ABSTRACT
The combined effect of the Great Patriotic War and the Cold War which followed it was to reinforce many of the harshest economic and political features of Soviet life. The German invasion caught the Red Army almost fatally unprepared and the Soviet Union suffered catastrophic defeats. Stalin and Molotov were so confident that they increased their demands on Germany: the USSR occupied Northern Bukovina in Romania, and pressed Hitler to accept that the Soviet sphere of influence should be extended to include Bulgaria and that traditional Tsarist dream, the Straits. Accurate Soviet intelligence reports were dismissed as unreliable, and clear warnings from the US and British governments were treated as deliberate ploys to embroil the Soviet Union in war. As agreed with the Western Allies, three months after Germany's surrender the Soviet Union joined the coalition against Japan, a move rendered superfluous in military terms by the annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
