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A Surgeon With 300% Mortality Rate From a Single Operation and Other Historic Screwups

Khalid Elhassan October 11, 2020 32 min

Robert Liston - Surgery — Dr. Robert Liston operating. Wellcome Images

27. The USSR Paid a Heavy Price for Stalin’s Mistakes

German armor advancing into the USSR. Getty Images

In the first six months after the German invasion, the USSR suffered over 6 million military casualties. That was aside from millions more civilian casualties. No country has ever suffered more losses in a similar period. By the time the invaders ran out of steam, the German army was deep in the USSR, at the gates of Moscow.

Soviet prisoners taken in Operation Barbarossa. Pintrest

It took superhuman efforts and sacrifice for the Soviets to recover, claw their way back up, and eventually win the war in the end. Stalin deserves credit for keeping the USSR in the fight long after any other country would have thrown in the towel. However, Stalin deserves even more credit for the many mistakes that almost destroyed his country.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.