WWII and After

80km a day for first 6 months

over 3 million

45%

Leningrad

production dropped by 60%

Blitzkrieg tactics

ignored warnings from spies and Churchill, retreated to country house for first week

forbade troops from retreating - Germans encircled, Army officers purged - many let out of Gulags after

5 week delay whilst weather was good

-35*C, roads turned to mud, frostbite

launched by General Zhukov with Siberian troops - snowsuits, goggles, skis

spies said Japan woudn't attack in East - Stalin transferred troops West

established industrial areas in Ural Mountains and Siberia

1,500 factories moved to and beyond the Urals - rest was destroyed

'motherland', 'Great Patriotic War'

stayed in Moscow as German forces approached

over half income spent on war, 'Tankograd' - produced most T-34 tanks, 12-18 hr factory shifts

1945 - 20,900 compared to 7,540 German

STAKVA - high command - politicians and generals, State Defence Committee (GKO) ran economy, Zhukhov appointed Deputy Supreme Commander

7

800,000 deaths, people ate dogs, cats, dead bodies and glue

Order 227 - 'not a step back', penal battalions - prisoners and soldiers refusing to fight carried out dangerous tasks, 300,000 soldiers shot by own commanders

Americans supplied 12% aeroplanes, 75% jeeps, wheat and spam

German cities attacked by British and American bombers

didn't retreat Sixth Army from Stalingrad

key for getting to the Baku in the Caucasus - rich in oil, communication hub - could stop oil getting to Northern half of USSR, named after Stalin

in ruins from German bombing

6th Army under General Von Paulus

Red Army were outnumbered 2 to 1

close range urban hand-to-hand combat

snipers

Vasily Zaitsev - 225 kills at Stalingrad

kessel - cauldron - intensity of fighting

75%

one division of 10,000 soldiers ended with only 320 survivors

by November 1942

Operation Uranus - led by Zhukov

attacked weaker Italian, Romanian and Hungarian troops surrounding - 6th Army cut off and destroyed

half a million - more than Britain lost in whole war

40,000 in first week of German air-attacks

10,000

147,000 dead, 91,000 prisoners

boosted - 'you cannot stop an army which has done Stalingrad' - popular remark

broken - 3 days national mourning

boosted around the world - Churchill presented Stalin with a ceremonial Sword of Stalingrad

Stalin and Zhukov - Marshals, Stalingrad - 'Hero City'

by 1945, almost 70% lost

Dneiper Dam, 100,000 collective farms, 19 million civilians, 9 million soldiers

1945

88% heavy industry and armaments

USSR became fastest growing economy globally, 1947 Dneiper Dam working again

31 in 1940, 19 in 1945, 38 in 1950

211 in 1940, 203 in 1950

nearly halved during war, even in 1952 had not recovered

men killed or moved to towns, not enough machinery, peasants had 1/6 wages of factory workers on Stalin's death

gulag population 1.6 million in 1942, 4.7 million in 1947

1.5 million Soviet prisoners treated as traitors on return, Zhukov mentioned 3 times in passing in 1956 school textbooks

nationalists in Ukraine and Baltic States fought for independence

20,000 in Lithuania

400,000 Lithuanians by 1950

Stalin thought Leningrad Communist Party Officials were too popular and independent after heroic role in war

around 200,000 officials removed from positions exiled from city

anyone with knowledge of the wider world - potential spy or traitor - developed into attack on Jewish population

had more loyalty to fellow Jews than to the Soviet Union

sacking, school, newspapers and libraries shut down, difficult to worship freely

Stalin's doctor Professor Vinogradov suggested he reduce his workload for health reasons - Stalin saw this as a murder plot

30 top, mainly Jewish, doctors arrested for plots of assassination - numbers later grew to hundreds

military alliance in 1949 - NATO

1953 - hydrogen bomb - 10 times more powerful than atomic bomb

2.5 million ground troops - second largest after China