Donbass Strategic Offensive | |||||||
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Part of Eastern Front | |||||||
Map of the Donbass Offensive (in German) |
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Belligerents | |||||||
Germany Italy Hungary Romania |
Soviet Union | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Adolf Hitler Erich von Manstein Erhard Raus Edwald von Kleist Italo Gariboldi Gusztáv Jány Petre Dumitrescu |
Joseph Stalin Fyodor Kuznetsov Dmitri Lelyushenko Vasili Gerasimenko Filipp Golikov |
The Donbass Strategic Offensive was a strategic operation of the Red Army on the Eastern Front of World War II with the goal of the liberation the Donbass from Nazi invaders. As a result of the Soviet victory, the contribution of the important economic region no longer benefited Nazi Germany, and by 1944 the Soviet Union had restarted its industrial operations in the region. As a byproduct of the Soviet offensive, the German Army was also forced to retreat from the Kuban.