ABSTRACT
Stalin had agreed to the Non-Aggression Pact with Germany in August 1939 to prevent-or postpone-the outbreak of war between Germany and Russia. Yet, on 22 June 1941, Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. The result was military collapse of astonishing rapidity with most of the losses of Soviet troops and equipment throughout the Second World War occurring during the first year of Soviet involvement. Stalin had ordered the withdrawal of the Soviet border troops in Soviet-occupied Poland, which meant that the German panzer divisions, now well-drilled in their Blitzkrieg (lightning war) strategy, could slice through the Ukraine to establish, by 1942, a front extending from Leningrad in the north to Moscow in the centre and Stalingrad in the south. Stalin himself withdrew for a while from public life and Hitler confidently predicted the end of the campaign and of the Soviet state.
