01/12 – The Vistula-Oder Offensive

A Polish crowd welcomes a Soviet ISU-152 tank to Warsaw. Their enthusiasm was likely short-lived. (Twitter.com) On this day in 1945, units of the Soviet Red Army launched the Vistula-Oder Offensive, an effort to capture strategic Polish population centres including Warsaw and Kraków near the end of WWII. Under the command of Soviet Marshals Georgy…