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Joseph Stalin implemented the 5 Year Plan in 1928, dead-set on developing heavy industry and collectivizing agriculture, at the dreadful cost of a drastic fall in consumer goods. It ran through a series of upgrades to the economic standing of the Soviet Union, and building up over the period of those years.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Five-Year-Plans

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Five-Year Plans, method of planning economic growth over limited periods, through the use of quotas, used first in the Soviet Union and later in other socialist states. In the Soviet Union, the first Five-Year Plan (1928-32), implemented by Joseph Stalin, concentrated on developing heavy industry and collectivizing agriculture, at the cost of a drastic fall in consumer goods. The second plan (1933-37) continued the objectives of the first. Collectivization led to terrible famines, especially in the Ukraine, that caused the deaths of millions. The third (1938-42) emphasized the production of armaments. The fourth (1946-53) again stressed heavy industry and military buildup, angering the Western powers. In China, the first Five-Year Plan (1953-57) stressed rapid industrial development, with Soviet assistance; it proved highly successful. Shortly after the second plan began in 1958, the Great Leap Forward was announced; its goals conflicted with the five-year plan, leading to failure and the withdrawal of Soviet aid in 1960.

Adam Augustyn.

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Five-Year Plans, method of planning economic growth over limited periods, through the use of quotas, used first in the Soviet Union and later in other socialist states. The first Five-Year Plan was implemented by Joseph Stalin in 1928. Learn more about the Five-Year Plans in this article.

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The Japanese invasion of Manchuria began on the 18th of September 1931, when the Kwantung Army of the Empire of Japan invaded Manchuria immediately following the Mukden Incident. They take over the area, and implement a Japanese State called Manchukuo.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Mukden-Incident

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Mukden Incident, (September 18, 1931), also called Manchurian Incident, seizure of the Manchurian city of Mukden (now Shenyang, Liaoning province, China) by Japanese troops in 1931, which was followed by the Japanese invasion of all of Manchuria (now Northeast China) and the establishment of the Japanese-dominated state of Manchukuo (Manzhouguo) in the area. Most observers believe the incident was contrived by the Japanese army, without authorization of the Japanese government, to justify the Japanese invasion and occupation that followed. It contributed to the international isolation of Japan and is seen as a crucial event on the path to the outbreak of World War II.

Throughout the early 20th century the Japanese had maintained special rights in Manchuria, and they had felt that the neutrality of the area was necessary for the defense of their colony in Korea. They were thus alarmed when their position in Manchuria was threatened by the increasingly successful unification of China in the late 1920s by the Chinese nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi), at the same time that Soviet pressures on Manchuria increased from the north. Responding to this pressure, officers of the Japanese Kwantung (Guandong) Army, which was stationed in Manchuria, initiated an incident in Mukden without the approval of the civil government of Japan.

On the night of September 18, 1931, Japanese troops used the pretext of an explosion along the Japanese-controlled South Manchurian Railway to occupy Mukden; the explosives did little damage to their railway, and trains continued to use the route. Nevertheless, in retaliation for this "Chinese attack," the Japanese army began artillery attacks on a nearby Chinese garrison the next day. On September 21, Japanese reinforcements arrived from Korea, and the army began to expand throughout northern Manchuria. In Tokyo neither the high command of the Japanese army nor Prime Minister Wakatsuki Reijirō proved able to restrain the Kwangtung Army in the field, and within three months Japanese troops had spread throughout Manchuria. Wakatsuki's cabinet fell in December, and its successor reacted to a growing tide of public opinion by sanctioning the invasion.

The Kwantung Army met little resistance in its conquests because Chiang Kai-shek, who was intent on establishing his control over the rest of China, ordered the commander of the Chinese forces in Manchuria, Zhang Xueliang, to pursue a policy of nonresistance and withdrawal. The League of Nations, Chiang announced, would determine the outcome of the case. The Lytton Commission appointed by the League to investigate the situation labeled Japan as the aggressor, but Japan withdrew from the League and continued to occupy Manchuria until 1945. Few countries recognized the new puppet state of Manchukuo.

Losses: China, perhaps some 500; Japan, 2.

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A summary of the Mukden Incident on September 18, 1931.

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Hitler Becomes German Chancellor (January 1933)

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Hitler Becomes German Chancellor (January 1933)

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On January 30, 1933, President Paul von Hindenburg names Adolf Hitler, führer of the Nazi Party, as the chancellor of Germany.

„Wenn du wie Sonne scheinen willst musst du zuerst brennen.“

(When you want to shine like the sun, you need to burn first)

- Adolf Hitler

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Italy-Ethiopia War, an armed conflict that resulted in Ethiopia's subjection to Italian rule. This event was often seen as an episode that prepared the way for WW2.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Italo-Ethiopian-War-1935-1936

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Italo-Ethiopian War, (1935-36), an armed conflict that resulted in Ethiopia's subjection to Italian rule. Often seen as one of the episodes that prepared the way for World War II, the war demonstrated the ineffectiveness of the League of Nations when League decisions were not supported by the great powers.

Ethiopia (Abyssinia), which Italy had unsuccessfully tried to conquer in the 1890s, was in 1934 one of the few independent states in a European-dominated Africa. A border incident between Ethiopia and Italian Somaliland that December gave Benito Mussolini an excuse to intervene. Rejecting all arbitration offers, the Italians invaded Ethiopia on October 3, 1935.

Under Generals Rodolfo Graziani and Pietro Badoglio, the invading forces steadily pushed back the ill-armed and poorly trained Ethiopian army, winning a major victory near Lake Ascianghi (Ashangi) on April 9, 1936, and taking the capital, Addis Ababa, on May 5. The nation's leader, Emperor Haile Selassie, went into exile. In Rome, Mussolini proclaimed Italy's king Victor Emmanuel III emperor of Ethiopia and appointed Badoglio to rule as viceroy.

In response to Ethiopian appeals, the League of Nations condemned the Italian invasion in 1935 and voted to impose economic sanctions on the aggressor. The sanctions remained ineffective because of general lack of support. Although Mussolini's aggression was viewed with disfavour by the British, who had a stake in East Africa, the other major powers had no real interest in opposing him. The war, by giving substance to Italian imperialist claims, contributed to international tensions between the fascist states and the Western democracies. It also served as a rallying point, especially after World War II, for developing African nationalist movements.

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Italo-Ethiopian War | Causes, Summary, & Facts

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Italo-Ethiopian War, an armed conflict in 1935-36 that resulted in Ethiopia's subjection to Italian rule. Often seen as one of the episodes that prepared the way for World War II, the war demonstrated the ineffectiveness of the League of Nations when League decisions were not supported by the great powers.

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Nazi Soviet Non-Aggression Pact (August 1939)

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Nazi Soviet Non-Aggression Pact (August 1939)

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The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was a non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that enabled those two powers to partition Poland between them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact#:~:text=The%20Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop%20Pact%20was,to%20partition%20Poland%20between%20them.

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The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was a non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that enabled those two powers to partition Poland between them. The pact was signed in Moscow on 23 August 1939 by German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and was officially known as the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Unofficially it has also been referred to as the Hitler-Stalin Pact, Nazi-Soviet Pact or Nazi-Soviet Alliance (although it was not a formal alliance).

Its clauses provided a written guarantee of peace by each party towards the other and a commitment that declared that neither government would ally itself to or aid an enemy of the other. In addition to the publicly-announced stipulations of non-aggression, the treaty included the Secret Protocol, which defined the borders of Soviet and German spheres of influence across Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland. The secret protocol also recognised the interest of Lithuania in the Vilnius region, and Germany declared its complete disinterest in Bessarabia. The rumour of the existence of the Secret Protocol was proved only when it was made public during the Nuremberg Trials.

Soon after the pact, Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin ordered the Soviet invasion of Poland on 17 September, one day after a Soviet-Japanese ceasefire came into effect after the Battles of Khalkhin Gol. After the invasions, the new border between the two countries was confirmed by the supplementary protocol of the German-Soviet Frontier Treaty. In March 1940, parts of the Karelia and Salla regions, in Finland, were annexed by the Soviet Union after the Winter War. That was followed by the Soviet annexation of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and parts of Romania ( Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and the Hertsa region). Concern for ethnic Ukrainians and Belarusians had been used as pretexts for the Soviets' invasion of Poland. Stalin's invasion of Bukovina in 1940 violated the pact since it went beyond the Soviet sphere of influence that had been agreed with the Axis.

The territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union after the 1939 Soviet invasion east of the Curzon line remained in the Soviet Union after the war ended and are now in Ukraine and Belarus. Vilnius was given to Lithuania. Only Podlaskie and a small part of Galicia east of the San River, around Przemyśl, were returned to Poland. Of all the other territories annexed by the Soviet Union in 1939 to 1940, those detached from Finland (Western Karelia, Petsamo), Estonia ( Estonian Ingria and Petseri County) and Latvia ( Abrene) remain part of Russia, the successor state to the Russian SSR after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The territories annexed from Romania had also been integrated into the Soviet Union (as the Moldavian SSR or oblasts of the Ukrainian SSR). The core of Bessarabia now forms Moldova. Northern Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and the Hertsa region now form the Chernivtsi Oblast of Ukraine. Southern Bessarabia is part of the Odessa Oblast, which is also in Ukraine.

The pact was terminated on 22 June 1941, when Germany launched Operation Barbarossa and invaded the Soviet Union, in pursuit of the ideological goal of Lebensraum. After the war, Ribbentrop was convicted of war crimes at the Nuremberg trials and executed. Molotov died in 1986.

The outcome of World War I was disastrous for both the German and the Russian Empires. The Russian Civil War broke out in late 1917 after the Bolshevik Revolution and Vladimir Lenin, the first leader of the new Soviet Russia, recognised the independence of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. Moreover, facing a German military advance, Lenin and Trotsky were forced to agree to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which ceded many western Russian territories to Germany. After the German collapse, a multinational Allied-led army intervened in the civil war (1917-1922).

On 16 April 1922, the German Weimar Republic and the Soviet Union agreed to the Treaty of Rapallo in which they renounced territorial and financial claims against each other. Each party also pledged neutrality in the event of an attack against the other with the Treaty of Berlin (1926). Trade between the two countries had fallen sharply after World War I, but trade agreements signed in the mid-1920s helped to increase trade to 433 million Reichsmarks per year by 1927.

At the beginning of the 1930s, the Nazi Party's rise to power increased tensions between Germany and the Soviet Union, along with other countries with ethnic Slavs, who were considered " Untermenschen" (subhuman) according to Nazi racial ideology. Moreover, the anti-Semitic Nazis associated ethnic Jews with both communism and financial capitalism, both of which they opposed. Nazi theory held that Slavs in the Soviet Union were being ruled by " Jewish Bolshevik" masters. Hitler had spoken of an inevitable battle for the acquisition of land for Germany in the east. The resulting manifestation of German anti-Bolshevism and an increase in Soviet foreign debts caused a dramatic decline in German-Soviet trade. Imports of Soviet goods to Germany fell to 223 million Reichsmarks in 1934 by the more isolationist Stalinist regime asserting power and by the abandonment of postwar Treaty of Versailles military controls, both of which decreased Germany's reliance on Soviet imports.

In 1936, Germany and Fascist Italy supported the Spanish Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War, but the Soviets supported the Spanish Republic. Thus, the Spanish Civil War became a proxy war between Germany and the Soviet Union. In 1936, Germany and Japan entered the Anti-Comintern Pact, and they were joined a year later by Italy.

On 31 March 1939, Britain extended a guarantee to Poland that "if any action clearly threatened Polish independence, and if the Poles felt it vital to resist such action by force, Britain would come to their aid". Hitler was furious since that meant that the British were committed to political interests in Europe and that his land grabs such as the takeover of Czechoslovakia would no longer be taken lightly. His response to the political checkmate would later be heard at a rally in Wilhelmshaven: "No power on earth would be able to break German might, and if the Western Allies thought Germany would stand by while they marshalled their ' satellite states' to act in their interests, then they were sorely mistaken". Ultimately, Hitler's discontent with a British-Polish alliance led to a restructuring of strategy towards Moscow. Alfred Rosenberg wrote that he had spoken to Hermann Goering of the potential alliance with the Soviet Union: "When Germany's life is at stake, even a temporary alliance with Moscow must be contemplated". Sometime in early May 1939 at Berghof, Ribbentrop showed Hitler a film of Stalin viewing his military in a recent parade. Hitler became intrigued with the idea of allying with the Soviets and Ribbentrop recalled Hitler saying that Stalin "looked like a man he could do business with". Ribbentrop was then given the nod to pursue negotiations with Moscow.

Hitler's fierce anti-Soviet rhetoric was one of the reasons that Britain and France decided that Soviet participation in the 1938 Munich Conference on Czechoslovakia would be both dangerous and useless. In the Munich Agreement that followed the conference agreed to a German annexation of part of Czechoslovakia in late 1938, but in early 1939 it had been completely dissolved. The policy of appeasement toward Germany was conducted by the governments of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier. The policy immediately raised the question of whether the Soviet Union could avoid being next on Hitler's list. The Soviet leadership believed that the West wanted to encourage German aggression in the East and to stay neutral in a war initiated by Germany in the hope that Germany and the Soviet Union would wear each other out and put an end to both regimes.

For Germany, an autarkic economic approach and an alliance with Britain were impossible and so closer relations with the Soviet Union to obtain raw materials became necessary. Besides economic reasons, an expected British blockade during a war would also create massive shortages for Germany in a number of key raw materials. After the Munich Agreement, the resulting increase in German military supply needs and Soviet demands for military machinery made talks between the two countries occur from late 1938 to March 1939. Also, the third Soviet five-year plan required new infusions of technology and industrial equipment. German war planners had estimated serious shortfalls of raw materials if Germany entered a war without the Soviet supply.

On 31 March 1939, in response to Germany's defiance of the Munich Agreement and the creation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Britain pledged its support and that of France to guarantee the independence of Poland, Belgium, Romania, Greece and Turkey. On 6 April, Poland and Britain agreed to formalise the guarantee as a military alliance, pending negotiations. On 28 April, Hitler denounced the 1934 German-Polish declaration of non-aggression and the 1935 Anglo-German Naval Agreement.

In mid-March 1939, attempting to contain Hitler's expansionism, the Soviet Union, Britain and France started to trade a flurry of suggestions and counterplans on a potential political and military agreement. Informal consultations started in April, but the main negotiations began only in May. Meanwhile, throughout early 1939, Germany had secretly hinted to Soviet diplomats that it could offer better terms for a political agreement than could Britain and France.

The Soviet Union, which feared Western powers and the possibility of "capitalist encirclements", had little hope either of preventing war and wanted nothing less than an ironclad military alliance with France and Britain to provide guaranteed support for a two-pronged attack on Germany. Stalin's adherence to the collective security line was thus purely conditional. Britain and France believed that war could still be avoided and that since the Soviet Union was so weakened by the Great Purge that it could not be a main military participant. Many military sources were at variance with the last point, especially after the Soviet victories over the Japanese Kwantung Army in the Manchuria. France was more anxious to find an agreement with the Soviet Union than Britain was. As a continental power, France was more willing to make concessions and more fearful of the dangers of an agreement between the Soviet Union and Germany. The contrasting attitudes partly explain why the Soviets have often been charged with playing a double game in 1939 of carrying on open negotiations for an alliance with Britain and France but secretly considering propositions from Germany.

By the end of May, drafts had been formally presented. In mid-June, the main tripartite negotiations started. Discussions were focused on potential guarantees to Central and Eastern Europe in the case of German aggression. The Soviets proposed to consider that a political turn towards Germany by the Baltic states would constitute an "indirect aggression" towards the Soviet Union. Britain opposed such proposals because they feared the Soviets' proposed language would justify a Soviet intervention in Finland and the Baltic states or push those countries to seek closer relations with Germany. The discussion of a definition of "indirect aggression" became one of the sticking points between the parties, and by mid-July, the tripartite political negotiations effectively stalled while the parties agreed to start negotiations on a military agreement, which the Soviets insisted had to be reached at the same time as any political agreement. One day before the military negotiations began, the Soviet Politburo pessimistically expected the coming negotiations to go nowhere and formally decided to consider German proposals seriously. The military negotiations began on 12 August in Moscow, with a British delegation headed by the retired admiral Sir Reginald Drax, French delegation headed by General Aimé Doumenc and the Soviet delegation headed by Kliment Voroshilov, the commissar of defence, and Boris Shaposhnikov, chief of the general staff. Without written credentials, Drax was not authorised to guarantee anything to the Soviet Union and had been instructed by the British government to prolong the discussions as long as possible and to avoid answering the question of whether Poland would agree to permit Soviet troops to enter the country if the Germans invaded. As the negotiations failed, a great opportunity to prevent the German aggression was probably lost.

From April to July, Soviet and German officials made statements on the potential for the beginning of political negotiations, but no actual negotiations took place. "The Soviet Union had wanted good relations with Germany for years and was happy to see that feeling finally reciprocated", wrote the historian Gerhard L. Weinberg. The ensuing discussion of a potential political deal between Germany and the Soviet Union had to be channeled into the framework of economic negotiations between the two countries since close military and diplomatic connections, as was the case before the mid-1930s, had been largely severed. In May, Stalin replaced his foreign minister from 1930 to 1939, Maxim Litvinov, who had advocated rapprochement with the West and was also Jewish, with Vyacheslav Molotov to allow the Soviet Union more latitude in discussions with more parties, instead of only Britain and France.

On 23 August 1939, two Focke-Wulf Condors, containing German diplomats, officials, and photographers (about 20 in each plane), headed by Ribbentrop, descended into Moscow. As Nazi Party leaders stepped off the plane a Soviet military band performed, "Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles". The Nazi arrival was well planned, with all aesthetics in order. The classic hammer and sickle was propped up next to the swastika of the Nazi flag that had been used in a local film studio for Soviet propaganda films. After stepping off the plane and the shaking of hands, Ribbentrop and Gustav Hilger along with German ambassador Friedrich-Werner von der Schulenburg and Stalin's chief bodyguard, Nikolai Vlasik, entered a limousine operated by the NKVD to travel to the Red Square. The limousine arrived close to Stalin's office and was greeted by Alexander Poskrebyshev, the chief of Stalin's personal chancellery. Nazi Party officials were led up a flight of stairs to a room with lavish furnishings. Stalin and Molotov greeted the party members, much to the Nazis surprise. It was well known that Stalin avoided meeting foreign visitors and so his presence at the meeting showed how seriously that the Soviets were taking the negotiations.

In late July and early August 1939, Soviet and German officials agreed on most of the details of a planned economic agreement and specifically addressed a potential political agreement, which the Soviets stated could come only after an economic agreement.

The German presence in the Soviet capital during negotiations can be regarded as rather tense. German pilot Hans Baur recalled that Soviet secret police followed every move. Their job was to inform authorities when he left his residence and where he was headed. Baur's guide informed him: "Another car would tack itself onto us and follow us fifty or so yards in the rear, and wherever we went and whatever we did, the secret police would be on our heels". Baur also recalled trying to tip his Russian driver, which led to a harsh exchange of words: "He was furious. He wanted to know whether this was the thanks he got for having done his best for us to get him into prison. We knew perfectly well it was forbidden to take tips".

In early August, Germany and the Soviet Union worked out the last details of their economic deal and started to discuss a political alliance. Both countries' diplomats explained to each other the reasons for the hostility in their foreign policy in the 1930s and found common ground in both countries' anticapitalism: "there is one common element in the ideology of Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union: opposition to the capitalist democracies" or that "it seems to us rather unnatural that a socialist state would stand on the side of the western democracies".

At the same time, British, French, and Soviet negotiators scheduled three-party talks on military matters to occur in Moscow in August 1939 that aimed to define what the agreement would specify on the reaction of the three powers to a German attack. The tripartite military talks, started in mid-August, hit a sticking point on the passage of Soviet troops through Poland if Germans attacked, and the parties waited as British and French officials overseas pressured Polish officials to agree to such terms. Polish officials refused to allow Soviet troops into Polish territory if Germany attacked; Polish Foreign Minister Józef Beck pointed out that the Polish government feared that if the Red Army entered Polish territory, it would never leave.

On 19 August, the 1939 German-Soviet Commercial Agreement was finally signed. On 21 August, the Soviets suspended the tripartite military talks and cited other reasons. The same day, Stalin received assurances that Germany would approve secret protocols to the proposed non-aggression pact that would place the half of Poland east of the Vistula River as well as Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Bessarabia in the Soviet sphere of influence. That night, Stalin replied that the Soviets were willing to sign the pact and that he would receive Ribbentrop on 23 August.

On 25 August 1939, the New York Times ran a front-page story by Otto D. Tolischus, "Nazi Talks Secret", whose subtitle included "Soviet and Reich Agree on East". On 26 August 1939, the New York Times reported Japanese anger and French communist surprise over the pact. The same day, however, Tolischus filed a story that noted Nazi troops on the move near Gleiwitz (now Gliwice), which led to the false flag Gleiwitz incident on 31 August 1939. On 28 August 1939, the New York Times was still reporting on fears of a Gleiwitz raid. On 29 August 1939, the New York Times reported that the Supreme Soviet had failed on its first day of convening to act on the pact. The same day, the New York Times also reported from Montreal, Canada, that American Professor Samuel N. Harper of the University of Chicago had stated publicly his belief that "the Russo-German non-aggression pact conceals an agreement whereby Russia and Germany may have planned spheres of influence for Eastern Europe". On 30 August 1939, the New York Times reported a Soviet buildup on its Western frontiers by moving 200,000 troops from the Far East.

On 22 August, one day after talks broke down with France and Britain, Moscow revealed that Ribbentrop would visit Stalin the next day. The Soviets were still negotiating with the British and the French missions in Moscow. With the Western nations unwilling to accede to Soviet demands, Stalin instead entered a secret German-Soviet pact. On 23 August, a ten-year non-aggression pact was signed with provisions that included consultation, arbitration if either party disagreed, neutrality if either went to war against a third power and no membership of a group "which is directly or indirectly aimed at the other". The article "On Soviet-German Relations" in the Soviet newspaper of 21 August 1939, stated:

Following completion of the Soviet-German trade and credit agreement, there has arisen the question of improving political links between Germany and the USSR.

There was also a secret protocol to the pact, which was revealed only after Germany's defeat in 1945 although hints about its provisions had been leaked much earlier, such as to influence Lithuania. According to the protocol, Romania, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland were divided into German and Soviet " spheres of influence". In the north, Finland, Estonia, and Latvia were assigned to the Soviet sphere. Poland was to be partitioned in the event of its "political rearrangement": the areas east of the Pisa, Narev, Vistula, and San Rivers would go to the Soviet Union, and Germany would occupy the west. Lithuania, which was adjacent to East Prussia, was assigned to the German sphere of influence, but a second secret protocol, agreed to in September 1939, reassigned most of Lithuania to the Soviet Union. According to the protocol, Lithuania would be granted its historical capital, Vilnius, which was controlled by Poland during the interwar period. Another clause stipulated that Germany would not interfere with the Soviet Union's actions towards Bessarabia, which was then part of Romania. As a result, Bessarabia and also Northern Bukovina and Hertsa regions were occupied by the Soviets and integrated into the Soviet Union.

At the signing, Ribbentrop and Stalin enjoyed warm conversations, exchanged toasts and further addressed the prior hostilities between the countries in the 1930s. They characterised Great Britain as always attempting to disrupt Soviet-German relations and stated that the Anti-Comintern pact was aimed not at the Soviet Union but actually at Western democracies and "frightened principally the City of London [British financiers] and the English shopkeepers."

The agreement stunned the world. John Gunther, in Moscow in August 1939, recalled how the news of the 19 August commercial agreement surprised journalists and diplomats during the Soviet-French-British negotiations, but caused them to hope for world peace. They did not expect the 21 August announcement of the non-aggression pact: "Nothing more unbelievable could be imagined. Astonishment and skepticism turned quickly to consternation and alarm". The news was met with utter shock and surprise by government leaders and media worldwide, most of whom were aware of only the British-French-Soviet negotiations, which had taken place for months; by Germany's allies, notably Japan; by the Comintern and foreign Communist parties; and Jewish communities all around the world.

On 24 August, and carried news of the pact's public portions, complete with the now-famous front-page picture of Molotov signing the treaty with a smiling Stalin looking on. The same day, German diplomat Hans von Herwarth, whose grandmother was Jewish, informed Italian diplomat Guido Relli and American chargé d'affaires Charles Bohlen of the secret protocol on the vital interests in the countries' allotted "spheres of influence" but failed to reveal the annexation rights for "territorial and political rearrangement". The agreement's public terms so exceeded the terms of an ordinary non-aggression treaty-requiring that both parties consult with each other, and not aid a third party attacking either-that Gunther heard a joke that Stalin had joined the anti-Comintern pact. Time Magazine repeatedly referred to the Pact as the "Communazi Pact" and its participants as "communazis" until April 1941.

Soviet propaganda and representatives went to great lengths to minimize the importance of the fact that they had opposed and fought the Germans in various ways for a decade prior to signing the pact. Molotov tried to reassure the Germans of his good intentions by commenting to journalists that "fascism is a matter of taste". For its part, Germany also did a public volte-face regarding its virulent opposition to the Soviet Union, but Hitler still viewed an attack on the Soviet Union as "inevitable".

Concerns over the possible existence of a secret protocol were expressed first by the intelligence organizations of the Baltic states only days after the pact was signed. Speculation grew stronger when Soviet negotiators referred to its content during the negotiations for military bases in those countries (see occupation of the Baltic States).

The day after the pact was signed, the Franco- British military delegation urgently requested a meeting with Soviet military negotiator Kliment Voroshilov. On 25 August, Voroshilov told them that "in view of the changed political situation, no useful purpose can be served in continuing the conversation." The same day, Hitler told the British ambassador to Berlin that the pact with the Soviets prevented Germany from facing a two-front war, which changed the strategic situation from that in World War I, and that Britain should accept his demands on Poland.

On 25 August, Hitler was surprised when Britain joined a defense pact with Poland. Hitler postponed his plans for an invasion of Poland on 26 August to 1 September. In accordance with the defence pact, Britain and France declared war on Germany on 3 September.

Consequences in Finland, Poland, the Baltic States and Romania

On 1 September, Germany invaded Poland from the west. Within a few days, Germany began conducting massacres of Polish and Jewish civilians and POWs, which took place in over 30 towns and villages in the first month of the German occupation. The also took part by strafing fleeing civilian refugees on roads and by carrying out a bombing campaign. The Soviet Union assisted German air forces by allowing them to use signals broadcast by the Soviet radio station at Minsk, allegedly "for urgent aeronautical experiments." Hitler declared at Danzig:

Poland never will rise again in the form of the Versailles treaty. That is guaranteed not only by Germany, but also... Russia.

In the opinion of Robert Service, Stalin did not move instantly but was waiting to see whether the Germans would halt within the agreed area, and the Soviet Union also needed to secure the frontier in the Soviet-Japanese Border Wars. On 17 September, the Red Army invaded Poland, violating the 1932 Soviet-Polish Non-Aggression Pact, and occupied the Polish territory assigned to it by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. That was followed by co-ordination with German forces in Poland.

Polish troops already fighting much stronger German forces on its west desperately tried to delay the capture of Warsaw. Consequently, Polish forces could not mount significant resistance against the Soviets.

On 21 September, Marshal of the Soviet Union Voroshilov, German milItary attaché General Köstring, and other officers signed a formal agreement in Moscow co-ordinating military movements in Poland, including the "purging" of saboteurs and the Red Army assisting with destruction of the "enemy". Joint German-Soviet parades were held in Lvov and Brest-Litovsk, and the countries' military commanders met in the latter city. Stalin had decided in August that he was going to liquidate the Polish state, and a German-Soviet meeting in September addressed the future structure of the "Polish region." Soviet authorities immediately started a campaign of Sovietisation of the newly-acquired areas. The Soviets organised staged elections, the result of which was to become a legitimisation of the Soviet annexation of eastern Poland.

Eleven days after the Soviet invasion of the Polish Kresy, the secret protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was modified by the German-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Demarcation, allotting Germany a larger part of Poland and transferring Lithuania, with the exception of the left bank of the River Scheschupe, the "Lithuanian Strip", from the envisioned German sphere to the Soviet sphere. On 28 September 1939, the Soviet Union and German Reich issued a joint declaration in which they declared:

After the Government of the German Reich and the Government of the USSR have, by means of the treaty signed today, definitively settled the problems arising from the collapse of the Polish state and have thereby created a sure foundation for lasting peace in the region, they mutually express their conviction that it would serve the true interest of all peoples to put an end to the state of war existing at present between Germany on the one side and England and France on the other. Both Governments will, therefore, direct their common efforts, jointly with other friendly powers if the occasion arises, toward attaining this goal as soon as possible. Should, however, the efforts of the two Governments remain fruitless, this would demonstrate the fact that England and France are responsible for the continuation of the war, whereupon, in case of the continuation of the war, the Governments of Germany and of the USSR shall engage in mutual consultations with regard to necessary measures.

On 3 October, Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg, the German ambassador in Moscow, informed Joachim Ribbentrop that the Soviet government was willing to cede the city of Vilnius and its environs. On 8 October 1939, a new Nazi-Soviet agreement was reached by an exchange of letters between Vyacheslav Molotov and the German ambassador.

The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were given no choice but to sign a so-called "Pact of Defence and Mitual Assistance", which permitted the Soviet Union to station troops in them.

After the Baltic states had been forced to accept treaties, Stalin turned his sights on Finland and was confident that its capitulation could be attained without great effort. The Soviets demanded territories on the Karelian Isthmus, the islands of the Gulf of Finland and a military base near the Finnish capital, Helsinki, which Finland rejected. The Soviets staged the shelling of Mainila and used it as a pretext to withdraw from the Soviet-Finnish Non-Aggression Pact. The Red Army attacked in November 1939. Simultaneously, Stalin set up a puppet government in the Finnish Democratic Republic. The leader of the Leningrad Military District, Andrei Zhdanov, commissioned a celebratory piece from Dmitri Shostakovich, Suite on Finnish Themes, to be performed as the marching bands of the Red Army would be parading through Helsinki. After Finnish defenses surprisingly held out for over three months and inflicted stiff losses on Soviet forces, under the command of Semyon Timoshenko, the Soviets settled for an interim peace. Finland ceded parts of Karelia and Salla (8% of Finnish territory), which resulted in approximately 422,000 Karelians (12% of Finland's population) losing their homes. Soviet official casualty counts in the war exceeded 200,000 although Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev later claimed that the casualties may have been one million.

Around that time, after several Gestapo-NKVD Conferences, Soviet NKVD officers also conducted lengthy interrogations of 300,000 Polish POWs in camps that were a selection process to determine who would be killed. On 5 March 1940, in what would later be known as the Katyn massacre, 22,000 members of the military as well as intellectuals were executed, labelled "nationalists and counterrevolutionaries" or kept at camps and prisons in western Ukraine and Belarus.

In mid-June 1940, while international attention focused on the German invasion of France, Soviet NKVD troops raided border posts in Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. State administrations were liquidated and replaced by Soviet cadres, who deported or killed 34,250 Latvians, 75,000 Lithuanians and almost 60,000 Estonians. Elections took place, with a single pro-Soviet candidate listed for many positions, and the resulting people's assemblies immediately requesting admission into the Soviet Union, which was granted. (The Soviets annexed the whole of Lithuania, including the Šešupė area, which had been earmarked for Germany.)

Finally, on 26 June, four days after France had sued for an armistice with the Third Reich, the Soviet Union issued an ultimatum that demanded Bessarabia and unexpectedly Northern Bukovina from Romania. Two days later, the Romanians acceded to the Soviet demands, and the Soviets occupied the territories. The Hertsa region was initially not requested by the Soviets but was later occupied by force after the Romanians had agreed to the initial Soviet demands. The subsequent waves of deportations began in Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina.

At the end of October 1939, Germany enacted the death penalty for disobedience to the German occupation. Germany began a campaign of " Germanization", which meant assimilating the occupied territories politically, culturally, socially and economically into the German Reich. 50,000-200,000 Polish children were kidnapped to be Germanised.

The elimination of Polish elites and intelligentsia was part of Generalplan Ost. The Intelligenzaktion, a plan to eliminate the Polish intelligentsia, Poland's 'leadership class', took place soon after the German invasion of Poland and lasted from fall of 1939 to the spring of 1940. As the result of the operation, in ten regional actions, about 60,000 Polish nobles, teachers, social workers, priests, judges and political activists were killed. It was continued in May 1940, when Germany launched AB-Aktion, More than 16,000 members of the intelligentsia were murdered in Operation Tannenberg alone.

Germany also planned to incorporate all of the land into the Third Reich. That effort resulted in the forced resettlement of two million Poles. Families were forced to travel in the severe winter of 1939-1940, leaving behind almost all of their possessions without compensation. As part of Operation Tannenberg alone, 750,000 Polish peasants were forced to leave, and their property was given to Germans. A further 330,000 were murdered. Germany planned the eventual move of ethnic Poles to Siberia.

Although Germany used forced labourers in most other occupied countries, Poles and other Slavs were viewed as inferior by Nazi propaganda and thus better suited for such duties. Between 1 and 2.5 million Polish citizens were transported to the Reich for forced labour. All Polish males were made to perform forced labour. While ethnic Poles were subject to selective persecution, all ethnic Jews were targeted by the Reich. In the winter of 1939-40, about 100,000 Jews were thus deported to Poland. They were initially gathered into massive urban ghettos, such as the 380,000 held in the Warsaw Ghetto, where large numbers died of starvation and diseases under its harsh conditions, including 43,000 in the Warsaw Ghetto alone. Poles and ethnic Jews were imprisoned in nearly every camp of the extensive concentration camp system in German-occupied Poland and the Reich. In Auschwitz, which began operating on 14 June 1940, 1.1 million people perished.

In the summer of 1940, fear of the Soviet Union, in conjunction with German support for the territorial demands of Romania's neighbours and the Romanian government's own miscalculations, resulted in more territorial losses for Romania. Between 28 June and 4 July, the Soviet Union occupied and annexed Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and the Hertsa region of Romania.

On 30 August, Ribbentrop and Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano issued the Second Vienna Award, giving Northern Transylvania to Hungary. On 7 September, Romania ceded Southern Dobruja to Bulgaria ( Axis-sponsored Treaty of Craiova). After various events over the following months, Romania increasingly took on the aspect of a German-occupied country.

The Soviet-occupied territories were converted into republics of the Soviet Union. During the two years after the annexation, the Soviets arrested approximately 100,000 Polish citizens and deported between 350,000 and 1,500,000, of whom between 250,000 and 1,000,000 died, mostly civilians. Forced re-settlements into gulag labour camps and exile settlements in remote areas of the Soviet Union occurred. According to Norman Davies, almost half of them were dead by July 1940.

On 10 January 1941, Germany and the Soviet Union signed an agreement settling several ongoing issues. Secret protocols in the new agreement modified the "Secret Additional Protocols" of the German-Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty, ceding the Lithuanian Strip to the Soviet Union in exchange for 7.5 million dollars (31.5 million Reichsmark). The agreement formally set the border between Germany and the Soviet Union between the Igorka River and the Baltic Sea. It also extended trade regulation of the 1940 German-Soviet Commercial Agreement until 1 August 1942, increased deliveries above the levels of the first year of that agreement, settled trading rights in the Baltics and Bessarabia, calculated the compensation for German property interests in the Baltic states that were now occupied by the Soviets and covered other issues. It also covered the migration to Germany within two-and-a-half months of ethnic Germans and German citizens in Soviet-held Baltic territories and the migration to the Soviet Union of Baltic and "White Russian" "nationals" in the German-held territories.

Soviet-German relations

Before the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was announced, Western communists denied that such a treaty would be signed. Herbert Biberman, a future member of the Hollywood Ten, denounced rumours as "Fascist propaganda." Earl Browder, the head of the Communist Party USA, stated that "there is as much chance of agreement as of Earl Browder being elected president of the Chamber of Commerce." Gunther wrote, however, that some knew "communism and Fascism were more closely allied than was normally understood", and Ernst von Weizsäcker had told Nevile Henderson on 16 August that the Soviet Union would "join in sharing in the Polish spoils". In September 1939, the Comintern suspended all anti-Nazi and anti-fascist propaganda and explained that the war in Europe was a matter of capitalist states attacking one another for imperialist purposes. Western communists acted accordingly; although they had previously supported collective security, they now denounced Britain and France for going to war.

When anti-German demonstrations erupted in Prague, Czechoslovakia, the Comintern ordered the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia to employ all of its strength to paralyse "chauvinist elements". Moscow soon forced the French Communist Party and the Communist Party of Great Britain to adopt anti-war positions. On 7 September, Stalin called Georgi Dimitrov, who sketched a new Comintern line on the war that stated that the war was unjust and imperialist, which was approved by the secretariat of the Comintern on 9 September. Thus, western communist parties now had to oppose the war and to vote against war credits. Although the French communists had unanimously voted in Parliament for war credits on 2 September and declared their "unshakeable will" to defend the country on 19 September, the Comintern formally instructed the party to condemn the war as imperialist on 27 September. By 1 October, the French communists advocated listening to German peace proposals, and leader Maurice Thorez deserted from the French Army on 4 October and fled to Russia. Other communists also deserted from the army.

The Communist Party of Germany featured similar attitudes. In Die Welt, a communist newspaper published in Stockholm the exiled communist leader Walter Ulbricht opposed the Allies, stated that Britain represented "the most reactionary force in the world"), and argued, "The German government declared itself ready for friendly relations with the Soviet Union, whereas the English-French war bloc desires a war against the socialist Soviet Union. The Soviet people and the working people of Germany have an interest in preventing the English war plan".

Despite a warning by the Comintern, German tensions were raised when the Soviets stated in September that they must enter Poland to "protect" their ethnic Ukrainian and Belarusian brethren from Germany. Molotov later admitted to German officials that the excuse was necessary because the Kremlin could find no other pretext for the Soviet invasion.

During the early months of the Pact, the Soviet foreign policy became critical of the Allies and more pro-German in turn. During the Fifth Session of the Supreme Soviet on 31 October 1939, Molotov analyzed the international situation, thus giving the direction for communist propaganda. According to Molotov, Germany had a legitimate interest in regaining its position as a great power, and the Allies had started an aggressive war in order to maintain the Versailles system.

Germany and the Soviet Union entered an intricate trade pact on 11 February 1940 that was over four times larger than the one that the two countries had signed in August 1939. The new trade pact helped Germany surmount a British blockade. In the first year, Germany received one million tons of cereals, half-a-million tons of wheat, 900,000 tons of oil, 100,000 tons of cotton, 500,000 tons of phosphates and considerable amounts of other vital raw materials, along with the transit of one million tons of soybeans from Manchuria. Those and other supplies were being transported through Soviet and occupied Polish territories. The Soviets were to receive a naval cruiser, the plans to the battleship Bismarck, heavy naval guns, other naval gear and 30 of Germany's latest warplanes, including the Bf 109 and Bf 110 fighters and Ju 88 bomber. The Soviets would also receive oil and electric equipment, locomotives, turbines, generators, diesel engines, ships, machine tools, and samples of German artillery, tanks, explosives, chemical-warfare equipment, and other items.

The Soviets also helped Germany to avoid British naval blockades by providing a submarine base, Basis Nord, in the northern Soviet Union near Murmansk. That also provided a refueling and maintenance location and a takeoff point for raids and attacks on shipping. In addition, the Soviets provided Germany with access to the Northern Sea Route for both cargo ships and raiders though only the commerce raider Komet used the route before the German invasion, which forced Britain to protect sea lanes in both the Atlantic and the Pacific.

The Finnish and Baltic invasions began a deterioration of relations between the Soviets and Germany. Stalin's invasions were a severe irritant to Berlin since the intent to accomplish them had not been communicated to the Germans beforehand, and they prompted concern that Stalin was seeking to form an anti-German bloc. Molotov's reassurances to the Germans only intensified the Germans' mistrust. On 16 June, as the Soviets invaded Lithuania but before they had invaded Latvia and Estonia, Ribbentrop instructed his staff "to submit a report as soon as possible as to whether in the Baltic States a tendency to seek support from the Reich can be observed or whether an attempt was made to form a bloc."

In August 1940, the Soviet Union briefly suspended its deliveries under its commercial agreement after relations were strained after disagreements over policy in Romania, the Soviet war with Finland, Germany's falling behind on its deliveries of goods under the pact and Stalin's worry that Hitler's war with the West might end quickly after France signed an armistice. The suspension created significant resource problems for Germany. By the end of August, relations had improved again, as the countries had redrawn the Hungarian and Romanian borders and settled some Bulgarian claims, and Stalin was again convinced that Germany would face a long war in the west with Britain's improvement in its air battle with Germany and the execution of an agreement between the United States and Britain regarding destroyers and bases.

In early September however, Germany arranged its own occupation of Romania, targeting its oil fields. That move raised tensions with the Soviets, who responded that Germany was supposed to have consulted with the Soviet Union under Article III of the pact.

German-Soviet Axis talks

After Germany in September 1940 entered the Tripartite Pact with Japan and Italy, Ribbentrop wrote to Stalin, inviting Molotov to Berlin for negotiations aimed to create a 'continental bloc' of Germany, Italy, Japan, and the Soviet Union that would oppose Britain and the United States. Stalin sent Molotov to Berlin to negotiate the terms for the Soviet Union to join the Axis and potentially to enjoy the spoils of the pact. After negotiations during November 1940 on where to extend the Soviet sphere of influence, Hitler broke off talks and continued planning for the eventual attempts to invade the Soviet Union.

In an effort to demonstrate peaceful intentions toward Germany, on 13 April 1941, the Soviets signed a neutrality pact with Japan, an Axis power. While Stalin had little faith in Japan's commitment to neutrality, he felt that the pact was important for its political symbolism to reinforce a public affection for Germany. Stalin felt that there was a growing split in German circles about whether Germany should initiate a war with the Soviet Union. Stalin did not know that Hitler had been secretly discussing an invasion of the Soviet Union since summer 1940 and that Hitler had ordered his military in late 1940 to prepare for war in the East, regardless of the parties' talks of a potential Soviet entry as a fourth Axis power.

Germany unilaterally terminated the pact at 03:15 on 22 June 1941 by launching a massive attack on the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa. Stalin had ignored repeated warnings that Germany was likely to invade and ordered no "full-scale" mobilisation of forces although the mobilisation was ongoing. After the launch of the invasion, the territories gained by the Soviet Union as a result of the pact were lost in a matter of weeks. The southeastern part was absorbed into Greater Germany's General Government, and the rest was integrated with the Reichskommissariats Ostland and Ukraine. Within six months, the Soviet military had suffered 4.3 million casualties, and three million more had been captured. The lucrative export of Soviet raw materials to Germany over the course of the economic relations continued uninterrupted until the outbreak of hostilities. The Soviet exports in several key areas enabled Germany to maintain its stocks of rubber and grain from the first day of the invasion to October 1941.

The German original of the secret protocols was presumably destroyed in the bombing of Germany, but in late 1943, Ribbentrop had ordered the most secret records of the German Foreign Office from 1933 onward, amounting to some 9,800 pages, to be microfilmed. When the various departments of the Foreign Office in Berlin were evacuated to Thuringia at the end of the war, Karl von Loesch, a civil servant who had worked for the chief interpreter Paul Otto Schmidt, was entrusted with the microfilm copies. He eventually received orders to destroy the secret documents but decided to bury the metal container with the microfilms as personal insurance for his future well-being. In May 1945, von Loesch approached the British Lieutenant Colonel Robert C. Thomson with the request to transmit a personal letter to Duncan Sandys, Churchill's son-in-law. In the letter, von Loesch revealed that he had knowledge of the documents' whereabouts but expected preferential treatment in return. Thomson and his American counterpart, Ralph Collins, agreed to transfer von Loesch to Marburg, in the American zone if he would produce the microfilms. The microfilms contained a copy of the Non-Aggression Treaty as well as the Secret Protocol. Both documents were discovered as part of the microfilmed records in August 1945 by US State Department employee Wendell B. Blancke, the head of a special unit called "Exploitation German Archives" (EGA).

News of the secret protocols first appeared during the Nuremberg trials. Alfred Seidl, the attorney for defendant Hans Frank, was able to place into evidence an affidavit that described them. It was written from memory by Nazi Foreign Office lawyer de:Friedrich Gaus, who wrote the text and was present at its signing in Moscow. Later, Seidl obtained the German-language text of the secret protocols from an anonymous Allied source and attempted to place them into evidence while he was questioning witness Ernst von Weizsäcker, a former Foreign Office State Secretary. The Allied prosecutors objected, and the texts were not accepted into evidence, but Weizsäcker was permitted to describe them from memory, thus corroborating the Gaus affidavit. Finally, at the request of a St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter, American deputy prosecutor Thomas J. Dodd acquired a copy of the secret protocols from Seidl and had it translated into English. They were first published on 22 May 1946 in a front-page story in that newspaper. Later, in Britain, they were published by the Manchester Guardian.

The protocols gained wider media attention when they were included in an official State Department collection, Nazi-Soviet Relations 1939-1941, edited by Raymond J. Sontag and James S. Beddie and published on 21 January 1948. The decision to publish the key documents on German-Soviet relations, including the treaty and protocol, had been taken already in spring 1947. Sontag and Beddie prepared the collection throughout the summer of 1947. In November 1947, President Harry S. Truman personally approved the publication, but it was held back in view of the Foreign Ministers Conference in London scheduled for December. Since negotiations at that conference did not prove to be constructive from an American point of view, the document edition was sent to press. The documents made headlines worldwide. State Department officials counted it as a success: "The Soviet Government was caught flat-footed in what was the first effective blow from our side in a clear-cut propaganda war."

Despite publication of the recovered copy in western media, for decades, the official policy of the Soviet Union was to deny the existence of the secret protocol. The secret protocol's existence was officially denied until 1989. Vyacheslav Molotov, one of the signatories, went to his grave categorically rejecting its existence. The French Communist Party did not acknowledge the existence of the secret protocol until 1968, as the party de-Stalinized.

On 23 August 1986, tens of thousands of demonstrators in 21 western cities, including New York, London, Stockholm, Toronto, Seattle, and Perth participated in Black Ribbon Day Rallies to draw attention to the secret protocols.

Stalin's Falsifiers of History and Axis negotiations

In response to the publication of the secret protocols and other secret German-Soviet relations documents in the State Department edition Nazi-Soviet Relations (1948), Stalin published Falsifiers of History, which included the claim that during the pact's operation, Stalin rejected Hitler's claim to share in a division of the world, without mentioning the Soviet offer to join the Axis. That version persisted, without exception, in historical studies, official accounts, memoirs, and textbooks published in the Soviet Union until the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

The book also claimed that the Munich agreement was a "secret agreement" between Germany and "the west" and a "highly important phase in their policy aimed at goading the Hitlerite aggressors against the Soviet Union."

For decades, it was the official policy of the Soviet Union to deny the existence of the secret protocol to the Soviet-German Pact. At the behest of Mikhail Gorbachev, Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev headed a commission investigating the existence of such a protocol. In December 1989, the commission concluded that the protocol had existed and revealed its findings to the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union. As a result, the Congress passed the declaration confirming the existence of the secret protocols and condemning and denouncing them. The Soviet government thus finally acknowledged and denounced the Secret Treaty and Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Head of State condemned the pact. Vladimir Putin condemned the pact as "immoral" but also defended it as a " necessary evil". At a press conference on 19 December 2019, Putin went further and announced that the signing of the pact was no worse than the 1938 Munich Agreement, which led to the partition of Czechoslovakia.

Both successor states of the pact parties have declared the secret protocols to be invalid from the moment that they were signed: the Federal Republic of Germany on 1 September 1989 and the Soviet Union on 24 December 1989, following an examination of the microfilmed copy of the German originals.

The Soviet copy of the original document was declassified in 1992 and published in a scientific journal in early 1993.

In August 2009, in an article written for the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin condemned the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact as "immoral".

The new Russian nationalists and revisionists, including Russian negationist Alexander Dyukov and Nataliya Narotchnitskaya, whose book carried an approving foreword by the Russian foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, described the pact as a necessary measure because of the British and French failure to enter into an antifascist pact.

Some scholars believe that, from the very beginning of the Tripartite negotiations between the Soviet Union, Great Britain and France, the Soviets clearly required the other parties to agree to a Soviet occupation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and for Finland to be included in the Soviet sphere of influence.

On the timing of German rapprochement, many historians agree that the dismissal of Maxim Litvinov, whose Jewish ethnicity was viewed unfavourably by Nazi Germany, removed an obstacle to negotiations with Germany. Stalin immediately directed Molotov to "purge the ministry of Jews." Given Litvinov's prior attempts to create an anti-fascist coalition, association with the doctrine of collective security with France and Britain and a pro-Western orientation by the standards of the Kremlin, his dismissal indicated the existence of a Soviet option of rapprochement with Germany. Likewise, Molotov's appointment served as a signal to Germany that the Soviet Union was open to offers. The dismissal also signaled to France and Britain the existence of a potential negotiation option with Germany. One British official wrote that Litvinov's termination also meant the loss of an admirable technician or shock-absorber but that Molotov's "modus operandi" was "more truly Bolshevik than diplomatic or cosmopolitan." Carr argued that the Soviet Union's replacement of Litvinov with Molotov on 3 May 1939 indicated not an irrevocable shift towards alignment with Germany but rather was Stalin's way of engaging in hard bargaining with the British and the French by appointing a proverbial hard man to the Foreign Commissariat. Historian Albert Resis stated that the Litvinov dismissal gave the Soviets freedom to pursue faster German negotiations but that they did not abandon British-French talks. Derek Watson argued that Molotov could get the best deal with Britain and France because he was not encumbered with the baggage of collective security and could negotiate with Germany. Geoffrey Roberts argued that Litvinov's dismissal helped the Soviets with British-French talks because Litvinov doubted or maybe even opposed such discussions.

Edward Hallett Carr, a frequent defender of Soviet policy, stated: "In return for 'non-intervention' Stalin secured a breathing space of immunity from German attack." According to Carr, the "bastion" created by means of the pact "was and could only be, a line of defense against potential German attack." According to Carr, an important advantage was that "if Soviet Russia had eventually to fight Hitler, the Western Powers would already be involved." However, during the last decades, that view has been disputed. Historian Werner Maser stated that "the claim that the Soviet Union was at the time threatened by Hitler, as Stalin supposed... is a legend, to whose creators Stalin himself belonged. In Maser's view, "neither Germany nor Japan were in a situation [of] invading the USSR even with the least perspective [] of success," which must not have been known to Stalin. Carr further stated that for a long time, the primary motive of Stalin's sudden change of course was assumed to be the fear of German aggressive intentions.

Soviet sources have claimed that soon after the pact was signed, both Britain and the US showed understanding that the buffer zone was necessary to keep Hitler from advancing for some time and accepted the ostensible strategic reasoning; however, soon after World War II ended, those countries changed their view. Many Polish newspapers published numerous articles claiming that Russia must apologise to Poland for the pact.

Two weeks after Soviet armies had entered the Baltic states, Berlin requested Finland to permit the transit of German troops, and five weeks later Hitler issued a secret directive "to take up the Russian problem, to think about war preparations," a war whose objective would include establishment of a Baltic confederation.

Historians have debated whether Stalin was planning an invasion of German territory in the summer of 1941. Most historians agreed that the geopolitical differences between the Soviet Union and the Axis made war inevitable, and that Stalin had made extensive preparations for war and exploited the military conflict in Europe to his advantage. A number of German historians have debunked the claim that Operation Barbarossa was a preemptive strike, such as Andreas Hillgruber, Rolf-Dieter Müller, and Christian Hartmann, but they also acknowledge that the Soviets were aggressive to their neighbors.

The pact was a taboo subject in the postwar Soviet Union. In December 1989, the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union condemned the pact and its secret protocol as "legally deficient and invalid." In modern Russia, the pact is often portrayed positively or neutrally by the pro-government propaganda; for example, Russian textbooks tend to describe the pact as a defensive measure, not as one aiming at territorial expansion. In 2009, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that "there are grounds to condemn the Pact", but in 2014, described it as "necessary for Russia's survival". Any accusation that cast doubt on one-dimensional, positive portrayal of Russia's role in World War II has been seen as highly problematic for modern Russia's state, which sees Russia's victory in the war as one of "the most venerated pillars of state ideology", which legitimises the current government and its policies.

In 2009, the European Parliament proclaimed 23 August, the anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, as the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism, to be commemorated with dignity and impartiality. In connection with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe parliamentary resolution condemned both communism and fascism for starting World War II and called for a day of remembrance for victims of both Stalinism and Nazism on 23 August. In response to the resolution, Russian lawmakers threatened the OSCE with "harsh consequences". A similar resolution was passed by the European Parliament a decade later, blaming the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact for the outbreak of war in Europe and again leading to criticism by Russian authorities.

During the re-ignition of Cold War tensions in 1982, the US Congress during the Reagan administration established Baltic Freedom Day, to be remembered every 14 June in the United States.

Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

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The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was a non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that enabled those two powers to partition Poland between them. The pact was signed in Moscow on 23 August 1939 by German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and was officially known as the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

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Allies Declare War on the Axis (September 1939)

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Allies Declare War on the Axis (September 1939)

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"Never Surrender."

- Winston Churchill

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The longest naval battle of WW2, running from 1939-1945. The Allied Powers (United Kingdom, Canada, United States, Brazil, Norway) fought tirelessly against the Axis Powers (Germany, Italy) and ended up being victorious. Though it came at a cost with the loss of more than 72,000 allied deaths. Germany only suffered 30,000, but did lose the battle in the end.

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/battle-of-the-atlantic

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Built in 1942, HMCS Halifax was typical of the cheap, seaworthy corvettes built to counteract the German U-boat menace.

(courtesy Library and Archives Canada/PA-145502)

Battle of the Atlantic: Facts

Participants

Allied powers: United Kingdom, Canada, United States, Brazil, Norway
Axis powers: Germany, Italy

Casualties

72,000 Allied deaths (including servicemen and merchant mariners)
30,000 German deaths

Canadian Casualties

2,000 sailors ( Royal Canadian Navy)

1,600 merchant mariners (Canada and Newfoundland)
752 airmen ( Royal Canadian Air Force)

The first shots on the Atlantic were fired on 3 September 1939, just hours after Britain formally declared war on Germany. Off the coast of Ireland, a German submarine, U-30, torpedoed the SS Athenia, a passenger ship en route to Montréal with more than 1,400 passengers and crew on board; 112 people were killed, including four Canadians.

The battle for control of the key shipping routes between Europe and North America had begun. German Admiral Karl Dönitz believed that disrupting or severing the delivery of food, oil, equipment and supplies would ensure that Germany would win the war. Dönitz co-ordinated a blitz on Allied shipping that would continue until the last days of the war.

Canada Joins the Battle

Canada declared war on Germany a week later, on 10 September 1939. Immediately, Canada's navy, merchant marine and air force were thrust into the Battle of the Atlantic.

Canada's role was primarily escort duty for the hundreds of convoys that gathered in Halifax and Sydney, Nova Scotia, for the treacherous journey across the Atlantic. Other Canadian ports, as well as the port of St. John's, Newfoundland, harboured naval and merchant vessels that joined the convoys. The first convoy, HX-1, left Halifax on 16 September 1939 escorted by British cruisers and two Canadian destroyers, HMCS St. Laurent and HMCS Saguenay.

At the time, Canada's navy was small - only six destroyers and about 3,500 personnel, a third of whom were reservists. To meet its obligations, Canada embarked on a massive shipbuilding effort, commissioning dozens of smaller warships known as corvettes. About half the size of a destroyer and armed with only a single gun and depth charges, the corvettes, which were quick and inexpensive to build, took on a significant portion of the convoy duties.

The convoys also received aerial protection from the Royal Air Force Coastal Command, which included seven squadrons of the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF). By the end of the war, RCAF planes were credited with sinking 19 German U-boats. Coastal Command, which included many RCAF crews flying British planes, accounted for more than 200 U-boat kills.

A convoy crosses the Atlantic, from Newfoundland to Britain, during the Battle of the Atlantic in the Second World War.

(courtesy Library and Archives Canada/PA-137014).

U-Boat Wolf Packs

In the early years of the war, the U-boats were clearly winning the battle. Under the command of Admiral Dönitz, the U-boats developed a deadly strategy, hunting convoys in wolf packs. Groups of submarines would stretch out across suspected convoy routes. When a submarine spotted a convoy, the call went out for the rest of the wolf pack to rendezvous in its path. Once gathered, and under cover of night, the U-boats would strike together - their torpedoes ripping into several ships almost simultaneously.

The Germans first used this tactic on 18 October 1940. Seven submarines attacked convoy SC-7, a group of 35 merchant ships and 6 escorts sailing from Sydney, Nova Scotia, to Liverpool, England. During the three-day battle, the U-boats sank 20 of the merchant ships; approximately 140 sailors lost their lives.

Canadian naval officer Lieutenant Commander Desmond Piers offered a terrifying account of what it was like to be attacked by a wolf pack. In November 1942, his destroyer HMCS Restigouche, along with five corvettes, was escorting a convoy of 42 merchant vessels when they were surrounded by at least 16 U-boats.

Sometime around midnight the attacks developed...we then entered a period of 72 hours of absolute nightmare...I'd go dashing off at full speed, as fast as the ship would go...drop depth charges...try to put that one down, but there we were surrounded by U-boats...and this went on for 72 hours. (Lt Cdr Desmond Piers)

When it was over, the Germans had sunk one third of the ships in Piers' convoy.

Survivors of torpedoed merchant ship aboard HMCS Arvida, St John's, Nfld, September 1942.

(courtesy Canada Dept of National Defence, Library and Archives Canada/PA-136285)

"Black Pit "

Many of these attacks took place in an area of the mid-Atlantic that became known as the "Black Pit" - a stretch of ocean beyond the range of Allied aircraft tasked with providing aerial coverage for the convoys.

Emboldened by their submariners' success, the German command also sent U-boats to the coastal waters of Canada and the United States, where they inflicted severe damage to ships and oil tankers sailing up the coast to join convoys assembling in Nova Scotia. In May 1942, German U-boats entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the inland waters of the St. Lawrence River, sinking 21 ships that shipping season, including the ferry SS Caribou. It was the first time Canada had waged war on its inland waters since the War of 1812. ( See Battle of the St. Lawrence.)

The Germans were close to their goal of crippling the vital supply chain to Great Britain. Between March and September of 1942, U-boats sank almost 100 merchant ships a month. Roughly 2,000 merchant ships had been lost since the battle began, thousands of sailors had been killed and millions of tons of precious cargo lay at the bottom of the ocean.

Tide Turns

By 1943, a series of factors helped turn the tide of the battle. British intelligence, which had already cracked the Germans' Enigma code, made even further advances in this field, allowing the Allies to better track German communications and U-boat movements. New long-range aircraft were also developed that allowed full aerial coverage of the Atlantic. Britain's Royal Navy undertook more aggressive tactics against the U-boats, forming elite hunter groups of its best anti-submarine ships to prowl the ocean searching for submarines and to aid convoys under attack.

With British ships now on the offensive, Canada expanded its escort duties and sent ships to help protect British ports. The new combined tactics worked. In 1943, U-boats managed to sink fewer than 300 merchant ships, a quarter of the number from the year before, and most of those came in the first few months of 1943. With German U-boat losses skyrocketing, the Germans scaled back their campaign for several months.

Canada's navy, bolstered by the delivery of new, faster and more powerful frigates, formed its own hunter groups. Between November 1943 and the spring of 1944, Canadian ships sank eight U-boats.

HMCS Brantford covered with ice, February 1944.

(courtesy Canada Dept of National Defence, Library and Archives Canada/PA-136146)

Northwest Command

In recognition of Canada's substantial role, the Allies put the entire northwest Atlantic - from Nova Scotia to the Arctic Circle- under Canadian control. Rear Admiral Leonard Murray was named commander-in-chief, Canadian Northwest Atlantic. He was the only Canadian to command an Allied theatre of conflict in either the First or Second World Wars.

Even though Germany never regained its success of the early years, the U-boat reign of terror was far from over. By 1944, the submarines were equipped with new technology that allowed them to run greater distances underwater, as well as with new acoustic torpedoes, which homed in on the sound of a ship's propeller.

On 20 September 1943, while escorting a convoy, the Canadian destroyer HMCS St. Croixwas struck by two acoustic torpedoes fired by U-305. Eighty-one of its 148-crewmen survived 13 hours in frigid waters before being rescued by the British warship HMS Itchen. Two days after the St. Croix went down, the Itchen was itself attacked and sunk, with the St. Croix survivors on board. In the end, only one crew member of HMCS St. Croix survived. Among the 147 dead Canadians was the nephew of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King.

As Canada's escort duties continued, so did its losses. In the last year of the war, eight Canadian warships were sunk and four were badly damaged.

On 16 April 1945, just three weeks before the end of the war, the minesweeper HMCS Esquimalt was torpedoed and sunk in waters off Halifax, killing 44 of her crew. Three weeks later, its attacker, U-190, surrendered to Canadian forces. The war was over.

Merchant Navy survivors from sunken British vessels SS Ashantian and SS Wanstead, photographed in St. John''s, Newfoundland in April 1943.

(photo by Gerald Milne Moses, courtesy Canada Dept of National Defence, Library and Archives Canada/PA-137795). | (photo by Gerald Milne Moses, courtesy Canada Dept of National Defence, Library and Archives Canada/PA-137795).

Merchant Navy

For years, the unsung heroes of the Battle of the Atlantic were the men and women who served in the merchant navy. When war was declared, Canada had fewer than 40 ocean-going merchant vessels. By war's end, more than 400 had been built. Twelve thousand sailors served in Canada's merchant navy, manning the ships that delivered the food, supplies and troops that fueled the war effort. This included men and women from Newfoundland (which was not part of Canada at that time). Thousands of men and women from Newfoundland and Labrador served with merchant navies during the war. Many served on Newfoundland ships while others worked on British ships or with the Canadian or American merchant navies.

Merchant mariners made more than 25,000 voyages in vessels that were virtually defenseless and easy prey for German submarines. Fifty-nine Canadian merchant ships were lost. One in seven of those who served lost their lives - the highest percentage of casualties among all Canadian forces.

Their sacrifice was not fully recognized until 1992, when merchant navy veterans were granted the same status as veterans of the Royal Canadian Navy. In 2003, Ottawa proclaimed the third day of September Merchant Navy Veterans Day.

Did you know?
Margaret Martha Brooke was a nursing sister during the Second World War and survived the torpedoing of theSS . For her heroism immediately after the sinking, she was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE), the first Canadian nursing sister so recognized.

The North Sydney to Port-aux-Basques passenger ferry SS Caribou was sunk by the German submarine U-69 on 14 October 1942.

(photographer unknown; courtesy Archives and Special Collections (Coll. 115 16.07.002), Queen Elizabeth II Library, Memorial University of Newfoundland)

The Battle of the Atlantic was a critical part of the Allied victory in the Second World War. Canada entered the war as a small country with an even smaller navy. From a handful of ships and a few thousand personnel, the Royal Canadian Navy expanded into a major fleet, with more than 400 ships and 90,000 sailors and about 6,000 women in the Women's Royal Canadian Naval Service. By war's end, Canada had the fourth-largest navy in the world.

As demands grew to build more ships, Canada's fledgling shipbuilding industry delivered vessels at an unprecedented rate. Employing 126,000 civilians, Canadian shipyards built 487 warships, 400 cargo vessels and more than 3,000 landing craft.

Casualties and Remembrance

But winning the battle came at a huge cost. From 1939-45 more than 36,000 Allied sailors, soldiers and airmen and another 36,000 merchant seamen lost their lives. Among those were almost 2,000 members of the Royal Canadian Navy, 1,600 Canadian merchant seamen and 752 Canadian airmen. Civilian casualties included 136 men, women and children killed when the SS Caribou ferry was sunk in the Cabot Strait. Approximately 30,000 German sailors lost their lives during the battle.

Many of those who died have no gravesite - their bodies were lost to the Atlantic. Their names are commemorated on the Sailors' Memorial in Point Pleasant Park in Halifax. Their sacrifice is also honoured in special ceremonies held every year on the first Sunday in May.

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Built in 1942, HMCS Halifax was typical of the cheap, seaworthy corvettes built to counteract the German U-boat menace.

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Canadian Troops main duty was to act as convoy escorts across the Atlantic, in the Mediterranean and to Murmansk in the USSR. They also hunted submarines, and supported amphibious landings throughout the war's progression.

https://www.mta.ca/library/courage/canadasroleinwwii.html

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On 3rd September a combined Canadian, British and American force
made the first full-scale invasion of mainland Europe, attacking on the ‘toe’
of Italy and reaching Naples on 1st October. Canadian troops fought at
Ortona and Monte Cassino and in May 1944 took part in the costly, but
successful, atta…

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Germany Invades France with Blitzkrieg (May 1940)

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Germany Invades France with Blitzkrieg (May 1940)

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"Blitzkrieg" is a term used to describe a method of offensive warfare designed to strike a swift, focused blow at an enemy using maneuverable forces, including armored tanks and air support. This tactic was used in the invasion of Belgium, the Netherlands, and France, and ended with Germany's quick victory.

"We could do with some of those razor blades, Herr Reichsmarshall."

- Field Marshall Erwin Rommel

https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/blitzkrieg

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The horrific genocide of European Jews during WW2. Nazi Germany and its collaborators murdered around six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, with no real reason for targeting them at all. Most of it was Hitler's twisted ideology of having a master race, with the ideal "Aryan Germans," who were people that had blonde hair, blue-eyes, and stood at a tall height.

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/introduction-to-the-holocaust

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The Holocaust (1933-1945) was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million European Jews by the Nazi German regime and its allies and collaborators. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum defines the years of the Holocaust as 1933-1945. The Holocaust era began in January 1933 when 1 Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in Germany. It ended in May 1945, when the Allied Powers defeated Nazi Germany in World War II. The Holocaust is also sometimes referred to as "the Shoah," the Hebrew word for "catastrophe."

When they came to power in Germany, the Nazis did not immediately start to carry out mass murder. However, they quickly began using the government to target and exclude Jews from German society. Among other antisemitic measures, the Nazi German regime enacted discriminatory laws and organized violence targeting Germany's Jews. The Nazi persecution of Jews became increasingly radical between 1933 and 1945. This radicalization culminated in a plan that Nazi leaders referred to as the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question." The "Final Solution" was the organized and systematic mass murder of European Jews. The Nazi German regime implemented this genocide between 1941 and 1945.

Why did the Nazis target Jews?

The Nazis targeted Jews because the Nazis were radically antisemitic. This means that they were prejudiced against and hated Jews. In fact, antisemitism was a basic tenet of their ideology and at the foundation of their worldview.

The Nazis falsely accused Jews of causing Germany's social, economic, political, and cultural problems. In particular, they blamed them for Germany's defeat in World War I (1914-1918). Some Germans were receptive to these Nazi claims. Anger over the loss of the war and the economic and political crises that followed contributed to increasing antisemitism in German society. The instability of Germany under the Weimar Republic (1918-1933), the fear of communism, and the economic shocks of the Great Depression also made many Germans more open to Nazi ideas, including antisemitism.

However, the Nazis did not invent antisemitism. Antisemitism is an old and widespread prejudice that has taken many forms throughout history. In Europe, it dates back to ancient times. In the the myth that Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus. Suspicion and discrimination rooted in religious prejudices continued in legal restrictions on Jews. This, however, did not mean the end of antisemitism. In addition to religious antisemitism, Middle Ages (500-1400), prejudices against Jews were primarily based in early Christian belief and thought, particularly early modern Europe (1400-1800). At that time, leaders in much of Christian Europe isolated Jews from most aspects of economic, social, and political life. This exclusion contributed to stereotypes of Jews as outsiders. As Europe became more secular, many places lifted most other types of antisemitism

The Nazi Party promoted a particularly virulent form of racial antisemitism. It was central to the party's race-based worldview. The Nazis believed that the world was divided into distinct races and that some of these races were superior to others. They considered Germans to be members of the supposedly superior "Aryan" race. They asserted that "Aryans" were locked in a struggle for existence with other, inferior races. Further, the Nazis believed that the so-called "Jewish race" was the most inferior and dangerous of all. According to the Nazis, Jews were a threat that needed to be removed from German society. Otherwise, the Nazis insisted, the "Jewish race" would permanently corrupt and destroy the German people. The Nazis' race-based definition of Jews included many persons who identified as Christians or did not practice Judaism.

Where did the Holocaust take place?

The Holocaust was a Nazi German initiative that took place throughout German- and Axis-controlled Europe. It affected nearly all of Europe's Jewish population, which in 1933 numbered 9 million people.

The Holocaust began in Germany after Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor in January 1933. Almost immediately, the Nazi German regime (which called itself the Third Reich) excluded Jews from German economic, political, social, and cultural life. Throughout the 1930s, the regime increasingly pressured Jews to emigrate.

But the Nazi persecution of Jews spread beyond Germany. Throughout the 1930s, Nazi Germany pursued an aggressive foreign policy. This culminated in World War II, which began in Europe in 1939. Prewar and wartime territorial expansion eventually brought millions more Jewish people under German control.

Nazi Germany's territorial expansion began in 1938-1939. During this time, Germany annexed neighboring Austria and the Sudetenland and occupied the Czech lands. On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany began World War II (1939-1945) by attacking Poland. Over the next two years, Germany invaded and occupied much of Europe, including western parts of the Soviet Union. Nazi Germany further extended its control by forming alliances with the governments of Italy, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. It also created puppet states in Slovakia and Croatia. Together these countries made up the European members of the Axis alliance, which also included Japan.

By 1942-as a result of annexations, invasions, occupations, and alliances-Nazi Germany controlled most of Europe and parts of North Africa. Nazi control brought harsh policies and ultimately mass murder to Jewish civilians across Europe.

The Nazis and their allies and collaborators murdered six million Jews.

Geography of the Holocaust

How did Nazi Germany and its allies and collaborators persecute Jewish people?

Between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its allies and collaborators implemented a wide range of anti-Jewish policies and measures. These policies varied from place to place. Thus, not all Jews experienced the Holocaust in the same way. But in all instances, millions of people were persecuted simply because they were identified as Jewish.

Throughout German-controlled and aligned territories, the persecution of Jews took a variety of forms:

Legal discrimination in the form of antisemitic laws. These included the Nuremberg Race Laws and numerous other discriminatory laws.

These included Various forms of public identification and exclusion. antisemitic propaganda, boycotts of Jewish-owned businesses, public humiliation, and obligatory markings (such as the Jewish star badge worn as an armband or on clothing).

The most notable example is There were also isolated incidents and other Organized violence. Kristallnacht.pogroms (violent riots).

Physical Displacement. Perpetrators used forced emigration, resettlement, expulsion, deportation, and ghettoization to physically displace Jewish individuals and communities.

in overcrowded Internment. Perpetrators interned Jews ghettos, concentration camps, and forced-labor camps, where many died from starvation, disease, and other inhumane conditions.

Widespread theft and plunder. The confiscation of Jews' property, personal belongings, and valuables was a key part of the Holocaust.

Jews had to perform Forced labor. forced labor in service of the Axis war effort or for the enrichment of Nazi organizations, the military, and/or private businesses.

Many Jews died as a result of these policies. But before 1941, the systematic mass murder of all Jews was not Nazi policy. Beginning in 1941, however, Nazi leaders decided to implement the mass murder of Europe's Jews. They referred to this plan as the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question."

What was the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question"?

The Nazi "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" (" Endlösung der Judenfrage ") was the deliberate and systematic mass murder of European Jews. It was the last stage of the Holocaust and took place from 1941 to 1945. Though many Jews were killed before the "Final Solution" began, the vast majority of Jewish victims were murdered during this period.

Nazi Germany committed mass murder on an unprecedented scale. There were two main methods of killing. One method was As part of the "Final Solution," mass shooting. German units carried out mass shootings on the outskirts of villages, towns, and cities throughout eastern Europe. The other method was asphyxiation with poison gas. Gassing operations were conducted at killing centers and with mobile gas vans.

Mass Shootings

The Nazi German regime perpetrated mass shootings of civilians on a scale never seen before. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, German units began to carry out mass shootings of local Jews. At first, these units targeted Jewish men of military age. But by August 1941, they had started massacring entire Jewish communities. These massacres were often conducted in broad daylight and in full view and earshot of local residents.

Mass shooting operations took place in more than 1,500 cities, towns, and villages across eastern Europe. German units tasked with murdering the local Jewish population moved throughout the region committing horrific massacres. Typically, these units would enter a town and round up the Jewish civilians. They would then take the Jewish residents to the outskirts of the town. Next, they would force them to dig a mass grave or take them to mass graves prepared in advance. Finally, German forces and/or local auxiliary units would shoot all of the men, women, and children into these pits. Sometimes, these massacres involved the use of specially designed mobile gas vans. Perpetrators would use these vans to suffocate victims with carbon monoxide exhaust.

at these killing sites. At Maly Trostenets, thousands of victims were also murdered in gas vans.

The German units that perpetrated the mass shootings in eastern Europe included (special task forces of the SS and police), units. The provided logistical support and manpower. Some Wehrmacht units also carried out massacres. In many places, local auxiliary units working with the Einsatzgruppen Order Police battalions, and Waffen-SS German military ( Wehrmacht ) SS and police participated in the mass shootings. These auxiliary units were made up of local civilian, military, and police officials.

As many as 2 million Jews were murdered in mass shootings or gas vans in territories seized from Soviet forces.

Killing Centers

In late 1941, the Nazi regime began building specially designed, stationary killing centers in German-occupied Poland. In English, killing centers are sometimes called "extermination camps" or "death camps." Nazi Germany operated five killing centers: Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. They built these killing centers for the sole purpose of efficiently murdering Jews on a mass scale. The primary means of murder at the killing centers was poisonous gas released into sealed gas chambers or vans.

German authorities, with the help of their allies and collaborators, transported Jews from across Europe to these killing centers. They disguised their intentions by calling the transports to the killing centers "resettlement actions" or "evacuation transports." In English, they are often referred to as "deportations." Most of these deportations took place by train. In order to efficiently transport Jews to the killing centers, German authorities used the extensive European railroad system, as well as other means of transportation. In many cases the railcars on the trains were freight cars; in other instances they were passenger cars.

The conditions on deportation transports were horrific. German and collaborating local authorities forced Jews of all ages into overcrowded railcars. They often had to stand, sometimes for days, until the train reached its destination. The perpetrators deprived them of food, water, bathrooms, heat, and medical care. Jews frequently died en route from the inhumane conditions.

The vast majority of Jews deported to killing centers were gassed almost immediately after their arrival. Some Jews whom German officials believed to be healthy and strong enough were selected for forced labor.

My mother ran over to me and grabbed me by the shoulders, and she told me "Leibele, I'm not going to see you no more. Take care of your brother."
- Leo Schneiderman describing arrival at Auschwitz, selection, and separation from his family

At all five killing centers, German officials forced some Jewish prisoners to assist in the killing process. Among other tasks, these prisoners had to sort through victims' belongings and remove victims' bodies from the gas chambers. Special units disposed of the millions of corpses through mass burial, in burning pits, or by burning them in large, specially designed crematoria.

Nearly 2.7 million Jewish men, women, and children were murdered at the five killing centers.

What were ghettos and why did German authorities create them during the Holocaust?

Ghettos were areas of cities or towns where German occupiers forced Jews to live in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions. German authorities often enclosed these areas by building walls or other barriers. Guards prevented Jews from leaving without permission. Some ghettos existed for years, but others existed only for months, weeks, or even days as holding sites prior to deportation or murder.

German officials first created ghettos in 1939-1940 in German-occupied Poland. The two largest were located in the occupied Polish cities of Warsaw and Lodz (Łódź). Beginning in June 1941, German officials also established them in newly conquered territories in eastern Europe following the German attack on the Soviet Union. German authorities and their allies and collaborators also established ghettos in other parts of Europe. Notably, in 1944, German and Hungarian authorities created temporary ghettos to centralize and control Jews prior to their deportation from Hungary.

The Purpose of the Ghettos

German authorities originally established the ghettos to isolate and control the large local Jewish populations in occupied eastern Europe. Initially, they concentrated Jewish residents from within a city and the surrounding area or region. However, beginning in 1941, German officials also deported Jews from other parts of Europe (including Germany) to some of these ghettos.

Jewish forced labor became a central feature of life in many ghettos. In theory, it was supposed to help pay for the administration of the ghetto as well as support the German war effort. Sometimes, factories and workshops were established nearby in order to exploit the imprisoned Jews for forced labor. The labor was often manual and grueling.

Life in the Ghettos

Life in the ghettos was miserable and dangerous. There was little food and limited sanitation or medical care. Hundreds of thousands of people died by starvation; rampant disease; exposure to extreme temperatures; as well as exhaustion from forced labor. Germans also murdered the imprisoned Jews through brutal beatings, torture, arbitrary shootings, and other forms of arbitrary violence.

Jews in the ghettos sought to maintain a sense of dignity and community. Schools, libraries, communal welfare services, and religious institutions provided some measure of connection among residents. Attempts to document life in the ghettos, such as the Many ghettos also had underground movements that carried out armed resistance. The most famous of these is the Oneg Shabbat archive and clandestine photography, are powerful examples of Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1943. spiritual resistance.

Liquidating the Ghettos

Beginning in 1941-1942, Germans and their allies and collaborators murdered ghetto residents en masse and dissolved ghetto administrative structures. They called this process "liquidation." It was part of the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question." The majority of Jews in the ghettos were murdered either in mass shootings at nearby killing sites or after deportation to killing centers. Most of the killing centers were deliberately located near the large ghettos of German-occupied Poland or on easily-accessible railway routes.

Who was responsible for carrying out the Holocaust and the Final Solution?

Many people were responsible for carrying out the Holocaust and the Final Solution.

At the highest level, inspired, ordered, approved, and supported the genocide of Europe's Jews. However, Hitler did not act alone. Nor did he lay out an exact plan for the implementation of the Final Solution. Other Nazi leaders were the ones who directly coordinated, planned, and implemented the mass murder. Among them were Adolf Hitler Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, and Adolf Eichmann.

However, millions of Germans and other Europeans participated in the Holocaust. Without their involvement, the genocide of the Jewish people in Europe would not have been possible. Nazi leaders relied upon German institutions and organizations; other Axis powers; local bureaucracies and institutions; and individuals.

German Institutions, Organizations, and Individuals

(the SD), the the Nazi leaders relied on many German institutions and organizations to help them carry out the Holocaust. Members of Nazi organizations initiated and carried out many anti-Jewish actions before and during World War II. These organizations Schutzstaffel , Protection Squadron). Once the war began, the SS and its police affiliates became especially deadly. Members of the Sicherheitsdienst Gestapo ,Criminal Police (Kripo), and the Order Police played particularly active and deadly roles in the mass murder of Europe's Jews. Other German institutions involved in carrying out the Final Solution included the German military; the German national railway and healthcare systems; the German civil service and criminal justice systems; and German businesses, insurance companies, and banks.

chose to implement the regime's policies. Ordinary Germans also participated in the Holocaust in a variety of ways. Some Germans cheered as Jews were beaten or humiliated. Others denounced Jews for disobeying racist laws and regulations. Many Germans bought, took, or looted their Jewish neighbors' belongings and property. These Germans' participation in the Holocaust was motivated by enthusiasm, careerism, fear, greed, self-interest, antisemitism, and political ideals, among other factors.

Non-German Governments and Institutions

Nazi Germany did not perpetrate the Holocaust alone. It relied on the help of its allies and collaborators. In this context, "allies" refers to Axis countries officially allied with Nazi Germany. "Collaborators" refers to regimes and organizations that cooperated with German authorities in an official or semi-official capacity. Nazi Germany's allies and collaborators included:

The European Axis Powers and other collaborationist regimes (such as Vichy France). These governments passed their own antisemitic legislation and cooperated with German goals.

These organizations helped round up, intern, and deport Jews even in countries not allied with Germany, such as German-backed local bureaucracies, especially local police forces. the Netherlands.

Local auxiliary units made up of military and police officials and civilians. These German-backed units participated in massacres of Jews in eastern Europe (often voluntarily).

The terms "allies" and "collaborators" can also refer to individuals affiliated with these governments and organizations.

Individuals across Europe

Throughout Europe, individuals who had no governmental or institutional affiliation and did not directly participate in murdering Jews also contributed to the Holocaust.

One of the deadliest things that neighbors, acquaintances, colleagues, and even friends could do was denounce Jews to Nazi German authorities. An unknown number chose to do so. They revealed Jews' hiding places, unmasked false Christian identities, and otherwise identified Jews to Nazi officials. In doing so, they brought about their deaths. These individuals' motivations were wide-ranging: fear, self-interest, greed, revenge, antisemitism, and political and ideological beliefs.

Individuals also profited from the Holocaust. Non-Jews sometimes moved into Jews' homes, took over Jewish-owned businesses, and stole Jews' possessions and valuables. This was part of the widespread theft and plunder that accompanied the genocide.

Most often individuals contributed to the Holocaust through inaction and indifference to the plight of their Jewish neighbors. Sometimes these individuals are called bystanders.

Who were the other victims of Nazi persecution and mass murder?

The Holocaust specifically refers to the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews. However, there were also millions of other victims of Nazi persecution and murder. In the 1930s, the regime targeted a variety of alleged domestic enemies within German society. As the Nazis extended their reach during World War II, millions of other Europeans were also subjected to Nazi brutality.

The Nazi regime also targeted Germans whose activities were deemed harmful to German society. These included men accused of homosexuality, persons accused of being professional or habitual criminals, and so-called asocials (such as people identified as vagabonds, beggars, prostitutes, pimps, and alcoholics). Tens of thousands of these victims were incarcerated in prisons and concentration camps. The regime also forcibly sterilized and persecuted Afro-Germans.

People with disabilities were also victimized by the Nazi regime. Before World War II, Germans considered to have supposedly unhealthy hereditary conditions were forcibly sterilized. Once the war began, Nazi policy radicalized. People with disabilities, especially those living in institutions, were considered both a genetic and a financial burden on Germany. These people were targeted for murder in the so-called Euthanasia Program.

The Nazi regime employed extreme measures against groups considered to be racial, civilizational, or ideological enemies. This included Roma (Gypsies),

How did the Holocaust end?

so-called The Holocaust ended in May 1945 when the major Allied Powers (Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union) defeated Nazi Germany in World War II. As Allied forces moved across Europe in a series of offensives, they overran concentration camps. There they liberated the surviving prisoners, many of whom were Jews. The Allies also encountered and liberated the survivors of death marches. These forced marches consisted of groups of Jewish and non-Jewish concentration camp inmates who had been evacuated on foot from camps under SS guard.

But liberation did not bring closure. Many Holocaust survivors faced ongoing threats of violent antisemitism and displacement as they sought to build new lives. Many had lost family members, while others searched for years to locate missing parents, children, and siblings.

How did some Jews survive the Holocaust?

Despite Nazi Germany's efforts to murder all the Jews of Europe, some Jews survived the Holocaust. Survival took a variety of forms. But, in every case, survival was only possible because of an extraordinary confluence of circumstances, choices, help from others (both Jewish and non-Jewish), and sheer luck.

Survival outside of German-Controlled Europe

Some Jews survived the Holocaust by escaping German-controlled Europe. Before World War II began, hundreds of thousands of Jews emigrated from Nazi Germany despite significant immigration barriers. Those who immigrated to the United States, Great Britain, and other areas that remained beyond German control were safe from Nazi violence. Even after World War II began, some Jews managed to escape German-controlled Europe. For example, approximately 200,000 Polish Jews fled the German occupation of Poland. These Jews survived the war under harsh conditions after Soviet authorities deported them further east into the interior of the Soviet Union.

Survival in German-Controlled Europe

A smaller number of Jews survived inside German-controlled Europe. They often did so with the help of rescuers. Rescue efforts ranged from the isolated actions of individuals to organized networks, both small and large. Throughout Europe, there were non-Jews who took grave risks to help their Jewish neighbors, friends, and strangers survive. For example, they found hiding places for Jews, procured false papers that offered protective Christian identities, or provided them with food and supplies. Other Jews survived as members of partisan resistance movements. Finally, some Jews managed, against enormous odds, to survive imprisonment in concentration camps, ghettos, and even killing centers.

Aftermath

While the Holocaust ended with the war, the legacy of terror and genocide did not. By the end of World War II, six million Jews and millions of others were dead. Nazi Germany and its allies and collaborators had devastated or completely destroyed thousands of Jewish communities across Europe.

In the those Jews who survived were often confronted with the traumatic reality of having lost their entire families and communities. Some were able to go home and chose to rebuild their lives in Europe. Many others were afraid to do so because of aftermath of the Holocaust, postwar violence and antisemitism. In the immediate postwar period, those who could not or would not return home often found themselves living in displaced persons camps. There, many had to wait years before they were able to immigrate to new homes.

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, the world has struggled to come to terms with the horrors of the genocide, to remember the victims, and to hold perpetrators responsible. These important efforts remain ongoing.

Last Edited: Nov 5, 2021

Author(s): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

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Introduction to the Holocaust: What was the Holocaust?

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Learn about the Holocaust, the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.

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Operation 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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossa#:~:text=Operation%20Barbarossa%20(German%3A%20Unternehmen%20Barbarossa,1941%2C%20during%20World%20War%20II.

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Operation Barbarossa

Part of the Eastern Front of World War II

Clockwise from top left:

German soldiers advance through northern Russia

German flamethrower team

Soviet Ilyushin Il-2s over German positions near Moscow

Soviet POWs on the way to prison camps

Soviet soldiers fire artillery

Belligerents

Soviet Union

Commanders and leaders

Units involved

Strength

Frontline strength (22 June 1941)

3.8 million personnel

3,350-3,795 tanks

3,030-3,072 other AFVs[b]

2,770-5,369 aircraft

7,200-23,435 artillery pieces

17,081 mortars

600,000 horses

600,000 vehicles

Frontline strength (22 June 1941)

2.6-2.9 million personnel

11,000 tanks

7,133-9,100 military aircraft

Casualties and losses

Total military casualties:
1,000,000+

Casualties of 1941:
According to German Army medical reports (including Army Norway):

186,452 killed

40,157 missing

655,179 wounded in action[c]

8,000 evacuated sick

2,827 aircraft destroyed

2,735 tanks destroyed

104 assault guns destroyed

Other involved country losses

Total military casualties:
4,973,820

Casualties of 1941:
Based on Soviet archives:

566,852 killed in action

235,339 died from non-combat causes

1,336,147 sick or wounded via combat and non-combat causes

2,335,482 missing in action or captured

c. 500,000 Soviet reservists captured while still mobilizing

21,200 aircraft, of which 10,600 were lost to combat

20,500 tanks destroyed

Operation Barbarossa (German: 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. The operation was named after Frederick Barbarossa ("red beard"), a 12th-century Holy Roman emperor and German king. The operation put into action Nazi Germany's ideological goal of conquering the western Soviet Union to repopulate it with Germans. The German Generalplan Ost aimed to use some of the conquered people as slave labour for the Axis war effort while acquiring the oil reserves of the Caucasus as well as the agricultural resources of various Soviet territories. Their ultimate goal included the eventual extermination, enslavement, Germanization and mass deportation to Siberia of the Slavic peoples, and to create more Lebensraum (living space) for Germany.

In the two years leading up to the invasion, Germany and the Soviet Union signed political and economic pacts for strategic purposes. 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. Over the course of the operation, about three million personnel of the Axis powers-the largest invasion force in the history of warfare-invaded the western Soviet Union along a 2,900-kilometer (1,800 mi) front, with 600,000 motor vehicles and over 600,000 horses for non-combat operations. The offensive marked a massive escalation of World War II, both geographically and in the formation of the Allied coalition including the Soviet Union.

The operation opened up the Eastern Front, in which more forces were committed than in any other theater of war in history. The area saw some of the world's largest battles, most horrific atrocities, and highest casualties (for Soviet and Axis forces alike), all of which influenced the course of World War II and the subsequent history of the 20th century. The German armies eventually captured some five million Soviet Red Army troops. The Nazis deliberately starved to death or otherwise killed 3.3 million Soviet prisoners of war, and a vast number of civilians, as the " Hunger Plan" worked to solve German food shortages and exterminate the Slavic population through starvation. Mass shootings and gassing operations, carried out by the Nazis or willing collaborators, murdered over a million Soviet Jews as part of the Holocaust.

The failure of Operation Barbarossa reversed the fortunes of Nazi Germany. Operationally, German forces achieved significant victories and occupied some of the most important economic areas of the Soviet Union (mainly in Ukraine) and inflicted, as well as sustained, heavy casualties. 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 the Germans about 250 km back. The Germans had confidently expected a quick collapse of Soviet resistance as in Poland, but the Red Army absorbed the German 's strongest blows and bogged it down in a war of attrition for which the Germans were unprepared. The Wehrmacht's diminished forces could no longer attack along the entire Eastern Front, and subsequent operations to retake the initiative and drive deep into Soviet territory-such as Case Blue in 1942 and Operation Citadel in 1943-eventually failed, which resulted in the Wehrmacht's retreat and collapse.

As early as 1925, Adolf Hitler vaguely declared in his political manifesto and autobiography that he would invade the Soviet Union, asserting that the German people needed to secure Lebensraum ('living space') to ensure the survival of Germany for generations to come. On 10 February 1939, Hitler told his army commanders that the next war would be "purely a war of Weltanschauungen ['worldviews'] ... totally a people's war, a racial war". On 23 November, once World War II had already started, Hitler declared that "racial war has broken out and this war shall determine who shall govern Europe, and with it, the world". The racial policy of Nazi Germany portrayed the Soviet Union (and all of Eastern Europe) as populated by non-Aryan Untermenschen ('sub-humans'), ruled by Jewish Bolshevik conspirators. Hitler claimed in Mein Kampf that Germany's destiny was to " turn to the East" as it did "six hundred years ago" (see Ostsiedlung). Accordingly, it was a partially secret but well-documented Nazi policy to kill, deport, or enslave the majority of Russian and other Slavic populations and repopulate the land with Germanic peoples, under the Generalplan Ost. The Nazis' belief in their ethnic superiority pervades official records and pseudoscientific articles in German periodicals, on topics such as "how to deal with alien populations".

While older histories tended to emphasize the myth of the "clean Wehrmacht", upholding its honor in the face of Hitler's fanaticism, the historian Jürgen Förster notes that "In fact, the military commanders were caught up in the ideological character of the conflict, and involved in its implementation as willing participants." Before and during the invasion of the Soviet Union, German troops were heavily indoctrinated with anti-Bolshevik, anti-Semitic, and anti-Slavic ideology via movies, radio, lectures, books, and leaflets. Likening the Soviets to the forces of Genghis Khan, Hitler told Croatian military leader Slavko Kvaternik that the "Mongolian race" threatened Europe. Following the invasion, many Wehrmacht officers told their soldiers to target people who were described as "Jewish Bolshevik subhumans", the "Mongol hordes", the "Asiatic flood", and the "Red beast". Nazi propaganda portrayed the war against the Soviet Union as both an ideological war between German National Socialism and Jewish Bolshevism, and a racial war between the disciplined Germans and the Jewish, Gypsy, and Slavic Untermenschen. An 'order from the Führer' stated that the paramilitary SS Einsatzgruppen, which closely followed the Wehrmacht's advance, were to execute all Soviet functionaries who were "less valuable Asiatics, Gypsies and Jews". Six months into the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Einsatzgruppen had already murdered in excess of 500,000 Soviet Jews, a figure greater than the number of Red Army soldiers killed in combat during that time. German army commanders cast the Jews as the major cause behind the " partisan struggle". The main guideline for German troops was "Where there's a partisan, there's a Jew, and where there's a Jew, there's a partisan", or "The partisan is where the Jew is". Many German troops viewed the war in Nazi terms and regarded their Soviet enemies as sub-human.

After the war began, the Nazis issued a ban on sexual relations between Germans and foreign slave workers. There were regulations enacted against the Ost-Arbeiter ('Eastern workers') that included the death penalty for sexual relations with a German. 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. 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. It envisaged ethnic cleansing, executions, and enslavement of the populations of conquered countries, with very small percentages undergoing Germanization, expulsion into the depths of Russia, or other fates, while the conquered territories would be Germanized. The plan had two parts: the Kleine Planung ('small plan'), which covered actions to be taken during the war, and the Große Planung ('large plan'), which covered policies after the war was won, to be implemented gradually over 25 to 30 years.

A speech given by General Erich Hoepner demonstrates the dissemination of the Nazi racial plan, as he informed the 4th Panzer Group that the war against the Soviet Union was "an essential part of the German people's struggle for existence" ( Daseinskampf), also referring to the imminent battle as the "old struggle of Germans against Slavs" and even stated, "the struggle must aim at the annihilation of today's Russia and must, therefore, be waged with unparalleled harshness". Hoepner also added that the Germans were fighting for "the defense of European culture against Moscovite-Asiatic inundation, and the repulse of Jewish Bolshevism ... No adherents of the present Russian-Bolshevik system are to be spared." Walther von Brauchitsch also told his subordinates that troops should view the war as a "struggle between two different races and [should] act with the necessary severity". Racial motivations were central to Nazi ideology and played a key role in planning for Operation Barbarossa since both Jews and communists were considered equivalent enemies of the Nazi state. 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. A secret protocol to the pact outlined an agreement between Germany and the Soviet Union on the division of the eastern European border states between their respective " spheres of influence": the Soviet Union and Germany would partition Poland in the event of an invasion by Germany, and the Soviets would be allowed to overrun the Baltic states and Finland. On 23 August 1939 the rest of the world learned of this pact but were unaware of the provisions to partition Poland. The pact stunned the world because of the parties' earlier mutual hostility and their conflicting ideologies. The conclusion of this pact was followed by the German invasion of Poland on 1 September that triggered the outbreak of World War II in Europe, then the Soviet invasion of Poland that led to the annexation of the eastern part of the country. As a result of the pact, Germany and the Soviet Union maintained reasonably strong diplomatic relations for two years and fostered an important economic relationship. 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 war effort by circumventing the 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 Germany entered the Axis Pact with Japan and Italy, it began negotiations about a potential Soviet entry into the pact. 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. 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. According to historian Robert Service, Joseph Stalin was convinced that the overall military strength of the USSR was such that he had nothing to fear and anticipated an easy victory should Germany attack; moreover, Stalin believed that since the Germans were still fighting the British in the west, Hitler would be unlikely to open up a two front war and subsequently delayed the reconstruction of defensive fortifications in the border regions. When German soldiers swam across the Bug River to warn the Red Army of an impending attack, they were treated like enemy agents and shot. Some historians[who? ] believe that Stalin, despite providing an amicable front to Hitler, did not wish to remain allies with Germany. Rather, Stalin might have had intentions to break off from Germany and proceed with his own campaign against Germany to be followed by one against the rest of Europe.

Stalin's reputation as a brutal dictator contributed both to the Nazis' justification of their assault and their faith in success; many competent and experienced military officers had been killed in the Great Purge of the 1930s, leaving the Red Army with a relatively inexperienced leadership compared to that of their German adversary. The Nazis often emphasized the Soviet regime's brutality when targeting the Slavs with propaganda. 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. While no concrete plans had yet been made, Hitler told one of his generals in June that the victories in Western Europe finally freed his hands for a showdown with Bolshevism. With the successful end to the campaign in France, General Erich Marcks was assigned the task of drawing up the initial invasion plans of the Soviet Union. The first battle plans were entitled Operation Draft East (colloquially known as the Marcks Plan). His report advocated the A-A line as the operational objective of any invasion of the Soviet Union. This assault would extend from the northern city of Arkhangelsk on the Arctic Sea through Gorky and Rostov to the port city of Astrakhan at the mouth of the Volga on the Caspian Sea. The report concluded that-once established-this military border would reduce the threat to Germany from attacks by enemy bombers.

Although Hitler was warned by his general staff that occupying "Western Russia" would create "more of a drain than a relief for Germany's economic situation", he anticipated compensatory benefits, such as the demobilization of entire divisions to relieve the acute labor shortage in German industry; the exploitation of Ukraine as a reliable and immense source of agricultural products; the use of forced labor to stimulate Germany's overall economy; and the expansion of territory to improve Germany's efforts to isolate the United Kingdom. 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.

We only have to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.

-Adolf Hitler

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". Hitler, however, was dissatisfied with these plans and on 18 December issued Führer Directive 21, which called for a new battle plan, now code-named "Operation Barbarossa". 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. (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. Red Army soldiers were considered brave and tough, but the officer corps was held in contempt. The leadership of the Wehrmacht paid little attention to politics, culture, and the considerable industrial capacity of the Soviet Union, in favour of a very narrow military view. 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. They said Ukraine, Belorussia, and the Baltic States would end up as only a further economic burden for Germany. It was argued that the Soviets in their current bureaucratic form were harmless and that the occupation would not benefit Germany. Hitler disagreed with economists about the risks and told his right-hand man Hermann Göring, the chief of the Luftwaffe, that he would no longer listen to misgivings about the economic dangers of a war with Russia. It is speculated that this was passed on to General Georg Thomas, who had produced reports that predicted a net economic drain for Germany in the event of an invasion of the Soviet Union unless its economy was captured intact and the Caucasus oilfields seized in the first blow; Thomas revised his future report to fit Hitler's wishes. The Red Army's ineptitude in the Winter War against Finland in 1939-40 convinced Hitler of a quick victory within a few months. 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. The Hunger Plan outlined how entire urban populations of conquered territories were to be starved to death, thus creating an agricultural surplus to feed Germany and urban space for the German upper class. Nazi policy aimed to destroy the Soviet Union as a political entity in accordance with the geopolitical Lebensraum ideals for the benefit of future generations of the " Nordic master race". In 1941, Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg-later appointed Reich Minister of the Occupied Eastern Territories-suggested that conquered Soviet territory should be administered in the following Reichskommissariate ('Reich Commissionerships'):

German military planners also researched Napoleon's failed invasion of Russia. In their calculations, they concluded that there was little danger of a large-scale retreat of the Red Army into the Russian interior, as it could not afford to give up the Baltic states, Ukraine, or the Moscow and Leningrad regions, all of which were vital to the Red Army for supply reasons and would thus, have to be defended. Hitler and his generals disagreed on where Germany should focus its energy. Hitler, in many discussions with his generals, repeated his order of "Leningrad first, the Donbas second, Moscow third"; but he consistently emphasized the destruction of the Red Army over the achievement of specific terrain objectives. Hitler believed Moscow to be of "no great importance" in the defeat of the Soviet Union and instead believed victory would come with the destruction of the Red Army west of the capital, especially west of the Western Dvina and Dnieper rivers, and this pervaded the plan for Barbarossa. This belief later led to disputes between Hitler and several German senior officers, including Heinz Guderian, Gerhard Engel, Fedor von Bock and Franz Halder, who believed the decisive victory could only be delivered at Moscow. They were unable to sway Hitler, who had grown overconfident in his own military judgment as a result of the rapid successes in Western Europe.

The Germans had begun massing troops near the Soviet border even before the campaign in the Balkans had finished. By the third week of February 1941, 680,000 German soldiers were gathered in assembly areas on the Romanian-Soviet border. In preparation for the attack, Hitler had secretly moved upwards of 3 million German troops and approximately 690,000 Axis soldiers to the Soviet border regions. Additional Luftwaffe operations included numerous aerial surveillance missions over Soviet territory many months before the attack.

Although the Soviet High Command was alarmed by this, Stalin's belief that Nazi Germany was unlikely to attack only two years after signing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact resulted in a slow Soviet preparation. This fact aside, the Soviets did not entirely overlook the threat of their German neighbor. 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. 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. Historian Thomas B. Buell indicates that Finland and Romania, which weren't involved in initial German planning, needed additional time to prepare to participate in the invasion. Buell adds that an unusually wet winter kept rivers at full flood until late spring. The floods may have discouraged an earlier attack, even if they occurred before the end of the Balkans Campaign.

The importance of the delay is still debated. William Shirer argued that Hitler's Balkan Campaign had delayed the commencement of Barbarossa by several weeks and thereby jeopardized it. Many later historians argue that the 22 June start date was sufficient for the German offensive to reach Moscow by September. Antony Beevor wrote in 2012 about the delay caused by German attacks in the Balkans that "most [historians] accept that it made little difference" to the eventual outcome of Barbarossa.

The Germans deployed one independent regiment, one separate motorized training brigade and 153 divisions for Barbarossa, which included 104 infantry, 19 panzer and 15 motorized infantry divisions in three army groups, nine security divisions to operate in conquered territories, four divisions in Finland and two divisions as reserve under the direct control of OKH. These were equipped with 6,867 armored vehicles, of which 3,350-3,795 were tanks, 2,770-4,389 aircraft (that amounted to 65 percent of the Luftwaffe), 7,200-23,435 artillery pieces, 17,081 mortars, about 600,000 motor vehicles and 625,000-700,000 horses. Finland slated 14 divisions for the invasion, and Romania offered 13 divisions and eight brigades over the course of Barbarossa. The entire Axis forces, 3.8 million personnel, deployed across a front extending from the Arctic Ocean southward to the Black Sea, were all controlled by the OKH and organized into Army Norway, Army Group North, Army Group Center and Army Group South, alongside three Luftflotten (air fleets, the air force equivalent of army groups) that supported the army groups: Luftflotte 1 for North, Luftflotte 2 for Center and Luftflotte 4 for South.

Army Norway was to operate in far northern Scandinavia and bordering Soviet territories. Army Group North was to march through the Baltic states into northern Russia, either take or destroy the city of Leningrad and link up with Finnish forces. Army Group Center, the army group equipped with the most armour and air power, was to strike from Poland into Belorussia and the west-central regions of Russia proper, and advance to Smolensk and then Moscow. Army Group South was to strike the heavily populated and agricultural heartland of Ukraine, taking Kiev before continuing eastward over the steppes of southern USSR to the Volga with the aim of controlling the oil-rich Caucasus. Army Group South was deployed in two sections separated by a 198-mile (319 km) gap. The northern section, which contained the army group's only panzer group, was in southern Poland right next to Army Group Center, and the southern section was in Romania.

The German forces in the rear (mostly and Einsatzgruppen units) were to operate in conquered territories to counter any partisan activity in areas they controlled, as well as to execute captured Soviet political commissars and Jews. On 17 June, Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) chief Reinhard Heydrich briefed around thirty to fifty Einsatzgruppen commanders on "the policy of eliminating Jews in Soviet territories, at least in general terms". While the Einsatzgruppen were assigned to the Wehrmacht's units, which provided them with supplies such as gasoline and food, they were controlled by the RSHA. The official plan for Barbarossa assumed that the army groups would be able to advance freely to their primary objectives simultaneously, without spreading thin, once they had won the border battles and destroyed the Red Army's forces in the border area.

In 1930, Mikhail Tukhachevsky, a prominent military theorist in tank warfare in the interwar period and later Marshal of the Soviet Union, forwarded a memo to the Kremlin that lobbied for colossal investment in the resources required for the mass production of weapons, pressing the case for "40,000 aircraft and 50,000 tanks". 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. Tukhachevsky was killed in 1937. Fifteen of 16 army commanders, 50 of the 57 corps commanders, 154 of the 186 divisional commanders, and 401 of 456 colonels were killed, and many other officers were dismissed. In total, about 30,000 Red Army personnel were executed. Stalin further underscored his control by reasserting the role of political commissars at the divisional level and below to oversee the political loyalty of the army to the regime. The commissars held a position equal to that of the commander of the unit they were overseeing. 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. Therefore, although about 75 percent of all the officers had been in their position for less than one year at the start of the German invasion of 1941, many of the short tenures can be attributed not only to the purge but also to the rapid increase in the creation of military units.

In the Soviet Union, speaking to his generals in December 1940, Stalin mentioned Hitler's references to an attack on the Soviet Union in Mein Kampf and Hitler's belief that the Red Army would need four years to ready itself. Stalin declared "we must be ready much earlier" and "we will try to delay the war for another two years". 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. But Stalin's distrust of the British led him to ignore their warnings in the belief that they were a trick designed to bring the Soviet Union into the war on their side. In early 1941, Stalin's own intelligence services and American intelligence gave regular and repeated warnings of an impending German attack. Soviet spy Richard Sorge also gave Stalin the exact German launch date, but Sorge and other informers had previously given different invasion dates that passed peacefully before the actual invasion. 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. Stalin disagreed, and in October he authorized the development of new plans that assumed a German attack would focus on the region south of Pripyat Marshes towards the economically vital regions in Ukraine. This became the basis for all subsequent Soviet war plans and the deployment of their armed forces in preparation for the German invasion.

In early-1941 Stalin authorized the State Defense Plan 1941 (DP-41), which along with the Mobilization Plan 1941 (MP-41), called for the deployment of 186 divisions, as the first strategic echelon, in the four military districts of the western Soviet Union that faced the Axis territories; and the deployment of another 51 divisions along the Dvina and Dnieper Rivers as the second strategic echelon under Stavka control, which in the case of a German invasion was tasked to spearhead a Soviet counteroffensive along with the remaining forces of the first echelon. 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. The second echelon was undetected by German intelligence until days after the invasion commenced, in most cases only when German ground forces bumped into them.

At the start of the invasion, the manpower of the Soviet military force that had been mobilized was 5.3-5.5 million, and it was still increasing as the Soviet reserve force of 14 million, with at least basic military training, continued to mobilize. The Red Army was dispersed and still preparing when the invasion commenced. Their units were often separated and lacked adequate transportation. While transportation remained insufficient for Red Army forces, when Operation Barbarossa kicked off, they possessed some 33,000 pieces of artillery, a number far greater than the Germans had at their disposal.

The Soviet Union had some 23,000 tanks available of which only 14,700 were combat-ready. Around 11,000 tanks were in the western military districts that faced the German invasion force. Hitler later declared to some of his generals, "If I had known about the Russian tank strength in 1941 I would not have attacked". However, maintenance and readiness standards were very poor; ammunition and radios were in short supply, and many armoured units lacked the trucks for supplies. 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. 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. But these large armoured formations were unwieldy, and moreover they were spread out in scattered garrisons, with their subordinate divisions up to 100 kilometres (62 miles) apart. The reorganization was still in progress and incomplete when Barbarossa commenced. Soviet tank units were rarely well equipped, and they lacked training and logistical support. Units were sent into combat with no arrangements in place for refueling, ammunition resupply, or personnel replacement. Often, after a single engagement, units were destroyed or rendered ineffective. 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. About 7,133-9,100 of these were deployed in the five western military districts, and an additional 1445 were under naval control.

Historians have debated whether Stalin was planning an invasion of German territory in the summer of 1941. The debate began in the late-1980s when Viktor Suvorov published a journal article and later the book Icebreaker in which he claimed that Stalin had seen the outbreak of war in Western Europe as an opportunity to spread communist revolutions throughout the continent, and that the Soviet military was being deployed for an imminent attack at the time of the German invasion. This view had also been advanced by former German generals following the war. Suvorov's thesis was fully or partially accepted by a limited number of historians, including Valeri Danilov, Joachim Hoffmann, Mikhail Meltyukhov, and Vladimir Nevezhin, and attracted public attention in Germany, Israel, and Russia. It has been strongly rejected by most historians, and Icebreaker is generally considered to be an "anti-Soviet tract" in Western countries. David Glantz and Gabriel Gorodetsky wrote books to rebut Suvorov's arguments. The majority of historians believe that Stalin was seeking to avoid war in 1941, as he believed that his military was not ready to fight the German forces.

At around 01:00 on 22 June 1941, the Soviet military districts in the border area were alerted by NKO Directive No. 1, issued late on the night of 21 June. It called on them to "bring all forces to combat readiness," but to "avoid provocative actions of any kind". It took up to two hours for several of the units subordinate to the Fronts to receive the order of the directive, and the majority did not receive it before the invasion commenced. A German deserter, Alfred Liskow, had crossed the lines at 21:00 on 21 June and informed the Soviets that an attack was coming at 04:00. Stalin was informed, but apparently regarded it as disinformation. Liskow was still being interrogated when the attack began.

On 21 June, at 13:00 Army Group North received the codeword "Düsseldorf", indicating Barbarossa would commence the next morning, and passed down its own codeword, "Dortmund". 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. Air-raids were conducted as far as Kronstadt near Leningrad, Ismail in Bessarabia, and Sevastopol in the Crimea. Meanwhile, ground troops crossed the border, accompanied in some locales by Lithuanian and Ukrainian fifth columnists. Roughly three million soldiers of the Wehrmacht went into action and faced slightly fewer Soviet troops at the border. Accompanying the German forces during the initial invasion were Finnish and Romanian units as well.

At around noon, the news of the invasion was broadcast to the population by Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov: "... Without a declaration of war, German forces fell on our country, attacked our frontiers in many places ... The Red Army and the whole nation will wage a victorious Patriotic War for our beloved country, for honour, for liberty ... Our cause is just. The enemy will be beaten. Victory will be ours!" By calling upon the population's devotion to their nation rather than the Party, Molotov struck a patriotic chord that helped a stunned people absorb the shattering news. Within the first few days of the invasion, the Soviet High Command and Red Army were extensively reorganized so as to place them on the necessary war footing. Stalin did not address the nation about the German invasion until 3 July, when he also called for a "Patriotic War ... of the entire Soviet people".

In Germany, on the morning of 22 June, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels announced the invasion to the waking nation in a radio broadcast with Hitler's words: "At this moment a march is taking place that, for its extent, compares with the greatest the world has ever seen. I have decided today to place the fate and future of the Reich and our people in the hands of our soldiers. May God aid us, especially in this fight!" Later the same morning, Hitler proclaimed to his colleagues, "Before three months have passed, we shall witness a collapse of Russia, the like of which has never been seen in history." Hitler also addressed the German people via the radio, presenting himself as a man of peace, who reluctantly had to attack the Soviet Union. Following the invasion, Goebbels instructed that Nazi propaganda use the slogan "European crusade against Bolshevism" to describe the war; subsequently thousands of volunteers and conscripts joined the Waffen-SS.

The initial momentum of the German ground and air attack completely destroyed the Soviet organizational command and control within the first few hours, paralyzing every level of command from the infantry platoon to the Soviet High Command in Moscow. Moscow not only failed to grasp the magnitude of the catastrophe that confronted the Soviet forces in the border area, but Stalin's first reaction was also disbelief. At around 07:15, Stalin issued NKO Directive No. 2, which announced the invasion to the Soviet Armed Forces, and called on them to attack Axis forces wherever they had violated the borders and launch air strikes into the border regions of German territory. At around 09:15, Stalin issued NKO Directive No. 3, signed by Marshal Semyon Timoshenko, which now called for a general counteroffensive on the entire front "without any regards for borders" that both men hoped would sweep the enemy from Soviet territory. Stalin's order, which Timoshenko authorized, was not based on a realistic appraisal of the military situation at hand, but commanders passed it along for fear of retribution if they failed to obey; several days passed before the Soviet leadership became aware of the enormity of the opening defeat.

Luftwaffe reconnaissance units plotted Soviet troop concentration, supply dumps and airfields, and marked them down for destruction. Additional Luftwaffe attacks were carried out against Soviet command and control centers to disrupt the mobilization and organization of Soviet forces. In contrast, Soviet artillery observers based at the border area had been under the strictest instructions not to open fire on German aircraft prior to the invasion. One plausible reason given for the Soviet hesitation to return fire was Stalin's initial belief that the assault was launched without Hitler's authorization. Significant amounts of Soviet territory were lost along with Red Army forces as a result; it took several days before Stalin comprehended the magnitude of the calamity. The Luftwaffe reportedly destroyed 1,489 aircraft on the first day of the invasion and over 3,100 during the first three days. Hermann Göring, Minister of Aviation and Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, distrusted the reports and ordered the figure checked. Luftwaffe staffs surveyed the wreckage on Soviet airfields, and their original figure proved conservative, as over 2,000 Soviet aircraft were estimated to have been destroyed on the first day of the invasion. In reality, Soviet losses were likely higher; a Soviet archival document recorded the loss of 3,922 Soviet aircraft in the first three days against an estimated loss of 78 German aircraft. The Luftwaffe reported the loss of only 35 aircraft on the first day of combat. A document from the German Federal Archives puts the Luftwaffe's loss at 63 aircraft for the first day.

By the end of the first week, the Luftwaffe had achieved air supremacy over the battlefields of all the army groups, but was unable to effect this air dominance over the vast expanse of the western Soviet Union. According to the war diaries of the German High Command, the Luftwaffe by 5 July had lost 491 aircraft with 316 more damaged, leaving it with only about 70 percent of the strength it had at the start of the invasion.

On 22 June, Army Group North attacked the Soviet Northwestern Front and broke through its 8th and 11th Armies. The Soviets immediately launched a powerful counterattack against the German 4th Panzer Group with the Soviet 3rd and 12th Mechanized Corps, but the Soviet attack was defeated. On 25 June, the 8th and 11th Armies were ordered to withdraw to the Western Dvina River, where it was planned to meet up with the 21st Mechanized Corps and the 22nd and 27th Armies. However, on 26 June, Erich von Manstein's LVI Panzer Corps reached the river first and secured a bridgehead across it. The Northwestern Front was forced to abandon the river defenses, and on 29 June Stavka ordered the Front to withdraw to the Stalin Line on the approaches to Leningrad. On 2 July, Army Group North began its attack on the Stalin Line with its 4th Panzer Group, and on 8 July captured Pskov, devastating the defenses of the Stalin Line and reaching Leningrad oblast. The 4th Panzer Group had advanced about 450 kilometres (280 mi) since the start of the invasion and was now only about 250 kilometres (160 mi) from its primary objective Leningrad. On 9 July it began its attack towards the Soviet defenses along the Luga River in Leningrad oblast.

The northern section of Army Group South faced the Southwestern Front, which had the largest concentration of Soviet forces, and the southern section faced the Southern Front. In addition, the Pripyat Marshes and the Carpathian Mountains posed a serious challenge to the army group's northern and southern sections respectively. On 22 June, only the northern section of Army Group South attacked, but the terrain impeded their assault, giving the Soviet defenders ample time to react. The German 1st Panzer Group and 6th Army attacked and broke through the Soviet 5th Army. Starting on the night of 23 June, the Soviet 22nd and 15th Mechanized Corps attacked the flanks of the 1st Panzer Group from north and south respectively. Although intended to be concerted, Soviet tank units were sent in piecemeal due to poor coordination. The 22nd Mechanized Corps ran into the 1st Panzer Army's III Motorized Corps and was decimated, and its commander killed. The 1st Panzer Group bypassed much of the 15th Mechanized Corps, which engaged the German 6th Army's 297th Infantry Division, where it was defeated by antitank fire and Luftwaffe attacks. On 26 June, the Soviets launched another counterattack on the 1st Panzer Group from north and south simultaneously with the 9th, 19th and 8th Mechanized Corps, which altogether fielded 1649 tanks, and supported by the remnants of the 15th Mechanized Corps. The battle lasted for four days, ending in the defeat of the Soviet tank units. On 30 June Stavka ordered the remaining forces of the Southwestern Front to withdraw to the Stalin Line, where it would defend the approaches to Kiev.

On 2 July, the southern section of Army Group South - the Romanian 3rd and 4th Armies, alongside the German 11th Army - invaded Soviet Moldavia, which was defended by the Southern Front. Counterattacks by the Front's 2nd Mechanized Corps and 9th Army were defeated, but on 9 July the Axis advance stalled along the defenses of the Soviet 18th Army between the Prut and Dniester Rivers.

In the opening hours of the invasion, the Luftwaffe destroyed the Western Front's air force on the ground, and with the aid of Abwehr and their supporting anti-communist fifth columns operating in the Soviet rear paralyzed the Front's communication lines, which particularly cut off the Soviet 4th Army headquarters from headquarters above and below it. On the same day, the 2nd Panzer Group crossed the Bug River, broke through the 4th Army, bypassed Brest Fortress, and pressed on towards Minsk, while the 3rd Panzer Group bypassed most of the 3rd Army and pressed on towards Vilnius. Simultaneously, the German 4th and 9th Armies engaged the Western Front forces in the environs of Białystok. On the order of Dmitry Pavlov, the commander of the Western Front, the 6th and 11th Mechanized Corps and the 6th Cavalry Corps launched a strong counterstrike towards Grodno on 24-25 June in hopes of destroying the 3rd Panzer Group. However, the 3rd Panzer Group had already moved on, with its forward units reaching Vilnius on the evening of 23 June, and the Western Front's armoured counterattack instead ran into infantry and antitank fire from the V Army Corps of the German 9th Army, supported by Luftwaffe air attacks. By the night of 25 June, the Soviet counterattack was defeated, and the commander of the 6th Cavalry Corps was captured. The same night, Pavlov ordered all the remnants of the Western Front to withdraw to Slonim towards Minsk. Subsequent counterattacks to buy time for the withdrawal were launched against the German forces, but all of them failed. On 27 June, the 2nd and 3rd Panzer Groups met near Minsk and captured the city the next day, completing the encirclement of almost all of the Western Front in two pockets: one around Białystok and another west of Minsk. The Germans destroyed the Soviet 3rd and 10th Armies while inflicting serious losses on the 4th, 11th and 13th Armies, and reported to have captured 324,000 Soviet troops, 3,300 tanks, 1,800 artillery pieces.

A Soviet directive was issued on 29 June to combat the mass panic rampant among the civilians and the armed forces personnel. The order stipulated swift, severe measures against anyone inciting panic or displaying cowardice. The NKVD worked with commissars and military commanders to scour possible withdrawal routes of soldiers retreating without military authorization. Field expedient general courts were established to deal with civilians spreading rumors and military deserters. On 30 June, Stalin relieved Pavlov of his command, and on 22 July tried and executed him along with many members of his staff on charges of "cowardice" and "criminal incompetence".

On 29 June, Hitler, through the Commander-in-Chief of the German Army Walther von Brauchitsch, instructed the commander of Army Group Center Fedor von Bock to halt the advance of his panzers until the infantry formations liquidating the pockets catch up. But the commander of the 2nd Panzer Group Heinz Guderian, with the tacit support of Fedor von Bock and the chief of OKH Franz Halder, ignored the instruction and attacked on eastward towards Bobruisk, albeit reporting the advance as a reconnaissance-in-force. He also personally conducted an aerial inspection of the Minsk-Białystok pocket on 30 June and concluded that his panzer group was not needed to contain it, since Hermann Hoth's 3rd Panzer Group was already involved in the Minsk pocket. On the same day, some of the infantry corps of the 9th and 4th Armies, having sufficiently liquidated the Białystok pocket, resumed their march eastward to catch up with the panzer groups. On 1 July, Fedor von Bock ordered the panzer groups to resume their full offensive eastward on the morning of 3 July. But Brauchitsch, upholding Hitler's instruction, and Halder, unwillingly going along with it, opposed Bock's order. However, Bock insisted on the order by stating that it would be irresponsible to reverse orders already issued. The panzer groups resumed their offensive on 2 July before the infantry formations had sufficiently caught up.

During German-Finnish negotiations Finland had demanded to remain neutral unless the Soviet Union attacked them first. Germany therefore sought to provoke the Soviet Union into an attack on Finland. After Germany launched Barbarossa on 22 June, German aircraft used Finnish air bases to attack Soviet positions. The same day the Germans launched Operation Rentier and occupied the Petsamo Province at the Finnish-Soviet border. Simultaneously Finland proceeded to remilitarize the neutral Åland Islands. Despite these actions the Finnish government insisted via diplomatic channels that they remained a neutral party, but the Soviet leadership already viewed Finland as an ally of Germany. Subsequently, the Soviets proceeded to launch a massive bombing attack on 25 June against all major Finnish cities and industrial centers including Helsinki, Turku and Lahti. During a night session on the same day the Finnish parliament decided to go to war against the Soviet Union.

Finland was divided into two operational zones. Northern Finland was the staging area for Army Norway. Its goal was to execute a two-pronged pincer movement on the strategic port of Murmansk, named Operation Silver Fox. Southern Finland was still under the responsibility of the Finnish Army. The goal of the Finnish forces was, at first, to recapture Finnish Karelia at Lake Ladoga as well as the Karelian Isthmus, which included Finland's second largest city Viipuri.

On 2 July and through the next six days, a rainstorm typical of Belarusian summers slowed the progress of the panzers of Army Group Center, and Soviet defences stiffened. The delays gave the Soviets time to organize a massive counterattack against Army Group Center. The army group's ultimate objective was Smolensk, which commanded the road to Moscow. Facing the Germans was an old Soviet defensive line held by six armies. On 6 July, the Soviets launched a massive counter-attack using the V and VII Mechanized Corps of the 20th Army, which collided with the German 39th and 47th Panzer Corps in a battle where the Red Army lost 832 tanks of the 2,000 employed during five days of ferocious fighting. The Germans defeated this counterattack thanks largely to the coincidental presence of the Luftwaffe's only squadron of tank-busting aircraft. The 2nd Panzer Group crossed the Dnieper River and closed in on Smolensk from the south while the 3rd Panzer Group, after defeating the Soviet counterattack, closed on Smolensk from the north. Trapped between their pincers were three Soviet armies. The 29th Motorized Division captured Smolensk on 16 July yet a gap remained between Army Group Center. On 18 July, the panzer groups came to within ten kilometres (6.2 mi) of closing the gap but the trap did not finally close until 5 August, when upwards of 300,000 Red Army soldiers had been captured and 3,205 Soviet tanks were destroyed. Large numbers of Red Army soldiers escaped to stand between the Germans and Moscow as resistance continued.

Four weeks into the campaign, the Germans realized they had grossly underestimated Soviet strength. The German troops had used their initial supplies, and General Bock quickly came to the conclusion that not only had the Red Army offered stiff opposition, but German difficulties were also due to the logistical problems with reinforcements and provisions. Operations were now slowed down to allow for resupply; the delay was to be used to adapt strategy to the new situation. Hitler by now had lost faith in battles of encirclement as large numbers of Soviet soldiers had escaped the pincers. He now believed he could defeat the Soviet state by economic means, depriving them of the industrial capacity to continue the war. That meant seizing the industrial center of Kharkov, the Donbas and the oil fields of the Caucasus in the south and the speedy capture of Leningrad, a major center of military production, in the north.

Chief of the OKH, General Franz Halder, Fedor von Bock, the commander of Army Group Center, and almost all the German generals involved in Operation Barbarossa argued vehemently in favor of continuing the all-out drive toward Moscow. Besides the psychological importance of capturing the Soviet capital, the generals pointed out that Moscow was a major center of arms production, the center of the Soviet communications system and an important transport hub. Intelligence reports indicated that the bulk of the Red Army was deployed near Moscow under Semyon Timoshenko for the defense of the capital. Panzer commander Heinz Guderian was sent to Hitler by Bock and Halder to argue their case for continuing the assault against Moscow, but Hitler issued an order through Guderian (bypassing Bock and Halder) to send Army Group Center's tanks to the north and south, temporarily halting the drive to Moscow. Convinced by Hitler's argument, Guderian returned to his commanding officers as a convert to the Führer's plan, which earned him their disdain.

On 29 June Germany launched its effort to capture Murmansk in a pincer attack. The northern pincer, conducted by Mountain Corps Norway, approached Murmansk directly by crossing the border at Petsamo. However, in mid-July after securing the neck of the Rybachy Peninsula and advancing to the Litsa River the German advance was stopped by heavy resistance from the Soviet 14th Army. Renewed attacks led to nothing, and this front became a stalemate for the remainder of Barbarossa.

The second pincer attack began on 1 July with the German XXXVI Corps and Finnish III Corps slated to recapture the Salla region for Finland and then proceed eastwards to cut the Murmansk railway near Kandalaksha. The German units had great difficulty dealing with the Arctic conditions. After heavy fighting, Salla was taken on 8 July. To keep the momentum the German-Finnish forces advanced eastwards until they were stopped at the town of Kayraly by Soviet resistance. Further south the Finnish III Corps made an independent effort to reach the Murmansk railway through the Arctic terrain. Facing only one division of the Soviet 7th Army it was able to make rapid headway. On 7 August it captured Kestenga while reaching the outskirts of Ukhta. Large Red Army reinforcements then prevented further gains on both fronts, and the German-Finnish force had to go onto the defensive.

The Finnish plan in the south in Karelia was to advance as swiftly as possible to Lake Ladoga, cutting the Soviet forces in half. Then the Finnish territories east of Lake Ladoga were to be recaptured before the advance along the Karelian Isthmus, including the recapture of Viipuri, commenced. The Finnish attack was launched on 10 July. The Army of Karelia held a numerical advantage versus the Soviet defenders of the 7th Army and 23rd Army, so it could advance swiftly. The important road junction at Loimola was captured on 14 July. By 16 July, the first Finnish units reached Lake Ladoga at Koirinoja, achieving the goal of splitting the Soviet forces. During the rest of July, the Army of Karelia advanced further southeast into Karelia, coming to a halt at the former Finnish-Soviet border at Mansila.

With the Soviet forces cut in half, the attack on the Karelian Isthmus could commence. The Finnish army attempted to encircle large Soviet formations at Sortavala and Hiitola by advancing to the western shores of Lake Ladoga. By mid-August the encirclement had succeeded and both towns were taken, but many Soviet formations were able to evacuate by sea. Further west, the attack on Viipuri was launched. With Soviet resistance breaking down, the Finns were able to encircle Viipuri by advancing to the Vuoksi River. The city itself was taken on 30 August, along with a broad advance on the rest of the Karelian Isthmus. By the beginning of September, Finland had restored its pre- Winter War borders.

By mid-July, the German forces had advanced within a few kilometers of Kiev below the Pripyat Marshes. The 1st Panzer Group then went south, while the 17th Army struck east and trapped three Soviet armies near Uman. As the Germans eliminated the pocket, the tanks turned north and crossed the Dnieper. Meanwhile, the 2nd Panzer Group, diverted from Army Group Center, had crossed the river Desna with 2nd Army on its right flank. The two panzer armies now trapped four Soviet armies and parts of two others.

By August, as the serviceability and the quantity of the Luftwaffe's inventory steadily diminished due to combat, demand for air support only increased as the VVS recovered. The Luftwaffe found itself struggling to maintain local air superiority. With the onset of bad weather in October, the Luftwaffe was on several occasions forced to halt nearly all aerial operations. The VVS, although faced with the same weather difficulties, had a clear advantage thanks to the prewar experience with cold-weather flying, and the fact that they were operating from intact airbases and airports. By December, the VVS had matched the Luftwaffe and was even pressing to achieve air superiority over the battlefields.

For its final attack on Leningrad, the 4th Panzer Group was reinforced by tanks from Army Group Center. On 8 August, the Panzers broke through the Soviet defences. By the end of August, 4th Panzer Group had penetrated to within 48 kilometres (30 miles) of Leningrad. 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. Nowhere was the Soviet levée en masse spirit stronger in resisting the Germans than at Leningrad where reserve troops and freshly improvised Narodnoe Opolcheniye units, consisting of worker battalions and even schoolboy formations, joined in digging trenches as they prepared to defend the city. On 7 September, the German 20th Motorized Division seized Shlisselburg, cutting off all land routes to Leningrad. The Germans severed the railroads to Moscow and captured the railroad to Murmansk with Finnish assistance to inaugurate the start of a siege that would last for over two years.

At this stage, Hitler ordered the final destruction of Leningrad with no prisoners taken, and on 9 September, Army Group North began the final push. Within ten days it had advanced within 11 kilometres (6.8 miles) of the city. However, the push over the last 10 km (6.2 mi) proved very slow and casualties mounted. Hitler, now out of patience, ordered that Leningrad should not be stormed, but rather starved into submission. Along these lines, the OKH issued Directive No. la 1601/41 on 22 September 1941, which accorded Hitler's plans. Deprived of its Panzer forces, Army Group Center remained static and was subjected to numerous Soviet counterattacks, in particular the Yelnya Offensive, in which the Germans suffered their first major tactical defeat since their invasion began; this Red Army victory also provided an important boost to Soviet morale. These attacks prompted Hitler to concentrate his attention back to Army Group Center and its drive on Moscow. The Germans ordered the 3rd and 4th Panzer Armies to break off their Siege of Leningrad and support Army Group Center in its attack on Moscow.

Before an attack on Moscow could begin, operations in Kiev needed to be finished. Half of Army Group Center had swung to the south in the back of the Kiev position, while Army Group South moved to the north from its Dnieper bridgehead. The encirclement of Soviet forces in Kiev was achieved on 16 September. A battle ensued in which the Soviets were hammered with tanks, artillery, and aerial bombardment. After ten days of vicious fighting, the Germans claimed 665,000 Soviet soldiers captured, although the real figure is probably around 220,000 prisoners. Soviet losses were 452,720 men, 3,867 artillery pieces and mortars from 43 divisions of the 5th, 21st, 26th, and 37th Soviet Armies. Despite the exhaustion and losses facing some German units (upwards of 75 percent of their men) from the intense fighting, the massive defeat of the Soviets at Kiev and the Red Army losses during the first three months of the assault contributed to the German assumption that Operation Typhoon (the attack on Moscow) could still succeed.

After operations at Kiev were successfully concluded, Army Group South advanced east and south to capture the industrial Donbas region and the Crimea. The Soviet Southern Front launched an attack on 26 September with two armies on the northern shores of the Sea of Azov against elements of the German 11th Army, which was simultaneously advancing into the Crimea. On 1 October the 1st Panzer Army under Ewald von Kleist swept south to encircle the two attacking Soviet armies. By 7 October the Soviet 9th and 18th Armies were isolated and four days later they had been annihilated. The Soviet defeat was total; 106,332 men captured, 212 tanks destroyed or captured in the pocket alone as well as 766 artillery pieces of all types. The death or capture of two-thirds of all Southern Front troops in four days unhinged the Front's left flank, allowing the Germans to capture Kharkov on 24 October. Kleist's 1st Panzer Army took the Donbas region that same month.

In central Finland, the German-Finnish advance on the Murmansk railway had been resumed at Kayraly. A large encirclement from the north and the south trapped the defending Soviet corps and allowed XXXVI Corps to advance further to the east. In early-September it reached the old 1939 Soviet border fortifications. On 6 September the first defence line at the Voyta River was breached, but further attacks against the main line at the Verman River failed. With Army Norway switching its main effort further south, the front stalemated in this sector. Further south, the Finnish III Corps launched a new offensive towards the Murmansk railway on 30 October, bolstered by fresh reinforcements from Army Norway. Against Soviet resistance, it was able to come within 30 km (19 mi) of the railway, when the Finnish High Command ordered a stop to all offensive operations in the sector on 17 November. The United States of America applied diplomatic pressure on Finland to not disrupt Allied aid shipments to the Soviet Union, which caused the Finnish government to halt the advance on the Murmansk railway. With the Finnish refusal to conduct further offensive operations and German inability to do so alone, the German-Finnish effort in central and northern Finland came to an end.

Germany had pressured Finland to enlarge its offensive activities in Karelia to aid the Germans in their Leningrad operation. Finnish attacks on Leningrad itself remained limited. Finland stopped its advance just short of Leningrad and had no intentions to attack the city. The situation was different in eastern Karelia. The Finnish government agreed to restart its offensive into Soviet Karelia to reach Lake Onega and the Svir River. On 4 September this new drive was launched on a broad front. Albeit reinforced by fresh reserve troops, heavy losses elsewhere on the front meant that the Soviet defenders of the 7th Army were not able to resist the Finnish advance. Olonets was taken on 5 September. On 7 September, Finnish forward units reached the Svir River. Petrozavodsk, the capital city of the Karelo-Finnish SSR, fell on 1 October. From there the Army of Karelia moved north along the shores of Lake Onega to secure the remaining area west of Lake Onega, while simultaneously establishing a defensive position along the Svir River. Slowed by winter's onset they nevertheless continued to advance slowly during the following weeks. Medvezhyegorsk was captured on 5 December and Povenets fell the next day. On 7 December Finland called a stop to all offensive operations, going onto the defensive.

After Kiev, the Red Army no longer outnumbered the Germans and there were no more trained reserves directly available. To defend Moscow, Stalin could field 800,000 men in 83 divisions, but no more than 25 divisions were fully effective. Operation Typhoon, the drive to Moscow, began on 30 September 1941. In front of Army Group Center was a series of elaborate defence lines, the first centred on Vyazma and the second on Mozhaysk. Russian peasants began fleeing ahead of the advancing German units, burning their harvested crops, driving their cattle away, and destroying buildings in their villages as part of a scorched-earth policy designed to deny to the Nazi war machine needed supplies and foodstuffs.

The first blow took the Soviets completely by surprise when the 2nd Panzer Group, returning from the south, took Oryol, just 121 km (75 mi) south of the Soviet first main defense line. Three days later, the Panzers pushed on to Bryansk, while the 2nd Army attacked from the west. The Soviet 3rd and 13th Armies were now encircled. To the north, the 3rd and 4th Panzer Armies attacked Vyazma, trapping the 19th, 20th, 24th and 32nd Armies. Moscow's first line of defense had been shattered. The pocket eventually yielded over 500,000 Soviet prisoners, bringing the tally since the start of the invasion to three million. The Soviets now had only 90,000 men and 150 tanks left for the defense of Moscow.

The German government now publicly predicted the imminent capture of Moscow and convinced foreign correspondents of an impending Soviet collapse. On 13 October, the 3rd Panzer Group penetrated to within 140 km (87 mi) of the capital. Martial law was declared in Moscow. Almost from the beginning of Operation Typhoon, however, the weather worsened. Temperatures fell while there was continued rainfall. This turned the unpaved road network into mud and slowed the German advance on Moscow. Additional snows fell which were followed by more rain, creating a glutinous mud that German tanks had difficulty traversing, whereas the Soviet T-34, with its wider tread, was better suited to navigate. At the same time, the supply situation for the Germans rapidly deteriorated. On 31 October, the German Army High Command ordered a halt to Operation Typhoon while the armies were reorganized. The pause gave the Soviets, far better supplied, time to consolidate their positions and organize formations of newly activated reservists. In little over a month, the Soviets organized eleven new armies that included 30 divisions of Siberian troops. These had been freed from the Soviet Far East after Soviet intelligence assured Stalin that there was no longer a threat from the Japanese. 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. Although the troops themselves were now able to advance again, there had been no improvement in the supply situation. Facing the Germans were the 5th, 16th, 30th, 43rd, 49th, and 50th Soviet Armies. The Germans intended to move the 3rd and 4th Panzer Armies across the Moscow Canal and envelop Moscow from the northeast. The 2nd Panzer Group would attack Tula and then close on Moscow from the south. As the Soviets reacted to their flanks, the 4th Army would attack the center. In two weeks of fighting, lacking sufficient fuel and ammunition, the Germans slowly crept towards Moscow. In the south, the 2nd Panzer Group was being blocked. On 22 November, Soviet Siberian units, augmented by the 49th and 50th Soviet Armies, attacked the 2nd Panzer Group and inflicted a defeat on the Germans. The 4th Panzer Group pushed the Soviet 16th Army back, however, and succeeded in crossing the Moscow Canal in an attempt to encircle Moscow.

On 2 December, part of the 258th Infantry Division advanced to within 24 km (15 mi) of Moscow. They were so close that German officers claimed they could see the spires of the Kremlin, but by then the first blizzards had begun. A reconnaissance battalion managed to reach the town of Khimki, only about 8 km (5.0 mi) from the Soviet capital. It captured the bridge over the Moscow-Volga Canal as well as the railway station, which marked the easternmost advance of German forces. In spite of the progress made, the Wehrmacht was not equipped for such severe winter warfare. The Soviet army was better adapted to fighting in winter conditions, but faced production shortages of winter clothing. The German forces fared worse, with deep snow further hindering equipment and mobility. Weather conditions had largely grounded the Luftwaffe, preventing large-scale air operations. Newly created Soviet units near Moscow now numbered over 500,000 men, and on 5 December, they launched a massive counterattack as part of the Soviet winter counteroffensive. The offensive halted on 7 January 1942, after having pushed the German armies back 100-250 km (62-155 mi) from Moscow. The Wehrmacht had lost the Battle for Moscow, and the invasion had cost the German Army over 830,000 men.

With the failure of the Battle of Moscow, all German plans for a quick defeat of the Soviet Union had to be revised. The Soviet counter-offensives in December 1941 caused heavy casualties on both sides, but ultimately eliminated the German threat to Moscow. Attempting to explain matters, Hitler issued Directive N. 39, which cited the early onset of winter and the severe cold as the reason for the German failure, whereas the main reason was the German military unpreparedness for such a giant enterprise. On 22 June 1941, the Wehrmacht as a whole had 209 divisions at its disposal, 163 of which were offensively capable. 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. The Red Army's tenacity and ability to counter-attack effectively took the Germans as much by surprise as their own initial attack had the Soviets. Spurred on by the successful defense and in an effort to imitate the Germans, Stalin wanted to begin his own counteroffensive, not just against the German forces around Moscow, but against their armies in the north and south. 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. Nonetheless, the Red Army proved capable of countering the German offensives, particularly as the Germans began experiencing irreplaceable shortages in manpower, armaments, provisions, and fuel. 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. Hitler, having realized that Germany's oil supply was "severely depleted", aimed to capture the oil fields of Baku in an offensive, codenamed Case Blue. 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. Approximately one million German troops confronted a Soviet force over 2.5 million strong. The Soviets prevailed. Following the defeat of Operation Zitadelle, the Soviets launched counter-offensives employing six million men along a 2,400-kilometre (1,500 mi) front towards the Dnieper River as they drove the Germans westwards. 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 autumn of 1944 put the German war machine into retreat. 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.

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). 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. Article 82 of the convention specified that "In case, in time of war, one of the belligerents is not a party to the Convention, its provisions shall nevertheless remain in force as between the belligerents who are parties thereto." Despite such mandates, Hitler called for the battle against the Soviet Union to be a "struggle for existence" and emphasized that the Russian armies were to be " annihilated", a mindset that contributed to war crimes against Soviet prisoners of war. 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". Conveniently for the Nazis, the fact that the Soviets failed to sign the convention played into their hands as they justified their behavior accordingly. Even if the Soviets had signed, it is highly unlikely that this would have stopped the Nazis' genocidal policies towards combatants, civilians, and prisoners of war.

Before the war, Hitler issued the notorious Commissar Order, which called for all Soviet political commissars taken prisoner at the front to be shot immediately without trial. German soldiers participated in these mass killings along with members of the SS-Einsatzgruppen, sometimes reluctantly, claiming "military necessity". On the eve of the invasion, German soldiers were informed that their battle "demands ruthless and vigorous measures against Bolshevik inciters, guerrillas, saboteurs, Jews and the complete elimination of all active and passive resistance". Collective punishment was authorized against partisan attacks; if a perpetrator could not be quickly identified, then burning villages and mass executions were considered acceptable reprisals. Although the majority of German soldiers accepted these crimes as justified due to Nazi propaganda, which depicted the Red Army as Untermenschen, a few prominent German officers openly protested against them. An estimated two million Soviet prisoners of war died of starvation during Barbarossa alone. By the end of the war, 58 percent of all Soviet prisoners of war had died in German captivity.

Organized crimes against civilians, including women and children, were carried out on a huge scale by the German police and military forces, as well as the local collaborators. Under the command of the Reich Security Main Office, the Einsatzgruppen killing squads conducted large-scale massacres of Jews and communists in conquered Soviet territories. Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg puts the number of Jews murdered by "mobile killing operations" at 1,400,000. The original instructions to kill "Jews in party and state positions" were broadened to include "all male Jews of military age" and then expanded once more to "all male Jews regardless of age." By the end of July, the Germans were regularly killing women and children. 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". In accordance with Nazi policies against "inferior" Asian peoples, Turkmens were also persecuted. According to a post-war report by Prince Veli Kajum Khan, they were imprisoned in concentration camps in terrible conditions, where those deemed to have "Mongolian" features were murdered daily. Asians were also targeted by the Einsatzgruppen and were the subjects of lethal medical experiments and murder at a "pathological institute" in Kiev. Hitler received reports of the mass killings conducted by the Einsatzgruppen which were first conveyed to the RSHA, where they were aggregated into a summary report by Gestapo Chief Heinrich Müller.

Burning houses suspected of being partisan meeting places and poisoning water wells became common practice for soldiers of the German 9th Army. At Kharkov, the fourth largest city in the Soviet Union, food was provided only to the small number of civilians who worked for the Germans, with the rest designated to slowly starve. 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. The German-Finnish blockade cut off access to food, fuel and raw materials, and rations reached a low, for the non-working population, of four ounces (five thin slices) of bread and a little watery soup per day. Starving Soviet civilians began to eat their domestic animals, along with hair tonic and Vaseline. 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. The Wehrmacht planned to seal off Leningrad, starve out the population, and then demolish the city entirely.

Sexual violence

Rape was a widespread phenomenon in the East as German soldiers regularly committed violent sexual acts against Soviet women. Whole units were occasionally involved in the crime with upwards of one-third of the instances being gang rape. Historian Hannes Heer relates that in the world of the eastern front, where the German army equated Russia with Communism, everything was "fair game"; thus, rape went unreported unless entire units were involved. Frequently in the case of Jewish women, they were immediately murdered following acts of sexual violence. Historian Birgit Beck emphasizes that military decrees, which served to authorize wholesale brutality on many levels, essentially destroyed the basis for any prosecution of sexual offenses committed by German soldiers in the East. She also contends that detection of such instances was limited by the fact that sexual violence was often inflicted in the context of billets in civilian housing.

Operation Barbarossa was the largest military operation in history - more men, tanks, guns and aircraft were deployed than in any other offensive. The invasion opened up the Eastern Front, the war's largest theater, which saw clashes of unprecedented violence and destruction for four years and killed over 26 million Soviet people, including about 8.6 million Red army soldiers. More died fighting on the Eastern Front than in all other fighting across the globe during World War II. Damage to both the economy and landscape was enormous, as approximately 1,710 Soviet towns and 70,000 villages were razed.

Operation Barbarossa and the subsequent German defeat changed the political landscape of Europe, dividing it into Eastern and Western blocs. 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. Stalin's fear of resurgent German power and his distrust of his erstwhile allies contributed to Soviet pan-Slavic initiatives and a subsequent alliance of Slavic states. Historians David Glantz and Jonathan House assert Operation Barbarossa influenced not only Stalin but subsequent Soviet leaders, claiming it "colored" their strategic mindsets for the "next four decades". As a result, the Soviets instigated the creation of "an elaborate system of buffer and client states, designed to insulate the Soviet Union from any possible future attack." As a consequence, Eastern Europe became communist in political disposition, and Western Europe fell under the democratic sway of the United States.

On 19 June 2021 German Chancellor Angela Merkel gave a speech to the German and Russian people in a video-podcast shortly before the 80th anniversary of the invasion. Merkel called Hitler's war of extermination ( Vernichtungskrieg) on the Russian, Ukrainian, Belarussian and Baltic peoples a 'cause for shame' ( Anlass für Scham).

We humbly bow to the few survivors of this war of aggression who are still alive today ... And we are deeply grateful that so many of these people have shaken hands with us in reconciliation. That they were ready to do so borders on a miracle after everything that Germans have done to them.

Andaházi Szeghy, Viktor (2016). A Magyar Királyi Honvédség részvétele a Szovjetunió elleni támadásban, 1941. június-december [Participation of the Royal Hungarian Armed Forces in the attack against the Soviet Union, June-December, 1941] (PDF) (in Hungarian). Szeged: Belvedere Meridionale. ISBN 978-615-5372-53-7.

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BRD (2021). "Kanzlerin Merkel: Jahrestag des Überfalls von Nazi-Deutschland auf die damalige Sowjetunion ist Tag der Scham (19 June 2021)" [Chancellor Angela Merkel: The Anniversary of Nazi Germany's Attack against the Former Soviet Union is a Day of Shame].

Breitman, Richard (1991). "Himmler and the 'Terrible Secret' among the Executioners". Journal of Contemporary History. 26 (3/4): 431-451. doi:10.1177/002200949102600305. JSTOR 260654. S2CID 159733077.

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Förster, Jürgen (Winter 1988). "Barbarossa Revisited: Strategy and Ideology in the East" (PDF). Jewish Social Studies. 50 (1/2): 21-36. Archived from the original (PDF) on 30 March 2016.

Glantz, David (2001). The Soviet-German War 1941-1945: Myths and Realities: A Survey Essay. A Paper Presented as the 20th Anniversary Distinguished Lecture at the Strom Thurmond Institute of Government and Public Affairs. Clemson University. Archived from the original on 18 February 2015.

Grazhdan, Anna (director); Artem Drabkin & Aleksey Isaev (writers); Valeriy Babich, Vlad Ryashin, et. al (producers) (2011). Siege of Leningrad (television documentary). Soviet Storm: World War II in the East. Star Media.

Hayward, Joel (July 2000). "Too Little, Too Late: An Analysis of Hitler's Failure in August 1942 to Damage Soviet Oil Production" (PDF). The Journal of Military History. 64 (3): 769-794. doi:10.2307/120868. JSTOR 120868.

Hilberg, Raul (1961). The Destruction of the European Jews. Chicago: Quadrangle Books.

Himmler, Heinrich (1940). "Reflections on the Treatment of Peoples of Alien Races in the East". Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10. 13. District of Columbia: US Government Printing Office. pp. 147-150. ISBN 978-0-333-94944-3.

Hitler, Adolf (22 June 1941). Der Führer an das deutsche Volk 22. Juni 1941 [The Führer to the German People: 22 June 1941] (Speech) (in German) - via Calvin College, German Propaganda Archive.

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Meltyukhov, Mikhail Ivanovich (2000). "Оценка советским руководством событий Второй мировой войны в 1939-1941" [Evaluation by the Soviet leadership of the events of World War II in 1939-1941]. Упущенный шанс Сталина. Советский Союз и борьба за Европу: 1939-1941 [Stalin's Missed Chance: Soviet Union and the Struggle for Europe, 1939-1941] (in Russian). Moscow: Veche. ISBN 978-5-7838-0590-5 - via Russian Military Library Moscow.

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Operation Barbarossa Part of the Eastern Front of World War II Clockwise from top left: German soldiers advance through northern Russia German flamethrower team Soviet Ilyushin Il-2s over German positions near Moscow Soviet POWs on the way to prison camps Soviet soldiers fire artillery Belligerents Soviet Union Commanders and leaders

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This was a surprise aerial attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, by the Japanese that precipitated the entry of the USA into WW2. This assault just managed to worsen the relationship between the US and Japan, and began the US's full involvement in WW2.

"Millions of people gave their lives fighting fascism and imperialism, but Pearl Harbor was the event that forever changed the course of human history."

- Sam Graves

https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/pearl-harbor

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Just six hours after the bombing at Pearl Harbor, the Japanese 38th Division - which was made up of well-trained, battle-hardened troops - attacked Hong Kong. The invaders bombed the military installations and airfield around the area, and quickly overran the troops defending the mainland portion of the territory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hong_Kong

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Battle of Hong Kong

Part of the Pacific Theatre of World War II

Japanese troops take Tsim Sha Tsui

Belligerents

British Empire Canada
China
Free France

Japan

Commanders and leaders

Strength

10,976[1]-14,564 troops[2]
5 planes
1 destroyer
4 gunboats
1 minelayer
8 MTBs

26,928 troops[3]
47 planes
1 cruiser
3 destroyers
4 torpedo boats
3 gunboats

Casualties and losses

1,560-2,278 killed or missing
2,300 wounded
10,000 captured[a]
1 destroyer captured
4 gunboats sunk
1 minelayer sunk
3 MTBs sunk
5 planes lost

675 killed
2,079 wounded
2 planes damaged

Civilian casualties:
4,000 killed
3,000 severely wounded[b]

The Battle of Hong Kong (8-25 December 1941), also known as the Defence of Hong Kong and the Fall of Hong Kong, was one of the first battles of the Pacific War in World War II. On the same morning as the attack on Pearl Harbor, forces of the Empire of Japan attacked the British Crown colony of Hong Kong around the same time that Japan declared war on Great Britain. The Hong Kong garrison consisted of British, Indian and Canadian units, also the Auxiliary Defence Units and Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps (HKVDC).

Of the three territories of Hong Kong, the defenders abandoned the two mainland territories of Kowloon and New Territories within a week. Less than two weeks later, with their last territory Hong Kong Island untenable, the colony surrendered.

Britain first thought of Japan as a threat with the ending of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance in 1921, a threat that increased throughout the 1930s with the escalation of the Second Sino-Japanese War. On 21 October 1938 the Japanese occupied Canton (Guangzhou) and Hong Kong was surrounded. British defence studies concluded that Hong Kong would be extremely hard to defend in the event of a Japanese attack, but in the mid-1930s work began on improvements to defences including along the Gin Drinkers' Line. By 1940, the British determined to reduce the Hong Kong Garrison to only a symbolic size. Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, the Commander-in-Chief of the British Far East Command argued that limited reinforcements could allow the garrison to delay a Japanese attack, gaining time elsewhere. Winston Churchill and the general staff named Hong Kong as an outpost, and decided against sending more troops. In September 1941, they reversed their decision and argued that additional reinforcements would provide a military deterrent against the Japanese and reassure Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek that Britain was serious about defending the colony.

The plan for the defence of Hong Kong was that a delaying action would be fought in the New Territories and Kowloon peninsula to allow the destruction of vital infrastructure and stores there. The Gin Drinker's Line was expected to hold out for at least three weeks, following which all defenders would withdraw to Hong Kong Island which would be defended and use of the harbour denied until reinforcements could arrive from Singapore or the Philippines.

According to the history manual of the United States Military Academy: "Japanese control of Canton, Hainan Island, French Indo-China, and Formosa virtually sealed the fate of Hong Kong well before the firing of the first shot". The British military in Hong Kong grossly underestimated the capabilities of the Japanese forces and downplayed assessments that the Japanese posed a serious threat as 'unpatriotic' and 'insubordinate'.

US Consul Robert Ward, the highest ranking US official posted to Hong Kong in the period preceding the outbreak of hostilities, offered a first-hand explanation for the rapid collapse of defences in Hong Kong by saying that the local British community had insufficiently prepared itself or the Chinese populace for war. He highlighted the prejudiced attitudes held by those governing the Crown Colony of Hong Kong: "several of them (the British rulers) said frankly that they would rather turn the island over to the Japanese rather than to turn it over to the Chinese, by which they meant rather than employ Chinese to defend the colony they would surrender it to the Japanese".

Colonel Reynolds Condon, a US Army assistant military attaché who witnessed the battle and was taken prisoner by the Japanese, wrote up his observations on military preparedness before the commencement of hostilities and on the execution of operations thereafter.

Strengths of all personnel mobilised at Hong Kong Garrison on 8 December 1941 10976-14564

Indian gunners manning a 9.2-inch naval artillery gun at Mount Davis Battery on Hong Kong Island

The 5/7th Battalion, Rajput Regiment took up garrison at Hong Kong in June 1937 followed by the 2/14th Battalion, Punjab Regiment in November 1940. Indian troops were also incorporated within several overseas regiments as for example the Hong Kong Singapore Royal Artillery Regiment which had Indian (Sikh) gunners. The Hong Kong Mule Corps was staffed almost entirely by Dogras and Punjabi Muslims. Medical personnel from the Indian Medical Service tended to those injured in combat. Ex-servicemen from India serving as security guards in Hong Kong also suffered "appallingly huge" casualties.

Coastal defence batteries, including those at Stonecutters Island, Pak Sha Wan, Lyemun fort, Saiwan, Mount Collinson, Mount Parker, Belchers, Mount Davis, Jubilee Hill, Bokara, and Stanley, provided artillery support for ground operations until they were put out of action or they surrendered. Hong Kong and Singapore Royal Artillery, which was raised with troops recruited from Undivided India, also suffered heavy casualties during the Battle of Hong Kong and are commemorated with names inscribed on panels at the entrance to Sai Wan War Cemetery: 144 killed, 45 missing and 103 wounded.

Canadian Army (C Force)

In late 1941, the British government accepted an offer by the Canadian Government to send a battalion of the Royal Rifles of Canada (from Quebec) and one of the Winnipeg Grenadiers (from Manitoba) and a brigade headquarters (1,975 personnel) to reinforce the Hong Kong garrison. "C Force", as it was known, arrived on 16 November on board the troopship Awatea and the armed merchant cruiser HMCS Prince Robert. A total of 96 officers, two Auxiliary Services supervisors and 1,877 other ranks disembarked. Included were two medical officers and two nurses ( supernumerary to the regimental medical officers), two Canadian Dental Corps officers with assistants, three chaplains and a detachment of the Canadian Postal Corps. A soldier of the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps (RCAMC), had stowed away and was sent back to Canada.

The Royal Rifles had served only in the Dominion of Newfoundland and New Brunswick, prior to posting to Hong Kong. The Winnipeg Grenadiers had been deployed to Jamaica. Few Canadian soldiers had field experience, but were nearly fully equipped. However, the battalions had only two anti-tank rifles, and no ammunition for 2-inch and 3-inch mortars or for signal pistols. These were intended to be supplied after they arrived in Hong Kong. Nor did C Force receive its vehicles, as the US merchant ship San Jose carrying them was, at the outbreak of the Pacific War, diverted to Manila, in the Philippine Islands, at the request of the US Government.

There were 40 Royal Marines attached to HMS Tamar (a shore station). When the battle began, the Royal Marines fought against Japanese forces in Magazine Gap, alongside HKVDC and Royal Engineers. They also manned machine guns on Mount Cameron. Commanding officer, Major Giles RM instructed his men to defend the island "to the last man and last round".

The Royal Air Force station at Hong Kong's Kai Tak Airport ( RAF Kai Tak) had only five aeroplanes: two Supermarine Walrus amphibious aircraft and three out-dated Vickers Vildebeest torpedo-reconnaissance bombers, flown and serviced by seven officers and 108 airmen. An earlier request for a fighter squadron had been rejected and the nearest fully operational RAF base was in Kota Bharu, Malaya, nearly 2,250 km (1,400 mi) away.

The Chinese Military Mission to Hong Kong, initiated in 1938, was headed by Rear Admiral Andrew Chan and his aide Lieutenant Commander Henry Hsu. It had the objective of co-ordinating Chinese war aims with the British in Hong Kong. Working with the British police, Chan organized pro-British agents among the population and rooted out triad factions that were sympathetic to the Japanese.

A squad of Free French under Captain Rodéric Egal, of the Free French in Shanghai who happened to be in Hong Kong when the battle broke out, fought alongside the HKVDC at the North Point power station. They were all World War I veterans (as were the local HKVDC) and acquitted themselves well.

Defending the New Territories was the 2nd Battalion, Royal Scots in the west, the 2/ 14th Punjab in the center and the 5/7th Rajput in the east. In front of them was a thin screen of 2/14th Punjab infantry supported by four Bren Gun Carriers and two armoured cars and engineers at Sheung Shui and Tai Po. At 04:45 on 8 December 1941 ( Hong Kong Time), roughly 2.5 hours after the Attack on Pearl Harbor (which happened at 07:49 Hawaii Time or 02:19 Hong Kong Time the next day because of International date line) Radio Tokyo announced that war was imminent and General Maltby and Governor Young was informed. At 05:00 the engineers detonated their charges destroying bridges on likely invasion routes.

Japanese forces had been assembling north of the Sham Chun River since the beginning of December. The Japanese attack began at 06:00 when the IJA 230th, 229th and 228th Regiments (arranged from west to east) crossed the Sham Chun River. In the west the 230th Regiment advanced towards Yuen Long, Castle Peak Bay and Tai Mo Shan. In the center, the 229th Regiment advanced from Sha Tau Kok towards Chek Nai Ping and across Tide Cove to Tai Shui Hang. In the east, the 228th Regiment crossed at Lok Ma Chau and Lo Wu and advanced towards Lam Tsuen and Needle Hill.

At 08:00 the Japanese bombed Kai Tak Airport. Two of the three Vildebeest and the two Walruses were destroyed by 12 Japanese bombers. The attack also destroyed several civil aircraft including all but two of the aircraft used by the air unit of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps. The RAF and air unit personnel from then fought on as ground troops. The Pan-Am Airways flying boat "Hong Kong Clipper" was dive-bombed and destroyed. The Japanese also bombed Sham Shui Po Barracks causing minimal damage.

The first significant exchanges of fire were at 15:00 when the 2/14th Punjab engaged the IJA who had crossed into Laffan's Plain. 2/14th Punjab eliminated several IJA platoons at 18:30 just south of Tai Po and HKVDC armoured cars and Bren Gun Carriers also successfully engaged IJA forces. Despite these successes, the 2/14th Punjab withdrew towards Grassy Hill in the afternoon to avoid being outflanked and the IJA forces advanced down the Tai Po Road towards Sha Tin. Late that night all units were ordered to withdraw to the Gin Drinker's Line.

On 9 December the 2nd Royal Scots held in the west, a reserve company of the 5/7th Rajputs moved forward to Smuggler's Ridge, the HKVDC held Fo Tan and the 2/14th Punjab held at Tide Cove. By 13:00 the IJA 228th Regiment had reached Needle Hill and its commander Colonel Doi was reconnoitring the Shing Mun Redoubt area of the Gin Drinker's Line which he found to be unprepared for an attack. Despite the area being outside of his regimental boundary he developed an attack plan and began moving his men into position. The redoubt was defended by A Company, 2nd Royal Scots supplemented by other units giving a total strength of three officers and 39 soldiers. The defenders and the nearby D Company, 5/7th Rajputs conducted patrols north of the redoubt and around Needle Hill but failed to detect the two IJA battalions in the area or the 150-man attacking force which had crossed the Jubilee Dam and was in position just below one of the redoubt's pillboxes. At 23:00 the defenders detected movement and opened fire as the IJA began their attack. As the Japanese progressively overran the complex of trenches and tunnels, many of the defenders found themselves locked in the redoubt's artillery observation post (OP). Pillbox 402 was destroyed by IJA sappers at 02:30 on the 10th and the rest of the 3/228th Regiment joined the assault moving through the redoubt and into the valley, running into the 5/7th Rajputs who were moving to support the redoubt. The 5/7th Rajputs forced the Japanese back toward the redoubt. The Japanese eventually blew open the OP, capturing the 15 survivors. Artillery at Stonecutter's Island and Mount Davis] pounded the redoubt until 05:00, but apart from one position which held out until the afternoon the redoubt was lost. The IJA had only lost a mere two soldiers in the attack.

At 21:30 on the 9th HMS Thanet and HMS Scout were ordered to leave Hong Kong for Singapore, successfully evading the IJN blockade. Only one destroyer, HMS Thracian, several gunboats and a flotilla of MTBs remained. Between 8 and 10 December, eight American plus a number of Chinese pilots of the China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC) and their crews flew 16 sorties between Kai Tak Airport and landing fields in Nanxiong and Chongqing (Chungking), the wartime capital of the Republic of China. The crew evacuated 275 people, including Mme Sun Yat-Sen, the widow of Sun Yat-sen and the Chinese Finance Minister Kung Hsiang-hsi.

On 10 December, the IJA 228th Regiment continued to move troops into the Shing Mun Redoubt while sending out small patrols along the rest of the line but otherwise failed to capitalize on their success. Maltby saw the loss of the redoubt as a disaster that undermined the entire defensive line and the 2nd Royal Scots were ordered to counterattack at dawn on the 11th, but their commander Lieutenant Colonel S. White refused on the basis that it had no chance of success.

At dawn on the 11th the IJA 228th Regiment attacked Golden Hill and was engaged by the 5/7th Rajputs supported by fire from HMS Cicala. D Company, 2nd Royal Scots counterattacked and regained the hill. At midday, Maltby having decided that the New Territories and Kowloon were untenable and that the defence of Hong Kong island was the priority, ordered the evacuation of all his forces. Demolition works were carried out and the 2nd Royal Scots and supporting forces withdrew south to Sham Shui Po Barracks and Jordan pier, while the 5/7th Rajputs withdrew to Ma Yau Tong where they would hold Devil's Peak peninsula protecting the narrow Lye Moon Passage. The guns on Stonecutter's Island were destroyed and the base was abandoned that night.

Also on the morning of the 11th, the IJA landed on Lamma Island and were engaged by guns of Jubilee Battery and Aberdeen Battery. That afternoon the Japanese attempted a landing near Aberdeen Island ( Ap Lei Chau) but were driven off by machine gun fire.

The 2/14th Punjab were to join the Rajputs on the Ma Yau Tong line, but during their march on the night of 11/12, December became split up, with one group reaching the Devil's Peak area while the other descended into Kai Tak and marched into Kowloon on the morning of the 12th, where they were engaged by the IJA 3/320th Regiment which had infiltrated into the area. The Punjabis fought their way down to Tsim Sha Tsui and were evacuated by Star Ferry. HMS Tamar was scuttled in the harbour to prevent its use by the Japanese. On the night of the 12th the 5/7th Rajputs withdrew from Ma Yau Tong further down the Devil's Peak peninsula and at 04:00 on the 13th they began boarding boats to take them to Hong Kong island with the evacuation being completed by the morning of 13 December 1941.

Maltby organized the defence of the island, splitting it between an East Brigade and a West Brigade. The West Brigade commanded by Brigadier John K. Lawson had its headquarters at the top of Wong Nai Chung Gap, a strategic passage between the north and south of the island. The West Brigade comprised the 2/14th Punjab covering the shoreline from Causeway Bay to Belcher's Point; the Winnipeg Grenadiers defended the southwest corner of the island and Lawson's headquarters; the Middlesex Regiment was dispersed across 72 pillboxes along the island shoreline; the 2nd Royal Scots reinforced by the HKVDC were held in reserve at Wanchai Gap; and the HKVDC had companies located at High West, Mt Davis, Pinewood Battery, Magazine Gap, Jardine's Lookout and Aberdeen Naval Base. The East Brigade commanded by Brigadier Cedric Wallis had its headquarters at Tai Tam Gap. The East Brigade comprised the 5/7th Rajputs holding pillboxes along the northeast shoreline with a company and their headquarters in the hills behind Taikoo Dockyard and a reserve company in Tai Hang; the Royal Rifles of Canada defended the island's northeast all the way around to Stanley; and two companies of the HKVDC were located at Tai Tam and Pottinger Gap.

On the morning of 13 December, a Japanese delegation crossed the harbour to offer terms of surrender, which were rejected. The Japanese then began an artillery bombardment of Hong Kong Island disabling one of the 9.2-inch guns on Mt Davis and hitting Belcher's Fort in Pok Fu Lam. On the 14th Japanese artillery destroyed a 3-inch gun at Mt Davis. On the 15th Japanese artillery moved to target pillboxes and other defensive positions along the shoreline. The Japanese mounted six air attacks on positions on the west of the island and bomb damage forced the abandonment of Pinewood Battery.

On the morning of the 17th, the Japanese again offered terms of surrender which were rejected. That night a reconnaissance team from the IJA 3/229th Regiment successfully explored the Taikoo area. The IJA had moved its forces closer to Hong Kong Island with the 23rd Army headquarters at Tai Po and the 38th Division near Kai Tak.

On 18 December the Japanese bombardment of the island shoreline increased and the oil storage tanks were hit. The IJA forces were organized into two assault units: the west assault unit comprised the 228th and 230th Regiments and would leave from the Kai Tak area, and the east assault unit comprised the 229th Regiment (less 1/229th held as Divisional reserve) and would leave from the Devil's Peak area. The attack order was issued at 18:00 and at 20:00 the first wave from the 2/228th and 3/230th began paddling towards the Taikoo Dockyard and sugar refinery under cover of artillery fire. As they approached the shore the boats were illuminated by searchlights and fired on by the 5/7th Rajputs. The boats scattered and both battalion commanders were wounded so Colonel Doi crossing with the second wave assumed command of the assault. At 21:40 the artillery barrage moved to targets further inshore and at 21:45 the 3/230th landed at North Point, followed by the 2/228th. At 21:38 the 2/229th landed at Sai Wan and the 3/229th landed at Aldrich Bay. By midnight all six IJA battalions were ashore but were held up on the beaches by barbed wire, fire from the 5/7th Rajputs and the general confusion of night operations. The Japanese eventually moved inshore overwhelming the Rajputs, bypassing or destroying the strong points as they generally headed towards the high ground. Maltby believing that the landing only comprised two battalions and was a diversion for a direct assault across the harbor on Victoria sent minimal reinforcements to block any IJA movement west towards Victoria and five HKVDC armored cars to protect the East Brigade headquarters. The 2/230th moved west towards Victoria but was stopped by an HKVDC, Free French and miscellaneous force in the North Point Power Station led by Major John Johnstone Paterson. Radioing for assistance, Maltby sent an HKVDC armoured car and a platoon from the 1st Middlesex, but they were ambushed on the way and only nine men made it to the station. The Japanese then directed artillery fire on the station and the surviving defenders withdrew at 01:45 continuing to fight the Japanese on Electric Road and King's Road until all were killed or captured.

In the early hours of 19 December, the IJA 3/229th moved uphill towards Mt Parker, while the 2/229th moved southeast towards the Lyemun fortifications. The 2/229th engaged a platoon of the Royal Rifles sent to check on A Company of the Rajputs and then quickly overwhelmed the Fort's garrison. The 2/229th then captured Sai Wan Battery killing six gunners from the HKVDC 5th Anti-Aircraft Battery and then proceeded to bayonet 20 prisoners, with only two surviving. The Royal Rifles attempted to retake the Victorian era Sai Wan Fort with two platoons but were unable to scale the walls and lost nine killed. A company from the 2/229th entered the Salesian Mission in Shau Kei Wan, which was being used as a dressing station and they proceeded to kill all those inside, however, four men survived. According to Captain Stanley Martin Banfill of the Royal Rifles, who witnessed his men being executed, the leading Japanese officer stated that "Order is all captives must die". The rest of the 2/229th were engaged by C Company, Royal Rifles who inflicted heavy casualties, but the Japanese were able to move past the Canadian while also inflicting heavy losses forcing C Company to withdraw leaving only A Company on Mt Parker. At 03:00 a platoon from D Company was sent to reinforce Mt Parker, but they became lost in the dark and only arrived at 07:30 to find over 100 Japanese on Mt Parker and A Company withdrawing and so Mt Parker was abandoned by the Japanese. In addition to East Brigade's infantry losses, the coastal batteries at Cape D'Aguilar and Cape Collinson were abandoned, while several 965 Battery's guns were destroyed in error or left to the Japanese. Wallis withdrew his headquarters from Tai Tam Gap to Stanley.

In the West Brigade area, Lawson sent three platoons from the Winnipeg Grenadiers forward to block the IJA advance from their landing sites, deploying one platoon on each of Jardine's Lookout and Mt Butler and one forward on Wong Nei Chung Gap Road. Meanwhile, the 3/230th was advancing along Sir Cecil's Ride on the side of Jardine's Lookout, the 2/230th towards Jardine's Lookout, the 2/228th advanced on the other side of Jardine's Lookout, the 1/228th moved through Quarry Gap and the 3/229th advanced up Tai Tam Reservoir Road. The Japanese swept aside the weak infantry screens and while pillboxes inflicted casualties the Japanese were able to bypass such strong points and captured Jardine's Lookout. At 06:20 Pillbox PB1 occupied by No. 3 Company, HKVDC fired on an estimated 400 IJA advancing along Sir Cecil's Ride. Several IJA battalions advancing along the catchwaters captured the anti-aircraft positions on Tai Tam Reservoir Road east of Wong Nei Chung Gap, after a heavy firefight. In the early morning Lawson brought forward A Company, Winnipeg Grenadiers to recapture Jardine's Lookout and they then successfully retook Jardine's Lookout, but only for a couple of hours before the hill fell after an intense artillery bombardment and frontal assaults by IJA 230th and 228th Regiment. The IJA forces descended from Wong Nei Chung Reservoir and attacked the police station and Postbridge House at the summit of Wong Nei Chung Gap. By 07:00 the 3/230th closed in on the West Brigade headquarters, Maltby sent A Company, 2nd Royal Scots to reinforce them approaching Wong Nei Chung Gap Road, but only 15 men made it through while a group of sailors approaching from the south up Repulse Bay Road were also ambushed. The 3/230th cleared out positions south and east of the headquarters despite fire from HKSRA artillery in Happy Valley. At 10:00 Lawson radioed that his headquarters were surrounded and that he was "going outside to shoot it out", he and his entire command group were then hit by Japanese machine gun fire from across the gap and Lawson died of blood loss the hill behind his bunker. By midday only elements of D Company, Winnipeg Grenadiers and British and Chinese engineers held positions above the West Brigade Headquarters, while Pillboxes PB 1 and PB 2 on the lower slopes of Jardine's Lookout continued to resist.

At 08:45 six MTBs assembled off Green Island and then moved east in pairs into Hong Kong Harbour to attack boats transporting IJA soldiers across the harbour. As they neared Kowloon Bay MTB 7 attacked three Japanese boats, sinking two and damaging others before being disabled by Japanese fire and towed out by MTB 2. MTB 9 damaged a further four Japanese boats.

At 13:30 Maltby issued Operation Order No. 6 for a general counterattack to commence at 15:00. A and D Companies, 2/14th Punjab was to attack east towards North Point to relieve the HKVDC still holding out there, however, the order never reached them. Headquarters Company, Winnipeg Grenadiers, the rest of 2/14th Punjab and the 2nd Royal Scots were to attack east from Middle Gap towards Wong Nei Chung Gap, but the Royal Scots were late and so the HQ Company moved along the front of Mt Nicholson separately. D Company, 2nd Royal Scots and D Company, Winnipeg Grenadiers were then ordered to advance up Wong Nei Chung Gap Road but were hit by Japanese fire from Jardine's Lookout and were pinned down for the rest of the day. By 18:00 PB1 and PB2 were abandoned. At 22:00 a Japanese counterattack on Mt Butler was repulsed by A Company, Winnipeg Grenadiers.

At 02:00 on the 20th the Royal Scots attacked the police station at the top of Wong Nei Chung Gap, but were repulsed as was another attack an hour later. An attack on Jardine's Lookout by C Company, 2nd Royal Scots also failed. Maltby ordered the Headquarters Company, Winnipeg Grenadiers to advance on Wong Nei Chung Gap, but they suffered heavy casualties before being stopped 300m short of the road, they then moved back along Black's Link and encountered approximately 500 unprepared Japanese and proceeded to attack them. At 15:00, after exhausting their ammunition, A Company, Winnipeg Grenadiers on Mt Butler surrendered to the Japanese, however in a final exchange of fire Sergeant-major John Robert Osborn smothered a Japanese grenade with his body, an action for which he was later posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross. By 17:45 elements of the HKSRA under Major, Edward De Vere were ordered to attack the police station. The attack was launched at 22:00 supported by two armoured cars. This attack was successful and the unit managed to recapture the police station, but only for a few hours until the Japanese captured the police station using reinforcements from Stanley Gap (the old name for the Tai Tam Reservoir Road.)

The new West Brigade commander Colonel H.B. Rose of the HKVDC developed a plan to retake the Gap using the 2nd Royal Scots and the Winnipeg Grenadiers. B Company, Winnipeg Grenadiers was brought from Pok Fu Lam in the afternoon but was unable to locate the 2nd Royal Scots who had inexplicably moved off the eastern slopes of Mt Nicholson. This lapse allowed Colonel Doi to order three companies of the 1/228th to occupy Mt Nicholson in the afternoon under cover of a rain storm. B Company, Winnipeg Grenadiers moved in two columns in the dark and rain around the north and south of Mt Nicholson, meeting up above the gap which was to be their starting point for the next day's attack. However, they were then engaged by the Japanese and all their officers and NCOs and 29 men became casualties and they retreated around the north of Mt Nicholson.

Elsewhere on the 20th, the 2nd and 3rd battalions, 229th Regiment had advanced down the Tytam Road and captured the X roads, Red Hill and Bridge Hill. They captured the 4.5-inch battery at Red Hill, which was abandoned the previous day. A handful of British civilians who were at the nearby pumping station were blindfolded and bayonetted at the beach in front of the pumping station. Meanwhile, the Japanese in the area south of Tai Tam Reservoir and into the hills above Repulse Bay where they encountered a company from the Royal Rifles and two HKVDC platoons preparing to attack Wong Hei Chung Gap from Violet Hill. Maltby sent A Company, 2/14th Punjab to support the forces in Repulse Bay, but they were engaged by a Japanese force on Shouson Hill and were forced to retreat with their commander Colonel Kidd killed in the action. Further east the 1/229th and 2/228th advanced from Tai Tam and Sai Wan towards Stanley. HMS Cicala which had been providing gunfire support in Deep Water Bay was hit by Japanese bombers and sank in the Lamma Channel.

At 09:15 on the 21st Wallis launched a new attack into Tai Tam to try to reach Wong Nei Chung Gap, with D Company, Royal Rifles, No. 1 Company, HKVDC, a medium machine gun section and two Bren Gun Carriers advancing from Stanley Mound. They were soon hit by Japanese mortar fire from Red Hill and then engaged by infantry from 1/229th and 1/230th on Bridge Hill and Red Hill. By 1400 hours, the Commonwealth forces managed to capture the summit of Bridge Hill, the X roads and the summit of Red Hill. The Japanese quickly rushed reinforcements from Tai Tam Gap, such as two Type 94 Tankettes. These tankettes were fired upon by a British machine gun on Bridge Hill, and the tankettes retreated to Tai Tam Gap. Even with this success, by 17:00 all the officers in the Commonwealth counterattacking force had been wounded and the force withdrew toward Stanley. On the north shore elements of the 230th Regiment pushed west reaching Victoria Park, while Japanese artillery bombarded HMS Tamar. Maltby ordered a further attack on Wong Nei Chung Gap by a force comprising four platoons, but when the commander saw the IJA forces in the area he cancelled the attack.

On the 22nd the 2/229th moved west from Shouson Hill and captured PB14 on the shore of Deepwater Bay from elements of the 1st Middlesex and then proceeded to behead all the prisoners. Two battalions of the 229th attacked the Repulse Bay Hotel while the 1/229th and 1/230th pushed the remnants of the East Brigade back into the Stanley peninsula. The East Brigade formed three defensive lines: the first line was composed of elements of the 1st Middlesex, three companies of the Royal Rifles and one company of the HKVDC supported by one 2-pounder gun; the second line at Stanley Village comprised two companies of the 1st Middlesex, a company of the HKVDC and the Stanley company of the HKVDC supported by two 18-pounder and 2-pounder guns; and at Stanley Fort were two HKVDC artillery batteries and two Royal Artillery batteries with two 18-pounder, two 3.7-inch and 9.2-inch and 6-inch coastal guns. On the north shore West Brigade forces struggled to hold the line from Causeway Bay, through Leighton Hill, Happy Valley and Mount Cameron down to Bennett's Hill on the south of the island. At midday the Japanese attacked Stanley Mound and Sugarloaf Hill defended by units of the Royal Rifles, after repulsing several attacks, low ammunition forced the defenders to withdraw. The Japanese began their assault on the southern flank of Mt Cameron inflicting severe losses on B Company, 2/14th Punjab, but the penetration was stopped by a counterattack by B Company, 4/7th Rajputs. In the north, after an intensive artillery bombardment, the Japanese broke through the defensive line south of Leighton Hill at 22:00, forcing the defenders to start abandoning their positions and retreat west to avoid encirclement.

On the 24th the Royal Rifles were withdrawn to the defensive lines at Stanley. The IJA forces attacked down the Tai Tam Road but were repulsed. A second attack began at 21:00 supported by three Type 94 tankettes, two of which were destroyed by a 2-pounder fire. The outer defensive line broke and No 2 Company HKVDC was forced back to Stanley Village with heavy losses. At midnight the Japanese penetrated the second defence line and entered the field hospital at St. Stephen's College and in the St. Stephen's College massacre tortured and killed a large number of injured soldiers, along with the medical staff. On the north shore the 230th Regiment advanced through Wanchai, meeting resistance at the China Fleet Club but this was soon overcome and the regiment advanced on the dockyard. In Happy Valley, the remnants of the 5/7th Rajputs were pushed back from the Happy Valley Racecourse, off Mount Parish and out of Wanchai Market.

On Christmas morning, Young informed Chan of his intent to surrender. Chan intended to break out and was given command of the five remaining MTBs; 68 men, including Chan, Hsu, and David Mercer MacDougall were successfully evacuated to Mirs Bay where they contacted Nationalist guerrillas and were escorted to Huizhou. For this feat, Chan was made an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

By the afternoon of 25 December 1941, it was clear that further resistance would be futile and at 15:30 Governor Young and General Maltby surrendered in person to General Sakai at the Japanese headquarters on the third floor of the Peninsula Hotel. At Stanley, Wallis refused to surrender without a written order and this was received by him at 02:30 on the 26th. Isolated pockets held out even longer, and the Central Ordnance Munitions Depot (known as "Little Hong Kong") surrendered on 27 December. This was the first occasion on which a British Crown Colony had surrendered to an invading force. The garrison had held out for 17 days. This day is known in Hong Kong as "Black Christmas".

Sai Wan War Cemetery

The Japanese officially reported 675 men killed and 2,079 wounded; western estimates go as high as 1,895 dead and 6,000 casualties overall. Allied casualties were 1,111 men killed, 1,167 missing and 1,362 wounded (sources vary; other figures given include 1,045 killed, 1,068 missing and 2,300 wounded, as well as 1,560 killed or missing). Allied dead, including British, Canadian and Indian soldiers, were eventually interred at Sai Wan Military Cemetery and the Stanley Military Cemetery. Total battle casualties of "Indian Other Ranks" is given to be 1164 out of a total of 3893 military personnel from India who were garrisoned in Hong Kong. The 5/7 Rajput bore the heaviest losses recorded amongst the 6 combat regiments during the battle of Hong Kong: 156 killed in action or died from wounds, 113 missing, and 193 wounded. The 2/14 Punjab had 55 killed in action or died from wounds, 69 missing, and 161 wounded. C Force casualties in the battle were 23 officers and 267 other ranks killed or died of wounds, including five officers and 16 other ranks of the brigade headquarters, seven officers and 123 men of the Royal Rifles and 11 officers and 128 men of the Winnipeg Grenadiers. C Force also had 28 officers and 465 men wounded. Some of the dead were murdered by Japanese soldiers during or after surrender. Japanese soldiers committed a number of atrocities on 19 December, when the aid post at the Salesian Mission near Sau Ki Wan was overrun. A total of 1,528 soldiers, mainly Commonwealth (predominantly Indians and Canadians), are either buried or commemorated there. There are also graves of other Allied combatants who died in the region during the war, including some Dutch sailors who were re-interred in Hong Kong after the war.

Civilians were interned at the Stanley Internment Camp. Initially, there were 2,400 internees although this number was reduced, by repatriations during the war. Interned persons who died and prisoners executed by the Japanese are buried in Stanley Military Cemetery.

An estimated 10,000 Hong Kong civilians were executed, while many others were tortured, raped, or mutilated.

Three captured persons were executed at Quarry Bay, including a female air raid warden named Ada Baldwin who was with the local Air Raid Precautions (ARP).

After the fall of the medical station near the West Brigade command post, ten stretcher bearers of the St. John Ambulance within the station were killed, as well as a policeman and a medic from the Royal Army Medical Corps.

A British pillbox near Jardine's Lookout

Four men of A Company Winnipeg Grenadiers were bayoneted after the battle at Jardine's Lookout.[110] One grenadier, Private Kilfoyle, was killed on the forced march to North Point, according to witnesses.

Four men were killed in the so-called "Black Hole of Hong Kong", a mess hut at the Wongneichong AA Battery, including two Canadian officers.

In the evening of 18-19 December 1941, surrendered gunners of the 5th Battery, Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps (HKVDC) and 5th Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment at Sai Wan AA Battery were murdered by Japanese soldiers of No. 6 Company, the 2nd Battalion, 229th Infantry Regiment. In total 28 are killed, some may have died in the fight for the position.

In the morning of 19 December 1941, Japanese soldiers of the 2nd Battalion or 3rd Battalion, 229th Infantry Regiment murdered medical personnel and wounded soldiers who were captured at Salesian Mission, which was used as an emergency hospital. The Japanese soldiers attempted to kill all male prisoners of wars and released two female nurses. In total 16 were killed.

From 19-20 December 1941, surrendered British and Commonwealth soldiers from various units were kept in a small shed near the anti-aircraft gun battery without food, water, and medical assistance. They were hit by shells and some were killed as the result in Wong Nai Chung Gap. The Japanese troops responsible for this probably came from the 230th and 229th regiments. In total at least 16 were killed.

Around thirty civilians of different ethnicities were massacred at No. 42 Blue Pool Road on 22 December. When the soldiers of the 230th Infantry Regiment entered Blue Pool Road from the south, they murdered civilians, inclduing local businessmen Lam Ming-fan and three male relatives of his family, as well a number of Ministry of Finance officials of the Nationalist Chinese government who took refuge in the houses along the road. Tang Shiu-kin, a prominent businessman and philanthropist who was at the same spot, survived the massacre.

On 23 December 1941, British and Commonwealth soldiers from various units, led by Lt. Col. Robert MacPherson, attempted to surrender but were killed by Japanese soldiers of the No. 6 Company, 2nd Battalion of the 229th Infantry Regiment at the Ridge in Repulse Bay. At least 47 were killed and most of the killed prisoners of war were wounded soldiers. Among the dead was Major Charles Sydney Clarke of China Command HQ, two men of the 12th and 20th Coastal Regiments of the Royal Artillery (RA), six men of the Royal Army Service Corps (RASC) and two of the Royal Canadian Army Service Corps (RCASC), nineteen men of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps (RAOC) and three of the Royal Canadian Ordnance Corps (RCOC) and fourteen men of the RASC Company of the HKVDC.

On 23 December 1941, wounded soldiers from various units were bayoneted at Overbays by Japanese soldiers of the 3rd Battalion, 229th Infantry Regiment; the Japanese troops also set fire on the building. The Japanese executed at least fourteen captives, men of the same units as at The Ridge but also including three Royal Rifles of Canada and an officer of the 1st Middlesex.

Ride, who was present at the surrender, stated later that he saw fifty bodies lying by the road, including six Middlesex men among them. These men may have been some of those attached to the Hong Kong Chinese Regiment.[119][120] The Commonwealth War Graves Commission report also states that five men of the Royal Air Force went missing near The Ridge on 20 December, perhaps captured and killed.

On 23 December 1941, Canadian troops from A Company, Royal Rifles and troops from various units were murdered at Eucliff by soldiers of the 3rd Battalion, 229th Infantry Regiment after surrender. At least 7 were killed.

Six men of the Middlesex were killed defending PB 14 at Deepwater Bay Ride (Lyon Light). Most of them were killed after capture via beheading.

Another 36 known victims cannot be placed precisely at one of the three locations (Ridge, Overbays, Eucliffe).

In the evening of 24 December, Japanese soldiers of the 229th and 230th regiments stormed the Marynoll Mission position ; resistance continued until dawn. At least six officers and a number of other men were killed after capture at Maryknoll Mission. Four members of the 8th Coastal Regiment RA may have been killed here as well; estimates of the number of men murdered vary from 11 to 16.

In the evening of 24 December 1941, soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 229th Regiment stormed the field hospital of St. Stephen's College, murdering the medical personnel and the wounded soldiers. Nurses were raped and then murdered. This was the largest-scale war crime against the garrison during the battle.

Twelve nurses were raped at the emergency hospital at Happy Valley racecourse on 25 December.[125]

From 25-28 December 1941, Japanese soldiers from various units (possibly include rear-area troops) looted and raped the civilians in Causeway Bay; they were sometimes stopped by Japanese Gendarmerie but there were not enough of them to stop the rampage.

One private (John Payne) and an Australian was captured by the Japanese in Kowloon on 12 December and executed.

From 8-9 December 1941, Japanese soldiers from various units passed through the Fanling Orphanage and looted the place; nurses and amahs were raped and brutalized. At least one baby was killed during the process. The case, however, was not thoroughly investigated and the perpetuators were not identified and tried.

Dongjiang guerillas fighting in trenches

During the over three and a half years of occupation by the Japanese, an estimated 10,000 Hong Kong civilians were executed, while many others were tortured, raped, or mutilated. The local population in the rural New Territories, a mix of Hakka, Cantonese and other Han Chinese groups, waged a guerrilla war with limited success. The resistance groups were known as the Gangjiu and Dongjiang forces. The Japanese razed several villages in reprisal; the guerillas fought until the end of the Japanese occupation. General Takashi Sakai, who led the invasion of Hong Kong and served as governor for some time, was tried as a war criminal and executed by a firing squad in 1946.[citation needed ]

Battalions from both Indian Army regiments earned Battle Honours for the defence of Hong Kong. In his despatch, Major-General C. M. Maltby, wrote about the conduct of troops under his command in Hong Kong and mentions the 5/7 Rajput Regiment: "This battalion fought well on the mainland and their repulse of the enemy attack on Devil's Peak was entirely successful. The full force of the enemy's initial attack on the island fell on this battalion and they fought gallantly until they had suffered heavy casualties (100% of British Officers and most senior Indian Officers being lost) and were run over".

Gander was a Newfoundland dog posthumously awarded the Dickin Medal, the "animals' Victoria Cross", in 2000 for his deeds in World War II, the first such award in over 50 years. He picked up a thrown Japanese hand grenade and rushed with it toward the enemy, dying in the ensuing explosion but saving the lives of several wounded Canadian soldiers.

Colonel Lance Newnham, Captain Douglas Ford and Flight Lieutenant Hector Bertram Gray were awarded the George Cross for the gallantry they showed in resisting Japanese torture in the immediate aftermath of the battle. The men had been captured and were in the process of planning a mass escape by British forces. Their plan was discovered but they refused to disclose information under torture and were shot by firing squad.

Captain Mateen Ansari of the 5/7th Rajput's was awarded the George Cross "for most conspicuous gallantry in carrying out hazardous work in a very brave manner". Despite numerous efforts by the Japanese to get him to renounce his allegiance to the British and assist them in spreading subversion amongst the Indian ranks held in Japanese POW camps (after the fall of the Colony), all efforts failed. Ansari was tortured and starved for over five months before being sentenced to death. He was executed by beheading on 20 October 1943.

The Cenotaph in Central commemorates the defence as well as war-dead from the First World War. The shield in the colonial Emblem of Hong Kong granted in 1959, featured the battlement design to commemorate the defence of Hong Kong during the Second World War. This Coat of Arms was in place until 1997, when it was replaced by the regional emblem. After the war, Lei Yue Mun Fort became a training ground for the British Forces until 1987, when it was vacated. In view of its historical significance and unique architectural features, the former Urban Council decided in 1993 to conserve and develop the fort into the Hong Kong Museum of Coastal Defence.

The memorial garden at Hong Kong City Hall commemorates those who died in Hong Kong during World War II.

Statue of an anonymous World War I soldier from statuary collection of Eu Tong Sen. Also visible is the Battle of Hong Kong memorial plaque dedicated to all the defenders of Hong Kong in December 1941 through John Robert Osborn

Memorial plaque dedicated to all the defenders of Hong Kong in December 1941 through John Robert Osborn and to commemorate the British Garrison at Hong Kong

Commemorative plaque at the entrance to Memorial Gardens at Hong Kong City Hall

The memorial garden at Hong Kong City Hall

Shrine to the war dead in the memorial garden at Hong Kong City Hall

Books

Carew, Tim (1960). Fall of Hong Kong. London: Anthony Blond Ltd.

Horne, Gerald (2004). Race war : white supremacy and the Japanese attack on the British Empire. New York: New York University Press. ISBN 978-0814736418.

Ishiwari, Heizō (31 May 1956). Army Operations in China, December 1941 - December 1943 (PDF). Japanese Monograph. IV 17807.71-2. Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army. OCLC 938077822.

Mackenzie, Compton (1951). Eastern Epic: September 1939 - March 1943, Defence. Vol. I. London: Chatto & Windus. OCLC 59637091.

Stacey, C. P. (1956) [1955]. Six Year of War: The Army in Canada, Britain and the Pacific (PDF). Official History of the Canadian Army in the Second World War. Vol. I (2nd rev. online ed.). Ottawa: By Authority of the Minister of National Defence. OCLC 917731527. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2 August 2016.

Woodburn Kirby, S.; et al. (2004) [1957]. Butler, J. R. M. (ed.). The War Against Japan: The Loss of Singapore. History of the Second World War United Kingdom Military Series. Vol. I (Naval & Military Press ed.). London: HMSO. ISBN 1-84574-060-2.

Journals

Newspapers

"(Associated Press) Japan Apologizes to Canadian POWs from H. K. Battle". Japan Times. 10 December 2011. p. 2. ISSN 0289-1956.

Websites

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Battle of Hong Kong Part of the Pacific Theatre of World War II Japanese troops take Tsim Sha Tsui Belligerents British Empire Canada China Free France Japan Commanders and leaders Strength 10,976[1] -14,564 troops[2] 5 planes 1 destroyer4 gunboats 1 minelayer8 MTBs 26,928 troops[3] 47 planes1 cruiser3 destroyers4 torpedo boats

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The Raid on Dieppe, France, was a pivotal moment in WW2. With virtually all of continental Europe under German occupation, the Allied forces faced a well-entrenched enemy. This was an Allied amphibious attack on the German-occupied port of Dieppe in northern France, ending in the German's victory. However, it provided invaluable lessons for the successful D-Day invasion that occurred later on, saving countless lives in that momentous offensive.

https://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/history/second-world-war/1942-dieppe-raid

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The Anglo-American invasion and capture of Sicily was a vital stepping-stone for the campaign in Italy, although the Allies were at fault in failing to prevent the Axis from successfully evacuating their best divisions from the island to continue the defensive battle on the mainland.

“There was no such thing as a fair fight. All vulnerabilities must be exploited.”

-Cary Caffrey

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Allied-Invasion-of-Sicily

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The Allied Forces of Britain, America, Canada, and France attacked German forces on the coast of Normandy, France. With a huge force of over 150,000 soldiers, the Allies attacked and gained a victory that became the turning point for WW2 in Europe.

https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/d-day

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D-Day - Normandy Invasion, Facts & Significance

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Codenamed Operation Overlord, the invasion began on June 6, 1944, also known as D-Day, when some 156,000 American, British and Canadian forces landed on five beaches along the heavily fortified coast of France’s Normandy region during World War II. The operation was one of the largest amphibious mil…

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The Allied Rhineland Offensive was made up of several large-scale military operations during the last months of WW2 in Europe. The two main objectives of these combined British, American and Canadian operations were to clear the west area of the Rhine and to accomplish the crossing of the river itself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhineland_Offensive

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The Rhineland Offensive was a series of allied offensive operations by 21st Army Group commanded by Bernard Montgomery from 8 February 1945 to 25 March 1945, at the end of the Second World War. The operations were aimed at occupying the Rhineland and securing a passage over the Rhine river.

It was part of General Dwight D. Eisenhower's "broad front" strategy to occupy the entire west bank of the Rhine before its crossing. The Rhineland Offensive encompassed Operation Veritable, Operation Grenade, Operation Blockbuster, Operation Plunder and Operation Varsity.

1. ^ Paul Douglas Dickson (2007). A thoroughly Canadian general : a biography of General H.D.G. Crerar. Toronto : University of Toronto Press, p.360.

2. Rosendaal, J. (2014). ^ De Bevrijding in Beeld. Van Neerpelt tot Wesel, 1944-1945, Nijmegen, Vantilt, p.6. 9789081450003.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Rhineland Offensive was a series of allied offensive operations by 21st Army Group commanded by Bernard Montgomery from 8 February 1945 to 25 March 1945, at the end of the Second World War. The operations were aimed at occupying the Rhineland and securing a passage over the Rhine river.

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Atomic Bomb Dropped on Hiroshima (And Nagasaki) (August 1945)

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Atomic Bomb Dropped on Hiroshima (And Nagasaki) (August 1945)

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Near the end of WW2, the United States detonated two nuclear weapons over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the only use of nuclear weapons in armed conflict.

“There, in the tin factory, in the first moment of the atomic age, a human being was crushed by books.”

-John Hersey

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/american-bomber-drops-atomic-bomb-on-hiroshima