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65th Anniversary of Victory in the Great
On the 9th of May this year, Russia will celebrate a significant and glorious jubilee, the 65th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War. 65 years ago, early in the morning on the 9th of May, the Soviet government announced the victory. Germany had surrendered and that was the end of the Great Patriotic War.
The War began on the 22nd of June 1941 when the Soviet Union was attacked by Nazi Germany. Hitler's Wehrmacht combined with Finnish, Romanian, Bulgarian, Italian and European volunteer SS units numbered close to 4 million soldiers, advancing in a line 1,600 miles long from the Gulf of Finland to the Black Sea. From the very first moments of the German surprise attack, Russian soldiers showed their toughness and their ability to survive despite terrible conditions.
For example, the Russian border fortress in Brest, Poland with 4000 Russian soldiers, was heavily attacked and immediately surrounded when the Germans invaded. Despite being under siege, outnumbered 10 to 1, running out of food, water and ammunition, the Russian defenders fought fierce-
ly for five weeks while the front moved hundreds of kilometres behind them. Later a few survivors continued the resistance underground for months. For the Germans, Brest was a bitter first taste of the type of fierce Russian fighting they would later experience in Stalingrad and elsewhere.
The Battle of Stalingrad continued for 200 days and nights and was one of the longest and the most arduous battles of the Second World War. The battle was also an important turning point in the Great Patriotic War, as it marked the beginning of the Soviet counter-offensive that greatly contributed to the surrender of Nazi Germany around two-and-a-half years later.
The capture of Stalingrad was important to Hitler for two major reasons. Firstly, it was a major industrial city on the Volga River - a vital transport route between the Caspian Sea and northern Russia. As a result, the German capture of the city would effectively sever the transportation of resources and goods to the north. Secondly, its capture would secure the East flank of the German army. The fact that the city bore the name of the leader of the
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Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, would make its capture an ideological and propaganda coup.
In the first days of the fighting, the Germans were confident that although Stalingrad's defenders fought fanatically from the beginning, they would quickly occupy the city. From the Soviet side things didn't look much better.
The 62nd Army was formed to defend the city. Vasiliy Chuikov was in command of this Army. When asked how he approached this task, he responded "We will defend the city or die in the attempt." The 62nd Army's mission was to defend Stalingrad at all costs.
The battle began with heavy bombing of the city. A massive German air bombardment caused a firestorm, killing thousands and turning Stalingrad into a vast landscape of rubble and burnt ruins.
Fighting within the ruined city was fierce and desperate. Stalin's Order No. 227 on the 27th of July 1942 decreed that all commanders who ordered unauthorised retreat would be subject to a military tribunal. "Not a step back!" and "There is no land behind the Volga!" were the slogans. The Germans pushing forward into Stalingrad suffered heavy casualties.
At the end of October 1942, the Soviet people held only a narrow strip and some isolated pockets in Stalingrad and the Germans tried one more major attack in an attempt to take it before winter, but exhaustion and rising shortages of ammunition prevented them. Nevertheless the fighting continued.
Hitler, increasingly frustrated with the standstill, pushed more divisions towards Stalingrad and into the city, weakening the long German flanks in the empty prairies West and South of Stalingrad. He assumed that the Russians were consuming their last remaining supplies and therefore a massive Russian attack on the German flanks was not expected. He was wrong.
The Russian counter attack code named "Uranus" began three months after the battle of Stalingrad had begun. It was the first fully prepared Russian attack in the Second
World War and it was a great success. This operation dramatically turned the tables, as the weakened German flanks collapsed and the German 6th Army was cut off and surrounded inside Stalingrad. By early February 1943, German resistance in Stalingrad had ceased and the 6th Army had been destroyed.
After the failure in Stalingrad, the German Army attempted to capture Kursk. The Germans hoped to shorten their lines by eliminating the Kursk salient (also known as the Kursk bulge). However the Soviet people had excellent intelligence on Hitler's intentions. The Soviet plan was to soak up the German assault in a colossal web of defensive positions and only then to launch their counter-attack. And this strategy was successful.
After the battle of Kursk, the war in the eastern front was a long Russian advance, through which the Russian army regained all the territory that it had lost to the Germans, conquered all of Eastern Europe,
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reached all the way to Germany and to Berlin and won the war. The Germans could no longer attack or stop the Russian advance and were pushed back in a long retreat.
There were many other examples of Russian steadfastness and heroism.
In the city of Smolensk, on the main road to Moscow, the advancing Germans encircled a large Russian force and fighting continued for more than 3 weeks. Though unlike other encirclements, this force did not surrender. It kept fighting fiercely fought back against the Germans and eventually succeeded in breaking out of the encirclement in order to continue fighting. Similar persistent fighting took place in Odessa, Murmansk and especially in Leningrad, which had remained besieged, horribly starved and shelled since the 3rd month of the war. It kept fighting for over two years until the terrible siege was finally ended by the advancing Russian army.
The price of Victory was very high. The fighting involved millions of Soviet troops. Over 26 million Soviet people were killed, out of which 13 million were civilians. About 2000 cities were destroyed.
But despite enormous losses our country won the War. We made a decisive contribution to the common victory over the Nazi Germany. We should be proud of our grandfathers' victory. We should be grateful for all those people, who paid for Victory with their blood and very often with their lives. It is thanks to their heroism that we are able to live today and create the present and the future of our country.
Ключевые слова: the Great Patriotic War, the Battle of Stalingrad, the Battle of Kursk, Victory Day.
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org
http://www.2worldwar2.com
http://www.encyclopedia.com
Д. А. Попова
Сведения об авторе:
Диана Андреевна Попова, Москва E-mail: popova_diane@mail.ru
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