In the last months of 1942 the German forces were encircled at Stalingrad.
At first the Germans hoped to reverse the situation by relieving the pocket and maintaining
it by air supply.
However, as 1943 began the Germans were forced to abandon their plans to relieve the city
and were pushed back from its approaches.
Despite that they ordered their troops in Stalingrad to hold out as long as possible
in order to tie up Soviet units and buy time.
The advance of the Red Army created the possibility of the German troops in the Caucasus to be
cut off.
They ordered a full withdrawal from the region, while their forces in the North kept the path
of retreat open.
The main effort of the Red Army was, however, directed against the Hungarian and Italian
units on the Northern flank.
Their lightly equipped forces were unable to hold the line and were forced into a harsh
winter retreat.
Most of them lost their combat capabilities or were destroyed, leaving a large gap in
the Axis lines.
The German units in the North had also to retreat, but they were able to keep their
battle worthiness intact.
At the same time the Germans managed to pull back part of their forces from the Caucasus.
The remaining troops formed a bridgehead on the Coast to retain the opportunity for a
summer push towards the oil fields.
During January both sides had their full attention set on the Southern sector.
The lack of the German reserves allowed the Red Army to achieve two small, but significant
victories.
In the North they reestablished a land connection to Leningrad and in the Central part of the
front they captured the railway junction of Velikiye Luki.
For the Axis, the situation in the South continued to deteriorate.
The German troops in Stalingrad surrendered, freeing up significant number of Soviet units.
The Red Army forces moving west into the Ukraine were not very formidable, but the large gap
in the Axis line left them little opposition.
The Soviet command decided to exploit this opportunity and attempted to cut off almost
all of the army group South.
In response the Germans used the forces retrieved from the Caucasus to extend their front eastwards
and pulled their main force west.
The Red Army moved further west to bypass their line and encircle them, but this overextended
their forces.
The Germans counterattacked from two sides and disorganized their forward detachments.
Having caught the Soviet Southern flank off balance, the Germans now wanted to push in
both from North and South at the same time destroying the whole Soviet force.
They began to muster their units for the Northern attack.
In the South their troops continued onwards retaking Kharkov.
But in the North they failed to concentrate a force sufficient for the attack, though
they were able to stop the Red Army’s advance.
By this time both the Soviets and the Germans had exhausted their forces and went on the
defensive.
As the fighting in the South had drawn all the German reinforcements, the Red Army prepared
to launch a major offensive in the North and Center.
The Germans realized the danger and responded by abandoning their most vulnerable positions
before the Soviets had finished deployment and the attacks that took place failed to
achieve their goals.
Being confronted with a much stronger German line, the Red Army abandoned its offensive
plans and the Eastern front became quiet.
With the end of the winter campaign, the Axis had lost the capabilities necessary to knock
the Soviet Union out of the war by capturing the areas vital for its war effort.
Now they planned to win through attrition by holding on to the occupied areas and inflicting
vast casualties to the attacking Red Army.
In this way they could drain the areas remaining under the Soviet control dry of resources
and create a stalemate.
The Red Army, on the other hand, set out to take back the economically vital western lands
of the Soviet Union, which would give it a strategic advantage.
However this time they would play it safe.
Their previous offensives had been threatened by the German armoured counterattacks and
this time they decided to receive them on prepared defences.
At the same time with building up the fortifications, the Red Army formed a massive offensive force.
As part of their defensive strategy the Germans planned a number of limited offensives to
encircle Soviet forces and shorten their defensive line.
The most promising of these was the encirclement of the Soviet units in the Kursk salient.
It took three months for the German build-up to match the gradually improved Soviet defences
and in the beginning of July they launched their attack.
The Germans made some headway, but were ultimately stopped dead in the depth of the Soviet defenses.
Having, for the time, tied up the strongest German armoured units, the Red Army now released
its forces for the offensive.
The attacks were to be carried out in consecutive stages along several sectors of the front.
First, the Red Army struck into the rear of the German troops North of Kursk.
Being unable to contain the attack and wishing to avoid the danger of encirclement, the Germans
began the process of evacuating the salient.
At the same time the Red Army launched an attack in the South.
The Germans redeployed their forces and contained it.
By this time the Soviet units South of Kursk had finished reorganization and pushed towards
Kharkov.
The Germans redeployed their forces to the sector, but failed to hold the city, though
succeeded in temporarily containing the Soviet advance.The situation in the North was more
under the German control.
The Red Army failed to break through the German defences near Smolensk.
At the same time the Germans had finished their withdrawal to the new line, strengthening
their position further.
By this time the Germans had been able to maintain the balance and check the Red Army’s
attacks.
However, the renewal of the Soviet offensive near the sea broke the German line and forced
them into a large scale retreat.
Even more, the concurrent offensive against the lightly fortified German positions on
the former western edge of the Kursk salient resulted in a breakthrough the Germans weren’t
able to contain.
They now realized that they lacked the troops necessary to contain the Soviets on their
present line and ordered a retreat to a much better defendable Panther-Wotan position,
that was centered around the Dnieper river and its tributaries.
They also abandoned the bridgehead towards the Caucasus.
At the same time the Soviet breakthrough near Smolensk hastened the retreat of Army Group
Center.
With the German forces taking a stronger defensive position, the Red Army had to concentrate
its main effort on a shorter section of the front.
They decided to make regaining Western Ukraine the main priority.
First, however, we’ll take a look at the central part of the front, where the Red Army
had outrun the Germans to the Dnieper and had established a bridgehead on the junctions
of the Army Groups Center and South.
They planned to trap the whole Army Group Center by combined strikes from the bridgehead
and from a breakthrough in the North, while the other forces would pin the Germans in
place.
In October, while part of the Red Army was still recovering from the pursuit, battles
were fought in order to secure the bridgehead, meanwhile the other forces began creating
a breach in the Northern part of the front.
With their main focus being in the South, the Red Army had established several bridgeheads
over the Dnieper in Ukraine.
After they had got their heavy equipment over the river, they attempted local breakouts,
first of which took place in the South.
The Germans were able to contain it.
Then the Soviets broke through the German land front severing their connection with
the Crimea.
They proceeded with another breakout attempt near Kiev, but the Germans redeployed their
troops and pushed it back towards the river.
Having not fully succeeded in the breakouts the Red Army adopted a more systematic approach,
slowly but surely expanding its bridgeheads and massing troops for a larger breakout.
In the Center the Red Army was now better prepared, which allowed it to increase the
pressure.
It resulted in a breakthrough in the North.
The Germans held on to the flanks in the hopes of conducting a counterattack and cutting
the Soviet forces off.
Then the Soviets launched their main attack from the southern bridgehead.
It broke through the lines and gained limited success, though it failed to achieve its objective.
The Germans were able to prevent a deeper breakthrough by abandoning territory and pulling
back their front line.
As 1943 ended the Red Army was ready for the winter offensive, which would encompass the
whole Soviet-German front.
In Ukraine the Germans had concentrated their defences in the great bend of the Dnieper.
This allowed the Red Army to catch them off balance by mounting a breakout from the Kiev
bridgehead.
The Germans managed to contain their advance only with great difficulties.
They wanted to keep their last position near the Dnieper river as a staging area for a
possible counter attack and did not evacuate it despite the evident threat.
The Red Army exploited this by cutting the salient off with a two pronged attack.
The Germans launched a rescue attempt and were able to retrieve part of the encircled
forces, but without their heavy equipment.
With the German attention directed towards the pocket, the Soviet forces launched attacks
on the flanks threatening to sever the connection between the Army Groups South and Center.
Meanwhile Soviet troops were continuing with their attempt to encircle Army Group Center
itself.
In the North the Germans realized they lacked the force to cut off the Red Army’s breakthrough
and abandoned the exposed salients.
The Red Army now attempted to encircle the town of Vitebsk, but it was not met with success.
Most of the Red Army’s offensive assets were deployed in the South and as a result
the goals of the Soviet forces in the Center proved to be beyond their means to achieve
them.
As a result the offensives took limited territory at the price of large casualties and were
eventually abandoned.
During the summer the Soviet pressure on the Army Group North had not been as strong as
against the other Army Groups and the Germans had dispatched a lot of its strength to other
fronts.
Despite its greatly reduced strength the Army Group had not withdrawn to the shorter line
and still held its forward positions.
The Red Army attempted to encircle part of the German forces during the winter offensive.
The Germans evaded the encirclement and then attempted to resist on the new positions,
but they lacked the strength to do so and it was decided to withdraw to the Panther
line.
Both armies settled on the new line and during the remaining part of the winter the Red Army
undertook only some limited attacks in order to probe the German defences.
The Red Army was planning to achieve its main success in the South.
During the preceding half year the Soviet forces were slowly but steadily consolidating
their positions on the west bank of the Dnieper and by the beginning of March this process
was complete.
The German Army Group South was by then pushed into the open plains and did not retreat behind
any other natural obstacle, leaving it vulnerable.
The Soviets wanted to pin the whole Army group to the Carpathian mountains or the Black Sea
and destroy it.
The Axis were unable to resist the Soviet Tank Armies and the whole front fell back.
Near the Black Sea they began pulling back their forces, but in the West the Red Army
encircled several German Corps.
Despite that, the Soviets made the mistake of expecting the Germans to retreat southwards,
which allowed them to extract most of the trapped force back to their front lines.
Then the Red Army captured the Crimea as the last operation of the Winter Campaign.
The Soviet Union had taken back its most economically valuable lands and gained the resources it
needed to defeat Germany completely.
However, with the front being still more close to Moscow than to Berlin, the question was,
how long shall it take.
The Germans, meanwhile, had other problems to deal with.
The Western Allies had landed in Italy and were preparing to do the same in France.
The race to Berlin was on.