I've Never Seen So Much Blood... A Tank Commander on the Battle for Kursk.The SS Division “Das Reich

Today we’ll take a look at the memoirs of the commander of a “Tiger” tank in the SS Division “Das Reich.” Hall kept a diary during the battles near Kursk; the entries aren’t very long, but they’re quite interesting. According to his personal tally, he destroyed over 40 tanks, which is quite an impressive result. His story fits into a single video, which is quite unusual for me, but I still found it interesting and decided to share it with you.

Operation Barbarossa – The invasion of the Soviet Union by Germany and many of its Axis powers, which began on Sunday, June 22, 1941, during World War II. It was the largest and bloodiest land offensive in human history, involving approximately 10 million soldiers and claiming more than 8 million lives by the end of the operation.
In the two years prior to the invasion, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed political and economic pacts that served strategic objectives.
Following the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, the German High Command began planning the invasion of the Soviet Union in July 1940 (under the code name “Plan Otto”). During the operation, more than 3.8 million Axis soldiers—the largest invasion force in the history of warfare—invaded the western Soviet Union across a 2,900-kilometer front, with over 600,000 vehicles and more than 600,000 horses available for non-military operations.

The failure of Operation Barbarossa turned the tide for Germany. Operationally, German troops achieved significant victories, occupied a number of important economic areas of the Soviet Union (mainly in Ukraine), and inflicted heavy losses on the enemy, but they also suffered heavy losses themselves. Despite these initial successes, the German advance ended during the Battle of Moscow in late 1941, and the subsequent winter offensive by Soviet troops pushed the Germans back about 250 kilometers. The German command expected a rapid collapse of Soviet resistance, as had been the case in Poland, analogous to the situation in Russia during World War I. However, such a collapse did not occur; instead, the Red Army repelled the strongest attacks by the German forces and drew them into a war of attrition for which the Germans were unprepared. After heavy losses and logistical problems during Operation Barbarossa, the weakened German forces were no longer able to advance along the entire Eastern Front, and subsequent operations to regain the initiative and advance into Soviet territory—such as Plan Blue in 1942 and Operation Citadel in 1943—were weaker and ultimately failed, leading to the defeat of the German forces. These victories by Soviet troops ended Germany's territorial expansion and foreshadowed Germany's final defeat and collapse in 1945.

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Видео I've Never Seen So Much Blood... A Tank Commander on the Battle for Kursk.The SS Division “Das Reich канала MILITARY CLUB