PUBLIC EXECUTION

(December 19, 1943)

Three German Gestapo officers and a Russian accomplice, were hanged in the market square of KHARKOV in the USSR. Captain Wilhelm Langheld, Hans Ritz, Reinhardt Retelav and Mikhail Bulanov were found guilty of war crimes by a Russian Military Court. A crowd of around 40,000 watched as lorries on which they stood were driven away, leaving them hanging from the scaffold.

http://members.iinet.net.au/~gduncan/1943.html

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Ostfront pctures:

http://www.ww2mmrefphotos.com/photos...RussiaMain.htm

Italian T-34:





http://mailer.fsu.edu/~akirk/tanks/I...lianTanks.html

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Some pics from the front:



Dead Red Army woman soldier



Dead Finnish soldiers -41



Finnish soldiers in Karelia



A Finnish soldier and "Lenin"

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Finnish patrol returning from behind the enemy lines march 1942



A couple of destroyed Russian tanks

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1945 May 1 Russians troops find the bodies of 1,000 volunteers of Himalayan origin in Berlin wearing German uniforms, but without any papers or identifying badges. Their identities have never been determined.

http://www.humanitas-international.o...t/1945tbse.htm

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After the beginning of operation Barbarossa the Free French offered a fighter squadron. Stalin was only too glad to get the Normandie Squadron. The unit flew Soviet LaGGs and Yaks against the Germans, who declared that any Normandie pilots captured by them would be shot. Despite this, the Normandie Squadron racked up 273 confirmed kills and 36 probables during their short tour of the Eastern Front.

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Normandie-Niemen Regiment was a unit of Free French. The Free French Forces (Forces Françaises Libres in French) were French fighters who decided to go on fighting against Germany after the Fall of France and German occupation and to fight against Vichy France in World War II.

First 12 Free French pilots were assigned to Soviet Union in the August 17 1942.

They were equipped with Soviet Yak fighters and initially named 3rd Fighter Group Normandie.

Pilots began active service in March 22 1943.

The regiment fought in three campaigns and in the battles in Smolensk, Belarus, Lithuania and east Prussia.

After July 1944 Stalin renamed the group Normandie-Niemen after they had participated in the Soviet victory at Alitous on the Niemen river. Field Marshall Keitel in turn ordered all the captured Normandie pilots shot. By the end of the war the group had grown to four squadrons.

Four of the pilots were awarded with the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union.

Pilots returned to France June 20 1945.

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionar...men%20Regiment

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Interestingly, as the regiment became famous they were given a free pick of what aircraft type they wanted to operate, Soviet or Lend-Lease, as they were something of a showcase unit for the Soviets. Not surprisingly they eventually ended up picking the outstanding lightweight fighter of the war, the Yak-3.

They flew this aircraft to the end of the war, when apparently each pilot received their aircraft as a pesonal gift for their outstanding service. Dunno how many were able to take this high-powered piece of military hardware with them back to France though!

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"Nervous wait for the whistle to blow
Rush of blood and over we go..."
- Iron Maiden, "Paschendale"

French Pilots Fly In to See Old Friends

[27 Jun 2001] Six decades ago, Joseph Risso, a French pilot, and Nikolai Tuniyev, a Russian mechanic, fought side by side to help defeat the Nazis. On Tuesday, they had a chance to get together again, tell the old stories and crack jokes. They both served in the legendary Normandie-Niemen escadrille de chasse, a French regiment that fought in the Soviet air force during World War II, flying Soviet Yakovlev planes. A delegation of 45 men from the regiment, including five war veterans, is in Russia on a weeklong visit organized by the Defense Ministry. They have been to historical places and participated in demonstration flights. On Tuesday, the Frenchmen visited a Moscow school that has a small museum devoted to their regiment and were treated to a performance by schoolchildren who took a break from their summer holiday to see the men their school has honored. Many schools in Russia have small military museums, and 18 of them celebrate the Normandie-Niemen. The regiment flew over from France last weekend in four of their Mirage F-1 fighters and two transport planes and then tested their skill in Russian MiG-29, Su-25 and Su-27 fighter jets in Lipetsk. They then visited their old base in the town of Ivanovo, northeast of Moscow, where they had trained and from where they flew to the front line. But back in 1942, when General Charles de Gaulle ordered the creation of the regiment, their trip to Russia was not as direct. ''France capitulated in 1940. In 1942, de Gaulle decided to send some French pilots to Russia because Free France wanted to be represented on all the fronts,'' Risso said. ''We traveled three weeks by sea, crossed Africa, : came to Egypt, then went to Palestine, Lebanon. ''In October 1942, we left for Iraq, then to Tehran. From there we set off with the Russians on Russian aircraft. We went to Baku and finally settled in Ivanovo. Thus our adventure started.'' Risso was one of 14 pilots who made the trip, along with 48 French mechanics. They later were replaced by Russians. In Ivanovo, they trained to fly Yakovlev planes, beginning with the Yak-1B and finishing the war with the Yak-3, what was then a modern light fighter. At the end of the war, they were given 40 of these planes to fly home. Of the first group of pilots, only three are alive today. Overall, 45 out of the regiment's 97 pilots who fought in the Soviet force either died or went missing. The pilots of Normandie-Niemen made 5,240 sorties, took part in 869 battles, gunned down 273 enemy planes and damaged 80 more planes, their itinerary stretching from Moscow to Elbing, East Prussia. They helped liberate Oryol, Bryansk, Smolensk, Belarus and Lithuania. Awards were given to 83 Frenchmen; four of them became Heroes of the Soviet Union. De Gaulle gave the regiment the first part of its name, Normandie, in English Normandy. The second, Niemen, was added by Stalin after the Frenchmen fought in the battle to retake the Neman River in August 1944. Risso shot down 15 enemy planes and was known as a bit of a hot dog. His nickname, Tuniyev said, was vozdushny khuligan, an endearment that translates literally as ''air hooligan.'' He stayed in the air force until his retirement in 1972. Of his first days in the regiment, Risso, now 82, recalls less difficulty with the Russian plane than with the Russian weather. ''The Russian planes were easy to operate. What was difficult was Russia's climate, snow. When we started training, the winter days were very short, and we had to make the most of the time we had to fly. ''We were very proud to serve with the Russians. It was a unique case in the history of the war,'' Risso said half in French and half in Russian. Tuniyev, who is a retired designer of mining equipment, has fond memories of working with the French pilots in the Normandie-Niemen. ''They were very committed,'' he said. Tuniyev and Risso described how one French pilot, Maurice de Seynes, sacrificed his life rather than desert his Russian comrade, mechanic Vladimir Belozub, when his plane was shot down. ''Maurice could have jumped out of the plane, but Vladimir, who sat behind him, did not have a parachute, so they died together,'' Tuniyev said. This and many more heroic acts have been documented in both countries in books and films. After the war, Normandie-Niemen was not dissolved and still exists as an active regiment in France's air force. The French and Russian veterans have stayed in touch over the years. Risso and Tuniyev last saw each other in 1997, the last time the French visited. Next year, the regiment will celebrate its 60th anniversary in France. ''For us it is a chance to reunite, to pursue communication with Russia and keep the memory of Normandie-Niemen alive,'' said the commander of the regiment, Ciril Claver. By Lyuba Pronina /Moscow Times/

http://www.aeronautics.ru/archive/ae...001_27_107.htm

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The aces of Normandia-Niemen


http://acesofww2.com/Normandy-Niemen...die-Niemen.htm

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KAI, thanks for this stuff. Only people from Finland can understand how treacherous and deadly was the neighbourhood of Stalin Russia.

A repro of the campaign medal for the occupation of Finland 1939....No Red Army soldier was awarded this!

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like the man says, "You can't win the all"!

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I guess this applies here but any Red Army General that would have said "You can't win them all"! to Stalin would have faced his death before finishing the sentence...

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Friedrich-Karl "Tutti"Müller
Oberstleutnant

In May 1942, I./JG 53 was relocated back to the Eastern front. Müller was particularly successful during this period. In August, Müller claimed 25 victories, including five enemy aircraft shot down on 12 August (47-51). In the period 1 to 19 September, Müller claimed 35 victories, including six Russia Il-2 Sturmovik ground-attack aircraft shot down on 9 September (78-83), five enemy aircraft on 17 September (88-92) and seven on 18 September (93-99).

http://www.luftwaffe.cz/mullerfk.html

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Galena Pavlovna Brok-Bel'tsova, Ekaterina Polunina And Anna Kiralina - Russian Women War-pilots

http://www.virtualpilots.fi/hist/WW2...VS_ladies.html

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That was really interesting to read about. You would have to be really brave to be a woman pilot on the eastern front. Can you think what the Germans would have done to the ones captured.

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I need a bailout of only $500,000

dont know if its true but Nikita Khrushchev used to criticize stalin's tactics and said that he often used a world globe to plan his attacks on... can anyone verify this to be true or was Khrushchev just trying to make stalin look bad, which he loved to do?

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"Das Dicke Ende Kommt Noch"- "The Worst is yet to Come"- the devil's brigade

Don´t know about the globe but definitely Stalin was a dictator and a murderer:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/d...00/2703581.stm

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Did I mention I used to keep budgies too?

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And...

On 6th June 1943, Soviet pilot of 88IAP Alexander K. Gorovetz attacked a big group of the Stukas. His alone La-5 shot down 9 (nine!) Ju87s in single combat and forced all other bombers to chaotically drop bombs and to retreat. Ufortunately, he was out of ammo. And when four FW190s arrived, the hero was killed. So 9:1 during one mission is the world best score for a single fighter. These results were confirmed by ground troops which watched this bloody battle in the sky.

http://wio.ru/ww2a.htm

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This whole question gives the Eastern Front air war a particularly sinister flavour.

There are certainly instances of downed Luftwaffe pilots committing suicide in their cockpits rather than face capture ( and worse ) by Soviet troops.

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

Didn't actually the Soviets put a price on Hartmann, Rudel and others' heads?

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"War is less costly than servitude, the choice is always between Verdun and Dachau." - Jean Dutourd, French veteran of both world wars

"A mon fils: depuis que tes yeux sont fermes les miens n’ont cessé de pleurir." - Mère française, Verdun

Operation Bagration

German losses in Generals according to Otto Sorzeny


7 killed in action

2 committed suicide

1 missing

21 captured

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The cross for the Danish volunteers in Winter War 1939-1940

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A captured T-34 lurking in the woods...

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