of the chiefs of staff of the corps at the headquarters of Army Group Center and issued the "Order for the Offensive in the Autumn of 1941" in the autumn of 1941. Army Group Center had 51 divisions in its clusters. The frontal assault was carried out by Kruger's 4th Army, with Hort's 3rd Panzer Army and Hopner's 4th Panzer Army on the left, tasked with encircling Moscow from north and west, respectively, the German Third and Fourth Panzer Groups redeployed on the northern front near Kalinin and Volokolamsk, capturing Kling and Solniechnogorsk, while Guderian's 2nd Panzer Corps on the right surrounded Moscow from the south.
Although the autumn offensive was huge, the Soviet army stubbornly withstood the German offensive and slowly consumed the German army in the cold winter, according to statistics, from November 16 to December 5, 1941 alone, the German army killed and wounded more than 155,000 people near Moscow, losing about 800 tanks, 300 artillery, and nearly 1,500 aircraft. Coupled with the fact that the German army was too long, the supply was insufficient, and the battle was too large, the German army began to change from active attack to passive, breaking the myth of the invincibility of the German army, and on November 29, 1941, Zhukov finally began to counterattack under stalin's authorization, and the German army began to fight and retreat. In December 1941, Hitler signed a decree to turn the entire Soviet-German battlefield into a defensive position, including Moscow, and removed The Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Brauchitsch, and even Guderian and Hepner were dismissed for their unauthorized retreat, and they themselves became Commander-in-Chief of the Army. He issued an order saying: "Everyone should stand in his current position and fight back." When there is no established position in the rear, it is absolutely forbidden to retreat." But it was also his order that led directly to the subsequent total rout in the Soviet Union.
Battle of Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad, an important turning point in World War II. Stalingrad, formerly known as Tsaritsin, later renamed Volgograd, is located on the west bank of the lower Volga River, is an important port on the Volga River, the most important thing is the railway transportation hub and important industrial city in the south of the Soviet Union, so the strategic location is extremely important, especially here is an important production base of grain, oil, coal in the Soviet Union, if Hitler occupies here, Hitler has oil and grain coal and other resources here. Most importantly, the name of the city was named after Stalin, so it cannot be thrown away.
In the summer of 1942, Hitler's German High Command drew up a plan for the southern operations, code-named Operation Blue. The goal is to control the oil fields in the Caucasus and Stalingrad.
The Battle of Kharkov officially kicked off the Battle of Stalingrad, and on 8 May 1942, General Manstein's German 11th Army first launched an offensive in Crimea and, on 4 July, occupied the entire crimea. Two days before the German occupation of Crimea, on 2 July, The 4th Panzer Army under Hoth had reached Voronezh, but Hitler turned south along the Don River towards Stalingrad. At the same time, due to the amazing results of the 6th Army in the early stages of the campaign, Hitler believed that Stalingrad did not need so many troops to take it, so he transferred part of the army group, leaving only Hort's 4th Panzer Army and Paulus's 6th Army, and it was because of this mistake and traffic problems that the Soviet Union was given enough time to prepare.
On July 17, 1942, the Battle of Stalingrad officially began.
The 8th Infantry Corps and the 14th Panzer Army of Paulus's 6th Army were the Northern Assault Group, with the 51st Infantry Army and the 24th Panzer Army as the Southern Assault Group, encircling the Soviet 62nd Army defenses and developing an offensive in the direction of Karachi.
On 23 July, the Germans successfully broke through the right wing of the Soviet 62nd Army's defensive line, taking action against the two divisions of the army.
On 25 July, the Germans attacked the right flank positions of the Soviet 64th Army, and on 29 July the Soviet 64th Army was forced to retreat across the Don River in the face of a powerful German offensive. At this time, Stalin reluctantly dismissed Marshal Timoshenko, was succeeded by Lieutenant General Gordolph, commander of the 64th Army, and sent the chief of the general staff, Admiral Vasilevsky, as a representative of the Supreme Command, to Stalingrad to help direct the war. Not only that, but Stalin also quickly transferred the tanks of the reserve 1st and 4th Armies to the Stalingrad area. In order to strengthen the morale of the defenders of Stalingrad, Stalin issued Order No. 227 on July 28, 1942, in which any soldier who disobeyed the order and left the combat post or retreated would be severely punished, and sternly demanded that the Red Army troops of the Soviet Union "absolutely not to take a step back!" "Why, because it was named after Stalin, but it worked, and in the face of stubborn Soviet resistance, coupled with the lack of armored support from the 6th Army, it was forced to turn into a defensive posture, but the Soviet Union on the west bank of the Don River was more difficult, and both flanks were encircled by Germans. There is a movie "Soldiers In the City" that depicts this battle.
On 30 July, Hitler made another wrong decision. He declared: "Since the fate of the Caucasus is to be decided at Stalingrad, it is necessary to draw troops from Army Group A to strengthen Army Group B because of the importance of this battle." As a result, Hort's 4th Panzer Army was returned to Army Group B, and on August 1, 1942, he was ordered to attack northeast of the Stalingrad Railway, and on the same day quickly broke through the soviet 51st Army's defenses and occupied Montenaya.
On August 3, Hut captured Koternikovo and then broke through the defenses of the Soviet 64th Army, but soon met with stubborn Soviet resistance, and Hot had to abandon the idea of independently capturing Stalingrad and turned to the defensive position on August 9, 1942.
On 19 August, Paulus and Holt resumed their offensive. Paulus's 6th Army attacked southeast from Tereh Ostrovkaya, northwest of Stalingrad, and on the 22nd broke through the defensive line of the Soviet 62nd Army in the welgache and Piscovatka areas, crossed the Don River, occupied Karachi, and on the 23rd the 14th Panzer Army advanced to the Yeltsovka area on the northern outskirts of Stalingrad, separating the Soviet 62nd Army from the main force of the Stalingrad Front. However, Hoth's 4th Panzer Army attacked north from the Abgarnierovo area to the south, breaking through the defenses of the Soviet 64th Army, and on the 29th, it entered the area of Gavrilovka south of the city, and its forwards had advanced to Jinguta Station.
On 2 September, the right flank of Paulus's 6th Army and the left flank of Hort's 4th Panzer Army completed the encirclement of Stalingrad in the old Rogachik region. At the same time, the German 4th Air Force dispatched hundreds of aircraft and 2,000 more aircraft in the night to bomb Stalingrad indiscriminately.
For Stalin, the current situation was very serious, so he appointed Zhukov as supreme deputy commander and decided to immediately dispatch the 24th and 66th armies and the 1st Guards Army to Stalingrad.
On 29 August, Zhukov arrived at Stalingrad and began organizing the 24th and 66th Armies and the 1st Guards Army to prepare for a counterattack.
At dawn on 5 September, Zhukov threw three new armies into a counterattack, which did not achieve its intended objective due to hasty preparations.
On September 6, the Soviet Union launched another offensive and failed again.
On 10 September, the Red Army attempted to carry out a surprise attack from the north and restore contact with the 62nd Army, but failed again.
On 12 September, the Red Army withdrew to the outskirts of the city, the outer defensive area had been completely lost, and the Germans broke through the stalingrad defenses and broke through to the Volga River from the south, separating the 62nd Army guarding the city from the rest of the battlefield.
On 13 September, the Germans began a siege of the city. This direct attack on Stalingrad was carried out by 13 divisions, about 170,000 men. Although there were 120 divisions of the Soviet Stalingrad Front and the Southeast Front, it was the 62nd and 64th Armies that actually defended Stalingrad, with only more than 90,000 men. Before the siege began, German bombers blasted the city to rubble with incendiary bombs, and the waterway reinforcements along the Volga River to Stalingrad were also affected. Paulus's 6th Army took the lead and launched a fierce assault from the north of the city. Hort's 4th Panzer Army advanced south of the city in response to Paulus' main attack north of the city.
On September 14, the Germans broke into the city from the north of the city and engaged in a fierce street battle with the Soviet 62nd Army, with the two sides fighting street by street and house. Stalingrad was reduced to rubble and 80% of the city's residential areas were destroyed. But the Soviet 62nd Army resisted stubbornly, and fierce gun battles took place in almost every street, every building, and every factory in the city. The number of German casualties entering the city increased, especially on the Soviet side, and the average survival time was not more than 24 hours, which showed the fierceness of the battle. Despite frequent German bombardments of the eastern bank of the Volga, the Soviets received constant supplies and support from there. The Soviets knew that the Germans were best at coordinating the artillery and the artillery of the Air Force, so the Soviet Union adopted a close-quarters strategy of fighting as close as possible to the Germans, which led to the inability of the German artillery and air force to play the advantages of long-range attacks.
On 15 September, the Germans launched a major assault on the Mamayev Heights, the commanding heights of Stalingrad, from which the headquarters of Lieutenant General Trikov's 62nd Army were located. After one of the most brutal days of fighting, the Germans captured the Mamayev Heights.
On 16 September, the 13th Guards Division crossed the Volga River into Stalingrad, counterattacked the Germans, and recaptured the heights. On 27 September, the Germans stormed the northern factory area and reoccupied the Mamayev Heights, but on 29 September 1942 they were retaken by the Soviets, and the two armies continued to alternately occupy the highlands.
On 25 September, the Germans captured the city center.
After months of bloody fighting until November 1942, the Germans advanced to the banks of the Volga River and occupied 80% of the city, dividing the Soviet army into two narrow pockets, but the Germans were still unable to fully occupy Stalingrad.
On 11 November, the Germans launched a strong offensive with 5 infantry divisions, 2 panzer divisions and 2 engineer battalions on a frontal 5 km wide. Within a day, the Soviet and German armies fought extremely fiercely for every inch of land and every house, and both sides suffered heavy casualties. Although the Germans had reached the volga bank south of the barricade factory, the troops were exhausted, and Paulus was forced to halt the attack the next day and repair his troops. The losses of the Red Army were equally severe, with two divisions of the 62nd Army losing 75 percent of their men.
So far, the Germans have lost nearly 700,000 people in the Battle of Stalingrad, more than 1,000 tanks, more than 2,000 artillery and mortars, and 1,400 aircraft, which shows the fierceness of the battle.
On 13 November, Stalin approved Zhukov and Vasilevsky's plan of counteroffensive and personally replaced it with Operation Uranus. The counteroffensive dates will be set for November 19 and 20.
On November 19, the Soviet Union began operation Uranus. Vatutin's Southwestern Front and Rokossovsky's Don Front spearheaded the counterattack, and within a day of the start of the battle the positions of the German 3rd Army of Romania were breached by the Red Army.
On 20 November, Yelemenko's Stalingrad Front's 51st, 57th, and 64th Armies also switched to the south, breaking through the German 4th Army of Romania.
Thereafter, the Red Army moved rapidly north toward Karachi. On the 22nd, the Southwestern Front began to cross the Don River in batches.
On 23 November, the Southwestern Front and the Stalingrad Front met at Karachi, completing the siege of Stalingrad.
On 30 November, the 3rd Front of the Soviet Red Army encircled 22 divisions of the 5th Corps of the German 6th Army, Romanian and Italian troops, and part of the Croatian army totaling about 270,000 people in Stalingrad, with only about 50,000 troops of the 6th Army divided out of the encirclement.
Meanwhile, when the Chief of the German Army General Staff, General Zeitzler, urged Hitler to order Paulus to withdraw from Stalingrad. Marshal Goering, the confident commander of the Air Force, however, assured Hitler that he could guarantee the Air Force the ability to supply the 6th Army through the "air bridge" in the air. Although Hitler knew that the Luftwaffe did not have the transportation capacity to supply such a large number of troops, Hitler still supported Goering's plan, so he ordered Paulus to hold his position, and the 6th Army was left in Stalingrad, and the final result was that the German airdrop plan failed, and the German army only received about 10% of the supplies. The Red Army was constantly tightening its encirclement of Stalingrad and began to shrink it.
On 21 November, Hitler ordered Marshal Manstein's 11th Army and Paulus's 6th Army, Hort's 4th Panzer Army, and the Romania 3rd and 4th Armies to be changed into Don Army Groups under the command of Marshal Manstein and instructed in his orders: "The present task of the Don Army Group is to bring the enemy offensive to a standstill and to retake the positions it had lost. And on 30 November, Hitler said that he would never retreat from Stalingrad, and reiterated that the besieged troops must not surrender, and that Manstein must cut a bloody road to Stalingrad.
On 12 December, Marshal Manstein launched a counteroffensive code-named "Winter Storm".
On 16 December, the Germans broke through the red army's 51st Army line on the Aksay River.
On 19 December, the 57th Panzer Army, part of the German 4th Panzer Army, had broken through to within 30 miles of the encirclement to the south. But Manstein found himself in danger of being surrounded by the Red Army. He therefore decided to ignore Hitler's orders and ordered Paulus to immediately break south to join the 4th Panzer Army. Paulus, however, refused Manstein's order on the grounds of insufficient fuel, forfeiting this last chance.
On 27 December, the Red Army launched a powerful counterattack to repel Hoth's 4th Panzer Army by 150 to 200 kilometers, the German army retreated to its original position, and under pressure, the German army finally abandoned the plan to rescue the besieged German army, which also led to the failure of Manstein's "Winter Storm" operation.
On 29 December, Paulus sent Lieutenant General Hobby, commander of the 14th Army, out of the encirclement to report the situation of the 6th Army to Hitler, but Hitler ordered the 6th Army to remain in Stalingrad until the spring of 1943, but due to Zetzler's repeated requests, Hitler finally agreed to withdraw Army Group A from the Caucasus.
In January 1943, the Soviet Union launched a new offensive, code-named Operation Jupiter, to encircle the remnants of the German Army Group South in the Caucasus. Although the Soviet offensive failed to achieve the desired results, the operation left the German 6th Army completely independent.
On 8 January, Lieutenant General Rokossovsky, commander of the Don Front, issued an ultimatum to The commander of the German 6th Army, Admiral Paulus, urging him to surrender. Paulus, commander of the German 6th Army, telegraphed Hitler in the hope that he would be allowed to surrender, but the request was rejected by Hitler. Therefore, on the 10th, the Soviet Union launched an attack on the besieged 6th Army, code-named "Ring", and the German 6th Army was forced to begin to shrink its defenses towards the city of Stalingrad.
On 22 January, the Soviets occupied The Gumenlac airfield, completely disrupted the 6th Army's airlift supplies and the evacuation of the wounded. Despite this, Paulus's 6th Army resisted stubbornly. At this time, Paulus again asked Hitler for permission to surrender, but Hitler again refused, and Hitler believed that the land that the German soldiers had traveled could not be returned, but could only advance.
On 30 January, Hitler awarded Paulus the German Field Marshal with a staff, encouraging him to continue his efforts, and said to Jodl, "Never in german history has a marshal been taken prisoner. ”
On 31 January, Paulus sent a final telegram to headquarters: "The 6th Army, faithful to its oath and recognizing its own extremely important mission, has held its post for the sake of the Fuehrer and the Fatherland, and has fought until the last soldier and one shot, one shot at a time." ”
On 1 February, the dispatchers of the headquarters of the encircled Sixth Army decided to send a famous telegram to Berlin that touched the Germans one last time, and finally wrote "CL" in international code, indicating that "this station will stop sending newspapers." Paulus then surrendered.
On 2 February, the remnants of the 11th Army, besieged north of Stalingrad, also announced their surrender. At this point, the Battle of Stalingrad ended.
At least 1 million people died in this massive battle, especially the 260,000 men of the German Sixth Army, of which only 5,000 returned to Germany. During the most intense phase of the battle, the two sides invested more than two million troops, two thousand tanks, more than two thousand three hundred aircraft, and twenty-five thousand artillery and mortars.
For both Stalin and Hitler, the Battle of Stalingrad was a crucial battle for success or failure. The commanders of both forces are under enormous pressure. The strategic focus of both sides shifted from Moscow to Stalingrad, and a large number of Soviet troops were transferred to Stalingrad. Although the Soviet Union won this battle, it was a fierce victory, but it was also a victory, a decisive victory for the entire European battlefield, and a turning point in the entire European battlefield of World War II.
Battle of Kiev
Kiev, now the capital of Ukraine, is the economic, cultural and political center of Ukraine.
The Battle of Kiev was the largest siege in history.
On 7 July 1941, the Germans, with the Tank Corps as the first echelon, broke through the Soviet defenses north of New Miropol and captured Berdychev. Day 2. Another breakthrough was made south of the Vronsky New Town, and on 9 July, Zhytomyr was captured.
On 11 July, the advance force of the 1st German Tank Group advanced 110 kilometers in two days and nights, reaching the Ilban River west of Kiev.
On 16 July, Guderian's 2nd Panzer Corps captured Smolensk and was pointing directly at Moscow, but Hitler asked Guderian to temporarily abandon Moscow and attack Kiev in a major encirclement. The encirclement operation was performed by two reinforcements from Army Group South and Army Group Center.
On 3 August, the Germans encircled the Soviet Fifth Army in the Uman area with two wings.
On 8 August, the Germans captured some 100,000 Red Army soldiers, including Lieutenant General Muzichenko, commander of the Soviet 6th Army, and Major General Ponegelin, commander of the 12th Army, and captured 317 tanks and 858 artillery pieces.
On 11 September, Soviet Marshal Budyonny asked Stalin to withdraw eastward, but Stalin refused, and Stalin ordered him to stay in Kiev. And on the 13th, Stalin removed Budyonny from his post and was replaced by the Commander-in-Chief of the West and Marshal Timoshenko of the Soviet Union, commander of the Western Front.
On 16 September, Guderian and Kleist's armored group met at Lokhwişa, and the Southwestern Front was surrounded by Germans.
From 16 September, the German army, mainly the 2nd Army and the 6th Army, launched a siege and annihilation operation against the Soviet Union's 5th, 21st, 38th, and 26th Armies. Although the Soviets fought exceptionally bravely, they were still killed and wounded by the shelling, strafing and crushing of German tanks, and except for a few troops who successfully broke through, the main force was still under siege.
On 19 September, Kiev fell and the Soviet 37th Army was forced to move to the Yagotin region.
On 20 September, the Germans captured Kiev.
The battle lasted for two and a half months, the Germans lost more than 100,000 people, the Soviets lost about 700,000 people, 665,000 people were captured, the commander of the Southwestern Front Kilbonos, the chief of staff Tupikov, the political commissar Bulmitchenko died in the breakthrough, and the commander of the Soviet 5th Army, Potapov, was captured in the battle. The Germans destroyed or captured 884 tanks, 3718 artillery pieces, and 3500 vehicles. The Germans also lost more than 100,000 men.
Kursk Tank Armageddon
Kursk, perhaps many people are very unfamiliar with this city, I believe many people first heard this name because of the silence of the Kursk nuclear submarine. On 12 August 2000, the Kursk exploded and sank while participating in military exercises off barents, killing all 118 of the 107 crew members and 11 fleet-class senior admirals and assistants.
But Kursk is no stranger to many military fans, as the largest tank battle in history has taken place here---- The Kursk Tank Armageddon.
In this battle, the Germans and the Soviet Union dispatched nearly 8,000 tanks, put in more than 1.5 million troops, and participated in more than 5,000 aircraft.
The Battle of Kursk was also the last strategic large-scale offensive launched by the Germans against the Soviet Union.
In early 1943, after the decisive victory of the Soviet Union in the Battle of Stalingrad, it began to pursue the victory, and in the face of the defeated German army, Marshal Manstein planned a large-scale counteroffensive to save the war, so he formulated the battle plan of the "fortress".
In July 1943, the German army gathered 17 tank divisions, 3 motorized divisions and 18 infantry divisions on the north and south sides of the Kursk region, mainly "Army Group Center" and "Army Group South", with a total strength of more than 900,000 people. These included the most advanced weapons of the time, the Tiger and Leopard tanks. In particular, the Tiger tank is equipped with a large-caliber artillery of 88 mm, which is very fierce, and at the same time, because its front armor is up to 100 mm thick, it has a strong protective ability. The main tank of the Soviet Army at that time was the T-34, which was obviously inferior to the Tiger tank in terms of armor performance and firepower.
At 2:00 a.m. on July 5, the Battle of Kursk officially began, the Soviet troops on the other side of the river gave priority to firing, and in the face of large-scale Soviet shelling, the Germans decided to change the raid to a strong attack, with tanks as the vanguard, followed by a large number of infantry. At the same time, 120 German bombers, under the cover of fighter jets, launched a frenzied bombardment of Soviet positions. The Soviets at the forefront engaged the Germans in fierce battles, using tanks, anti-tank guns, and Molotov cocktails filled with gasoline to confront the Germans.
On the evening of 6 July, the Germans broke through the soviet first line of defense.
On 11 July, the Germans decided to launch a new offensive against the Soviets on the Southern Front on 12 July. At this point, the Battle of Kursk entered a crucial second stage, which is also a stage that is currently controversial among many historians of World War II.
In order to win the second phase of the campaign, Manstein threw the main forces of the German SS Panzer Army and the 48th Panzer Army (i.e., the SS Panzer Army) into battle. The German SS Panzer Corps was an elite motorized armored unit of the German Army, a trump card in Manstein's hand.
On 12 July, the Germans, with the SS Panzer Corps as the core, began an encounter with Soviet tanks near Prokhlovka. The Soviets sent about 850 tanks, the Germans put in about 650 tanks, and the two sides engaged in a tank "hand-to-hand combat" on the 15-square-kilometer battlefield. At the beginning of the battle, soviet tanks rushed into the enemy position with full horsepower, using the flexibility of their T-34 Tanks to eliminate the Tiger tanks in close combat. This bold strategy surprised the Germans, and they were in disarray. In the end, in the chaos, the German SS Panzer Army was severely damaged, and this battle completely destroyed the combat effectiveness of the German SS Panzer Army, turned the tide of the battle on the southern front of Kursk, and also declared the failure of Manstein's "fortress" plan.
However, there is a great deal of controversy among historians of World War II about this battle, and some people say that hitler caused the rout of the German army, but the German army lost anyway.
In this battle, the Germans lost more than 250,000 troops, about 1,500 tanks and 1,000 aircraft. The Red Army also paid an even heavier price for the Battle of Kursk, losing 800,000 troops, 6,000 tanks, 5,244 artillery pieces and 1,700 aircraft.
The Battle of Berlin
The Battle of Berlin was the last strategic offensive campaign carried out by the Soviet Union.
By the spring of 1945, when the Allies were fighting on German soil, the closest to Berlin was the Soviets, and the German high command took various measures, including the formation of more than 200 national commando battalions and the concentration of the strongest army group defenders to prevent the Soviets from capturing Berlin.
In the early morning of April 16, 1945, thousands of cannons and Katyusha rockets began shelling German positions, followed by attacks on German positions, but met with stubborn German resistance, and the first attack failed.
In the early morning of 17 April, Zhukov again concentrated all the artillery of the Front and ordered nearly a thousand tanks to advance in a column, and even if the tanks in front were hit and caught fire, the tanks in the rear had to push it forward. At this time, the German army defending the heights was also tired and began to retreat in the direction of the city of Berlin, until the early morning of April 18, when the Soviets finally captured the Zelov Heights, annihilated nearly 30,000 German troops, and continued to advance towards the city of Berlin.
On 20 April, the 3rd Assault Army of the 1st Belorussian Front, led by General Kuznetsov, arrived on the outskirts of Berlin, and at 1:30 p.m., Soviet ground artillery began to bombard the city. On the evening of the 20th, the Soviet Union began the encirclement of Berlin.
On 21 April, soviet 2nd Tank Army and 47th Army came to Berlin. It was not until the 25th that the Soviets finally completed the encirclement of Berlin.
In the early morning of April 26, thousands of Soviet planes dropped thousands of tons of bombs and petrol bombs on Berlin. After the bombardment and firing, Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front sent numerous assault groups and assault detachments to break through the city from all directions. Faced with the stubborn resistance of the German army, the Soviet army had to fight for buildings and streets, and each step forward had to pay a great price.
On 27 April, when the Soviets had invaded the 9th arrondissement of berlin, Keitel informed Hitler that the breakout had failed, and Hitler realized that he had completely lost the war he had started, so he refused to leave Berlin.
On 28 April, the 3rd Belorussian Assault Army and the 8th Guards Army pushed into the TilGarten district of Berlin, which was the last support point for the German army in Berlin, and late at night, the 3rd Assault Army, under the command of General Kuznetsov, launched a strong attack on the Building of the Ministry of Internal Affairs outside the Reichstag, and the German army carried out desperate but most stubborn resistance, and the battle continued until the late night of the 29th, when the German army was almost completely killed, and the building was captured by the Soviets.
In the early hours of April 29, Hitler married Eva Braun, who had been waiting for him for twelve years. After the wedding, Hitler dictated his will, designating Admiral Dönitz as his successor, and he decided to commit suicide and wanted the couple's remains to be cremated at the Chancellery.
At 3:30 p.m. on April 30, Hitler and his wife, who had only been married for one day, committed suicide by taking poison in their bedrooms in the underground bunker, and while taking poison, Hitler raised his gun and pulled the trigger on his temple. Goebbels and others then carried the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun to a crater in the garden of the Chancellery, poured gasoline on them and cremated them. At 6 p.m., the Soviets again charged the Reichstag, engaging 2,000 Germans, and at 21:50, Soviet hero Mikhail Igor. Sergeant Yegorov and Melitang. Corporal Cantaria planted the Soviet red flag on the dome of the main building of the Reichstag. Late at night, the Germans broadcast a temporary ceasefire and demanded negotiations with the Soviets.
At 3:55 a.m. on May 1, General Kleebs, chief of the German Army General Staff, drilled out of the underground shelter of the Reich Office under a white flag and went to the front command post of the Soviet Guards 8th Army to negotiate, but Stalin refused: "The German army can only surrender unconditionally, without any negotiations, unlike Klebs, not with any other fascists." At 9:45, Zhukov issued an ultimatum to the Germans in Berlin: the Germans must surrender completely, or the Soviets would launch a final offensive against the Germans at 10:40. Trikov asked Klebs to bring the ultimatum back to Goebbels and the others, and when Goebbels saw the ultimatum, he knew there was no room for bargaining, and committed suicide with his wife and six children in the evening.
At 7 o'clock on 2 May, General Weidlin, commander of the German city defenses of Berlin, went to Trikov's forward command post and signed the surrender order. By noon, the remaining 150,000 defenders in Berlin had all surrendered. At this point, the last decisive battle of the Soviet-German war, the Battle of Berlin, ended. In this campaign, the Soviets destroyed 70 German infantry divisions, 23 armored divisions and motorized divisions, more than 1 million people, including 480,000 German prisoners, more than 1,500 tanks and self-propelled guns, more than 4,500 aircraft and more than 10,000 cannons. The Soviets also paid a heavy price in the Battle of Berlin, with 304,000 casualties and 2,156 tanks, 1,220 artillery pieces, and 527 aircraft.
At this point, the European battlefield in World War II was completely over, until September 2, 1945, when World War II was completely over, and the world entered a new order---- that is, the post-war order, which was also the beginning of a new era in the Soviet Union.