On the Eastern Front of World War II, in October 1941, a Soviet artilleryman was killed beside a ZiS-3 gun, scattering the bodies of a very young Soviet crewman who had fallen. A shell had hit the gun and the shrapnel had destroyed the rubber on the slope, damaging the gun.

   On the Eastern Front of World War II, in October 1941, a Soviet artilleryman was killed beside a ZiS-3 gun, scattering the bodies of a very young Soviet crewman who had fallen. The shells had hit and the debris had destroyed the rubber on the slope and damaged the guns.

　The Battle of Rzhev was a series of attacks by the Soviet Red Army against the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front of World War II, from January 8, 1942, to March 31, 1943. The fighting took place in the northeastern part of Smolensk Oblast and the southern part of Tver Oblast. The losses to the Soviet forces were so severe that it was dubbed Operation Rzhev Meat Grinder. The Soviet Red Army, driven back to the outskirts of Moscow, launched a counter-offensive against the Germans and began to invade toward Vyazima in the Battle of Rzhev. Leaving only the Rzhev area, the Soviets pushed their front line back to the west, and another attack was launched against the remaining German thrust. In the fierce fighting, all the buildings in Rzhev were destroyed, and more than one-sixth of its population was sent to Germany to be forced into labor. About 9,000 other civilians were shot and tortured. They starved to death in concentration camps set up in the center of Rzhev.

　The German Armed SS (SS) soldiers were separated from active political thought by a harsh and ruthless ideology for an indefinite period of time. Motivated by loyalty to Führer Hitler and the belief in the victory of the Fatherland, the armed SS troops invaded swamps and forests unimpeded by the Russian invasion. The heroic deeds and sacrifices recorded in this gripping battlefield tale. The SS Armed Forces earned their place in the voluminous records of World War II. Whether in the South, Central, or Northern Army Groups, where the Soviets had recovered from their initial wounds and defended themselves to the death, where Soviet counterattacks had torn holes in the German lines, the SS Armed Forces were ordered into action.

　The SS Armed Forces took the lead of all German forces. It gained a bridgehead on the Dnieper River, defeated the Soviet defense of Crimea at Perekop, attacked Taganlok, and invaded Rostov. The armed SS reached the shores of the Sea of Azov in pursuit of the Soviet troops. South of Borodino, they broke through the Soviet defenses of Moscow and advanced to within a few kilometers of the capital, Warsaw, where, at the end of 1941, for the first time, the Soviet Army launched a major counterattack, and the SS Armed Forces showed an exertion unparalleled in military history. It withstood heavy Soviet fire and repelled a flood of tanks and infantry groups. The SS Armed Forces demonstrated its military prowess as a fire extinguisher for the German Army of the East.