Velikaya Bridgehead

After capture of Raseiniai, Army Group North's Panzers under Hoepner rapidly advanced to bridgeheads over the Dvina. Leningrad was virtually defenseless, but von Leeb was overly cautious and halted Hoepner for six days. By the time the offensive resumed the …

1941-07-01

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After capture of Raseiniai, Army Group North's Panzers under Hoepner rapidly advanced to bridgeheads over the Dvina. Leningrad was virtually defenseless, but von Leeb was overly cautious and halted Hoepner for six days. By the time the offensive resumed the Soviets had reorganized the defenses of both Leningrad and the greater Northwest Front. The 1st Panzer Division quickly captured Ostrov on the Velikaya on July 4th, but the Soviet 27th Army immediately and determinedly counter-attacked the bridgehead with support from the Red Air Force. The Germans suffered heavy casualties, but by July 11th the Soviet units were exhausted and Hoepner renewed the advance the next day.

Pskov, Russia

Operation Barbarossa was the code name for the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union, which started on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II. The operation put into action Nazi Germany's ideological goal of conquering the western Soviet Union so as to repopulate it with Germans. The German Generalplan Ost aimed to use some of the conquered people as slave labour for the Axis war effort while acquiring the oil reserves of the Caucasus as well as the agricultural resources of various Soviet territories. Their ultimate goal included the eventual extermination, enslavement, Germanization and mass deportation to Siberia of the Slavic peoples, and to create more Lebensraum for Germany.

Wikipedia: Operation Barbarossa

German

Russian

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