Following Kursk, many of the best German units were withdrawn as the allies opened fronts in Sicily and Italy and began the build up for Normandy. The Red Army was now on the offensive and remained on the attack for the rest of the war.

 

In 1944 offensives all along the line threw the Germans back almost to the borders of the Soviet Union. Leningrad was liberated, as was the Crimea in the south. As D-Day commenced in Normandy, the Red Army turned the tables on the Germans by inflicting the sort of defeat  that they themselves had suffered in 1941. Operation Bagration encircled and destroyed the German Army Group Centre, killing, wounding or capturing nearly 500,000 soldiers, Germany's biggest defeat of the war.

1943 - 45

On the 4th July the German offensive opened. From north and south panzer  formations exhausted themselves hacking through miles of mine fields and anti-tank fortifications. Worn down after nine days of fighting, the Germans were counter attacked and driven back by fresh Soviet forces, the final German attack had failed.

The Red Army had now come of age, well equipped and trained, it had learned the lessons well from three years of bitter defeats and could now match the Germans at every turn. New uniforms and a new confidence made the army of 1944 unrecognisable from that which had been hammered in 1941.

 

1945 saw the Red Army enter Germany itself, with the final offensive taking Berlin on the May 2nd, the war was won. The Soviet people paid a horrendous price in order to defeat the most powerful, best trained and equipped army in the world. Nine million soldiers and sixteen million civilians had lost their lives.