[83], The Soviet counter-offensive during the Battle of Moscow had removed the immediate German threat to the city. [102], The offensive to capture central Germany and Berlin started on 16 April with an assault on the German front lines on the Oder and Neisse rivers. Comprising the 16th and 18th Armies and the 4th Panzer Group, this formation advanced through the Baltic states, and the Russian Pskov and Novgorod regions. Instead, they switched the direction of their advance to approach it from the south, crossing the Malka at the end of October and entering North Ossetia. Once these facilities were reassembled east of the Urals, production could be resumed without fear of German bombing. The ceremonial Victory parade was held in Moscow on 24 June. [57] In 1941, Germany only had 18% of the oil it had in peacetime. The diversion of the well-equipped Großdeutschland Division from Belgorod to Karachev could not counteract it, and the Wehrmacht began a withdrawal from Orel (retaken by the Red Army on 5 August 1943), falling back to the Hagen line in front of Bryansk. Towards the south, the 1st Panzer Army had reached the Caucasian foothills and the Malka River. The island was returned to the Danish government four months later. Similarly, Russia’s post-war position in Europe will be a dominant one. Two per cent of civilians and 14 per cent of the POWs were sent to the Gulag.[127][128]. The Germans had transferred some units to France to counter the invasion of Normandy two weeks before. London: Greenhill Books. [119] By October 1942 the idea of regular blocking detachments was quietly dropped, By 29 October 1944 the units were officially disbanded. Stalin ordered the retreating Red Army to initiate a scorched-earth policy to deny the Germans and their allies basic supplies as they advanced eastward. Moscow partitioned the annexed Romanian territory between the Ukrainian and Moldavian Soviet republics. Bagration was, by any measure, one of the largest single operations of the war. The two principal belligerent powers were Germany and the Soviet Union, along with their respective allies. To the north, the Red Army surrounded a German garrison in Demyansk, which held out with air supply for four months, and established themselves in front of Kholm, Velizh, and Velikie Luki. It contained a secret protocol aiming to return Central Europe to the pre–World War I status quo by dividing it between Germany and the Soviet Union. Ten days later the Red Army reached the prewar Polish border. Three armies were pitted there against the Finns, among them several experienced guards rifle formations. In June 1940 the Soviet Union occupied and illegally annexed the three Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania). The huge death toll was attributed to several factors, including brutal mistreatment of POWs and captured partisans, the large deficiency of food and medical supplies in Soviet territories, and atrocities committed mostly by the Germans against the civilian population. Local insurgents seized the moment and controlled most of Lithuania, northern Latvia and southern Estonia prior to the arrival of the German forces. Meanwhile, Germany had been cut off from foreign trade for years by the time it invaded the USSR, was in the middle of two extended and costly theatres at air and sea that further limited production (Battle of the Atlantic and Defence of the Reich), and was forced to devote a large segment of its expenditures to goods the Soviets could cut back on (such as trucks) or which would never even be used against the Soviets (such as ships). US Strategic Bombing Survey "Appendix D. Strategic Air Attack on the Powder and Explosives Industries", Table D7: German Monthly Production of Powders and Exploders (Including Extenders) and Consumption by German Armed Forces. Of the estimated 70–85 million deaths attributed to World War II, around 30 million occurred on the Eastern Front, including 9 million children. In addition, the Polish Armed Forces in the East, particularly the First and Second Polish armies, were armed and trained, and would eventually fight alongside the Red Army. Without Russia in the war, the Axis cannot be defeated in Europe, and the position of the United Nations becomes precarious. British and Commonwealth forces also contributed directly to the fighting on the Eastern Front through their service in the Arctic convoys and training Red Air Force pilots, as well as in the provision of early material and intelligence support. [73], Army Group South, with the 1st Panzer Group, the 6th, 11th and 17th Armies, was tasked with advancing through Galicia and into Ukraine. [51]:135 Soviet statistics show, that without these shipments of aluminium, aircraft production would have been less than one-half (or about 45,000 less) of the total 137,000 produced aircraft. However, Soviet society as a whole was hostile to the invading Nazis from the very start. In both areas, famines, epidemics, and civil unrest were recurrent, much farmland was flooded, and millions of refugees fled their homes, some several times. [99], In Slovakia, the Slovak National Uprising started as an armed struggle between German Wehrmacht forces and rebel Slovak troops between August and October 1944. The fairly limited scope of the Soviet offensive, although still eventually targeted on Rostov, also allowed Hitler time to see sense and pull Army Group A out of the Caucasus and back over the Don.[86]. Stephen G. Fritz, professor of history at East Tennessee State University, is the author of Frontsoldaten: The German Soldier in World War II and Endkampf: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Death of the Third Reich. In wartime, the German forces had brought into the Reich 6.5 million civilians in addition to Soviet POWs for unfree labour in factories. Over three days, on a broad front incorporating four army fronts, the Red Army launched the Vistula–Oder Offensive across the Narew River and from Warsaw. [116], The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were both ideologically driven states (by Soviet communism and by Nazism respectively), in which the foremost political leaders had near-absolute power. The attack breached the Finnish front line of defence in Valkeasaari on 10 June and the Finnish forces retreated to their secondary defence line, the VT-line. 1944–1951 годы // История СССР. The war was fought between Nazi Germany, its allies and Finland, against the Soviet Union and its allies. [123] In many towns, the battles were fought within towns and cities with trapped civilians caught in the middle. After the war, following the Yalta conference agreements between the Allies, the German populations of East Prussia and Silesia were displaced to the west of the Oder–Neisse line, in what became one of the largest forced migrations of people in world history. Many divisions became cut off in "fortress" cities, or wasted uselessly in secondary theatres, because Hitler would not sanction retreat or voluntarily abandon any of his conquests. [110] It involved more land combat than all other World War II theatres combined. (1997). British bakers reintroduce World War II bread in coronavirus fight “As we know today, darker bread is better for you," said baker Bryce Evans. Two months later, the Soviet forces won the battle and entered Slovakia. [16] The vast majority of German soldiers viewed the war in Nazi terms, seeing the Soviet enemy as sub-human. On 12 July the Red Army battled through the demarcation line between the 211th and 293rd divisions on the Zhizdra River and steamed towards Karachev, right behind them and behind Orel. The German army group "Narwa" included Estonian conscripts, defending the re-establishment of Estonian independence.[90][91]. Sweden had access to internal German communications through breaking the crypto used in the Siemens and Halske T52 crypto machine also known as the Geheimschreiber and informed Stalin about the forthcoming invasion well ahead of June 22, but did not reveal its sources. "[67], At 03:15 on 22 June 1941, 99 of 190 German divisions, including fourteen panzer divisions and ten motorised, were deployed against the Soviet Union from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Two-thirds of all French trains in 1941 were used to carry goods to Germany. [141] Germany on the other hand had the resources of conquered Europe at its disposal; those numbers are however not included into the tables above, such as production in France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Denmark, and so on. This was particularly true for the territories of Western Ukraine, recently rejoined to the Soviet Union, where the anti-Polish and anti-Soviet Ukrainian nationalist underground hoped in vain to establish the "independent state", relying on German armed force. They were supplied by air until April when they were given permission to regain the Soviet main lines. "[126], Sixty percent of Soviet POWs died during the war. This date is celebrated as a national holiday – Victory Day – in Russia (as part of a two-day 8–9 May holiday) and some other post-Soviet countries. [citation needed], The Soviets lost 96,500 tanks, tank destroyers, self-propelled guns and assault guns, as well as 37,600 other armoured vehicles (such as armoured cars and semi-tracked trucks) for a total of 134,100 armoured vehicles lost. After a 120-kilometre (75 mi) advance in January and February, the Leningrad Front had reached the borders of Estonia. The Eastern Front was the largest and bloodiest theatre of World War II. I need the Ukraine so that they can't starve us out, as happened in the last war. [citation needed] The increases in production of materiel were achieved at the expense of civilian living standards – the most thorough application of the principle of total war – and with the help of Lend-Lease supplies from the United Kingdom and the United States. A small German garrison on the Danish island of Bornholm refused to surrender until they were bombed and invaded by the Soviets. This included the terrorisation of their own people, as well as mass deportations of entire populations. The offensive at Estonia claimed another 480,000 Soviet soldiers, 100,000 of them classed as dead. The answer was just as confusing: "You must be insane. The war ended on 9 May 1945, when Germany's armed forces surrendered unconditionally following the Battle of Berlin (also known as the Berlin Offensive), a strategic operation executed by the Red Army. Having suffered a major defeat the German striking forces of Army Group Centre were retreating." [citation needed]. I am expecting from you the utmost severity towards the native population. In the operation, the Red Army lost ~180,000 dead and missing (765,815 in total, including wounded and sick plus 5,073 Poles),[92] as well as 2,957 tanks and assault guns. Hitler's insistence on holding the Dnieper line, even when facing the prospect of catastrophic defeat, was compounded by his conviction that the Cherkassy pocket could break out and even advance to Kiev, but Manstein was more concerned about being able to advance to the edge of the pocket and then implore the surrounded forces to break out. After the war, the battle near Prochorovka was idealised by Soviet historians as the largest tank battle of all time. In the south the Red Army lunged over the Donets River at Izyum and drove a 100 km (62 mi) deep salient. After the war the Soviets once again purged the Red Army (though not as brutally as in the 1930s) and demoted many successful officers (including Zhukov, Malinovsky and Koniev) to unimportant positions. pp. Larger units had military councils consisting of the commander, commissar and chief of staff – commissars ensured the loyalty of the commanding officers and implemented Party orders. In 1943–44, French payments to Germany may have risen to as much as 55% of French GDP. According to Zhukov, "the success of the December counter-offensive in the central strategic direction was considerable. Germany had been assembling very large numbers of troops in eastern Poland and making repeated reconnaissance flights over the border; the Soviet Union responded by assembling its divisions on its western border, although the Soviet mobilisation was slower than Germany's due to the country's less dense road network. Belarus lost a quarter of its pre-war population, including practically all its intellectual elite. What shall we do?" Red Army forces occupied Germany, Poland, Czechosolvakia, parts of … Regions closer to the front were managed by military powers of the region, in other areas such as the Baltic states annexed by the USSR in 1940, Reichscommissariats were established. The advance into the Caucasus bogged down, with the Germans unable to fight their way past Malgobek and to the main prize of Grozny. At the beginning of July, the Third and Fourth Romanian Armies, aided by elements of the German 11th Army, fought their way through Bessarabia towards Odessa. [78], Army Group South pushed down from the Dnieper to the Sea of Azov coast, also advancing through Kharkov, Kursk, and Stalino. Although the Soviet Union had not signed the Geneva Convention (1929), it is generally accepted that it considered itself bound by the provisions of the Hague convention. This battle also enabled Army Group South to recapture Korosten and gain some time to rest. Under the pressure of the Soviet Baltic Offensive, the German Army Group North were withdrawn to fight in the sieges of Saaremaa, Courland and Memel. [56], On 27 May 1940, Germany signed the "Oil Pact" with Romania, by which Germany would trade arms for oil. After Germany's initial success at the Battle of Kiev in 1941, Hitler saw the Soviet Union as militarily weak and ripe for immediate conquest. At the crisis of the war, in the autumn of 1942, Stalin made many concessions to the army: the government restored unitary command by removing the Commissars from the chain of command. Ring in the new year with a Britannica Membership, Forces and resources of the European combatants, 1939, The Baltic states and the Russo-Finnish War, 1939–40, The war in the west, September 1939–June 1940, The invasion of the Low Countries and France, Italy’s entry into the war and the French Armistice, The Atlantic and the Mediterranean, 1940–41, Pearl Harbor and the Japanese expansion, to July 1942, Developments from autumn 1941 to spring 1942, Allied strategy and controversies, 1940–42, The Germans’ summer offensive in southern Russia, 1942, The Solomons, Papua, Madagascar, the Aleutians, and Burma, July 1942–May 1943, Montgomery’s Battle of el-Alamein and Rommel’s retreat, 1942–43, Stalingrad and the German retreat, summer 1942–February 1943, The invasion of northwest Africa, November–December 1942, The Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and the North Sea, 1942–45, The Eastern Front, February–September 1943, The Southwest and South Pacific, June–October 1943, The Allied landings in Europe and the defeat of the Axis powers, Developments from autumn 1943 to summer 1944, Sicily and the fall of Mussolini, July–August 1943, The Allies’ invasion of Italy and the Italian volte-face, 1943, The western Allies and Stalin: Cairo and Tehrān, 1943, The Eastern Front, October 1943–April 1944, The war in the Pacific, October 1943–August 1944, The Burmese frontier and China, November 1943–summer 1944, Developments from summer 1944 to autumn 1945, The Allied invasions of western Europe, June–November 1944, Allied policy and strategy: Octagon (Quebec II) and Moscow, 1944, The Philippines and Borneo, from September 1944, The German offensive in the west, winter 1944–45, The Soviet advance to the Oder, January–February 1945, The end of the Japanese war, February–September 1945. Washington, 1947. (Yes, this was before they re-appeared in the neighbourhood in World War … [citation needed], "Great Patriotic War" redirects here. [124] More than 600 villages like Khatyn were burned with their entire population. That area of China unoccupied by the Japanese was virtually cut off from the outside world after the Japanese conquest of Burma in early 1942, and its economy continually tottered on the brink of collapse. Most of those who joined were Soviet POWs. [167], Hitler's notorious Commissar Order called for Soviet political commissars, who were responsible for ensuring that Red Army units remained politically reliable, to be summarily shot when identified amongst captured troops. On 25 January 1945, Hitler renamed three army groups. Estimates of total civilian dead in the Soviet Union in the war range from seven million (Encyclopædia Britannica) to seventeen million (Richard Overy). Indeed, the Soviets viewed Germany's invasion as an act of aggression and an attempt to conquer and enslave the local population. The National Loaf was first devised in 1942. In the south, the German attempts, in Operation Konrad, to relieve the encircled garrison at Budapest failed and the city fell on 13 February. [51]:123 It is estimated that all the food supplies sent to Russia could feed a 12,000,000-man strong army half pound of concentrated food per day, for the entire duration of the war. They took up position on either side of Stalingrad to free German troops for the main offensive. At crucial periods in the war he held daily situation-conferences at which he used his remarkable talent for public speaking to overwhelm opposition from his generals and from the OKW staff with rhetoric. On 27 November, the 4th Panzer Army got to within 30 km (19 mi) of the Kremlin when it reached the last tramstop of the Moscow line at Khimki. After a meeting held in Orsha between the head of the OKH (Army General Staff), General Franz Halder and the heads of three Army groups and armies, decided to push forward to Moscow since it was better, as argued by the head of Army Group Center, Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, for them to try their luck on the battlefield rather than just sit and wait while their opponent gathered more strength. The Red Army advanced from the Don 500 km (310 mi) to the west of Stalingrad, marching through Kursk (retaken on 8 February 1943) and Kharkov (retaken 16 February 1943). Estimated civilian deaths range from about 14 to 17 million. Apart from the Battles of Khalkhin Gol, it marked the only military action of the Soviet Union against Imperial Japan; at the Yalta Conference, it had agreed to Allied pleas to terminate the neutrality pact with Japan and enter the Second World War's Pacific theatre within three months after the end of the war in Europe. [75], Hitler then decided to resume the advance on Moscow, re-designating the panzer groups as panzer armies for the occasion. Mindful of the continuing antagonism between Axis allies Romania and Hungary over Transylvania, the Romanian army in the Don bend was separated from the Hungarian 2nd army by the Italian 8th Army. The battle for Kohima and Imphal was a decisive turning point in WWII. Among other goods, Lend-Lease supplied:[51]:8–9, Lend-Lease aid of military hardware, components and goods to the Soviet Union constituted to 20% percent of the assistance. [51]:123, Of the 800,000 tons of nonferrous metals shipped,[51]:124 about 350,000 tons were aluminium. 3,878,000 were deployed in eastern Europe, 311,000 in Norway/Denmark, 1,873,000 in western Europe, 961,000 in Italy, and 826,000 in the Balkans. By the end of August 1944, it had cost the Germans ~400,000 dead, wounded, missing and sick, from whom 160,000 were captured, as well as 2,000 tanks and 57,000 other vehicles. [134] From 1941 to 1945, the USSR produced only 505,000 tons of explosives and received 105,000 tons of Lend-Lease imports. Others claim the war began on July 7, … [125] More than 209 cities and towns (out of 270 total) and 9,000 villages were destroyed. Others say that Stalin was eager for Germany to be at war with capitalist countries. Soviet armoured fighting vehicle production was greater than the Germans (in 1943, the Soviet Union manufactured 24,089 tanks and self-propelled guns to Germany's 19,800). Some 60,000 British, … Tenaciously, small units paddled their way across the 3 km (1.9 mi) wide river and established bridgeheads. The 1st Panzer Group turned away from Kiev for the moment, advancing into the Dnieper bend (western Dnipropetrovsk Oblast). ", Atrocities against the Jewish population in the conquered areas began almost immediately, with the dispatch of Einsatzgruppen (task groups) to round up Jews and shoot them.[122]. The war in Europe was over.[107]. Further north still, the Soviet 2nd Shock Army was unleashed on the Volkhov River. It was also reflected in the ideological premise fo… A strategic air offensive by the United States Army Air Force and Royal Air Force played a significant part in reducing German industry and tying up German air force and air defence resources, with some bombings, such as the bombing of the eastern German city of Dresden, being done to facilitate specific Soviet operational goals. The largest number of civilian deaths in a single city was 1.2 million citizens dead during the Siege of Leningrad. Germany, which was an anti-communist régime, formalised its ideological position on 25 November 1936 by signing the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan. At this time Hitler agreed to a general withdrawal to the Dnieper line, along which was meant to be the Ostwall, a line of defence similar to the Westwall (Siegfried Line) of fortifications along the German frontier in the west. The 9th Army blunted its spearhead against the Soviet minefields, frustratingly so considering that the high ground there was the only natural barrier between them and flat tank country all the way to Kursk. [74] As a part of this policy, the NKVD massacred thousands of anti-Soviet prisoners. Battle was joined on 12 July, with about one thousand tanks being engaged. Source: L. E. Reshin, "Year of 1941", vol. F. W. Winterbotham wrote of Hitler's signal to Gerd von Rundstedt to continue the attack to the west during the Battle of the Bulge: From experience we had learned that when Hitler started refusing to do what the generals recommended, things started to go wrong, and this was to be no exception. By that time the Hungarian 2nd Army had also been wiped out. In the first week of November, on the outskirts of Ordzhonikidze, the 13th Panzer Division's spearhead was snipped off and the panzer troops had to fall back. The harbour at Manila was wrecked by the retreating Japanese, and many portions of the city were demolished by bombardment. 1150–1162. It is generally accepted as being the deadliest conflict in human history, with over 30 million killed as a result. The Germans' final strategic offensive in the Soviet Union ended with their defence against a major Soviet counteroffensive that lasted into August. [95][96], The rapid progress of Operation Bagration threatened to cut off and isolate the German units of Army Group North bitterly resisting the Soviet advance towards Tallinn. A limited counter-attack (codenamed Operation Solstice) by the newly created Army Group Vistula, under the command of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, had failed by 24 February, and the Red Army drove on to Pomerania and cleared the right bank of the Oder River. Anti-Soviet Finland, which had fought the Winter War against the Soviet Union, also joined the offensive. The direction of advance was then switched to Ponyri, to the west of Olkhovatka, but the 9th Army could not break through here either and went over to the defensive. Season 1 (43) IMDb 8.7 2010 13+ The project "Soviet Storm: WW2 in the East" depicts the most important events and battles of World War II. [10] The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact ostensibly provided security to the Soviets in the occupation both of the Baltics and of the north and northeastern regions of Romania (Northern Bukovina and Bessarabia, June–July 1940), although Hitler, in announcing the invasion of the Soviet Union, cited the Soviet annexations of Baltic and Romanian territory as having violated Germany's understanding of the Pact. Adolf Hitler had declared his intention to invade the Soviet Union on 11 August 1939 to Carl Jacob Burckhardt, League of Nations Commissioner, by saying: Everything I undertake is directed against the Russians. Many hundreds of thousands of Soviet civilians were executed, and millions more died from starvation as the Germans requisitioned food for their armies and fodder for their draft horses. The Free French forces also contributed to the Red Army by the formation of the GC3 (Groupe de Chasse 3 or 3rd Fighter Group) unit to fulfil the commitment of Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French, who thought that it was important for French servicemen to serve on all fronts. Five thousand tanks were provided by the British and Canada. More than 2.3 million Soviet troops went into action against German Army Group Centre, which had a strength of fewer than 800,000 men. The destruction battalions burned down villages, schools, and public buildings. [51]:133–4, Prof. Dr. Albert L. Weeks conclude: 'As to attempts to sum up the importance of those four-year-long shipments of Lend-Lease for the Russian victory on the Eastern Front in World War II, the jury is still out – that is, in any definitive sense of establishing exactly how crucial this aid was.'[51]:123. From the foundation of the Red Army in 1918, political distrust of the military had led to a system of "dual command", with every commander paired with a political commissar, a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. To establish air supremacy, the Luftwaffe began immediate attacks on Soviet airfields, destroying much of the forward-deployed Soviet Air Force airfield fleets consisting of largely obsolescent types before their pilots had a chance to leave the ground. Civilian deaths totalled 15.9 million, which included 1.5 million from military actions; 7.1 million victims of Nazi genocide and reprisals; 1.8 million deported to Germany for forced labour; and 5.5 million famine and disease deaths. This refusal to take necessary action was instrumental in the destruction of major portions of the Red Air Force, lined up on its airfields, in the first days of the German-Soviet war. Germany and the Soviet Union remained unsatisfied with the outcome of World War I (1914–1918). Aside from the ideological conflict, the mindframe of the leaders of Germany and the Soviet Union, Hitler and Stalin respectively, contributed to the escalation of terror and murder on an unprecedented scale. On Army Group North's front, there was barely any fighting at all until January 1944, when out of nowhere Volkhov and Second Baltic Fronts struck. The distinctly brutal nature of warfare on the Eastern Front was exemplified by an often wilful disregard for human life by both sides. Some recent reports raise the number of Belarusians who perished in the war to "3 million 650 thousand people, unlike the former 2.2 million. This opened up their places to the promotion of many younger officers that Stalin and the NKVD regarded as in line with Stalinist politics. The territory occupied by Japanese forces was roughly equivalent to that occupied by the Axis in Europe and the period of occupation was longer. Initially this made some progress; however, it was unsupported, and by June a German counterattack cut off and destroyed the army. Micheal Clodfelter, Warfare and Armed Conflicts, p. 449, Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences, 50th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide protests, Act of the Re-Establishment of the State of Lithuania, On the Restoration of Independence of the Republic of Latvia, German–Soviet Border and Commercial Agreement, the north and northeastern regions of Romania, Germany–Soviet Union relations, 1918–1941, program aiming to exterminate all European Jews, treaties of mutual assistance with France, during a short period of Nazi–Soviet economic collaboration, bombing of the eastern German city of Dresden, an attempt to cripple Romanian oil production, Forced labour under German rule during World War II, Strategic operations of the Red Army in World War II, fierce Soviet resistance in the Smolensk area, NKVD massacred thousands of anti-Soviet prisoners, intelligence that Japan would remain neutral, Learn how and when to remove this template message, Großdeutschland Panzergrenadier divisions, re-establishment of Estonian independence, terrain not suitable for large-scale operations, offensive to capture central Germany and Berlin, German front lines on the Oder and Neisse rivers, rapid industrialisation of the Soviet Union, German war crimes against Soviet civilians, Soviet Union manufactured 24,089 tanks and self-propelled guns, World War II casualties of the Soviet Union, Timeline of the Eastern Front of World War II, Soviet occupation of the Baltic states (1940), Occupation of Baltic republics by Nazi Germany, Soviet occupation of the Baltic states (1944), Italian participation in the Eastern Front, Military history of Greece during World War II, List of military operations on the Eastern Front of World War II, A Japanese plan to invade the Soviet Far East in 1941, Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism, https://books.google.com/books?id=ed9jDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=World+War+2+eastern+front&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj2nIm4mOvtAhUrpFkKHfTJDOgQ6AEwBXoECAYQAg#v=onepage&q=World%20War%202%20eastern%20front&f=false, The term 'habitat' in Hitler's 'Mein Kampf', "Speech of the Reichsfuehrer-SS at the meeting of SS Major-Generals at Posen 4 October 1943", "The Wannsee Conference, the Fate of German Jews, and Hitler's Decision in Principle to Exterminate All European Jews", Adolf Hitler's Speech on Operation Barbarossa, "The Myth of German Superiority on the WW2 Eastern Front", https://www.bbc.com/bitesize/guides/z2932p3/revision/4, "China today is foreign oil dependent like Germany in WW2 | Peak Oil News and Message Boards", "Swedish iron ore exports to Germany, 1933–44", "Stalin and the Prospects of a Separate Peace in World War II", "The Otto Tief government and the fall of Tallinn", "The Crisis Deepens: The Outbreak of World War II", "The Executive of the Presidents Soviet Protocol Committee (Burns) to the President's Special Assistant (Hopkins)", "ПРИКАЗ О РАСФОРМИРОВАНИИ ОТДЕЛЬНЫХ ЗАГРАДИТЕЛЬНЫХ ОТРЯДОВ", "The Nazi struggle against Soviet partisans", Partisan Resistance in Belarus during World War II, "Nazi Persecution of Soviet Prisoners of War", "German military deaths to all causes EF", "Die deutschen Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg", Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Encyclopedia of Casualty and Other Figures, 1492–2015, 4th ed. , as well as the largest number of civilian deaths in the Wermacht were primarily in. 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