Anyone who loves freedom owes such a debt to the Red Army that it can never be repaid.”

— Ernest Hemingway

On June 22, 1944, three years to the day after German troops invaded Soviet territory, the Red Army launched Operation Bagration, a massive offensive on the eastern front aimed primarily at annihilating Army Group Center, the once mighty Nazi force that had reached the outskirts of Moscow in 1941 during Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa.

Deceptions indicating a Soviet offen­sive to the south around the Black Sea left Germans to the north exposed when nearly 1.5 million Soviet troops attacked. Hitler made things worse by not allowing forces caught in that on­slaught to withdraw until it was too late. The German Fourth and Ninth Armies were decimated as Soviet pincers closed around them at Minsk. The Third Pan­zer Army was hard-hit as well. Soviets then advanced into German ­annexed Poland before halting to regroup in Au­gust at the Vistula River near Warsaw.

The Red Army did not renew its offensive in Poland and take Warsaw until January 1945. In the meantime, Soviet troops made great strides to the north and momentous gains to the south, where they invaded Romania and other na­tions allied with Germany. After Soviets seized the Ploesti oil fields and denied their output to fuel-­hungry German forces, King Michael I of Romania ousted that country’s pro-­Nazi dictator, and yielded to the USSR.

The final battle in the savage struggle between Germany and USSR opened before dawn on April 16, 1945, when Soviet artillery along the Oder River unleashed a thunderous bombardment that reverberated 40 miles away on the outskirts of Berlin. German troops had pulled back to avoid that pounding and held firm initially. But they could not long withstand onslaughts by the First Belorussian Front under Marshal Geor­gi Zhukov, hailed as the savior of Mos­cow, whose numerically su­perior forces now bludgeoned their way toward Berlin.

To the south, Marshal Ivan Konev, commander of the First Ukrainian Front, shredded the Fourth Panzer Army before pivoting toward Berlin to compete with Zhukov for that prize. “Whoever reaches Ber­lin first,” said Stalin, “let him take it.” Zhukov had a shorter path to the city and won the race, but Konev’s swift ad­vance drew a noose around the capital.

On April 26, a half million Soviets launched a furious assault on central Berlin, site of the Reich Chancellery—under which lay Hitler’s bombproof Führerbunker—and the nearby Reichs­tag, the old German parliament buil­ding, abandoned after an arsonist set it ablaze in 1933 and Hitler seized emergency powers. Berlin’s last-ditch defenders, including Waffen-­SS units and civilians of the Volkssturm, a people’s militia made up largely of boys and old men, were outmanned and outgunned. Many fought to the bitter end in subway tunnels and streets as the city became a funeral pyre for the Reich and the leader who drove it to ruin.

On April 30, Adolf Hitler committed suicide while holed up in the Führer­ bunker; his body was cremated by aides. That evening, Soviet troops fought their way into the Reichstag and raised their red flag over the smoldering cap­ital. German forces conceded defeat on May 2, 1945. Five days later on May 7, 1945, Grand Adm. Karl Dönitz, left in charge of the doomed Reich and its shattered armed forces, signed a formal unconditional surrender to the victorious Allies.

• Soviet Storm. WW2 in the East - Battle Of Berlin. Episode 17 :flag-su:

Here is a list of Trans rights organizations you can support :cat-trans:

Here are some resourses on Prison Abolition :brick-police:

Foundations of Leninism :flag-su:

:lenin-shining: :unity: :kropotkin-shining:

Anarchism and Other Essays :ancom:

Remember, sort by new you :LIB:

Yesterday’s megathread :sad-boi:

Follow the Hexbear twitter account :comrade-birdie:

THEORY; it’s good for what ails you (all kinds of tendencies inside!) :RIchard-D-Wolff:

COMMUNITY CALENDAR - AN EXPERIMENT IN PROMOTING USER ORGANIZING EFFORTS :af:

Come listen to music with your fellow Hexbears in Cy.tube :og-hex-bear:

Join the fresh and beautiful batch of new comms:

!genzedong@hexbear.net :deng-salute:

!strugglesession@hexbear.net :why-post-this:

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Next Friday 7th of May at 8 pm CST we will watch

:gamer: Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris :turtle-pogger:

on hexbear cytube :og-hex-bear:

did you missed the first and second gamera films and want to watch the 3° one? well here is the link to the first movie :president-parrot: :turtle-pogger:

and Here is the link to the 2° movie :posad: :turtle-pogger: part 1 , part 2