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What was the WWII for USSR and Leningrad (June 22 1941 – May 9) 1945? The Soviet – German Pact of 23 August 1939. The Soviet – Finnish Winter War (1939). June 1941: The Blitzkrieg. The Defense of Kiev, Odessa, Leningrad. George Zhukov as the head of the West front (October 1941). The Battle of Moscow. Hard winter & spring 1941 – 1942. Teheran 1943, the alliance with the USA & Britain. The battle of Stalingrad. The battle of Kursk. The guerilla war. The roads of Europe. The battle of Berlin. The War with Japan. Yalta & Potsdam conferences. The nuclear threats. Science & culture, state & church during the wartime.
The Great Patriotic War ____________________ War and Stalinist development Heavy-industrialization contributed to the Soviet Union''s wartime victory over Nazi Germany in the Second World War (known throughout the former USSR as the Great Patriotic War). The Red Army overturned the Nazi eastern expansion single-handedly (although relying heavily on lend-lease aid from the United States and United Kingdom), with the tide of war on the Eastern Front turning at the Battle of Stalingrad. The Germans never recovered after the attempt to reverse their fortunes at the Battle of Kursk were crushed; following this clash the initiative passed fully to the Red Army. Although the Soviet Union was getting aid and weapons from the United States, its production of war materials was greater than that of Nazi Germany because of rapid growth of Soviet industrial production during the interwar years. The Second Five Year Plan raised the steel production to 18 million tons and the coal to 128 million tons. Before it was interrupted, the Third Five Year Plan produced no less than 19 million tons of steel and 150 million tons of coal. During the war, the allies were able to outstrip Nazi Germany in the production of war materials, in some cases ten-fold. The tank production, for example, was equal to 40,000 per year for the allies, to only 4,000 for Nazi Germany. The Soviet Union''s industrial output helped stop Nazi Germany''s initial advance, and stripped them of their advantage. According to Robert L. Hutchings, "One can hardly doubt that if there had been a slower buildup of industry, the attack would have been successful and world history would have evolved quite differently." For the laborers involved in industry, however, life was difficult. Workers were encouraged to fulfill and overachieve quotas through propaganda, such as the Stakhanovite movement. Between 1933 and 1945, some argue that seven million civilians died because of the demanding labor. Between 1930 and 1940, 6 million were put through the forced labor system. Some historians, however, interpret the lack of preparedness of the Soviet Union to defend itself as a flaw in Stalin''s economic planning. David Shearer, for example, argues that there was "a command-administrative economy" but it was not "a planned one." He argues that the Soviet Union suffered from a chaotic state of the Politburo in its policies due to the Great Purges, and was completely unprepared for the Nazi German invasion. When the Soviet Union was invaded in 1941, Stalin was indeed surprised. Economist Holland Hunter, in addition, argues in his Overambitious First Soviet Five-Year Plan, that an array "of alternative paths were available, evolving out of the situation existing at the end of the 1920s... that could have been as good as those achieved by, say, 1936 yet with far less turbulence, waste, destruction and sacrifice." While by no means an "orderly" economy or an efficient one, the Five Year Plans did plan an offensive, but since the Soviet Union was under attack, the situation required a defensive response. The result, as Shearer points out, was that the command economy had to be relaxed so that the mobilization needed was achieved. Sapir supports this view, arguing that Stalin''s policies developed a mobilized economy (which was inefficient), with tension between central and local decision-making. Market forces became more significant than central administrative constraints. This view, however, is refuted by Stephen Lee, who argues that Soviet Union''s "heavy industrialization translated into ultimate survival." Wartime developments The Nazi invasion caught the Soviet military unprepared. A widely-held belief is that this was caused by a large number (an estimated 40,000) of the senior officers being sent to prison in the "Great Purges" of 1936-1938. To secure Soviet influence over Eastern Europe as well as open economic relations with Germany, Stalin arranged the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany on August 23, 1939 and the German-Soviet Commercial Agreement. A secret appendix to the pact gave Eastern Poland, Latvia, Estonia and Finland to the USSR, and Western Poland and Lithuania to Nazi Germany. Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1; the USSR followed on September 17. With Poland being divided between two powers, the Soviet Union put forth its territorial demands to Finland for a minor part of the Karelian Isthmus, a naval base at Hanko (Hangö) peninsula and some islands in the Gulf of Finland. Finland rejected the demands and on November 30, the Soviet Union invaded Finland, thus triggering the Winter War. Despite outnumbering Finnish troops by over 50:1, the war proved embarrassingly difficult for the Red Army, although it concluded with the Soviet annexation of strategically important border areas, particularly those to the immediate north of Leningrad. The war triggered an international outcry and on December 14 the Soviet Union was expelled from the League of Nations. On June 22, 1941, Hitler broke the non-aggression pact and invaded the Soviet Union (see Operation Barbarossa). Using his contacts within the German Nazi party, NKVD spy Richard Sorge was able to discover the exact date and time of the planned German invasion of the Soviet Union. This information was passed along to Stalin, but went ignored, despite warning from not only Sorge, but Winston Churchill as well. It is said that Stalin at first refused to believe Nazi Germany had broken the treaty. However, new evidence shows Stalin held meetings with a variety of senior Soviet government and military figures, including Vyacheslav Molotov (People''s Commissar for Foreign Affairs), Semyon Timoshenko (People''s Commissar for Defense), Georgy Zhukov (Chief of Staff of the Red Army), Nikolai Kuznetsov (Commander of both North Caucasus and Baltic Military Districts), and Boris Shaposhnikov (Deputy People''s Commissar for Defense). All in all, on the very first day of the attack, Stalin held meetings with over 15 individual members of the Soviet government and military apparatus. Nazi German troops reached the outskirts of Moscow in December 1941, but were diverted to shore up southern flanks. At the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942-43, after losing an estimated 1 million men in the bloodiest fighting in history, the Red Army was able to regain the initiative of the war. Due to the unwillingness of the Japanese to open a second front in Manchuria, the Soviets were able to call dozens of Red Army divisions back from eastern Russia. These units were instrumental in turning the tide, because most of their officer corps had escaped Stalin''s purges. The Soviet forces were soon able to regain their lost territory and push their over-stretched enemy back to Nazi Germany itself. Marking the Soviet Union''s victory, a soldier raises the Soviet flag over the German Reichstag in the Nazi capital, Berlin From the end of 1944 to 1949 large sections of eastern Germany came under the Soviet Union''s occupation and on 2 May 1945, the capital city Berlin was taken, while over fifteen million Germans were removed from eastern Germany and pushed into central Germany (later called GDR German Democratic Republic) and western Germany (later called FRG Federal Republic of Germany). Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, Czech etc. were then moved onto German land. The Soviets bore the brunt of World War II because the West could not open up a second ground front in Europe until the invasion of Italy and D-Day. Approximately 28 million Soviets, among them 17 million civilians, were killed in "Operation Barbarossa," the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany. Civilians were rounded up and burned or shot in many cities conquered by the Nazis. Many feel that since the Slavs were considered "sub-human," this was ethnically targeted mass murder. However, the retreating Soviet army was ordered to pursue a ''scorched earth'' policy whereby retreating Soviet troops were ordered to destroy civilian infrastructure and food supplies so that the Nazi German troops could not use them. World War II resulted in enormous destruction of infrastructure and populations throughout Eurasia, from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans, with almost no country left unscathed. The Soviet Union was especially scathed due to the mass destruction of the industrial base that it had built up in the 1930s. The only major industrial power in the world to emerge intact, and even greatly strengthened from an economic perspective, was the United States. As mentioned, the Soviets bore the heaviest casualties of World War II. These war casualties can explain much of Russia''s behavior after the war. The Soviet Union continued to occupy and dominate Eastern Europe as a "buffer zone" to protect Russia from another invasion from the West. Russia had been invaded three times in the 150 years before the Cold War, during the Napoleonic Wars, World War I, and World War II, suffering tens of millions of casualties. The Soviets were determined to punish those peoples it saw as collaborating with Germany during the war. Millions of Poles, Latvians, Georgians, Ukrainians and other ethnic minorities were deported to Gulags in Siberia. (Previously, following the 1939 annexation of eastern Poland, thousands of Polish Army officers, including reservists, had been executed in the spring of 1940, in what came to be known as the Katyn massacre.) Stalin also had all Russian soldiers taken captive by Germany sent to isolated work camps in Siberia. This was done because many Soviet prisoners-of-war had been recruited to fight alongside the Germans in the Vlasov army, and to minimize any perceived counter-revolutionary ideas they might have been exposed to while in captivity. From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Soviet_Union_%281953-1985%29 _____________________________________________________________________________________ National Anthem of the Soviet Union The Hymn of the Soviet Union was composed by A. V. Aleksandrov, the lyrics were written by Sergey Vladimirovich Mikhalkov & G.G. El-Registan. It was first performed on the 1st of January 1944 and was officially adopted as a national hymn of the U.S.S.R. on the 15th of March 1944. United Forever in Friendship and Labour, Our mighty Republics will ever endure. The Great Soviet Union will Live through the Ages. The Dream of a People their fortress secure. Long Live our Soviet Motherland, Built by the People''s mighty hand. Long Live our People, United and Free. Strong in our Friendship tried by fire. Long may our Crimson Flag Inspire, Shining in Glory for all Men to see. Through Days dark and stormy where Great Lenin Lead us Our Eyes saw the Bright Sun of Freedom above and Stalin our Leader with Faith in the People, Inspired us to Build up the Land that we Love. Long Live our Soviet Motherland, Built by the People''s mighty hand. Long Live our People, United and Free. Strong in our Friendship tried by fire. Long may our Crimson Flag Inspire, Shining in Glory for all Men to see. We fought for the Future, destroyed the invaders, and Brought to our Homeland the Laurels of Fame. Our Glory will live in the Memory of Nations and All Generations will Honour Her Name. Long Live our Soviet Motherland, Built by the People''s mighty hand. Long Live our People, United and Free. Strong in our Friendship tried by fire. Long may our Crimson Flag Inspire, Shining in Glory for all Men to see. _______________________________________________________________________________ HITLER’S INVASION AND DEFEAT After collecting the rewards of the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939, the Soviet leaders sat back to watch the struggle between Germany and France and Britain. Meanwhile, under the terms of the German-Soviet trade agreement of August 19, 1939, the Soviet government furnished Germany large quantities of wheat, oil, and minerals, becoming thus, in a sense, the "arsenal of dictatorship," just as the United States became the "arsenal of democracy." The Soviet government also gave loyal diplomatic support to Germany by expelling from Moscow the envoys of the countries which Germany had overrun and by recognizing the puppet governments which Germany had set up. The unexpected rapid collapse of France startled the Soviet leaders because it left Russia alone on the continent with a powerful Germany. while the attention of the world was focused on the final phases of the struggle in the West, the Soviet government moved quickly to consolidate its position in the east-in the Baltic states and Rumania. The Soviet government had not consulted the German government before making these moves. Hitler was angered particularly by the Soviet encroachments in Rumania, on which Germany counted for filling a substantial part of her needs in oil and wheat. A frankly fascist regime was organized by General Antonescu, which permitted the Germans to send in troops to "protect" the Ploesti oil fields in October 1940. Russia was thus blocked from access to the Balkans. However, at the same time an Italian blunder opened them to the British. In October 1940 Mussolini decided to have a little adventure of his own. Without consulting Berlin and without any provocation, he declared war on Greece. The Italian army invaded Greece from Albania, the Italian air force bombarded her cities, and the Italian navy attacked her shipping. The pro-Axis dictator of Greece, General Metaxas, was forced to accept British assistance. The Greek army, however, proved perfectly capable of taking care of itself. Not only did it succeed in containing the Italian invasion, but in a difficult winter campaign hurled them back and invaded Albania in its turn. I. Invasion of the Balkans The foothold gained by the British in Greece disquieted Hitler. Raging against the ineptitude of his Italian partner, he ordered the preparation of operation "Marita," the invasion of the Balkans, to be undertaken in the spring of 1941. Before undertaking this operation, Hitler wished to ascertain the attitude of Russia. On his summons, the Soviet Foreign Commissar Molotov arrived in Berlin for discussions (November 12-14, 1940). During the conversations, which were interrupted by a British air raid sending the Soviet and Nazi dignitaries scurrying for the safety of an air-raid shelter, Hitler suggested that Russia join the German-Italian Pact of Steel. but the negotiation over spoils bugged down. So, on December 18, 1940, Hitler ordered the preparation of operation "Barbarossa," the invasion of Russia. The decision to attack Russia added a reason to secure the right wing of the German army by sweeping the British out of the Balkans-which the Germans proceeded to do in April 1941. Having cleaned up the Balkans wing, they turned to the main business of invading Russia. II. Invasion of Russia At four AM, June 22, 1941, the German Panzers lumbered across the Soviet border under a protective umbrella of the German Luftwaffe. At the same hour, the German foreign minister informed the astonished Soviet ambassador in Berlin that Germany was at war with Russia. No Soviet provocation preceded the invasion. A few hours later, speaking over the London radio, Prime Minister Churchill offered Russia an alliance, and on July 13 Britain and Russia concluded a mutual assistance pact, which was later transformed into a formal Anglo-Soviet alliance valid for twenty years. For three years Russia took on the brunt of German military power largely alone. In her struggle with Germany Russia enjoyed one advantage: Japanese neutrality. While Japan remained neutral toward Russia, Germany''s European allies and satellites all hastened to declare war on her. The German propaganda, which represented the German-Soviet war as an all-European crusade against communist Russia, had a certain basis in fact. A. The Offensive of 1941 The organization of Hitler''s vast army could not be completely concealed, but the Soviet government ignored warnings. It was completely surprised by the German attack. The German plan was to annihilate the Soviet Army in a few swift blows and to seize the great Russian cities: Leningrad, Moscow and Kiev. After that, the Germans expected, the Soviet government would surrender and disintegrate. At first, their campaign proceeded "according to plan"-to use the characteristic phrase of the German war communiqués. German armored divisions plunged deep into Russia and encircled in great pincers movements Soviet army units, leaving them to later destruction by conventional forces. City after city fell, millions of Soviet soldiers were captured or killed, and vast quantities of war supplies were lost. But, despite heavy losses, the Soviet army retreated in good order. It had many natural advantages for defense: the vastness of Russia, poor roads, and a climate characterized by short, hot summers, separated from long, rigorous winters by periods of thaw in the spring and rains in the fall, when military operations had to be suspended. Leningrad, Kiev, Moscow By September 8, the Germans reached Leningrad in the north and invested it. Hitler attached great psychological importance to the capture of the city of Lenin-the "cradle of Bolshevism." But the siege, marked by great heroism and harrowing suffering on the part of the defenders, lasted 18 months, and the city was never taken. In the south Kiev, the "Mother of Russian cities," fell to the Germans on October 18. But in the center the Germans were then still 200 miles from Moscow. At the end of October, despite the advanced season, they suspended major operations in the north and south and made an all-out drive to the capital. By the end of November, after fighting vast tank battles which dwarfed the battles in the west of the previous year, the Germans clawed their way to the suburbs of Moscow. Soviet government bureaus and foreign embassies had already been evacuated to Kuibyshev, some 500 miles to the east on the Volga. Looting broke out in the semi-deserted city, which appeared doomed. But Stalin and his associates were still in the Kremlin, planning a counter-offensive. Marshal Timoshenko, an old civil war general, in command of the defenses, was replaced with General George Zhukov, one of the crop of younger commanders trained in Germany. On December 6 Zhukov hurled fresh units from Siberia into he battle. Soviet units all along the front went into an offensive and the German lines wavered and fell back. Panic developed in German headquarters, but Hitler assumed operational command and prevented the retreat from turning into a rout by draconian stand-or-die orders. The Germans withdrew into "hedgehog" positions-armed camps bristling with defenses in all directions. The severe winter took a heavy toll from the Germans, who had expected to defeat the Russians before winter and were unprepared for a winter campaign. At the same time they had to contend with increasing guerrilla activities. If Hitler had come to Russia as a liberator instead of as a conqueror, he might very well have rallied much of the Soviet population against their communist government. War behind the Lines However, like Napoleon in 1812, he preferred to rely on military means alone to defeat Russia. Alfred Rosenberg, a Baltic German and former Russian subject, who as a student at the University of Moscow had witnessed the Russian Revolution, was appointed commissioner of the occupied regions. He instituted harsh and humiliating policies which alienated the Russian population. Old churches, monasteries, palaces and the homes of Leo Tolstoy and Peter Tchaikovsky were systematically and deliberately desecrated. The Communist Party fought back by maintaining underground organizations in the occupied regions which directed resistance against the Germans. To prevent fraternization communist agents committed deliberate outrages against the Germans, provoking them to brutal reprisals against the population-taking and shooting of hostages, burning of villages, deportations to concentration camps, or forced labor in Germany. As a result of German shortsightedness and Soviet cleverness, the Russian people rallied to the defense of the "Soviet fatherland." B. The Offensive of 1942 In the spring of 1942 the German army reorganized for a new offensive, whose objective was to complete the conquest of the Ukraine and to seize the Caucasus region as far as the Volga. After that the Germans would be able to turn north or south, and from the east outflank Moscow or the lands of the Near and Middle East. Stalingrad Churning through the dust of southern Russia, the German armored and motorized units reached Stalingrad on the right (western bank) of the Volga by August 23. The conventional tactic for the Soviet army to adopt would have been to retire to the left (eastern) bank of the Volga and form a defensive line based on the river, but this would have cut the Soviet supply of oil coming in tankers across the Caspian Sea and up the Volga. There was also a psychological factor, in that the city bore the name of Stalin and its fall would have diminished the prestige of the dictator. Defeat and Consequences On his hold-or-die orders the Soviet army, strengthened by the local population, clung to the city. The battle of Stalingrad-the Verdun of World War II-got underway. As days, weeks, and months went by, the battle increased in intensity. At first the Germans and Russians fought over quarters of the city, then over streets, and finally in fierce man-to-man combats over individual houses, floors and rooms. The city was reduced to a pile of rubble. As winter approached, the German generals advised retreat, but Hitler, who had already proclaimed Russia broken and defeated, would not hear of it-not even when the Soviet army mounted an offensive to the north and south of Stalingrad, broke through the German lines, and encircled the German Sixth Army in front of the city-in November 1942. The inevitable result of Hitler''s folly came on February 1, 1943, when Marshal von Paulus, twenty-four German and satellite generals, and 91,000 Axis troops (of the original 330,000 trapped by the Soviet army) surrendered. This catastrophe broke the offensive power of the German Army. From this time on, the initiative on the Eastern front was safely in the hands of the Soviet army. C. Road to Defeat: 1943 The early days and weeks of 1943 opened-as had 1942-with the German Army in serious trouble. In the first winter its predicament had arisen largely out of accident and miscalculation. In 1943 the causes were more serious, and more fundamental. For over half its length, nearly six hundred miles, the front had solidified. From the frozen Baltic, around the siege perimeter at Leningrad, due south to Lake Ilmen, and across the pine forest of the old Rzhev salient, and then down to Orel, the German front had hardly altered in twelve months. Permanent emplacements of logs and earth sheltered the soldiers; reinforced concrete protected guns whose field of fire traversed enormous mine fields, laid during spring and summer, while the earth was soft. In these positions the "garrison" had a comfortable enough time. Fuel was plentiful, clothing adequate, mail was delivered regularly. Its situation is comparable to that of the Western front in World War I between St. Mihiel and the Swiss frontier. Its bitterest enemies were the terrible cold and the huge bands of Partisans who roamed the desolate terrain, usually on horseback, and came out of the freezing night to attack lonely German billets far behind the lines. The front itself was often quiet for days at a time. The Germans used it as a rest area for worn-out divisions, the Russians as a training ground for new ones. It was to the south, where the three great rivers of the Ukraine flowed into the Black Sea, that the campaign was being decided. Here, six months before, the Germans had deployed the flower of their Army, and here it was now in headlong retreat. it had failed to force an issue in its prime. How, weakening daily, could it avoid annihilation? For Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, as he considered this problem, there was no comfort. The forces for which he had responsibility were broken into three separate groups, each too far, and too preoccupied with its own perils, to render the others mutual support. With Paulus gone, German strength in south Russia was halved. To the southeast, still deep in the Caucasus, Army Group A lingered on, outside the scope of Manstein''s direct command and alarmingly vulnerable to Russian encirclement. Manstein''s own units, in Army Group Don, had taken such a battering since November as to be hardly recognizable. Corps and divisions had lost their identity; shot-up Panzers, anti-aircraft and Luftwaffe remnants, had polarized around a few energetic commanders-Hollidt, Mieth, Fretter-Pico, who gave their names to Gruppen responsible for stretches of front up to a hundred miles long. Nonetheless, the Germans'' inferiority was not so great as they, and the majority of Allied observers, believed it to be at the time. Many of the factors present the previous winter had recurred-men and machines had worn themselves down in the exertions of the summer battles; winter equipment was still inadequate, for mobile warfare at least; the tenacity and resilience of the Russian soldier had again been underestimated-and these factors were transient. As the Germans fell back on their railheads, if and when they could gain time to breathe, when the temperature moderated, then they might still expect their situation to improve. The Russians now definitely had the stronger army-whereas in the winter of 1941 they had never achieved more than a local numerical superiority and owed their victory simply to the toughness and bravery of the Red Army man and his personal ascendancy over the individual German when the thermometer was 20 below. But equally the Russians had inherited many of the weaknesses of the previous period. They had brought two and a half million men into uniform since the outbreak of war. They had lost over four million trained soldiers. A ruthless standardization of equipment-two types of trucks, two tanks, three artillery pieces-had allowed them to raise production rates in spite of losing two thirds of their factory space. But of leaders to handle the new army there was a desperate scarcity. Some were too cautious, others too headstrong, all compensated for lack of experience with blind obedience to orders from above. The result was that tactical flexibility and speed in exploitation were far below the German standard. Only the artillery, some of the cavalry, and a very few of the tank brigades truly merited the "Guards" accolade that was being so liberally dispensed. The real problem for the Red Army had become one of adaptation: the change-over from a defensive stance, where its rugged courage and fortitude had carried the day, to the more complex structure of an offensive pattern, where the initiative and training of even the smallest units could be of vital importance. The Battle of Kursk Of all the operations in World War II none is so evocative of 1914-18 as the German attack on the Kursk salient, the ill-fated Fall Zitadelle in high summer of 1943. Rightly acclaimed as the greatest of all tank battles -at its height there were close to three thousand tanks on the move at the same time-it was from first to last a colossal battle of attrition, a slugging match which swayed to and fro across a narrow belt of territory, seldom more than fifteen miles deep, in which mines, firepower, and weight of explosives (rather than mobility and leadership) were the decisive factors. There is another feature of the offensive, which broke the Panzer force and irrevocably handed the strategic initiative to the Russians, which evokes the Great War, and this is the procrastination and argument which preceded its launching. The plan can be seen acquiring a momentum of its own, which ends by sweeping along all its participants, some protesting, some intoxicated, to a doom whose inevitability they all came to recognize. When this great Panzer battle turned out to be a failure for the Germans, despite the new Panther tank, the generals took to quarreling among themselves. Some even talked of staging a palace revolution to do away with Hitler. Even Heinrich Himmler saw that the failure of the Zitadelle offensive meant that the war was lost. The question which now exercised him was how to moderate defeat and save his own skin, and as on two other occasions he sent out secret agents to put out peace feelers to the Allies. The explosion of the Stauffenberg bomb was less than a year away. Devastating Retreat By the late summer of 1943 the morale of the whole Wehrmacht, from top to bottom, had suffered permanent change. Its courage and discipline were unimpaired. But hope was tainted, and humanity, where vestiges of it remained, was extinguished. August came in stifling heat; then September, the days crisper but with an evening fog. The rattle of machine guns, as a few last scores were settled with the local population, and the thud of demolition charges, the German Army retreated across European Russia, leaving a trail of smoke, of abandoned vehicles and loose-covered shallow graves. At the same time the Western Allies were liquidating another German pincer reaching out to the lands of the Near and Middle East through the deserts of North Africa. By G. Rempel from: http://mars.acnet.wnec.edu/~grempel/courses/russia/lectures |
