Ivanovskoye Bridgehead

The town of Muravina and its bridge over the Luga River were captured by Kampfgruppe Raus of the 6th Panzer Division on July 11th as they continued to push toward Leningrad. The Kampfgruppe then advanced another 5 km through the …

1941-07-01

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The town of Muravina and its bridge over the Luga River were captured by Kampfgruppe Raus of the 6th Panzer Division on July 11th as they continued to push toward Leningrad. The Kampfgruppe then advanced another 5 km through the forest to Ivanovskoye to capture the small village and the important road that passed through it. Without the forces to develop a proper bridgehead, they found themselves defending a thin 5 km strip of land. Three Soviet Proletarian (Militia) Divisions attacked with massive air support, and a tank brigade including a few KV-1 tanks that were straight from the factory in Leningrad. Both sides discovered that the KV-1 could not be hurt by standard German anti-tank weapons. Soviet morale was further raised by the presence of Minister of War Voroshilov on the battlefield. Raus's men, despite their losses, managed to hold out for 5 days until the arrival of the rest of their division. The inexperienced Russian infantry were routed by the Panzer Grenadiers and the KV-1's were eventually destroyed by German 88's and heavy artillery.

Ivanovskoye, 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

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