The Far Bank

Fifteen days after the beginning of "Operation Barbarossa" the Fourth Panzer Army moved along the southern bank of the upper Divin~ River as it positioned itself for an enveloping attack on Vitebsk. The L VII Panzer Corps being the army's …

1941-07-07

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Fifteen days after the beginning of "Operation Barbarossa" the Fourth Panzer Army moved along the southern bank of the upper Divin~ River as it positioned itself for an enveloping attack on Vitebsk. The L VII Panzer Corps being the army's northern wing, was to cross the Divina at Ulla and capture Gorodok, just north of Vitebsk. The panzer corps commander assigned the 1st Engineers School Battalion to the task of constructing the bridge at Ulla in what was assumed to be an area weakly defended.

Ulla, 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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