The humble beginnings of the army which fought and defeated the bulk of Hitler’s vaunted Wehrmacht just 25 years later:
The humble beginnings of the army which fought and defeated the bulk of Hitler’s vaunted Wehrmacht just 25 years later: The first official Soviet military parade took place on 1 May 1918 when soldiers of the Moscow garrison of the recently created Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army marched on Khodynka Field. At that time, there was good reason to hope that the Russian Civil War would soon be over. General Lavr Kornilov, the leader of the counterrevolutionary “Volunteer Army,” had been killed by artillery shell two weeks earlier during an attack on the city of Yekaterinodar (now Krasnodar) and what was left of his dwindling forces, now led by the less inspiring but far more competent General Anton Denikin, had withdrawn. Unfortunately, however, the entry of the German Army into the Ukraine and beyond to Rostov forced the Reds to evacuate the Don region which in turn allowed a counterrevolutionary force of Don Cossacks to seize control in alliance with Denikin’s forces. This led to the ir