Unit 5 Russia: Stalin Lesson 6 Operation Barbarossa and Effects of WW2 on Russia NOTES 1. Invasion of the USSR 1941-3 (Operation Barbarossa) why it failed 1940: Hitler tried to bring Russia into the war as a full Axis power but the negotiations were not successful. The following year he made an undeclared attack on Russia, despite the Ten Year Nonaggression Pact of 1939. Hitler felt confident that he could now at last destroy communism. He watched the Russian troops' defeat in Finland and misjudged their abilities. He expected to seize soviet resources. Perhaps he foresaw Germans linking up with Japanese militarists after a Russian surrender at either Moscow or the Ural mountains. He could turn on the British flank in the Middle East, overthrow her Eastern Empire, and in conjunction with Japan, dominate the world. Hitler misjudged the size, strength and determination of the USSR. Operation Barbarossa was delayed for six weeks while Hitler s troops went to the aid of Mussolini in the Balkans. 1 This was a disaster because the Russian winter was therefore six weeks nearer. The Germans (later assisted by Hungary, Romania, Finland, Italy and volunteers from Spain), invaded Russia on a thousand mile front from the Baltic to the Black sea. Germany profited by the element of surprise, greater preparedness, superior equipment, Blitzkrieg tactics. Stalin rallied the people to a "Great Patriotic War" in defence of "Mother Russia" (not communism) Russians fought heroically, continuing to fall back, destroying everything as they went ( scorched earth policy ) By end of November 41 the Germans were encircling Leningrad and threatening Moscow, having captured the important cities of Odessa, Rostov and Kharkov. Russians fought heroically at Leningrad enduring horrific casualties and starvation. Blitzkrieg scored great initial success. BUT Russia is a vast land. Tactics which worked well against small countries (e.g. Poland) did not work so well. German supply lines were vulnerable to guerilla attacks. Time had to be spent building railways and supply depots. Russian winter took a heavy toll on both sides. Britain and USA sent Russia supplies (especially tanks and aircraft which Russia lacked). This was at great cost when they had to be ferried across the submarine infested Atlantic. Overland supplies came via Persia which Britain and Russia occupied for 1 See Unit 3 Lesson 3 (e) (v) Invasion of Greece 1940.
the purpose. Like Napoleon Hitler did not equip his army to face a Russian winter. Without adequate clothing German soldiers died of frostbite. Hitler was trapped in a "war in the east" which he could not win. Value of Stalin s third Five Year Plan became clear. This was concerned with the development of the "Ural Zone". In spite of the loss of much agricultural land (esp. the Ukraine) and of industrial centres to the German advance, there was a gigantic transfer of technical plant and personnel from the west to the safe area east of the Ural Mountains. Nevertheless in Spring 1942 the Germans resumed their advance. They occupied the Crimea and reached the River Volga at Stalingrad. This was: vast industrial city a rallying point of Russian national morale the limit of the German advance turning point of the war in the east. In November the Russians started counter offensive from the ruins of the city (it had been pounded by the Germans for two months). The Russians chose this time because the first strong frosts had hardened the ground making manoeuvres easy but the snow which would clog manoeuvres up had not yet fallen. Another soviet force burst through to cut the German General Von Paulus off from direct routes by which assistance could have come to him. The Russians eventually (Feb. 43) encircled the huge besieging army destroying much of it and capturing the rest. Hitler was only just persuaded in time (Jan.) that his army must retreat. General Von Paulus surrendered in February 43 when General Kliest had retreated back across the River Don. If Paulus had surrendered earlier Soviet troops would have been free to fall on Kliest. As it was, Von Paulus delay in surrendering to the encircling Russian army enabled Kliest to escape. From then on the Russians pushed the invaders back. In Jan. the Germans had been forced to end the siege of Leningrad. In March they had to remove the threat to Moscow. By the middle of 1944 they were cleared out of Russian territory. Churchill and Roosevelt agreed that the priority was defeat of Germany in 1941 (Washington) they set up machinery for united action. Churchill went to Moscow to explain the strategy to Stalin. In 1943 (Morocco) Churchill and Roosevelt agreed the invasion of Italy. Stalin wanted a second front sooner to draw German forces away from Russia but Churchill and Roosevelt after careful planning decided there was no strategy that would be successful apart from waiting until they were strong enough to mount the cross channel invasion of Europe. B. Effects of WW2 on USSR (i) Territory The USSR made separate treaties with her neighbours at the end of the war:
The Polish Russian border was agreed and approximated the old Curzon 2 line. Czechoslovakia lost its eastern tip to the USSR USSR now took Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, part of Romania. To compare the size of the USSR Before and after WW2 see maps on p.148 and p. 153 of Tate or something similar. A Chino/Russian Treaty was agreed in which Russia replaced Japanese influence in Manchuria. (ii) economy Soviet industrial heartland had been devastated by the war. Much reconstruction needed. Soviets even prepared to ask the USA for loans for reconstruction. Population devastated by war and famine. By 1947 many soviet industries had attained pre-war levels of production. Agriculture remained dismal for decades. How was this achieved? 2 million German prisoners of war used as forced labour fierce repression of dissent: no labour unions no protest allowed against poverty hardship poor working conditions allowing for fact that statistics from Eastern bloc were unreliable - still impressive similar results in the Russian satellite countries: agriculture collectivised so that people forced off land into cities to provide labour pool for new industries (especially heavy industry) to supply defence and manufacturing industries (iii) the church. During the war Stalin wanted to rally all sectors of Russian opinion behind him. The purges had removed most of the intellectuals and even the ablest men in the communist party itself. Collectivisation of agriculture, the shock if the German invasion all these factors lowered morale and threatened collapse of the nation. Stalin decided to appeal to patriotism. To do this he had to make concessions to the Russian Orthodox church. He bargained with Orthodox leaders and its theological colleges were reopened, its magazine republished and the consecration of its bishops was again allowed, the price was probably some form of state control. As far as evangelicals were concerned Stalin had some of the leaders released from prison before they had finished their sentences in order to negotiate with them and use them to form the state-controlled All-Union 2 Because of the confused condition of Russia, Poland s eastern border had been ill defined after WW1. In 1920 Lloyd George suggested a boundary which became known as the Curzon Line. However there were Poles east of the line and so the Poles wished to push the boundary eastwards. This they did by war and the Treaty of Riga (1921) added considerable territory to Poland.
Council of Evangelical Christians and Baptists (AUCECB). This organisation was used to dominate the churches and attempt to control them. It continued to do this until the end of communism in Russia, ensuring that young people were discouraged from attending meetings, removing from office pastors who were effective and useful, urging compliance with laws forbidding the Christian teaching of children, closing churches if they were growing and providing information to the persecuting authorities about everything that went on in church and who was involved. Christians were therefore forced to form unregistered churches free from AUCECB control. Members of these unregistered churches were persecuted, imprisoned, tortured, had their children taken from them with unparalleled brutality. However, when during the war, churches were reopened under the auspices of the AUCECB believers generally greeted this with enthusiasm, not seeing what was to come. All this is vividly described in: Boyko, Nikolay, I Believe in Life After Death ISBN13: 1110000097610 and Yoder, Harvey, A Small Price to Pay ISBN9781885270511 which are autobiographies of Christians who lived under Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenkov and Gorbachev. I recommend you read these books for your own interest. WRITTEN WORK Before doing the written work go over the notes with a map so that you understand the geography of this part of the war. Then answer questions 1 or 2, and 3. 1. Describe the events of the German invasion of the USSR from 22 June 1941 to the surrender of the 6th army near Stalingrad on 31c January 1943. Why did Operation Barbarossa fail to defeat the USSR in 1941? 2. Describe the events of the invasion of the USSR from 22 June 1941 to the surrender of General Paulus outside Stalingrad on 2nd February 1943. Why was the USSR able to survive during this period? 3. What were the effects of the Second World War on the population, the economy and the territorial size of the USSR? Was the USSR stronger or weaker as a result of the second world war? Explain your answer. [This question requires some information from the optional Lesson 7. If you are going to cover Lesson 7 you may like to wait until you have done that lesson before tackling the question. If you are not going to cover Lesson 7 the notes below will give you the information you need. Notice stronger or weaker so answer on the one hand stronger because... on the other hand weaker because... ] Use the join-the-dots-without-looking method for one of the questions you answer and be sure to check your essay against the notes. Additional notes for question 3: End of WW2 and post war Establishment of USSR control in Eastern Europe.
Russian victories enabled Stalin to expand the power of Russia expand the appeal of communism. After 1945 most of Eastern Europe became communist. All resistance fighters agreed that the Nazis should be opposed. They did not agree on future government of their countries. Some were communists. Western powers resisted concessions to Communism encouraged liberated countries to set up a capitalist democratic government. Where the Red Army advanced there was no choice communist systems were developed. Stalin wanted to establish regimes sympathetic to or controlled by the USSR in countries of the defeated enemies: Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary East Germany and in the countries of the liberated allies Poland, Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia, Albania Communists were already strong in these countries because they had gained respect by resisting the Nazis and poor people tend to be attracted to communist ideas. Stalin used left-wing coalitions and "Popular Fronts" and created communist governments in these countries which became "Russian satellites" divided from the West by what Churchill called the "Iron Curtain" In this way the Eastern Bloc was created. Britain, France, Germany and Italy were weakened either politically or economically (or both) by the war and so the USSR became a superpower, the only rival to the USA.