no illusions were involved in their agreement is indicated, among many other things, by the fact that Molotov, who signed the treaty for the Soviet Union and thus represented the 'pro-German orientation,' retained his position and Stalin's favor after Hitler attacked the U.S.S.R. Yet both parties to the pact expected to gain major temporary advantages by means of it. Germany would be free to fight Western powers. The Soviet Union would escape war, at least for the time being. Besides, the agreement was accompanied by a secret protocol dividing the spheres of influence and enabling the Soviet Union to expand in eastern Europe.
The Red Army occupied eastern Poland, incorporating its White Russian and Ukrainian areas into the corresponding Soviet republics. Next the Soviet government signed mutual assistance pacts with Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, obtaining a lease of Baltic bases. But in July 1940 these states were occupied by Soviet troops, and, following a vote of their beleaguered parliaments, they were incorporated into the U.S.S.R. as union republics - a procedure that the Western democracies with excellent reasons failed to recognize. Finland was more troublesome: the Finnish government turned down the Soviet demand that they move the Finnish boundary some twenty miles further away from Leningrad, abandoning a Finnish defense line, in exchange for a strip of Karelia; a war between the two countries resulted and lasted from the end of November 1939 until mid-March 1940. In spite of the heroic Finnish defense and the surprising early reverses of the Red Army, the Soviet Union eventually imposed its will on Finland. Finally, in the summer of 1940 the U.S.S.R. utilized its agreement with Germany to obtain from Rumania, by means of an ultimatum, the disputed region of Bessarabia as well as northern Bukovina. The new Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic was formed from the territory acquired from Rumania. In April 1941 the Soviet Union signed a five-year nonaggression treaty with Japan, which had chosen to expand south rather than into Siberia.
But, although the Soviet government did not know it, time was running short for its efforts to strengthen its position on the European and Asiatic continents. Following his stunning victory in the west in the summer of 1940, Hitler decided to invade the Soviet Union. In December he issued precise instructions for an attack in May 1941. The defeat that Germany suffered in the autumn in the aerial Battle of Britain apparently only helped convince the Nazi dictator that he should strike his next major blow in the east. The schedule, however, could not quite be kept. A change of
government in Yugoslavia made the Germans invade Yugoslavia as well as Greece, which had stopped an earlier Italian offensive. While brilliantly successful, the German campaign in the Balkans, together with a certain delay in supplying the German striking force with tanks and other vehicles, postponed by perhaps three weeks the invasion of Soviet Russia. The new date was June 22, and on that day German troops aided by Finnish, Rumanian, and other units attacked the U.S.S.R. along an enormous front from the Baltic to the Black Sea.
The blow was indeed staggering. Hitler threw into the offensive some 175 divisions, including numerous armored formations. A huge and powerful air force closely supported the attack. Moreover, perhaps surprisingly, the German blow caught the Red Army off guard. Apparently, although Stalin and the Politburo were preparing for war, they had ignored Western warnings as well as their own intelligence and did not expect such an early, sudden, and powerful offensive. The Germans aimed at another
The central front proved decisive. There the Germans aimed their main blow directly at Moscow. But they were delayed in fierce fighting near Smolensk. The summer
they came to within twenty miles of it, but no further. Late in November the Red Army started a counteroffensive against the extremely extended German lines on the southern front, recapturing Rostov-on-Don at the end of the month. In early December it struck on the central front, attacking both north and south of Moscow as well as in the Moscow area itself. The Germans suffered enormous losses and had to retreat. Winter came to play havoc with unprepared German troops and to assist the Russians. On January 20 the Red Army recaptured Mozhaisk, thus eliminating any immediate threat to Moscow. But German troops had to retreat much further west before they could stabilize the front. In fact, its lines overextended, its troops unequipped for cold weather and exhausted, the German army probably came near complete collapse in the winter of 1941/42. Some specialists believe that only Hitler's frantic determination to hold on prevented a catastrophic withdrawal. As it was, the German army gave up about one hundred thousand square miles of Soviet territory, but retained five hundred thousand when fighting finally quieted down.
In retrospect it seems clear that, in spite of its many splendid victories, the great German campaign of 1941 in Russia failed. The Red Army remained very much in the field, and the
Furthermore, although the Soviet Union bore the brunt of Nazi armed might from the summer of 1941 until the end of the Second World War in Europe, it certainly did not fight alone. Churchill welcomed Soviet Russia as an ally the day of the German attack - although shortly before he had been ready to wage war against the U.S.S.R. in defense of Finland. Great Britain and the United States arranged to send sorely needed supplies to the Soviet Union; and after the Japanese strike at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the United States became a full-fledged combatant. In spite of German submarines and aircraft and the heavy losses they inflicted, British convoys began to reach Murmansk and Archangel in the autumn of 1941, while American aid through Persia started to arrive in large quantity in the spring of 1942. More important, the Axis powers had major enemies to fight in Africa, and eventually in southern and western Europe, as well as in the east.
The second great German offensive in Russia, unleashed in the summer of 1942, was an operation of vast scope and power, even though it was more limited in its sweep and resources than the original attack of 1941: in 1942 the Germans and their allies used about 100 divisions and perhaps
a million men in an attack along the southern half of the front, from Voronezh to the Black Sea. Having occupied the Kerch area and captured Sevastopol after a month of bitter fighting, the Germans opened their main offensive early in July. They struck in two directions: east toward the Volga, and south toward the Caucasus. Blocked on the approaches to Voronezh, the German commander, Marshal Fedor von Bock had his main army of over 300,000 men cross the Don farther south and drive to the Volga. At the end of August the Nazis and their allies reached Stalingrad.
That industrial city of half a million people, strung along the right bank of the Volga, had no fortifications or other defensive advantages. Yet General Basil Chuikov's 62nd Army, supported by artillery massed on the other bank, fought for every house and every foot of ground. Reduced to rubble, the city became only more impassable to the invaders in spite of all their weapons and aircraft. Both sides suffered great losses. Hitler, who had assumed personal command of the German army in December 1941 and possibly saved his troops from catastrophe in the winter of 1941/42, began to make disastrous strategic errors. He kept pounding at Stalingrad for fruitless weeks and even months and, disregarding professional opinion, would not let his troops retreat even when a Soviet
