EASTERN FRONT IN FLAMES 1942-1943
“OVER 90,000 SOLDIERS BECAME POWS. ONLY 5,000 WOULD EVER RETURN TO GERMANY”
“BETWEEN NOVOROSSIYSK AND TUAPSE”
29 OCTOBER 1942
The cover of the Cologne Illustrated Newspaper spotlights a mass of Russian POWs led by a single German soldier, pipe in mouth, thereby trumpeting the Wehrmacht’s Eastern Front victories – in this case on a dusty road near two important Black Sea ports.
Most of Novorossiysk was occupied by German and Romanian troops on 10 September 1942. However, the strategic bay was defended for 225 days by a small Soviet naval unit until it was liberated in September 1943. The Axis was therefore never allowed access to the port for the transport of supplies.
Hitler fanatically believed that after Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union the Communist monolith would collapse like a house of cards when confronted by the
