World war ii brought a clash of titans: hitler versus stalin

In the beginning of WWII, Hitler attacked Austria, but that was mainly Germans anyway and nobody took any actions against Germany. Then he signed the Munich agreement with Neville Chamberlain, which said the Czech republic was the last place Hitler was going to attack. He broke this agreement when he attacked Poland with the Soviet Union. This attack was under the non-aggression pact, this agreement said that neither Hitler nor Stalin would attack each other. This caused Great Britain and France to declare war on Germany and this began the Second World War.

Stalingrad was an important industrial city. If the Germans won the battle then they could stop many Russian attacks and supplies shipments, and its industrial oil drills, which was a large part of The Soviet Union’s economy. Hitler also wanted to capture Stalingrad, because it was named after Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union. If he succeeded in the battle of Stalingrad it would make Stalin look weak; not being able to defend his own country.

In June of 1942 Adolf Hitler launches Operation Blue; an offensive attack on the Soviet Union. By the end of July the German Airforce and army had reached their target destination, Stalingrad. They began bombing as soon as they reached the outskirts. This broke the non-aggression pact and Stalin and Hitler were officially enemies. Then During the Summer and Autumn of 1942, the Germans dropped 1, 000 tons of bombs on Stalingrad. One bombing raid in caused a huge fire. The bombing turned the city into rubble. This rubble gave the Russians cover from which they could attack the Germans, using snipers and long range weapons. Hitler and Stalin both sent in large numbers of soldiers. They both ordered there was no surrendering.

On 19 November 1942, the Soviets launched an attack which to cut off and surrounded the Germans in the Stalingrad area. The German air force tried to supply food and ammunition to the German army by flying into Stalingrad. They were facing a brutal winter which they had not prepared for. By February of 1943, the German forces in Stalingrad had no ammunition, food and they were freezing, so they surrendered.

The battle lasted a little over five months. The people that died in this battle were over 1. 1 million. This total was more Soviet deaths than German deaths, but it was an overall victory for the Russians. It caused Hitler and Germany to be pushed out of the east part of Europe and It’s North, East and West faces were controlled by the Allied powers. It was a turning point in the war and that was when Germany’s offensive was compromised. This battle might have been the most significant one in World War II and it definitely turned the odds against one of the most notorious leaders of all time.

Joseph Stalin Biography

Joseph Stalin was born in the village of Gori, Georgia, on December 21, 1879. His father was a shoemaker, who left the family when Stalin was young to seek better employment elsewhere. Joseph’s mother, Yekaterina, made a large impact on his education, first in the Gori Church School and then, because of a scholarship with her help, he attended the Tiflis Theological Seminary.

Stalin became very involved in politics and socialist activities. He began going to congressional meetings. He was appointed into the Communist Party, and he dealt very much with Lenin. They soon became political partners. Then he was elected General Secretary of the Party in 1922, He began getting more and more powerful which nobody realized. Even near Lenin’s death he realized that Stalin could become a problem and wrote a testament to his colleagues not to allow him to stay in the Party, but they disregarded this and allowed him to stay. By 1930 he was the last person in the Party because he kicked or voted out the other members.

Once in power, Stalin began a drive to industrialize and modernize the Soviet Union, with the Five-Year Plan (1927-32). Central to his program was the collectivization of agriculture, in which the government would redistribute the land by taking over the estates of the wealthiest peasants. Another thing he wanted was to industrialize the railroads, because it took Russia many weeks to reach their destination of battle and mobilization for war. This boosted his likeness because it caused unemployment rates to decrease because he hired many unemployed throughout these five years.

Meanwhile, World War II was fast approaching. As Hitler rose to power in Germany, Stalin first thought of forming a defensive alliance with Britain and France against the Nazis. But he wanted to avoid war at all costs, and in 1939 he signed the Non-Aggression pact, which pledged that the two dictatorships would not attack one another, and this also secretly granted Stalin the permission to take over Eastern Poland. But in June of 1941 Germany invaded the Soviet Union in defiance of their previous agreement. Their destination was Stalingrad a major industrial city named after Joseph Stalin. during the beginning of the battle the Soviets and the Red Army were suffering major losses, but they began to win later on in the battle and eventually conquered Germany and they pushed Germany out of Eastern Europe.

Even in his later years, Stalin remained dangerous. He launched a new series of persecutions at home, this time against the Jews and followed in Hitler’s footsteps. He was one of the most brutal leaders of all time and he caused an 20 million deaths among his own people. By the time he died on March 5, 1953, he may have even killed more people than Adolf Hitler did in his reign.