Invasion of The Soviet Union
The 4th Army took part in Operation Barbarossa in 1941 as part of von Bock's Army Group Center. Its initial aim was to trap as many Soviet troops as possible around Minsk. The 4th Army performed well and took part in the capture of Smolensk. However, the poor road network contributed to the stalling of the army group and the 4th Army. On 19 December 1941, Kluge resigned along with von Bock and Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch. Kluge was replaced by General Ludwig Kübler.
After the launching of Operation Blue, the 4th Army and the entire Army Group Center did not see much action, as troops were concentrated to the south. However, from 1943 on, as Army Group Center was in full retreat, the Fourth Army also had to move its troops backwards. The Red Army's campaign of autumn 1943, Operation Suvorov (also known as the "battle of the highways") saw the 4th Army pushed back towards Orsha and Vitebsk.
Read more about this topic: 4th Army (Wehrmacht)
Famous quotes containing the words soviet union, invasion of, invasion, soviet and/or union:
“If the Soviet Union let another political party come into existence, they would still be a one-party state, because everybody would join the other party.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)
“An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not the invasion of ideas.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“In our governments the real power lies in the majority of the community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts of government contrary to the sense of the constituents, but from the acts in which government is the mere instrument of the majority.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“So they lived. They didn’t sleep together, but they had children.”
—Russian saying popular in the Soviet period, trans. by Vladimir Ivanovich Shlyakov (1993)
“If in madness of delusion, anyone shall lift his parricidal hand against this blessed union ... the arms of thousands will be raised to save it, and the curse of millions will fall upon the head which may have plotted its destruction.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)