RED STORM - The Soviet Assault on Europe 1943-44.

As the exhausted German tank crews and Panzer grenadiers licked their
wounds after the Battle of Kursk July 1943, few of them can have realised was 
that from that point on, despite many brilliant local successes to prove
that the Wehrmacht was still a formidable fighting force, the initiative
had passed inexorably to the Russians.
Even while the German tigers and Panthers were locked in a life and 
death struggle with the Soviet T-34's and KV-1's at Kursk, the Russians
had launched a major new offensive designed to drive Army Group Centre
out of its salient around Orel.Three Soviet Fronts (equivalent to German
Army groups though smaller) rained down a series of hammer blows designed
to keep the Germans off balance. The Russians tied up the German reserves
and weakened Army Group centre's line of defence.
The initial Russian advance around Orel was slowed by torrential rain
could but not be halted. Field Marshall Model (German) in command of
Second Panzer Army and 9th Army conducted a skilful retreat back to a
defence line termed the Hagen line abandoning Orel on the 4th of
August. By the 18th August he was back on the Hagen line  gaving lost the
best part of 15 Divisions.
Menawhile on July 17, all hell broke loose on the Donbass as the South-
West Front of Marshall Malinovsky struck out against Army Group A and the
South Front launched an attack against the Germans holding the line of
the River Mius. In the Kuban the German 17th Army was facing big attacks from
the Russian Caucasus front.
By the beginning of September, the 17th Army's position was becoming
increasingly perilous because Russian forces were pressing towards the 
kneck of the Crimea, and if it were sealed off a major part of Army
Group A would be lost - the Kuban bridgehead was partlyevacuated and the 
troops ferried over to the Crimea.

Farther north, occupying a line in between Army Groups A and Centre,
von Manstein's Army Group South enjoyed a brief respite while Model and
Kliest (A) endured the brunt of the Soviet offensive.However on the
3rd August the Soviet Voronezh and Steppe fronts attacked Army
Group South. manstein had been weakened by the need to send troops in
as reinforcements as well as the transfer of the crack SS Division
Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler to Italy, but his Fourth Panzer Army and
Army Detachment Kempf were still formidable opponents.By the end of the
4th ofAugust, Belgorod had fallen and and by the 8th, elements of the
Voronezh front had advanced 60 miles to Bogodukhov driving a wedge
into Army Group South.
Yet again the Waffen SS divisions - Das Reich,Totenkopf and Wiking
were called upon to act as fire-brigades and launched a vigorous counter
attack on the 11th. After six days of furious battle, they were
contained by the Russians who then launched a major attack on the big
industrial centre of Kharkov from which the Germans retreated.
A new offensive on August 26th attacked all along the front and
the eastern Ukraine was cleared .On September 22nd, the Red
Army reached the River Dnieper, Germany's fortified 'Eastern Rampart' and 
threw bridgheads across that river. On September 25th, Smolensk fell
once more into Soviet hands and by the 9th October, the Germans
had evacuated the  whole of the Kuban Peninsula to which they were
never to return - Hitler's foothold in the Caucasus had been lost
forever. On October 25th the industrial city of Dnepropetrovsk in
the Ukraine fell and on November 6th, Kiev, capital of the Ukraine
was again in Russian hands and this was a very severe blow for the
Germans.
On December 24th 1943, the Sovoet Winter offensive was lanched
and in January Kirovograd was retaken, Leningrad relieved from its
999 day siege and on the 29th January, two German army corps were
surrounded at Cherkassy with staggering losses in men and material.
On March 24th,1944, Soviet troops cross the River Dniester one of the
last major obstacles to the red tide now sweeping through Western
Russian. On April 10th the Russians took Odessa in the Crimea amd 
cleared the Crimea on May 9th with the German surrender at 
Sevastapol.
The Germans had conducted a skilful and tenacious retreat but in the
face of the ever growing might of the Red Army it was only a matter
of time before the constant Russian offensives took the tide
of war on to German soil......