Red Army Victory Day

Had it not been for the COVID-19 crisis, Moscow’s Red Square, today, would have been the stage for the 75th anniversary parade in honour of the Red Army’s heroic performance in defeating fascism in WWII, with many delegations expected from the West.

The March of the Immortal Regiment usually follows the military parade; millions of ordinary people, holding aloft photographs of wartime relatives, originally started as a spontaneous grassroots movement, but it is now an intrinsic part of the ceremony.

The March of the Immortal Regiment

In September last year we condemned the European Parliament’s decision to equate fascism with communism where they referred to the Nazi-Soviet pact of August 1939. It is not often mentioned that the UK and France also signed non-aggression agreements with Hitler over the annexation of Sudetenland in Western Czechoslovakia.

Nevertheless, in June 1941, 3 million Nazi personnel and 600,000 motor vehicles, the largest invasion force in the history of warfare, invaded the western Soviet Union along a 1,800 mile front. The Luftwaffe reportedly destroyed an estimated 3,922 aircraft on the first 3 days of the invasion and the Soviet Union bore the brunt of the Nazi war machine.

An estimated 26 million Soviet citizens, including as many as 11 million soldiers died during WWII,and the battles that eventually rolled back the Nazi advance; the siege of Leningrad, the battle of Stalingrad and Kursk - the biggest Tank battle in history -  had no parallel on the Western Front.

By 1943, the Soviet Union had already lost some 5 million Red Army troops but Germany underestimated the strength of Soviet reserves and despite paying the harshest price, they eventually rolled back the Nazi advance.

So began the pushback and the tide of the war was turned, with Marshal Georgy Zhukov advancing from the east and north, while Marshal Ivan Konev advanced from the south.
At 8.30am on 22nd April 1945 Soviet shells began to rain down on the German capital and over the course of a week the Red Army gradually took the entire city.

Before the battle was over, Hitler and several of his followers killed themselves. The city’s garrison surrendered on May 2 and the Soviet flag was raised over the Reichstag.

Fighting continued to the north-west, west, and south-west of the city until the end of the war in Europe on May 8 (May 9 in the Soviet Union) as some German units fought westward so that they could surrender to the Western Allies rather than to the Soviets, who might seek revenge for the atrocities and brutality of the Eastern Front.

PHOTOS:
Main image: Kazakh Cadets in Moscow Parade, by Mil.ru, CC BY 4.0
March of the Immortal Regiment, by kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0
Soviet M3 Lee tanks of the 6th Guards Army Kursk July 1943
Red Army soldiers with their PPSh-41 during street fighting in Stalingrad, Nov 1942, by RakaAditya, CC BY-SA 4.0