Cross Reference Sajer's Account With One Of The Maps From The Reader

Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union under Directive 21, known as Operation Barbarossa commenced on the 22nd of June 1941. The invasion proved to be motivated by Adolf Hitler’s long-standing ideologies of lebensraum and race. Hitler saw Barbarossa as an ideological, strategic and economic advance within World war II.

However, the Soviet’s blockade wasn’t just a failure, they suffered from it and it was a moral defeat. The inability to control West Berlin caused “the trade embargo between the Western zones and the Soviet zones [to be] severely hampered” as well as “the development of the East German economy, whereas the West German economy was beginning to take off in the wake of currency reform” (Botting). The influence of a democracy from the Allies made the people of West Germany follow in their shadow. The Allies’ influence created a “turning point in the German people’s attitudes toward democracy” and “it was the moment when the United States first learned how to function at the summit of world power and became admired and beloved around the world” (Ries). The Soviets were absolutely demolished by the effort of the Americans. Their failure only made the Americans look more powerful to the world and made the Soviets look weaker. The fact that the blockade didn’t stop the people of Berlin was already a humiliation to the Soviets, but it was an even bigger one when the Soviets lifted the blockade and accepted their failure. They doubted the Allie’s capabilities and were no match to the American’s

Captain Dennis W. Dingle’s dissertation, presented before the faculty of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College in 1977, concerns the significance of the Soviet Union’s decisive victory at Stalingrad and its impact on the outcome of the Second World War. While much of this information is irrelevant for the purpose of answering the thesis question I have proposed, it does contain indispensable statistics showcasing the economic and military might of the two most pertinent combatant nations in the Second World War in the timeframe of December of 1941 and July of 1943.

“This is the time of the cold war. This is the time when the entire world is split into two vast increasingly hostile armed camps” (Joseph McCarthy). He thought that to find the peace that people wanted they could no longer close their eyes and close their ears to the problems in the government and in the world. To think that the communist revolution could not be carried out peacefully within the framework of a Christian democracy means one has either gone out of ones mind and lost all normal understanding, or has grossly repudiated the communist revolution. He knew that “The time was now”, that when a great democracy is destroyed, it will not be because of enemies from without but because of enemies from within (The Annals of America).

In the wake of World War II, Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union delivered a largely controversial speech in the Bolshoi theater located near the center of Moscow. In Stalin’s speech, he articulated upon the idea that Communism and Capitalism could not co-exist. He claimed to the people that the Soviet Union was the only key factor in eliminating the Axis powers from the war.

The consequence of World War Two left the United States and Russia as the prevailing military forces on the planet, yet they had altogether different types of government and economy, the previous an industrialist majority rule government, the last a comrade tyranny. The two countries were adversaries who dreaded each other, each ideologically restricted.

From the time of ‘Mein Kampf’ Hitler had outwardly expressed his desire to move toward Russia in his quest for ‘Lebensraum,’ however in 1939, it was beneficial for him

Sacrifices Dr. Martin Johnson once said,”The war affected every aspect of daily life, and meant that everyone endured hardships and sacrifice”(Dr. Martin Johnson 1). Everyone, everywhere has at least lost a person of whom they loved so dearly to a war they believe should not be taken part of. Sacrifices are made from the people who are willing to fight to protect of what’s important in life. Many others may lose their minds because their son, father husband, wife, etc, fought for us but never came back.

Winston Churchill indignantly bolstered the American public with a phrase that would be remembered for many years to come: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.” This line was what Americans labeled as the start of containment, the start of a new era, especially that of the war on communism later entitled the “Cold War.” However, it was not just this flimsy line that buttressed the supporters of democracy; the true motivator of containment was rather the “Long Telegram,” an eight-thousand-word telegram sent by American ambassador to the Soviet Union, George F. Kennan, to the White House. Albeit inspirational, the “Iron Curtain” speech failed miserably to do the one thing that the “Long Telegram” did: set the policy of containment in place with a purely American ideology. With this telegram, the United States started its trek dedicated to remaining the second world power of the time by reducing the Soviet Union’s power as to not constitute a constant communist threat, changing the rules of international conduct so the Soviet Union would not dominate the globe, and eventually fostering a world environment in which an American system could survive and flourish.

The prolonged battle lasted for months and was one of the most costliest battles of the war as it saw brutal urban warfare and ceaseless artillery bombing which annihilated the city. The head of the Jewish Virtual Library, Jason Levine, accounts the huge impact and aftermath the battle had claimed that “Stalingrad was also revealing of the discipline and determination of both the German Wehrmacht and the Soviet Red Army. The Soviets first defended Stalingrad against a fierce German onslaught. So great were Soviet losses that at times, the life expectancy of a newly arrived soldier was less than a day,and the life expectancy of a Soviet officer was three days… In all, the battle resulted in an estimated total of 1.7 million to 2 million Axis and Soviet casualties”(Levine). Levine details the battle as an unprecedented event as both sides suffered astronomically high casualties and highlighted the brutality of the fighting as the rate of death for Soviet soldiers was a few days. To understand the grasp of the battle; the entire four year long campaign of the American Civil War had less casualties than the singular Battle of

It was a cold day in March 1946 when Winston Churchill took the stage at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri to deliver what would become one of his well-known speeches. The 74 year-old had recently been voted out of office in England, nonetheless he was still giant on the world stage. A small stage was erected so that the vast crowds of people present could hear him speak. In his address, Churchill would warn of the growing power of the Soviet Union, saying “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.” Churchill’s observations and dire predictions would prove true in the coming decades. For the next fifty years, the Soviet Union and the United States would be pitted

To understand the significance of Stalingrad to the Second World War and to Germany and Russia, one has to understand the series of events that led up to the fateful battle.

This would be one of the earliest instances where any liberal sentiment towards communism would not be tolerated and it would not end there. When Truman advocated aiding Greece during their civil war, he made sure to underline the main reasons were to ensure democracy not communism would be the only acceptable way of living and since “There is no other country to which democratic Greece can turn”, America had to save the day. As the years went on, developments in Korea and China went in a way that was not planned. Stalin however saw everything coming together and believed America was losing ground. “They are trying to offset these difficulties with the "Marshall plan," the war in Korea, frantic rearmament, and industrial militarization. But that is very much like a drowning man clutching at a straw” (Stalin). While statements like this gave the USSR a boost, it gave America a sense that their national security was faltering and in turn any domestic reassurance was in limited supply.

“He also spoke about the background on June 1941, German attack against Soviet Russia.” “The words proved prescient on June 22, 1941, Hitler unilaterally broke his deal with Stalin and launched the largest surprise attack in the history of warfare.” Soviet leaders plan to overwhelm Europe in a great military assault was dashed by Hitler’s preemptive “Barbarossa strike.” “Der Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, Dictator of Germany, burrowed away in a refreshed air-raid shelter, he consumes a cyanide capsule, he shoots himself with a pistol on 1945, as his “1,000-year” Reich

During the 1950’s, there was a great sense of political pride. Each country felt that their own way of running their countries was better than the practices used in other countries and because of this they did not want to see another country’s influences in their homeland. In this era, American democracy and Russian communism were at odds. America runs on democracy which allows the people to exercise their “freedom” (Anti Communist Propaganda). In the American society, communism is a system of international control and conformity and the act of the government taking complete control over the citizens’ freedom and property (Eisenhower).