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Hitler, a cautious dictator for the first couple of years of his rule, had become reckless by 1941, and had gambled everything on a swift victory in the USSR. If StalinStalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (18 December 1878 – 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician, dictator and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. Read More’s regime could be crushed and thirty million Russians starved to death as a result, then there would be enough living space for Aryan German settlers and the resources to defeat any enemy in the west. The defeat of…
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The conquest of the Soviet Union was an idea that had been at the forefront of HItler’s thoughts since the 1920s. Exploiting the resources of Russia and the Ukraine for the benefit of Germany was not a new concept and it had most recently been tried during the last year of the First World War. Hitler and Himmler had grand visions of a transformed landscape, full of vast German cities, relying on Russian slaves to work the land for German farmers. When the USSR didn’t collapse quite as readily as
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What often gets overlooked in the examination of the great terror (and other 20th Century terrors) is the experience of ordinary people and their thoughts, fears and survival strategies. During the Cold War an immense amount of scholarship went into fathoming the internal workings of the soviet state and the reasoning of StalinStalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (18 December 1878 – 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician, dictator and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. Read More and his inner circle. Historian Sheila Fitzpatrick has done an immense amount of work and scholarship…
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In 1937 many Soviet citizens had traumatic memories of collectivisation, anti Kulak campaigns and famine from the period 1928-33. Many could sense that a new time of crisis was emerging and saw the arrest of party members as the beginnings of a dramatic change. Few had any knowledge of how indescriminate and far reaching the terror would become, as the regime searched endlessly for imagined enemies within. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations an
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In the decade before the FIrst World War, Germany and Austria-Hungary put little effort in to coordinating their military strategies in the event of a war on two fronts. Germany’s chief of General Staff Helmuth Von Moltke assured Austria that the plans inherited from Alfred Von Schlieffen, his predecessor, would offer the best chance that the central powers had of overcoming unfavourable odds. The plans were out of date by 1914, however, and both Germany and Austria-Hungary went to war basing th
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The landslide victory for Eisenhower and the Republican Party in the 1952 Presidential Election showed Democrats that a right of centre, socially conservative America in the grip of an obsessive anti communism would decide their political fate for decades to come. The continuing Korean War and the loss of China to communism three years earlier shaped American attitudes to communism and its perceived threat. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations a