Transcript File

World War II: The Eastern Front
Operation “Barbarossa”
• June 22, 1941
• German army invades
USSR with 3 million men
• Soviet resistance almost
collapses – Germans
occupy huge areas of
Eastern Russia
• Germans capture
millions of Soviet POW’s
Battle of Moscow
• German offensive slows down near Moscow
by October rains, mud
• Attacks halted by arrival of “General” Winter
(-50oC !) and Soviet counter-attack
• Germans driven backwards 150-200 km
before front stabilizes
1942: Road to Disaster
• German summer
offensive drives
Soviets back towards
Stalingrad
Battle of Stalingrad
• Germans attempt to take city – Soviets resist
fanatically – city mostly destroyed
• Nov. Soviets counter-attack and encircle
German 6th Army (200 000 men) inside
Stalingrad
• Jan. 1943 – 6th Army surrenders – major defeat
for Germany
Summer 1943: Battle of Kursk
 Largest tank battle
in history
 German attacks fail
– huge numbers of
tanks lost
 Germans can now
only retreat
1944 - 1945
• Soviets
steadily
push
Germans
back out of
USSR,
across
Poland and
into
Germany
Apr. 1945: Battle for Berlin
The Final Act...
• Hitler spends
final days in
underground
bunker
• April 30:
Hitler & Eva
Braun commit
suicide
What About Il Duce ?
• 1945: Mussolini
captured by partisans
and killed
• Body is hung up by
heels and ridiculed
by Italians
Finis: VE- Day
• May 8, 1945: Germany surrenders to Allies