The invasion of the Soviet Union can be seen as one of Hitler’s greatest blunders. In 1941 Hitler and Stalin were in a non-aggression pact. Hitler decided to waive that pact and invade the Soviet Union in 1941 with Operation Barbarossa. Hitler’s decision to invade the Soviet Union was a great risk and ultimately led to the 3rd Reich’s downfall. The Soviet Union was a country full of vast resources and a much higher population than Germany. There seems to be so many risks involved with attacking the Soviet Union. So why was the Soviet Union attacked by Germany in 1941?
Hitler wanted his country’s population to grow. The German land mass was small and if Hitler wanted a growth in population he would need more land. Hitler was quoted saying, “The growth in population could only be compensated by growth-expansion of the Lebensraum.” One reason why Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941 was for what Hitler called Lebensraum. Lebensraum means living space. Hitler needed new soil for the surplus German population. Hitler knew that most of the world had already been carved up by colonial powers, so he looked east for new land. Hitler said, “If we speak of soil in Europe today, we can primarily have in mind only Russia and her vassal border states.” Hitler believed Russia as the only country large enough to meet “Germany’s territorial requirements for living space.” Hitler saw how vast the Soviet Union territory was and he wanted the German people to have the rich lands that it possessed for the surplus German population. If Hitler succeeded in taking the lands east of Germany, he would have enough room for Germany’s surplus population. The Soviet Union had many acres of unsettled land. The Soviet Union stretched all the way from Eu...
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Stahel’s book contributed more to my understanding of the Soviet experiment. Stahel went into great detail about the ideological aspect of the war. Many people know that the Soviet’s and Nazi’s had differing ideologies, but they do not know the reason behind it. It seems that Stahel’s main point in his writing is to show the difference between the ideologies. The
The Soviet Tragedy did not have a great deal of detail over Operation Barbarossa and the reasons behind the attack. Malia did write that the Soviet Union was rich in resources and about the ideological nature of the Nazi party. Malia also wrote that Hitler’s ideological nature was one of the greatest errors in his failure for his quest of a Nazi Europe. If Hitler were to use the people from the areas that he had won in the summer months of 1941, he could have had a better chance of winning.
As the Soviet Union approaches Berlin from the East, the allied forces invade from the west. Hitler’s German war-machine was crumbling. The United States had to make an enormous decision. Should they attack the Red Army of the Soviet Union? Should they keep the increasingly shaky alliance with the Russians and end the war in Europe? America chose to remain allies, resulting in a decision that affected the world for the next 46 years. World War 2 had concluded but now there was a new enemy, the Soviet Communist.
The Russians, who were also strongly affected by the war, were not deciding to retreat back to their borders without gaining anything - they were not allowed to attend the Treaty of Versailles or take part in agreeing on the terms and reparations that Germany was to pay off, thus getting no reward from participating in the war. Bitter with this prospect, Stalin decided to answer with his own set of policies, such as the ComEcom, ComInfor...
...se the main reason for the invasion of the Soviet Union was to weaken and demoralize the British. Hitler would have control of the Middle East and the rest of the British Empire. If the United States wanted to join the war, it would be very hard for them to have a place to launch an attack and would basically be forced to have peace with Hitler. With these events taking place in the west, the war would end early and Hitler would come out on top. This would not be the end to all conflicts because once Hitler wanted to start invading the east; he would run into more problems.
Hitler's Invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 I think that Hitler had always planned to attack Russia, even as he agreed to the signing of a non aggression pact with Russia, his plans to invade were beginning to come together as the pact split up Poland, enabling Germany to have a border with Russia. The pact was signed by Ribentrop from Germany and Molotov from Russia This was vital as German tactics relied on fast, effective and surprise attacks known as blitzkrieg; with Poland standing between Germany and Russia, in the time that it would take the German army to advance Poland and reached Russia, the Russian army would be aware and ready for battle; the element of surprise would be gone and Germany would be at a disadvantage. Also using blitzkrieg tactics would enable them to destroy the Russian air force while it was on the ground Hitler had stated in his book 'Mein Kampf' that he very much-disliked communism, he thought of the Russian people as inferior, this however would be one of the contributing reasons for the downfall of Germany, Hitler would underestimate the Russian people thinking they were inferior. He also stated that he would give the German people 'Lebensraum' (living space) and that living space would be in the east, this almost definitely meant Russia.
3. Once the war began, Germany developed a clear set of aims, already discussed before the war, to gain large territorial gains in central and eastern Europe, very similar to Hitler’s later craving for Lebensraum (‘living space’) in eastern Europe
It is the inquisitive nature of man that is primary driving force behind the Five W’s: Who, What, When, Where and Why. Though these are all meaningful pursuits in their own right, it is the purpose of this piece to shed light on the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union’s purpose, as well as the most likely causes for its manifestation. Also in question, but not out of the scope of discussion, is whether or not non-aggression pacts truly work to preserve peace, or whether they are unintentionally one of the primary fuel sources that combust to cause war amongst the nations involved. The realist holds the key to this argument. The realist perspective sits alone as being the most concise angle from which to view the events transpired. However, without understanding a bulk of the history, a moderately concise answer cannot be delivered to the reader.
In September of 1942, the German commander of the Sixth Army, advanced his troops to the city of Stalingrad where Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht to secure the oil fields and take Stalingrad. Stalingrad was a target location due to its manufacturing and center of communications for parts of Russia. Hitler had extra motivation to take Stalingrad because the significance of the name, it was named after the Soviet Russian leader Stalin. Russia had been war torn and devastated from previous attacks and battles from the Germans, they knew they had to persevere and hang on along enough to defeat the German Army. The Soviets did have somewhat of a warning of the German attack, they shipped out cattle, grain, and other main supplies, but most of the civilians stayed. Hitler was very confident he could take this city down without losing major causalities. While Hitler was planning the attack the Soviet Marshall Zhukov was planning a major counterattack. Marshall Zhukov had 6 armies of 1 million men ready to attack the Germans. Both the Germans and Soviets had flaws in their attacks but, t...
The USSR simply had way more money that the United States, buying themselves bigger missiles and an even larger nuclear arsenal (Doc. E). Countries dared to start anything with the USSR because they knew how strong their nuclear arsenal was. Statistics show that the USSR had 165 billion dollars to spend, in which the US only had 131 billion in comparison (Doc. E). If the USSR didn’t have such a strong military, what would have broken out from the Cold War? Both countries felt the need to avoid a nuclear war.
This references that the war must be properly declared by the official government of the state. On August 23rd 1939, Stalin proposed to Hitler and the Nazi party a non-aggression pact which was seen to be a way of preventing a war between both Germany and the Soviet Union however Stalin knew that an attack from Germany was inevitable and that this pact was only there to buy time for Russia and the Red Army. Even with the intelligence from numerous Russian spies, Josef Stalin refused to believe the rumours that were circulating that Hitler was going to invade just over two years after the German-Soviet Union Non-aggression pact was signed. Unannounced, in a display of blatant treachery, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa across a 930 mile front committing almost 3.6 million German soldiers. When asked at the time why Hitler wished to invade the Soviet Union, his excuse was “Czechoslovakia provided Soviet Russia with landing fields for aircrafts, thereby increasing the threat against Germany”. Hitler’s propaganda was an attempt of convincing the rest of the world that there was a valid reason for the invasion of the Soviet Union however no one was fooled by Hitler’s deceitful lies.
Hitler had many motives to why he did so. To Hitler Jews were maggots, a virus that had to be eliminated. He saw himself as the German Messiah doing God’s work by destroying the Jew. Hitler and the Nazis considered the Jew to be like the devil, wishing to dominate the world. When Hitler saw the image of a Jew, he saw an image of Satan. It wasn’t just Jews he wanted to destroy, but he saw the Jews as the main problem, and wanted to destroy them before they infected the entire world. He made himself the supreme racist. All he could think about was murder. He wanted one perfect race of people, all under one nation, with one leader, him.
On June 22, 1941, the Adolf Hitler launched a ruthless attack on his so-called ally, the Soviet Union. In December 1941, after a short five months, Operation Barbarossa, induced by the Nazi’s, failed. The Nazi Party ultimately fell to its demise, through the fail of Operation Barbarossa, from a combination of Hitler’s arrogance towards the Soviets as well as the Soviet response, but most importantly, Hitler’s greatest mistake: spreading his troops too wide across a colossal Russia.
During the late summer of 1942, Germany’s position in the Soviet Union appeared to be dominant. The Russian winter offensive in front of Moscow had succeeded in relieving the pressure on the capital but had failed to make any substantial gains beyond a few miles of breathing space. The Germans had managed to stabilize the situation, inflicting severe casualties on the Russians before opening their own offensive in southern Russia in the spring and summer of 1942. This offensive, like the initial attack on the Soviet Union, caught the Russians (who expected a second assault on Moscow) completely off guard. Germany’s success was immense, and by the end of July the Wehrmacht had reached the Caucasus Mountains and the Volga River, with the oil-rich cities of Astrakhan, Grozny, and Baku in its sights.
The time would soon come for Hitler to seek out his revenge on the nation that delayed his imminent world domination. One year after the siege at Leningrad, Hitler’s once indestructible Axis power had begun to weaken. Hitler began to see his dream fading away. He realized that to maintain hope, he and his army must remain on the offensive, so he decided to go after his most glaring defeat, which was Russia.
The invasion of Russia came as no surprise to the Soviets as Hitler made it evident on multiple occasions that he would invade the country. His future plans for the nation were set by his strategic, racial, economic and ideological motives:
The Soviet Union’s economy and essential needs would eventually start to fall apart and crumble one by one. "Food supplies fell. Factories faced closures as metal, oil and other raw materials failed to be delivered. Banks ceased to bail out industrial enterprises. The civilian administrative system, which was already creaking under wartime strains, started to collapse. Transport and communication became unreliable. Workers called for higher pay and secure employment. Soldiers in the garrisons supported a peace policy: they were horrified by the possibility of being transferred to the front line (UKEssays). All of the Soviet Union’s power sources has now been hindered. Many areas now seen this as a golden opportunity to bring down the Soviet Union. Stalin was very aware that his death was near because he killed many officials from rival areas. Stalin knew he wasn’t going out without fighting because he had much more pride than that so he ordered his men to fight. Stalin then met Hitler and they signed an agreement to not have any aggressive attacks. Little did Stalin know that Hitler was actually planning a huge attack against Stalin. “Over the next few days, the members would vote on Supreme Commander. It was not until the 10th of July, that Stalin was appointed the position. As the three million German forces crept closer to Moscow, panic began to pervade all of USSR because