Meanwhile Russia had worked feverishly to replace lost industrial centers with new facilities east of the Ural Mountains and throughout Siberia.* Gradually these began turning out war materials in adequate supply. Also American lend-lease equipment and materials began pouring into Murmansk* and across Iran in quantities which made American jeeps, trucks, and many other articles familiar through out the Red army.
The gain in supply and the victory at Stalingrad enabled Russia to take the offensive along the entire front. By August 1943 the Red army had forced the Nazis back to the Dnieper River.* In the winter they occupied Kiev* and raised the long siege of Leningrad.* In the spring of 1944 they drove the Nazis completely out of southern Russia and entered Rumania. In August they were in Hungary. In October they joined forces with Tito’s Partisans in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. In January 1945, they took Warsaw, capital of Poland. On April 13 they captured Vienna, capital of Austria. Finally, on May 2, 1945, they took Berlin, after battling two weeks on streets, in buildings, and in subways. Russians and Americans had met at the Elbe River on April 25.*
From A Summary of the Second World War and its Consequences (1946), published by F. E. Compton and Company.
* The Urals are a mountain spine some 1,550 miles long, like a vast Pennines, located in west central Russia. They mark the eastern boundary of the continent of Europe; Siberia is roughly equivalent to all of Russia east of the Urals.
* Murmansk is a major port in the far north of Russia, located deep into a long bay that reaches south from the Barents Sea.
* The Dnieper is the river on which Kiev stands. It flows north to south, and empties into the Black Sea at Cherson.
* The Battle of Kiev went through two phases, an offensive action from November 3rd 1943 to November 13th, and a defensive phase that lasted until December 22nd. Kiev is one of Russia’s two mother cities: the other, Great Novgorod in the northwest, was occupied by the German Army from 1941 to 1944, and experienced great loss of life as well as wanton vandalism.
* The Siege of Leningrad began on September 8th, 1941, and ended on January 27th, 1944.
* The River Elbe is a major river of central Europe, flowing north from the Czech Republic through Germany, connecting Dresden, Magdeburg and Hamburg and emptying into the North Sea at Cuxhaven. For the events that now followed, leading to Victory in Europe, see VE Day.