A German soldier was killed in the Bryansk Forest during the Battle of Bryansk during Operation Barbarossa on the Eastern Front of World War II. The bodies of German soldiers killed in action littered the wilderness.

　　　On the Eastern Front of World War II, German soldiers were killed by the Soviet Red Army in the Bryansk Forest during the Battle of Bryansk during Operation Barbarossa. The bodies of German soldiers killed in action littered the wilderness. The Soviet Red Army units, surrounded by German troops, continued fighting, delaying the German invasion of Moscow for about two weeks, and the bitterly cold winter season arrived. German casualties from the destruction of Soviet positions contributed to the collapse of the German army on the doorstep of the crisis-stricken capital, Moscow.

　　The Battle of Bryansk broke out on October 2-21, 1941. It was fought in Bryansk Oblast as part of the Moscow offensive. The Wehrmacht, returning from the Kiev campaign in Ukraine, unexpectedly attacked the Soviet forces and occupied Bryansk and Oryol with few casualties. The Germans surrounded two Soviet formations, the 3rd and 13th Armies, and a third, the 50th Soviet Army, was surrounded by infantry from the German 2nd Army north of Bryansk. As a result of this battle, the Germans occupied Bryansk until they were expelled by the Soviet Red Army on September 17, 1943 as part of Operation Smolensk. During the Battle of Bryansk, the Germans suffered 48,000 casualties, the Soviets 100,000 killed in action, and 600,000 taken prisoner.

　　Mikhail Kalashnikov, the inventor of the Kalashnikov rifle, was wounded during the Battle of Bryansk, but walked to the hospital and received medical attention. While recovering from his wounds, Kalashnikov became obsessed with developing a machine gun that would drive the Germans out of the Soviet Union. The Kalashnikov gun became the weapon that killed the most people in human history. Born secretly in the Soviet Union, they were easy for anyone to handle, never malfunctioned, could be had for as little as $10 a gun, and spread around the world. Kalashnikovs were used in the Vietnam War, in the African Civil War, and in terrorism. Mikhail Kalashnikov himself continued to deny his guilt. In a letter he sent to his church after his death, he wrote: "The pain in my heart is unbearable. My gun took people's lives. Even if the gun went to the enemy, am I guilty of 'the death of people'?" Even now, the cycle of Kalashnikov gun killings continues unabated.