First Crisis at Army Group North

When Army Group North moved toward the Daugava River, the Russian command responded by detailing the Ill Armored Corps to meet and destroy Manstein's units. On June 24th, the Soviet armored force made contact with the 6th Panzer Division, the …

1941-06-25

TS1

When Army Group North moved toward the Daugava River, the Russian command responded by detailing the Ill Armored Corps to meet and destroy Manstein's units. On June 24th, the Soviet armored force made contact with the 6th Panzer Division, the spearhead of the XU Panzer Corps. Over a hundred of the Soviet tanks were the super-heavy KV models. The size and power of these stunned the panzer crews and baffled the AT gunners: neither seemed to possess a gun which could penetrate the armor of their opponents. The German advance was halted and the 6th Panzer cut off. The following day, the 1st Panzer was ordered to relieve and reinforce the 6th, while the Soviet unit moved to continue its advance. These two efforts immediately collided.

Daugav River, 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