Russian schoolgirls keep an eye out for German bomber aircraft during the Siege of Leningrad. Over the course of the encirclement, the line between civilian and soldier became increasingly blurred. (Wikimedia Commons) On this day in 1942, a rail line was opened by the Soviet Red Army into the besieged Russian city of Leningrad, enabling…
Tag: Red Army
02/08 – Devyatayev’s Great Escape
A Heinkel HE 111 light bomber like the one Mikhail Devyatayev and his comrades stole in 1945. (Flickr) On this day in 1945, Soviet fighter pilot Mikhail Devyatayev and 9 others escaped from a Nazi labour camp located in the Baltic Sea. Shot down over the Eastern Front in 1944, Devyatayev was captured by German…
Stalingrad
German 6th Army troops pinned down by Soviet sniper fire in Stalingrad. (source: Wikimedia Commons) In the summer of 1941 the German army kicked off Operation Barbarossa, the long-awaited invasion of the Soviet Union. Army units of the Wehrmacht (German Army) as well as troops from friendly Axis nations like Romania and Hungary made massive…