War timeline / itself

• 23rd august - Nazi Soviet pact signed - non aggressive and to split poland

  • Stalin had gained time for an inevitable war but squandered it by supplying the Nazi’s till the point of Soviet invasion
  • Eight months prior and eighy warnings ignored
• Russia was on hit list as Hitlers aim was to destroy communism and increase living space

  • French British relations were already frosty
• Operation Barbarossa - 22nd June 1941

  Stalin was surprised and there were no defenses prepared

  • Most of soviet air force is destroyed before it can take off
  • Targeted Moscow ( railway ) - Leningrad
• June - December 1941

  2.6 million soviet soldiers killed

  3.3 million taken as prisoners of war - 2 million die from circumstances
• Seige of Leningrad - September 1941

  • 900 days
  • 800,000 starve to death
  • rations fall to 8 ounces - scurvy
  • 1500 cannibalism arrests
  • factories run out
• January 1942


  Lake Lagoda freezes over so 1.5 million evacuate

  • Once melted the British bring supplies
  • 7th symphony performed to Leningrad
  • Anna makes a speech on women
• Kiev falls and 1.5 million Soviets die defending it - Stalin refused to let them retreat