World War II History for July 13

Audio Clip: BBC Charles Gardner Reports On Convoy Attack & Dogfight (14 July 1940) Today in WWII History World War II History for July 13 13 July 1941 – Britain and the Soviet Union signed a mutual aid pact, that provided the means for Britain to send war material to the Soviet Union. 13 July 1944 – Soviet General Konev establishes a new western border for the USSR On this day in 1944, General Ivan Konev, one of the Soviet Union's most outstanding officers, pursues an offensive against 40,000 German soldiers to capture the East Galician city of Lvov. When the battle was over, 30,000 Germans were dead, and the USSR had a new western border. The Red Army's "Operation Bagration" was the westward thrust from June to August 1944, which included the First and Second Ukrainian Fronts, was moving swiftly across Ukraine and Poland. Konev consults with 38th Army Commander Moskalenko Joseph Stalin had declared that he wanted the western border of the Soviet Union to be pushed back across the River Bug, territory that was part of prewar Poland, but was now occupied German territory. General Konev, who had led the first offensive against the Germans when they invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 (and who had created the "Konev ambush," a strategy by which troops retreat from the center of a battle area, only to allow troops from the flanks to close into the breach, used to defeat German General Heinz Guderian's tank offensive against Moscow), led the Red Army's new attack westward. He encircled 40,000 German soldiers in the town of Brody. After seven days, 30,000 German soldiers were dead, and Lvov was Soviet-occupied territory and would remain a part of the new postwar Soviet map. General Konev would go on to cross Poland into Germany and, meeting up with U.S. and other Soviet forces, enter Berlin to see the final downfall of the Axis power. "Soviet General Konev establishes a new western border for the USSR," History.com, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=tdihArticleCategory&id=6518 (accessed Jul 13, 2009).