June 1942
Situation in the northern sector on Germany's eastern front
At first Army Group North aimed to make a general push towards Moscow, with an encirclement being very unlikely due to the large amount of the newly created Red Army units in Demyansk combined with the Marshy terrain. This was extremely costly from the beginning, with the Soviets winning the battles of attrition with little benefit to the
Heer as no land could be taken. Soviet attacks on entrenched German units were successfully repulsed while nearly all the captured territory was lost just as quickly to the dismay of the German leadership.
Situation in the central sector on Germany's eastern front
The offensive on the Ukraine and beyond initially looked promising with continuing success at Bryansk, Roslavl and Tula, albeit at high casualties. The High Command has demanded the return of the armoured car brigades for its top units as quality is clearly more important then quantity as it helped reduced casualties in 1941, with the brigades being put into production after these repeated high casualties. However the Soviets managed to trap the majority of offensive German units by launching a surprise mass attack on Sumy while the Germans were distracted attacking Tula. This created panic in the
Wehrmacht which ordered a general retreat through Sumy back to the original 1942 lines,
After Sumy was retaken, the German leadership clamped down on the panic and fear in the army, ordering it to go on the offensive once again with mixed success. On 19th June it looked as if the encirclement had been completed when looking on a map, but this masked the fact that German units had evacuated Bryansk and were on the retreat in Klintsy. By late-June it was clear to the Germans the offensive was untenable with a retreat being ordered from Kursk and all other territories west of the Dnieper.
Situation in the air war
As has been since it started, the air war in the west remains in Germany's favour with the Allies taking much higher casualties then the Germans with little success in its strategic bombing campaign. The bombers of the
Luftwaffe managed to see some action alongside Vichy French planes over Leningrad as they aimed to bomb the city into submission, before the Red Air force repulsed daylight attacks, with night-time attacks being ineffectual.
The start of June looked promising for the Germans with the offensive in the Ukraine being pursued with several victories, however by the end of the month the
Heer was on a full scale retreat with no clear end in sight to the war. However the German High Command does aim to once again go on the offensive in July once the army has regrouped and reorganised.