Battle Of Stalingrad Thesis

To begin with, this book educated the reader about the past. Everyone in the Soviet Union looked up to the leader, Stalin, even though he wasn’t a good leader at all. He caused many problems for the citizens including uncomfortable living conditions. This book educates the reader by showing that back then even when people were treated badly, they still had to look up to their leader even though he was the cause of all

There were two main causes of tension between Russia and the West from 1941 and 1945. One cause, according to historians was the disagreements over a Second Front being opened. Tensions arose due to the West’s perceived delay in opening a front, the front being used as a political tool by Stalin and the perceived lack of supplies and materials being sent to the soviets as aid. A more significant cause of tension, however, is believed by some to be Stalin’s attempts to create a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe and his actions in Poland.

Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege 1942-1943 is book written by the British military historian, Antony Beevor. Stalingrad covers the Battle of Stalingrad during World War II. Stalingrad was a city in Russia where Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union fought for control. This was part of Adolf Hitler’s plan to crush the Soviet Union and extend his Third Reich into Russian territory. The battle lasted from August 1942 to February 1943. However, the battle ended up with the destruction of the entire German 6th army and with a victory for the Soviet Union. Beevor has won three awards for this book. I wish to give brief summaries of the five sections of the book and give reviews on their main content.

The United States entered World War Two in late 1941, and right away they were thrown into a conflict that involved making important decisions that would affect generations of people, in the United States and elsewhere, for years to come. A most notable decision by the Allies, namely the United States and Great Britain, was the combining of the American and British military chiefs of staff. This joint collaboration was appropriately titled the “Combined Chiefs of Staff”. They worked together as one body, and made war planning decisions and strategized together. This type of alliance was an innovation in war planning for the time, and the decisions made collaboratively by the two powers contributed greatly to the Allied victory in 1945. The relationships involved and the disputes that came up are worth noting, specifically the question of the Allies opening up a second front in the west, particularly titled “Operation Sledgehammer”. The relationship between President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, as well as General George Marshall of the United States and General Sir Alan Brooke of Great Britain were the main actors involved in this undertaking, and they will be the main individuals discussed and analyzed for the purposes of this paper. Ultimately Operation Sledgehammer was delayed and no action was taken upon it. Even though it caused rifts between the USSR, for reasons that will be explained, and the Allies far into the future, in retrospect they may have been

     It was less than a year after war ended in Europe that Churchill revealed in his “Sinews of Peace” address that, “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent”. The Soviet Union became extremely

For the third engaged activity, I decided to attend a lecture on April 24th by Martin Previsic, a professor at the University of Zagreb who specializes in Croatian history. Previsic’s lecture was titled “The Yugoslav Gulag: The Goli otok (Barren Island) Labor Camp, 1949-1956.” Previsic’s lecture revolved around the time period of the “Tito-Stalin split”, which was an era marked as being the end of mutual relations between the Soviet Union and the former country of Yugoslavia. The spit, initially occurring shortly after WWII in 1948, was caused due to conflicting political interests of Yugoslavia’s leader Josip Tito and the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin. Though they had relations prior, Tito and the Yugoslavian government no longer wanted

John Lewis Gaddis offers a different opinion of the one responsible for the Cold War. He believes that Stalin’s authoritarian vision was a minor issue; the big issue

It was nearly unimaginable to the world when Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus surrendered his German forces to the Soviet Union on February 2, 1943. The Battle of Stalingrad, a major Second World War battle began with the German’s offensive on July 17, 1942 and ended with the German surrender on February 2, 1943. It was on August 5, 1942 that Adolf Hitler ordered an attack on the city of Stalingrad. This battle went down as one of the bloodiest battles in history, taking large tolls on both sides and most importantly marking the turning point for Hitler in the Second World War. The “master race” had taken its first major blow, proving to the world that they were not invincible. And in fact, Germany would not rise again after this truly

The German invasion of Poland on September 1st 1939, was an experimental display of the most advanced and intense form of warfare the world had ever seen. With such a drastic use of power and with aspirations expanding so wide, the German “Wehrmacht”1, along with the Soviet Union and a small Slovak contingent, soon escalated a central European battle into a global conflict. The target of Poland, for such an experiment had been strategically chosen as a geographical and logistical advantage, a self-proclaimed repossession of pre-World War one land ownership, and an eastern front barrier with Germany’s newly established pact/ally (via the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact), the USSR.

Humans show their real nature in war,all of the anger has now turned into grenades and bullets and searches for revenge.

"Lend-Lease is one of Franklin Roosevelt 's most remarkable and vital achievements in the formation of the anti-Hitler alliance" (World War Two: Alliance). Such glowing praises were usually beyond Stalin. Lend-Lease has been hotly debated by historians since the conclusion of hostilities, as Russians insisted that it made up merely 3% of the Soviet Union’s industrial output during the war (Glantz), and many contemporaries (Sokolov) arguing that it made up much more. This begs the question: To what extent did lend-lease empower the Soviet Union’s efforts on the Eastern Front during the second world war? This is a significant question. It is significant because years of soviet era propaganda have muddled the perception of how important it was to the war cause, prohibiting historians from viewing the communist parties archives until recently and generally obscuring the truth. And it is all historians goals to discover the truth. The categories for analysis that I will use to answer my investigative question are these: Political, Economic, and Military. These are the three areas where lend-lease made the greatest impact. If lend-lease affected the Soviet Union as much as Stalin himself admits, then maybe it has an even greater role than it would first appear.

In his 1945 biennial report to the U.S. Secretary of War, Chief of Staff George C. Marshall inscribed, “In good conscience this Nation can take little credit for its part in staving off disaster in those critical days. It is certain that the refusal of the […] Russian peoples to accept what appeared to be inevitable defeat was the great factor in the salvage of our civilization.” Unequivocally, the Soviet Union had endured much more than any other belligerent nation in the Second World War: their economy devastated by the brisk onslaught of the Wehrmacht; their populace withered as millions were sacrificed to stifle the German’s Blitzkrieg; and vast expanses of territory relinquished from their dominion. Many suspected that the Soviet Union

Causes and Consequences of Operation Barbarossa On June 22nd 1941, German forces crossed the Russian frontier and began to fight their way into Soviet territory. Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's codename for the attack on Russia, had begun. In this essay I am going to describe the causes, events and consequences of Operation Barbarossa. What happened when the 'unbeatable' Hitler and Germany met the sheer determination and patriotism of Stalin and the USSR?

This investigation explores the question, “Why did the Soviet Union refuse to support the Warsaw Uprising against the Nazis in 1944?” This exploration will examine the rationale behind Stalin’s decisions that effectively dictated the outcome of the Warsaw Uprising. This topic merits an investigation as the Soviet Union’s attitude towards the Polish resistance is considered as one of greatest infamies of World War Two until today, while also bearing great significance on the War’s outcome. The lack of support from the Soviet Union on the greatest armed uprising by underground European insurgents on German occupation in World War Two will be analysed through primary resources like foreign congressional records reflecting on the situation, while

Almost all narratives of Allied victory in World War II account economic output as a decisive factor. Overy concedes to this point as well, citing Soviet evacuation of civilians and industry as salvation for the Eastern front. (Overy, 181) As the Germans flooded into the Soviet Union in 1941 entire populations and industries fled to the east, destined for the Urals, the Volga region, and Eastern Siberia. Along with saving Soviet industry by relocation, the Soviets also destroyed what they could not move including food and manufacturing plants. Destruction denied the invading Germans valuable resources that could’ve assisted the Axis war machine. The relocation of industry in the Soviet Union forced hard conditions on civilians who endured scarce rations and appalling working conditions. (Overy, 187) However, despite the odds, Soviet war production actually increased after the relocation of its industry. Overy attributes this economic success to central planning and control of the economy as well as simple models that allowed for easy mass production. The Soviet Union operated under a command economy that was completely controlled by the government and were more easily able to direct the economy for wartime production. Centralized organizations such as the Manpower Committee allocated valuable resources to labor, reserving skilled men for the war industry. Additionally, the Soviet Union simplified tank and aircraft models to allow quick production. For example, Overy writes