Wehrmacht troops take Crimea, 1942
Archival footage of German troops fighting in Crimea during World War II. The Wehrmacht launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, on June 22, 1941, and by the end of September German troops were fighting for control of the Crimean Peninsula. Throughout 1942, the German Army retained a tenuous hold on much of the peninsula, despite a Soviet counter-offensive from April to May, and significant partisan activity which made life difficult for occupation troops. German forces in Crimea supported operations further east in the Caucasus, and when that offensive failed in late 1943, those forces fell back to the Crimean Peninsula with the Red Army on their heels. By early 1944, counterattacking Soviet Army groups had driven the Germans completely from Crimea, though they suffered horrific casualties in the process.
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