Eastern Front

1943–1944: The Dnieper–Carpathian offensive

December 1943 – April 1944 · 2 battles

After the Battle of the Dnieper the Red Army gave the Germans no respite. From Christmas Eve 1943 four Ukrainian fronts conducted a series of linked operations which in four months liberated right-bank Ukraine. Soviet troops crossed Poland’s pre-war frontier, encircled two German corps at Korsun, cut off the 1st Panzer Army at Kamenets-Podolsky and, in the winter thaw, waist-deep in mud, reached the Dniester, the Prut and the foothills of the Carpathians. Manstein and Kleist lost their commands, and in April 1944 the front came to rest on the borders of Romania and Czechoslovakia. It was the largest winter offensive of the war and the prelude to the summer blow in Belorussia.