Welcome to 3 and 3.

Three key facts in three minutes or less on the topics you care about most.

World War II, the Soviet Union, and the Allies.

Key fact number one.

The Soviets could not have handled Germany by themselves. Before the war,

Stalin had already purged military leadership, weakening the officer corps. In the first German

offensive on the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa, Soviet losses included, 800,000 soldiers

killed, 6 million wounded or captured, 4,000 aircraft, and 600,000 soldiers lost in the very

first week of battle. Before winter of 1941, Germany was on the verge of capturing three

of the largest Soviet cities, Moscow, Leningrad, and Stalingrad. In 1942, Stalin pressured

Churchill and FDR to open a second front in Europe.

Key fact number two. The Soviets would have lost without United States weaponry and support.

An often overlooked fact is that, per the U.S. State Department, under the Lend Lease Act, the U.S.

provided the Soviet Union with 400,000 jeeps and trucks, 14,000 airplanes, 8,000 tractors,

13,000 tanks, 15 million pairs of army boots, 2.7 million tons of oil products, and 4.5 million

tons of food. Nikita Khrushchev quoted his conversation with Stalin, saying that if the United

States had not helped

us, we would not have won the war. Key fact number three. The Soviets stayed out of the

Pacific until the war was effectively over. In 1941, Japan and the Soviet Union signed a

non-aggression pact. It was effectively only the United States and British Imperial troops, along with Chinese nationalist

armies who had to fight Japan. The Soviets waited to enter the Pacific Theater completely

until the United States dropped both atomic bombs and Japan was mostly defeated before they invaded

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