This research paper discusses the war between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union (1941-1945), its origins, nature and course and assesses the reasons for Germany's defeat in the East.
Adolf Hitler decided to invade the Soviet Union in mid-1941 for a combination of ideological, strategic and economic reasons. This turned out to be a fateful miscalculation and may not have been the most promising option then open to Nazi Germany. The Wehrmacht enjoyed spectacular successes in the summer and early fall of 1941; however, the Germans lost their best chance to achieve decisive victory late that year due to a combination of factors. In 1941-1942 the Germans grossly underestimated the courage, tenacity, numbers and recuperative power of their Soviet foe and unwisely split and overextended their forces. The war in the East was a total war of annihilation which helped the Soviet leadership to rally the Russian population and reorganize its countereffort, culminating in the devastating German defeats at Stalingrad and in the Don Basin (November 1942-March 1943). Large scale carnage in the East continued for more than two years, including the enormous armored battle of the Kursk Salient in July 1943, but the Germans lost the strategic initiative after 1942. Both Hitler and Soviet dictator Josef Stalin made colossal blunders during the war; however, Hitler's were fatal because Germany lacked the human and material resource base needed to prevail in a prolonged war of attrition. The sense of impending doom produced by Germany's defeats in the East had a progressively corrosive effect on morale on the German home front, but did not crucially impede the German war effort.
Hitler's Decision to Invade the Soviet Union
After assuming power in 1933, Hitler ended the secret collaboration between Germany and the Soviet Union under which Soviet officers were trained by the Germans and Germany developed new weapons in Russia in violation of the Versa...