transformation of Soviet fighting power and morale. The soviet army learned a lot from their previous encounters with the German army.
The soviet air and tanks were adjusted to copy the Germans.
Communication and intelligence, training for officers and men was improved
Soviet technology was modernised to match Germany's.
The Soviets set up an evacuation committee two days after the war started to transport machines, workers and factories to the east.
3500 new factories were created in the USSR. Industry was geared totally to creation of armaments. The civilian economy was neglected.
State procurement of food form collective farms. The peasants helped them win it!
Propaganda drummed up support and wartime morale and patriotism. Control over the Russian Orthodox Church was relaxed and so provided spiritual strength.
’everything for the front’
Pre-war economic planning helped the regime to run a war on an emergency basis
The very large amount of workers/factories allowed the soviets to reconstruct armaments quickly.
1942 a flow of food/raw materials continued the Soviet war effort. There was enough food to ensure a meal for every Soviet soldier.
Most of the Soviet railway was supplied with trains and wagons that were made in America.
Stalin came to realise that political control hold the army back and cut the amount politics influenced the army in 1942.
Stalin created a deputy supreme commander who worked under him, Marshal Zhukov.
Stalin stepped back from conducting the war.
Within a year Soviet factories were out-producing their richly-endowed German counterparts.
Zhukov effectively led the attack on Berlin in April/May 1945
Throughout the whole Russian campaign Zhukov was known as the ‘man who did not lose a battle’.
"Zhukov played a decisive role in the battles of Moscow, Stalingrad and Kursk that helped bring down the Nazi regime.
Zhukov was the first of the Allied generals to enter Berlin and took the German surrender.”
The Red Army had embarked on a thorough transformation of the technical and organisational base of Soviet forces.
Soviet stiffening of morale, from Stalin downwards.
“In my view, Zhukov remains always a man of strong will and decisiveness, clear and gifted, exacting, persistent and purposeful."
The German Army in fighting Russia is like an elephant attacking a host of ants. The elephant will kill thousands, perhaps even millions, of ants, but in the end their numbers will overcome him, and he will be eaten to the bone.
The Allies won due to pure and simple brute force made possible by the enormous productive capacity of the USA.
2/3 of German submariners were killed in the war.
US technological superiority combined with massive production crushed the German U-Boat threat.
The Americans employed the use of aircraft to hunt subs.
By 1943 the U-boats were being hunted more than the U-boats were hunting.
The gigantic losses of German fighter aircraft and pilots sustained while defending the factories was critical.
In spring 1944, the Allied Air forces cut out the heart of the German air defences
Many historians view the US invasion of France in 1944 to be a "sledgehammer crushing an egg."
DDay- massive fleet assembled backed by aircraft.Was a typically American operation.
March 1941 Roosevelt extended lend lease to the USSR. The great bulk of supplies came from the USA.
1/3 off soviet vehicles came from abroad and were off better quality and more durable.
Trains, wagons and railway lines were vital to connect industrial bases and military fronts. These were provided by the lend lease plan and the USA.
“Without spam we wouldn’t have been able to feed our army.” Khrushchev
Without lend lease it would have taken 12-18 months longer to defeat Germany.
There was enough food in the end to ensure a square meal for every Soviet soldier
Most of the Soviet rail network was supplied with locomotives, wagons and rails made in the USA;
one million miles of telephone wire, 14 million pairs of boots, 363, 000 trucks, all helped to keep the Red Army fighting
Without Allied aid, Stalin later admitted, 'we would not have been able to cope'.
The D-day landings 5-6th June opened a new front in the war.
Barbarossa failed due to the stalling of the invasion.
Russian soldiers appeared ‘superhuman’, with endless soldiers to combat the German army.
The German army had no winter uniforms in -40 degree temperatures
The Germans were not successful in taking Moscow and other important cities.
The Germans didn’t get to the remaining old fields.
Bombing through direct destruction led to the interruption of raw material, transport and energy supplies in German
Bombing forced the German Air Force to divert most of its fighter force to the defence of Germany, and to reduce sharply the proportion of bomber aircraft produced.
Allied bombing affected the German frontline of much needed bomber and fighter aircraft
By 1944 German air power was easily eroded around the periphery of German-controlled Europe, where pilot losses reached exceptionally high levels.
‘Hitler spread his forces too thin’
In 1941 Hitler took command over the army which had a disastrous impact.
Rather than listening to his military expert Hitler granted audiences to them.
The Germans were not prepared for the long campaign. They suffered from lack of supplies and inadequate equipment.
Hitler's control was so strong that he could try out his very reckless and unorthodox ideas when he chose to do so.
Allies quickly learned that the trick to beating the Germans was to keep them from breaking through.
Hitler's personality prevented discussion of surrender, so Germany was now doomed to destruction in addition to defeat.
Once the Americans got into the war the main idea was to find the Germans, pin them down, and then smash them into oblivion or submission
For the last two years of the war the Germans never successfully pulled off another Blitzkrieg on a massive scale.
By 1944, the Germans no longer were able to use blitzkrieg
Without Allied help, Stalin said, 'we would not have been able to cope'.
The aid provided by America in the form of armaments shows just how much the Allied war effort progressed due to the materials provided by USA
America had the surprising ability to convert to the mass production of weapons and war equipment.
The allied war effort was strengthened a great deal due to the nature of American industrial capitalism, high levels of engineering skill and entrepreneurs.
Roosevelt saw air combat as a key to reduce American casualties.
With Roosevelt's command, the American military was able to develop an air force that surpassed those of Germany and Japan.
The key to this strategy was a strategic bombing through long range attacks on the economic and military hubs of the enemy state.
