German advances during the opening phases of Operation Barbarossa from 22 June 1941 to 25 August 1941 – public domain image map by the History Department of the US Military Academy

TOP 10 NAZI-SOVIET WARS / NAZI-SOVIET WAR ICEBERG

The Nazi-Soviet war – fought from commencement of Operation Barbarossa on 22 June 1941 through to German surrender on 8 May 1945 – was the top entry in my Top 10 Second World Wars.

However, the concept behind that list – one of my tongue-in-cheek top ten lists I look at a subject which has a fundamental continuity but which also can be demarcated into distinct parts in their own right – can also be applied to the Nazi-Soviet War given its primacy and scale, as I noted in its entry.

If you prefer, you can think of this as a Nazi-Soviet war iceberg meme. To be frank, it can’t be so clearly demarcated into distinct or effectively separate parts as the Second World War, given the more far-flung scale and span of the latter. The components of the conflict which I identify as ‘wars’ within it for entries in this top ten are mostly much more overlapping and difficult to separate from the conflict as a whole.

Even so, I think looking at them as separate components of or ‘wars’ within the conflict – in the form of this top ten list or iceberg – can be instructive and potentially offer new perspectives on the conflict as a whole.

However, reflecting that most of the entries are much less distinct parts of the conflict as a whole than in my Top 10 Second World Wars, this will be more one of my shallow dip top tens – with shorter entries – than the deep dive of the latter. Essentially, almost all entries have a focus on particular combatants within the war. A few entries effectively repeat entries from my Top 10 Second World Wars so will be mostly abbreviated to links or references to that top ten