![]() ![]() ![]() In 1942, however, the Soviets turned the tables on the Germans and won a great victory at Stalingrad that spelled doom for the Wehrmacht. Not until June 1941 did Hitler launch his invasion of the Soviet Union-a state that posed a strategic threat to German domination of Europe as well as being an ideological rival and racial enemy.Īt first all went well for Operation Barbarossa-the codename for the German invasion-as Hitler’s armies penetrated deep into Russia, reaching the outskirts of Leningrad and Moscow by the end of 1941. The war began with Hitler’s attack on Poland in September 1939 and was followed by the stunning German defeat of France in summer 1940. World War II was a global conflict of immense proportions in which 50 million people died, but at its heart was the epic struggle between Stalin and Hitler on the Eastern Front. ![]() Under his leadership the Soviet Union had just won the war of the century, and that victory was closely identified with his role as the country’s supreme commander. When World War II ended in 1945 few doubted that the victor’s laurels belonged mainly to Joseph Stalin. Soviet foreign minister Molotov and Stalin stand in the background. Ribbontrop, the German foreign minister, signing the Nazi–Soviet pact on 23 August 1939. ![]()
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