1.
Eastern Front (World War II)
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The battles on the Eastern Front constituted the largest military confrontation in history. They were characterized by unprecedented ferocity, wholesale destruction, mass deportations, and immense loss of life due to combat, starvation, exposure, disease, and massacres. The Eastern Front, as the site of nearly all extermination camps, death marches, ghettos, of the estimated 70 million deaths attributed to World War II, over 30 million, many of them civilian, occurred on the Eastern Front. The Eastern Front was decisive in determining the outcome of the European portion of World War II and it resulted in the destruction of the Third Reich, the partition of Germany for nearly half a century and the rise of the Soviet Union as a military and industrial superpower. The two principal belligerent powers were Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, along with their respective allies. Though never engaged in action in the Eastern Front, the United Kingdom. The joint German–Finnish operations across the northernmost Finnish–Soviet border and in the Murmansk region are considered part of the Eastern Front, in addition, the Soviet–Finnish Continuation War may also be considered the northern flank of the Eastern Front. Despite their ideological antipathy, both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union shared a dislike for the outcome of World War I. The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact signed in August 1939 was an agreement between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. It contained a secret protocol aiming to return Central Europe to the pre–World War I status quo by dividing it between Germany and the Soviet Union, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania would return to Soviet control, while Poland and Romania would be divided. I need the Ukraine so that they cant starve us out, the two powers invaded and partitioned Poland in 1939. The annexations were never recognized by most Western states, the annexed Romanian territory was divided between the Ukrainian and Moldavian Soviet republics. Adolf Hitler had argued in his autobiography Mein Kampf for the necessity of Lebensraum, acquiring new territory for Germans in Eastern Europe, Wehrmacht officers told their troops to target people who were described as Jewish Bolshevik subhumans, the Mongol hordes, the Asiatic flood and the red beast. The vast majority of German soldiers viewed the war in Nazi terms, Hitler referred to the war in unique terms, calling it a war of annihilation which was both an ideological and racial war. In addition, the Nazis also sought to wipe out the large Jewish population of Central, after Germanys initial success at the Battle of Kiev in 1941, Hitler saw the Soviet Union as militarily weak and ripe for immediate conquest. On 3 October 1941, he announced, We have only to kick in the door, thus, Germany expected another short Blitzkrieg and made no serious preparations for prolonged warfare. Throughout the 1930s the Soviet Union underwent massive industrialization and economic growth under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, Stalins central tenet, Socialism in one country, manifested itself as a series of nationwide centralized Five-Year Plans from 1929 onwards. It served as a testing ground for both the Wehrmacht and the Red Army to experiment with equipment and tactics that they would later employ on a wider scale in the Second World War
2.
Operation Arctic Fox
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Operation Arctic Fox was the codename given to a World War II campaign by German and Finnish forces against Soviet Northern Front defenses at Salla, Finland in July 1941. The operation was part of the larger Operation Silver Fox which aimed to capture the port of Murmansk. Arctic Fox was conducted in parallel to Operation Platinum Fox in the far north of Lappland, the principal goal of Operation Arctic Fox was to capture the town of Salla and then to advance in the direction of Kandalaksha to block the railway route to Murmansk. As a joint operation by German and Finnish forces, it combined experienced Finnish arctic troops with relatively unsuitable German forces from Norway and they managed to capture Salla after fierce fighting, but the German troops were unable to overcome the old, pre-war Soviet border fortifications further east. The Finnish units were able to make progress, and came to within 30 km of the Murmansk railway. Strong Soviet reinforcements prevented any further advance, because of the escalating situation further south in Central Russia, the Germans were unwilling to assign more units to this theatre, calling an end to their offensive. While the Finns were reluctant to continue the attack on their own due to pressure from the United States. Arctic Fox ended in November 1941, when both sides dug in at their current positions, the German High Command included Finland in its plan for its major offensive against the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa. A joint Finnish-German offensive named Operation Silver Fox was planned to support the Germanys main effort in central Russia. The goal of Silver Fox was to capture or disable the port of Murmansk, the southern pincer of the attack was named Operation Arctic Fox and was launched from the Kemijärvi region of Central Finland against the defenses at Salla. Salla was occupied by the Soviet during invasion of Finland in 1939, German XXXVI Corps, consisting of both German and Finnish troops, was the main German force of the operation. The corps was commanded by General Hans Feige and was subordinate to the Army of Norway which was commanded by Nikolaus von Falkenhorst, XXXVI Corps was supported by Finnish III Corps commanded by Hjalmar Siilasvuo. Planning for the operation started in in December 1940, on 8 December 1940 Hitler issued Directive No. 21, which detailed his plan for Operation Barbarossa as whole, the detailed operational plan was created by Nikolaus von Falkenhorst with Army of Norway staff in January 1941. German units assigned to the operation were transported to the Arctic in successive operations Blue Fox 1, the 169th Division and Feiges headquarters were transported by ship and train to Rovaniemi. From there they joined Finnish forces and took position for the offensive under the guise of border exercises, the SS-Infantry Kampfgruppe Nord was created, consisting of the 6th and 7th Motorized SS Infantry Regiments, two artillery battalions, and one reconnaissance battalion. This unit was primarily a police unit and unsuited for arctic warfare. During transit from Norway to Finland a transport ship caught fire and 110 soldiers died, the unit was renamed the 6th SS Mountain Division Nord and was led by General Demelhuber
3.
Operation Bagration
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The Soviet Union achieved a major victory by destroying the German Army Group Centre and completely rupturing the German front line. On 23 June 1944, the Red Army attacked Army Group Centre in Byelorussia, by 28 June, the German Fourth Army had been destroyed, along with most of the Third Panzer and Ninth Armies. The Red Army exploited the collapse of the German front line to encircle German formations in the vicinity of Minsk and destroy them, with Minsk liberated on 4 July. With the end of effective German resistance in Byelorussia, the Soviet offensive continued further to Lithuania, Poland and Romania over the course of July and August. The Red Army successfully used the Soviet deep battle and Maskirovka strategies for the first time to full extent, Army Group Centre had previously proved tough to counter as the Soviet defeat in Operation Mars had shown. Operation Suvorov had seen Army Group Centre itself forced to retreat westwards from Smolensk during the autumn of 1943. By the middle of June 1944, the Western Allies on the Cotentin Peninsula were just over 1,000 km from Berlin, for the Third Reich, the strategic threats were about the same. Army Group Centre only had a total of 580 tanks, tank-destroyers and they were opposed by over 9000 Soviet machines. The redeployment of forces from Army Group Center left only 80 men defending every kilometer of the front line, the operation enabled the next operation, the Vistula–Oder Offensive, to come within sight of the German capital. The Soviets were initially surprised at their success of the Belorussian operation which had nearly reached Warsaw, the Soviet advance encouraged the Warsaw uprising against the German occupation forces. The military tactical operations of the Red Army successfully avoided the mobile reserves of the Wehrmacht, despite the massive forces involved, Soviet front commanders left their adversaries completely confused about the main axis of attack until it was too late. The Russian word maskirovka is roughly equivalent to the English word camouflage, during World War II the term was used by Soviet commanders to describe measures to create deception with the goal of inflicting surprise on the Wehrmacht forces. The Oberkommando des Heeres expected the Soviets to launch a major Eastern Front offensive in the summer of 1944, the Stavka considered a number of options. The timetable of operations between June and August had been decided on by 28 April 1944, the Stavka rejected an offensive in either the Lvov sector or the Yassy-Kishinev sectors owing to the presence of powerful enemy mobile forces equal in strength to the Soviet strategic fronts. The first two options were rejected as being too ambitious and open to flank attack, the third option was rejected on the grounds the enemy was too well prepared. The only safe option was an offensive into Belorussia which would enable subsequent offensives from Ukraine into Poland, the Soviet and German High Commands recognised western Ukraine as a staging area for an offensive into Poland. This was the purpose of Bagration. In order to maximize the chances of success, the maskirovka was a double bluff, the Soviets left four tank armies in the Lvov-Peremyshl area and allowed the Germans to know it
4.
Battle of Narva (1944)
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The campaign took place in the northern section of the Eastern Front and consisted of two major phases, the Battle for Narva Bridgehead and the Battle of Tannenberg Line. The Soviet Kingisepp–Gdov Offensive and Narva Offensives were part of the Red Army Winter Spring Campaign of 1944, following Joseph Stalins Broad Front strategy, these battles coincided with the Dnieper–Carpathian Offensive and the Lvov–Sandomierz Offensive. A number of volunteers and local Estonian conscripts participated in the battle as part of the German forces. The Soviet units established a number of bridgeheads on the bank of the river in February while the Germans maintained a bridgehead on the eastern bank. Subsequent attempts failed to expand their toehold, German counterattacks annihilated the bridgeheads to the north of Narva and reduced the bridgehead south of the town, stabilizing the front until July 1944. The Soviet Narva Offensive led to the capture of the city after the German troops retreated to their prepared Tannenberg Defence Line in the Sinimäed Hills 16 kilometres from Narva, in the ensuing Battle of Tannenberg Line, the German army group held its ground. Stalins main strategic goal—a quick recovery of Estonia as a base for air and seaborne attacks against Finland, as a result of the tough defence of the German forces the Soviet war effort in the Baltic Sea region was hampered for seven and a half months. Terrain played a significant role in operations around Narva, the elevation above sea level rarely rises above 100 meters in the area and the land is cut by numerous waterways, including the Narva and Plyussa Rivers. The bulk of the land in the region is forested and large swamps inundate areas of low elevation, the effect of the terrain on operations was one of channelization, because of the swamps, only certain areas were suitable for large-scale troop movement. On a strategic scale, a choke point was present between the northern shore of Lake Peipus and the Gulf of Finland. The 45 kilometre wide strip of land was bisected by the Narva River and had large areas of wilderness. The primary transportation routes, the Narva–Tallinn highway and railway, ran on an east-west axis near, there were no other east-west transportation routes capable of sustaining troop movement on a large scale in the region. On 14 January 1944, the Leningrad Front launched the Krasnoye Selo–Ropsha Offensive, on the third day of the offensive, the Soviets broke through German lines and pushed westward. The Army Group North evacuated the population of Narva. By 1944 it was fairly routine practice for Stavka to assign its operating fronts new, the rationale was that relentless pressure might trigger a German collapse. This was applied in consonance with his rationale that, if the Red Army applied pressure along the entire front. The Soviet winter campaign included major assaults across the entire expanse the front in the Ukraine, Belorussia, breaking through the Narva Isthmus situated between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Peipus was of major strategic importance to the Soviet Armed Forces. For the Baltic Fleet trapped in a bay of the Gulf of Finland
5.
Battle of Stalingrad
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Marked by fierce close quarters combat and direct assaults on civilians by air raids, it is often regarded as one of the single largest and bloodiest battles in the history of warfare. German forces never regained the initiative in the East and withdrew a vast military force from the West to replace their losses, the German offensive to capture Stalingrad began in August 1942, using the German 6th Army and elements of the 4th Panzer Army. The attack was supported by intensive Luftwaffe bombing that reduced much of the city to rubble, the fighting degenerated into house-to-house fighting, and both sides poured reinforcements into the city. By mid-November 1942, the Germans had pushed the Soviet defenders back at great cost into narrow zones along the west bank of the Volga River. On 19 November 1942, the Red Army launched Operation Uranus, the Axis forces on the flanks were overrun and the 6th Army was cut off and surrounded in the Stalingrad area. Adolf Hitler ordered that the stay in Stalingrad and make no attempt to break out, instead, attempts were made to supply the army by air. Heavy fighting continued for two months. By the beginning of February 1943, the Axis forces in Stalingrad had exhausted their ammunition, the remaining units of the 6th Army surrendered. The battle lasted five months, one week, and three days, elsewhere, the war had been progressing well, the U-boat offensive in the Atlantic had been very successful and Rommel had just captured Tobruk. In the east, they had stabilized their front in a running from Leningrad in the north to Rostov in the south. There were a number of salients, but these were not particularly threatening, neither Army Group North nor Army Group South had been particularly hard pressed over the winter. Stalin was expecting the main thrust of the German summer attacks to be directed against Moscow again, with the initial operations being very successful, the Germans decided that their summer campaign in 1942 would be directed at the southern parts of the Soviet Union. The initial objectives in the region around Stalingrad were the destruction of the capacity of the city. The river was a key route from the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea to central Russia and its capture would disrupt commercial river traffic. The Germans cut the pipeline from the oilfields when they captured Rostov on 23 July, the capture of Stalingrad would make the delivery of Lend Lease supplies via the Persian Corridor much more difficult. On 23 July 1942, Hitler personally rewrote the operational objectives for the 1942 campaign, both sides began to attach propaganda value to the city based on it bearing the name of the leader of the Soviet Union. The expansion of objectives was a significant factor in Germanys failure at Stalingrad, caused by German overconfidence, the Soviets realized that they were under tremendous constraints of time and resources and ordered that anyone strong enough to hold a rifle be sent to fight. If I do not get the oil of Maikop and Grozny then I must finish this war, Army Group South was selected for a sprint forward through the southern Russian steppes into the Caucasus to capture the vital Soviet oil fields there
6.
Belgrade Offensive
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Soviet forces and local militias launched separate but loosely cooperative operations that undermined German control of Belgrade and ultimately forced a retreat. Martial planning was coordinated evenly among command leaders, and the operation was largely enabled through tactical cooperation between Josip Tito and Joseph Stalin that began in September 1944. These martial provisions allowed Bulgarian forces to engage in operations throughout Yugoslav territory, the spearhead of the offensive was executed by the Soviet 3rd Ukrainian Front in coordination with the Yugoslav 1st Army Group and XIV Army Corps. There were additional skirmishes between Bulgarian forces and German anti-partisan regiments in Macedonia that represented the campaigns southernmost combat operations. By the summer of 1944, the Germans had not only lost control of all the mountainous area of Yugoslavia but were no longer able to protect their own essential lines of communication. Another general offensive on their front was unthinkable, and by September it was clear that Belgrade, in August 1943, the German Wehrmacht had two army formations deployed in the Balkans, Army Group E in Greece and the 2nd Panzer Army in Yugoslavia and Albania. Army Group F headquarters in Belgrade acted as a joint high command for these formations, as well as for Bulgarian, after the collapse of the uprising in December 1941, anti-Axis activity in Serbia decreased significantly, and the focus of resistance moved to other, less populated areas. Consequently, although Serbia had great significance to the Germans, very few troops remained there. In the following years, Tito repeatedly tried to reinforce the forces in Serbia with experienced units from Bosnia. From the spring of 1944, the Allied command had assisted in these efforts, in July 1944, German defenses began to fail. After the failure of Operation Rübezahl in Montenegro in August 1944, Army Group F command responded by deploying additional forces, the 1st Mountain Division arrived in Serbia in early August, followed by the 4th SS Panzergrenadier Division from the Thessaloniki area. The Allied command, and the NOVJ supreme command, predicted this scenario, on 1 September 1944, a general attack from the ground and from the air on the German transport lines and installations began. These attacks largely hindered German troop movements, with units disassembled and tied to the ground, in the meantime, the 1st Proletarian Corps, the main partisan formation in Serbia, continued with reinforcing and developing its forces and with seizing positions for the assault on Belgrade. On 18 September Valjevo was taken, and on 20 September Aranđelovac, Partisans achieved control of a large area south and southwest of Belgrade, thus forming the basis for the future advance towards Belgrade. But the combined actions of Yugoslav partisans and Allied air forces impeded German movements with Ratweek, as a result of the Bulgarian coup détat of 1944, the monarchist-fascist regime in Bulgaria was overthrown and replaced with a government of the Fatherland Front led by Kimon Georgiev. Once the new government came to power, Bulgaria declared war on Germany, under the new pro-Soviet government, four Bulgarian armies,455,000 strong were mobilized and reorganized. In early October 1944, three Bulgarian armies, consisting of around 340,000 men, were located on the Yugoslav – Bulgarian border. By the end of September, the Red Army 3rd Ukrainian Front troops under the command of Marshal Fyodor Tolbukhin were concentrated at the Bulgarian-Yugoslav border
7.
Battle of Brody (1941)
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It is known in Soviet historiography as a part of the border defensive battles. Although the Red Army formations inflicted heavy losses on the German forces, 1st Panzer Group, led by Generaloberst Paul Ludwig Ewald von Kleist, was ordered to secure the Bug River crossings and advance to Rovno and Korosten with the strategic objective of Kiev. It deployed two Corps forward and advanced between Lviv and Rovno in an attempt to cut the Lviv–Kiev railway line, thus driving a wedge along junction point between the Soviet 5th and 6th Armies. The Southwestern Front, under the command of General Mikhail Kirponos, had received intelligence on the size. They were surprised when Stavka ordered a general counter-attack under the title of Directive No.3 on the authority of Chief of General Staff Georgy Zhukov, most of the headquarters staff were convinced that the strategy would be to remain in a defensive posture until the situation clarified. The general orders of Directive No, six Soviet mechanized corps, with over 2,500 tanks, were massed to take part in a concentric counter-attack through the flanks of Panzer Group 1. To achieve this, the 8th Mechanized Corps was transferred from the command of the 26th Army, positioned to the south of the 6th Army and this essentially brought all the mobile assets of the Southwestern Front to bear against the base of von Kleists thrust toward Kiev. The primary German infantry formation operating on this sector of the front, at the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, German armor was composed of a mix of Czech and German tanks, as well as small numbers of captured French and British tanks. Furthermore, nearly 50% of the tanks deployed by the Wehrmacht were the virtually obsolete Panzer I, of the 4000 armored vehicles available to the Wehrmacht, only 1400 were the new Panzer III and Panzer IV. In the first few hours of the invasion, German commanders were shocked to find that some Soviet tanks were immune to all anti tank weapons in use by the Wehrmacht, during pre-war exercises, Heinz Guderian noted that on their own, tanks were very vulnerable to infantry. While dispersing tanks among infantry formations solved many of the tanks weaknesses, at the beginning of June, the Red Army included over 19,000 tanks in their inventory, most of them light tanks such as the T-26 or BT-7. The front armor of the T-26 was just 15mm thick, furthermore, the poor design of Soviet shells meant that most rounds shattered on contact, rather than detonating. During the interwar years, far sighted military theorists such as Mikhail Tukhachevsky came to conclusions as Heinz Guderian regarding tanks in modern warfare. However, during the Great Purge Tukhachevsky was executed, Red Army tanks were dispersed widely throughout infantry divisions in the 1930s. Then came the shock of the Fall of France, however, by June 1941 this process was barely half complete, so many of the 10,000 tanks in the Red Army arsenal were still dispersed among infantry divisions on the eve of the invasion. This ensured that if the Red Army had a unified command. At full strength, a German Panzer Division was a formation with between 150 and 200 tanks, motorized infantry, motorized artillery, and motorized engineers. To support its logistical needs, each division included 2000 trucks
8.
Siege of Budapest
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The Siege of Budapest or the Battle of Budapest was the 50-day-long encirclement of the Hungarian capital of Budapest by Soviet forces near the end of World War II. Part of the broader Budapest Offensive, the siege began when Budapest, defended by Hungarian and German troops, was first encircled on 26 December 1944 by the Red Army, during the siege, about 38,000 civilians died from starvation and military action. The city unconditionally surrendered on 13 February 1945 and it was a strategic victory for the Allies in their push towards Berlin. Suffering from nearly 200,000 deaths in three years fighting the Soviet Union, and with the front lines approaching its own cities, as political forces within Hungary pushed for an end to the fighting, Germany preemptively launched Operation Margarethe 19 March 1944, and entered Hungary. Upon hearing of Horthys efforts, Hitler launched Operation Panzerfaust to keep Hungary on the Axis side, Horthy and his government were replaced by Hungarist Ferenc Szálasi, led by the far-right National Socialist Arrow Cross Party. The besieging Soviet forces were part of Rodion Malinovskys 2nd Ukrainian Front, arrayed against the Soviets was a collection of German Army, Waffen-SS, and Hungarian Army forces. The Siege of Budapest was one of the bloodiest sieges of World War II, the Red Army started its offensive against the city on 29 October 1944. More than 1,000,000 men, split into two operating maneuver groups, advanced, the plan was to isolate Budapest from the rest of the German and Hungarian forces. On 7 November 1944, Soviet and Romanian troops entered the suburbs,20 kilometers from the old town. The Red Army, after a pause in hostilities, resumed its offensive 19 December. On 26 December, a road linking Budapest to Vienna was seized by Soviet troops, the nazi Leader of the Nation, Ferenc Szálasi, had already fled 9 December. As a result of the Soviet link-up, nearly 33,000 German and 37,000 Hungarian soldiers, as well as over 800,000 civilians, became trapped within the city. Refusing to authorize a withdrawal, Adolf Hitler had declared Budapest a fortress city, Waffen SS General Karl Pfeffer-Wildenbruch, the commander of the IX Waffen SS Alpine Corps, was put in charge of the citys defenses. Budapest was a target for Joseph Stalin. The Yalta Conference was approaching and Stalin wanted to display his strength to Churchill. He therefore ordered General Rodion Malinovsky to seize the city without delay, during the night of 28 December 1944, the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Front contacted the besieged Germans by radios and loudspeakers and told them about a negotiation for the citys capitulation. The Soviets promised to provide humane conditions and not to mistreat the German and Hungarian prisoners. They also promised that the groups would not bring weapons
9.
Case Blue
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Case Blue, later renamed Operation Braunschweig, was the German Armed Forces name for its plan for the 1942 strategic summer offensive in southern Russia between 28 June and 24 November 1942. Initially, the offensive saw gains, with an advance into the Caucasus capturing large areas of land, however, the Red Army defeated the Germans at Stalingrad, following Operations Uranus and Little Saturn. This defeat forced the Axis to retreat from the Caucasus, only the city of Kursk and the Kuban region remained tentatively occupied by Axis troops. On 22 June 1941 the Wehrmacht had launched Operation Barbarossa with the intention of defeating the Soviets in a Blitzkrieg lasting only months, the Axis offensive had met with initial success and the Red Army had suffered some major defeats before halting the Axis units at Moscow. Although the Germans had captured vast areas of land and important industrial centers, in the winter of 1941–42 the Soviets struck back in a series of successful counteroffensives, pushing back the German threat to Moscow. Despite these setbacks, Hitler wanted a solution, for which he required the oil resources of the Caucasus. By February 1942 the German Army High Command had begun to develop plans for a campaign to the aborted Barbarossa offensive – with the Caucasus as its principal objective. On 5 April 1942, Hitler laid out the elements of the now known as Case Blue in Führer Directive No.41. The main focus was to be at the capture of Caucasus region, the Caucasus, a large, culturally diverse region traversed by its eponymous mountains, is bounded by the Black Sea to the west and the Caspian Sea to the east. South of the lay the densely populated region of Transcaucasia, comprising Georgia, Azerbaijan. This heavily industrialized and densely populated area contained some of the largest oilfields in the world, Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, was one of the richest, producing 80 percent of the Soviet Unions oil—about 24 million tons in 1942 alone. The Caucasus also possessed plentiful coal and peat, as well as nonferrous, manganese deposits at Chiaturi, in Transcaucasia, formed the richest single source in the world, yielding 1.5 million tons of manganese ore annually, half of the Soviet Unions total production. The Kuban region of the Caucasus also produced large amounts of wheat, corn, sunflower seeds and these resources were of immense importance to Hitler and the German war effort. Of the three tons of oil Germany consumed per year,85 percent was imported, mainly from the United States, Venezuela. An indication of German reliance on Romania is evident from its oil consumption, in 1938, in late 1941, the Romanians warned Hitler that their stocks were exhausted and they were unable to meet German demands. Whereas in 1941 most units fought on the central front supporting Army Group Centre,1,610 aircraft, initially commanded by Löhr, on 20 July 1942, Wolfram Freiherr von Richthofen took command of Luftflotte 4. Blau II, Sixth Army, commanded by Friedrich Paulus, would attack from Kharkiv and move in parallel with Fourth Panzer Army, to reach the Volga at Stalingrad. Blau III, First Panzer Army would then strike south towards the lower Don River, with Seventeenth Army on the western flank, the strategic objectives of the operation were the oilfields at Maykop, Grozny and Baku
10.
Battle of the Dukla Pass
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It was part of the Soviet East Carpathian Strategic Offensive that also included the Carpathian-Uzhgorod Offensive. The German resistance in the eastern Carpathian region was much harder than expected, five days to Prešov turned into fifty days to Svidník alone with over 70,000 casualties on both sides. Prešov that was to be reached in six days remained beyond the Czechoslovaks grasp for four months, in summer 1944, Slovaks rebelled against the Nazis and the Czechoslovak government appealed to Soviets for help. On 31 August, Soviet marshal Ivan Konev was ordered to prepare plans for an offensive to destroy Nazi forces in Slovakia, the plan was to push through the old Slovak-Polish border in the Carpathian Mountains via the Dukla Pass near Svidník to penetrate into Slovakia proper. In the meantime, however, the Germans had fortified the region, the Soviet operation plan called for the Soviet forces to cross the pass and capture the town of Prešov within five days. The operation started on 8 September and it took the Soviets three days to take Krosno. The town of Dukla was seized on 21 September, the area of the former Czechoslovak state border—heavily fortified by the Germans—was captured on 6 October, it took almost a month for the Soviet forces to reach Slovakia. The Dukla operation did not end when the Soviets forced the pass, the combat zone shifted to Eastern Slovakia, with Soviet forces trying to outflank and push back the German forces, still strong and having many fortified positions. South of the pass and directly west of the village of Dobroslava lies an area which has come to be known as the Valley of Death, here Soviet and German armor clashed in a miniature reenactment of the great tank battle of Kursk. Soviet and Czechoslovak forces would enter Svidník on 28 October, a major German fortified position near the pass, Hill 532 Obšár, would be secured as late as on 25 November 1944. Another factor was that the Slovak insurgent forces failed to secure the other side of the pass, as planned by the Slovak and Soviet commanders during early preparations. In 1949, the Czechoslovak government erected a memorial and cemetery southeast of the Dukla border crossing, in Vyšný Komárnik and it contains the graves of several hundred Soviet and Czechoslovak soldiers. Several other memorials and cemeteries have also erected in the region. In 1956, the football club ATK Praha changed their name to Dukla Praha in honour of those who had fallen in the battle, boje o Przełęcz Dukielską Wierchy t
