Engines of the Red Army in WW2

M4A2 »Emcha« in Lublin/Poland

3-digit vehicle number and tactical sign

Note inscription on hull side

White "764" in full motion

M4A2 "Emcha" in Lublin, Poland, July 1944

In order to exploit the gains of "Operation Bagration" in July of 1944, the Soviet High Command, the "Stavka" ordered several smaller operations along the Eastern Front.

Among them was the "Lublin-Brest Operation" named after the two target cities, with Lublin as the first Polish town to be captured by the Red Army.

Interestingly, the operation took place under the command of the 1^st Belorussian Front of the brillant Konstantin Rokossovsky who was born in Warsaw/Poland himself.

The task of taking Lublin was given to the 8^th Guards Tank Corps equipped with some 245 tanks, among them 21 IS-2 and 139 M4A2 "Sherman" 75mm tanks, as well as 21 SU-76M, 21 SU-85 and 2 SU-57.

After crossing river Bug, the Corps reached the outskirts of Lublin on July 22 and started a heavy artillery bombardment on the German defenders.

Hitler had given orders to defend Lublin as a "Fester Platz" (fortress), resulting once again in a death sentence for many Landsers.

The fierce urban fighting with German infantry and a handful of "Nashorn" SPG of the sHPz.Jg.Abt .655 lasted until the morning of July 25, with only some 250 German soldiers succeeding to escape the pocket.

Lublin itself became the infamous birthplace of the communist post-war Poland as seat of the "Polski Komitet Wyzwolenia Narodowego", "PKWN", the "Polish Committee of National Liberation".