U.S.S.R and World War II

World War II began when Hitler's troops invaded Poland from the west on Sept. 1,1939. Two days later, France and Britain declared war on Germany. Soviet troops invaded Poland from the east on Sept. 17,1939, and soon occupied eastern Poland. On November 30, the U.S.S.R. attacked Finland. The Soviet Union had won much Finnish territory by March 1940, when Finland had to agree to a peace treaty.

In June 1940, the Red Army moved into Bessarabia (then part of Romania) and the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which had become independent after the fall of the czar. In August 1940, the Baltic countries became separate republics of the Soviet Union, and most of Bessarabia became part of the new Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (now Moldova).

On June 22,1941, a huge German force invaded the U.S.S.R. German warplanes destroyed much of the Soviet air force, and Hitler's tanks drove deep into Soviet territory. In September, the Germans captured Kiev and attacked Leningrad. By December, the Germans came close to Moscow. The attack on Leningrad lasted until January 1944, when the Germans were finally driven off.

Britain and the other Western Allies welcomed the U.S.S.R. as a partner in the war against Germany. Britain, Canada, and the United States began shipping supplies to the Soviet Union. The United States joined the Allies in December 1941, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

By early 1942, the Red Army had driven the Germans back from the Moscow area and some other battlegrounds. The five-month Battle of Stalingrad (now Volgograd), which began in late August 1942, was a major turning point in the war. By the time the Germans surrendered, about 300,000 of their troops had been killed or captured.

After the victory at Stalingrad, the Red Army advanced steadily across Eastern Europe and into eastern Germany. As the Red Army swept across Eastern Europe, they freed many countries from German control, including Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania. In April 1945, Soviet troops began to attack Berlin. The city fell to the Red Army on May 2. Germany surrendered to the Allies on May 7. The war in Europe was over.

Soviet troops halted the eastward advance of Nazi German forces at the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942 and 1943, during World War II. The battle marked a major turning point in the war

Results of the war. About 7 ½ million Soviet troops were killed in World War II, and about 5 million were wounded. Another 3 million troops were captured and died in German prison camps. No other country suffered so many military casualties. Also, millions of Soviet civilians died, whole regions of the U.S.S.R. lay in ruins, and much of the Soviet economy was shattered.

In February 1945, Stalin had met with President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the United States and Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Britain at Yalta in the Crimea. At this conference, Stalin promised to help in the war against Japan. On August 6, the United States dropped on Japan the first atomic bomb used in warfare. Two days later, the U.S.S.R. declared war on Japan and invaded Japanese-held Manchuria and Korea. Soviet troops occupied Manchuria for eight months and took nearly a billion dollars' worth of industrial machinery from the region. Japan's surrender to the Allies on Sept. 2, 1945, marked the end of World War II.