In the 1930s and 1940s, an economic crisis that swept the world intensified domestic contradictions in various countries. Especially for Germany, which suffered great setbacks in World War I, the economic crisis and the hatred and humiliation that had been exploited in the Treaty of Versailles forced them to the path of Nazism.
Paris Peace Conference
In order to divert domestic contradictions and expand the living space, Germany began to expand abroad, launched wars of aggression against other countries, and maintained the domestic survival path by plundering land resources in the form of war, thus opening the prelude to the Second World War.
The Soviet Union, as the largest power in Eastern Europe, naturally became the target of German aggression. Under the famous Barbarossa plan, Germany launched a war of aggression against the Soviet Union. However, under the stubborn resistance of the Soviet Red Army, the German target of aggression did not succeed.
Soviet-German war
After the fierce battle of the "Moscow Defense War", the German army finally suffered from the low temperature of the blizzard of -40 degrees Celsius in Siberia and froze to death on the outskirts of Moscow. At the same time, the Red Army suffered heavy casualties. It is probably because of this that the Soviet-German battlefield became the largest and most intense existence in World War II, and it is worth mentioning that the Soviet-German War took 1,418 days, with 61 million casualties being the most serious in World War II.
The Defense of Moscow
So, in the face of the German soldiers who froze to death in Moscow, some people could not help but wonder: the Germans have all hit Moscow, why not rob some more Soviets along the way of food, fuel and warm clothing? Wouldn't that freeze to death?
In fact, it is not that the German soldiers do not rob, but that the German soldiers have "nothing to grab." So let's take a look at some of the bizarre stories that happened during this tragic Soviet-German war.
Tanks traveling in the snow
Why did Germany attack the Soviet Union?
First of all, it is worth noting that why did Germany attack the Soviet Union? And why did you choose to launch a war of aggression against the Soviet Union in the bitter winter? In the face of the Soviets, who were born with a cold-resistant system, was not the German army even less dominant?
Before launching the Soviet-German war, the German army swept through the Western European battlefield with the advantage of "blitzkrieg" and was unstoppable. It even took France, known as the "strongest continental army in Europe," within thirty-nine days. At this time, Germany was full of vigor, and even Hitler could not help but swell.
The spirited Hitler
In this case, Germany's next target of aggression was the Soviet Union, a newly rising industrial power, adjacent to the Eastern European theater. In fact, Germany's idea of fighting the Soviet Union was indeed not empty-minded - the contradictions between the Soviet Union and Germany were already deep, and the conflict of interests was becoming more and more intense.
First of all, the ideology of the two countries doomed the Soviet union and Germany to a rupture - the Nazi regime in Germany implemented "anti-communism" and regarded the Communist Party and social democracy as political enemies. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, happened to be a communist-led regime that was the "target of hatred" of the Nazi Party in Germany.
USSR
Secondly, under the leadership of Stalin's "Two Five-Year Plans", the Soviet Union's economic strength was greatly enhanced, it got rid of its previous state of poverty, it became an industrial power, and it also began to have a certain right to speak in the international community.
Germans
The rise of the Soviet Union, therefore, could not help but also make Germany's "law of the jungle" view of Nazism feel a little threatening. Hitler, who was very crisis-conscious, believed that if the rising power of the Soviet Union was not contained, the more germany's development would be stifled and it would be more difficult to expand its living space outward. In Hitler's autobiography Mein Kampf, it was also repeatedly emphasized that if the German people wanted to seek land resources abroad, they must march to Eastern Europe.
Hitler
At the same time, due to the long-term war in Germany, military expenditure and energy consumption are very huge, with the continuous advancement of the war, before the outbreak of the Soviet-German war, Germany's war machine has the problem of lack of oil resources. At present, we can only seek survival and development by constantly encroaching on and plundering the resources of other countries, but this method has also begun to appear in short supply. However, for the German Nazis at this time, there was no way back.
Nazi Germany
If Nazism was to be maintained, Hitler had to continue to wage war in order to "return to the roots" and at the same time achieve the purpose of stabilizing the people's minds and diverting contradictions. Throughout the European continent, only a large area of land in the Soviet Union has yet to be conquered, and on the entire European continent, only the Soviet Union has very rich oil resources, which can alleviate the lack of oil resources in the German war machine.
At the same time, the gradual deterioration of relations between Britain and Germany also made Germany feel threatened. In this case, Germany had to further isolate Britain by defeating the Soviet Union and expanding itself, in order to achieve its ambition to become the hegemon of Europe.
Therefore, under the pressure of the situation, Germany had to extend the claws of aggression against the Soviet Union and continue to maintain the survival and operation of the country in the form of war expansion. However, before the war, the two countries secretly signed the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact to divide Poland, which had a certain contractual effect, and whoever violated it first would fall into a treacherous situation, so Hitler, who was committed to "pure and harmless" man-made design, had to find a suitable reason to launch an attack on the Soviet Union.
The scene of the signing of the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact
At this time, Stalin, who was carrying out the "Great Purge" at home, was unaware of the hidden crisis. In Stalin's "purge sphere", many were backbones of the Red Army or officers of the Red Army. This made Hitler smell a glimmer of opportunity to start a war, he believed that at this time the Red Army was in a fragile stage of reorganization and loss of talent, it must be vulnerable, and if the opportunity was taken to launch a war of aggression against the Soviet Union, the probability of victory would be greatly increased.
Stalin (right)
To this end, Hitler began to actively prepare for the deployment of public opinion, preaching Stalin's "black history" all over the world, claiming that Stalin was implementing a reign of terror by a brutal regime, and claiming that the Soviet Red Army deployed on the German-Soviet border was deliberately launching an offensive and that he wanted to "preemptively attack" in order to emphasize the rationality of his own war. While secretly propagating the Soviet Union's "political black material", Germany actively made strategic arrangements and formulated the "Barbarossa Plan" to attack the Soviet Union.
Launch an offensive
In the winter of December 1940, Hitler, who was full of self-confidence and had a good chance of victory, did not want to miss this "once-in-a-century" good opportunity, and despite the cold climate of the cold winter moon, he still launched the Soviet-German war without hesitation, officially tearing up the "Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact".
In the face of the rapid attack of the German "blitzkrieg", the Soviet army lost 15,000 Red Army officers in the "Great Purge" and seriously lacked leadership and command capabilities. At this time, Stalin came back from the "Great Purge", and he was chafed that he believed too much in the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact and did not deliberately fortify Germany, so that the fortifications and expansion of the army were too hasty to resist the German invasion for a while.
The Red Army was always ready to fight back
Therefore, in the early stage of the Soviet-German war, the German army won successive battles, quickly pushing into the Interior of the Soviet Union and quickly penetrating into the territory of the Soviet Union. Soon after penetrating deep into Soviet territory, the German army divided into three routes, with the northern bloc advancing Leningrad, the southern bloc responsible for taking oil resources and food supplies in the Ukraine-Caucasus region, and the central bloc responsible for conquering the Soviet capital Moscow.
A corner of the Soviet-German War
However, with the lengthening of the front and the stubborn resistance of the Soviet Red Army and the timely remediation of the tactical fortifications, the German offensive posture gradually became difficult, and the advance of the front was much longer than they expected. In the end, the two armies broke out in Moscow in a fierce battle with heavy casualties - the German army continued to launch fierce attacks on Moscow, and the Soviet Union used the stubborn resistance of the Mozhaisk defense line to defend the capital Moscow, and finally successfully defended the city and completely annihilated the invading German army.
Moscow defended victory
When cleaning up the battlefield afterwards, it was found that many German soldiers were frozen to death on the battlefield, wearing only one autumn coat to protect themselves from the cold. Why, then, didn't the German soldiers rob the Soviet people of resources to keep warm and cold?
Scorched-earth policy
In fact, it was not that the German soldiers did not want to rob the Soviet union of supplies, but that the German soldiers had no funds to rob. When the German army was divided into three routes, in order to be able to quickly advance the front, after the German army had deployed the armaments and materials needed to advance the front, the officers ordered the soldiers to reduce their weight and bring only twenty days' worth of food to the battle, after which the required materials were directly "collected" from the Soviet Union - that is, looted.
Thus, the German soldiers, armed with twenty days of dry food and wearing only autumn coats to protect themselves from the cold, stepped into the battlefield, but they did not expect that the city they had worked so hard to fight down had long been burned to rubble, and all the supplies were reduced to ashes - it turned out that under the guidance of Stalin's "scorched earth policy", in order to prevent the German army from plundering the materials in the occupied areas, they did not hesitate to set fire to them and destroy them, which made the German army, which was increasingly difficult in logistics, even worse.
Not only that, but with the stubborn resistance of the Soviet Red Army, the front line was gradually lengthened. The increasingly extreme cold weather in the Soviet Union also exceeded the imagination and preparation of German soldiers, the German army was hungry and cold but could not plunder any resources, many weapons and cars also failed under this extreme low temperature, making the German army's combat effectiveness more and more declining; making it even more vulnerable to the Soviet Red Army, which was well versed in the cold environment combat know-how and had warm measures in place, so that many German soldiers froze to death.
A fierce battle in the snow
In this way, Hitler's ambitions were destroyed in the snowstorm of Siberia.