Stalin was able to rally patriotic support for the war effort, and Soviet forces entered Berlin triumphantly in April 1945. Hitler repudiated the agreement in 1941, and Russian, Belorussian, and Ukrainian territory subsequently became the scene of fierce fighting and the eventual repulsion of a huge Nazi invasion force. The security that Stalin bought with the German treaty was short-lived. His cunning outweighed and his barbaric treatment of his own lieutenants. The British and American campaigns in Western Europe and North Africa were almost sideshows.The Soviets lost 10 million soldiers and at least as many civilians by some estimates 15 million civilians died, mostly from starvation, forced labor and German reprisals."Īs a wartime leader, Stalin was inept at first but improved with time. John Barry wrote in Newsweek: "the war against Nazi Germany was overwhelmingly fought and won by the Soviet Union. Massive mobilization emptied many villages. The meat of World War II was a war of attrition fought in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe that the Nazis eventually lost at great cost to the Russians. A crucial event in that turnaround was Stalin's removal of political officers having parallel command authority, allowing his top officers to exercise military judgment independent of ideological concerns. Īlthough the Nazi invasion of 1941 drove far into the Russian interior to threaten Leningrad and Moscow, a new generation of officers gradually asserted themselves as the Germans were driven from Russian territory in 19 after the climactic Battle of Stalingrad. Although ravaged by the war, the Soviet Union emerged from the conflict as an acknowledged great power. The Red Army stopped the Nazi offensive at the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943 and drove through Eastern Europe. Although Stalin tried to avert war with Germany by concluding the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact in 1939, in 1941 Germany invaded the Soviet Union. World War II is known as the "Great Patriotic War" in Russia.
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