Joseph Stalin is surprised and unprepared when Hitler breaks their treaty of non-aggression and invades Russia.
In 1939 Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler signed a treaty of non-aggression but Hitler violated this when his troops invaded Russia on 22nd June 1941. Stalin was caught off guard and because of his unwillingness to listen to reports that Hitler wanted to conquer Russia he was almost completely unprepared.
The Red Army Begin to lose the Battle
Russia’s Red Army had no effective leadership and its armies were annihilated by the better armed and better led Nazis. It took less than six months for Hitler’s invading army of just over three million to capture the nearly four million troops of Stalin’s Red Army and rumor, confusion and panic began to spread behind the lines.
Hitler could have capitalized on Russian misery but threw his chance away by refusing to allow 800,000 Russian volunteers to fight for Germany.
Russia Turns the Tide
Once the Nazi’s were besieging Leningrad and were less than a mile from the Kremlin in Moscow, Stalin appealed over the radio to, ‘his friends,’ the Russian people to help him throw off the yoke of Nazism. Then came the onslaught of winter and the tide began to turn.
Stalin Does Not Change His Colors
Even though the Russian people answered the call and laid down their lives for the Motherland, Stalin still found ways of terrorizing them.
During the most savage conflict of a merciless war, the Battle for Stalingrad, Stalin formed units of the NKVD who were ordered, on pain of death, to advance behind the Russian troops. Should any soldier try to retreat they were to be shot. It was forbidden for any Russian soldier to surrender and if they did their families would lose their state allowances. Tens of thousands of deserters lost their lives in this way.
By 1945 the Red Army pushed west destroying Hitler’s armies and arrived at the gates of Berlin in May. But Stalin’s repression followed them.
Stalin became alarmed by the thought that his troops would become contaminated by the ideas of the American and British troops in Germany. If a Russian soldier should even embrace one of his fellow victors he was arrested and sent to a labor camp for re-education.
By 1945 more than three million Russians had escaped to the West and by 1948 almost all had been forcibly repatriated. On arriving back to the USSR thousands were marched straight from the boats and trains into makeshift execution yards and shot.
Source:
The Most Evil Men and Women In History by Miranda Twiss, published by Barnes and Noble 2002
