All good! Do you happen to know of any key things to include in my USSR paragraph?
Thanks for your help!
Hey there,
These were some of the key points I remember writing in the exam:
Economic:
- Mass migration eastwards (beyond Ural mountains) to move industrial areas away from German bombers
- Factories were stripped down and rebuilt in the east
- Somewhere around 1500 enterprises were moved (check with other sources to make sure I quoted the right statistic!)
- US Lend Lease Scheme also helped USSR
Social:
- Slavs were viewed as untermenschen + USSR has a lot of Jews + communist = the Nazis biggest targets
- 20 million Russians died during the war
- Babi Yar refers to the Kiev massacres, carried out by einsatzgruppen (SS groups that trailed after German forces with the sole purpose of eliminating 'undesirables')
- Some Ukrainians swore an oath of loyalty to Hitler because they hated Stalin but since they were viewed as untermenschen, they were eliminated
- USSR also used scorched earth policy when retreating
- Therefore German barbarity + USSR scorched earth policy = devastating impacts on civilians
With social, you could also talk about propaganda here (i.e. the idea of fighting not for Stalin but for "Mother Russia"). Just make sure to flesh out these key points with some detail (like a statistic or a historian).
Hope this helps!