Joseph Stalin who ruled Russia with a brutal and unyielding fist was slow to accept the inevitability of the pending invasion of Germany.
Russian military leaders reluctantly adopted Stalin’s policy of appeasement and ignored all the tell-tale signs that Adolf Hitler had no intention of honoring any of the peace and non aggression pacts that had been signed and agreed upon by the two powers.
Joseph Stalin was forewarned that the Germans were initiating a strike plan called "Operation Barbarossa." Several reliable sources all agreed that Adolf Hitler was planning to invade Russia and all made this known to Stalin.
The Soviet man of steel believed that Germany would not attack Russia and he began his own campaign of Russian military aggression by annexing Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania.
Adolf Hitler had made a plastic offer to Joseph Stalin to join the Axis powers right beside his partners Italy and Japan. But actually this offer was just a ploy to gain time and fill the Soviets with a feeling of ease.
This tactic by Hitler may have contributed to Stalin's policy of appeasement toward Germany. Stalin went to great lengths to avoid angering the Nazi's and derailing his own crusade of military hostility.
Adolf Hitler really believed that the majority of Russian's were inferior and a collection of Slavs, Jews, and Gypsies who were in dire need of extermination to make way for Aryan expansion in Eastern Europe and reverently pushed forward with his Operation Barbarossa invasion plan.
The two leaders although separated by their ideologies: Bolshevism vs. Fascism were eerily very similar. They were both brutal bloody dictators without the slightest regard for human life or personal freedoms of the people, and both sought conquest and expansion.
Joseph Stalin was eventually forced to accept that his policy of appeasement toward Germany had not worked and that an invasion was looming and imminent.
The Soviet Army was ill prepared, and poorly equipped for Hitler's "Lightening War" and initially "Operation Barbarossa" was a smashing success.
The Soviet Union was in dire straits and were being routed by the German's at every turn. Having to swallow his considerable pride "The Soviet Man of Steel" was forced to look to the west for succor.
Tragically, help from the west was slow in coming due to Winston Churchill's and the Americans rancor for Soviet Communism and Russia's military aggression toward its sovereign neighbors.
The Allies took pity on the suffering Soviets and began filtering in supplies that would prevent the collapse of the country and help invigorate their will to fight and resist the invasion.
Stalin's policy of appeasement left his country venerable to the merciless Nazi invaders and Russia's military aggression and land grab policy left The Soviet Unions plight less sympathetic to the west.
Adolf Hitler would never gain his goal of expansion by conquering Russia, exterminating the majority of its population and creating room for Aryan settlements.
Mother nature, just as she had deterred Napoleon, would once again come to the aid of the Russian's and along with support from the west would doom Germany's attempt to eradicate The Soviet Union.
Stalin's policies had nearly caused the end of his country and twenty-million of his fellow countrymen would perish during the war; many from hunger and disease, but Russia would rebound and become a serious world power for nearly fifty years.
references: Bethell, Nicholas "Russia Besieged" World War II-1977
Ziemke, F. Earl "The Soviet Juggernaut" World War II-1980
