Military History of The Soviet Union During World War II

Military History Of The Soviet Union During World War II

Joseph Stalin was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee from 1922 until his death in 1953. In the years following Lenin's death in 1924, he rose to become the authoritarian leader of the Soviet Union.

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

In June 1941, Germany began an invasion of the Soviet Union, 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 some 30 kilometers from Moscow. Over the next four years, the Soviet Union repulsed German offensives, such as at the Battle of Stalingrad and Battle of Kursk, and pressed forward to victory in large Soviet offensives such as the Vistula-Oder Offensive. Stalin began to listen to his generals more after Kursk.

Stalin met with Churchill and Roosevelt in Tehran Conference and began to discuss a two-front war against Germany and future of Europe after the war. Berlin finally fell 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, 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.