Soviet Storm: WWII in the East

Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, is, after a lengthy battle, back in Soviet hands. But now they have to clear the Germans and German allies out of the Crimea and liberate the rest of Western Ukraine. Hitler declared the Crimea a "Festung," meaning it should be held at all cost and to the last man. The German 17th Army was effectively destroyed in the process.

By summer 1944, Germany has undeniably lost the battle of the USSR. After the Soviet victories at Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk, and Leningrad, the Soviet Union, with its practically unlimited resources of manpower and matériel, begins to rapidly push the Germans back toward the German border. On 22 June 1944, Stalin launches Operation Bagration, named after a Russian hero of the Napoleonic Wars.

On 22 June 1941, German pilots were the first to see the sun rise. Before the day was over, the Soviet Air Forces had lost almost 2 000 aircraft. The early German air superiority gave a significant boost to German confidence, and severely damaged Soviet military capability and morale. The air wars over the USSR would be some of the biggest and toughest in military history

Hours before the start of Operation Barbarossa, the Germans, along with their Finnish allies, begin mining the Gulf of Finland to prevent any naval evacuation of Soviet troops and ships. When Operation Barbarossa begins, Axis U-boats begin pounding the grand Soviet Navy, primarily based at Leningrad.

By 1943-1944, as the Germans are desperately struggling to hold their ground, they are increasingly hindered by the Soviet partisans, which contain many former Red Army soldiers that had been cut off behind enemy lines. The Germans responded with intensive counter-insurgency campaigns and brutal reprisals against the civilian population.

Germany is retreating on all fronts and suffering defeat after defeat. The breach of Germany's pre-War borders now seems inevitable. Desperate, Hitler orders all males between the ages of 16 and 70 to enlist and fight for the fatherland. Nazi ideologues put faith in victory and the Nazis seem to vanquish and suppress all forms of doubt and resistance in the last months of the Reich.

Germany has without question lost World War II in Europe, but Hitler, by now a heavily medicated and deluded character, refuses to give up hope; he orders the roughly one million German soldiers left in the ruined city to defend Berlin, now a strange mix of combat veterans, teenage boys from the Hitler Youth, and old men from the People's Army.

The war in Europe is over. However, in the Pacific East, the United States is still fighting the Japanese, who consider surrender the greatest humiliation for a soldier. Stalin promises to help Roosevelt, but the dropping of the Atomic bomb on Japan suddenly alters the calculus for the Allies. Despite the devastation, the Japanese military vows to fight on.