10. War Against Japan

2012 - Season 2

In August 1945 the Red Army launched an overwhelming assault against Japanese-occupied Manchuria. It came on the same day that Japan suffered its second devastating nuclear attack, and proved instrumental in forcing the Japanese leadership to recognise that the war was lost. This is the fascinating untold story of the Red Army’s last campaign of World War Two, which included the last battle of the war - a bloody amphibious landing on the remote Kurile Islands almost a week after Japan’s surrender.

9. The Battle for Germany

2012 - Season 2

In January 1945, across the snow-covered plains of Poland, the Red Army launched an overwhelming assault against the enemy that would take it to the gates of Berlin. These final months of the war in Europe were some of its darkest, as Soviet soldiers stormed German fortresses, uncovered evidence of Nazi death camps that shocked the world, and carried out their own terrible retribution against the German people.

8. The Secret War

2012 - Season 2

Stalin’s USSR was a nation obsessed with secrecy and highly experienced in the skills of espionage. But despite establishing networks of agents across Europe and the Far East in the 1930s, the Soviets were still caught off-guard by Hitler’s invasion in 1941. But thereafter, the GRU (army intelligence) and NKVD (KGB forerunner) went on to score some amazing intelligence coups in Tokyo, Washington, and even from the heart of Berlin.

7. The Partisan War

2012 - Season 2

In 1941 German armed forces overran vast swathes of Russia, Byelorussia and Ukraine. But it was not long before the local population, encouraged by Nazi brutality, took up arms against the invader. Soviet partisans, operating under the command of a Central Headquarters in Moscow, created huge ‘no-go’ areas for German troops, and conducted a systematic campaign of sabotage against the enemy rail network.

6. The War at Sea

2012 - Season 2

The Soviet navy fought many different types of war, from coastal raids in the Black Sea, to convoy escorts in the Arctic Ocean and submarine patrols in the Baltic Sea. Their submarines would prove a particularly lethal force, and in 1945 were responsible for massive and controversial losses of life at sea.

5. The Air War

2012 - Season 2

The Soviet Air Force was nearly wiped out in the first days of the German invasion of the Soviet Union. But thanks to the courage of its aircrews and brilliant new aircraft designs, it began to fight back, and by 1944 dominated the skies over the Eastern Front

4. The Battle of the Caucasus

2012 - Season 2

In 1942 Hitler launched his great summer offensive against the Soviet oil fields in the Caucasus. If he could seize control of this vital resource, the war might be lost. But bitter fighting in the Caucasus Mountains, and in the streets of Stalingrad, would thwart Hitler’s dream.

3. The Rzhev ‘Meat-Grinder’

2012 - Season 2

The German conquests of 1941 left Hitler’s troops perilously close to the Soviet capital, Moscow. Around Rzhev terrible fighting raged as the Red Army attacked again and again to drive back the invader. Soviet troops, who suffered appalling casualties, grimly referred to these battles as ‘the Rzhev meat-grinder’.

2. The Defence of Sevastopol

2012 - Season 2

Hitler’s 1941 invasion of the USSR ran into some its fiercest resistance at the Black Sea ports of Odessa and Sevastopol, where Soviet elite naval infantry brigades fought doggedly to hold back German and Romanian troops. At Sevastopol, a long and bloody siege unfolded, causing the Germans to bring in some of the biggest artillery guns ever used.

1. The Battle of Kiev

2012 - Season 2

As September ended, the Germans found the Dnieper line impossible to hold as the Soviet bridgeheads grew and important Dnieper towns started to fall. Finally, early in November the Soviets broke out of their bridgeheads on either side of Kiev and captured the Ukrainian capital.

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