A Global War 1069

Peasants watching the effects of the German invasion of Ukraine, August 1941.

The German advance left Russian towns and villages in ruins, and hun­
dreds of thousands of civilians dead. But despite enormous battlefield casu­
alties, as well as half a million captured prisoners dying of hunger and cold
in German camps, Russian resistance stiffened. News of Nazi atrocities
helped rally virtually the entire population. German armies bogged down in
the face of determined resistance around Smolensk. Soviet state-run facto­

ries were converted to wartime production, soon turning out great numbers
of tanks of good quality. The United States, still officially neutral in the
conflict, extended the Lend-Lease policy to the Soviet Union.
Their drive to victory stalled, despite having captured more than a mil­
lion square miles of Soviet territory, the German troops, like Napoleon’s
armies in 1812, found that a frozen winter, the coldest in a century, fol­
lowed the chilly Russian fall. “Hitler no more resembles Napoleon than a
kitten resembles a lion,’’ Stalin taunted. Oil for tanks and guns froze. So
did soldiers. The German high command, so certain of a quick victory, had
not bothered to provide them with warm clothing and blankets for temper­
atures reaching far below zero.
After ordering a halt in the push toward Moscow, Hitler, fearing the con­
sequences of retreat on German morale, ignored the advice of his generals
to pull back and await spring weather. Early in December 1941, a desper­
ate German attack stalled twenty miles from Moscow. The German army
never got closer. During the first year of the Russian campaign, German
casualties reached 1.3 million, or 40 percent of the original invading force,
the greatest losses of any single military operation in history.