Red Army into the Reich

Simon Forty, Patrick Hook, Nik Cornish

• Publisher: Casemate
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781636240220
• eBook ISBN: 9781636240237
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

A detailed narrative of how the Red Army pushed west and into Berlin in 1945. The last year of the war saw Russian offensives that cleared the Germans out of their final strongholds in Finland and the Baltic states, before advancing into Finnmark in Norway and the east European states that bordered Germany: Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. By spring 1945 the Red Army had reached to Vienna and the Balkans, and had thrust deep into Germany where they met American, French and British troops advancing from the west. The final days of the Third Reich were at hand. Berlin was first surrounded, then attacked and taken. Hitler’s suicide and his successors’ unconditional surrender ended the war. For writers and historians who concentrate on the Western Allies and the battles in France and the Low Countries, the Eastern Front comes as a shock. The sheer size of both the territories and the forces involved; the savagery of both weather and the fighting; the appalling suffering of the civilian populations of all countries and the wreckage of towns and cities—it’s no wonder that words like Armageddon are used to describe the annihilation. Red Army into the Reich combines a narrative history, contemporary photographs and maps with images of memorials, battlefield survivors and then & now views. It may come as a surprise to the western reader to see how many memorials there are to Russia’s Great Patriotic War and those to the losses suffered by the countries who spent so long under the murderous Nazi regime.

1

67

Finland and the

Baltic States

Opposite:

“You—have you

volunteered yet?”This propaganda

poster by Dmitry Moor was

produced in 1920 at the time of the

Russian Civil War and is as iconic in

the east as Kitchener’s World War

I recruiting poster is in Britain or

Uncle Sam’s in America.

Above:

Hjalmar

Siilasvuo (R)

(1892–1947) was promoted

general after the Winter War, led III

Corps in the Continuation War, and

commanded Finnish forces in the

Lapland War.

T

he end of the Continuation War—what the Finns call the period of World

War II, when they were allied with the Germans and fought against the

Red Army (see pp. 68–69)—came with a cease fire on September 5, 1944.

Part of the resolution confirmed by the Moscow Armistice of September 19 was

that German forces had to leave the country. This left 20. Gebirgsarmee, under

Generaloberst Lothar Rendulic, in a perilous situation. Straddling the Arctic

Circle, it was in serious danger of becoming isolated, and quickly began moving

toward Norway, as did all the German forces in Finland, following carefully laid

down plans. Their enemies were snapping at their heels.

The Soviet offensive aimed to push through harsh Arctic terrain in order to

liberate Finnmark—the northernmost county of Norway—and began doing so

on October 7. Undertaking such a major operation at the onset of the region’s

severe winter would be unthinkable to most western armies, however, the

Soviet troops—most of whom were used to such conditions—were able to cope

very well. The advance was a com...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Finland and the Baltic States
• 2 Poland
• 3 Hungary
• 4 The Balkans
• 5 Czechoslovakia
• 6 Austria
• 7 Germany
• 8 Aftermath
• 9 Remembrance
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Credits