Russia+fights+back

RUSSIA STRIKES BACK ﻿  Read the following article, and answer the questions on your [|form]] While Germany enjoyed initial success in their attack, the further they pushed, the further they got from their supplies and the more they were surrounded by hostile Russians. Also, they found out rather quickly that Russia gets pretty cold in the winter...

Furthermore, Stalin had recovered from the shock of Hitler's betrayal, and by now he had a grip on the situation. He quickly and very forcefully redirected everything in Russia towards making the Germans suffer for every minute they were in Russia. Even if he couldn't beat them in battle right away, he would wear the Germans down until his Red Army did stand a chance.

And this strategy finally paid off in 1942 (a year after the Nazis invaded), during the **Battle of Stalingrad.**

Turning Points: The progress of the whole war was reversed once Hitler set in motion one of the most bitter conflicts of the 20th century - the Battle of Stalingrad. In the spring of 1942, he launched an attack in what he believed would be his final offensive in the East. One of his targets was Stalingrad, which was on the way to Russia’s valuable oil-fields.



After more than a year of bitter defeats, the Soviet army was exhausted and demoralized, but it started to try a new tactic - the fighting retreat - which put a strain on German supply lines. Before, Soviet soldiers were instructed to die before retreating. As a result, millions were killed without a chance, due to Germany’s superior technology. Now, the Russians were ready to try something new. Instead of standing their ground (and dying, which meant a whole new army had to be created), now Russians were told that they SHOULD retreat... but they should keep shooting at the Germans as they did. This kept more Russians alive, and slowed down the Germans.

Also, Stalin ordered that every Russian citizen should do everything possible to stop the German advance. For example, thousands of Russians dug miles and miles of ditches so deep that German tanks would get caught in them.



When the Germans reached the city of Stalingrad, the bloodiest battle in history officially began. The Germans dropped more than 1,000 tons of bombs on the city, but Stalin forbade any evacuation from the city, even of children. Surrender, he said, was not an option. Stay, fight, and die. Soviet reinforcements had to cross the Volga river and many of them drowned under the weight of their clothing and weapons. The average life-expectancy of a Soviet soldier during the battle of Stalingrad was just 24 hours. By the end of the battle, one million Soviet soldiers had died on the Stalingrad front.

The ferocity of the fighting at Stalingrad shocked the Germans, who were used to being able to use their tanks and planes on open ground (Blitzkrieg) to move quickly. All of that stopped here in Stalingrad. The city streets were too narrow and full of rubble for the German tanks to be used. Suddenly the Germans were faced with hand-to-hand combat, often only yards away from the enemy. The Russian strategy was to get so close to the Germans that they could not use their planes without bombing their own men, too. Soviet veteran Suren Mirzoyan remembers the blood lust of the time. 'I was like a beast. I wanted only one thing - to kill. You know how it looks when you squeeze a tomato and juice comes out? Well, it looked like that when I stabbed the Germans. Blood everywhere. Every step in Stalingrad meant death. Death was in our pockets. Death was walking with us.'

The battle went back and forth, with both sides pouring everything they had into it. Streets taken by Germany during the day were re-taken that night by Russia. Over two million men would fight in this battle, and many of those would perish, before Germany simply could not keep up this match of endurance. While Stalin could keep reinforcing the city, Germany’s army was being bled dry... literally. On January 31st 1943, German General Paulus surrendered and 91,000 Nazis were taken prisoner. Most would never return.



This battle was crucial. Almost the entire German force in Russia was now lost. With the momentum now on their side, Russia would have an easy job driving what little remained of Germany’s army out of Russia. Operation Barbarossa was now clearly a failure.

**Russia's victory **

After Stalingrad, the Germans barely stood a chance. Russia’s armies were massive, and were unlike before, they now had confidence in their victory. Now it was the German army’s turn to be on the run, and to fight without any hope of winning. By the spring of 1944, the Soviets had driven Germany completely out of Russia, and were now ready to invade Germany itself. Hitler ordered the citizens of Germany to destroy anything that the enemy could put to good use. He now used the same terrible policy that Stalin had tried earlier against him. He ordered everything to be burned in Germany, so that the Russians could not use it. He ordered his soldiers to stand and fight to the death, rather than pulling back to fight again later. In one Russian attack in the summer or 1944, three times as many Germans died than did at Normandy with D-Day. Hitler now knew that the end was here... he was going to lose the war.

Final victory came for Russia when Soviet soldiers hoisted the red flag over the Berlin Reichstag in April 1945.

The occupying Russian troops celebrated, and many took their revenge on the German citizens for what the Nazis had done when they had occupied Russia- there were hundreds of thousands of women raped and murdered in those months. When Stalin was told how some of the Red Army soldiers were treating German refugees, he is reported to say: 'We lecture our soldiers too much; let them have some fun for awhile.' Vladlen Anchishkin, a Soviet soldier, sums up the horror of the whole event, when he tells how he took personal revenge on German soldiers: 'I can admit it now, I was in such a state, I was in such a frenzy. I said, 'Bring them here for an interrogation' and I had a knife, and I cut him. I cut a lot of them. I thought, 'You wanted to kill me, now it's your turn.'

WWII was over, thanks in large part to Hitler’s disastrous decision to invade the USSR.