[265] Russian peasants began fleeing ahead of the advancing German units, burning their harvested crops, driving their cattle away, and destroying buildings in their villages as part of a scorched-earth policy designed to deny to the Nazi war machine needed supplies and foodstuffs. Piri Reis was a nephew. [67] As a result of the pact, Germany and the Soviet Union maintained reasonably strong diplomatic relations for two years and fostered an important economic relationship. [100][101] This belief later led to disputes between Hitler and several German senior officers, including Heinz Guderian, Gerhard Engel, Fedor von Bock and Franz Halder, who believed the decisive victory could only be delivered at Moscow. [104] In preparation for the attack, Hitler had secretly moved upwards of 3 million German troops and approximately 690,000 Axis soldiers to the Soviet border regions. Glantz and House use the expression "The Great Patriotic War", which is the Soviet name for the Second World Warbut this term represents by and large, the contest between the U.S.S.R. and Nazi Germany. [131], During Joseph Stalin's Great Purge in the late-1930s, which had not ended by the time of the German invasion on 22 June 1941, much of the officer corps of the Red Army was executed or imprisoned and their replacements, appointed by Stalin for political reasons, often lacked military competence. 19411942 invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany, Germany's allies, in total, provided a significant number of troops and material to the front. The northern section, which contained the army group's only panzer group, was in southern Poland right next to Army Group Center, and the southern section was in Romania. Troops led by this commander gain a 10% chance to reduce all damage taken on the next turn. It is assumed that he was born in 1122. But all the same there was a definite delay in the opening of our Russian Campaign. The Finns[n] had pushed southeast on both sides of Lake Ladoga to reach the old Finnish-Soviet frontier. ", Flooding was so bad that Guderian wrote: "The Balkans Campaign had been concluded with all the speed desired, and the troops there engaged which were now needed for Russia were withdrawn according to plan and very fast. [87] Hillgruber argued that because these assumptions were shared by the entire military elite, Hitler was able to push through with a "war of annihilation" that would be waged in the most inhumane fashion possible with the complicity of "several military leaders", even though it was quite clear that this would be in violation of all accepted norms of warfare.
