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.
S-TIER (GOD TIER)
(1) NAZI-SOVIET WAR
Well, obviously. My top entry has to be the baseline of the conflict itself as a whole, which I look at in more detail as the top entry in my Top 10 Second World Wars. It might also be considered not just as a baseline but also as the superstructure of war between two ideological regimes – Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union – in the Second World War that overlaid the similar conflict between the two imperial states of Germany and Russia in the First World War.
In many ways, they were similar conflicts or even the same conflict. As German historian Fritz Fischer proposed in the so-called Fischer thesis (or Fischer controversy), Germany had the same fundamental aim in both world wars. That aim was to forge Germany as a world power (and pre-empt the rise of Russia as one) by the German domination of Europe (Mitteleuropa) and the annexation of territory, particularly from Russia itself.
The ideological conflict between the two regimes just added another layer to this German aim in both world wars – in large part heightening the brutality of the conflict (particularly towards civilians) as well as the much higher casualties of the Second World War compared to the First.
Ironically, despite their deadly ideological opposition, the two regimes had many traits in common, as indeed they were to find in their brief rapport with each other that enabled Germany to fight its British and French opponents first – and also which in effect had each regime feed off the other in developing their own regime or power.
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
(2) RUSSO-GERMAN WAR
Wait – what? Didn’t I just do this in my previous entry for the Nazi-Soviet war itself?
Well, not exactly. As I emphasized, that entry reflected the ideological conflict between the two regimes in the Second World War that overlaid the more traditional contest between their two states continuing on from the First. The war between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union was both a Nazi-Soviet war and a Russo-German war, the latter with a fundamental continuity of purpose and conflict from the First World War.
It also illustrates two important distinctions, one on each side.
Firstly, on the Axis side, Germany was not the only combatant, something which seems to be often forgotten, particularly by those counting up casualties on each side to somehow demonstrate German military “excellence” or “superiority” and usually overlooking the other Axis combatants to only tally up German casualties against all Soviet casualties.
Yes – Germany may have been the predominant combatant on the Axis side, without which the other Axis combatants, with two limited exceptions, could not have fought and did not fight the Soviet Union separately, but it remains that Germany did have other Axis allies fighting alongside it. The most substantial of these essentially comprise other entries in this top ten, although that does not include more minor combatants such as Slovakia or the approximately one million or so foreign volunteers or conscripts fighting with Germany against the Soviet Union – including from the Soviet Union itself, such as dissident ethnic groups or the Russian Liberation Army under General Vlasov.
Secondly, on the Soviet side, Russia itself was only a part, albeit the most substantial part, of all Soviet forces – which also drew, often critically, on the forces from the Soviet republics other than Russia or from the ethnic groups other than Russians within the Russian republic itself.
(3) NAZI-SOVIET PARTISAN WAR
The war between Axis forces and Soviet partisans behind Axis lines deserves to be considered in the highest tier of Nazi-Soviet warfare, even if it remained subordinate to and could not have achieved victory without the primary Soviet war effort.
Although in some cases, partisans were not subordinate to the Soviet war effort, fighting both the Axis and Soviet forces in turn.
And in others, those ethnic groups or Russians that actively allied themselves with Germany against the Soviet Union as noted in my previous entry might effectively be considered partisans on the Axis side, albeit ones that did not so much fight irregular partisan warfare as such but within conventional German military forces.
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)
(4) SOVIET-JAPANESE WAR
Japan is one of the two limited exceptions for Germany’s Axis allies that could and did fight the Soviet Union separately from Germany, albeit not too well.
Indeed, that was the issue for Germany, that its strongest ally Japan fought its strongest enemy, the Soviet Union, entirely separately from Germany itself – before and after Germany’s own war with the Soviet Union (with the former mostly before Germany even invaded Poland to commence the war in Europe).
Hence, Japan was conspicuous in its absence from the Nazi-Soviet war, so the impact of this entry is more one of omission than commission. Not that Germany particularly sought out Japanese involvement in its war against the Soviet Union – at least not until Germany’s initial victories began to wane to the point that Germany considered it might need Japanese involvement after all, by which point it was too little too late.
Japan had signed the Japanese-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact on 13 April 1941, a little over two months before Germany invaded the Soviet Union – reflecting how little Germany had coordinated with or even informed Japan with respect to its intentions.
In large part, that reflected the defeat of the Japanese army by the Soviets in war between them in 1939 that both combatants mostly kept secret from others – a war which also underlay the Soviet reasons to divert war with Germany away by the Nazi-Soviet Pact.
Given the weakness of the Japanese army against the Soviets, particularly in mechanized and armored forces, I am not sure whether any Japanese involvement in Germany’s war against the Soviet Union would have actually made any difference to the outcome, even in 1941 when it was most optimal for Japan or Germany.
Both the Soviet-Japanese war and the war in my next entry were also entries in my Top 10 Second World Wars.
(5) SOVIET-FINNISH WAR – WINTER & CONTINUATION WARS
Finland is the other of the two limited exceptions for Germany’s Axis allies that fought the Soviet Union separately from Germany, although it was more the Soviet Union that was allied to Germany than Finland at the time of the Winter War and it was not Finland’s choice to fight the Soviets as the latter invaded Finland.
The Winter War has quite the notoriety within Second World War history, primarily for the obvious Soviet expectations of a walkover only to be undone by the Finnish underdog against the odds, although ultimately Finland had to negotiate while they still had the means to avoid worse defeat.
That prompted Finland to participate in the German invasion of the Soviet Union in what the Finns called the Continuation War to reverse the losses of the Winter War, although it tried to do so as separately from Germany as possible. Finland held itself aloof from Germany, even to the extent of identifying as co-belligerent rather than ally and not signing the Tripartite Pact. Finland also refused to advance beyond certain points and had to demobilize part of its army from economic necessity in 1942.
Finland was also the first to see the logic of German defeat if Germany could not secure a quick victory, attempting to start peace negotiations with the Soviet Union as early as autumn 1941.
As a result, both of fighting as separately as possible and following the logic of German defeat as well as its successes in its own defence and Allied sympathy, Finland alone of Germany’s allies (and Germany itself) in the wider Nazi-Soviet war avoided occupation.
As noted in my previous entry, not only were the Soviet-Japanese war and the Soviet Finnish war both those two limited exceptions to Germany’s Axis allies fighting the Soviet Union separately, but they were both also entries in my Top 10 Second World Wars.
(6) ROMANIAN-SOVIET WAR
Now we come to the first of three active Axis combatants allied with Germany against the Soviet Union that, unlike the limited exceptions of Finland in the Winter War or Japan, were obviously subordinate to the German war effort and otherwise could not or did not fight the Soviets separately.
At first glance, it is somewhat surprising that Romania was first and foremost of these Axis combatants, given that Italy was Germany’s major ally in Europe. However, the primary theater of combat for Italy was always the Mediterranean, where Romania shared a border with the Soviet Union.
Indeed, the Romanian-Soviet border was a border across which Germany had ceded territorial concessions from Romania to the Soviet Union in the Nazi-Soviet Pact – the Romanian territory of Bessarabia, to which the Soviets also added Northern Bukovina and some islands in the Danube.
It was also a border across which Germany launched a major part of Operation Barbarossa, with Romania as allied combatant against the Soviets – both on land and in naval warfare on the Black Sea. And as combatant, Romania committed more troops to the Eastern Front than all of other Germany’s allies combined – with Romania apparently having the third largest Axis army in Europe (after Germany and Italy) and fourth largest in the world (after Japan as well).
Notably, like Italy and Japan, Romania switched sides from being on the Allied side in the First World War. Indeed, Britain had extended the same guarantee it made to Poland to Romania (and Greece) on 13 April 1939, prompted by the Italian invasion of Albania – such that Romania was effectively a potential ally to Britain until joining the Axis on 23 November 1940.
Romania’s significance in the Nazi-Soviet war and indeed to Germany in the Second World War was not just its military contribution, but also (and probably even more so) its economic contribution – primarily its oil, which saw Romania bombed by the Allies in their strategic bombing offensive against Germany.
Ultimately, as the tide of war turned against Germany, the war came to Romania itself in what has been dubbed the Battle of Romania – where the Soviets defeated German and Romanian forces before Romania surrendered and defected to the Allies, declaring war against Germany after a Romanian royal coup d’etat against the fascist government of Antonescu.
As historian H.P. Willmott observed, the German Sixth Army, reconstituted after the destruction of its predecessor at Stalingrad, eerily found itself replaying that destruction – as it was encircled and destroyed for a second time by Soviet forces when Romanian resistance crumbled (as before on its flanks at Stalingrad).
Romania then committed a substantial number of troops – which suffered substantial casualties – as combatants allied with the Soviets against Germany, not that either prevented the Soviet occupation of and installation of a subordinate communist state in Romania.
(7) ITALIAN-SOVIET WAR
Not surprisingly, as Germany’s major ally and only other Axis claimant to great power status in Europe, however inflated, Italy was also an active combatant allied with Germany against the Soviet Union.
Italy initially committed an expeditionary army corps, subsequently expanded into an army, to Germany’s campaign against the Soviet Union. Both saw action in the southern part of the Eastern Front – most notoriously in the fighting around Stalingrad, where Italian forces covering the German flank at the Don River bore the full brunt of the Soviet offensive to encircle Stalingrad.
Historian H.P. Willmott observed that the Germans considered the Italians the best of their allied combatants on the Eastern Front, although the competition for that accolade was not particularly fierce.
Almost all Italian forces were withdrawn from the Nazi-Soviet war as Italy’s primary theater of operations in the Mediterranean loomed larger with the Allied threat to Italy itself. Ultimately, that saw Italy as the first of Germany’s Axis allied combatants to surrender and defect to the Allies in 1943, although even then some residual Italian forces remained in the Eastern Front (serving on behalf of Germany’s puppet government installed in Italy).
(8) HUNGARIAN-SOVIET WAR
Hungary is the last of what I identify as the substantial Axis combatants allied to and participating in the German war against the Soviet Union – the others being Finland, Romania and Italy. Bulgaria was an Axis ally of Germany, but it was a special case as it did not declare war against the Soviet Union and remained neutral in that part of the Second World War. There were other Axis combatants that fought alongside German forces against the Soviets, but they were either small – at a divisional level or so – or consisted of volunteer forces rather than official participation, or both.
Hungary is also notable enough for its own entry, as it was also the last of Germany’s Axis allies to remain allied with Germany – albeit not so much by its own choice but because it was the subject of Germany’s last successful military occupation of the war in Operation Margerethe.
As such, Hungary itself became one of the last battlefields of the Second World War in Europe, with German and Hungarian forces fighting against the Soviets there into 1945, most notably in the Siege of Budapest. While the Ardennes Offensive or Battle of the Bulge was famously the last substantial German counter-offensive of the war, Germany did launch counter-offensives after that – with the last one that could be described as major in Hungary, the Lake Balaton Offensive in an attempt to secure Germany’s last source of oil and to prevent the Soviets from advancing towards Vienna.
(9) SOVIET-BULGARIAN WAR
And now we have the first of two wars that were effectively separate from the Nazi-Soviet war but connected to it.
Bulgaria was an Axis ally of Germany but was careful not to declare war against the Soviet Union and to remain as neutral as possible in Germany’s war with it, although Bulgaria was very much involved as a Germany ally against Greece and Yugoslavia.
I say as neutral as possible because the Bulgarian navy did participate in Axis convoys in the Black Sea as well as skirmishes with the Soviet Black Sea Fleet. Bulgaria also sent delegations of high-ranking officers, including the Chief of General of the Bulgarian Army, to German-occupied territory in the Soviet Union, as demonstration of its commitment to the alliance.
However, Bulgaria’s stance of official neutrality towards the Soviets did not save them from Soviet occupation or installation of a communist government, despite Bulgaria scrambling at the last moment to declare war against Germany. The Soviet Union declared war on Bulgaria, such that on 8 September 1944 Bulgaria “was simultaneously at war with four major belligerents of the war: Germany, Britain, the USA, and the USSR”.
Of course, of those four belligerents, only one counted – the Soviet Union, which invaded Bulgaria the following day without resistance by Bulgaria.
(10) HUNGARIAN-ROMANIAN WAR
The second of two wars effectively separate from the Nazi-Soviet war but connected to it – although the term war is overstating the hostility between them, which did not break out into actual war, at least while both were allies of Germany. Cold war might be a better term.
There was a Hungarian-Romanian war but it was in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, from 13 November 1918 to 3 August 1919. Not surprisingly, Romania won, given that Hungary was one part of the dual monarchy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that had gone down to catastrophic defeat by the Allies.
During the First World War however, it had been Romania that had gone down to catastrophic defeat on the Allied side, although it had a reversal of fortune from the final Allied victory.
That saw Romania gain the longstanding source of hostility between it and Hungary – Transylvania, which had a majority Romanian population but which had been controlled by Hungary, either as a kingdom of itself or as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Another Hungarian-Romanian war loomed as Hungary sought to reclaim Transylvania, but Germany “arbitrated” the cession by Romania to Hungary of Northern Transylvania in August 1940 – obviously favoring Hungary as an ally as opposed to a Romania that was still nominally a British ally by Britain’s military guarantee to Romania (in much the same terms as its guarantee to Poland).
Romania became a German Axis ally under the new fascist government of Antonescu on 23 November 1940 but remained hostile to Hungary, such that Romanian troops in the Soviet Union could not be stationed alongside their Hungarian counterparts for fear of them fighting each other.
Romania under Antonescu apparently considered a war with Hungary over Transylvania an inevitability after German victory over the Soviet Union. As it was, Romania got its war with Hungary as well as Northern Transylvania back – not under Antonescu or as a German ally but on the Allied side fighting alongside the Soviets against the Germans and Hungarians from September 1944.
