🏅 #OTD in 1943, the Red Army began Operation (Offensive) Koltso — the final stage of the Battle of Stalingrad. The coordinated actions of the Red Army resulted in the encirclement and defeat of the Wehrmacht.

Operation Ring was part of a large-scale Soviet counteroffensive near Stalingrad, which followed 125 days of the heroic defence of the city. The Red Army launched an attack on November 19, and by the end of the year the 6th Army, commanded led by Friedrich Paulus, was trapped between the Don and Volga rivers.

The encircled enemy force retained its combat strength with 250,000 troops, 4,130 artillery guns and mortars, 300 tanks and 100 planes, but the troops’ morale, psychological and physical condition were in a desperate state. Nevertheless, Berlin ordered Paulus to stand to the end.

On January 8, the command of the Don Front issued an ultimatum to the occupying army, proposing that it put an end to the futile resistance and accept the capitulation terms. But Paulus rejected the offer of the Soviet command.

🌟 In the morning of January 10, Soviet troops launched a coordinated attack from nearly all directions, gradually tightening the knot. Aware of their dire situation, German units started surrendering en masse.

On January 31, Field Marshal Paulus and the generals and officers of his headquarters capitulated. The last remnants of German resistance were liquidated on February 2.

The Operation Koltso resulted in the defeat of 22 German divisions and 149 separate units, lead to the capture of over 91,000 troops, including 24 generals.

🎖 The victory in the Battle of Stalingrad marked a turning point in the Great Patriotic War, enhancing the international prestige of the Soviet army and strengthening the anti-Hitler coalition. The Soviet command seized the strategic initiative, creating conditions for the liberation of the Soviet Union from Nazi occupation.

🏅 #OnThisDay in 1945, the Red Army launched its Vistula-Oder offensive, liberating Polish territory west of the Vistula and capturing a bridgehead on the left bank of the Oder, which was later used in the advance on Berlin.

By early 1945, the Red Army in the east and the Western Allies from the Second Front had closed in on Germany for a series of final assaults on the enemy. As before, the Wehrmacht concentrated its main forces – 185 divisions, including 33 tank and mechanised divisions, as well as 21 brigades – against the Soviet fronts.

The Soviet offensive was planned for January 20. But on January 6, the Allies suffered a major setback in the Ardennes and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill asked Soviet leader Joseph Stalin for help by moving up the offensive on the Vistula front. The Soviet Supreme High Command General Headquarters responded by curtailing preparations for the Vistula-Oder offensive and setting the date for its start on January 12.

☝️ The Red Army had to break through 300-500 kilometres of multi-layered defensive positions between the Vistula and the Oder rivers. The first line of defence on the Vistula consisted of four belts 30 to 70 kilometres deep. The most formidable obstacle for the attacking forces was the sixth line of defence that ran along the 1939 German-Polish border and included the Pomerania, Meseritz, and Glogau-Breslau fortified areas.

As a result, 35 enemy divisions were routed and another 25 lost between 50 and 70% of their strength, weapons and equipment. Forces of the two Soviet fronts took prisoner 147,400 officers and men and captured 14,000 guns and mortars, as many as 1,400 tanks and assault guns, and over 1,000 aircraft.

🎖 The Vistula-Oder operation went down in history as the most rapid WWII offensive. The Soviet forces advanced 500 kilometres within 23 days (!), liberated vast territories in Poland, and emerged on roads leading directly to the capital of Nazi Germany.