The Great Patriotic War
The Uneasy Alliance






The Great Patriotic War
Russian Victory



By winter 1942, the Soviet Union was able to focus all it's armed forces on fighting the Germans. The production of ammunition and weapons was in full gear. Russian artillery proved superior to German artillery, reports describing detonating bombs lifting the corpses of soldiers several meters up in the air. Entire trench segments were cleared in a few seconds, the artillery fire being both accurate and powerful.
Russian arms and ammunitions factories could produce in full gear, while German factories lay under the permanent threat of aerial bombardment. Over time, the Russians got a numerical superiority.
In January 1944 the siege of Leningrad was broken. In April 1944, the Russians destroyed the central segment of the German eastern front. Russian troops invaded Rumania. Rumania signed an armistice on Sept. 12tyh, Bulgaria on Oct. 28th. Warsaw was occupied by Sept. 1944. Russian troops advanced into Germany, took Berlin at the end of April (Hitler committed suicide on April 30th 1945, with Russian soldiers only a few hundred meters from his bunker). On April 25th, Russian and US troops had linked up at TORGAU on the Elbe river. Germany surrendered unconditionally on May 8th, in a separate ceremony to the Soviets on May 9th at KARLSHORST in Berlin.

According to promises made by Stalin to Roosevelt, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan on August 8th (after the bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima). Soviet forces occupied Manchuria and the Northern half of the Korean peninsula, in accordance with the decisions of the POTSDAM CONFERENCE.



EXTERNAL
FILES 		Library of Congress, Country Studies : Russia, chapter Great Patriotic War
DOCUMENTS The Yalta Conference, February, 1945, from Avalon Project at Yale Law School
REFERENCE Richard Overy, Russia's War, A History of the Soviet War Effort 1941-1945, (1997) Penguins 1998
Article : USSR, in : Americana Annual 1945 pp.709-716 (on events of 1944) [G]
Article : USSR, in : Americana Annual 1946 pp.733-742 (on events of 1945) [G]


This page is part of World History at KMLA
First posted in 2000, last revised on September 25th 2006

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