Soviet Storm: World War II in the East

The Battle of Britain is over. The Luftwaffe has been driven to exhaustion, and Germany suffers its first major defeat. Even though Britain remains undefeated, it is so isolated that Hitler has no concerns about turning his attention East. Operation Barbarrossa, the German invasion of the USSR, takes the Soviets completely by surprise and the Red Army suffers terrible casualties.

After the swift success at Smolensk, Hitler has diverted the bulk of Heinz Guderian's panzers down to the South, so as to capture the Ukrainian capital Kiev, considered more important than Moscow in Hitler's mind. It begins a gigantic clash and turns out to be the biggest military encirclement in history.

Erich von Manstein's soldiers have trapped a massive Soviet force in Crimea, but the doomed troops have no intentions of surrendering, obeying Stalin's brutal "Not A Step Back" order. Manstein assembles the greatest concentration of artillery in history, which includes the world's biggest railway-gun nicknamed "Dora," and for eight months Soviets troops are savagely bombarded.

October 1941, Germany's Army Group Center is only some 25 km west of Moscow. The Russian winter, however, is only a few weeks away. With not enough soldiers or military equipment, the Soviet high command's only hope left is that the weather will save the capital. The battle ends in a bloody failure for the German Army, and it is forced to retreat.

Leningrad, a vital and large Baltic sea port, is facing the entire weight of Army Group North. The Soviets have no reserves to spare as the Battle of Moscow is about to begin. Wilhelm von Leeb's Army Group North fails to take Leningrad, but begins a horrible siege that will last 872 days, in which over a million civilians will die of starvation and disease.

The capture of Rzhev, the city that connects all railroads in Western Russia, is imperative. It will cost the lives of some 3 million Soviet soldiers and 500,000 German soldiers. It will take the Soviets a total of 3 years to throw the Germans firmly out of the city. These bloodbaths will become known by the veterans and historians as "The Rzhev Meat-Grinder."