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The Luftwaffe was called upon to rescue the situation in a huge aerial counter-offensive lasting from 16 July–31 July against a Soviet offensive at Khotynets and saved two German armies from encirclement, reducing the attacking Soviet 11th Guards Army to just 33 tanks by 20 July.
21 April: A bombing raid on Norway kills the first American military officer killed in World War II. 13 May: Luftflotte 3 (supported by Luftflotte 2) in the Battle of France executed the heaviest air bombardment to date (300 sorties)--the most intense by World War II Luftwaffe.
The Battle of Moscow was a military campaign that consisted of two periods of strategically significant fighting on a 600 km (370 mi) sector of the Eastern Front during World War II, between October 1941 and January 1942. The Soviet defensive effort frustrated Hitler's attack on Moscow, the capital and largest city of the Soviet Union.
The final major German offensive in the Eastern theatre of World War II took place during July–August 1943 with the launch of Operation Citadel, an assault on the Kursk salient. [334] Approximately one million German troops confronted a Soviet force over 2.5 million strong.
During World War II, German pilots claimed roughly 70,000 aerial victories, while over 75,000 Luftwaffe aircraft were destroyed or significantly damaged. Of these, nearly 40,000 were lost entirely. The Luftwaffe had only two commanders-in-chief throughout its history: Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring and later Generalfeldmarschall Robert Ritter ...
German attacks on Olkhovatka and the nearby village of Teploe failed to penetrate the Soviet defences; including a powerful concerted attack on 10 July by about 300 Germans tanks and assault guns from the 2nd, 4th, and 20th Panzer Divisions, supported by all available Luftwaffe air power in the northern face.
Accordingly, while almost all of the original 5 million men of the Soviet army had been wiped out by the end of 1941, the Soviet military had swelled to 8 million members by the end of that year. [149] Despite substantial losses in 1942 far in excess of German losses, Red Army size grew even further, to 11 million. [149]
Between 1933 and 1945, the organization of the Luftwaffe underwent several changes. Originally, the German military high command, for their air warfare forces, decided to use an organizational structure similar to the army and navy, treating the aviation branch as a strategic weapon of war.