International Relations in 1941-1942.

Barbarossa – the Attack on Russia.

The German invasion of the USSR began June 22, 1941. The invasion force of three million included Finnish, Rumanian, Hungarian, and Italian contingents along with German and advanced on a broad front about 2,000 miles. In the first season of fighting the Germans seized Western regions of Russia and of the Ukraine, advancing to the Crimean Peninsula in the South. They surrounded the city Leningrad, and came within about 25 miles of Moscow. In November the enemy actually entered the suburbs. But Soviet resistance (strong despite heavy losses) brought the invasion to a halt. During the winter a Russian counterattack pushed the Germans back from Moscow and saved the capital.

International Relations in 1941-1942.

In August 1941 the USSR and England brought the troops in Iran. Soviets in the North, England in the South. Its measures prevented invasion of Germany to Iran. Through the Iran, the SU provided by military equipment and raw materials from the USA and England.

- On December 7, 1941 Japanese army attacked the American fleet in Pearl Harbor. On December 8, 1941 the USA declared war on Japan. On December 11, Germany and Italy declared war on the USA. Great Britain and the USA then established the Combined Chiefs of Staff, headquartered in Washington, to direct Anglo-American military operations.

- On January 1, 1942, representatives of 26 nations met in Washington and signed the Declaration on the United Nations, pledging themselves to the principles of the Atlantic Charter and promising not to make a separate peace with their common enemies.

- Anglo-American ideas about what the postwar world should be like were expressed by Roosevelt and Churchill at their meeting of the coast of Newfoundland in August 1941. This was a general statement of goals:

a) Restoration of the sovereignty and self-government of nations conquered by Hitler;

b) Free access to world trade and resources;

c) Cooperation to improve living standards and economic security;

d) Peace that would ensure freedom from fear and want stop to use of force and aggression as instruments of national policy, what Roosevelt had earlier called “The Four Freedoms”.

The main problems in 1942-1943 was opening of the Second Front. Churchill declared the opening Second Front impossible in 1942, because of offensive in Africa against General Erwin Roomel’s Africa Korps. In May 1943, Roomel’s army surrendered. But in 1943 the Second Front wasn’t opened too. The German forces launched a second offensive in the summer of 1942. This attack concentrated on southern part of the front, aiming at the Caucasus and vital oil fields around the Caspian Sea. At Stalingrad on the Volga River the Germans were stopped Hitler refused to allow the strategic retreat urged by his generals. As a result, the Soviet forces crossed the river north and south of the city and surrounded 22 German divisions. On January 31, 1943 the German commander Friedrich Paulus surrendered the remnants of his army. From then on the Soviets were almost always on the offensive. In 1943, instead opening of the Second Front in France, Allies landed in Italy. Allied armies under George C.Patton invaded Sicily from Africa in July 1943. Moving from Sicily, the Allied Armies invaded the Italian mainland in September. Benito Mussolini had already fallen from power, and his successor, Marshal Pietro Badoglio, surrendered. In September 1943 Italy surrendered.

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