Daily Times

Recently, the D-Day was celebrated in Normandy (France) on June 6 where allies’ leaders were gathered to remember the sacrifices rendered by the allied forces during WWII. Russian President Vladimir Putin was not invited to attend the grand event.Sergey Lavrov, Russian FMsaid the expansive events commemorating the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of France were painting a false picture regarding who was responsible for defeating Nazi Germany in World War II. Truly, the heroic role that Russian Red Army played during the War cannot be shrouded. In this backdrop, one could hardly dispute the Pride in Russia’s role regarding the defeat of Nazism.The War, the Soviet forces fought on the Eastern front transmogrified Hitler’s victory dream into an exemplary defeat. It is also a historical fact that more than 25 million Soviet soldiers and citizens sacrificed their lives during the said war.

Strategically, Germany’s sudden invasion of Russia was the largest surprise attack in military history; yet it shouldn’t have come as a surprise at all. Whilst the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany had already signed a famous non-aggression pact in August 1939, many were of the view that Adolf Hitler had designs on attacking the Russians-whom he discerned as an inferior race-as soon as the time was suitable. History is the correct reminder that German and Finnish forces besieged Lenin’s namesake city after their spectacular initial advance during Operation Barbarossa. After a precipitous advance during summer 1941, forces of German Army Group North struggled against stubborn Soviet resistance to isolate and seize the city before the onset of winter. In heavy fighting during August, German forces reached the city’s suburbs and the shores of Lake Ladoga, severing Soviet ground communications with the city.

The battle of Moscow– that has been historically affiliated with the German offensive ‘Operation Typhoon’ (that was started in October 1941 and ended in January 1942) —holds strategic significance,a boxing match between two battered and bloodied fighters barely on their feet. The Red Army could field more than a million soldiers and a thousand tanks at Moscow dug into multiple defensive lines dug by women and children.The Battle of Stalingrad was a brutal military campaign between Russian forces and those of Nazi Germany and the Axis powers during World War II.

The truth holds: without the remarkable efforts of the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front, the United States and Great Britain would have been hard-pressed to score a decisive military victory over Nazi Germany

The battle is rightly known as one of the largest, longest and bloodiest engagements in modern warfare: From August 1942 through February 1943, more than two million troops fought in close quarters – and nearly two million people were killed or injured in the fighting, including tens of thousands of Russian civilians. But the Battle of Stalingrad (one of Russia’s important industrial cities) ultimately turned the tide of World War II in favour of the Allied forces. In subsequent months, the city sought to establish supply lines from the Soviet interior and evacuate its citizens, often using a hazardous ice and water road across Lake Ladoga. Subsequently, the Germans were able to manage or muster almost two million men, and more than a thousand tanks and five hundred aircraft.

Though initially, the Soviet forces conducted a strategic defence of the Moscow Oblast by constructing three defensive belts, deploying newly raised reserve armies, and bringing troops from the Siberian and Far Eastern Military Districts In so far as the German offensives were halted, a Soviet strategic counter-offensive and smaller-scale offensive operations compelled the German troops back to the positions around the cities of Oryol, Vyazma and Vitebsk, and nearly surrounded three German armies.Undoubtedly, it was a major setback for the Germans, the end of the idea of a fast German victory in the USSR. Notably, Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch was excused as commander of OKH, with Hitler appointing himself as Germany’s supreme military commander. According to the military analysis, with proper supply and good weather, such a big German strike force could probably have conquered any country in the planet. Alas, neither condition would prove true. The initial phase of Typhoon went according to plan, with four Soviet armies and more than 500,000 Soviet soldiers killed or captured at Vyazma alone.

Although relations between Moscow and Washington had been strained in the years before World War II, the U.S.-Soviet alliance of 1941-1945 was marked by a great degree of cooperation and was essential to securing the defeat of Nazi Germany. The truth holds: without the remarkable efforts of the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front, the United States and Great Britain would have been hard-pressed to score a decisive military victory over Nazi Germany. Heuristically, the revisionist history revisits longstanding Russian contention that their nation paid the heaviest price in casualties during World War II, albeit conventional historians agree the tide of the conflict did not turn until the Allied invasion of the European mainland. “The Normandy landings were not a game-changer for the outcome of WWII and the Great Patriotic War. The sequel was determined by the Red Army’s victories – mainly, in Stalingrad and Kursk. For three years, the UK and then the US dragged out opening the second front,” Maria Zakharova, a spokesman for the ministry, said on the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ official Twitter account.

“The Nuremberg Tribunal, whose rulings became an integral part of international law, clearly identified who was on the side of good and who was on the side of evil… “In the first case, it was the Soviet Union, which sacrificed millions of lives of its sons and daughters to the altar of Victory, as well as other Allied nations. In the second case, it was the Third Reich, the Axis countries and their minions”, Russian Foreign minister Sergey Lavrov asserted. Absolutely true! the Eastern Front was the widest, spanning four to six thousand kilometers, four times more than the North African, Italian and Western European frontlines combined. It is true that the Red Army faced a lion’s share of Nazi forces on the Eastern Front, nearly about five million soldiers. The major part of Hitler’s military hardware was also concentrated in the East: 5,400 artillery pieces, 54,600 mortars and over 3,000 warplanes. Whilst combined, it amounted to three-fourths of the heavy weapons at Hitler’s disposal. By the end of the war, the Soviets had almostdestroyed over 70 percent of the enemy’s forces.

The writer is an independent ‘IR’ researcher and international law analyst based in Pakistan