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German advances through 5 December 1941, with large groups of encircled Red Army soldiers in red. Nazi Germany and its allies invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. [4] [5] The Nazi leadership believed that war with its ideological enemy was inevitable [6] due to the Nazi dogma that conquering territory to the east—called living space ()—was essential to Germany's long-term survival, [7 ...
A speech given by General Erich Hoepner demonstrates the dissemination of the Nazi racial plan, as he informed the 4th Panzer Group that the war against the Soviet Union was "an essential part of the German people's struggle for existence" (Daseinskampf), also referring to the imminent battle as the "old struggle of Germans against Slavs" and ...
Susan Brownmiller argues that rape played a pivotal role in the Nazis' aim to conquer and destroy people they considered inferior, such as Jews, Russians, and Poles. [125] An extensive list of rapes committed by German soldiers was compiled in the so-called "Molotov Note" in 1942.
The German troops encountered the first wave of Russian defenders as they launched a desperate counter-charge. These were the remnants of the 13th Company of the 226th Infantry Regiment—soldiers who had survived the initial gas attack. The Germans recoiled in horror at the sight of the advancing Russians, whose uniforms were bloodied.
The War Crimes Bureau had five major sources of information: (1) captured enemy papers, especially orders, reports of operations, and propaganda leaflets; (2) intercepted radio and wireless messages; (3) testimony of Soviet prisoners of war; (4) testimony of captured Germans who had escaped; and (5) testimony of Germans who saw the corpses or ...
Richard Overy in The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia puts total number of German POWs captured by the USSR at 2,880,000 of whom 356,000 died. [54] However, in his Russia's War, Richard Overy maintains that according to Russian sources 356,000 out of 2,388,000 POWs died in Soviet captivity. [55]
Only after the fall of communism in Poland in 1989/1990 did the Polish government try to renegotiate the issue of reparations, but found little support in this from the German side and none from the Soviet (later, Russian) side. [35] The total number of forced labourers under Nazi rule who were still alive as of August 1999 was 2.3 million. [1]
On 20 April 1945, Hitler's 56th birthday, Soviet artillery of the 1st Belorussian Front began shelling Berlin and did not stop until the city surrendered. The weight of ordnance delivered by Soviet artillery during the battle was greater than the total tonnage dropped by Western Allied bombers on the city. [ 53 ]