6 battles of the Great Patriotic War

 1. The Moscow Battle

About seven million people from both sides were drawn into the battle for the capital of the Soviet Union, which lasted from October 1941 to April 1942. One of the largest battles in the history of mankind began with the heavy defeats of the Red Army on the outskirts of the main city of the country. In the Vyazma pocket alone, Soviet troops lost about 900,000 killed, wounded, missing and captured. At the beginning of December, at the most critical moment of the battle, the Wehrmacht stood only a few dozen kilometers from Moscow, preparing for a decisive attack. "It can be assumed that at the moment the enemy does not have any significant full-strength formations to use as a reserve," the Supreme Command of the Ground Forces (OKH) stated on December 3. As it soon became clear, the Germans underestimated the capabilities of the Red Army. Already on December 5 and 6, having accumulated large reserves in the capital, the Soviet troops launched a large-scale counteroffensive. The Wehrmacht, exhausted by the fierce resistance of the enemy, wavered and began to rapidly roll back from the capital. The offensive of the Red Army, which liberated several regions and pushed the Germans back 150-250 km from Moscow, was stopped only in the spring of 1942.

2. The Stalingrad Battle

The most important battle of the Second World War became one of the bloodiest in the history of mankind. Of the over two million soldiers who took part on both sides, about a million died in battle, died of wounds in hospitals and went missing. The loss of the city on the Volga could have turned into a terrible catastrophe for the Soviet Union: the Wehrmacht would have been able to free up large reserves to strike Moscow from the south, as well as continue its "campaign for oil" in the Caucasus, which then accounted for more than 70 percent of the all-Union production of "blood of war." By mid-November, the Soviet troops, pressed against the Volga, held only a few small beachheads on the shore. The Germans had victory in their pocket, but on November 19, 1942, during Operation Uranus, the Red Army suddenly struck at the weak Romanian divisions covering the flanks of the 6th and 4th Panzer armies stuck in the city. A 300,000-strong German group was trapped, dissected and destroyed in early 1943. The Stalingrad triumph marked the beginning of a radical turning point in World War II.

3. The Kursk Battle

In the summer of 1943, German troops attempted to regain the strategic initiative in the war lost after Stalingrad. About four million people, more than 13,000 tanks and self-propelled guns, as well as 12,000 aircraft took part in the bloody battles on the Kursk Bulge on both sides. With two converging strikes, the Wehrmacht sought to encircle and destroy the Red Army forces in the area of the Kursk Bulge, but encountered stubborn and fierce resistance from the Soviet troops. "It was a real nightmarish hell," recalled tankman Vladimir Tolstikov of the tank battle near Prokhorovka: "We got so close to the Fascist tanks that it was impossible to fire from cannons, jumped out of the car and fought the enemy in hand—to–hand combat, fought with anything - a sledgehammer, a knife, a pistol. God took pity on me in this difficult battle..." Suffering heavy losses, the German troops were able to advance only a few tens of kilometers. Having stopped the offensive, they were soon forced to go on the defensive. "With the termination of Operation Citadel, the initiative in the Eastern Theater of Military Operations finally passed to the Soviet side," Field Marshal General Erich von Manstein noted.

4. The Dnieper Battle

Retreating under the onslaught of the Red Army, German troops rushed to the Dnieper, along which ran a powerful line of defensive fortifications — Panther-Wotan or the Eastern Rampart. The task of the Soviet command was to prevent the enemy from gaining a foothold on this important strategic line. Up to four million soldiers from both sides took part in the battles for the Dnieper. Arriving on shore, the Soviet divisions and regiments did not wait for a general order and immediately began crossing. "The perseverance, courage and heroism of the Soviet troops, the high operational skill of the commanders and superiors of all degrees ensured the brilliant success of the crossing and the capture of bridgeheads on the right bank of the river," recalled Marshal Ivan Konev, commander of the Steppe Front at that time: "The troops of the front in fierce battles not only held, but also successfully expanded all captured bridgeheads by turning them into strategic ones." Despite the fact that the number of such bridgeheads was small in the end, they played a key role in the campaign for the liberation of right-bank Ukraine in 1944. The violation of the integrity of the Eastern Wall finally deprived the Third Reich of the chance for a protracted war on the territory of the Soviet Union.

5. Operation "Bagration"

In the summer of 1944, the Red Army showed the Wehrmacht what a Soviet blitzkrieg was. On June 23, the large-scale operation Bagration began in Belarus, during which the 800,000-strong army group Center confronted Soviet troops numbering over 1.5 million people. As a result of the coordinated actions of the four Soviet fronts, the competent use of aviation and artillery, and the skillful use of large tank formations, the enemy's powerful defenses were breached. In two months of fighting, the Red Army advanced 600 km to the west, liberated the territory of Belarus and part of Poland, reaching the approaches to Warsaw and East Prussia. "The rapidity of your armies' advance is amazing," U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt wrote to Stalin on July 21, 1944. Army Group Center, which lost about half a million soldiers killed, wounded, missing and captured, was completely defeated. However, the Red Army also paid a heavy price for storming the enemy's defensive lines: 178,000 irretrievable losses, as well as 587,000 wounded.

6. The Battle for Berlin

Despite the fact that the Third Reich was living out its last days in the spring of 1945, the Germans were able to concentrate a group of 800,000 to a million soldiers to defend their capital. Two and a little million Red Army soldiers, in turn, had to break into the "lair of the beast". Breaking through the deeply echeloned German defenses and repelling numerous enemy counterattacks, the Soviet troops encircled the city on April 25. "The storming of Berlin was distinguished by heavy street fighting," recalled Vladimir Antonov, who served in the 301st Infantry Division: "We saw rifle platoons attacking basements, windows and doors of buildings under cover of all types of fire. There was a battle for every basement and floor, for every house and block. Everyone was looking forward to the appearance of a red flag from an upper-floor window or on the roof, which meant the building was taken..." The encircled garrison surrendered on May 2. Individual units that did not want to lay down their arms and tried to break through to the west were destroyed and dispersed. During the Berlin operation, the Red Army lost more than 80,000 soldiers killed.