Soviet
Operation Uranus – Don Front
On the Don Front, the going was more difficult. Batov threw his 65th Army at General Alexander Freiherr Edler von Daniels’s 376th Infantry Division, but his infantry made little progress against a determined German defense. Batov found easier going at the junction of the 376th and the 1st Romanian Cavalry Division, and the Soviets were able to advance as they…
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The Abwehr and the RSHA against the NKVD, NKGB and ‘SMERSH’
‘SMERSH’ and counterintelligence personnel. Two of which are practicing choke holds. The Russians, who had been waging total war since November 1941, immediately reacted to the increased activities of the Abwehr and the RSHA against the USSR. But this response was only to increase the number of agencies combatting German…
Antonov An-32
The Antonov An-32 (NATO reporting name: Cline) is a turboprop twin-engined military transport aircraft. An-32 is a twin engine, tactical light transport aircraft designed and manufactured by Antonov Design Bureau of Ukraine for the Indian Air Force (IAF). Its Nato reporting name is Cline. The An-32 is derived from the…
In the Northern Wastes
He 115C-1 ‘8L+IH’ from Ku.Fl.Gr.906. On 8 October 1942 it participated in the evacuation of Estonian saboteurs from Russian territory. On 5 November 1942, two long-range Pe-3 fighters from the 2nd Squadron of the 95th Special Naval Aviation Group took off from the temporary airfield near the village of Pona…
The Abwehr’s War in the Caucasus
The ‘Lenin’ oil refinery in the city of Grozny. Even before the Second World War, the Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess formulated the Nazi concept of ‘total espionage’. It consisted of three fundamental precepts: ‘Everyone can be a spy’, ‘Everyone should be a spy’ and ‘There is no secret that cannot…
Operation Kutuzov
The direct aspect of that development began on July 11. It involved a still-overlooked operation that is arguably better evidence of the Red Army’s progress than the so frequently cited battle to the south. When all is said and done, Kursk, seen from a Russian perspective, was a traditional Russian…
Night Air Operations 1943: Eastern Front
Since January 1943, partisan operations against the railroads in the rear of German Army Group Center had been disrupting troop and supply movements. On June 14, Stavka initiated a comprehensive “rail war” focused on the lines into the Kursk sector. Raids destroyed bridges, disabled rolling stock, and diminished train crews’…