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“Great Patriotic War”: War With Ussr

a) Operation Barbarossa
-Soviet invasion
-whoever wins will win war
-invasion of Russia and destruction of Communism was Hitler’s #1 priority
-an obsession that cost Hitler and Germany the war
-Hitler would encircle the enemy in a series of rapid ‘blitzkrieg’ movements
-this tactic worked to some extent
-Hitler’s overconfidence proved to be Germany’s undoing
-no winter clothing was issued (confident war would be over before winter)
-Russians ‘scorched the earth’ as they fell back
-Germans had no food or shelter from the terrible ‘General Winter’ – Russia’s constant ally
-Hitler divided his roughly 3 million men into 3 army groups
-Army group north was to head to Leningrad (centre of Russia’s armaments industry)
-Army Group Centre was to capture the Ukrainian wheat fields and then the oil of the Caucasus
-22 June 1941, 3 million men+3500 tanks+5000 aircraft moved into Russian-occupied Poland.
-‘Barbarossa’ had begun
-Stalin was warned by Britain but did not trust Britain
-taken completely by surprise
-1200 Russian aircraft was destroyed in a few hours
-over 300,000 Russian prisoners fell with the capture of Smolensk in July
- General Leeb laid a siege which was to last 3 years and cost the lives of 800,000 Leningraders
-Russians, led by General Zhukov, launched a counter-offensive and drove the Germans back
-Moscow was saved
-Hitler had estimated the Soviet forces at 140 divisions
-Soviets able to deploy more than 320 divisions
-Russian winter began to take its toll with 100,000 cases of frost-bite
-Stalin had managed to move over 1500 factories eastwards, far from the fighting
-Hitler had expected to have control of the bulk of Russia’s industry

b) Battle of Stalingrad
-Russians launched counter-attacks early in 1942 but these were beaten back
-Hitler decided the main war effort would be concentrated in the south of Russia with the Caucasus oil fields as the target
-he decided that both oil fields and Stalingrad be captured...