RU-23 Red Tide

From 1941 through the spring of 1944 the Red Army bore the principal burden of opposing the German Wehrmacht on the continent of Europe. The armored and mobile forces would eventually be forged into a weapon capable of smashing the German armed forces, but it was the infantry and artillery which held the Germans at bay in the critical fighting of 1941 and 1942, and kept the Soviet Union in the war.