It is December 1941. The Germans forces got really close to Moscow. While Stalin was preoccupied about inside loyalty, the Germans almost marched straight here. Their leader, Hitler, broke the Nazi Soviet non-aggression pact. Russia and Germany had agreed to split Poland in half and not to attack each other. Stalin believed that while Germany was invading Britain they would not invade Russia, because Hitler had wrote about avoiding a two front war. While Russia has a big army and air force, Stalin’s leadership hindered the country's military strength. Stalin’s purge before the war hurt the Soviet army. “During 1937 and 1938, the NKVD detained 1,548,366 persons, of whom 681,692 were shot – an average of 1,000 executions a day.”
“Three out of the five Soviet marshals were purged in 1937-8, thirteen of fifteen army commanders, fifty seven of the eighty-five corps commanders, 110 of the 195 divisional commanders.” Stalin killed a lot of his own generals and soldiers so his generals were afraid of him. When Stalin was in power generals feared to do anything that had not been approved by him. Since Stalin killed so many people it is possible that low people in the army such as corps
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In July of 1941 Stalin ordered ‘Not One Step Back’ meaning that if a soldier retreated the soldiers was treated as a traitor. This was ineffective because most troop obeyed these orders and eventually got captured. “Within the first four months of the war Germany had captured 3 million Red Army Troops.” At the fall of Kiev alone, Germany took 665,000 prisoners. Since Stalin ordered ‘Not One Step Back’ he is responsible for these soldiers being captured. If the troops in Kiev would have retreated Russia would not have suffered such a big loss of troops. Also because the Red Army didn’t retreat the German army raced past them and cutting them off from moving