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Catastrophe: History’s Most Disastrous Defeats

Khalid Elhassan January 15, 2025 17 min

Catastrophe - Napoleon retreats from Moscow — Napoleon retreats from Moscow. ABC

5. History’s Deadliest Onslaught

Captured Soviet prisoners. Holocaust Encyclopedia

Stalin’s meddling and unreasonable order led to a series of massive encirclements, in which the Germans captured up to 700,000 Soviets per encirclement. By the end of 1941, the Germans had bagged 3.4 million Soviet POWs, most of whom died in captivity. The Soviets suffered over six million military casualties, plus millions of civilians, in the war’s first six months – more than any country has ever suffered in a similar period. It took superhuman effort and sacrifice for them to recover, claw their way back up, and win in the end. Stalin deserves much credit for keeping the USSR in the fight long after any other country would have thrown in the towel. But Stalin deserves even more blame for the catastrope at war’s beginning.

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.