How effective a leader was Josef Stalin during World War II 

Essay credit: Conor Gleeson. Graded 82/100

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When World War II ended in 1945 few doubted that the victor´s laurels belonged mainly to Josef Stalin. Under his leadership, the Soviet Union had just won the war of the century, and that victory was closely identified with his role as the country´s supreme commander. (4)

World War II was a global conflict of immense proportions in which 50 million people died, but at its heart was the power struggle between Stalin and Hitler on the Eastern Front. The war began with Hitler´s attack on Poland in September 1939 and was followed by the stunning German defeat of France in the Summer of 1940. Not until June 1941 did Hitler launch his invasion of the Soviet Union, a state that posed a strategic threat to German domination of Europe as well as being an ideological rival and racial enemy. (4)

At first, all went well for Operation Barbarossa, the codename for the German invasion, as Hitler´s penetrated deep into Russia, reaching the outskirts of Leningrad and Moscow by the end of 1941. In 1942, however, the Soviets turned the tables on the Germans and won a great victory at Stalingrad that spelt doom for the Wehrmacht. In 1943 and 1944, the Red Army expelled the Germans from the rest of Russia and then began an invasion of Germany that culminated in the capture of Berlin in May. (5)

Eighty per cent of all the combat of World War II took place on the Eastern Front. The Germans suffered ten million casualties, 85% of their total wartime losses, including three million dead, while Hitler´s Axis allies lost another million. The Red Army destroyed 48,000 enemy tanks, 167,000 guns and 77,000 aircrafts. In comparison, the contribution of Stalin´s western allies to the defeat of Germany was of secondary importance. Even after the Anglo-American invasion of France in June 1944, there were still twice as many German soldiers serving on the Eastern Front as in the West. On the other hand, Britain and the US did supply a great quantity of material aid to the USSR that greatly facilitated the Soviet Union over Germany. Even so, victory did not come cheap. Red Army casualties totalled sixteen million. Material damage to the Soviet Union was equally staggering. Six million houses, 98,000 farms, 32,000 factories, 82,000 schools, 43,000 libraries, 6,000 hospitals, and thousands of miles of roads and railways were destroyed. In total, the Soviet Union lost 25% of its national wealth and 14% of its population as a direct result of the war. (8)

When the Red Army captured Berlin, the full extent of Soviet war damage was far from clear, but there was no doubt that the Soviets had fought a brutal war against a barbaric enemy and that the cost had been astronomical. Some saw the Soviet victory as one which was won at too great of a cost. Others worried that German domination of Europe had been replaced by a Soviet and communist threat to the continent. However, most people in the allied world, thought that whatever costs and problems Stalin´s victory brought, it was still preferable to Hitler´s dream of a global racist empire. Stalin was widely seen as Europe´s saviour from this fate, and when in June 1945 he was proclaimed “generalissimus”, the superlative general, it seemed only appropriate. (8)

Stalin shared the miliary glory with his generals, above all with his deputy supreme commander, Marshal Georgi Zhukov. As supreme commander Stalin decided on military strategy and supervised all the big battles and operations. As People´s Commissar for Defence and chairman of the State Defence Council he was responsible for the country´s mobilisation for total war. As head of government, Stalin represented the USSR at summit meetings with its British and American allies and corresponded on a regular basis with Winston Churchill and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. As leader of the Communist Party, it fell to him to rally the Soviet people for a patriotic war of national defence. However, it was no secret that he was a ruthless dictator who presided over an authoritarian communist state that terrorised its own people. During the war, the harshest discipline was imposed. 170,000 Soviet military personnel were executed for treason, cowardice or ill-discipline, whole communities and ethnic groups, accused of collective collaboration with the enemy were uprooted and deported. At the end of the war millions of returning Soviet Prisoners of War were screened for disloyalty, and a quarter of them were executed or re-imprisoned. Needless to say, there was no mercy for the million Soviet citizens who fought on the German side. (9)

Stalin´s reputation soon began to take a battering. When the wartime grand alliance with Britain and the United States gave way to the Cold War in 1947, the Soviet role in the Second World War was criticised by western propagandists. A particular target was the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact of 1939-1941. This was an agreement between Stalin and Hitler which the German dictator a free hand to attack Poland to fight the British and French. In return for a promise of Soviet neutrality, Stalin was given a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe including territory in Poland. Thus, this was led the Soviets to invade Eastern Poland on 17th September 1939 and occupied the territory allocated to them by the pact. (5)

From the Soviet point of view, the invasion was justified by the fact that this territory had been forcibly occupied by the Poles in the wake of the Russo-Polish war of 1919-20. The territory´s inhabitants were mainly Ukrainian and Belorussia, and its reincorporation into the USSR meant the reunification of Eastern and Western Ukraine and Belorussia. But the Red Army invasion was clearly an act of aggression and the process of integrating Western Belorussia and Western Ukraine into the USSR was very violent, including the deportation of 400,000 ethnic Poles to the Soviet Interior. Among their number were 20,000 Polish army officers and police officials, executed on Stalin´s order in March-April 1940. (4)

The great turning point for Stalin and his generals came during the battle of Stalingrad. In the summer of 1942, the Germans re-launched their invasion of the USSR with a campaign in southern Russia designed to reach Baku and capture the oilfields that supplied 80% of the Soviet war economy´s fuel. Hitler was encouraged to think that his armies could simultaneously reach Baku and occupy Stalingrad. “Stalin’s city” was a psychological as well as an industrial and strategic target for Hitler and its capture would have been a devasting blow to Soviet morale. Stalin was slow to respond to the German threat in the south as he thought that Hitler´s main target was Moscow. Another dilemma was that some ill-conceived and badly weakened state when the Germans launched their southern campaign (re-write more clearly). But when Hitler´s plans became clear, Soviet defences in the Stalingrad area were strengthened and plans laid for a concentrated counter-offensive that would turn back the German advance. One of the keys to success was maintaining a Red Army bridgehead in Stalingrad itself that would keep the Germans locked into a gruelling war of attrition for the city. This was the importance of the prolonged defensive battle of Stalingrad that the Soviets waged from August to November 1942. (5)

The turning point at Stalingrad came in November 1942, when the Soviets launched a multi-pronged offensive that surrounded Hitler´s armies in the city and threatened to cut off German forces advancing toward Baku. In the event, the Germans were able to execute a retreat that saved some of their southern armies, but their troops in Stalingrad remained trapped in the city and by early 1942 had either been wiped out or captured by the Red Army. Hitler´s southern campaign was a complete failure, as he suffered casualties of one and a half million including 150,000 dead in Stalingrad alone. It was the last real chance for the Germans to win the war on the Eastern Front and had been lost. (4)

Stalingrad was a triumph for Stalin and his generals. They had orchestrated a heroic defence of the city and illustrated of how the Soviet high command developed a coherence and dynamism that it maintained until the end of the ear. Central to the cohesion and creativity was Stalin´s leadership. It was his authority and his handling of relations with and between his generals that united and energised the group. Stalin continued to make mistakes, as did his generals, but these became fewer and less costly as the war progressed. After Stalingrad, German defeat on the Eastern Front was inevitable, as long as the Soviet People continued to make colossal sacrifices and provided that Stalin and his generals kept on winning the big battles. (8)

Cumulative Mark: 60/60 – With over ten paragraphs, the pure wealth of information in this essay is enough to garner the full sixty marks. However, the individual marks per paragraph are quite low across the board so in the event of not having time to finish the essay during an exam situation, this mark would drop swiftly. It may be wise to look at combining certain paragraphs that were awarded low marks into a single paragraph to improve efficiency and to give yourself more time to focus on other parts of the essay (the first two/three paragraphs could easily be combined into one which would be awarded higher marks). Good grammar was consistent throughout the essay and the writing flowed well, contributing to the full marks.

Evaluation: 22/40 – While there is a lot of background information here, the essay reads more like one which is based on the Eastern front of WWII, rather than Stalin’s effectiveness as a leader. With more emphasis put on relating your facts and figures to the question, this mark should jump and push you to a H1. For example, your conclusion does a great job of focusing on Stalin’s contribution and war-time enterprise. If this type of insight was included in more paragraphs then the evaluation would be higher. The corrector should ultimately be able to guess what the question was without knowing it after reading the essay, and that hasn’t been achieved here.

Overall Grade 82/100: Feedback – Overall this was a very good essay with lots of information on the war itself. However, a little more information on Stalin himself as well as how the Russian public responded to his leadership is needed to increase your grade. Including a quote or two from a respected historian on the topic would also improve your evaluation score (Dr. Sean McEeekin and Dr. Rob Cetino would be too good sources to look at – correctors love this.)