Russia’s Heroic Stand
In 1941, with much of the West subdued, Adolf Hitler bent the full force of his hatred on Moscow.
1941-1945
King George VI 1936-1952
The Red Army raises the flag of the USSR over the Reichstag in Berlin, May 2, 1945.
By Yevgeny Khaldei (1916-1997), viua Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
This iconic photograph of the flag of the USSR being raised over the Reichstag in Berlin on May 2nd, 1945, was taken by Yevgeny Khaldei, who worked as a correspondent for TASS Photo Chronicle between 1936 and 1948. It was appropriate that the Red Army should have this moment of satisfaction: from the beginning, Adolf Hitler had made his abiding hatred for the USSR clear. The Soviet Union lost roughly 8.6 million military personnel and 19 million civilians in what they name the Great Patriotic War, more than any other nation. Taken together, the British Empire and the US lost a million lives in the conflict, though owing to war-related famine and disease India alone lost some two million.
Introduction
The British Empire held out against the Nazis almost alone for two years. The arrival of the Americans in 1942 was a blessed relief, but it was the Russians (also somewhat late to the party) who bore the brunt of the Nazis’ hatred, and whose sacrifices and determination finally broke the vast German military machine.
IN the first World War Germany inflicted an overwhelming defeat on Russia.* Before the war ended, the empire of the czars was in the throes of revolution. Communists seized the government, took over farms, mines, and factories, and set up a socialistic state — the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Joseph Stalin became dictator in 1924 and set about to industrialize the country by a series of five-year plans.
But in 1933 Hitler obtained full dictatorial power in Germany and loudly proclaimed his intention of destroying the Soviet Union. Russia began feverishly to build up armament; and the apparent rivalry continued until the two leaders stunned the world by concluding a nonaggression pact (Aug. 23, 1939).* Thereupon Hitler attacked Poland and launched the second World War.*
Russia and Germany divided Poland between them and Russia occupied the Baltic republics. Russia then demanded territories from Finland, claiming that they were vital for the defense of Leningrad.* Finland refused, and Russia enforced its demands in three months of war, ending March 12, 1940. From Rumania, Russia took Bessarabia and part of Bucovina.
* Officially, Russia withdrew from the Great War in 1917 and claimed neutrality, but as the author says Germany had already dealt the country a terrible blow by exporting Lenin to Moscow: see Winston Churchill on Germany’s Secret Weapon.
* This was the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, named after the politicians who brokered it: Vyacheslav Molotov, Minister of Foreign Affairs for the Soviet Union from 1939 to 1949, and Joachim von Ribbentrop, Minister of Foreign Affairs for the German Empire from 1938 to 1945. Its fate was much the same as that of the Munich Agreement, signed on September 30th 1938 between Britain and France on one side, and Italy and Germany on the other.
* See our brief summary of key events in The Outbreak of the Second World War.
* Leningrad was the Communist name for St Petersburg. The USSR’s precautions for defence proved foresighted. The Germans subsequently occupied Finland, and but for the Russians’ realism things in Leningrad might have been even worse. See also The Story of Miss.
