Nearly four years after the commencement of Operation Barbarossa, the German Army stood on the verge of annihilation. What Adolph Hitler expected in 1941 to be a quick victory for National Socialism over its archenemy, "Jewish Bolshevism", had become a brutal war of attrition. By April 1945, the remnants of the German war machine had been pushed back into the Fatherland where they would fight a final battle for survival against the endless masses of the Red Army. The Germans constructed their last prepared defensive positions before Berlin along the Seelow Heights over looking the level plain of the Oder River valley. From their positions on the high ground, the German defenders faced the largest concentration of force to space in the history of warfare. Looking up to the Heights, the restless soldiers of the 1st Byelorussian Front commanded by Marshal G. K. Zhukov were positioned to destroy the German defenders and demonstrate their proficiency in modern combined arms operations to the rest of the world. During this devastating battle, the weight of Soviet combined air and ground operations proved successful despite tactical errors and personality conflicts within the Soviet command structure. Along the Seelow Heights and in the Oderbruch Valley, the new methods of modern combined arms operations reached their zenith as the largest concentration of force in the history of modern warfare opened the final offensive of World War II.
The early years of World War II in Europe saw the evolution of a new kind of warfare exemplified by Germany's decisive victories over Poland, France and the Balkans. The new tactics of the German armed forces utilized a revolutionary doctrine known as Blitzkrieg or lighting war. Blitzkrieg as defined by author and Eastern Front historian Christopher Duffy was, "an offensive way of fighting, which uses the combined efforts of tanks, mechanized infantry, mobile artillery and combat engineers, and calls on the greatest possible close air support."[1] These same tactics were used with great success against Stalin's armies in the opening days of Operation Barbarossa. By the end of 1941, German Army Group North had surrounded and begun a siege of the city of Leningrad, and Army Group Center was approaching the gates of Moscow. Subsequent German offensives in the spring of 1942 by Army Group South drove the Soviet Army back to the City of Stalingrad. The power and effectiveness of the Blitzkrieg seemed unstoppable. However, Soviet leadership above all had learned from their costly mistakes, and by the winter of 1942/43 they were ready to unleash their own version of Blitzkrieg on the Nazi invader.
Read Full Article »
