USSR+7

=USSR 7= =Annie Acevedo, Jasmine Diaz, Melba Gynes, Mariah Castro= =__ The Soviet Union __= -The Nazi-Soviet Pact The "Stalin-Hitler Pact." After being rebuffed by his attempts to form a containment policy with France and Britain against Germany, Stalin agreed to this treaty in order to gain time to rearm the U.S.S.R. The most important provision of this agreement was the Russian acceptance of and participation in the German partition of Poland. Here, Russian Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov signs the pact with Germany on August 23, 1939 as Stalin looks on.

A French cartoon on the Stalin-Hitler pact: "So, you'll give us your roubles, yes?" Stalin embraces Goering and Hitler, who are depicted as prostitutes. The alliance between two countries so ideologically at odds came as a profound shock to the rest of Europe.

-The German Invasion German military and police authorities intended to wage a war of annihilation against the Communist state as well as the Jews of the Soviet Union, whom they characterized as forming the "racial basis" for the Soviet state.the German domination of Europe reached its furthest geographical extension.** -German treatment of Soviet citizens and soldiers **One motivation for the German** [|**invasion of the Soviet Union**] **was the desire to acquire //Lebensraum// (living space) for the German people to colonize, at the expense of the Russians, Belorussians, Ukrainians, and Baltic peoples.** -Battles of Moscow, Leningrad, and Stalingrad [] battle of stalingrad was the turning point on the [|Eastern Front] the war also gave the [|Soviets] a psychological lift and the military initiative.
 * annie: Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 in the largest German military operation of World War II.

. -Stalin’s leadership -Soviet treatment of German prisoners -The race to Berlin against the Americans

melba:www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007183
 * //German policy on the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war (POWs) was determined by Nazi ideology. German political and military leaders regarded Soviet POWs not only as racially less valuable but as potential enemies, obstacles in the German conquest of 'living space." The Nazi regime claimed that it was under no obligation for the humane care of prisoners of war from the Red Army because the Soviet Union had not ratified the 1929 Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War, nor had it specifically declared its commitment to the 1907 Hague Convention on the Rules of War. Technically both nations, therefore, were bound only by the general international law of war as it had developed in modern times. Yet even under that law, prisoners of war were to be protected

Soviet prisoners of war were the first victims of the Nazi policy of mass starvation in the east. In August 1941, the German army set a ration of just 2,200 calories per day for working Soviet prisoners of war...Many Soviet prisoners of war received at most a ration of only 700 calories a day. Within a few weeks the result of this "subsistence" ration, as the German army termed it, was death by starvation....The Germans made little provision to shelter most of the prisoners they took from the Soviet military. Eventually the Germans established makeshift camps but the lack of proper food, clothing, and shelter took a terrible toll. Often the prisoners had to dig holes in the ground as improvised shelter from the elements... //**

mariah: