“We’ll be in Berlin by summer,” wrote Sergeant Ivan Morozov to his wife in February 1943. He would be home before their son’s next birthday.
He had reasons to say that. After Stalingrad, the Red Army was moving like a storm. Towns that had taken the Wehrmacht years to conquer fell in hours.
The mood in Moscow was no different. Stalin mused that the war might be finished in 1943. His generals promised him as much.
The advance was so incredible that Soviet tanks came within a few dozen kilometers of Hitler’s own forward headquarters.
But one German general, watching the Red Army surge forward, saw something else: a fatal mistake. An opening, and with it, the chance to turn Stalin’s triumph into one of the most shocking reversals of the war.
Only one obstacle stood in his way: Hitler himself.
Credit to : WW2 on TV