According to the Soviets, they had not signed the Geneva Conventions in 1929 due to Article 9 which, by imposing racial segregation of POWs into different camps, contravened the Soviet constitution.
In the early 1930s, a modern operational doctrine for the Red Army was developed and promulgated in the 1936 Field Regulations in the form of the Deep Battle Concept.
Defense expenditure also grew rapidly from just 12 percent of the gross national product in 1933 to 18 percent by 1940. During Stalin's Great Purge in the late-1930s, which had not ended by the time of the German invasion on 22 June 1941, much of the officer corps of the Red Army was executed or imprisoned and their replacements, appointed by Stalin for political reasons, often lacked military competence.
Of the five Marshals of the Soviet Union appointed in 1935, only Kliment Voroshilov and Semyon Budyonny survived Stalin's purge.
In the early 1930s, a modern operational doctrine for the Red Army was developed and promulgated in the 1936 Field Regulations in the form of the Deep Battle Concept.
Tukhachevsky was killed in 1937.
On 10 February 1939, Hitler told his army commanders that the next war would be "purely a war of Weltanschauungen ['worldview'] ...
Nazi imperialist ambitions rejected the common humanity of both groups, declaring the supreme struggle for Lebensraum to be a Vernichtungskrieg ('war of annihilation'). ===German-Soviet relations of 1939–40=== In August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact in Moscow known as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
On 23 August 1939 the rest of the world learned of this pact but were unaware of the provisions to partition Poland.
The Red Army's ineptitude in the Winter War against Finland in 1939–40 convinced Hitler of a quick victory within a few months.
Also, between January 1939 and May 1941, 161 new divisions were activated.
Furthermore, in the autumn of 1939, the Soviets disbanded their mechanized corps and partly dispersed their tanks to infantry divisions; but following their observation of the German campaign in France, in late-1940 they began to reorganize most of their armored assets back into mechanized corps with a target strength of 1,031 tanks each.
In early-September it reached the old 1939 Soviet border fortifications.
Following the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, the German High Command began planning an invasion of the Soviet Union in July 1940 (under the codename Operation Otto), which Adolf Hitler authorized on 18 December 1940.
Heinrich Himmler, in his secret memorandum, Reflections on the Treatment of Peoples of Alien Races in the East (dated 25 May 1940), outlined the Nazi plans for the non-German populations in the East.
The countries entered a trade pact in 1940 by which the Soviets received German military equipment and trade goods in exchange for raw materials, such as oil and wheat, to help the Nazis circumvent a British blockade of Germany. Despite the parties' ostensibly cordial relations, each side was highly suspicious of the other's intentions.
For instance, the Soviet invasion of Bukovina in June 1940 went beyond their sphere of influence as agreed with Germany.
After two days of negotiations in Berlin from 12 to 14 November 1940, Germany presented a written proposal for a Soviet entry into the Axis.
On 25 November 1940, the Soviet Union offered a written counter-proposal to join the Axis if Germany would agree to refrain from interference in the Soviet Union's sphere of influence, but Germany did not respond.
They also claimed that the Red Army was preparing to attack the Germans, and their own invasion was thus presented as a pre-emptive strike. In the middle of 1940, following the rising tension between the Soviet Union and Germany over territories in the Balkans, an eventual invasion of the Soviet Union seemed the only solution to Hitler.
Hitler was convinced that Britain would sue for peace once the Germans triumphed in the Soviet Union, and if they did not, he would use the resources available in the East to defeat the British Empire. On 5 December 1940, Hitler received the final military plans for the invasion on which the German High Command had been working since July 1940 under the codename "Operation Otto".
Hillgruber argued that because these assumptions were shared by the entire military elite, Hitler was able to push through with a "war of annihilation" that would be waged in the most inhumane fashion possible with the complicity of "several military leaders", even though it was quite clear that this would be in violation of all accepted norms of warfare. In autumn 1940, high-ranking German officials drafted a memorandum on the dangers of an invasion of the Soviet Union.
Well before the German invasion, Marshal Semyon Timoshenko referred to the Germans as the Soviet Union's "most important and strongest enemy", and as early as July 1940, the Red Army Chief of Staff, Boris Shaposhnikov, produced a preliminary three-pronged plan of attack for what a German invasion might look like, remarkably similar to the actual attack.
Defense expenditure also grew rapidly from just 12 percent of the gross national product in 1933 to 18 percent by 1940. During Stalin's Great Purge in the late-1930s, which had not ended by the time of the German invasion on 22 June 1941, much of the officer corps of the Red Army was executed or imprisoned and their replacements, appointed by Stalin for political reasons, often lacked military competence.
As early as August 1940, British intelligence had received hints of German plans to attack the Soviets only a week after Hitler informally approved the plans for Barbarossa and warned the Soviet Union accordingly.
Stalin acknowledged the possibility of an attack in general and therefore made significant preparations, but decided not to run the risk of provoking Hitler. Beginning in July 1940, the Red Army General Staff developed war plans that identified the Wehrmacht as the most dangerous threat to the Soviet Union, and that in the case of a war with Germany, the Wehrmacht's main attack would come through the region north of the Pripyat Marshes into Belorussia, which later proved to be correct.
Operation Barbarossa (Unternehmen Barbarossa) also known as the German invasion of the Soviet Union was the code name for the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and some of its Axis allies, which started on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II.
Despite these early successes, the German offensive stalled in the Battle of Moscow at the end of 1941, and the subsequent Soviet winter counteroffensive pushed German troops back.
Himmler believed the Germanization process in Eastern Europe would be complete when "in the East dwell only men with truly German, Germanic blood". The Nazi secret plan Generalplan Ost ('General Plan for the East'), prepared in 1941 and confirmed in 1942, called for a "new order of ethnographical relations" in the territories occupied by Nazi Germany in Eastern Europe.
As both sides began colliding with each other in Eastern Europe, conflict appeared more likely, although they did sign a border and commercial agreement addressing several open issues in January 1941.
The operation was named after medieval Emperor Frederick Barbarossa of the Holy Roman Empire, a leader of the Third Crusade in the 12th century. On 30 March 1941 the Barbarossa decree declared that the war would be one of extermination and advocated the eradication of all political and intellectual elites. The invasion was set for 15 May 1941, though it was delayed for over a month to allow for further preparations and possibly better weather.
Neither Hitler nor the General Staff anticipated a long campaign lasting into the winter, and therefore adequate preparations, such as the distribution of warm clothing and winterization of vehicles and lubricants, were not made. Beginning in March 1941, Göring's Green Folder laid out details for the Soviet economy after conquest.
By the third week of February 1941, 680,000 German soldiers were gathered in assembly areas on the Romanian-Soviet border.
Since April 1941, the Germans had begun setting up Operation Haifisch and Operation Harpune to substantiate their claims that Britain was the real target.
These simulated preparations in Norway and the English Channel coast included activities such as ship concentrations, reconnaissance flights and training exercises. The reasons for the postponement of Barbarossa from the initially planned date of 15 May to the actual invasion date of 22 June 1941 (a 38-day delay) are debated.
The reason most commonly cited is the unforeseen contingency of invading Yugoslavia and Greece in April 1941.
Defense expenditure also grew rapidly from just 12 percent of the gross national product in 1933 to 18 percent by 1940. During Stalin's Great Purge in the late-1930s, which had not ended by the time of the German invasion on 22 June 1941, much of the officer corps of the Red Army was executed or imprisoned and their replacements, appointed by Stalin for political reasons, often lacked military competence.
But in spite of efforts to ensure the political subservience of the armed forces, in the wake of Red Army's poor performance in Poland and in the Winter War, about 80 percent of the officers dismissed during the Great Purge were reinstated by 1941.
Also, between January 1939 and May 1941, 161 new divisions were activated.
In early 1941, Stalin's own intelligence services and American intelligence gave regular and repeated warnings of an impending German attack.
But on 22 June 1941 the first echelon only contained 171 divisions, numbering 2.6–2.9 million; and the second strategic echelon contained 57 divisions that were still mobilizing, most of which were still understrength.
Hitler later declared to some of his generals, "If I had known about the Russian tank strength in 1941 I would not have attacked".
The most advanced Soviet tank models – the KV-1 and T-34 – which were superior to all current German tanks, as well as all designs still in development as of the summer 1941, were not available in large numbers at the time the invasion commenced.
The Soviet numerical advantage in heavy equipment was thoroughly offset by the superior training and organization of the Wehrmacht. The Soviet Air Force (VVS) held the numerical advantage with a total of approximately 19,533 aircraft, which made it the largest air force in the world in the summer of 1941.
At around 03:15 on 22 June 1941, the Axis Powers commenced the invasion of the Soviet Union with the bombing of major cities in Soviet-occupied Poland and an artillery barrage on Red Army defences on the entire front.
The Finns had pushed southeast on both sides of Lake Ladoga to reach the old Finnish-Soviet frontier. The Germans attacked Leningrad in August 1941; in the following three "black months" of 1941, 400,000 residents of the city worked to build the city's fortifications as fighting continued, while 160,000 others joined the ranks of the Red Army.
la 1601/41 on 22 September 1941, which accorded Hitler's plans.
Operation Typhoon, the drive to Moscow, began on 30 September 1941.
During October and November 1941, over 1,000 tanks and 1,000 aircraft arrived along with the Siberian forces to assist in defending the city. With the ground hardening due to the cold weather, the Germans resumed the attack on Moscow on 15 November.
The Soviet counter-offensives in December 1941 caused heavy casualties on both sides, but ultimately eliminated the German threat to Moscow.
On 22 June 1941, the Wehrmacht as a whole had 209 divisions at its disposal, 163 of which were offensively capable.
Anger over the failed German offensives caused Hitler to relieve Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch of command and in his place, Hitler assumed personal control of the German Army on 19 December 1941. The Soviet Union had suffered heavily from the conflict, losing huge tracts of territory, and vast losses in men and materiel.
A memorandum from 16 July 1941, recorded by Martin Bormann, quotes Hitler saying, "The giant [occupied] area must naturally be pacified as quickly as possible; this will happen at best if anyone who just looks funny should be shot".
On 18 December 1941, Himmler and Hitler discussed the "Jewish question", and Himmler noted the meeting's result in his appointment book: "To be annihilated as partisans." According to Christopher Browning, "annihilating Jews and solving the so-called 'Jewish question' under the cover of killing partisans was the agreed-upon convention between Hitler and Himmler".
Some desperate citizens resorted to cannibalism; Soviet records list 2,000 people arrested for "the use of human meat as food" during the siege, 886 of them during the first winter of 1941–42.
Himmler believed the Germanization process in Eastern Europe would be complete when "in the East dwell only men with truly German, Germanic blood". The Nazi secret plan Generalplan Ost ('General Plan for the East'), prepared in 1941 and confirmed in 1942, called for a "new order of ethnographical relations" in the territories occupied by Nazi Germany in Eastern Europe.
The offensive halted on 7 January 1942, after having pushed the German armies back from Moscow.
On 31 March 1942, less than one year after the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Wehrmacht was reduced to fielding 58 offensively capable divisions.
Despite the rapid relocation of Red Army armaments production east of the Urals and a dramatic increase of production in 1942, especially of armour, new aircraft types and artillery, the Wehrmacht was able to mount another large-scale offensive in July 1942, although on a much reduced front than the previous summer.
Thousands of Soviets were deported to Germany to be used as slave labor beginning in 1942. The citizens of Leningrad were subjected to heavy bombardment and a siege that would last 872 days and starve more than a million people to death, of whom approximately 400,000 were children below the age of 14.
Again, the Germans quickly overran great expanses of Soviet territory, but they failed to achieve their ultimate goals in the wake of their defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad in February 1943. By 1943, Soviet armaments production was fully operational and increasingly outproducing the German war economy.
The final major German offensive in the Eastern theater of the Second World War took place during July—August 1943 with the launch of Operation Zitadelle, an assault on the Kursk salient.
Employing increasingly ambitious and tactically sophisticated offensives, along with making operational improvements in secrecy and deception, the Red Army was eventually able to liberate much of the area which the Germans had previously occupied by the summer of 1944.
The destruction of Army Group Centre, the outcome of Operation Bagration, proved to be a decisive success; additional Soviet offensives against the German Army Groups North and South in the fall of 1944 put the German war machine into retreat.
The political vacuum left in the eastern half of the continent was filled by the USSR when Stalin secured his territorial prizes of 1944–1945 and firmly placed his Red Army in Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the eastern half of Germany.
By January 1945, Soviet military might was aimed at the German capital of Berlin.
The war ended with the total defeat and capitulation of Nazi Germany in May 1945. ===War crimes=== While the Soviet Union had not signed the Geneva Convention, Germany had signed the treaty and was thus obligated to offer Soviet POWs humane treatment according to its provisions (as they generally did with other Allied POWs).
(See Reasons for delay.) According to a 1978 essay by German historian Andreas Hillgruber, the invasion plans drawn up by the German military elite were coloured by hubris stemming from the rapid defeat of France at the hands of the "invincible" Wehrmacht and by traditional German stereotypes of Russia as a primitive, backward "Asiatic" country.
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