The Most Important Battle of WW2 We Never Heard Of

June 22nd, 1941. Nazi Germany broke its non-aggression pact with the USSR and launched an all-out invasion of the Soviet Union. Operation Barbarossa – the surprise attack on Russia – pitted ten million soldiers against each other across 1,800 miles of Eastern Europe. Yet the outcome would be decided by a relative handful of troops: a few infantry divisions, a battalion or two of armor and some oddments of naval forces. The outcome of this engagement – in such an out-of-the-way place that it’s not even on the map of Barbarossa – would determine victory or defeat on the Eastern Front.

The destruction of the Soviet Union, eliminating the Communist threat to Germany and providing lebensraum (living space) for the German people, had long been goals of the Nazis. Hitler had always seen the 1939 non-aggression pact with the Soviets as a temporary measure allowing him a free hand in Western Europe. Just months after the conquest of France and the Low Countries was complete the operational orders for Barbarossa were issued.

160 infantry divisions, 19 panzer divisions with over 3,000 tanks, 7,000 pieces of artillery and 2,500 aircraft delivered sudden hammer blows to the Soviet armies in their path. The Soviets were caught completely by surprise. The 204 divisions facing the Nazis on the frontier were unprepared and – thanks to Stalin’s political purges – poorly led. (The Soviet military was purged of officers not known to be loyal to Stalin and/or those who didn’t mouth the appropriate political platitudes. America, are you listening?) The opening weeks of Barbarossa saw the Nazis go from success to success. They destroyed or captured over 100 Soviet divisions. This included the great encirclement at Kiev, where they trapped four Soviet Armies and took over 700,000 prisoners … most of whom would die in captivity. But the Soviets grimly hung on, trading ground and personnel for time. Farther to the east, they were marshalling 150 new divisions, soldiers they had or could conscript. But how to equip them and move them to the fighting? Besides the staggering casualty figures, the Soviets had lost enormous amounts of materiel and equipment. They were doing the impossible – moving almost their entire manufacturing base from west of the Ural Mountains to protected areas in the east. But in the near term much of what was lost was irreplaceable. To continue to fight, they desperately needed all kinds of stuff they didn’t have and couldn’t make.

What was to be done?

Located more or less on the Arctic Circle are the Soviet ports of Murmansk and Archangel. Murmansk in particular was home to a Soviet naval facility and warships detailed to the Barents Sea. These two ports were the USSR’s only available lifeline to the West. Almost immediately upon the launch of Barbarossa, the UK dispatched submarines, destroyers and aircraft carriers to the Arctic with an eye towards securing the sea lanes into Murmansk. There was little such forethought by either the Soviets or the Nazis. The Soviets were unprepared for war, and the Germans’ timetable for Barbarossa projected a quick finish to the war in the east. Soviet resupply was a moot point … or so they thought.

To secure Murmansk, Barbarossa detailed only two divisions. But what they lacked in quantity they made up for in quality. Assigned to the task was Eduard Dietl’s elite Mountain Corps Norway, consisting of two crack Austrian infantry divisions, the 2nd and 3rd mountain divisions. They were combat veterans of the Poland and Norway campaigns. They were reinforced by the armored fist composed of the 40th and 211th Panzer battalions. The 211th was equipped with captured French and British light and medium tanks. It was thought that these relatively lightly armed formations would be able to operate efficiently in the rocky Arctic tundra. As it turned out, the Germans woefully overestimated the capabilities of the rudimentary Soviet road net and valuable time and resources were expended blasting roadways into the lunar landscape.

The attack kicked off a week after Barbarossa began. On June 29th, the Germans overwhelmed the machine gun battalions guarding the borders of the USSR. The 3rd Division managed to secure a bridgehead over the Titovka River, but neither force could penetrate the stouter defenses on the Litsa River west of Murmansk. The Litsa was held by the Soviet 14th and 52nd Rifle Divisions. Both units were veterans of the unsuccessful Winter War against Finland. The area around the river became known as “Death Valley.” Eventually, on July 6, the Austrian 3rd Mountain Division forced a crossing and expanded it to a regiment-sized foothold. Keen to the danger, it was lashed by air attacks by the Soviet Air Force. Help was on the way from an unexpected source.

The Soviet Navy in Murmansk – with the grandiose title of The Northern Fleet – consisted of a motley collection of 8 destroyers, 7 patrol boats, a few minesweepers and torpedo boats. This force, commanded by Captain IG Platonov – with no landing craft – somehow managed to land two battalions of marines in Litsa Bay behind the German lines. Worried about his own supply lines, Dietl halted offensive operations for a week and called for reinforcements. They were few. Just as Dietl was resuming the attack, Capt. Platonov was back at it. Commanding the operation from his little patrol boat, Smersh – aka “the Litsa battleship” – the Northern Fleet managed to land the entire 352nd Rifle Regiment of the 14th Division on the German side of the River. Meanwhile, the German rear areas and supply hubs were being savaged by air strikes from the British carriers Furious and Victorious. Dietl halted offensive operations and called for assistance yet again.

This time, he got what he was looking for. He was allocated another Mountain Division – the 6th – and an SS regiment. Unfortunately for him, the first transports carrying the SS troops were nearly destroyed by the British cruisers Aurora and Nigeria. This caused the German Navy to declare the area unsafe for further operations. Dietl made one more try. But by then the RAF was operating out of Murmansk, and the Soviet lines were reinforced by militia. Although the Soviets were forced to withdraw their troops from the German side of the Litsa, the attacking Germans were hammered by air, so the attack came to nothing. Dietl withdrew into defensive positions. Further south, a separate attempt to cut the rail line from Murmansk to the rest of the USSR also foundered. This ended the attempts to take Murmansk. The Soviet 52nd Division was promoted to the elite status of a guards division for its role in the defense. The handful of Murmansk defenders opened the spigot that turned the tide of the war.

While these military actions were going on, Murmansk (and the nearby port of Archangel) became a pivotal to the Soviet War effort. As soon as the Germans had attacked the USSR, America made the USSR a beneficiary of the Lend-Lease program. FDR convinced Congress that, despite the political differences, aid to the Soviets was vital to the American national interest.

“We cannot, and we will not, tell [them] that they must surrender, merely because of present inability to pay for the weapons which we know they must have.”

By August, American convoys were making “the Murmansk Run,” delivering a ceaseless torrent of arms, armaments and material – even a complete tire factory – to the USSR. This desperately needed source of supplies allowed the Soviets to survive the initial onslaught, build a strategic reserve, and eventually take the offensive against the Nazis.

Over the course of the War, the Americans gave the Soviets more than:

14,000 aircraft 44,000 jeeps 375,000 cargo trucks 12,000 tanks 8,000 tractors

Plus steel, boots, blankets, and food. Much of that went through Murmansk. The Murmansk Run was one of the most dangerous naval assignments of the war. One-fifth of the Murmansk bound shipping was lost to German activity and weather. And although the city itself was pounded into rubble by German air attacks, the docks never stopped working.

Soviet General Gregory Zhukov said later:

We didn’t have explosives, gunpowder. We didn’t have anything to charge our rifle cartridges with. The Americans really saved us with their gunpowder and explosives. And how much sheet steel they gave us! How could we have produced our tanks without American steel? But now they make it seem as if we had an abundance of all that. Without American trucks we wouldn’t have had anything to pull our artillery with.

Now they say that the allies never helped us, but it can’t be denied that the Americans gave us so many goods without which we wouldn’t have been able to form our reserves and continue the war.

Russian memorials to the Murmansk defense: