tjen223's government blog: EXTRA EXTRA CREDIT

The Forgotten Front (Retreat)

In the winter of 1941 to 1942 the Soviets became well supplied with weapons, munitions and well trained troops from Siberia. The Russians began their counter offensive against the Germans that winter trying to push out of the nearly encircled cities. With the Germans weakened by the cold the Soviets begin to gain their first victories on the eastern front.

With the coming of spring German troops were forced to fall back. This proved to be more difficult than it sounds, mainly because of the mud. Russia at this period in history lacked a decent road system. Most roads turned in to goo when the ground unfroze from the long winter. It was hard to move troops and artillery because the artillery was pulled by horses and troops had to walk through the slop all day exhausting them.

Fun fact: the Germans cut down scores of roadside trees in Russia to make the roads with them.

The Germans were continually but slowly pushed back by the ever growing mass off Soviet troops and machinery. The German situation was not helped by the attack by the allied forces in France. This split the German army in two, it was a devastating blow to their reinforcements. The Russians also began to fight more fierce than every do to learning of the atrocities done to Jews, civilians, and prisoners by German rear guard and SS troops behind German lines.

Not so fun fact: Roughly 225,000 Jews were executed while Germany occupied soviet soil.

Eventually the soviets entered Germany out numbering the German soldiers nearly ten to one.

The soviet advanced through the weakened German defenses with ease, now fighting mostly tired disheartened soldiers, old men, and young boys. The German army prayed to be captured by the allies moving in from the west to avoid the stern hand of Russian captivity.

Fun fact: The German army reenlisted officers that had previously been discharged for wounds ( mainly amputees) to lead the remaining troops.

Orders for the German soldier were not to retreat at all costs and hold the city of Berlin, the last holdout of German troops. On April 29,1945 Adolf Hitler supreme leader of the German army committed suicide. Berlin was taken by the Soviet Union on May, 12,1945 ending the war in Europe. Now the Germans were free of socialist control but stuck behind the iron curtain of communism.

I believe the Russian Campaign was a campaign of bravery, tactics, and brutality. It was a side of war much more primitive than that on the western front. The people, the weapons and the landscape of this battle are all things that intrigue me and I wish to learn much more about this time in history.

fun fact: Some German prisoners were not released by the Soviets until 1956 and all soviet soldiers who had been outside the Soviet Union were forced into prison camps for two years by their own government for “reeducation”.

Good books about the Eastern front: