Costing 27 million Soviet lives, the war between Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany was the most brutal and destructive conflict in human history. This course examines the origins of the war and the key campaigns and battles: the failure of Operation Barbarossa to defeat the USSR, the siege of Leningrad, the battles of Moscow, Stalingrad, and Kursk, the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, the battle for Berlin, and the Soviet occupation of eastern Germany. It analyses Soviet and German political and military leadership and the performance of the Red Army and the Wehrmacht. The Soviet victory ensured the destruction of Nazi Germany but the ensuing Cold War, the division of Germany and the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe from 1945-1990, the collapse of communism and the USSR, and the current tensions between Putin’s Russia and the West, show that the repercussions of this war reverberate to this day.