After the Munich Agreement, the Soviet Union pursued a rapprochement with Nazi Germany. On 23 August 1939 the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with Germany which included a secret protocol that divided Eastern Europe into German and Soviet “spheres of influence“, anticipating potential “territorial and political rearrangements” of these countries. Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, starting World War II. The Soviets invaded eastern Poland on 17 September. Following the Winter War with Finland, the Soviets were ceded territories by Finland. This was followed by annexations of the Baltic states and parts of Romania.

On 22 June 1941, Hitler launched an invasion of the Soviet Union with the largest invasion force in history, leading to some of the largest battles and most horrific atrocities. Operation Barbarossa comprised three army groups. The city of Leningrad was besieged while other major cities fell to the Germans during the invasion. Despite initial successes, the German offensive halted to a stop in the Battle of Moscow, and the Soviets launched a counteroffensive, pushing the Germans back. The failure of Operation Barbarossa reversed the fortunes of Germany. Stalin was confident that the Allied war machine would eventually defeat Germany. The Soviet Union repulsed Axis attacks, such as in the Battle of Stalingrad and the Battle of Kursk, which marked a turning point in the war. The Western Allies provided support to the Soviets in the form of Lend-Lease as well as air and naval support. Stalin met with Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt at the Tehran Conference and discussed a two-front war against Germany and the future of Europe after the war. The Soviets launched successful offensives to regain territorial losses and began a push to Berlin. The Germans unconditionally surrendered in May 1945 after Berlin fell.

The bulk of Soviet fighting took place on the Eastern Front—including the Continuation War with Finland—but it also invaded Iran in August 1941 with the British, and the Soviets later entered the war against Japan in August 1945, which began with an invasion of Manchuria. The Soviets had border conflicts with Japan up to 1939 before signing a non-aggression pact with Japan in 1941. Stalin had agreed with the Western Allies to enter the war against Japan at the Tehran Conference in 1943 and at the Yalta Conference in February 1945 once Germany was defeated. The entry of the Soviet Union in the war against Japan along with the atomic bombings by the United States led to Japan to surrender, marking the end of World War II.

The Soviet Union suffered the greatest number of casualties in the war, losing more than 20 million citizens, about a third of all World War II casualties. The full demographic loss to the Soviet people was even greater.The German Generalplan Ost aimed to create more Lebensraum (lit. ’living space’) for Germany through extermination. An estimated 3.5 million Soviet prisoners of war died in German captivity as a result of deliberate mistreatment and atrocities, and millions of civilians, including Soviet Jews, were killed in the Holocaust. However, at the expense of a large sacrifice, the Soviet Union emerged as a global superpower.^[6] The Soviets installed dependent communist governments in Eastern Europe, and tensions with the United States became known as the Cold War.

Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact

Main articles: Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and Soviet–German relations before 1941

During the 1930s, Soviet foreign minister Maxim Litvinov emerged as a leading voice for the official Soviet policy of collective security with the Western powers against Nazi Germany. In 1935, Litvinov negotiated treaties of mutual assistance with France and with Czechoslovakia with the aim of containing Hitler’s expansion.^[8] After the Munich Agreement, which gave parts of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany, the Western democracies’ policy of appeasement led the Soviet Union to reorient its foreign policy towards a rapprochement with Germany. On 3 May 1939, Stalin replaced Litvinov, who was closely identified with the anti-German position, with Vyacheslav Molotov.

In August 1939, Stalin accepted Hitler’s proposal into a non-aggression pact with Germany, negotiated by the foreign ministers Vyacheslav Molotov for the Soviets and Joachim von Ribbentrop for the Germans. Officially a non-aggression treaty only, an appended secret protocol, also reached on 23 August, divided the whole of eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence. The USSR was promised the eastern part of Poland, then primarily populated by Ukrainians and Belarusians, in case of its dissolution, and Germany recognised Latvia, Estonia and Finland as parts of the Soviet sphere of influence,^[11] with Lithuania added in a second secret protocol in September 1939. Another clause of the treaty was that Bessarabia, then part of Romania, was to be joined to the Moldovan SSR, and become the Moldovan SSR under control of Moscow.

The pact was reached two days after the breakdown of Soviet military talks with British and French representatives in August 1939 over a potential Franco-Anglo-Soviet alliance. Political discussions had been suspended on 2 August, when Molotov stated that they could not be resumed until progress was made in military talks late in August, after the talks had stalled over guarantees for the Baltic states, while the military talks upon which Molotov insisted started on 11 August. At the same time, Germany—with whom the Soviets had started secret negotiations on 29 July– argued that it could offer the Soviets better terms than Britain and France, with Ribbentrop insisting, “there was no problem between the Baltic and the Black Sea that could not be solved between the two of us.” German officials stated that, unlike Britain, Germany could permit the Soviets to continue their developments unmolested, and that “there is one common element in the ideology of Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union: opposition to the capitalist democracies of the West”. By that time, Molotov had obtained information regarding Anglo-German negotiations and a pessimistic report from the Soviet ambassador in France.

After disagreement regarding Stalin’s demand to move Red Army troops through Poland and Romania (which Poland and Romania opposed),on 21 August, the Soviets proposed adjournment of military talks using the pretext that the absence of the senior Soviet personnel at the talks interfered with the autumn manoeuvres of the Soviet forces, though the primary reason was the progress being made in the Soviet-German negotiations. That same day, Stalin received assurance that Germany would approve secret protocols to the proposed non-aggression pact that would grant the Soviets land in Poland, the Baltic states, Finland and Romania, after which Stalin telegrammed Hitler that night that the Soviets were willing to sign the pact and that he would receive Ribbentrop on 23 August. Regarding the larger issue of collective security, some historians state that one reason that Stalin decided to abandon the doctrine was the shaping of his views of France and Britain by their entry into the Munich Agreement and the subsequent failure to prevent the German occupation of Czechoslovakia. Stalin may also have viewed the pact as gaining time in an eventual war with Hitler in order to reinforce the Soviet military and shifting Soviet borders westwards, which would be militarily beneficial in such a war.

Stalin and Ribbentrop spent most of the night of the pact’s signing trading friendly stories about world affairs and cracking jokes (a rarity for Ribbentrop) about Britain’s weakness, and the pair even joked about how the Anti-Comintern Pact principally scared “British shopkeepers.” They further traded toasts, with Stalin proposing a toast to Hitler’s health and Ribbentrop proposing a toast to Stalin.

The division of Eastern Europe and other invasions

On 1 September 1939, the German invasion of its agreed upon portion of Poland started the Second World War.^[9] On 17 September the Red Army invaded eastern Poland and occupied the Polish territory assigned to it by the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, followed by co-ordination with German forces in Poland.Eleven days later, the secret protocol of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was modified, allotting Germany a larger part of Poland, while ceding most of Lithuania to the Soviet Union. The Soviet portions lay east of the so-called Curzon Line, an ethnographic frontier between Russia and Poland drawn up by a commission of the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.

After taking around 300,000 Polish prisoners in 1939 and early 1940, NKVD officers conducted lengthy interrogations of the prisoners in camps that were, in effect, a selection process to determine who would be killed.On March 5, 1940, pursuant to a note to Stalin from Lavrenty Beria, the members of the Soviet Politburo (including Stalin) signed and 22,000 military and intellectuals were executed – They were labelled “nationalists and counterrevolutionaries”, kept at camps and prisons in occupied western Ukraine and Belarus. This became known as the Katyn massacre. Major-General Vasili M. Blokhin, chief executioner for the NKVD, personally shot 6,000 of the captured Polish officers in 28 consecutive nights, which remains one of the most organized and protracted mass murders by a single individual on record. During his 29-year career Blokhin shot an estimated 50,000 people, making him ostensibly the most prolific official executioner in recorded world history.

In August 1939, Stalin declared that he was going to “solve the Baltic problem, and thereafter, forced Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to sign treaties for “mutual assistance.”

In November 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Finland. The Finnish defensive effort defied Soviet expectations, and after stiff losses, as well as the unsuccessful attempt to install a puppet government in Helsinki, Stalin settled for an interim peace granting the Soviet Union parts of Karelia and Salla (9% of Finnish territory). Soviet official casualty counts in the war exceeded 200,000, while Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev later claimed the casualties may have been one million. After this campaign, Stalin took actions to modify training and improve propaganda efforts in the Soviet military.

In mid-June 1940, when international attention was focused on the German invasion of France, Soviet NKVD troops raided border posts in the Baltic countries.Stalin claimed that the mutual assistance treaties had been violated, and gave six-hour ultimatums for new governments to be formed in each country, including lists of persons for cabinet posts provided by the Kremlin. Thereafter, state administrations were liquidated and replaced by Soviet cadres, followed by mass repression in which 34,250 Latvians, 75,000 Lithuanians and almost 60,000 Estonians were deported or killed. Elections for parliament and other offices were held with single candidates listed, the official results of which showed pro-Soviet candidates approval by 92.8 percent of the voters of Estonia, 97.6 percent of the voters in Latvia and 99.2 percent of the voters in Lithuania. The resulting peoples’ assemblies immediately requested admission into the USSR, which was granted. In late June 1940, Stalin directed the Soviet annexation of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, proclaiming this formerly Romanian territory part of the Moldavian SSR. But in annexing northern Bukovina, Stalin had gone beyond the agreed limits. The invasion of Bukovina violated the pact, as it went beyond the Soviet sphere of influence agreed with Germany.

After the Tripartite Pact was signed by Axis Powers Germany, Japan and Italy, in October 1940, Stalin personally wrote to Ribbentrop about entering an agreement regarding a “permanent basis” for their “mutual interests.” Stalin sent Molotov to Berlin to negotiate the terms for the Soviet Union to join the Axis and potentially enjoy the spoils of the pact. At Stalin’s direction, Molotov insisted on Soviet interest in Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Greece, though Stalin had earlier unsuccessfully personally lobbied Turkish leaders to not sign a mutual assistance pact with Britain and France. Ribbentrop asked Molotov to sign another secret protocol with the statement: “The focal point of the territorial aspirations of the Soviet Union would presumably be centered south of the territory of the Soviet Union in the direction of the Indian Ocean.” Molotov took the position that he could not take a “definite stand” on this without Stalin’s agreement. Stalin did not agree with the suggested protocol, and negotiations broke down. In response to a later German proposal, Stalin stated that the Soviets would join the Axis if Germany foreclosed acting in the Soviet’s sphere of influence. Shortly thereafter, Hitler issued a secret internal directive related to his plan to invade the Soviet Union.

In an effort to demonstrate peaceful intentions toward Germany, on 13 April 1941, Stalin oversaw the signing of a neutrality pact with Japan. Since the Treaty of Portsmouth, Russia had been competing with Japan for spheres of influence in the Far East, where there was a power vacuum with the collapse of Imperial China. Although similar to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with the Third Reich, that Soviet Union signed Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact with the Empire of Japan, to maintain the national interest of Soviet’s sphere of influence in the European continent as well as the Far East conquest, whilst among the few countries in the world diplomatically recognizing Manchukuo, and allowed the rise of German invasion in Europe and Japanese aggression in Asia, but the Japanese defeat of Battles of Khalkhin Gol was the forceful factor to the temporary settlement before Soviet invasion of Manchuria in 1945 as the result of Yalta Conference. While Stalin had little faith in Japan’s commitment to neutrality, he felt that the pact was important for its political symbolism, to reinforce a public affection for Germany, before military confrontation when Hitler controlled Western Europe and for Soviet Union to take control Eastern Europe. Stalin felt that there was a growing split in German circles about whether Germany should initiate a war with the Soviet Union, though Stalin was not aware of Hitler’s further military ambition.

Termination of the pact[edit]

Further information: Operation Barbarossa and Continuation War

During the early morning of 22 June 1941, Hitler terminated the pact by launching Operation Barbarossa, the Axis invasion of Soviet-held territories and the Soviet Union that began the war on the Eastern Front. Before the invasion, Stalin thought that Germany would not attack the Soviet Union until Germany had defeated Britain. At the same time, Soviet generals warned Stalin that Germany had concentrated forces on its borders. Two highly placed Soviet spies in Germany, “Starshina” and “Korsikanets”, had sent dozens of reports to Moscow containing evidence of preparation for a German attack. Further warnings came from Richard Sorge, a Soviet spy in Tokyo working undercover as a German journalist who had penetrated deep into the German Embassy in Tokyo by seducing the wife of General Eugen Ott, the German ambassador to Japan.

Seven days before the invasion, a Soviet spy in Berlin, part of the Rote Kapelle (Red Orchestra) spy network, warned Stalin that the movement of German divisions to the borders was to wage war on the Soviet Union. Five days before the attack, Stalin received a report from a spy in the German Air Ministry that “all preparations by Germany for an armed attack on the Soviet Union have been completed, and the blow can be expected at any time.” In the margin, Stalin wrote to the people’s commissar for state security, “you can send your ‘source’ from the headquarters of German aviation to his mother. This is not a ‘source’ but a dezinformator.” Although Stalin increased Soviet western border forces to 2.7 million men and ordered them to expect a possible German invasion, he did not order a full-scale mobilisation of forces to prepare for an attack.Stalin felt that a mobilization might provoke Hitler to prematurely begin to wage war against the Soviet Union, which Stalin wanted to delay until 1942 in order to strengthen Soviet forces.

In the initial hours after the German attack began, Stalin hesitated, wanting to ensure that the German attack was sanctioned by Hitler, rather than the unauthorized action of a rogue general.Accounts by Nikita Khrushchev and Anastas Mikoyan claim that, after the invasion, Stalin retreated to his dacha in despair for several days and did not participate in leadership decisions. But, some documentary evidence of orders given by Stalin contradicts these accounts, leading historians such as Roberts to speculate that Khrushchev’s account is inaccurate.

Stalin soon quickly made himself a Marshal of the Soviet Union, then country’s highest military rank and Supreme Commander in Chief of the Soviet Armed Forces aside from being Premier and General-Secretary of the ruling Communist Party of the Soviet Union that made him the leader of the nation, as well as the People’s Commissar for Defence, which is equivalent to the U.S. Secretary of War at that time and the U.K. Minister of Defence and formed the State Defense Committee to coordinate military operations with himself also as chairman. He chaired the Stavka, the highest defense organisation of the country. Meanwhile, Marshal Georgy Zhukov was named to be the Deputy Supreme Commander in Chief of the Soviet Armed Forces.

In the first three weeks of the invasion, as the Soviet Union tried to defend itself against large German advances, it suffered 750,000 casualties, and lost 10,000 tanks and 4,000 aircraft.^[70] In July 1941, Stalin completely reorganized the Soviet military, placing himself directly in charge of several military organizations. This gave him complete control of his country’s entire war effort; more control than any other leader in World War II

A pattern soon emerged where Stalin embraced the Red Army‘s strategy of conducting multiple offensives, while the Germans overran each of the resulting small, newly gained grounds, dealing the Soviets severe casualties.^[72] The most notable example of this was the Battle of Kiev, where over 600,000 Soviet troops were quickly killed, captured or missing.

By the end of 1941, the Soviet military had suffered 4.3 million casualties and the Germans had captured 3.0 million Soviet prisoners, 2.0 million of whom died in German captivity by February 1942. German forces had advanced c. 1,700 kilometres, and maintained a linearly-measured front of 3,000 kilometres. The Red Army put up fierce resistance during the war’s early stages. Even so, according to Glantz, they were plagued by an ineffective defence doctrine against well-trained and experienced German forces, despite possessing some modern Soviet equipment, such as the KV-1 and T-34 tanks.

Soviets stop the Germans

Further information: Eastern Front (World War II), Battle of Moscow, Battle of Stalingrad, and Azerbaijan in World War II

While the Germans made huge advances in 1941, killing millions of Soviet soldiers, at Stalin’s direction the Red Army directed sizable resources to prevent the Germans from achieving one of their key strategic goals, the attempted capture of Leningrad. They held the city at the cost of more than a million Soviet soldiers in the region and more than a million civilians, many of whom died from starvation.

While the Germans pressed forward, Stalin was confident of an eventual Allied victory over Germany. In September 1941, Stalin told British diplomats that he wanted two agreements: (1) a mutual assistance/aid pact and (2) a recognition that, after the war, the Soviet Union would gain the territories in countries that it had taken pursuant to its division of Eastern Europe with Hitler in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. The British agreed to assistance but refused to agree to the territorial gains, which Stalin accepted months later as the military situation had deteriorated somewhat by mid-1942. On 6 November 1941, Stalin rallied his generals in a speech given underground in Moscow, telling them that the German blitzkrieg would fail because of weaknesses in the German rear in Nazi-occupied Europe and the underestimation of the strength of the Red Army, and that the German war effort would crumble against the Anglo-American-Soviet “war engine”.

Correctly calculating that Hitler would direct efforts to capture Moscow, Stalin concentrated his forces to defend the city, including numerous divisions transferred from Soviet eastern sectors after he determined that Japan would not attempt an attack in those areas. By December, Hitler’s troops had advanced to within 25 kilometres (16 mi) of the Kremlin in Moscow. On 5 December, the Soviets launched a counteroffensive, pushing German troops back c. 80 kilometres (50 mi) from Moscow in what was the first major defeat of the Wehrmacht in the war.

In early 1942, the Soviets began a series of offensives labelled “Stalin’s First Strategic Offensives”. The counteroffensive bogged down, in part due to mud from rain in the spring of 1942. Stalin’s attempt to retake Kharkov in the Ukraine ended in the disastrous encirclement of Soviet forces, with over 200,000 Soviet casualties suffered. Stalin attacked the competence of the generals involved.General Georgy Zhukov and others subsequently revealed that some of those generals had wished to remain in a defensive posture in the region, but Stalin and others had pushed for the offensive. Some historians have doubted Zhukov’s account.

At the same time, Hitler was worried about American popular support after the U.S. entry into the war following the Attack on Pearl Harbor, and a potential Anglo-American invasion on the Western Front in 1942 (which did not occur until the summer of 1944). He changed his primary goal from an immediate victory in the East, to the more long-term goal of securing the southern Soviet Union to protect oil fields vital to the long-term German war effort.While Red Army generals correctly judged the evidence that Hitler would shift his efforts south, Stalin thought it a flanking move in the German attempt to take Moscow.

The German southern campaign began with a push to capture the Crimea, which ended in disaster for the Red Army. Stalin publicly criticised his generals’ leadership. In their southern campaigns, the Germans took 625,000 Red Army prisoners in July and August 1942 alone.At the same time, in a meeting in Moscow, Churchill privately told Stalin that the British and Americans were not yet prepared to make an amphibious landing against a fortified Nazi-held French coast in 1942, and would direct their efforts to invading German-held North Africa. He pledged a campaign of massive strategic bombing, to include German civilian targets.^[84]

Estimating that the Russians were “finished,” the Germans began another southern operation in the autumn of 1942, the Battle of Stalingrad. Hitler insisted upon splitting German southern forces in a simultaneous siege of Stalingrad and an offensive against Baku on the Caspian Sea. Stalin directed his generals to spare no effort to defend Stalingrad. Although the Soviets suffered in excess of more than 2 million casualties at Stalingrad,their victory over German forces, including the encirclement of 290,000 Axis troops, marked a turning point in the war.

Within a year after Barbarossa, Stalin reopened the churches in the Soviet Union. He may have wanted to motivate the majority of the population who had Christian beliefs. By changing the official policy of the party and the state towards religion, he could engage the Church and its clergy in mobilising the war effort. On 4 September 1943, Stalin invited the metropolitans Sergius, Alexy and Nikolay to the Kremlin. He proposed to reestablish the Moscow Patriarchate, which had been suspended since 1925, and elect the Patriarch. On 8 September 1943, Metropolitan Sergius was elected Patriarch. One account said that Stalin’s re

Our volunteer online buddies do like to keep team work going, with a little competitiveness. Tuesday, I am usually over the starting line first, but on this occasion, I happened to be last over the finishing line finishing. Oh dear!, Better luck next timework next time.

I had a nice walk around The Field at Churchill Playing Fields with my Dad this afternoon. It is the field behind Holywell Avenue in Monkseaton then we came straight home as you can see it was nice and sunny when we were out to.

Thank you to Bob Dennis for taking a picture of mine and Simon Schofield’s Learn My Way Awards. Also thank you to Vicki Peacock for signing mine and Simon’s awards to. Me and Simon are both really happy with our certificates and very proud after we did all the Learn My Way work on the computer.

Russia entered the first world war with the largest army in the world, standing at 1,400,000 soldiers; when fully mobilized the Russian army expanded to over 5,000,000 soldiers (though at the outset of war Russia could not arm all its soldiers, having a supply of 4.6 million rifles).

The Russian empire gradually entered World War I during the three days before July 28, 1914. This began with Austria-Hungary‘s declaration of war on Serbia, which was a Russian ally. Russia sent an ultimatum, via Saint Petersburg, to Vienna, warning Austria-Hungary not to attack Serbia. Following the invasion of Serbia, Russia began to mobilize the reserve army on the border of Austria-Hungary. Consequently, on July 31, Germany demanded Russian demobilization. There was no response, which resulted in the German declaration of war on Russia on the same day (August 1, 1914). Per its war plan, Germany disregarded Russia and moved first against France, declaring war on August 3. Germany sent its main armies through Belgium to surround Paris. The threat to Belgium caused Britain to declare war on Germany on August 4.The Ottoman Empire soon joined the Central Powers and fought Russia along their border.

Historians researching the causes of World War I have emphasized the role of Germany and Austria-Hungary. Scholarly consensus has typically minimized Russian involvement in the outbreak of this mass conflict. Key elements were Russia’s defence of Orthodox Serbia, its pan-Slavic roles, its treaty obligations with France, and its concern with protecting its status as a world power. However, historian Sean McMeekin emphasizes Russian plans to expand its empire southward and to seize Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) as an outlet to the Mediterranean Sea.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was assassinated by Bosnian Serbs on June 28, 1914, due to Austria-Hungary’s annexation of the mainly Slavic province. Though Austria-Hungary couldn’t find evidence that the Serbian state had sponsored this assassination, it issued an ultimatum to Serbia during the July Crisis one month later, assuming it would be rejected and thus lead to war. Austria-Hungary deemed Serbia deserving of punishment for the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Although Russia had no formal treaty obligation to Serbia, it stressed its desire to control the Balkans, having a long-term perspective toward gaining a military advantage over Germany and Austria-Hungary. Russia was incentivized to delay militarization, and most Russian leaders wanted to avoid war. However, Russia had yielded French support and feared that a failure to defend Serbia would harm Russian credibility, constituting a major political defeat in its goal of controlling the Balkans. Tsar Nicholas II mobilized Russian forces on July 30, 1914, to threaten Austria-Hungary if it invaded Serbia. Historian Christopher Clark believes that the “Russian general mobilization [of July 30] was one of the most momentous decisions of the August crisis“. The first general mobilization occurred before the German government declared a state of impending war.

Russia’s threats against Germany resulted in military action by German forces, which followed through with its mobilization and a declaration of war on August 1, 1914. At the outset of hostilities, Russian forces led offensives against Germany and Austria-Hungary.

Between 1873 and 1887, Russia was allied with Germany and Austria-Hungary in the League of the Three Emperors, and then with Germany in the 1887–1890 Reinsurance Treaty. Both collapsed because of the competing interests of Austria-Hungary and Russia in the Balkans. France took advantage of this, agreeing to the 1894 Franco-Russian Alliance, but Britain viewed Russia with deep suspicion because of the Great Game. In 1800, over 3,000 kilometres (1,900 mi) separated Russia and British India, but by 1902, it was lessened to 30 kilometres (19 mi) with Russian advances into Central Asia. The proximity threatened to bring the two powers into conflict along with the long-held Russian objective of gaining control of the Bosporus Straits, and with it access to the British-dominated Mediterranean Sea.

Britain’s isolation during the 1899–1902 Second Boer War and Russia being defeated in the 1905 Russo-Japanese War led both parties to seek allies. The Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907 settled disputes in Asia and allowed the establishment of the Triple Entente with France, which was largely informal. In 1908, Austria-Hungary annexed the former Ottoman province of Bosnia and Herzegovina, prompting the Russian response of the Balkan League to prevent further Austrian expansion.

In the 1912–1913 First Balkan War, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece captured most of the remaining Ottoman possessions in Europe. Disputes over their division resulted in the Second Balkan War, in which Bulgaria was comprehensively defeated by its former allies. This defeat turned Bulgaria into a revanchist local power, which fueled a second opportunity to fulfill its national aspirations. This left Serbia as the most important Russian ally in the region.

Russia’s industrial base and railway network had significantly improved since 1905, but from a relatively low base. In 1913, Nicholas II increased the Russian army of over 500,000 men. Although there was no formal alliance between Russia and Serbia, their close bilateral links provided Russia a route into the crumbling Ottoman Empire, where Germany also had significant interests. Combined with the increase in Russian military strength, Austria-Hungary and Germany felt threatened by Serbia’s expansion. When Austria invaded Serbia on July 28, 1914, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Sazonov viewed it as an Austro-German conspiracy to end Russian influence in the Balkans.

On July 30, Russia declared a general mobilization in support of Serbia. The next day, on August 1, 1914, Germany declared war on Russia, followed by Austria-Hungary on August 6. Russia and the Entente declared war on the Ottoman Empire in November 1914 after Ottoman warships bombarded the Black Sea port of Odesa in late October.

Most historians agree that Russia’s top military leadership was generally tremendously incompetent. Tsar Nicholas II made all final decisions but was repeatedly given conflicting advice by his peers, resulting in unsound decision-making throughout his time in power. He set up a seriously flawed organizational structure that proved inadequate for the high pressures and wartime’s instant demands. The British historian David Stevenson, for example, points to the “disastrous consequences of deficient civil-military liaison,” in which civilians and generals were not in contact with each other. The government was unaware of its fatal weaknesses and remained out of touch with public opinion. The Foreign Minister had to warn Nicholas that “unless he yielded to the popular demand and unsheathed the sword on Serbia’s behalf, he would run the risk of revolution and the loss of his throne.” Nicholas yielded but lost his throne. Stevenson concludes:

Russian decision-making in July 1914 was more truly a tragedy of miscalculation… a policy of deterrence that failed to deter. Yet, like Germany, it too rested on the assumption that war was possible without domestic breakdown and that it could be waged with a reasonable prospect of success. Russia was more vulnerable to social upheaval than any other power. Its socialists were more estranged from the existing order than those elsewhere in Europe, and a strike wave among the industrial workforce reached a crescendo with the general stoppage in St. Petersburg in July 1914.

Foreign Minister Sergei Sazonov was not a powerful figure in the events leading up to Russia’s entry into World War I, nor did he play a consequential role in Russia’s decisions following their entry. According to historian Thomas Otte, “Sazonov felt too insecure to advance his positions against stronger men… Tsar Nicholas II tended to yield rather than press home his views… At the critical stages of the July crisis, Sazonov was inconsistent and showed an uncertain grasp of international realities.”

French ambassador Maurice Paléologue quickly became influential by repeatedly promising France would go to war alongside Russia, which reflected the position of President Raymond Poincaré.

Serious planning for a future war was practically impossible because of the complex rivalries and priorities given to royalty. The main criteria for high command were linkage to the royalty rather than expertise. Though the General Staff had the expertise, it was often outweighed by the elite Imperial Guards, a favourite bastion of the aristocracy that prized throwing parades over planning large-scale military maneuvers. This led to the grand dukes inevitably gaining high command.

Russia depended heavily on the French alliance since a two-front war against Germany had a chance of being won, but not if Russia was alone. The French ambassador, Maurice Paléologue, despised Germany and saw that when war broke out, France and Russia had to be close allies against Germany. His approach agreed with French President Raymond Poincaré. Unconditional French support to Russia was promised in the unfolding crisis with Germany and Austria-Hungary. Historians debate whether Paléologue exceeded his instructions but agree that he failed to inform Paris of what was happening exactly, not warning that Russian mobilization might launch a world war.^[18][19][20]

Beginning of the war[edit]

On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo, and Tsar Nicholas II vacillated as to Russia’s course of action. A relatively-new factor influencing Russian policy was the growth of Pan-Slavism, which identified Russia’s duty to all Slavs, especially those who practiced [impulse shifted attention away from the Ottoman Empire and toward the threat posed to the Slavic people by Austria-Hungary. Serbia identified itself as the champion of the Pan-Slavic ideal, and Austria-Hungary planned to destroy Serbia for that reason. Nicholas wanted to defend Serbia, but not to fight a war with Germany. In a series of letters exchanged with Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany (the so-called “Willy–Nicky correspondence“), both cousins proclaimed their desire for peace, and each attempted to get the other to back down. Nicholas desired Russia’s mobilization to be only against Austria-Hungary to avoid war with Germany. The Kaiser, however, had pledged to support Austria-Hungary.

Nicky (Tsar Nicholas II) (right) with Willy (Kaiser Wilhelm) in 1905. Nicholas is wearing a German Army uniform, and Wilhelm is wearing that of a Russian hussar regiment.

On July 25, 1914, Nicholas decided to intervene in the Austro-Serbian conflict, a step toward general war. He put the Russian army on “alert” on July 25. Although it was not general mobilization, the German and Austro-Hungarian borders were threatened and looked like military preparation for war. However, the Russian Army had few workable plans and no contingency plans for a partial mobilization. On July 30, 1914, Nicholas took the fateful step of confirming the order for general mobilization, despite being very reluctant.

On July 28, Austria-Hungary formally declared war against Serbia. Count Witte told the French Ambassador Maurice Palaeologus that the Russian point of view considered the war to be madness, Slavic solidarity to be simply nonsense and nothing could be hoped by war.

Russian prisoners at the Battle of Tannenberg where German forces annihilated the Russian Second Army.

On July 30, Russia ordered general mobilization but maintained that it would not attack if peace talks began. Reacting to the discovery of Russian partial mobilization ordered on July 25, Germany announced its pre-mobilization posture, the imminent danger of war. Germany told Russia to demobilize within twelve hours. In St. Petersburg, at 7 p.m., the German ultimatum to Russia expired. The German ambassador to Russia met Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Sazonov, asked three times if Russia would reconsider, and delivered the note accepting Russia’s war challenge and declaring war on August 1. On August 6, Franz Joseph I of Austria signed the Austro-Hungarian declaration of war against Russia.

At the outbreak of war, each of the European powers began to publish selected, and sometimes misleading, compendia of diplomatic correspondence, seeking to establish justification for their own entry into the war and to cast blame on other actors. The first of these color books to appear was the German White Book which appeared on August 4, 1914, the same day as Britain’s war declaration. The British Blue Book came out two days later, followed by the Russian Orange Book in mid-August.

The outbreak of war on August 1, 1914, found Russia grossly unprepared.^[32] The Allies placed their faith in the Russian army. Its pre-war regular strength was 1,400,000, and mobilization added 3,100,000 reserves. In every other aspect, however, Russia was unprepared for war. Germany had ten times as much railway track per km², and Russian soldiers traveled an average of 1,290 kilometres (800 mi) to reach the front, but German soldiers traveled less than a quarter of that distance to get to the front. Russian heavy industry was not large enough to equip the massive armies that the Tsar could raise, and its reserves of munitions were small. While the German army in 1914 was better equipped than any other man-for-man, the Russian army was severely short on artillery pieces, shells, motorized transports, and boots.

Before the war, Russian planners had neglected the critical logistical issue of how the Allies could ship supplies and munitions to Russia. With the Baltic Sea barred by German U-boats and surface ships and the Dardanelles by the guns of Germany’s ally, the Ottoman Empire, Russia initially could receive help only via Archangel, which was frozen solid in winter, or via Vladivostok, which was over 6,400 kilometres (4,000 mi) from the front line. By 1915, a new rail line was begun, which gave access to the ice-free port of Murmansk by 1917.

The Russian High Command was severely weakened by the mutual contempt between War Minister Vladimir Sukhomlinov and Grand Duke Nicholas, who commanded the armies in the field. However, an immediate attack was ordered against the German province of East Prussia. The Germans efficiently mobilized there, defeating the two Russian armies that invaded. The Battle of Tannenberg, where the entire Russian Second Army was annihilated, cast an ominous shadow over the empire’s future. The loyal officers who lost were the very ones that were needed to protect the dynasty. The Russian armies had some success against both the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman Armies, but the German Army steadily pushed them back. In September 1914, to relieve pressure on France, the Russians were forced to halt a successful offensive against Austria-Hungary in Galicia to attack German-held Silesia.

The main Russian goal was focused on the Balkans and especially taking control of Constantinople (Istanbul). The Ottoman entry into the war opened up new opportunities, but Russia was too hard-pressed to exploit them. Instead, the government incited Britain and France to the action at Gallipoli, which failed badly. Russia then incited a rebellion by the Armenians, who were massacred in one of the great atrocities of the war, the Armenian genocide. The combination of poor preparation and poor planning destroyed the morale of Russian troops and set the stage for the collapse of the entire regime in early 1917.

Gradually, a war of attrition set in on the vast Eastern Front; the Russians were facing the combined forces of Germany and Austria-Hungary and suffered staggering losses. General Anton Denikin, retreating from Galicia wrote:

The German heavy artillery swept away whole lines of trenches and their defenders with them. We hardly replied. There was nothing with which we could reply. Our regiments, although completely exhausted, were beating off one attack after another by bayonet… Blood flowed unendingly, the ranks became thinner and thinner and thinner. The number of graves multiplied.

How things have changed, some for the better others not so well recieved. With digital services taking precedence over a wide range of diagnostics, Treatments and support services. We at Park View Project applaud all staff who go to great length this to keep our nation healthy. We like to think we do our little bit by supporting older and disabled people to use digital services and ensure access to the NHS is optimised.

This blog was made by Simon Schofield

My Mum took this photo of me Harry and Ellie on Saturday afternoon at Morpeth Park. It was also a nice sunny afternoon at The Park to.

I was received a certificate today that is from learn my way this is a picture of me holding my certificate.

Thank you to our friend at NTDF Marion for giving me the two old Wwe wrestling books from 2007 from when I was twenty one when I was in my early twenties with the two wrestling dvds inside them to. It was also a nice surprise that I was not expecting when I came in to NTDF and Park View Project today.