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76 years ago today, on June 22nd, 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Union of Soviet Republics, bringing the USSR into WWII on the unexpected side of the allies. Nearly 4 million German and Axis Allies (Hungarian, Finns, Slovaks, Romanians and Italians) commenced Operation Barbarossa. Within months, thanks largely to the poor state of the Red Army, the Ostheer (East Army) had inflicted nearly 5 million Soviet casualties, either killed, captured or wounded. To the Nazis the invasion of the USSR wasn't just another conflict, it was a "Vernichtungskrieg", a war of annihilation. To the Nazis, the purpose of the war was to rid the world of the "Jewish-Bolshevik" collaboration that had been 'poisining' the world, and to finally subdue the "Asiatic hordes" that had threatened Europe for so long. Under these principles the Nazis would commit horrible crimes in the Eastern front, slaughtering nearly 20 million Slavs, gypsies, Jews, and other groups they considered sub humans.
It's a shame that the Red Army served Joseph Stalin, a man as evil and brutal as Hitler himself, but in the end it was the sacrifice of millions of Soviet men and women that enabled the destruction of over a hundred German divisions and 70% of the material losses of the Wehrmacht. Between the invasion of the USSR and the declaration of war on the United States, Hitler doomed Nazi Germany to defeat, either through atomic bombing or through hordes of Red Army divisions and mechanized forces.
It's a shame that the Red Army served Joseph Stalin, a man as evil and brutal as Hitler himself, but in the end it was the sacrifice of millions of Soviet men and women that enabled the destruction of over a hundred German divisions and 70% of the material losses of the Wehrmacht. Between the invasion of the USSR and the declaration of war on the United States, Hitler doomed Nazi Germany to defeat, either through atomic bombing or through hordes of Red Army divisions and mechanized forces.