ABSTRACT
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) had protested the British blockade of Germany, exerted pressure on Turkey to reject a pact with Britain and France, and bitterly attacked the United States program of Lend-Lease to Britain. The Nazi military victory had been great, but Hitler's plan to crush the USSR "quickly" had failed. Guderian's scheme of a massive thrust to Moscow might have achieved the victory on which Hitler counted. Hitler's objective, as stated in the directive for Operation Barbarossa, was "to crush Soviet Russia in a quick campaign before the end of the war against England." As the invasion opened, he announced that the Soviet Union was dissolved, and the first few days of fighting suggested that he would achieve his aims in 1941. More often than not, the peoples of the Soviet Union at first received the Nazi invaders as liberators.
