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Battles and operations of the Soviet–German War

  • Battle of UmanThe Battle of Uman began on the 15th of July 1941 and lasted just over three weeks, yet in that time the Wehrmacht encircled and destroyed two entire Soviet…
  • Budapest offensiveThe Budapest offensive began on the 29th of October 1944, as Soviet and Romanian armies launched a sustained assault against Hungary and its Axis partners.
  • Operation KutuzovOperation Kutuzov opened on the 12th of July 1943, named after General Mikhail Kutuzov, the commander credited with driving Napoleon's army out of Russia in…
  • Leningrad–Novgorod offensiveThe Leningrad-Novgorod strategic offensive began on the 14th of January 1944 with a thunderclap of artillery: 220,000 shells poured onto German lines along a…
  • Vyborg–Petrozavodsk offensiveSoviet propaganda listed the Vyborg-Petrozavodsk offensive as one of Stalin's ten blows, the string of major offensives that reshaped the Eastern Front in…
  • East Prussian offensiveThe East Prussian offensive officially ended on the 25th of April 1945. Yet some German units under Wehrmacht command refused to surrender until the entire…
  • First Jassy–Kishinev offensiveThe First Jassy-Kishinev offensive is one of the least-documented major operations of the entire Soviet-German War. Named after two cities in the region…
  • East Pomeranian offensiveThe East Pomeranian offensive was a Soviet Red Army campaign that changed the final shape of World War Two in Europe. From the 10th of February to the 4th of…
  • Silesian offensivesThe Silesian offensives were not the main event. They were the protection racket for it. In the winter of 1945, the Soviet Red Army had its eyes fixed on…
  • Smolensk operationThe second Smolensk operation began on the 7th of August 1943. General Andrei Yeremenko commanded the Kalinin Front while Vasily Sokolovsky led the Western…
  • Battle of Smolensk (1941)The Battle of Smolensk began on the 10th of July 1941, roughly 400 kilometers west of Moscow, and what unfolded over the next two months would alter the…
  • Crimean offensiveThe Crimean offensive began on the 8th of April 1944 and ended on the 12th of May. In just over a month, the Red Army's 4th Ukrainian Front drove the German…
  • Battle of Narva (1944)The Battle of Narva lasted from the 2nd of February to the 10th of August 1944, and it ran far deeper than a contest over a single Estonian city.
  • Battle of Białystok–MinskThe Battle of Białystok-Minsk began on the 22nd of June 1941, the moment Germany launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union.
  • Battle of the DnieperThe Battle of the Dnieper began on the 26th of August 1943, when Red Army divisions started moving along a 1,400 kilometer front.
  • First Battle of KharkovIn the fall of 1941, Kharkov stood as a vital rail and air link connecting Ukraine to Crimea, the Caucasus, the Dnieper region, and the Donbass.
  • Operation UranusOperation Uranus began at 07:20 Moscow time on the 19th of November 1942, when Soviet artillery commanders received a single codeword: "Siren".
  • Vienna offensiveJoseph Stalin reached an agreement with the Western Allies prior to April 1945 concerning the relative postwar political influence of each party in much of…
  • Battle of StalingradThe Battle of Stalingrad was a fight that consumed an entire city and changed the course of the Second World War. By the time it ended on the 2nd of February…
  • Case BlueCase Blue, known in German as Fall Blau, was the Wehrmacht's grand plan for the summer of 1942 on the Eastern Front. It ran from the 28th of June to the 24th…
  • Operation MarsSoviet forces launched Operation Mars in the early hours of the 25th of November 1942. The goal was to encircle and destroy the German Ninth Army within the…
  • Siege of Sevastopol (1941–1942)On the 4th of July 1942, the last organized defenses of Sevastopol collapsed after 250 days of siege. When German and Romanian forces finally raised their…
  • Battle of KurskThe Battle of Kursk holds a distinction no other engagement in all of recorded warfare can claim: it is the single largest battle in human history.
  • Battle of Kiev (1941)The Battle of Kiev produced what historians have called the largest encirclement in the history of warfare by number of troops.
  • Battle of KönigsbergThe Battle of Königsberg took four days, but a siege had gripped the city since late January 1945 long before that. Soviet forces of the 3rd Belorussian…
  • Prague offensiveThe Prague offensive was the last major military operation of World War II in Europe, fought between the 6th and the 11th of May 1945.
  • Operation BagrationOperation Bagration began on the 22nd of June 1944, exactly three years to the day after Germany launched its invasion of the Soviet Union.
  • Siege of LeningradThe Siege of Leningrad lasted 872 days. From September 1941 to January 1944, the Soviet Union's second largest city was encircled by German and Finnish…
  • Battle of the Kerch PeninsulaOn the evening of the 25th of December 1941, Soviet forces packed into small fishing trawlers and began crossing the Kerch Strait from the Taman Peninsula.
  • Belgrade offensiveThe Belgrade offensive, fought from the 15th of September to the 24th of November 1944, was one of the most complex joint military operations of the Second…
  • Crimean campaignThe Crimean campaign began on the 26th of September 1941, when German and Romanian forces swept onto the Crimean Peninsula as part of Operation Barbarossa.
  • Dnieper–Carpathian offensiveThe Dnieper-Carpathian offensive, fought from late December 1943 to early May 1944, was one of the largest military operations in the history of the Second…
  • Second Battle of KharkovThe Second Battle of Kharkov began at 6:30 in the morning on the 12th of May 1942, with a concentrated hour-long artillery bombardment crashing into German…
  • Second Jassy–Kishinev offensiveThe Jassy-Kishinev offensive began on the 20th of August 1944, and within two days the entire German-Romanian front line had collapsed.
  • Vistula–Oder offensiveThe Vistula-Oder offensive of January 1945 was the fastest large-scale advance in the history of the Eastern Front. In just over two weeks, the Red Army…
  • Siege of BudapestThe Siege of Budapest lasted exactly fifty days. When it ended on the 13th of February 1945, more than eighty percent of the city's buildings had been…
  • Third Battle of KharkovThe Third Battle of Kharkov began on the 19th of February 1943, when Field Marshal Erich von Manstein launched a counterstrike that few in the Red Army…
  • Winter campaign of 1941–1942The winter campaign of 1941-1942 began on the 5th of December 1941, and the Soviet Union was fighting for its life. Nazi Germany had launched Operation…