[Author’s Note:The article below, first published by GR in April 2022, focuses mostly on the German attack on the Soviet Union. In spite of not having a superiority over the Soviets in either manpower or military hardware, the Germans would advance far into the western USSR during the early 1940s. The Soviet city of Kharkov, in north-eastern Ukraine, was especially hard-fought over, experiencing a succession of large battles in the Nazi-Soviet War. I’ve mentioned what would prove to be Hitler’s unsuccessful attemptduring the year 1943to retake Kharkov from the Red Army, after they had forced the Germans to depart from Kharkov for the last time in the late summer of 1943. Yet in a broader context, historian Chris Bellamy noted that the amount of effort put in by the Soviets in overcoming the unparalleled ferocity of the German invasion was a leading factor behind the USSR’s dissolution almost half a century later. —Shane Quinn, February 25, 2026]

Among the Second World War’s real tragedies, and which has often been overlooked in Western historiography, is the damage inflicted by the German armed forces on the Soviet Union and its people, the worst of it in 1941 and 1942.

Nazi Germany ultimately lost the war but, such was the force of blows the Germans had landed on the Soviet Union, that their invasion would be a principal factor behind the communist state’s eventual collapse in 1991.

Geoffrey Roberts, an Irish-based historian of Soviet history, wrote that the German-Axis assault “was no ordinary military conflict. Rather it was an ideological and racist war, a war of destruction and extermination that aimed to kill Jews, enslave the Slavic peoples and destroy communism. This resulted in the death of 25 million Soviet citizens, including a million Jews as the first victims of the Holocaust”.

Around 70,000 Soviet cities, towns and villages were destroyed in the Nazi-led invasion.Also wiped out by the invaders were 98,000 Soviet collective farms, tens of thousands of factories, and thousands of miles of roads and rail lines. Partly as a result of this destruction and the effort expended to overcome it, Soviet Russia would not fully recover and became “a long-term casualty of the Great Patriotic War” with the USSR’s demise in 1991, according to military scholar Chris Bellamy. (Bellamy, Absolute War, p. 6)

A substantial proportion of the Nazi-Soviet War was not fought out on Russian soil. Extensive fighting occurred across Soviet republics such as the Ukraine, Europe’s biggest country today outside of Russia.Of all the states that the Third Reich conquered in World War II, the Ukraine proved by far the most difficult for the Wehrmacht to capture.

After German Army Group South had breached into western Ukraine in late June 1941, the capital Kiev, 300 miles further east, would not be taken and subdued until 3 months later, on 26 September 1941. Even then Kiev was only captured by the Germans, after Adolf Hitler on 21 August had ordered significant additional forces southward, to bolster German divisions in the Ukraine. Three battles alone were fought for the eastern Ukrainian metropolis of Kharkov, the USSR’s 4th largest city, between the autumn of 1941 and the spring of 1943. All three battles were won by the Germans; the devastation was immense and Kharkov was virtually destroyed.

The shell of Kharkov was liberated by the Red Army on 23 August 1943, in spite of Hitler repeatedly demanding that the city be held “under all circumstances”. The outnumbered Germans were compelled to leave Kharkov on 22 August, so as to prevent “another Stalingrad”, Wehrmacht generals assessed on the ground; but not before the Germans had blown up a few more buildings in the city as they departed.

Hitler was determined to retake Kharkov, however. In late August 1943, he quickly prepared a counterattack in the hope of re-establishing German supremacy over the city. To be closer to the front, on 27 August 1943 Hitler arrived at his Vinnitsa Werwolf compound, located deep in a pine forest not far from central Ukraine. It was the first time Hitler had visited the Werwolf complex in more than 5 months.

As summer turned to autumn in 1943 and the evenings were closing in, Hitler’s effort to recapture Kharkov failed when the German assault was repulsed by the Soviet 5th Guards Tank Army, but the fighting was again vicious. Hitler remained at the Werwolf headquarters for nearly 3 weeks, until 15 September 1943, when he left it for the final occasion.

Source: Global Research