by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review
It is now fashionable to demonize Russia, but most Americans have forgotten key aspects of 20th-century history, including the Russians’ fight to stop the march of Nazi Germany.
Seventy-five years ago this month, the Soviet Red Army surrounded — and would soon destroy — a huge invading German army at Stalingrad on the Volga River. Nearly 300,000 of Germany’s best soldiers would never return home. The epic 1942–43 battle for the city saw the complete annihilation of the attacking German 6th Army. It marked the turning point of World War II.
Before Stalingrad, Adolf Hitler regularly boasted on German radio as his victorious forces pressed their offensives worldwide. After Stalingrad, Hitler went quiet, brooding in his various bunkers for the rest of the war.
During the horrific Battle of Stalingrad, which lasted more than five months, Russian, American, and British forces also went on the offensive against the Axis powers in the Caucasus, in Morocco and Algeria, and on the island of Guadalcanal in the Pacific.
Yet just weeks before the Battle of Stalingrad began, the Allies had been near defeat. They had lost most of European Russia. Much of Western Europe was under Nazi control. Axis armies occupied large swaths of North Africa. The Japanese controlled most of the Pacific and Asia, from Manchuria to Wake Island.
Stalingrad was part of a renewed German effort in 1942 to drive southward toward the Caucasus Mountains, to capture the huge Soviet oil fields. The Germans might have pulled it off had Hitler not divided his forces and sent his best army northward to Stalingrad to cut the Volga River traffic and take Stalin’s eponymous frontier city.
By the time two Red Army pincers trapped the Germans at Stalingrad in November, Russia had already suffered some 6 million combat casualties during the first 16 months of Germany’s invasion. By German calculations, Russia should have already submitted, just like all of the Third Reich’s prior European enemies except Britain.
Instead, the Red Army drew the Germans deeper into the traditional quagmire of Russia until the 6th Army was low on supplies, freezing in the winter cold, and trapped more than 1,500 miles from Berlin. How did the Red Army not only survive but go on the offensive against the deadly invaders?
In part, it had no choice. Germany was intent on not just absorbing Russia, but wiping it out or enslaving millions of its citizens. In part, Britain and the United States under the Lend-Lease policy began sending huge amounts of material aid, providing everything from boots to locomotives. In part, Red Army soldiers were terrified of their own communist strongman, Josef Stalin.
Prior to the German invasion, Stalin was responsible for some 20 million Russian deaths through forced farm collectivization, planned famine, show trials and purges, and the murders of his own Red Army troops. More than 10,000 soldiers were likely executed at Stalingrad by their own officers.
But most important, no European invader — neither Sweden under Charles XII in the early 1700s nor France under Napoleon in the early 1800s — had ever successfully invaded and defeated Russia.
The country was too large, both geographically and demographically. Good weather was too brief between the spring floods and the bitter Russian winter. And Russians always fought heroically as defenders of their own soil, even if this wasn’t always the case when they were fighting abroad as invaders.
Despite the horrors of Soviet Communism, the Allied winners of World War II owed a great deal to the Russian people. Russia’s male and female soldiers were most responsible for destroying Hitler’s vast ground forces, having killed more than two-thirds of the German soldiers lost in the war.
The Soviet Union lost about 27 million soldiers and civilians — about 60 times more than America lost in the war.
Due to memories of the Soviet Union’s Cold War ruthlessness, and because of Vladimir Putin’s autocratic government, it is now fashionable to demonize Russia. Moscow sent troops into eastern Ukraine, absorbed Crimea, and has sought to tamper with a U.S. presidential election.
But most Americans have forgotten key aspects of Russia’s 20th-century history, a tragedy of unspeakable human losses. Outside Kiev in late summer of 1941, more than 700,000 Russian soldiers were killed or captured by Germans in a single battle.
In one of the costliest sieges in history, at Sevastopol in July 1942, 100,000 Russians were killed or captured in a failed effort to save the port on the Black Sea.
We rightly see Putin as an aggressive autocrat. But millions of Russians view Ukraine and the Crimea as sacred, blood-soaked Russian ground.
After the collapse of the nightmarish Soviet Union, Stalingrad was renamed Volgograd “city on the Volga.” Today, few in the West know exactly what happened there 75 years ago this month.
This Veterans Day, we should also remember those heroic Russian soldiers. In bitter cold, and after losing hundreds of thousands of lives, they finally did the unbelievable: They halted the march of Nazi Germany.
Discussion (15)
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Putin is no more an "aggressive autocrat" than were Bush the 1st, Clinton, Bush the 2nd, and Obama. Putin defends Russia and its values. Many values I fought and killed for during 24 years in the USAF no longer exist in this nation. During the Cold War I never thought it would be the case that I empathize with Russia. But Russia, along with some Eastern European nations, may very well become the last bastions of Western Civilization.
Thank you. To add to the complexity of it all - Stalin had the biggest army on the world before WWII, and he was tearing to go to war with the West, after Hitler would exhaust his resources. But Germany attacked first. Not to take away from the personal heroism of the Russian soldiers - my granddad was one of them - the country is wicked. Always was, and I’m afraid, always will be.
Russian troops part and parcel of the German 6th Army [about 20 % of the total army strength] continued to fight for several months after German surrender.
"We rightly see Putin as an aggressive autocrat. But millions of Russians view Ukraine and the Crimea as sacred, blood-soaked Russian ground." I consider you one of my favourite writers in today's age. The comment You wrote above I feel I need to call out. More Ukrainians died in present day Ukraine (soldiers and civilians) than Russians did. Writing the above is not accurate and could be interpreted as towing the line of the Kremlin. Btw the largest majority in the Soviet army at Stalingrad were Ukrainians. It almost reads as a justification for the Kremlins current war they have launched in Ukraine? Please say it isn't so.
Dear Victor, Thank you for your article. I really enjoy reading it. One factual error: "After the collapse of the nightmarish Soviet Union, Stalingrad was renamed Volgograd “city on the Volga" It actually happened in 1961, well before the collapse of the Soviet Union. At that time Nikita Khrushchev was in charge and it was part of the campaign of disclosing Stalin's crimes that Khrushchev initiated. Vladimir Fishman. San Jose, CA
Agreed. Russia has long connections with Crimea, in particular.
Dr. Hanson, Great article and reminder as to our relationship to the Russian people despite their government. But as I read your writings on WWII it begs the question of what has happened since. The US has been in direct or proxy wars ever since without any success or conclusion on the horizon and has turned itself into a bankrupt police state, for what?
Prof. Hanson, I received my copy of your book, and am about half way through, with my busy life. But I wanted to reach out and thank you for what is obviously a monumental effort to clarify and simplify and communicate the essence of the driving factors across the globe during WW2. I am always trying to find the equation. I read about history constantly, striving for a predictive model in my own mind about weaponry, tactics, economies, error, and time. Modern written history is often written in imperative form: The axis could not win due to the much larger economies of it enemies. And yet conflicting imperatives: Without England’s determination, Hitler would have won the war. But as a linear equation, outcomes can be predicted based on weighing economies with determination with weaponry, and with game theory models of different countries holding different chess pieces in different formations. Your book beautifully organized and discussed these factors clearly. And I got to fantasize history as a linear algebra. I thank you.
I wonder , if we faced the same odds, would we fight or throw our hands in the air, hoping that our iphone, computer, texting life would not be disturbed. We are so divided now that there would be no common america to fight for. Would all of our immigrants, legal and illegal fight. I doubt it. Our politicians would cave in, or draft our "deplorables" to fight..
The Russian part in World War II was not so easily forgotten in Great Britain as it has apparently been in the United States, and I think in Australasia. The contact between the City of London Merchant Venturers and Tsarist Russia of Ivan the Terrible led to a long period of contacts on and off. Sometimes anti Russian. Many British troops fought in the Crimea against the Russians, and their names appear on war memorials in Britain. Vladimir Putin is not vilified by everyone, either. Though as he is an Orthodox Christian I presume that adds to the bad feeling. among the U S newsmedia who haven't got a clue about Orthodoxy in general. Those of us who remember the inclusion of Eastern Europe in the U.S.S R and partition of Germany and the building of the Berlin Wall are not so put off by Putin's strong methods. (Why I even remember Stalin on the newsreels at the cinema when he was still alive, as Uncle Joe during the war and an enemy after it) Putin isn't Stalin,thank God is how I feel. Thanks for your articles .
They must never be forgotten. They had so little.
Who am I, but I did say two things when the communism and the Soviet Union fell. In both cases, this was to a long-time friend whom I describe as conservative blue collar Vietnam veteran and proletarian intellectual, though he became both by choice in that most of his family went to four-year colleges. One, I said, "The Fall of Communism was no more than a change of doctrine on the part of the international communist movement. Don't worry, here in America our own communists are still firmly in charge." The other thing I said was, "The former Soviets are our brave Russian allies once again."
Fair enough Vic. Stalingrad and the WW2 Eastern Front needs to be both said to and remembered by folks 'of age' that have never put on a uniform or served. ted
Thank you for posting this, Professor Hanson.
I want to read your new book about Japan in WWII, and agree with what you said on the Ingrahm Angle last night about china