MILESTONE IN WORLD WAR II

The Second World War events stimulate debate on exactly when the war turned and what
key moments in the conflict brought about the change. In order to conclusively decide on the
turning point, it requires a judgment on how history would have been altered had things gone
differently. Hitler’s unsuccessful invasion of the Soviet Union and in particular the battle of
Stalingrad stands out as a significant event having implications on both the war outcome, and
how the Twentieth Century progressed.
Operation Fritz, also known as Operation Barbarossa dealt a big blow to Hitler’s efforts
to invade the Soviet Union. The Nazi suffered a major setback when it was forced to wage a
double fronted war against an Allied Force that held massive and superior resources. With
operation Barbarossa, Hitler intended to use Blitzkrieg tactics to destroy the Soviet war plans and
infrastructure while quickly advancing to occupy Leningrad and Moscow (Seidler, 2010) .
The battle of Stalingrad proved an uphill task for the Nazi. Despite fighting almost a
thousand miles into the Soviet Union territory, they spent about twenty seven months retreating
back to Berlin. The master stroke by the two generals, Georgy Zhukov and Alexander
Vasilevsky, to encircle the German troops depriving them of vital resources, brought about a
major turning point in the war forcing a German retreat (Roberts, 2013) . They suffered a great
loss in personnel and equipment greatly reducing their momentum into the Eastern Front, a loss
which Germany never recovered.
In Moscow, the war took a twist when the Soviet Union successfully averted attempts by
the German troops to capture the capital although the death toll was quite high on both sides. The
battle of Moscow is a major turning point because it exposed the inadequacies in the Germany
Army preparations in the face of hard terrain, bad weather and poor infrastructure. This rendered
motorized divisions and tanks, which Germany forces relied on, useless thereby slowing them

MILESTONE IN WORLD WAR II 3

down while exposing them to loss (Stahel, 2013) . In addition, the spreading out to cover a large
front meant that they could not concentrate a large force to achieve the intended impact on the
enemy. The Nazi military campaigns and successes almost gave Germany the control of the
whole of Europe. However the Stalingrad victory opened a new chapter where the Allies
succeeded in pushing back the Japanese and German troops, with an Allied victory being
declared in 1945 (Cole & Symes, 2017) . Resistance to the German invasion of Stalingrad and
Moscow contributed immensely in the ultimate victory by the Allied forces.
Germany had great ambitions when it launched the war on USSR and the invasion was
expected to last for a short period. It therefore came as a surprise to Hitler and the Nazi that
despite the large number of troops deployed to attack the Soviet Union, the war dragged on for a
long time with heavy casualties and eventual retreat. The failure in USSR cost Germany the war
because it caused a ripple effect in all the occupied regions, with German forces retreating in
Italy and in the East. Low morale due to impending failure among the Germans, rise in resistance
movements across Europe and the heightened expectations of a victory among the allied Forces
resulted in a definite turning point and eventual ending of the Second World War. Although it is
impossible to resolve counterfactual history, it begs the question of what would have happened
had Hitler succeeded in his quest to fully occupy. Had Soviet Union been overrun, Hitler’s
genocidal tendencies would have been carried out at a global level with devastating implications
into the Twentieth Century.

MILESTONE IN WORLD WAR II 4

References

Cole, J., & Symes, C. (2017). Western. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Roberts, G. (2013). Victory at Stalingrad: The Battle That Changed History. Oxford: Routledge.
Seidler, H. (2010). Operation Barbarossa: Hitler’s Invasion of Russia. Indiana: Pen & Sword
Military.
Stahel, D. (2013). Operation Typhoon: Hitler’s March on Moscow, October 1941. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.