All language subtitles for [English] The Entire Second World War from the USSR Perspective In Full Color [DownSub.com]

[music]

27 million dead. It is not a number. It

is the weight of a world that no longer

exists.

As the western world remembers D-Day,

the tanks in the North African desert

and the bombs on London, there is a

different, more colossal, more cruel,

more decisive war that occurred in the

east. This is the history of the Red

Army. The story of how the Soviet Union

with colossal mistakes, with millions of

sacrifices, with generals learning under

the heaviest fire ever seen, stopped,

turned, and finally destroyed the

Vermacht, the deadliest war machine

Europe had ever produced.

In 1918, revolutionary Russia had no

army. It had militias of armed workers,

mutinous sailors, and the scattered

ghost of what was once the Imperial

Army. Vifan Lenin and his commisar for

military affairs, Leon Trosky, needed to

build a fighting force from scratch in

the midst of the bloodiest civil war

that country had ever witnessed. The

solution was brutal and pragmatic.

Recruit tens of thousands of former

officers of the Tsarist army, the

so-called military specialists, [music]

and keep them under political

surveillance through the system of

commisars. Each unit had a military

commander and a political officer whose

signature was needed to validate any

significant orders. It was a system of

institutionalized distrust. It worked

because it had to work. The Civil War of

1918 to 1921 forged the Soviet military

mentality in a way that would [music]

persist for decades. Armored trains

carrying reserves from one front to

another, moving entire units along

interior lines to plug gaps, created

what would become known as echelon

warfare. Some infantry divisions changed

fronts up to five times over the course

of the conflict. This experience

generated a deep understanding of the

need for strategic reserves staggered in

depth, [music] a lesson the Red Army

would never forget. But the Civil War

also taught something else. Civil War

commander Mikail Nikolivich Tukachevski

and theorist Vladimir K. Triandilov came

to a conclusion that would change the

history of military art. Modern armies

were too large to be defeated in a

single catastrophic battle. You needed

to dismantle the enemy with successive

offensive operations, each followed by a

quick exploitation to the rear before

the defender could reorganize.

From that principle was born what the

Soviets would call the operational art

and within it operation in depth. It

wasn't just attacking. It was to attack

simultaneously at multiple depths

[music] neutralizing all enemy defenses

at the same time employing tanks,

artillery, aviation, and infantry

mechanized in a coordinated dance that

prevented the defender from creating a

firm front. In the 1930s, as the world

looked the other way, the Red Army

became the most advanced mechanized

warfare laboratory on the planet. By

1936, the Soviet Union had formed its

first two mechanized corpses, 3 years

before Germany created its first Panza

divisions. That year's interim campaign

regulations codified [music]

concepts that German theorists were just

beginning to articulate. The Soviet

arsenal included thousands of tanks

Production had reached 3,000 armored

vehicles per year since 1933.

The large-scale exercises tested the

combined use of airborne armored and

motorized infantry forces for

operational [music]

penetrations of 100 km or more. There

was a problem named Ysef Visarionovich

Stalin.

Stalin's paranoid obsession with

absolute control led him in 1937 to

unleash a purge of the officer corps

that rivals any military disaster in

history. Tukachevski, the genius who had

conceived Operation Deep, was arrested

on May 27th, 1937.

On June 12th, he was executed along with

the commander of two military districts

and six highranking colleagues. The

figures for what followed are almost

inconceivable. The commanders of the

country's 16 military districts were

purged. 90% of the deputy commanders,

chiefs [music] of staff and section

chiefs, 80% of the commanders of core

and divisions. 91% of regimental

commanders, their deputies and their

chiefs of staff. In total, between

34,000 and 54,700

officers were dismissed, [music]

imprisoned, or executed. Of the five

marshals of the Soviet Union, three were

shot. Military historian David Glance in

his analysis of this period concludes

that the purges not only eliminated the

intellectual elite of the army, but

created a climate where any show of

independent judgment could cost one's

life. Young officers with no combat

experience were suddenly elevated to

division commands. Students of the 1938

course of the Voroselof Academy, among

them future luminaries such as AM

Vasileski and MV Zakarov, graduated

hastily to fill vacancies that no one

wanted to fill. The army that existed in

1941 was, in the words of one

contemporary analysis, magnificent but

hollow. It had the formal structure of a

powerful force. I didn't have the brain

to operate on her. Between 1938 and

1941, the Red Army fought three

conflicts that revealed everything that

was wrong and at the same time gave

glimpses of what could become. At Lake

Cassan in 1938, Soviet forces clashed

[music] with Japanese troops for weeks

before winning a costly and poorly

coordinated engagement. The losses were

disproportionate to the results

obtained. Less than a year later on the

Kkin Gaul River in remote [music] outer

Mongolia, an officer who had survived

the purges, Geoji Constantinovich Jukov,

was given command of the Soviet forces

with instructions to resolve the problem

with the Japanese. What Jukov did on

August 20th, 1939 was a masterclass. He

secretly concentrated 57,000 men, 498

tanks, and 385 armored vehicles. He

staged a classic envelopment attack

while a territorial division attacked

headon to lock on to the enemy. Within

hours, the Japanese forces [music] were

locked in. The assault on August 27th to

break the siege failed. On September

15th, Japan signed a ceasefire

agreement. Zhukov had carried out almost

perfectly the principles of operation

depth that Tukachevsky had articulated.

Japanese casualties reached 61,000

killed, wounded, and captured. But the

real revelation came that same winter.

In November 1939, Stalin ordered the

invasion of Finland after failed

negotiations.

What followed was a catastrophe. The Red

Army, deprived of its best commanders

and doctrine by the purges, blindly

attacked the defenses of the Manahheim

line. The 44th Rifle Division was almost

entirely destroyed in the forests of Su

Musalmi. His men, [music]

illequipped for Arctic combat, froze in

their positions as Finnish skiers

methodically encircled and dismembered

them. The commander of the division was

shot. Dozens of officers replaced.

[music]

Soviet forces suffered 131,476

killed and missing before the situation

was reorganized enough to break through

Finnish defenses [music] in February

1940. Timoshenko took command in the

northwest. He trained his troops hard.

He organized specialized raiding groups.

He concentrated the artillery. On

February 12th, 1940, [music]

an entirely different attack, more

precise, more coordinated, more

concentrated, penetrated the Manahheim

line. In March, the Fins signed the

armistice. The outside world and

particularly the German high command saw

only the initial disaster.

Historian Carl Van notes that Finnish

reports of Soviet improvement in the

second phase of the Winter War reached

German intelligence and were ignored.

Hitler and the OKH drew the conclusion

they wanted. The Red Army was incapable

of defending itself. It was the most

expensive miscalculation in military

history.

On August 23rd, 1939, Yokim von

Ribbentrop landed in Moscow. Within

hours, representatives of two regimes

that had proclaimed each other mortal

enemies for a decade signed the Molotov

Ribbentrop Pact. Publicly, it was a

non-aggression agreement. In its secret

clauses, it divided Eastern Europe into

spheres of influence with a coldness

that would have scandalized any diplomat

of the previous century. Why did Stalin

sign? The short answer is that he

distrusted everyone equally. The Munich

conference of 1938 where France and

Britain handed over the Czechoslovak

Sudatan land to Hitler without even

inviting the Soviets to the table was an

unmistakable signal to Moscow.

Westerners would sacrifice the Soviet

Union if it would buy peace for them.

Stalin apparently calculated that if

Hitler attacked the West first, the

resulting war would last for years,

[music] giving him time to rebuild his

army torn apart by the purges. What he

did not foresee was the speed of the

French collapse. When France fell in 6

weeks in May and June 1940, Stalin

suddenly found himself facing a Germany

that controlled all of Western Europe

and his own army was still recovering.

The pact had given the Soviet Union time

but not enough. And it had bought

territory, parts of Poland, the Baltic

states, Bessabia that was now becoming a

trap. The defenses of the former Polish

Soviet border had been dismantled in

order to build new positions in the

newly acquired territories.

Those new defenses were incomplete. The

army was ahead, exposed in positions it

could not defend. In the spring of 1941,

the world's two most powerful armies

were staring at each other across a

border they both knew would not last. On

the German side, 152 divisions,

including 19 armored and 14 motorized

infantry, organized into three army

groups, approximately 3,350

tanks, 7,146

artillery pieces and 2,770

aircraft. An officer corps with two

years of blitzkrieg in Poland and France

accustomed to victory trained in

decentralized initiative taking with

doctrines of mechanized penetration that

had proven effective against the best

armies in Western Europe. But the

Germans also had hidden limitations. The

Veyt was not a fully motorized force.

More than 600,000 horses were taking

part in the initial invasion, dragging

artillery and supplies. Infantry units

marched on foot as in 1914.

German logisticians estimated that the

army had enough fuel to advance between

500 and 800 km from the border. After

that, it would need a pause to resupply.

The Soviet railway system used a

different gauge than the European one,

which meant that German trains could not

use captured lines without converting

them.

General France Halder, the German chief

of staff, presented [music] these

figures with almost preient precision in

November 1940.

They ignored them on the Soviet side. On

paper, a formidable army. In reality, an

organism in transition convulsed by

simultaneous reorganizations, massive

changes of command, and incomplete

defensive deployments. The 29 new

mechanized core approved in February

1941 had not received their equipment.

Many of them had less than 40% of their

tanks authorized. The fourth mechanized

core, considered the most powerful in

the Soviet army, had 979 tanks,

including 414 of the modern KV and T34.

But most of the mechanized core had

mixtures of obsolete vehicles, trucks

requisitioned from civilian companies

that could not operate in the field and

crews that had barely been with their

machines for weeks. And yet the T-34 was

in almost every technical respect

superior to any German tank deployed in

June 1941.

Its 45 mm sloped armor withtood most

German anti-tank guns. Its 76.2 [music]

2 mm high gun speed pierced the armor of

the Panzer 3s and fours at normal combat

ranges. The German 37 mm guns that

equipped most of the infantry could not

penetrate their frontal armor. The 47.5

ton KV1 heavy tank was directly

invulnerable to almost all German

weapons except the Luftwaffer's famous

88 mm anti-aircraft guns. If the Red

Army had had four more years to prepare,

the picture would have been radically

different. He did not have them.

At 3:00 a.m. on June 22nd, 1941, 30

Luftwaffer bomber crews crossed the

Soviet border at high altitude. In

groups of three, they struck 10 major

Soviet air bases at exactly 3:15, at the

exact moment when a brief artillery

preparation signaled the start of the

ground war. When the sun rose, 500

bombers, 270 dive bombers, and 480

fighters attacked 66 Soviet airfields.

The Red Air Force lost more than 1,200

aircraft on the first morning of the

war, most of them destroyed on the

ground before their pilots could take

off. Soviet communications collapsed

within hours. The civilian telephone

network on which much of the army

depended was destroyed by the air

strikes and the overwhelming mass of

emergency reports. German sabotage

units, the Brandenburgers, infiltrated

in Soviet uniforms, cut telephone lines,

captured key bridges, and wreaked havoc

in the rear. On the Western Front,

General Dmitri Pavof, commander of the

Western Front, lost control of his

forces in the early hours. His armies

from the Beer Listo sector, the 3rd and

10th, were caught in a trap as German

Panzer groups engulfed them from the

north and south. By June 26th, General

Pav sent Moscow the desperate message.

Up to 1,000 tanks of the Third Panza

group are enveloping Minsk from the

northwest. There is no way to resist

them. It was not an exaggeration. It was

the reality. By the end of June, the

second and third Panza [music] groups

had closed their pincers around a huge

pocket west of Minsk, containing most of

the [music] 10th, 3rd, and 13th armies

of the Western Front. More than 417,000

Soviet soldiers had been killed or

captured. The Western Front, as an

organized force, had ceased to exist.

Pav was executed shortly thereafter. But

even in this unprecedented chaos, there

were signs of things to come.

In the south, General Mikail Kaponos,

commander of the southwest front, had

been in close contact with the border

guards in the previous days and alerted

his units when the Germans were masked

on [music] the border. His front was

blessed with eight mechanized core. None

were completely equipped. None were

fully trained. But General Constantine

Roosovski, commander of the 9inth

Mechanized Corps with obsolete T-26

tanks, made a decision that illustrated

the birth of a new capability. Instead

of attacking according to impossible

orders, he established [music]

defensive positions and ambushed the

main column of the 13th Panza Division

advancing towards Rivo.

For the first time in the war, the

German army encountered massive Soviet

artillery fire and suffered severe

casualties.

The fierce battle for the southwestern

Soviet flank delayed army group south by

at least a week, buying crucial time

that would allow the partial evacuation

of Soviet industry to the eurals.

On June 24th, 1941, Stalin signed the

order that created the evacuation

council. Under the leadership of Nikolai

and with Alexe Kosigin as his deputy,

the Soviet state undertook one of the

most extraordinary logistical feats of

the 20th century. Entire factories with

their machines, their engineers, their

workers, and their families were

dismantled and loaded onto trains

leaving for the Eurals and Siberia. The

Zaparosia metallurgical plant in the

Donbass required 8,000 railway wagons

just to be moved to Magnetosk.

In the Leningrad area, where the German

advance was so rapid that only 92

factories could be relocated before the

city was surrounded. A former tank plant

was converted into the complex known as

the Tankerrad in Chelabinsk, which by

the end of 1941 was already producing

more than 500 KV heavy tanks. By

December 12th, 1941, 523 enterprises and

564,248

workers with their families [music] had

been evacuated from the Moscow region in

100,334

railway wagons. The Soviet Union claimed

to have moved a total of 1,910

large factories, including 824 armament

related factories [music] to the Vular,

Siberia, and Central Asia on nearly

30,000 trains carrying 1.5 million rail

loads between July and December 1941.

Machinery arrived at its destinations on

a confusing and staggered [music]

schedule, sometimes with only a fraction

of the skilled workers. They were often

unloaded into newly erected unheated

wooden buildings in the middle of the

Siberian winter. Workers worked under

electric lights hung on trees

supplemented by bonfires while outside

temperatures dropped well below zero.

Some factories were producing again

within weeks. Others took more than a

year. The result was that despite the

initial collapse, the Soviet Union

produced approximately 6,590

tanks in 1941.

twothirds of them, the modern T34 and

KV. Comparatively, Germany produced

5,200.

The USSR also produced twice as many

fighter aircraft as Germany that year,

twice as many guns and 11 times as many

mortars. An entirely new war machine was

being born in the bowels of the Eurals,

literally built on snow and sacrifice.

When General Holder noted in his diary

on July 3rd, 1941 that the Russian

campaign has been won in the space of

two weeks, it was a statement that at

that time, at the precise [music]

moment, it seemed backed up by the

facts. All three frontline guns on the

Western Front had been destroyed. The

Germans were on the Neper and the West

Deina, less than 400 km from Moscow.

What Halda did not know was that on the

other side of the Neper were waiting

five armies that Marshall Boudeni had

begun to assemble since [music] the end

of May. These armies were not frontline

formations, the 21st, the 21st, [music]

the 22, the 16th. They were poorly

equipped formations, many of them

composed of reserveists [music]

called up urgently with poor

communications, insufficient anti-tank

artillery, and staffs that barely knew

their own units. However, they were

something the Germans had not

anticipated. [music] New meat for the

mill.

Stalin put Marshall Timoshenko in

command of the Western Front on July

1st. In the days that followed, the

Germans found crossing the Deniper to be

much more difficult than crossing the

Deina. Soviet counteroffensives were

crude, [music] poorly coordinated, and

costly. But they existed. The German

Panza divisions, which had advanced 700

km in two weeks, suddenly found

themselves locked into a fierce defense

to [music] which they were not

accustomed.

On July 18th, Gudderians Panza group had

captured the heights of Elnia, 82 km

southeast of Smolinsk. Their tanks had

[music] reached the logistical limit of

their initial advance. German tankists

could [music] see in the distance the

domes of the city's churches which maps

described as the gateway to Moscow. No

fuel, no ammunition. The divisions were

reduced to companies. The companies in

platoon. The commander of the 18th Panza

division wrote a note that captured the

mood. We need to reduce our casualties

if we do not intend to earn ourselves to

death. On July 23rd, Jukov coordinated

the first genuinely organized

counteroffensive of the war. Four

operational groups attacking

simultaneously from the north, east, and

south against Army Group Center east of

Smolinsk. The attacks were

uncoordinated, costly, and largely

tactically unsuccessful, but they were

continuous. For the first time in the

war, Army Group Center [music] had to

stop to defend. On July 30th, Fura

Directive number 34 ordered Army Group

Center to go on [music] the defensive

and prepare its forces for future

operations.

It was the first time the Germans had

issued such an order since the

Blitzkrieg had begun in 1939.

While Timoshenka was holding back Army

Group Center near Smealinsk, the biggest

disaster of the entire war was unfolding

to the south. Marshall Semon Budeni,

commander of the Southwest Directorate,

had orders to hold Kiev at all costs.

Stalin was convinced that the main

German offensive would eventually come

toward Moscow and that the southward

movement was a distraction. Zhukov, on

one of the few occasions when he dared

to directly contradict the dictator,

warned in August 1941 that Kiev was a

trap. Army Group South was being

reinforced for a huge pinser. The

warning cost Jukov the post of chief of

[music] staff. Zhukov himself asked to

be transferred to the command of the

reserve front. The premonition was

fulfilled with chilling accuracy.

Gderrion turned his Panza group south

behind the lines of the southwest front.

Klest did the same from the south. On

September 14th, 1941, the two groups

joined east of Kiev. In the following

weeks, four Soviet armies were destroyed

within the encirclement. The 5th, 37th,

26th, and 21st, a total of 43 divisions

with 452,720

men and 3,867

guns and mortars. General Kerponos, who

had warned of the danger and asked

permission to withdraw, was killed

during an attempt to break [music] the

siege. The German figure of 665,000

prisoners probably tripled the number of

actual captives, but it approximates

well the total Soviet losses in the

operation. And yet, even in Kiev, the

Germans paid a price. They had diverted

their energy and resources from the main

axis of advance.

Time lost in the south. Almost two

critical months could not recover. The

Russian winter was approaching. The road

to Moscow was intact, but the clock was

ticking against the invaders.

Operation Typhoon, the last German

attempt to capture Moscow in 1941, began

on October 2nd. Three Panza groups,

regrouped and partially resupplied,

pounded the Soviet lines along a 350 km

front. What followed was one of the most

dramatic moments of the entire war. In

the first days, the pockets of Viasma

and Brians gobbled up more than 650,000

Soviet soldiers in Moscow. On October

13th, Stalin ordered the evacuation of

most government and party offices to

Quebe.

The announcement of this evacuation

combined with rumors about the fighting

in Viasma produced on October 16th and

17th a situation close to panic in the

capital. Only the radio announcement

that Stalin remained in the city quelled

the chaos. Zukov [music] was sent from

Leningrad to take command of the western

front. He found that there were

virtually no forces to defend the road

to Moscow. The desperate battle in the

Viasma pocket led by General Lucin won

crucial days as fresh units arrived from

Siberia.

General Katakov and his fourth tank

brigade, equipped with the new T34s,

used tactics for the first time that

would become characteristics of the

Soviet army. Ambushes from the forest,

attacks from the flanks, controlled

withdrawals that drew the German panzas

into prepared anti-tank lines. near

Matsensk on October 6th. Katukov

inflicted such damage on the battle

group of Gdderian's fourth Panza

Division that a special investigation

was opened in the German general staff.

By November, the ground had frozen,

restoring German mobility and Boach

launched his final onslaught.

The third Panza army arrived at Clean on

November 24th. A bridge over the Moscow

Vulga Canal was crossed, placing German

tanks within 35 km of the Kremlin.

German officials claimed that they could

see the city's towers through their

binoculars. It was the closest point the

Vermacht would ever reach. On December

4th, temperatures dropped [music] to

-15° C. German tank engines would not

start without being preheated for hours.

Soldiers without adequate winter

equipment suffered from massive

frostbite. The infantry divisions had

lost more than 50% of their fighting

strength in two months. At the same

time, Stalin had quietly amassed three

new armies. The first shock, the 20th,

and the 10th, fresh, well equipped, and

equipped with skis, which were waiting

in the Stavka's reserve. The soldiers

came from the cold, hardened Siberian

military districts, prepared for the

winter war that the Germans feared. At

3:00 a.m. on December 5th, 1941, when

the temperature was minus5° C and

[music] snow covered a meter deep, the

Kinan front launched the counter

offensive. The next day, the Western

Front added its own attacks from

positions north and south of Dimmitro.

The nature of combat changed overnight.

Soviet skiers and cavalry battalions

penetrated between the villages that

German units needed to survive. The T34s

advanced on roads that German tanks

could not use. In the north, the first

shock army drove the [music] seventh

Panza division from its bridge head over

the Moscow Vulgar Canal. In the south,

General Belellov's cavalry cut off the

supply route of Gdderian's second Panza

army. Within 10 days, Army Group Center

had been pushed 100 to 150 km westward.

Clint was released on December 15th.

Gderrion repeatedly requested

authorization to withdraw his army to

more defensive positions. The OKH had no

authority to grant it without Hitler's

consent. On December 25th, following a

final conflict with the new commander of

army group center Feld Mascal vonuga,

Gdderion was relieved of command. Hitler

assumed personal command of the army.

His fanatical resistance order has been

criticized by generations of German

military historians as another example

of amateur interference. But in this

case, most analysts conclude that the

order was correct. The Germans lacked

the resources and transportation to

build a new defensive line. Defending on

the spot, as hard as it was, allowed

them to at least keep the rudiments of

shelter and the supplies that would keep

them alive until reinforcements arrived.

What Stalin did not understand was that

the December victory was not the prelude

to the German defeat, but the end of his

own strategic offensive. He demanded

that his commanders extend the

counteroffensive in all directions

simultaneously

against army group north near Lenengrad

against army group center along its

entire front against army group south in

southern Russia. Jukov and Shaposnikov

warned that the available forces were

insufficient.

Stalin ignored the warnings. [music] The

counteroffensive spread. The cavalry

units penetrated hundreds of kilometers

into the German rear, but lacked [music]

the mass needed to explode. The second

shock army was sent through a breach

into the rear guard of the German

northern army near Lennengrad. He was

trapped, his men held out in nightmarish

conditions for months. In June 1942, the

commander who had been sent to rescue

them, General Vlassov, was captured. His

bitterness over abandonment led him to

collaborate with the Germans, an act

that Soviet historians meticulously

erased from the records for decades. By

the spring of 1942, the front line had

stabilized, fatigue was mutual, and both

sides were preparing [music] for the

summer.

In May 1942, Marshall Timoshenko planned

an ambitious offensive to recapture

Kharkiv. In theory, it was a coup to

dismantle German preparations for the

summer. In practice, it was a

catastrophe that illustrated all the

outstanding problems of the Red Army.

The plan was complex, depended on

simultaneous coordination between

multiple armies and radically

underestimated the German response

capacity.

Timoshenko concentrated 765,300

men and 923 tanks against the German 6th

Army. The May 12th attacks initially

surprised defenders. [music]

In the south, General Gorodnski's sixth

army advanced 60 km in 2 days. The

armored formations that were to exploit

the success remained in their areas of

concentration due to coordination

failures of the general staff. The

Germans responded masterfully. Hitler

authorized the transfer of Richtoven's

eighth air core from the Crimea and

allowed Kle to launch operation

Fredicus, a Pinsir attack from the south

against the Soviet left flank. Gafon

Schwepenberg's third motorized core with

four [music] Panza divisions cut off

communications from the Soviet advance.

On May 17th, the Soviet 6th and 57th

Armies as well as two tank core were

completely destroyed. The Germans

captured 239,036

prisoners. The defeat at Kharkiv

preceded the most ambitious German

offensive of the summer of 1942,

Operation Blue, which aimed at the oil

reserves of the Caucuses and control of

the Vular. Stalin, still convinced that

the real German target was Moscow, kept

his strategic reserves in the center

while the southern flank collapsed. By

the end of July, the Germans had reached

the Caucuses. The first Panza army

captured the small oil fields of MOP on

August 9th only to find them

systematically destroyed. Army Group B

was advancing eastward along the dawn.

And on the horizon, a city that no one

had paid much attention to began to take

on disproportionate importance for both

sides. Stalinrad.

In 1942, Stalinrad was an industrial

city of 600,000 [music]

inhabitants spread over 24 km on the

west bank of the Vular supplied

equipment, crucial military forces. But

what made it the epicenter of the war

was something simpler and more fateful,

[music] its name. For Hitler, capturing

the city that bore his enemy's name had

a symbolic value that surpassed any

strategic consideration.

For Stalin, losing it was unthinkable.

Both dictators made the same decision at

the same time for identical reasons.

This city could not be lost. General

Vasili Triov took command of the 62nd

Army inside Stalingrad in September

1942.

His operational instruction born of

desperation became doctrine. Embrace the

enemy. to keep one's own lines so close

to the Germans that German aviation and

heavy artillery could not be used

without destroying one's own troops.

Fight meter by meter, building by

building, floor by floor, in a war of

proximity where the German tactical

advantage was nullified. The battles for

the ruins of Stalingrad's industrial

complexes, the tractor factory, the Red

October steel mills, the Baricardi

munitions factory are some of the

fiercest in all of military history.

Regiments arriving in the city with

thousands of men dwindled to hundreds in

days. Palace's divisions rotated their

units between active combat within the

city and defensive positions on the

flank. German casualties were steadily

increasing. At the same time, the Stava

was executing something extraordinary.

The most meticulous planning operation

the Red Army had ever conducted. As the

world stared at the ruins of Stalingrad,

away from the spotlight, two Soviet

fronts quietly amassed massive forces on

either side of the German salient.

General Alexi Antonov and the Stavka

planners had identified the fundamental

weakness. The flanks of Palace's sixth

army were not protected by German

forces, but by the poorly equipped

Romanian third and fourth armies with

few effective anti-tank guns.

Operation Uranus would not seek to

penetrate the Germans. He would surround

them through his weaker allies.

On November 19th, 1942, at 7:30 a.m.,

General Nikolai Vatutin's southwestern

front launched the offensive. The

temperature was -18° C. The 26th and

first tank corps of Romanenko's fifth

tank army penetrated the sectors of the

Romanian third army in a matter of

hours. Three Romanian divisions totaling

27,000 prisoners were captured in the

first 3 days. The tank corps advanced up

to 70 km per day, evading the centers of

resistance. At dawn on November 22nd,

Lieutenant Colonel GN Philippov staged a

daring maneuver. He formed five T34

tanks and two companies of motorized

infantry in close column with all

headlights on and advanced toward the

north bridge at Kalish on the dawn as if

it were a German column returning from

operations. The German centuries let him

pass. The bridge was captured intact.

From the south, General Volsky's fourth

mechanized corps penetrated from the

positions of the Romanian Fourth Army.

On November 23rd, the 26th tank corps

and the fourth mechanized corps joined

near Sovetskcoy.

The German sixth army, 22 divisions,

330,000 men, was encircled.

What followed was one of the darkest

denums in modern military history. Reich

Marshall Guring promised Hitler that the

Luftvafa could supply the Sixth Army by

air to sustain 330,000 men. At least 600

tons per day were needed. The Luftvafa

never exceeded 300 tons on any day. Many

days he delivered less than 100. Soviet

General PSenov organized the first

Soviet systematic air defense system of

the war. concentric rings of

groundcontrolled interceptors and

anti-aircraft batteries. The slow J52s,

the unarmored German transport planes,

flew directly into these defenses. In

the most intense period of the airlift,

the German fourth air fleet lost 488

transport aircraft and converted

bombers, more than 265 J52s, a third of

Germany's complete inventory. Marshall

Fon Mannstein was given command of the

newly created Dawn Army Group with

orders to open a corridor into the

pocket. Operation Wintergitta began on

December 12th. Kchner's 57th Panza Corps

equipped with the newly reinforced Sixth

Panza Division advanced for 8 days

coming within 50 km of the Stalinrad

perimeter. He was arrested by

Malinowski's second guard army. On

January 31st, 1943, the newly promoted

Feld Mascal Friedrich Powus capitulated

to the Soviet 64th Army. On February

2nd, all organized resistance ceased

from 330,000 men captured inside the

pocket. Approximately 91,000 marched

into Soviet captivity. Only 5,000 would

ever return to Germany. The Sixth Army

had ceased to exist. The victory at

Stalingrad demonstrated that the Red

Army was capable of planning and

executing strategic operations on a

scale that the Germans had not

anticipated.

But the weeks that followed also

revealed that old problems persisted.

Stalin's tendency to demand offensives

on too many fronts simultaneously and

the army's inability to sustain deep

exploitations without becoming

overextended.

In February and March 1943, as the Red

Army attempted to exploit Stalingrad

toward a general collapse of Army Group

South, Mannstein executed a masterful

counteroffensive that recaptured Karkov

and halted the Soviet advance on the

Donets River. Soviet units exhausted

after months of offensive operations

lacked the fuel, ammunition, and

reinforcements to withstand the blow of

the SS armor. Lipstandata Dasich Totenov

that Manstein had expertly concentrated.

But from the ashes of Soviet failure in

the spring of 1943, something new was

born. The map of the front with its

peculiar curvature had created a salient

that the Germans could only look at as

an opportunity. The Kursk Bulge, a

pocket 250 km from north to south and

160 from east to west, which pointed

west like a fist. The perfect trap. The

Germans began to plan. The Soviets,

perfectly informed, thanks to their

intelligence service, which included

sources within the German headquarters

itself, prepared to receive them.

By the summer of 1943, the fundamental

strategic decision in the Soviet general

staff was the most counterintuitive of

the war, not to attack. Zhukov and

Vasilevki convinced Stalin that the Red

Army must absorb the coming German

offensive, destroy its offensive

potential, and only then launch its own

counteroffensives.

It was not easy. Stalin had ended two

consecutive winters with the feeling

that victory was within reach and that

he had escaped due to timing errors. But

the logic was irrefutable.

If the Germans were going to attack at

Kusk, let them attack. The Red Army

built in the Kursk salient the most

elaborate defensive network Europe had

ever seen. Eight successive defensive

belts, each made up of minefields up to

3,200 per km of front. anti-tank

positions in depth and concentrated

artillery. Each rifle company had at

least three artillery pieces, nine

anti-tank guns, a self-propelled tank or

gun, and a platoon of combat engineers

within its position defensive. Artillery

fire control exercises were repeated

daily. All the whites were registered.

Every meter of telephone cable was

checked and retested. The battle began

on July 5th, 1943.

Half an hour before the Germans planned

to open their own artillery, Soviet

artillery launched a preemptive counter

blockade. The effect was mixed. German

gunners surprised in the open suffered

badly, but in other sectors, the

concentration positions of the assault

troops were not hit. In the north,

General Mod's 9inth Army attacked the

fronts of Rokosovski's 13th and 70th

armies. In 6 days, with massive support

from Stooka bombers, it only penetrated

between 8 and 15 km inside the

multi-layered Soviet defenses.

Rokosovski counterattacked with the

second tank army. Soviet tank corps

closed the gap, launched counterattacks

from the flanks, and halted the German

advance. On July 12th, model had lost

about 400 tanks and 50,000 casualties.

In the south, Hoth's fourth Panza army

with the fearsome Tiger, Panther, and

Elephant penetrated deeper, up to 35 km.

But Vatin engaged Katakov's first tank

army in an active defense, burying

tanks, launching continuous

counterattacks from the flanks to tire

and degrade the German armor. On July

11th, General Rott Mistrov's Fifth

Guard's tank army arrived on the

battlefield after a 100 km march on

night marches. On July 12th, Brock

Mistrov launched his charge forward,

seeking to reduce the Tiger's technical

advantage by reducing it to short combat

distances where Soviet guns had a chance

to penetrate their armor. The attack was

costly. Rott Mistro lost as many as 400

of his 500 attacking tanks, but it

served its purpose. He pinned down the

second SS Panza Corps and fought it to a

halt by July 13th.

On the same day, July 10th, the Western

Allies had landed in Sicily. Hitler

ordered the withdrawal of the second SS

Panza Corps to be redeployed in Italy.

Manstein protested in vain. On the 18th

of July, the fourth Panzer Army began

its retreat to the initial positions.

For the first time in the war, a major

German offensive had failed to penetrate

Soviet defenses into operational depths.

On July 12th, 1943, while the Germans

were still fighting in the Ksk salient,

the Red Army launched Operation Coutus

against the German oral salient north of

the battlefield. General Bramian's 11th

Guard's army with 170,500

men, 648 tanks, and 3,100 artillery

pieces created a penetration on the

first day that Soviet tank core exploded

before the Germans could react. On

August 5th, General Riyalo's third

guard's tank army entered Orel. By

August 18th, the German salient had been

completely eliminated. Two weeks later,

without giving them time to reorganize,

the Vorones and Stepper fronts launched

Operation Rumiant south of the Kusk

salient. Katakov's first tank army and

Rot Mistrov's fifth guard's tank army

exploited the gap created by the

combined forces. Belgarod fell on August

5th. Kharkif was liberated on August

23rd. The moment the planners of the

German general staff were trying to

understand what had happened in the

north, the south exploded. When they

tried to stabilize the south, the north

moved again. It was the concept of the

successive offensive that Tukachevsky

had articulated in the 1920s and that

now with a mature army and sufficient

mass was beginning to function with

deadly precision. By the end of 1943,

the Red Army was crossing the Daniper at

40 crossing points, most of them

improvised. Soviet engineers built rafts

out of logs and drums of oil under

German fire. The vanguard units were

launched into the Daniper in any

available vessel. On November 6th, 1943,

Rebalco's tanks stormed from the small

bridge head of Lutees, north of Kiev,

and within 3 days had liberated the

capital of Ukraine.

The year 1944 was the year in which the

Red Army proved that it could not only

win battles, but sequence them. Stalin

planned five staggered offensives that

began in the north and worked southward

like a rising tide, preventing the

Germans from concentrating their

reserves at any point before the next

point was hit. In the north on January

14th, 1944, the Leningrad front attacked

from a bridge head at Oranian bomb that

had been secretly reinforced during

weeks of night infiltration.

The second shock army with five rifle

divisions, 600 guns, and several armored

units struck the flank of the German

18th Army, besieging the city. A day

later, the rest of the Leningrad front

joined. By February 20th, the siege of

Leningrad, which had lasted 872 days,

was over. The city that the Germans had

promised not to take but simply to

destroy, had survived. Its citizens had

paid a price that defies comprehension.

More than a million civilians died

during the siege, mostly from

starvation. The winter of 1941 to 1942

was the deadliest. As many as 100,000

people died in January 1942 in

Lenningrad alone. People would collapse

in the street and die before anyone

could help them. The ration of bread for

non-competent workers fell to 250 g per

day. For shop assistants, 125 g. In

Ukraine, the Soviet machine worked with

an efficiency that would have been

unimaginable 2 years earlier. Operation

Corsen Chevchenkovski enclosed two

German core, the 11th and 32nd, in a

pocket near the Daineer. General KV

executed an elaborate deception

operation, simulating the concentration

of the fifth guard's tank army in the

woods west of Kiraovagrad. As that army

moved silently 100 km north on January

24th, the fifth tank and the sixth tank

army closed the encirclement.

The German rescue counterattacks came

within 15 km of the pocket. They never

opened it.

On February 17th, General Stemerman gave

the order to break with the survivors.

At dawn, Soviet tanks and cosacs on

horseback cut off the fugitives. The

Soviets claimed 55,000 Germans killed or

wounded and 18,000 captured. On June

22nd, 1944,

the exact third anniversary of the

German invasion of the Soviet Union, the

operation that many military historians

consider the greatest defeat in the

history of the German army began, not in

Stalingrad, in Bellarus.

Operation Bration was an exercise in

strategic deception and operational

concentration on a scale that the

Germans had not thought possible. While

the German armor watched south,

convinced that the next offensive would

come against Army Group north of

Ukraine, where all German intelligence

pointed to a huge Soviet concentration,

the Stafka had quietly moved the Fifth

Guard's tank army, the Eighth Guard's

Army, and several other frontline

formations from the south into Bellarus

undetected by German intelligence. Feld

Mascal Bush's army group center had 63

divisions defending a front of nearly

600 km. Only four divisions were

available as operational reserves behind

that line. Many units of these so-called

reserves were engaged in antipartisan

operations in the rear. The defensive

systems consisted of a cordon of

trenches with no real depth. Hitler had

designated several cities as fortresses.

Vitbsk, Orcha, Mgalev, Boruisk that were

to hold out indefinitely, though none

had the garrisons, supplies, or defenses

to do so. On the night of June 19th to

20th, Soviet partisans launched a

coordinated wave of attacks on railroad

tracks throughout the rear of Army Group

Center. More than 10,000 sabotage points

were activated simultaneously.

The supply, withdrawal, and

reinforcement lines were paralyzed. On

June 23rd, the armies of four Soviet

fronts attacked at five points

simultaneously. By June 25th, the German

53rd Army Corps was locked up in Vitbsk

with 35,000 men. By 27th June, the First

Guard's tank corps and the 9inth tank

corps had crossed the Berisena and were

beginning to converge on Minsk from the

north and south respectively. The German

Fourth Army, more than 100,000 men, was

enclosed east of Minsk. On July 3rd, the

29th Guards Tank Brigade entered Minsk

from the northwest, while the fourth

Guards Tank Brigade entered Minsk from

the northeast. That same afternoon,

elements of the First Guards Tank Corps

arrived from the south. The city fell in

one morning with no meaningful defense

organized. Within 12 days, Army Group

Center had lost 25 divisions and more

than 300,000 men. In the following

weeks, it would lose more than 100,000

additional pesos. Operation Braton cost

the Germans 400,000 casualties, while

the Red Army suffered approximately

180,000 dead and missing, and more than

500,000 wounded and non-combat

casualties. The operation as a whole

destroyed 28 of the 34 divisions of the

Third Panza Army, the fourth and ninth

armies of Army Group Center, and the

largest defeat in the history of the

German army.

Hoover Institution, Wikipedia.

On July 17th, 1944, 50,000 German

prisoners captured in Minsk were paraded

through the streets of Moscow. It was

not a show of cruelty. It was a

statement. The Soviet Union was telling

the world that the war had changed

direction permanently. While Bagraton

destroyed the center of the German

front, the Red Army executed two

additional offensives that extended the

collapse to the ends of German

controlled territory. In the north,

Operation Lavandir launched three armies

of Marshall Konev's tanks into southern

Poland. Katakov's first guard's tank

army, Reebalo's third guard's tank army,

and Leoshenko's fourth tank army entered

army group north of Ukraine and within

days had crossed the Vistula,

establishing bridge heads on Polish

soil. By July 29th, advanced units of

the First Guards tank army had crossed

the Vistula south of Sandom. In the

south on August 20th, Ukraine's second

and third fronts executed operation

Ayasi Kishenev. In a move that perfectly

reflected Soviet doctrine, they

selectively attacked the weaker Allied

armies of the Vemarked the Romanian

forces. Three Romanian divisions were

disbanded in the first hours. General

Kravchenko's sixth guard's tank army

exploded to the south without

significant resistance.

4 days later on August 23rd, 1944, King

Michael of Romania arrested Marshall

Antonescu and proclaimed Romania's

withdrawal from the Axis. Within hours,

Romanian units that had been fighting

alongside the Germans, began to

surrender to the Soviets. Within days,

they were fighting their former allies.

The German sixth army, the same army

number that had been destroyed at

Stalingrad, was trapped in Kishv's

pocket. By September 5th, its last

elements had been destroyed or captured.

Total axis losses exceeded 400,000 men.

The Red Army advanced into the Balkans

with a speed that turned entire

countries into theaters of operations in

weeks. Bulgaria declared war on Germany

on September 8th. On October 20th, the

Yugoslav partisans and the Third

Ukrainian army entered Belgrade

together. By the end of 1944, the Soviet

army was dominant throughout Eastern

Europe and part of the Balkans.

On January 12th, 1945, exactly 8 days

ahead of schedule, accelerated at the

request of the Western Allies who were

being pushed back by the Arden's

offensive, KV's Ukrainian First Front

attacked from the Sandomir's bridge

head. Artillery preparation was an

instrument of precision, not of brute

destruction. The advanced battalions

first occupied the German frontline

positions with specific supporting

artillery. When the main bombardment

began, it did so with an elaborate

sequence designed to fool the defenders.

First massive fire, then a silence of

several minutes that induced the Germans

to come out of their bunkers to occupy

their firing positions. Then another

bombardment that trapped them in the

open field. At 1400 hours on the first

day, the third guard's rebalo and fourth

Leoshenko guards tank armies were

exploding through the attacking infantry

divisions into the German device. By the

end of the first day, the front had

penetrated 35 km wide and 20 km deep. On

January 14th, Zhukov's Bellarusian first

front attacked from the Magnusu bridge

head. The combined German armies of

Bus's 9inth Army found themselves

crushed under concentrations of up to

250 guns per kilometer of penetration

front. By January 18th, KV was 5 days

away ahead of its program. By January

19th, the former Avitz death camp was

liberated, revealing to the world

something that many already knew, but

whose full scope no one could yet

comprehend.

The fighting of the summer of 1939 to

January 1945 on the Eastern Front had

produced casualties that define the

limits of human language to describe

destruction. Only between the Ukrainian

first and the Bellarian first in

operation Vistulara Oda did the Germans

effectively lose the 9inth army and the

fourth Panza army. Naring and vonalkan

groups, what was left of entire armies,

traversed 400 kilometers of Soviet

controlled territory in a desperate

retreat toward the Oda. By January 31st,

units of Bogdanov's second guard's tank

army had reached the Oda River near

Kustrin. Only 60 km separated these

troops from Berlin, only 60 km, and then

Stalin stopped the advance. For decades,

the official Soviet explanation for this

halt was logistical. Zhukov's right

flank was exposed, supply lines

overextended, troops exhausted after 700

km of advance in 3 weeks. All this was

true. But perhaps there was another

reason. On February 4th, 1945,

the Yaltta conference began. Stalin,

Roosevelt, and Churchill met in Crimea

to decide the postwar world. Among the

most important agreements, a protocol

signed in London in September 1944 had

divided Germany into occupation zones.

The Soviet Union would receive Berlin

and Eastern Germany regardless of who

took the city. That agreement was

confirmed at Yalttar, but Austria, the

Osmark that Hitler had annexed in 1938,

was not included in that protocol.

Austria was technically an undivided

territory. Stalin was the kind of chess

player who never let a piece slip away

without claiming it.

On February 17th, just days after Yaltta

concluded, Stalin issued instructions

ordering the Ukrainian second and third

fronts to prepare an offensive toward

Vienna. The best tank armies, including

Kravchenko's sixth guards tank, were

redirected south instead of west. On

March 6th, 1945, Hitler launched his

last major offensive north of Lake

Balaton in Hungary. 10 Panza divisions,

including the elite 6th SS Panza army of

Dietrich, fresh from the Arden. The

offensive penetrated deep into the

Soviet front on the first day. Tolbukin

begged the Stavka to allow him to commit

the reserves designated for his own

offensive. The Stavka categorically

refused. The front was folded. It didn't

break. By March 15th, the German

offensive had expired. The next day, the

Soviet armies that had absorbed the

heaviest blow turned and launched their

own onslaught. Within days, the sixth SS

Panzer army was retreating faster than

it had advanced. On April 13th,

Kravchenko's tanks entered Vienna.

Austria would be occupied by the Red

Army. Stalin's objective had been

accomplished. The next day, April 14th,

Soviet artillery opened the preliminary

bombardment along the Oda and the nicer.

Berlin was waiting. On April 16th, 1945,

at 3:00 a.m., 143 anti-aircraft search

lights illuminated the German front in

front of Zhukov's positions at the

Kustrin bridge head. Zhukov's plan was

ambitious, to use light to dazzle the

defenders as his infantry advanced. The

plan failed. Dust and smoke from the

preliminary bombardment blocked the

light. The German soldiers were not

dazzled. They were simply pointing at

the light to see where to shoot from.

The attackers advanced towards their own

search lights. Chuikov's eighth army of

the guards got stuck on the CEO heights,

a line of hills that dominated the only

direct road to Berlin. Zhukov, watching

from an advanced command post, lost his

patience. He prematurely committed his

tank armies, which were caught in the

tangle of artillery and supply vehicles

of the rifle divisions. Nine German

divisions held underground, had

succeeded in slowing down all the most

powerful machinery that the Red Army had

ever concentrated on a single front. It

was not until April 20th that Jukov's

forces had penetrated the German Fourth

Defensive Belt and begun the advance

into the eastern suburbs of Berlin.

Meanwhile, to the south, KV was

progressing better. His artillery had

executed a more carefully calibrated

preparation. On the first day, his

forces had crossed the na and penetrated

1.5 km into the second defensive belt.

On April 20th, the third guard's tank

army took the OKH headquarters at Zosan,

30 km from the center of Berlin. Stalin

watched and decided to encourage

competition. In telephone conversations

with Zhukov and KV on April 17th, he

blurred the dividing line between his

two fronts in the vicinity of Berlin.

The first to arrive would take the

prize. On April 24th, Triov's 8th

Guard's army and Katakov's first guard's

tank army joined with the vanguards of

Rebelo's Third Guard's tank army and

Luchinsk's 28th Army southeast of

Berlin. The German 9th Army was

enclosed, the city, too. On April 29th,

the first elements of the 79th Rifle

Corps of the Third Shock Army began the

symbolic assault on the Reichstar. On

April 30th, scouts from the 150th Rifle

Division, waved the Red Standard over

the building. Hitler committed suicide

that same day. On May 2nd, Artillery

General Helmouth Vidling, commander of

the Berlin Garrison, surrendered the

last defenders of the city. The battle

of Berlin [music] had lasted 17 days. It

had cost the Red Army 361,367

sick leave 81,116

of them irreoverable.

The Vermacht lost 458,080

dead and 479,298

prisoners.

The magnitude of the Soviet contribution

to the defeat of Nazism is difficult to

communicate with numbers, but numbers

are all we have. The Eastern Front

absorbed approximately 75 to 80% of

German military power throughout the

entire war. At the most critical moments

of 1941 and 1942, when Britain and the

United States were just beginning to

mobilize, the Soviet Union sustained the

ground war effort against Germany

virtually alone. The Red Army fought the

largest number of battles against the

largest concentrations of the German

army during the entire conflict. Total

Soviet military casualties are estimated

at approximately 8.7 million killed in

combat with an additional 1 to2 million

killed in German captivity.

Soviet civilian casualties directly

caused by the war, massacres,

starvation, conflict related diseases

are estimated at an additional 14 to 17

million. The exact figures will always

vary depending on the methodology and

sources. The commonly cited total figure

of 27 million Soviet dead is a widely

accepted estimate that attempts to

encompass all categories of losses. In

terms of equipment, the Red Army [music]

destroyed or captured according to

estimates by the German general staff's

own estimates 75% of all German

divisions consumed in the war. The

Vermacht suffered losses on the Eastern

Front that increased [music] every year.

1941 saw the greatest German advances

with the lowest relative costs. 1942 was

more costly. 1943 was the year when the

Germans began to lose more than they

could replace. 1944 was the collapse.

1945 was the apocalypse.

What the Vermacht general staff

documented internally and which its

postwar memoirs tried to downplay was

that the Red Army by 1944 and 1945 was

by any objective operational measure a

firstass army. Their commanders, Zhukov,

KV, Rousosovski, Vasilvki, Malininovski,

Tolbukin, Bagram, Vatutin, had learned

under the heaviest fire in human

history, and had survived and grown

precisely because the cost of error was

death, their own or their soldiers, or

boths. War economist Harold James

observed that the Allies bought the

German defeat in Soviet blood and paid

in a can of spam. It's not a perfect

metaphor, but it captures a truth. The

Anglo-American lend lease was crucial in

equipping the Red Army, especially the

49,000 trucks that finally enabled the

deep exploitative logistics that Soviet

doctrine had always demanded, but never

before been able to execute. But the

price in lives was Soviet. The

transformation of the Red Army between

1941 and 1945 is one of the most

remarkable phenomena in military

history. It began as an army decapitated

by purges, caught institutionally

surprised, caught in transition between

doctrines with commanders terrified to

take initiative with communications that

were collapsed under the first shock and

with logistics that could not sustain

the operations that their doctrine

demanded.

Four years later, it was the most

experienced army in the history of

mechanized warfare. Its commanders had

learned to coordinate artillery, armor,

infantry, and aviation in combined

operations on a scale that no other army

had attempted. Their staffs could move

multiple armies in complex

replenishments without enemy

intelligence detecting it. Their

strategic deception operations, the

Masquerovka, were executed with a

sophistication that repeatedly left the

German OKH believing that the attack

would come in the wrong sector. The

price of that learning is incalculable.

Each year of the war, the Red Army

perfected its techniques while paying

with millions of lives. The soldiers

[music] who survived the disasters of

1941 were veterans who had learned with

their blood the lessons that no manual

could teach. The officers who survived

the purges and the first months of the

war had demonstrated under the most

demanding conditions that they were

capable of thinking under extreme

[music] pressure. There is a moment in

the historical record that sums up this

transformation better than any other. It

is June 23rd, 1944, the exact

anniversary of the German invasion. When

2.5 million Soviet soldiers attacked

Army Group Center along 360 mi of front,

the Germans did not see it coming,

although they had been in their

positions for weeks. The deception had

been perfect. The concentration had been

perfect. The execution was in its first

hours perfect. By the time the Germans

understood what was happening, it was

over. That army of 1944 was

unrecognizable compared to that of 1941.

And yet, it was the same army, he had

learned, at a price that no nation

should have to pay for any reason.

Chapter 26.

The last campaign. Manuria. On August

9th, 1945, just 3 months after the

German surrender, the Red Army executed

its last campaign of World War II, the

invasion of Japanese controlled Manuria.

Marshall Vasileski coordinated three

Soviet fronts totaling 90 divisions,

5,000 tanks, and 4,000 aircraft. The

Japanese Quantum Army had 31 infantry

divisions and 12 independent brigades,

but most had been created in the spring

of 1945 with men who had previously been

exempt from service or deemed unfit, and

many were garrison divisions without

significant artillery or anti-tank

capability.

Japanese intelligence had concluded that

the mountainous and inhospitable terrain

of Manuria's flanks would make any

Soviet attack from those directions

impracticable. It was the same mistake

that Army Group Center [music] planners

had made regarding the swamps of

Bellarus 2 months earlier.

General Kravchenko's sixth guard's tank

army crossed the border in the early

dark [music] hours of August 9th and

within 3 days had covered 450 km

crossing the passes of the great king

and range which the Japanese had been

ruled out as impracticable for armor

before Japan understood the threat. Lend

lease's advances had included the

American Sherman ships whose narrower

tracks proved inadequate for the marshy

passages. The T-34s and BT7s took the

lead. By August 15th, Emperor Hirohito

announced the surrender. The Manurian

campaign, which many expected to last

months, was resolved in 11 days of

effective combat. Soviet casualties were

2,31 killed and 24,425

wounded. the Japanese much higher.

Although the imperial capitulation ended

the organized combat before the

encirclements could be completed. The

Manurion campaign was also a laboratory.

Vasilfki reorganized his tank armies

with an experimental structure that

integrated more motorized infantry and

artillery support than any previous

formation. The Sixth Guard's tank army

included 25 armored and 44 motorized

battalions with 1,09 tanks and

self-propelled guns. It was the

structure that the Red Army would study

for its postwar period. More mass, more

balance, more sustaining capacity. The

Red Army's last bullet of World War II

was fired in the Kurill Archipelos in

the weeks following the Japanese

surrender on September 2nd. Soviet and

Japanese soldiers fought on islands that

both knew no longer had any strategic

significance. [music]

It was the inertia of war, which is the

most difficult force to stop that exists

in human nature.

When the war ended in May 1945, the

Soviet Union was the most militarily

powerful state on the face of the earth.

His army had destroyed the Vermacht. It

had occupied half of Europe. He had

liberated or conquered depending on

one's perspective entire nations. He had

shown that the doctrine of operation

depth that Tukachevsky had articulated

in the 1930s was correct and that a

sufficiently large, sufficiently

capable, and sufficiently determined

army could annihilate any force that

opposed it on the ground. And he had 26

million dead. Each medium-sized Soviet

city had lost between 15 and 25% of its

population.

Collective farms operated with 71% of

their 1941 staff. Women, the elderly,

and children sustained the economy while

their sons and husbands died on the

fronts in Poland, Germany, and Austria.

The Red Army returned home, not to the

easy celebration, but to the brutal work

of rebuilding a literally destroyed

country. Many veterans returned to find

that their families had not survived.

The cities in the western part of the

country, Kiev, Minsk, Leningrad,

Stalingrad were ruins. In some regions,

there were no men of working age left.

The memory of that war was imprinted in

the collective DNA of the Soviet nation.

May 9th, Victory Day, became the holiest

holiday on the calendar, not as a

celebration, but as mourning. In Russian

families, everyone can name their dead

in that war. Grandparents,

great-grandparents, uncles who never

returned. The memory of that sacrifice

is the foundation stone on which

everything that came after was built for

better and for worse.

There is an image that persisted in the

Soviet popular imagination. The

photograph of the anonymous soldier who

nails the red banner over the ruins of

the Reichag in Berlin. It didn't matter

if he had been the first or the 10th to

do so, if the photograph was recreated

or authentic, if the soldier had one or

two watches on his wrist, a detail that

the Soviet sensors would correct,

erasing the evidence of looting. What

mattered was the gesture, the flag over

the city that had sent its armies to

destroy them. That gesture cost 27

million lives. Let's not forget that.

Never.