Aftermath of the German retreat

19th September 1943: As the Red Army recovers territory in the Ukraine they find a people traumatised by the German occupation

Karachev operation. The Soviet army in the liberated settlement. During the liberation of the city, Private Shirobokov met his sisters, who escaped from death. Their father and mother were shot by the Germans. 15-17, August 1943.

Another view of the liberation of Karachev

Whatever the claims by Manstein of an orderly German withdrawal on the Eastern Front, the Russian - and Ukrainian - perspective was very different. The Red Army was now reoccupying territory that had been under Nazi rule for just over two years.

… there are only two sacred words left to us. One of them is ‘love’, the other one is ‘revenge’.

When the Germans had first arrived, there were some who had welcomed them in place of the communists. The welcome did not last long - they quickly learnt that the Nazis viewed them only as 'subhuman' Slavs. If the Jews were to be exterminated, then the remaining ethnic groups in Soviet Russia were only just one step up, available to be exploited at will.

The Red Army was rolling back over towns and cities that had been shattered by the war. They soon discovered that they were also liberating a people who had been equally shattered by the occupation. Journalist Vassily Grossman¹, travelling with the Soviet Army, put a human face on what they now discovered:

Old men, when they hear Russian words, run to meet the troops and weep silently, unable to utter a word. Old peasant women say with a quiet surprise: ‘We thought we would sing and laugh when we saw our army, but there’s so much grief in our hearts, that tears are falling.’