War and Superpower Status

The border guards along the Soviet frontier die before anyone in Moscow understands what is happening. German artillery opens fire at 3:15 AM, hitting communication lines, rail junctions, and airfields simultaneously across the entire western edge of the Soviet empire. By dawn, hundreds of Soviet aircraft are burning on runways, destroyed before they could take off.

Soviet Union — flag, hammer-and-sickle, and skyline of Moscow at dusk.

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Contents — 7 sections

OPENING SCENE
OPERATION BARBAROSSA: THE LARGEST INVASION IN HISTORY
THE SOVIET WAR ECONOMY: HOW A NATION MOVED ITS INDUSTRY EAST
FROM KURSK TO BERLIN: THE LONG ROAD TO VICTORY
THE COLD WAR BEGINS: YALTA TO THE BERLIN BLOCKADE
THE NUCLEAR ARMS RACE AND THE SPACE COMPETITION
THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS: THIRTEEN DAYS AT THE EDGE

OPENING SCENE

In Moscow, Joseph Stalin receives the news and, according to accounts gathered by historian Dmitri Volkogonov, goes silent. He does not address the nation for eleven days. Generals phone his dacha; he refuses to take calls. The man who had purged the Red Army of its most experienced officers in 1937 and 1938, who had dismissed repeated intelligence warnings of a German invasion as British provocation, now sits paralyzed while his country burns.

The shock is not simply military. Soviet soldiers on the western front receive no coherent orders. Entire armies are encircled within days. In the first six weeks of Operation Barbarossa, the Soviet Union loses 600,000 soldiers as prisoners alone, and total casualties run into the millions. The scale of collapse is without precedent in modern warfare.

The country that emerges from this catastrophe four years later bears little resemblance to the one that stumbled into war on that June morning. The journey from paralysis to superpower is the subject of Day 3.

LOCKED AFTER THE PREVIEW

What's in the rest of Day 3

OPERATION BARBAROSSA: THE LARGEST INVASION IN HISTORY
THE SOVIET WAR ECONOMY: HOW A NATION MOVED ITS INDUSTRY EAST
FROM KURSK TO BERLIN: THE LONG ROAD TO VICTORY
THE COLD WAR BEGINS: YALTA TO THE BERLIN BLOCKADE
THE NUCLEAR ARMS RACE AND THE SPACE COMPETITION
THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS: THIRTEEN DAYS AT THE EDGE

Day 4 explores what life actually looked like inside the Soviet Union — from the apartment blocks built in a decade to the musicians and writers who tested the limits of what the state would allow.

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Day 4 explores what life actually looked like inside the Soviet Union — from the apartment blocks built in a decade to the musicians and writers who tested the limits of what the state would allow.

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War and Superpower Status

OPENING SCENE

Red Army soldiers with PPSh-41 submachine guns during street fighting in Stalingrad, November 1942. Combined casualties at Stalingrad exceeded two million, making it the bloodiest battle in recorded history.RakaAditya / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0

What's in the rest of Day 3

OPERATION BARBAROSSA: THE LARGEST INVASION IN HISTORY

THE SOVIET WAR ECONOMY: HOW A NATION MOVED ITS INDUSTRY EAST

FROM KURSK TO BERLIN: THE LONG ROAD TO VICTORY

THE COLD WAR BEGINS: YALTA TO THE BERLIN BLOCKADE

THE NUCLEAR ARMS RACE AND THE SPACE COMPETITION

THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS: THIRTEEN DAYS AT THE EDGE

Day 4 explores what life actually looked like inside the Soviet Union — from the apartment blocks built in a decade to the musicians and writers who tested the limits of what the state would allow.