Beyond Barbarossa: The Eastern Front of World War 2

After their stunning, bloody defeat at Stalingrad, the Germans withdrew west to the Donets River in Ukraine, and the Red Army swept ahead as much as 800 km. But the Germans were still a potent force, and in March 1943, were ready to retake Kharkiv. 

Map 1: The counter-attack in the Donbas

Map 2: The advances on Kharkiv 

Map 3: Withdrawal from the Rzhev salient

Maps 4 and 5: The front in March 1943

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After the 6th Army's surrender at Stalingrad, rapid, far-ranging mobility returns to the war on the Eastern Front, as German and Soviet forces advance and retreat hundreds of kilometres.

Map 1: The Kuban Bridgehead

Map 2: Operation Star 

Map 3: Von Manstein's counter-offensive 

A Tiger tank near Kharkiv, 1943

Source: Pinterest.

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The Red Army finally scores two major victories in January 1943 — in the two cities where it mattered most. 

Map 1: End of the battle of Stalingrad

 Map 2: Operation Iskra 

  Source: Wikipedia

Photos: The surrender at Stalingrad 

 Left to right: Field Marshal F. Paulus, C-in-C, 6th Army; Gen. W. Schmidt, Chief of Staff; Col. Adam, Paulus' adjutant. 

 General Konstantin Rokossovsky, commander of the Don Front that captured the 6th Army in Stalingrad. 

 The aftermath in Stalingrad. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

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The Germans in the Stalingrad cauldron reject the Soviets' final offer of surrender. The Red Army responds by crushing the cauldron. 

Map 1: The end of the Kessel

Source: Military History Now 

The ultimatum to Stalingrad: 

https://www.stalingrad.net/russian-hq/the-russian-ultimatum/rusultimatum.html 

Images:

3-engine German transport plane lands at Pitomnik airfield.

Red Army soldiers attack in the ruins of Stalingrad.

Sources:

Antony Beevor, Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege 1942–1943. Penguin Books, 1998.

Antony Beevor, The Second World War. London, UK: Little, Brown and Co., 2012.

William Craig, Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad. Old Saybrook, CT, USA: Konecky & Konecky, 1973.

Anthony Tucker-Jones, Slaughter on the Eastern Front: Hitler and Stalin’s War 1941–1945. Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: The History Press, 2017

Sound effects by Zapsplat. 

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For the Germans of the 6th Army, Christmas 1942 was a hungry Yule in the  freezing Cauldron.

Map 1: Operation Uranus, November and December 1942 

Map 2: Operation Winter Storm: The German relief attempt 

Map 3: Operation Winter Storm stalled 

Failure: Luftwaffe supplies the trapped 6th Army in the Kessel

Failure: Operation Winter Storm 

German soldiers in the Kessel/Cauldron

Red Army soldier writes home, December 1942 

By December, the Red Army soldiers' morale was very different from the Germans'.

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Warfare usually slows down in winter. Not so in Russia in 1942. The Germans launch another huge attack to relieve the 6th Army in Stalingrad. But the Red Army has its own ideas. 

Map 1: The long, long German lines to Stalingrad

Map 2: Operation Uranus

Source: Awesome stories

Map 3a: Operation Winter Storm

Source: https://alchetron.com/cdn/operation-winter-storm-ee2a434c-cf0a-4ef4-a3c3-e87d2e84c08-resize-750.jpeg 

Map 3b: Operation Winter Storm fails

Source: WWIIincolor.com 

Historical pictures

A Panzer III on the steppe in southern Russia, December 1942 

Source: Wikimedia Commons 

Soviet forces in southern Russia, winter 1942.

Source: Wikimedia Commons 

Sources:

Antony Beevor, Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege 1942–1943. Penguin Books, 1998.

Antony Beevor, The Second World War. London, UK: Little, Brown and Co., 2012.

Anthony Tucker-Jones, Slaughter on the Eastern Front: Hitler and Stalin’s War 1941–1945. Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: The History Press, 2017

Sound effects by Zapsplat. 

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As three Red Army Fronts move on the German flanks west and south of Stalingrad, two more attack the Rzhev-Vyazma salient west of Moscow. Is it a diversion, or is Mars the twin of Uranus?

Map 1: The Rzhev-Vyazma salient

Map 2: Operation Mars

Historical images

Workers from Moscow suburbs handing over new tanks to Soviet servicemen. Source: Commons:RIA Novosti

Sources

Antony Beevor, Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege 1942–1943. Penguin Books, 1998.

Antony Beevor, The Second World War. London, UK: Little, Brown and Co., 2012.

Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin's General: The Life of Georgy Zhukov. London, UK: Icon Books, 2012.

David Glantz, Zhukov's Greatest Defeat: The Red Army's Epic Disaster in Operation Mars, 1942. Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 1999.

Anthony Tucker-Jones, Slaughter on the Eastern Front: Hitler and Stalin’s War 1941–1945. Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: The History Press, 2017

Sound effects by Zapsplat. 

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The Soviet high command's strategy to defeat the Germans at Stalingrad took the invaders by surprise. 

Map 1: The German flanks

Map 2: Operation Uranus in action

Red Army soldiers in winter camouflage charge across the steppe

The T-34 in action in Uranus 

Northern and southern pincers meet 

Red Army commanders from the 5th Tank Army and the 4th Mechanized Corps meet on the steppe near Kalach, 23 November 1942. The end of the beginning. 

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The third installment describing the biggest single battle in history: the siege of Stalingrad. 

By November 1942, the casualties for attackers and defenders was unsustainable for both sides. The Soviet high command, Stavka, makes a new plan. 

Pavlov's House

Map 1: The city of Stalingrad

Map 2: The plan for Operation Uranus

Sources

Antony Beevor, The Second World War.

Antony Beevor, Stalingrad: the Fateful Siege 1942–1943. .

William Craig, Enemy at the Gates.

Anthony Tucker Jones, Slaughter on the Eastern Front: Hitler and Stalin’s War 1941–1945.

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In the autumn of 1942, the German 6th Army with Romanian, Hungarian and Italian armies in support, ground into Stalingrad—a hell of their own making. 

Map: Stalingrad city layout

Photos

Red Army soldier prepare to defend Stalingrad suburb

Stalingrad on fire after bombing, 2 October 1942 

The Red October Factory's ruins became hiding places for Red Army defenders

Loading a Katyusha rocket launcher

Katyusha from military museum

General Friedrich Paulus 

Second from left, Gen. Vasily Chuikov in his headquarters in Stalingrad, 1942.

Sources

Antony Beevor, Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege 1942–1943. Penguin Books, 1998.

Antony Beevor, The Second World War. London, UK: Little, Brown and Co., 2012.

William Craig, Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad. Old Saybrook, CT, USA: Konecky & Konecky, 1973.

Anthony Tucker-Jones, Slaughter on the Eastern Front: Hitler and Stalin’s War 1941–1945. Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: The History Press, 2017

Sound effects by Zapsplat. 

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