With the German defeat at Kursk, the Soviet Stavka (high command) ordered the Western and Kalinin Fronts to launch Operation Suvorov in order to liberate the city of Smolensk. The Germans had held this city for two years and Heeresgruppe Mitte's (Army Group Centre) 4. Armee had heavily fortified the region. The Soviet offensive began in August 1943 and they quickly realized that the German defences were exceedingly tough and that the Western Front had not prepared adequately for an extended offensive. Consequently, the Soviets were forced to pause their offensive after only two weeks, in order to replenish their combat forces and then begin again. The German 4. Armee was commanded by Generaloberst Gotthard Heinrici, one of the Wehrmacht's top defensive experts. Although badly outnumbered, Heinrici's army gamely held off two Soviet fronts for seven weeks. Eventually, the 4. Armee's front was finally broken and Smolensk was liberated on 25 September 1943. However, the Western Front was too exhausted to pursue Heinrici's defeated army, which retreated to the fortified cities of Vitebsk, Orsha and Mogilev; the 4. Armee would hold these cities until the destruction of Army Group Centre in June 1944. Operation Suvorov focuses on a major offensive that is virtually unknown in the West and which set the stage for the decisive defeat of Heeresgruppe Mitte in the next summer offensive.

The first Red Army soldiers that entered Smolensk in the fall of 1943 were met with a bleak landscape. The town was now an empty shell and the countryside a vast wasteland. The survivors emerged from their cellars and huts on the verge of starvation. Amidst the destruction, Party officials were tasked with picking up the pieces and rebuilding the region’s political, economic, and social foundations. To understand how this process unfolded is the chief concern of this study. It is my hope that an analysis of the physical and ideological reconstruction of Russia’s western frontier will contribute to a more realistic view of Soviet power in the postwar period. The history of Smolensk’s reconstruction addresses fundamental historiographic questions about the Party’s role in postwar society as well as its relationship with liberated communities. It examines how local officials tried to reassert the Party’s authority and re-Sovietize individuals whose loyalties were now in question and whether these tensions could be overcome in pursuit of the regime’s wider postwar economic goals. It approaches from a new perspective the question of whether collective wartime experiences brought the Party and its subjects closer together and created the foundations of a mature socialist state. This study asserts that the Party’s relationship with local residents in Smolensk Oblast was extremely unstable in the immediate aftermath of the war and defined by internal divisions and conflicts.

Drawing on oral-history interviews and other sources, this work provides fascinating accounts of how Soviets, Jews, and Roma fared in the Russian city of Smolensk under the 26-month Nazi occupation. The 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union ("Operation Barbarossa") significantly altered the lives of the civilians in occupied Russian territories, yet these individuals' stories are overlooked by most scholarly treatments ofthe attack and its aftermath. This study, drawing on oral-history interviews and a broad range of archival sources, provides a fascinating and detailed account of the everyday life of Soviets, Jews, Roma, and Germans in the city of Smolensk during its twenty-six months under Nazi rule. Smolensk under the Nazis records the profound and painful effects of the invasion and occupation on the 30,000 civilian residents (out of a prewar population ofroughly 155,000) who remained in this border town. It also compares Nazi and Stalinist local propaganda efforts, as well as examining the stance of Russian civilians, thereby investigating what it meant to support -- or hinder --the new Nazi-German and collaborating Russian authorities. By underlining the human dimensions of the war and its often neglected long-term effects, Laurie Cohen promotes a more complex understanding of life under occupation. Smolensk under the Nazis thus complements recent works on everyday life in occupied Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic States as well as on the siege of Leningrad. Laurie R. Cohen is Adjunct Professor at the Universities of Innsbruck and Klagenfurt.

Published in 1989, Soviet Military Deception in the Second World War is a valuable contribution to the field of Military & Strategic Studies.

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 69. Chapters: Battle of Stalingrad, Battle of Kursk, Continuation War, Third Battle of Kharkov, Battle of Smolensk, Battle of Prokhorovka, Lower Dnieper Offensive, Operation Iskra, Battle of Krasny Bor, Mirgorod direction offensive, Battle of Kiev, Battle of Belgorod, Kerch-Eltigen Operation, Battle of Nikolayevka, Moscow Declaration, Moscow Conference, Operation Polkovodets Rumyantsev, Battle of Sokolovo, Kalmyk deportations of 1943, Battle of Voronezh, Soviet films of 1943.