Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria (1869-1955). Ger. From August 9 1914, Rupprecht commanded both Sixth and Seventh (Gen von Heeringen) Armies in Alsace-Lorraine, on the extreme left of the German line of advance. Under the Schlieffen plan, his task was to tie up as many French troops as possible: thus, after taking Mulhouse on August 10, he fell back, a move intended by Moltke to draw the French right forward into a vulnerable salient. Following the French capture of Sarre-bourg (August 18), however, Rupprecht urged a counterattack and Moltke — further watering-down the Schlieffen plan - agreed. In the Battle of Lorraine, August 20-24, Rupprecht drove back French First and Second Armies to Nancy, but, because of Moltke’s reluctance to weaken the right further, failed too achieve a breakthrough.
A most able, if sometimes oversanguine leader, Rupprecht commanded with distinction throughout the war, notably at Messines and Third Ypres (Passchendaele), 1917, and in Ludendorffs final offensives of 1918, when he shared overall command of the German army groups with Crown Prince William of Germany. In September-October 1918, he struggled with some limited success to contain King Albert’s Flanders’ offensive, until the overall situation forced a general retreat. In November 1918, the outbreak of revolution in Bavaria deposed his house. RO’N.
Rusk, Dean (b. l909). US. As a colonel in the US War Department, assisted by Col Charles H Bonsteel, selected the 38th Parallel as the dividing line between the US and Soviet zones of occupation in Korea on the night of August 10-11 1945. In 1946 Rusk joined the State Department and was Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs when the Korean War broke out. From 1961-69 he was Secretary of State under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and a leading spokesman on the Vietnam War policy.
Russia, invasion of and campaign in (1941-44). The Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939 did not alter Hitler’s intention to destroy the
Soviet Union. His Directive No 21, December 18 1940, laid down invasion plans for Operation “Barbar-ossa”, and from early 1941 there was an immense build-up of German forces along the frontier from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Anticipating speedy victory, the attack was launched on June 22 1941 by more than 3,000,000 men, 7,184 guns and more than 7,000 aircraft. Although Soviet ground forces were roughly comparable in number, the Germans were superior in armoured and air strength. Taken by surprise, with much of the Red Air Force destroyed on the ground at the outset, the Russians were initially out-generalled, out-manouevred and out-fought.
There were three major German thrusts. In the north. Army Group North (von Leeb) advanced rapidly through the Baltic states and, with the Finns advancing down the Karelian isthmus, converged on Leningrad by early September. Army Group Centre (von Bock) mounted the main thrust against Moscow. Here, Second and Third Panzer Groups executed rapid encirclements: 500,000 Russian prisoners were taken at Minsk in late June and a further 300,000 in the Smolensk pocket in mid-July. In the south. Army Group South (von Rundstedt) moved into the Ukraine and towards the Don basin. At Kiev, the panzer groups of Guderian and von Kleist effected a masterly envelopment, taking 665,000 prisoners.
Hitler’s failure to define his ultimate strategic objectives and the consequent switching of units between commands tended to dissipate the initial German advantages. Diverting forces from Bock to Rundstedt resulted in major victory in the Ukraine but delayed the drive on Moscow which, in mud and snow, by December ground to a halt within sight of the Russian capital. In the north, the siege of Leningrad dragged on. Increasingly resolute Russian resistance, and the privations of an attritional winter campaign for which they were ill-prepared, blunted the German thrusts, and although they made better progress in the south, Soviet resistance continued at Sevastopol.
On December 6 1941, Zhukov launched a counteroffensive that removed the threat of encircle
Ment from Moscow. In the south, the Germans were pushed back from Rostov, but a Soviet attempt to relieve Sevastopol failed and the city fell on July 2 1942. Hitler now gave priority to the southern flank, ordering Army Groups A and B to seize the Caucasus oilfields and capture Stalingrad. There, the besiegers were themselves trapped by a Russian offensive in November, surrendering soon after German withdrawal from the Caucasus was ordered in January
1943. By late February the Germans had been pushed back to a line running approximately from Leningrad to the Dnieper.
In mid-1943 the Germans planned to straighten their line, and inflict a crushing defeat on the Red Army, by eliminating the Soviet salient around Kursk, launching Operation “Citadel” on July 5. But they failed to achieve the allimportant breakthrough and, in von Manstein’s words, “initiative in the Eastern theatre... finally passed to the Russians”. The Red Army advanced, recapturing Orel, Bryansk, Kharkov, Belgorod and, on November 6, Kiev. In winter 1943-spring 1944, the Germans were driven from the Ukraine and Crimea; in the north, the Soviets triumphed at Novgorod and relieved Leningrad.
In summer 1944, the Russians shattered Army Group Centre in Operation “Bagration”, the Belorussian offensive, in which four Soviet Fronts, with massive armoured, artillery and air strength, attacked on June 22. Hitler forbade withdrawal and von Busch’s command was crushed: only Soviet fatigue and the belated sanctioning of retreat restored a semblance of order to the German line. Driven from their eastern conquests, the Germans now had to defend their own homeland. MS.
World History
