From the very beginning of Nazism, from its earliest days, Hitler’s philosophy of National Socialism was a theory of history that explained the past and predicted the future. Hitler saw National Socialism’s destiny as confronting and destroying Soviet communism in the East. It was a fight to gain living space for the superior German race at the expense of the inferior Slavic people of Russia. World War II: The Complete History: The World Shall Hold Its Breath
The German army, unequipped to fight in winter, suffered terrible losses in the deepest cold ... Barbarossa ended in the snow before Moscow. There were still much fighting and dying to be done. World War II: The Complete History: The Day of Infamy
Soviet prisoners falling into German hands were treated with what amounted to savagery. Nearly 80% died in captivity. The Germans claimed not to be bound by the Geneva Convention as the USSR had not signed. Russian officers were shot; ordinary soldiers were left without food or shelter. World War II: The Complete History: Six Months to Run Wild
The German-Soviet conflict dominates World War II. ibid.
It is thought that nearly one million died in the winter of 1941-42 of hunger, disease, of cold. World War II: The Complete History: The End of the Beginning
Stalin was of course a dictator whose power depended on fear and violence. The Russian was in many ways a greater dictator than Hitler who had come to power through democracy and had enjoyed popular German support. World War II: The Complete History: Unconditional Surrender
Of the three Allies, the Soviet Union and its people made a tremendous sacrifice, paying the highest price in death and destruction. Theirs was the only territory that was to become a battlefield; it was mostly Soviet soldiers that died for the Allies. World War II: The Complete History: The Presence of History
The USSR lost thirteen and a half million soldiers and eight million civilians. ibid.
280,000 soldiers waited in ice and snow for supplies in vain. Too few planes flew too few missions. It was a hopeless undertaking. Hitler’s Henchmen: Goering the Marshall
He was a little man. About five foot five. In his sixties. Rather tubby. Enjoyed his drinks and his smokes. An unlikely hero perhaps but in the dark days of the twentieth century he helped save Britain. And he was one of the biggest mass murderers in history. Stalin was his party name. Professor David Reynolds, World War Two: 1941 and the Man of Steel, BBC 2012
In 1941 the Man of Steel blew it ... One of the most spectacular military blunders in history. ibid.
He was regularly beaten by his shoemaker father. ibid.
He never lost his thick Georgian accent. ibid.
His speciality was bank robberies ... Here was a gangster. A street thug. ibid.
Subjecting thousands to macabre show trials. ibid.
Barbarossa had hardly come out of the blue. ibid.
He signed a pact with Germany that would carve up eastern Europe. ibid.
The Germans expected to be in Moscow within a month. ibid.
Stalin had nearly come close to a nervous breakdown. ibid.
It was the Germans who were now encircled. ibid.
And now a new empire, the Soviet Union, was taking a grip on Czechoslovakia and most of Eastern Europe. It demanded that national identity be subsumed in socialist internationalism as defined by the Kremlin. David Reynolds, Long Shadow III, BBC 2018
Stalin’s Red Army in Poland prepared to launch a major offensive on Germany’s eastern border. Hitler’s forces in the region were poorly equipped. World War II in HD Colour s1e12: Victory in Europe, Channel 5 2009
There were horrific tales of Russian rape, murder and pillage. ibid.
This battle of epic proportions between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union deserves to be considered as the most important battle of the Second World War if not in all wars in history. More than 6,000 tanks and over 2,000,000 men clashed there. The Battle of Kursk, 2009
Dogfights involving up to 150 aircraft at any one time. ibid.
This was a fight to the finish. ibid.
The battle was lost and the fault was Hitler’s. ibid.
Russia, mid-June 1941: Bewildered uncertain country. Rumours abounded of invasion by Hitler’s Germany. The World at War 5/26: Barbarossa, ITV 1973
Doubts about the Red Army’s strength had been raised inside Russia itself. For the purges of the ’30s had decimated its leadership. ibid.
Even while Molotov was still in Berlin Hitler ordered his Generals to plan an attack on Russia for May 15th 1941. They responded with a detailed scheme which he now named Operation Barbarossa. ibid.
In a week the Wehrmacht was already halfway to Moscow. ibid.
The Germans were having trouble of their own. Temperatures were down to minus forty degrees Centigrade. Oil solidified in the sumps of lorries and tanks. The intense cold affected the soldiers too. There were more casualties from frostbite and stomach troubles than from actual fighting. ibid.
Russia: the summer of 1942. The Germans are on the move again. The World at War 9/26: Stalingrad
The German army’s plan to destroy Russia by a blitzkrieg in 1941 had failed. And in the attempt they lost a million men. ibid.
Hitler turned south to the Caucasus. Three-quarters of Russia’s oil was there. ibid.
The Germans didn’t take many prisoners. They captured territory and towns. ibid.
Soon it would be 30, 40, 50 degrees below freezing. Equipment and men would freeze. ibid.
Hitler was obsessed with Stalingrad. The Russians too. ibid.
The same day he was promoted Von Paulus surrendered. His captors had never seen such a senior German officer before ... Hitler had expected him to shoot himself. It was not an ordinary defeat; it was a catastrophe. ibid.
Adolf Hitler had decided on a radical action that was to alter the course of the war and change the Nazi policy towards the Jews. Hitler had decided as the fulfilment of his ideological dream to invade the Soviet Union. The German operation Barbarossa began on June 22nd 1941. The Nazis: A Warning from History s1e5: The Road to Treblinka, BBC 1997
Unlike the conflict in the West, the German soldiers knew that the war on the Eastern front was to be fought without rules. ibid.
Hitler codenames the invasion plan Operation Barbarossa. World War II: The Apocalypse: Origins of the Holocaust aka Apocalypse – The Second World War: Shock, France 2 2009
This is Stalin’s scorched earth policy. ibid.
The 9th Panza Division was ready to attack but the order didn’t come. So they went round in circles waiting. At the last minute Hitler deferred his plans for an offensive in the East. He had to help out his ally Mussolini who had tried to fight his own separate war and got into trouble. ibid.
Operation Barbarossa had been delayed by several weeks. ibid.
The Soviet Air Force was nearly wiped out on the first day. ibid.
The executioners took pictures of their victims ... Holocaust by bullets. ibid.
The Germans capture 600,000 Russian soldiers in one foul swoop. Himmler comes through on a visit – no provisions have been made to feed the prisoners. ibid.
The long siege of Leningrad begins. ibid.
The Germans are no longer able to wash or change their clothes. Like their enemies they are driven crazy by lice and parasites that bring Scabies and Typhus. ibid.
Hitler writes to his troops: Soldiers on the Eastern front, comrades, today begins the last great decisive battle. ibid.
Stalingrad at the end of October 1942: The city on the Volga had still not fallen. German soldiers listened to the Fuhrer on the radio: ‘We have taken Stalingrad. A few pockets of resistance remain. We will take them one by one. It’s just a question of time.’ World War II: The Apocalypse: Allies Strike Back aka Apocalypse: The Second World War: The Great Landings/The Noose
After seven hundred days of siege the Soviets continued to resist. ibid.
Stalingrad became a raging inferno. ibid.
Von Paulus went on to collaborate with the Russians. And testified at the Nuremberg trials against his former commanders. ibid.
The Russians receive huge shipments of jeeps, tanks, planes and trucks, and cans of corned beef. ibid.
We want no useless mouths to feed. Those who can work will work for the Reich. The rest will die. Those that work will give everything they have until they themselves die. Marshall Goering