The Unknown War Season 1 Episode 13 The Liberation Of The Ukraine

In the late summer of 1941 the Soviet army was forced to retreat from Kiev in the Soviet Ukraine. For more than two years, the Nazis occupied the city and virtually destroyed it. In 1943, after victories at Stalingrad and Kursk, the Soviet army line moved westward as the Russians liberated the occupied territories of the Ukraine that had been under the Nazi yoke. Hitler was determined to stop the Soviet army on the German line of fortifications that extended from the Baltic to the Black Sea, and which he called the "Eastern Bastion." The Germans considered the Dnieper River a key point in the line, and Hitler himself boasted the Dnieper would reverse its course before the Russians would ever cross it.