Info about Russia
Russia History in the World Wars
When the World War I started, Russia was not in a very comfortable place as the defeats of the Russian-Japanese War, The Crimean War and the Bosnia Crisis were recent memories. As a result, tzar Nicholas II felt obliged to enter the war in 1914.
The intention of Russia was to sustain serbia against Hungary, but this also ment that Germany was its opponent. Although Russia joined the war with the biggest army that reached about five million soldiers, these were nor prepared enough, nor armed satissfactorily.
The first battle that proved to be extremely important was that from Tannenberg. First, Germans seemed to take the lead in the battle as they were better organized. Half of the Russian forces were butchered, but then Russia regained some terrain. However, the final result was another defeat for Russia.
At this moment, Russia was unprotected in Poland and that meant ammunition could not reach the Russian soldiers. One more thing that could not be transported from one place to another was food. In 1915, Russia’s situation was quite desperate and hunger was a common thing all over its territory, although food resources were available at farms.
Nicholas II took all the responsibily of war over himself, so the people were even more neglected. That also meant all the victories and defeats were directly related to him. Things never got better for Russia duirng World War I, so when it ended, in 1916, Russia had to pay a lot for war losses, never taking into consideration all the lives lost. Moreover, in 1917, Nicholas II as well as his son had to abdicate.
Although the Nazists never liked the Russians, a non-agression pact was necessary so that each nation could make its own conquest during the war, so this was signed on 23 August 1943. Russia used it and first attacked Finland. And in 1940 Finland surrended. The Baltic stated were next.
In 1941, URSS signed another pact this time with Japan, that assured neutrality.
In the same year, after defeating almost the whole Europe, Germany started the attack against URSS. Soon afterwards, Italy and Romania also declared war to Russia, followed by Finland, Hungary and Slovakia.
Germany sieged Leningrad, which will remain in this situation until 1944 and then marshed to Moscow. However, in this time, URSS got some help from USA. When Germany renounced at this attack, the Soviet troops counterattacked and in 1943, 90,000 Germa soldiers surrended at Stalingrad. This was the point when the result of the war was decided.
While the Western Allies started an attack in the occupied France, Russia started another one in the East.. In 1943, 23 April the URSS troops reached Berlin and then met with The Allies at the Elbe River. While the Soviet were on the streets of Berlin, Adolf Hitler committed suicide.
On May2, 1945 the war in Europe was over, but the Soviet troops also took part in the battle against Japan, helping USA winning the Pacific war.
Soon, the . Cold War was about to begin.