Stalin in World War II - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...

was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the title given to the leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. With some exceptions, the office was synonymous with leader of the Soviet Union...

's Central Committee

Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , abbreviated in Russian as ЦК, "Tse-ka", earlier was also called as the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party ...

from 1922 until his death in 1953. In the years following Lenin's

Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...

death in 1924, he rose to become the authoritarian leader of the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

.

In August 1939, at Stalin's direction, the Soviet Union entered into a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

, containing a secret protocol, dividing the whole of eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence. Thereafter, Germany and the Soviet Union invaded their apportioned sections of Poland. The Soviet Union later invaded Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and part of Romania, along with an attempted invasion of Finland. Stalin and Hitler later traded proposals for a Soviet entry into the Axis Pact

German–Soviet Axis talks

In October and November 1940, German–Soviet Axis talks occurred concerning the Soviet Union's potential entry as a fourth Axis Power. The negotiations included a two day Berlin conference between Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, Adolf Hitler and German Foreign Minister Joachim von...

.

In June 1941, Germany began an invasion of the Soviet Union

Operation Barbarossa

Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...

, before which Stalin had ignored reports of a German invasion. Stalin was confident that the total Allied war machine would eventually stop Germany, and the Soviets stopped the Wehrmacht

Wehrmacht

The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...

some 30 kilometers from Moscow

Battle of Moscow

The Battle of Moscow is the name given by Soviet historians to two periods of strategically significant fighting on a sector of the Eastern Front during World War II. It took place between October 1941 and January 1942. The Soviet defensive effort frustrated Hitler's attack on Moscow, capital of...

. Over the next four years, the Soviet Union repulsed German offensives, such as at the Battle of Stalingrad

Battle of Stalingrad

The Battle of Stalingrad was a major battle of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in southwestern Russia. The battle took place between 23 August 1942 and 2 February 1943...

and Battle of Kursk

Battle of Kursk

The Battle of Kursk took place when German and Soviet forces confronted each other on the Eastern Front during World War II in the vicinity of the city of Kursk, in the Soviet Union in July and August 1943. It remains both the largest series of armored clashes, including the Battle of Prokhorovka,...

, and pressed forward to victory in large Soviet offensives such as the Vistula-Oder Offensive

Vistula-Oder Offensive

The Vistula–Oder Offensive was a successful Red Army operation on the Eastern Front in the European Theatre of World War II; it took place between 12 January and 2 February 1945...

. Stalin began to listen to his generals more after Kursk.

Stalin met with Churchill and Roosevelt in Tehran Conference

Tehran Conference

The Tehran Conference was the meeting of Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill between November 28 and December 1, 1943, most of which was held at the Soviet Embassy in Tehran, Iran. It was the first World War II conference amongst the Big Three in which Stalin was present...

and began to discuss a two-front war against Germany and future of Europe after the war. Berlin finally fell

Battle in Berlin

The Battle in Berlin was an end phase of the Battle of Berlin. While the Battle of Berlin encompassed the attack by three Soviet Army Groups to capture not only Berlin but the territory of Germany east of the River Elbe still under German control, the Battle in Berlin details the fighting, and...

in April 1945, but Stalin was never fully convinced his nemesis Hitler had actually committed suicide. Fending off the German invasion and pressing to victory in the East required a tremendous sacrifice by the Soviet Union, which suffered military casualties of approximately 35 million men.

Stalin became personally involved with questionable tactics employed during the war, including the Katyn massacre

Katyn massacre

The Katyn massacre, also known as the Katyn Forest massacre , was a mass execution of Polish nationals carried out by the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs , the Soviet secret police, in April and May 1940. The massacre was prompted by Lavrentiy Beria's proposal to execute all members of...

, Order No. 270, Order No. 227 and NKVD prisoner massacres. Controversy also surrounds rapes and looting in Soviet held territory along with large numbers of deaths of POWs held by the Soviets and the Soviets' treatment of their own soldiers who had spent time in German POW camps.

Pact with Hitler

In August 1939, Stalin accepted Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...

's proposal to enter into a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany, negotiated by Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov

Vyacheslav Molotov

Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov was a Soviet politician and diplomat, an Old Bolshevik and a leading figure in the Soviet government from the 1920s, when he rose to power as a protégé of Joseph Stalin, to 1957, when he was dismissed from the Presidium of the Central Committee by Nikita Khrushchev...

and German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop

Joachim von Ribbentrop

Ulrich Friedrich Wilhelm Joachim von Ribbentrop was Foreign Minister of Germany from 1938 until 1945. He was later hanged for war crimes after the Nuremberg Trials.-Early life:...

. Officially a non-aggression treaty only, an appended secret protocol, also reached on August 23, 1939, divided the whole of eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence. The USSR was promised an eastern part of Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

, primarily populated with Ukrainians and Belarusians, in case of its dissolution, and additionally Latvia

Latvia

Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...

, Estonia

Estonia

Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...

and Finland

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

were recognized as parts of the Soviet sphere of influence, with Lithuania

Lithuania

Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...

added in a second secret protocol in September 1939. Another clause of the treaty was that Bessarabia

Bessarabia

Bessarabia is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west....

, then part of Romania, was to be joined to the Moldovan ASSR, and become the Moldovan SSR under control of Moscow.

The Pact was reached two days after the breakdown of Soviet military talks with British and French representatives in August 1939 over a potential Franco-Anglo-Soviet alliance. Political discussions had been suspended on August 2 when Molotov stated they could not be restarted until progress was made in military talks late in August, after the talks had stalled over guarantees of the Baltic states, while the military talks upon which Molotov insisted started on 11 August. At the same time, Germany—with whom the Soviets had started secret discussions since July 29 -- argued that it could offer the Soviets better terms than Britain and France, with Ribbentrop insisting "there was no problem between the Baltic and the Black Sea that could not be solved between the two of us." German officials stated that, unlike Britain, Germany could permit the Soviets to continue their developments unmolested, and that "there is one common element in the ideology of Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union: opposition to the capitalist democracies of the West." By that time, Molotov obtained information regarding Anglo-German negotiations and a pessimistic report from the Soviet ambassador in France. After disagreement regarding Stalin's demand to move Red Army troops through Poland and Romania (which Poland and Romania opposed), on August 21, the Soviets proposed adjournment of military talks using the excuse that the absence of the senior Soviet personnel at the talks interfered with the autumn manoeuvres of the Soviet forces, though the primary reason was the progress being made in the Soviet-German negotiations. That same day, Stalin received assurance that Germany would approve secret protocols to the proposed non-aggression pact that would grant the Soviets land in Poland, the Baltic states, Finland and Romania, after which Stalin telegrammed Hitler that night that the Soviets were willing to sign the pact and that he would receive Ribbentrop on August 23. Regarding the larger issue of collective security, some historians state that one reason that Stalin decided to abandon the doctrine was the shaping of his views of France and Britain by their entry into the Munich Agreement

Munich Agreement

The Munich Pact was an agreement permitting the Nazi German annexation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland. The Sudetenland were areas along Czech borders, mainly inhabited by ethnic Germans. The agreement was negotiated at a conference held in Munich, Germany, among the major powers of Europe without...

and the subsequent failure to prevent German occupation of Czechoslovakia

German occupation of Czechoslovakia

German occupation of Czechoslovakia began with the Nazi annexation of Czechoslovakia's northern and western border regions, known collectively as the Sudetenland, under terms outlined by the Munich Agreement. Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's pretext for this effort was the alleged privations suffered by...

. Stalin also viewed the Pact as gaining time in an inevitable war with Hitler in order to reinforce the Soviet military and shifting Soviet borders westwards, which would be militarily beneficial in such a war.

Stalin and Ribbentrop spent most of the night of the Pact's signing trading friendly stories about world affairs and cracking jokes (a rarity for Ribbentrop) about England's weakness, and the pair even joked about how the Anti-Comintern Pact

Anti-Comintern Pact

The Anti-Comintern Pact was an Anti-Communist pact concluded between Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan on November 25, 1936 and was directed against the Communist International ....

principally scared "British shopkeepers." They further traded toasts, with Stalin proposing a toast to Hitler's health and Ribbentrop proposing a toast to Stalin.

Implementing the division of Eastern Europe and other invasions

On September 1, 1939, the German invasion of its agreed upon portion of Poland started World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. On September 17 the Red Army

Red Army

The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...

invaded eastern Poland and occupied the Polish territory assigned to it

Soviet invasion of Poland

Soviet invasion of Poland can refer to:* the second phase of the Polish-Soviet War of 1920 when Soviet armies marched on Warsaw, Poland* Soviet invasion of Poland of 1939 when Soviet Union allied with Nazi Germany attacked Second Polish Republic...

by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, followed by co-ordination with German forces in Poland. Eleven days later, the secret protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was modified, allotting Germany a larger part of Poland, while ceding most of Lithuania

Lithuania

to the Soviet Union. The Soviet portions lay east of the so-called Curzon Line

Curzon Line

The Curzon Line was put forward by the Allied Supreme Council after World War I as a demarcation line between the Second Polish Republic and Bolshevik Russia and was supposed to serve as the basis for a future border. In the wake of World War I, which catalysed the Russian Revolution of 1917, the...

, an ethnographic frontier between Russia and Poland drawn up by a commission of the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. In early 1940, the Soviets executed over 25,000 Polish POWs and political prisoners in the Katyn Forrest

Katyn massacre

In August 1939, Stalin declared that he was going to "solve the Baltic problem, and thereafter, forced Lithuania

Lithuania

, Latvia

Latvia

and Estonia

Estonia

to sign treaties for "mutual assistance."

After unsuccessfully attempting to install a communist puppet government in Finland, in November 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Finland

Winter War

The Winter War was a military conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland. It began with a Soviet offensive on 30 November 1939 – three months after the start of World War II and the Soviet invasion of Poland – and ended on 13 March 1940 with the Moscow Peace Treaty...

. The Finnish defense defied Soviet expectations, and after stiff losses, Stalin settled for an interim peace granting the Soviet Union less than total domination by annexing only the eastern region of Karelia (10% of Finnish territory). Soviet official casualty counts in the war exceeded 200,000, while Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev

Nikita Khrushchev

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...

later claimed the casualties may have been one million. After this campaign, Stalin took actions to bolster the Soviet military, modify training and improve propaganda efforts in the Soviet military.

In mid-June 1940, when international attention was focused on the German invasion of France

Battle of France

In the Second World War, the Battle of France was the German invasion of France and the Low Countries, beginning on 10 May 1940, which ended the Phoney War. The battle consisted of two main operations. In the first, Fall Gelb , German armoured units pushed through the Ardennes, to cut off and...

, Soviet NKVD troops raided border posts in Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. Stalin claimed that the mutual assistance treaties had been violated, and gave six hour ultimatums for new governments to be formed in each country, including lists of persons for cabinet posts provided by the Kremlin. Thereafter, state administrations were liquidated and replaced by Soviet cadres, followed by mass repression in which 34,250 Latvians, 75,000 Lithuanians and almost 60,000 Estonians were deported or killed. Elections for parliament and other offices were held with single candidates listed, the official results of which showed pro-Soviet candidates approval by 92.8 percent of the voters of Estonia, 97.6 percent of the voters in Latvia and 99.2 percent of the voters in Lithuania. The resulting peoples assemblies immediately requested admission into the USSR, which was granted by the Soviet Union.

In late June 1940, Stalin directed the Soviet annexation of Bessarabia

Bessarabia

Bessarabia is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west....

and northern Bukovina

Bukovina

Bukovina is a historical region on the northern slopes of the northeastern Carpathian Mountains and the adjoining plains.-Name:The name Bukovina came into official use in 1775 with the region's annexation from the Principality of Moldavia to the possessions of the Habsburg Monarchy, which became...

, proclaiming this formerly Romanian territory part of the
Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. But in annexing northern Bukovina, Stalin had gone beyond the agreed limits of the secret protocol.
After the Tripartite Pact

Tripartite Pact

The Tripartite Pact, also the Three-Power Pact, Axis Pact, Three-way Pact or Tripartite Treaty was a pact signed in Berlin, Germany on September 27, 1940, which established the Axis Powers of World War II...

was signed by Axis Powers

Axis Powers

The Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...

Germany, Japan and Italy, in October 1940, Stalin personally wrote to Ribbentrop about entering an agreement regarding a "permanent basis" for their "mutual interests."

German–Soviet Axis talks

Stalin sent Molotov to Berlin to negotiate the terms for the Soviet Union to join the Axis and potentially enjoy the spoils of the pact. At Stalin's direction, Molotov insisted on Soviet interest in Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Greece, though Stalin had earlier unsuccessfully personally lobbied Turkish leaders to not sign a mutual assistance pact with Britain and France. Ribbentrop asked Molotov to sign another secret protocol with the statement: "The focal point of the territorial aspirations of the Soviet Union would presumably be centered south of the territory of the Soviet Union in the direction of the Indian Ocean." Molotov took the position that he could not take a "definite stand" on this without Stalin's agreement. Stalin did not agree with the suggested protocol, and negotiations broke down. In response to a later German proposal, Stalin's stated that the Soviets would join the Axis if Germany foreclosed acting in the Soviet's sphere of influence. Shortly thereafter, Hitler issued a secret directive on the eventual attempts to invade the Soviet Union.

In an effort to demonstrate peaceful intentions toward Germany, on April 13, 1941, Stalin oversaw the signing of a neutrality pact with Axis power Japan. While Stalin had little faith in Japan's commitment to neutrality, he felt that the pact was important for its political symbolism, to reinforce a public affection for Germany. Stalin felt that there was a growing split in German circles about whether Germany should initiate a war with the Soviet Union.

Hitler breaks the pact

During the early morning of June 22, 1941, Hitler

Adolf Hitler

broke the pact by implementing Operation Barbarossa

Operation Barbarossa

, the German invasion of Soviet held territories and the Soviet Union that began the war on the Eastern Front

Eastern Front (World War II)

The Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of World War II between the European Axis powers and co-belligerent Finland against the Soviet Union, Poland, and some other Allies which encompassed Northern, Southern and Eastern Europe from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945...

. Before the invasion, Stalin felt that Germany would not attack the Soviet Union until Germany had defeated Britain. At the same time, Soviet generals warned Stalin that Germany had concentrated forces on its borders. As well, two highly placed Soviet spies in Germany, "Starshina" and "Korsikanets", had sent dozens of reports to Moscow containing evidence of a German attack. Further warnings came from Richard Sorge

Richard Sorge

Richard Sorge was a German communist and spy who worked for the Soviet Union. He has gained great fame among espionage enthusiasts for his intelligence gathering during World War II. He worked as a journalist in both Germany and Japan, where he was imprisoned for spying and eventually hanged....

, a Soviet spy in Tokyo working under cover as a German journalist.

Seven days before the invasion, a Soviet spy in Berlin warned Stalin that the movement of German divisions to the borders was for the purpose of waging war on the Soviet Union. Five days before the attack, Stalin received a report from a spy in the German Air Ministry that "all preparations by Germany for an armed attack on the Soviet Union have been completed, and the blow can be expected at any time." In the margin, Stalin wrote to the people's commissar for state security, "you can send your 'source' from the headquarters of German aviation to his mother. This is not a 'source' but a dezinformator." Although Stalin increased Soviet western border forces to 2.7 million men and ordered them to expect a possible German invasion, he did not order a full-scale mobilization of forces to prepare for an attack. Stalin felt that a mobilization might provoke Hitler to prematurely begin to wage war against the Soviet Union, which Stalin wanted to delay until 1942 in order to further strengthen Soviet forces.

A theory suggested by Viktor Suvorov

Viktor Suvorov

Viktor Suvorov is the pen name for Vladimir Bogdanovich Rezun , a former Soviet and now British writer of Russian and Ukrainian descent who writes primarily in Russian, as well as a former Soviet military intelligence spy who defected to the UK...

claims that Stalin had made aggressive preparations beginning in the late 1930s and was preparing to invade Germany in summer 1941. Thus, he believes Hitler only managed to forestall Stalin and the German invasion was in essence a pre-emptive strike

Pre-Emptive Strike

Pre-Emptive Strike is the first release by Five Finger Death Punch on July 10, 2007. It was only released as a digital download to the American iTunes Music Store. The live version of "The Devil's Own" was recorded at a performance in Las Vegas, Nevada....

, precisely as Hitler claimed himself. This theory was supported by Igor Bunich

Igor Bunich

Igor Bunich is a Russian historian known for offering a number of revisionist interpretations of Russian history. He is most famous for claiming that Joseph Stalin was actively preparing to invade western Europe in 1941 before any suggestion of the German eastward assault in Operation...

, Joachim Hoffmann

Joachim Hoffmann

Joachim Hoffmann was a German historian and scientific director of the German Armed Forces Military History Research Office.-Life:...

, Mikhail Meltyukhov (see Stalin's Missed Chance
Stalin's Missed Chance
Stalin's Missed Chance is a study by Russian military historian Mikhail Ivanovich Meltyukhov, author of several books and articles on Soviet military history....

) and Edvard Radzinsky

Edvard Radzinsky

Edvard Stanislavovich Radzinsky is a Russian playwright, writer, TV personality, and film screenwriter. He is also known as an author of several books on history which were characterized as "folk history" by journalists and academic historians.-Biography:Edvard Stanislavovich Radzinsky was born...

(see Stalin: The First In-Depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia's Secret Archives). Other historians and especially Gabriel Gorodetsky

Gabriel Gorodetsky

Gabriel Gorodetsky is a Quondam Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and the holder of the Rubin Chair for Russian Studies at Tel Aviv University. Prof. Gorodetsky studied History and Russian Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and went on to obtain his Ph.D degree under the supervision...

and David Glantz

David Glantz

David M. Glantz is an American military historian and the editor of the Journal of Slavic Military Studies....

reject this thesis. General

General (Germany)

General is presently the highest rank of the German Army and Luftwaffe . It is the equivalent to the rank of Admiral in the German Navy .-Early history:...

Fedor von Boch's diary states that the Abwehr

Abwehr

The Abwehr was a German military intelligence organisation from 1921 to 1944. The term Abwehr was used as a concession to Allied demands that Germany's post-World War I intelligence activities be for "defensive" purposes only...

fully expected a Soviet attack against German forces in Poland no later than 1942.

In the initial hours after the German attack commenced, Stalin hesitated, wanting to ensure that the German attack was sanctioned by Hitler, rather than the unauthorized action of a rogue general. Accounts by Nikita Khrushchev

Nikita Khrushchev

and Anastas Mikoyan

Anastas Mikoyan

Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan was an Armenian Old Bolshevik and Soviet statesman during the rules of Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, and Leonid Brezhnev....

claim that, after the invasion, Stalin retreated to his dacha in despair for several days and did not participate in leadership decisions. However, some documentary evidence of orders given by Stalin contradicts these accounts, leading some historians to speculate that Khrushchev's account is inaccurate.

In the first three weeks of the invasion, attempting to defend against large German advances, the Soviet Union suffered 750,000 casualties, and lost 10,000 tanks and 4,000 aircraft. In July 1940, Stalin completely reorganized the Soviet military, placing himself directly in charge of several military organizations, which gave him complete control of his country's entire war effort; more control than any other leader in World War II.

A pattern soon emerged where Stalin embraced the Red Army

Red Army

's strategy of conducting multiple offensives, while the Germans soon overran each of the resulting small newly gained grounds, dealing the Soviets severe casualties. The most notable example of this was the Battle of Kiev

Battle of Kiev (1941)

The Battle of Kiev was the German name for the operation that resulted in a very large encirclement of Soviet troops in the vicinity of Kiev during World War II. It is considered the largest encirclement of troops in history. The operation ran from 23 August – 26 September 1941 as part of Operation...

, where over 600,000 Soviet troops were quickly killed, captured or had gone missing.

By the end of 1941, the Soviet military had suffered 4.3 million casualties and the Germans had captured 3.0 million Soviet prisoners, 2.0 million of which would die in German captivity by February 1942. German forces had advanced c. 1,700 kilometers, and maintained a linearly-measured front of 3,000 kilometers. The Red Army

Red Army

put up fierce resistance during the war's early stages. Even so, according to Glantz, they were plagued by an ineffective defense doctrine against well-trained and experienced German forces, despite possessing some modern Soviet equipment such as the KV-1 and T-34

T-34

The T-34 was a Soviet medium tank produced from 1940 to 1958. Although its armour and armament were surpassed by later tanks of the era, it has been often credited as the most effective, efficient and influential design of World War II...

tanks.

Soviets stop the Germans

While the Germans made huge advances in 1941, killing millions of Soviet soldiers, at Stalin's direction, the Red Army directed sizable resources to prevent the Germans from achieving one of their key strategic goals, the attempted capture of Leningrad

Siege of Leningrad

The Siege of Leningrad, also known as the Leningrad Blockade was a prolonged military operation resulting from the failure of the German Army Group North to capture Leningrad, now known as Saint Petersburg, in the Eastern Front theatre of World War II. It started on 8 September 1941, when the last...

, although more than a million Soviet soldiers lost their lives in the region during the course of the war and over a million civilians died, many by starvation.

While the Germans pressed forward, Stalin was confident of an eventual Allied victory over Germany. In September 1941, Stalin told British diplomats that he wanted two agreements: (1) a mutual assistance/aid pact and (2) a recognition that, after the war, the Soviet Union would gain the territories in countries that it had taken pursuant to its division of Eastern Europe with Hitler in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. The British agreed to assistance but refused to agree upon the territorial gains, which Stalin accepted months later as the military situation had deteriorated somewhat by mid-1942. In November 1941, Stalin rallied his generals in a speech given underground in Moscow, telling them that the German blitzkrieg would fail because of weaknesses in the German rear in Nazi-occupied Europe and the underestimation of the strength of the Red Army, and that the German war effort would crumble against the British-American-Soviet "war engine". On November 6, 1941, Stalin addressed the Soviet Union for the second time (the first was on July 2, 1941).

Correctly calculating that Hitler would direct efforts at the capture of Moscow

Battle of Moscow

, Stalin concentrated forces on the defense of the city, including numerous divisions transferred from Soviet eastern sectors after Stalin estimated that Japan would not attempt an attack in those areas. By December, Hitler's troops had advanced to within 30 km of the Kremlin

Kremlin

A kremlin , same root as in kremen is a major fortified central complex found in historic Russian cities. This word is often used to refer to the best-known one, the Moscow Kremlin, or metonymically to the government that is based there...

in Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

. On December 5, the Soviets launched a counteroffensive, pushing German troops back c. 80 km from Moscow, the Wehrmacht

Wehrmacht

's first significant defeat of the war.

The Soviets then in early 1942, began a series of offensives labeled "Stalin's First Strategic Offensives", although there is no concrete evidence that Stalin actually engineered the offensives. The counteroffensive bogged down, in part due to mud from rain in the Spring of 1942. Stalin's attempt to retake Kharkov

Second Battle of Kharkov

The Second Battle of Kharkov, so named by Wilhelm Keitel, was an Axis counter-offensive against the Red Army Izium bridgehead offensive conducted from 12 May to 28 May 1942, on the Eastern Front during World War II. Its objective was to eliminate the Izium bridgehead over Seversky Donets, or the...

in the Ukraine ended in disastrous encirclement of Soviet forces, with over 200,000 Soviet casualties suffered. Stalin attacked the competence of the generals involved. General Georgy Zhukov

Georgy Zhukov

Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov , was a Russian career officer in the Red Army who, in the course of World War II, played a pivotal role in leading the Red Army through much of Eastern Europe to liberate the Soviet Union and other nations from the Axis Powers' occupation...

and others subsequently revealed that some of those generals had wished to remain in a defensive posture in the region but Stalin and others had pushed for the offensive, though some doubt Zhukov's account.

At the same time, worried by the possibility of American support after their entry into the war following the Attack on Pearl Harbor

Attack on Pearl Harbor

The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941...

, and a potential Anglo-American invasion on the Western Front

Western Front (World War II)

The Western Front of the European Theatre of World War II encompassed, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and West Germany. The Western Front was marked by two phases of large-scale ground combat operations...

in 1942 (which would not actually happen until 1944), Hitler shifted his primary goal from an immediate victory in the East, to the more long-term goal of securing the southern Soviet Union to protect oil fields vital to the long-term German war effort. While Red Army generals saw evidence that Hitler would shift his efforts south, Stalin considered this to be a flanking move attempting to take Moscow. The German southern campaign began with a push to capture the Crimea which ended in disaster for the Red Army

Battle of the Kerch Peninsula

Battle of the Kerch Peninsula was a World War II offensive by German and Romanian armies against the Soviet Crimean Front forces defending the Kerch Peninsula, in the eastern part of the Crimea. It was launched on 8 May 1942 and concluded around 18 May 1942 with the near complete destruction of...

, and caused Stalin to issue a broad scolding of his generals' leadership. In their southern campaigns, the Germans took 625,000 Red Army prisoners in July and August 1942 alone. At the same time, in a meeting in Moscow, Churchill privately told Stalin that the British and Americans were not yet prepared to make an amphibious landing against a fortified Nazi-held French coast in 1942, and would instead direct their efforts to invading German-held North Africa

Operation Torch

Operation Torch was the British-American invasion of French North Africa in World War II during the North African Campaign, started on 8 November 1942....

. He also pledged a campaign of massive strategic bombing, including that of German civilian targets.

Feeling dizzy with success, estimating that the Russians were "finished," the Germans then began another southern operation in the fall of 1942, the Battle of Stalingrad

Battle of Stalingrad

. Hitler insisted upon splitting German southern forces in a simultaneous siege of Stalingrad and an offensive against Baku

Baku

Baku , sometimes spelled as Baki or Bakou, is the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and of the Caucasus region. It is located on the southern shore of the Absheron Peninsula, which projects into the Caspian Sea. The city consists of two principal...

on the Caspian Sea. Stalin directed his generals to spare no effort or shirk any sacrifice to defend Stalingrad. Although the Soviets suffered in excess of 1.1 million casualties at Stalingrad, the victory over German forces, including the encirclement of 290,000 Axis troops, marked a turning point in the war.

Within a year after Barbarossa, Stalin reopened the churches in the Soviet Union. One reason could have been to motivate the majority of the population who had Christian beliefs. The reasoning behind this is that by changing the official policy of the party and the state towards religion, the Church and its clergymen could be at his disposal in mobilizing the war effort. On September 4, 1943, Stalin invited Metropolitan Sergius

Patriarch Sergius I of Moscow

Patriarch Sergius I , – May 15, 1944) was the 12th Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, from September 8, 1943 until his death. He was also the de facto head of the Russian Orthodox Church as Patriarchal locum tenens in 1925-1943.-Early life:...

, Metropolitan Alexy and Metropolitan Nikolay

Metropolitan Nikolay of Krutitsy

Metropolitan Nicholas , Kovno – December 13, 1961, Moscow), was a bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church.He supported the controversial 1927 declaration of Metropolitan Sergius, pledging loyalty of the Church to the Soviet authorities against the will of the imprisoned Patriarchal locum tenens,...

to the Kremlin and proposed to reestablish the Moscow Patriarchate, which had been suspended since 1925, and elect the Patriarch. On September 8, 1943, Metropolitan Sergius was elected Patriarch. One account states that Stalin's reversal followed a sign that he supposedly received from heaven. The story in which Ilya, Metropolitan of the Lebanon Mountains, claimed to receive a sign from heaven that "The churches and monasteries must be reopened throughout the country. Priests must be brought back from imprisonment, Leningrad must not be surrendered, but the sacred icon of Our Lady of Kazan

Our Lady of Kazan

Our Lady of Kazan, also called Theotokos of Kazan , was a holy icon of the highest stature within the Russian Orthodox Church, representing the Virgin Mary as the protector and patroness of the city of Kazan. Copies of the image are also venerated in the Catholic Church...

should be carried around the city boundary, taken on to Moscow, where a service should be held, and thence to Stalingrad Tsaritsyn." Shortly thereafter, Stalin's attitude changed and "Whatever the reason, after his mysterious retreat, he began making his peace with God. Something happened which no historian has yet written about. On his orders many priests were brought back to the camps. In Leningrad, besieged by the Germans and gradually dying of hunger, the inhabitants were astounded, and uplifted, to see wonder-working icon Our Lady of Kazan brought out into the streets and borne in procession." Radzinsky asked, "Had he seen the light? Had fear made him run to his Father? Had the Marxist God-Man simply decided to exploit belief in God? Or was it all of these things at once?."

Soviet push to Germany

The Soviets repulsed the important German strategic southern campaign and, although 2.5 million Soviet casualties were suffered in that effort, it permitted to Soviets to take the offensive for most of the rest of the war on the Eastern Front

Eastern Front (World War II)

.

In 1943, Stalin ceded to his generals' call for the Soviet Union to take a defensive stance because of disappointing losses after Stalingrad, a lack of reserves for offensive measures and a prediction that the German's would likely next attack a bulge in the Soviet front at Kursk

Kursk

Kursk is a city and the administrative center of Kursk Oblast, Russia, located at the confluence of the Kur, Tuskar, and Seym Rivers. The area around Kursk was site of a turning point in the Russian-German struggle during World War II and the site of the largest tank battle in history...

such that defensive preparations there would more efficiently use resources. The Germans did attempt an encirclement attack at Kursk

Battle of Kursk

, which was successfully repulsed by the Soviets after Hitler canceled the offensive, in part, because of the Allied invasion of Sicily

Allied invasion of Sicily

The Allied invasion of Sicily, codenamed Operation Husky, was a major World War II campaign, in which the Allies took Sicily from the Axis . It was a large scale amphibious and airborne operation, followed by six weeks of land combat. It launched the Italian Campaign.Husky began on the night of...

, though the Soviets suffered over 800,000 casualties. Kursk also marked the beginning of a period where Stalin became more willing to listen to the advice of his generals.

By the end of 1943, the Soviets occupied half of the territory taken by the Germans from 1941-1942. Soviet military industrial output also had increased substantially from late 1941 to early 1943 after Stalin had moved factories well to the East of the front, safe from German invasion and air attack. The strategy paid off, as such industrial increases were able to occur even while the Germans in late 1942 occupied over half of European Russia, including 40% (80 million) of its population, and c. 2,500,000 square kilometers of Russian territory. The Soviets had also prepared for war for over a decade, including preparing 14 million civilians with some military training. Accordingly, while almost all of the original 5 million men of the Soviet army had been wiped out by the end of 1941, the Soviet military had swelled to 8 million members by the end of that year. Despite substantial losses in 1942 far in excess of German losses, Red Army size grew even further, to 11 million. While there is substantial debate whether Stalin helped or hindered these industrial and manpower efforts, Stalin left most economic wartime management decisions in the hands of his economic experts. While some scholars claim that evidence suggests that Stalin considered, and even attempted, negotiating peace with Germany in 1941 and 1942, others find this evidence unconvincing and even fabricated.

In November 1943, Stalin met with Churchill and Roosevelt in Tehran

Tehran Conference

. Roosevelt told Stalin that he hoped that Britain and America opening a second front against Germany could initially draw 30-40 German division from the Eastern Front

Eastern Front (World War II)

. Stalin and Roosevelt, in effect, ganged up on Churchill by emphasizing the importance of a cross-channel

English Channel

The English Channel , often referred to simply as the Channel, is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates southern England from northern France, and joins the North Sea to the Atlantic. It is about long and varies in width from at its widest to in the Strait of Dover...

invasion of German-held northern France, while Churchill had always felt that Germany was more vulnerable in the "soft underbelly" of Italy (which the Allies had already invaded

Italian Campaign (World War II)

The Italian Campaign of World War II was the name of Allied operations in and around Italy, from 1943 to the end of the war in Europe. Joint Allied Forces Headquarters AFHQ was operationally responsible for all Allied land forces in the Mediterranean theatre, and it planned and commanded the...

) and the Balkans. The parties later agreed that Britain and America would launch a cross-channel invasion of France in May 1944, along with a separate invasion of southern France. Stalin insisted that, after the war, the Soviet Union should incorporate the portions of Poland it occupied pursuant to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, named after the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and the German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, was an agreement officially titled the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union and signed in Moscow in the late hours of 23 August 1939...

with Germany, which Churchill tabled.

In 1944, the Soviet Union made significant advances across Eastern Europe toward Germany, including Operation Bagration, a massive offensive in Belorussia against the German Army Group Centre. Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill closely coordinated, such that Bagration occurred at roughly the same time as American and British forces initiation of the invasion of German held Western Europe

Operation Overlord

Operation Overlord was the code name for the Battle of Normandy, the operation that launched the invasion of German-occupied western Europe during World War II by Allied forces. The operation commenced on 6 June 1944 with the Normandy landings...

on France's northern coast. The operation resulted in the Soviets retaking Belorussia and the western Ukraine, along with the successful effective destruction of the Army Group Centre and 300,000 German casualties, though at the cost of over 750,000 Soviet casualties.

Successes at Operation Bagration and in the year that followed were, in large part, due to a weakened Wehrmacht

Wehrmacht

that lacked the fuel and armament they needed to operate effectively, growing Soviet advantages in manpower and materials, and the attacks of Allies on the Western Front

Western Front (World War II)

. In his 1944 May Day speech, Stalin praised the Western allies for diverting German resources in the Italian Campaign

Italian Campaign (World War II)

, Tass published detailed lists of the large numbers of supplies coming from Western allies, and Stalin made a speech in November 1944 stating that Allied efforts in the West had already quickly drawn 75 German divisions to defend that region, without which, the Red Army could not yet have driven the Wehrmacht from Soviet territories. The weakened Wehrmacht also helped Soviet offensives because no effective German counter-offensive could be launched,

Beginning in the summer of 1944, a reinforced German Army Centre Group did prevent the Soviets from advancing in around Warsaw for nearly half a year. Some historians claim that the Soviets' failure to advance was a purposeful Soviet stall to allow the Wehrmacht to slaughter members of a Warsaw Uprising

Warsaw Uprising

The Warsaw Uprising was a major World War II operation by the Polish resistance Home Army , to liberate Warsaw from Nazi Germany. The rebellion was timed to coincide with the Soviet Union's Red Army approaching the eastern suburbs of the city and the retreat of German forces...

by the Polish home army

Armia Krajowa

The Armia Krajowa , or Home Army, was the dominant Polish resistance movement in World War II German-occupied Poland. It was formed in February 1942 from the Związek Walki Zbrojnej . Over the next two years, it absorbed most other Polish underground forces...

in August 1944 that occurred as the Red Army approached, though others dispute the claim and cite sizable unsuccessful Red Army efforts to attempt to defeat the Wehrmacht in that region. Earlier in 1944, Stalin had insisted that the Soviets would annex the portions of Poland it divided with Germany in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

, while the Polish government in exile

Polish government in Exile

The Polish government-in-exile, formally known as the Government of the Republic of Poland in Exile , was the government in exile of Poland formed in the aftermath of the Invasion of Poland of September 1939, and the subsequent occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, which...

, which the British insisted must be involved in postwar Poland, demanded that the Polish border be restored to prewar locations. The rift further highlighted Stalin's blatant hostility toward the anti-communist Polish government in exile and their Polish home army, which Stalin felt threatened his plans to create a post-war Poland friendly to the Soviet Union. Further exacerbating the rift was Stalin's refusal to resupply the Polish home army, and his refusal to allow American supply planes to use the necessary Soviet air bases to ferry supplies to the Polish home army, which Stalin referred to in a letter to Roosevelt and Churchill as "power-seeking criminals." Worried about the possible repercussions of those actions, Stalin later began a Soviet supply airdrop to Polish rebels, though most of the supplies ended up in the hands of the Germans. The uprising ended in disaster with 20,000 Polish rebels and up to 200,000 civilians killed by Wehrmacht forces, with Soviet forces entering the city in January 1945.

Other important advances occurred in late 1944, such as the invasion of Romania in August and Bulgaria

Bulgaria

Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...

. The Soviet Union declared war on Bulgaria

Bulgaria

in September 1944 and invaded the country, installing a communist government. Following the invasion of these Balkan countries, Stalin and Churchill met in the fall of 1944

Moscow Conference (1944)

The Fourth Moscow Conference, also Tolstoy Conference for its code name Tolstoy, between the major Allies of World War II took place from October 9 to October 19 1944....

, where they agreed upon various percentages for "spheres of influence" in several Balkan states, though the diplomats for neither leader knew what the term actually meant. The Red Army also expelled German forces from Lithuania and Estonia in late 1944 at the cost of 260,000 Soviet casualties.

In late 1944, Soviet forces battled fiercely to capture Hungary in the Budapest Offensive

Budapest Offensive

The Budapest Offensive was the general attack by Soviet forces against Germany and their allies from the territory of Hungary. The offensive lasted from 29 October 1944 until the fall of Budapest on 13 February 1945.-Prelude:...

, but could not take it, which became a topic so sensitive to Stalin that he refused to allow his commanders to speak of it. The Germans held out in the subsequent Battle of Budapest

Battle of Budapest

The Siege of Budapest centered on the Hungarian capital city of Budapest. It was fought towards the end of World War II in Europe, during the Soviet Budapest Offensive. The siege started when Budapest, defended by Hungarian and German troops, was first encircled on 29 December 1944 by the Red Army...

until February 1945, when the remaining Hungarians signed an armistice with the Soviet Union. Victory at Budapest permitted the Red Army to launch the Vienna Offensive

Vienna Offensive

The Vienna Offensive was launched by the Soviet 3rd Ukrainian Front in order to capture Vienna, Austria. The offensive lasted from 2–13 April 1945...

in April 1945. To the northeast, the taking of Belorussia and the Western Ukraine permitted the Soviets to launch the massive Vistula–Oder Offensive, where German intelligence had incorrectly guessed the Soviets would have a 3-to-1 numerical superiority advantage that was actually 5-to-1 (over 2 million Red Army personnel attacking 450,000 German defenders), the successful culmination of which resulted in the Red Army advancing from the Vistula

Vistula

The Vistula is the longest and the most important river in Poland, at 1,047 km in length. The watershed area of the Vistula is , of which lies within Poland ....

river in Poland to the German Oder

Oder

The Oder is a river in Central Europe. It rises in the Czech Republic and flows through western Poland, later forming of the border between Poland and Germany, part of the Oder-Neisse line...

river in Eastern Germany.

Stalin's shortcomings as strategist are frequently noted regarding massive Soviet loss of life and early Soviet defeats. An example of it is the summer offensive of 1942, which led to even more losses by the Red Army and recapture of initiative by the Germans. Stalin eventually recognized his lack of know-how and relied on his professional generals to conduct the war.

Additionally, Stalin was well aware that other European armies had utterly disintegrated when faced with Nazi military efficacy and responded effectively by subjecting his army to galvanizing terror and nationalist appeals to patriotism. He also appealed to the Russian Orthodox church

Russian Orthodox Church

The Russian Orthodox Church or, alternatively, the Moscow Patriarchate The ROC is often said to be the largest of the Eastern Orthodox churches in the world; including all the autocephalous churches under its umbrella, its adherents number over 150 million worldwide—about half of the 300 million...

and images of national Russian people.

Final Victory

By April 1945, Germany faced its last days with 1.9 million German soldiers in the East fighting 6.4 million Red Army soldiers while 1 million German soldiers in the West battled 4 million Western Allied soldiers. While initial talk existed of a race to Berlin

Race to Berlin

The Race to Berlin refers mainly to the competition between two Soviet Marshals to be the first to enter Berlin during the final months of World War II....

by the Allies, after Stalin successfully lobbied for Eastern Germany to fall within the Soviet "sphere of influence" at Yalta

Yalta Conference

The Yalta Conference, sometimes called the Crimea Conference and codenamed the Argonaut Conference, held February 4–11, 1945, was the wartime meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union, represented by President Franklin D...

, no plans were made by the Western Allies

Western Allies

The Western Allies were a political and geographic grouping among the Allied Powers of the Second World War. It generally includes the United Kingdom and British Commonwealth, the United States, France and various other European and Latin American countries, but excludes China, the Soviet Union,...

to seize the city by a ground operation. Stalin still remained suspicious that western Allied forces holding at the Elbe river might move on the capital and, even in the last days, that the Americans might employ their two airborne divisions to capture the city.

Stalin directed the Red Army to move rapidly in a broad front into Germany because he did not believe the Western Allies would hand over territory they occupied, while he made the overriding objective capturing Berlin. After successfully capturing Eastern Prussia

East Prussian Offensive

The East Prussian Offensive was a strategic offensive by the Red Army against the German Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front . It lasted from 13 January to 25 April 1945, though some German units did not surrender until 9 May...

, three Red Army fronts converged on the heart of Eastern Germany, with one of the last pitched battles of the war

Battle of the Oder-Neisse

The Battle of the Oder–Neisse is the German name for the initial phase of one of the last two strategic offensives conducted by the Red Army in the Campaign in Central Europe during World War II. Its initial breakthrough phase was fought over four days, from 16 April until 19 April 1945, within...

putting the Soviets at the virtual gates of Berlin. By April 24, Berlin was encircled by elements of two Soviet fronts, one of which had begun a massive shelling of the city on April 20 that would not end until the city's surrender. On April 30, Hitler and Eva Braun

Eva Braun

Eva Anna Paula Hitler was the longtime companion of Adolf Hitler and, for less than 40 hours, his wife. Braun met Hitler in Munich, when she was 17 years old, while working as an assistant and model for his personal photographer and began seeing him often about two years later...

committed suicide, after which Soviet forces found their remains, which had been burned at Hitler's directive. German forces surrendered a few days later. Some historians argue that Stalin delayed the last final push for Berlin by two months in order to capture other areas for political reasons, which they argue gave the Wehrmacht time to prepare and increased Soviet casualties (which exceeded 400,000), though this is contested by other historians. Despite the Soviets' possession of Hitler's remains, Stalin did not believe that his old nemesis was actually dead, a belief that remained for years after the war. Stalin also later directed aides to spend years researching and writing a secret book about Hitler's life for his own private reading that reflected Stalin's prejudices, including an absence of criticism of Hitler for his treatment of Jews.

Fending off the German invasion and pressing to victory in the East required a tremendous sacrifice by the Soviet Union. Soviet military casualties totaled approximately 35 million (official figures 28.2 million) with approximately 14.7 million killed, missing or captured (official figures 11.285 million). Although figures vary, the Soviet civilian death toll probably reached 20 million. Millions of Soviet soldiers and civilians disappeared into German detention camps and slave labor factories, while millions more suffered permanent physical and mental damage. Economic losses, including losses in resources and manufacturing capacity in western Russia and Ukraine, were also catastrophic. The war resulted in the destruction of approximately 70,000 Soviet cities, towns and villages. Destroyed in that process were 6 million houses, 98,000 farms, 32,000 factories, 82,000 schools, 43,000 libraries, 6,000 hospitals and thousands of kilometers of roads and railway track.

Questionable tactics

After taking around 300,000 Polish prisoners in 1939 and early 1940, NKVD officers conducted lengthy interrogations of the prisoners in camps that were, in effect, a selection process to determine who would be killed. On March 5, 1940, pursuant to a note to Stalin from Lavrenty Beria, the members of the Soviet Politburo

Politburo

Politburo , literally "Political Bureau [of the Central Committee]," is the executive committee for a number of communist political parties.-Marxist-Leninist states:...

(including Stalin) signed an order to execute 25,700 Polish POWs, labeled "nationalists and counterrevolutionaries", kept at camps and prisons in occupied western Ukraine

Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

and Belarus

Belarus

Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...

. This became known as the Katyn massacre

Katyn massacre

. Major-General Vasili M. Blokhin

Vasili Blokhin

Vasili Mikhailovich Blokhin was a Soviet Major-General who served as the chief executioner of the Stalinist NKVD under the administrations of Genrikh Yagoda, Nikolai Yezhov and Lavrenty Beria...

, chief executioner

Executioner

A judicial executioner is a person who carries out a death sentence ordered by the state or other legal authority, which was known in feudal terminology as high justice.-Scope and job:...

for the NKVD

NKVD

The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....

, personally shot 6,000 of the captured Polish officers in 28 consecutive nights, which remains one of the most organized and protracted mass murders by a single individual on record During his 29 year career Blokhin shot an estimated 50,000 people, making him ostensibly the most prolific official executioner in recorded world history.

Stalin personally told a Polish general requesting information about missing officers that all of the Poles were freed, and that not all could be accounted because the Soviets "lost track" of them in Manchuria

Manchuria

Manchuria is a historical name given to a large geographic region in northeast Asia. Depending on the definition of its extent, Manchuria usually falls entirely within the People's Republic of China, or is sometimes divided between China and Russia. The region is commonly referred to as Northeast...

. After Polish railroad workers found the mass grave, the Nazi's used the massacre to attempt to drive a wedge between Stalin and the other Allies, including bringing in a European commission of investigators from twelve countries to examine the graves. In 1943, as the Soviets prepared to retake Poland, Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels

Joseph Goebbels

Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism...

correctly guessed that Stalin would attempt to falsely claim that the Germans massacred the victims. As Goebbels predicted, the Soviets had a "commission" investigate the matter, falsely concluding that the Germans had killed the POWs. The Soviets did not admit responsibility until 1990.

On August 16, 1941, in attempts to revive a disorganized Soviet defense system, Stalin issued Order No. 270, demanding any commanders or commissars "tearing away their insignia and deserting or surrendering" to be considered malicious deserters. The order required superiors to shoot these deserters on the spot. Their family members were subjected to arrest. The second provision of the order directed all units fighting in encirclements to use every possibility to fight. The order also required division commanders to demote and, if necessary, even to shoot on the spot those commanders who failed to command the battle directly in the battlefield. Thereafter, Stalin also conducted a purge of several military commanders that were shot for "cowardice" without a trial.

In June 1941, weeks after the German invasion began, Stalin directed that the retreating Red Army also sought to deny resources to the enemy through a scorched earth policy of destroying the infrastructure and food supplies of areas before the Germans could seize them, and that partisans were to be set up in evacuated areas. This, along with abuse by German troops, caused starvation and suffering among the civilian population that were left behind. Stalin feared that Hitler would use disgruntled Soviet citizens to fight his regime, particularly people imprisoned in the Gulags. He thus ordered the NKVD

NKVD

to take care of the situation. They responded by murdering around one hundred thousand political prisoners throughout the western parts of the Soviet Union, with methods that included bayoneting people to death and tossing grenades into crowded cells. Many others were simply deported east.

In July 1942, Stalin issued Order No. 227, directing that any commander or commissar of a regiment, battalion or army, who allowed retreat without permission from his superiors was subject to military tribunal. The order called for soldiers found guilty of disciplinary measures to be forced into "penal battalions", which were sent to the most dangerous sections of the front lines. From 1942 to 1945, 427,910 soldiers were assigned to penal battalions. The order also directed "blocking detachments" to shoot fleeing panicked troops at the rear. In the first two months following the order, over 1,000 troops were shot by blocking units and blocking units sent over 130,000 troops to penal battalions. Despite having some effect initially, this measure proved to have a deteriorating effect on the troops' morale, so by October 1942 the idea of regular blocking units was quietly dropped By 20 November 1944 the blocking units were disbanded officially.

After the capture of Berlin, Soviet troops reportedly raped German women and girls, with total victim estimates ranging from tens of thousands to two million. During and after the occupation

Battle of Budapest

of Budapest

Budapest

Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...

, (Hungary

Hungary

Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

), an estimated 50,000 women and girls were raped. Regarding rapes that occurred in Yugoslavia, Stalin responded to a Yugoslav partisan leader's complaints saying, "Can't he understand it if a soldier who has crossed thousands of kilometers through blood and fire and death has fun with a woman or takes some trifle?"

In former Axis countries, such as Germany, Romania and Hungary, Red Army officers generally viewed cities, villages and farms as being open to pillaging and looting. For example, Red Army soldiers and NKVD members frequently looted transport trains in 1944 and 1945 in Poland and Soviet soldiers set fire to the city centre of Demmin

Demmin

Demmin is a town in the Mecklenburgische Seenplatte district, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Germany. It was the capital of the former district Demmin.- Name :...

while preventing the inhabitants from extinguishing the blaze, which, along with multiple rapes, played a part in causing over 900 citizens of the city to commit suicide. In the Soviet occupation zone of Germany, when members of the SED

Socialist Unity Party of Germany

The Socialist Unity Party of Germany was the governing party of the German Democratic Republic from its formation on 7 October 1949 until the elections of March 1990. The SED was a communist political party with a Marxist-Leninist ideology...

reported to Stalin that looting and rapes by Soviet soldiers could result in negative consequences for the future of socialism in post-war East Germany, Stalin reacted angrily: "I shall not tolerate anybody dragging the honour of the Red Army through the mud." Accordingly, all evidence of looting, rapes and destruction by the Red Army was deleted from archives in the Soviet occupation zone.

Stalin's personal military leadership was emphasied as part of the "cult of personality" after the publication of Stalin's ten victories extracted from 6 November 1944 speech "27th anniversary of the Great October socialist revolution" during the 1944 meeting of the Moscow's Soviet deputies.

According to recent figures, of an estimated four million POWs taken by the Russians, including Germans, Japanese, Hungarians

Hungary

, Romania

Romania

Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...

ns and others, some 580,000 never returned, presumably victims of privation or the Gulags, compared with 3.5 million Soviet POW that died in German camps out of the 5.6 million taken.

Soviet POWs and forced laborers who survived German captivity were sent to special "transit" or "filtration" camps meant determine which were potential traitors. Of the approximately 4 million to be repatriated 2,660,013 were civilians and 1,539,475 were former POWs. Of the total, 2,427,906 were sent home and 801,152 were reconscripted into the armed forces. 608,095 were enrolled in the work battalions of the defense ministry. 272,867 were transferred to the authority of the NKVD for punishment, which meant a transfer to the Gulag system. 89,468 remained in the transit camps as reception personnel until
the repatriation process was finally wound up in the early 1950s.

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