It is a two-stage device — a primary fission bomb which detonates and compresses a secondary bomb filled with two heavy isotopes of hydrogen: They undergo a process of nuclear fusion, forcing the nuclei of atoms together and multiplying exponentially the amount of energy released by the device. All strategic weapons in modern arsenals are now thermonuclear, or hydrogen, bombs. The bargain at the heart of the NPT was that member states without nuclear weapons agreed not to acquire them, as long as the states with weapons reduced their obscenely large arsenals, capable of destroying the planet many times over.
That has indeed happened, to an extent — at first as the result of arms control agreements, and then the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the end of the cold war. From a peak of 70, nuclear weapons in the world at the height of the cold war, in , there are now about 14,, according to the Federation of American Scientists FAS , still enough to end life on the planet.
The rest are in reserve stockpiles or in the process of being retired and dismantled. The last successful arms control agreement, the New Start treaty , was signed by Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev in , limiting the US and Russia to 1, deployed strategic warheads each. The hope at the time was that the two nuclear superpowers would pursue a follow-on treaty and at one point Obama suggested he might reduce the US arsenal unilaterally by another third.
But that did not happen. The terrorist nuclear weapon is one of the scariest scenarios the world faces. Unlike states, such groups cannot be deterred from using a weapon as the perpetrator could be very hard to identify in the wake of a blast, difficult to find, and ready to accept death as the price of inflicting devastating damage. Terrorist groups would not need expensive missiles to deliver their warheads. They could be sailed into a port in a shipping container or across land borders in the back of a truck.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US spent substantial resources on dismantling many of its weapons and production facilities as well as ensuring that its many nuclear scientists had alternative employment so as not to be tempted to sell their wares and expertise to the highest bidder. But serious concerns about nuclear weapons security remain.
Pakistan in particular is a source of anxiety as its military and intelligence services have radicalised elements within them, with links to terror groups. There are also fears that a cash-strapped or vengeful North Korea could sell one of its warheads for the right price.
As the years have passed since the cold war, it has become increasingly clear that we had several lucky escapes from nuclear weapons use during that era as the result of miscalculation or technical glitches.
Hitler's Invasion of Russia in World War Two
For example, in , when a US watch officer left training tapes in the early warning system when he finished his shift, those in the incoming shift saw their screens light up with the tracks of multiple incoming Soviet missiles. It was only good judgment of the duty officers that avoided a nuclear alert. Nearly three decades after the cold war, the US and Russia still keep hundreds of missiles on hair-trigger alert, ready to launch within minutes, in anticipation of just an occasion.
In the US system, there is no institutional check or barrier to the president launching those missiles once he has identified himself to the Pentagon war room using his nuclear codes.
One option is that the two presidents could extend the New Start treaty by another five years, as allowed for in the agreement. It is more likely he would argue for a more ambitious arms control agreement he could put his own name to. But Putin will be hard to convince, without the US scaling back its missile defence system, and that is unlikely at the moment. The threat of a conflict with North Korea has receded somewhat since the Singapore summit , but it is increasingly clear that Pyongyang has no intention of disarming any time soon.
The big question is what will Trump do once that becomes apparent to him. The chances of a nuclear standoff with Iran , meanwhile, are rising. In May, Trump walked out of the nuclear agreement with Tehran, which curbed Iranian nuclear activities in return for sanctions relief. The US is now piling on sanctions and telling the world to stop buying Iranian oil. Sooner or later it is possible, likely even, that the Iranian government will stop abiding by the agreement and start stepping up its uranium enrichment and other activities.
That is likely to raise tensions in the Gulf dramatically and make other regional players rethink whether to acquire nuclear weapons themselves. The darkest day of the cold war produced some timeless comedy, from the classic movie of accidental apocalypse, Dr Strangelove, to the songs of the mathematician, musician and comedian, Tom Lehrer, with titles like So Long Mom A song for WWIII , and in the UK, the civil defence sketch by Beyond the Fringe.
There are much darker works in the canon. On the Beach, in , was the first major post-apocalyptic movie, in which survivors gather in Australia, the last continent left habitable. The Day After, in , is even blacker. It starts with a nuclear blast obliterating a column of cars stuck on a highway as panicked people rush to try to evade the attack spreads. More recent films, since the cold war, have dwelt on the threat of a single nuclear weapon detonated by terrorists or deranged geniuses or both.
They include Broken Arrow , The Peacemaker and The Sum of All Fears , in which — because there is just one bomb involved — the detonation is no longer treated as an exctinction-level event. In that, art is following reality. The use of a nuclear weapon is now more likely than any time since the worst days of the cold war, but the probability of humanity being wiped out entirely by nuclear war is, for the time being, diminished. The use of a nuclear weapon is now more likely than any time since the cold war, but the probability of humanity being wiped out entirely has diminished by Julian Borger and Ian Sample.
However, the 3rd Panzer Group had already moved on, with its forward units reaching Vilnius on the evening of 23 June, and the Western Front's armoured counterattack instead ran into infantry and antitank fire from the V Army Corps of the German 9th Army, supported by Luftwaffe air attacks. The same night, Pavlov ordered all the remnants of the Western Front to withdraw to Slonim towards Minsk. A Soviet directive was issued on 29 June to combat the mass panic rampant among the civilians and the armed forces personnel.
The order stipulated swift, severe measures against anyone inciting panic or displaying cowardice. The NKVD worked with commissars and military commanders to scour possible withdrawal routes of soldiers retreating without military authorization. Field expedient general courts were established to deal with civilians spreading rumours and military deserters. On 29 June, Hitler, through the Commander-in-Chief of the German Army Walther von Brauchitsch, instructed the commander of Army Group Center Fedor von Bock to halt the advance of his panzers until the infantry formations liquidating the pockets catch up.
But Brauchitsch, upholding Hitler's instruction, and Halder, unwillingly going along with it, opposed Bock's order. However, Bock insisted on the order by stating that it would be irresponsible to reverse orders already issued. The panzer groups, however, resumed their offensive on 2 July before the infantry formations had sufficiently caught up. During German-Finnish negotiations Finland had demanded to remain neutral unless the Soviet Union attacked them first.
Germany therefore sought to provoke the Soviet Union into an attack on Finland. Despite these actions the Finnish government insisted via diplomatic channels that they remained a neutral party, but the Soviet leadership already viewed Finland as an ally of Germany. Subsequently, the Soviets proceeded to launch a massive bombing attack on 25 June against all major Finnish cities and industrial centers including Helsinki, Turku and Lahti.
During a night session on the same day the Finnish parliament decided to go to war against the Soviet Union. Finland was divided into two operational zones. Northern Finland was the staging area for Army Norway. Its goal was to execute a two-pronged pincer movement on the strategic port of Murmansk , named Operation Silver Fox. Southern Finland was still under the responsibility of the Finnish Army. The goal of the Finnish forces was, at first, to recapture Finnish Karelia at Lake Ladoga as well as the Karelian Isthmus, which included Finland's second largest city Vyborg.
On 2 July and through the next six days, a rainstorm typical of Belarusian summers slowed the progress of the panzers of Army Group Center, and Soviet defenses stiffened. The army group's ultimate objective was Smolensk , which commanded the road to Moscow. Facing the Germans was an old Soviet defensive line held by six armies.
On 6 July, the Soviets launched a massive counter-attack using the V and VII Mechanized Corps of the 20th Army, [] which collided with the German 39th and 47th Panzer Corps in a battle where the Red Army lost tanks of the 2, employed during five days of ferocious fighting. Trapped between their pincers were three Soviet armies. On 18 July, the panzer groups came to within ten kilometres 6. Large numbers of Red Army soldiers escaped to stand between the Germans and Moscow as resistance continued. Four weeks into the campaign, the Germans realized they had grossly underestimated Soviet strength.
That meant seizing the industrial center of Kharkov , the Donbass and the oil fields of the Caucasus in the south and the speedy capture of Leningrad, a major center of military production, in the north. Intelligence reports indicated that the bulk of the Red Army was deployed near Moscow under Semyon Timoshenko for the defense of the capital. On 29 June Army Norway launched its effort to capture Murmansk in a pincer attack.
The northern pincer, conducted by Mountain Corps Norway , approached Murmansk directly by crossing the border at Petsamo. However, in mid-July after securing the neck of the Rybachy Peninsula and advancing to the Litsa River the German advance was stopped by heavy resistance from the Soviet 14th Army. Renewed attacks led to nothing, and this front became a stalemate for the remainder of Barbarossa. The German units had great difficulty dealing with the Arctic conditions.
After heavy fighting, Salla was taken on 8 July. To keep the momentum the German-Finnish forces advanced eastwards, until they were stopped at the town of Kayraly by Soviet resistance. Facing only one division of the Soviet 7th Army it was able to make rapid headway. On 7 August it captured Kestenga while reaching the outskirts of Ukhta.
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Large Red Army reinforcements then prevented further gains on both fronts, and the German-Finnish force had to go onto the defensive. The Finnish plan in the south in Karelia was to advance as swiftly as possible to Lake Ladoga, cutting the Soviet forces in half. Then the Finnish territories east of Lake Ladoga were to be recaptured before the advance along the Karelian Isthmus, including the recapture of Vyborg, commenced. The Finnish attack was launched on 10 July. The Army of Karelia held a numerical advantage versus the Soviet defenders of the 7th Army and 23rd Army , so it could advance swiftly.
The important road junction at Loimola was captured on 14 July. By 16 July, the first Finnish units reached Lake Ladoga at Koirinoja, achieving the goal of splitting the Soviet forces. During the rest of July, the Army of Karelia advanced further southeast into Karelia, coming to a halt at the former Finnish-Soviet border at Mansila. With the Soviet forces cut in half, the attack on the Karelian Isthmus could commence. The Finnish army attempted to encircle large Soviet formations at Sortavala and Hiitola by advancing to the western shores of Lake Ladoga.
By mid-August the encirclement had succeeded and both towns were taken, but many Soviet formations were able to evacuate by sea. Further west, the attack on Viborg was launched. With Soviet resistance breaking down, the Finns were able to encircle Vyborg by advancing to the Vuoksi River. The city itself was taken on 30 August, along with a broad advance on the rest of the Karelian Isthmus. By the beginning of September, Finland had restored its pre- Winter War borders. By mid-July, the German forces had advanced within a few kilometers of Kiev below the Pripyat Marshes.
The 1st Panzer Group then went south, while the 17th Army struck east and trapped three Soviet armies near Uman. The two panzer armies now trapped four Soviet armies and parts of two others. By August, as the serviceability and the quantity of the Luftwaffe's inventory steadily diminished due to combat, demand for air support only increased as the VVS recovered. The Luftwaffe found itself struggling to maintain local air superiority. The VVS, although faced with the same weather difficulties, had a clear advantage thanks to the prewar experience with cold-weather flying, and the fact that they were operating from intact airbases and airports.
On 8 August, the Panzers broke through the Soviet defenses. By the end of August, 4th Panzer Group had penetrated to within 48 kilometres 30 miles of Leningrad. The Finns [o] had pushed southeast on both sides of Lake Ladoga to reach the old Finnish-Soviet frontier. The Germans attacked Leningrad in August ; in the following three "black months" of , , residents of the city worked to build the city's fortifications as fighting continued, while , others joined the ranks of the Red Army.
The Germans severed the railroads to Moscow and captured the railroad to Murmansk with Finnish assistance to inaugurate the start of a siege that would last for over two years. At this stage, Hitler ordered the final destruction of Leningrad with no prisoners taken, and on 9 September, Army Group North began the final push.
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Within ten days it had advanced within 11 kilometres 6. Hitler, now out of patience, ordered that Leningrad should not be stormed, but rather starved into submission. Before an attack on Moscow could begin, operations in Kiev needed to be finished. Half of Army Group Center had swung to the south in the back of the Kiev position, while Army Group South moved to the north from its Dniepr bridgehead.
A battle ensued in which the Soviets were hammered with tanks, artillery, and aerial bombardment. After ten days of vicious fighting, the Germans claimed , Soviet soldiers captured, although the real figure is probably around , prisoners. After operations at Kiev were successfully concluded, Army Group South advanced east and south to capture the industrial Donbass region and the Crimea. The Soviet Southern Front launched an attack on 26 September with two armies on the northern shores of the Sea of Azov against elements of the German 11th Army , which was simultaneously advancing into the Crimea.
By 7 October the Soviet 9th and 18th Armies were isolated and four days later they had been annihilated. The Soviet defeat was total; , men captured, tanks destroyed or captured in the pocket alone as well as artillery pieces of all types. Kleist's 1st Panzer Army took the Donbass region that same month. A large encirclement from the north and the south trapped the defending Soviet corps and allowed XXXVI Corps to advance further to the east.
On 6 September the first defense line at the Voyta River was breached, but further attacks against the main line at the Verman River failed. The United States of America applied diplomatic pressure on Finland to not disrupt Allied aid shipments to the Soviet Union, which caused the Finnish government to halt the advance on the Murmansk railway. With the Finnish refusal to conduct further offensive operations and German inability to do so alone, the German-Finnish effort in central and northern Finland came to an end.
Germany had pressured Finland to enlarge its offensive activities in Karelia to aid the Germans in their Leningrad operation. Finnish attacks on Leningrad itself remained limited. Finland stopped its advance just short of Leningrad and had no intentions to attack the city. The situation was different in eastern Karelia. On 4 September this new drive was launched on a broad front. Albeit reinforced by fresh reserve troops, heavy losses elsewhere on the front meant that the Soviet defenders of the 7th Army were not able to resist the Finnish advance.
Olonets was taken on 5 September. On 7 September, Finnish forward units reached the Svir River. From there the Army of Karelia moved north along the shores of Lake Onega to secure the remaining area west of Lake Onega, while simultaneously establishing a defensive position along the Svir River. Slowed by winter's onset they nevertheless continued to advance slowly during the following weeks. Medvezhyegorsk was captured on 5 December and Poventsa fell the next day. On 7 December Finland called a stop to all offensive operations, going onto the defensive.
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After Kiev, the Red Army no longer outnumbered the Germans and there were no more trained reserves directly available. To defend Moscow, Stalin could field , men in 83 divisions, but no more than 25 divisions were fully effective. Operation Typhoon, the drive to Moscow, began on 30 September To the north, the 3rd and 4th Panzer Armies attacked Vyazma , trapping the 19th, 20th, 24th and 32nd Armies.
The pocket eventually yielded over , Soviet prisoners, bringing the tally since the start of the invasion to three million. The Soviets now had only 90, men and tanks left for the defense of Moscow. The German government now publicly predicted the imminent capture of Moscow and convinced foreign correspondents of a pending Soviet collapse. Almost from the beginning of Operation Typhoon, however, the weather worsened. Temperatures fell while there was continued rainfall.
This turned the unpaved road network into mud and slowed the German advance on Moscow.
Operation Barbarossa
The pause gave the Soviets, far better supplied, time to consolidate their positions and organize formations of newly activated reservists. These had been freed from the Soviet Far East after Soviet intelligence assured Stalin that there was no longer a threat from the Japanese.
With the ground hardening due to the cold weather, [p] The Germans resumed the attack on Moscow on 15 November. Facing the Germans were the 5th, 16th, 30th, 43rd, 49th, and 50th Soviet Armies. The Germans intended to move the 3rd and 4th Panzer Armies across the Moscow Canal and envelop Moscow from the northeast. The 2nd Panzer Group would attack Tula and then close on Moscow from the south. In two weeks of fighting, lacking sufficient fuel and ammunition, the Germans slowly crept towards Moscow.
In the south, the 2nd Panzer Group was being blocked. On 22 November, Soviet Siberian units, augmented by the 49th and 50th Soviet Armies, attacked the 2nd Panzer Group and inflicted a defeat on the Germans. The 4th Panzer Group pushed the Soviet 16th Army back, however, and succeeded in crossing the Moscow Canal in an attempt to encircle Moscow. They were so close that German officers claimed they could see the spires of the Kremlin , [] but by then the first blizzards had begun. It captured the bridge over the Moscow-Volga Canal as well as the railway station, which marked the easternmost advance of German forces.
The German forces fared worse, with deep snow further hindering equipment and mobility. With the failure of the Battle of Moscow , all German plans for a quick defeat of the Soviet Union had to be revised. The Soviet counter-offensives in December caused heavy casualties on both sides, but ultimately eliminated the German threat to Moscow. On 31 March , less than one year after the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Wehrmacht was reduced to fielding 58 offensively capable divisions. Spurred on by the successful defense and in an effort to imitate the Germans, Stalin wanted to begin his own counteroffensive, not just against the German forces around Moscow, but against their armies in the north and south.
The Soviet Union had suffered heavily from the conflict, losing huge tracts of territory, and vast losses in men and material. Nonetheless, the Red Army proved capable of countering the German offensives, particularly as the Germans began experiencing irreplaceable shortages in manpower, armaments, provisions, and fuel. Hitler, having realized that Germany's oil supply was "severely depleted", [] aimed to capture the oil fields of Baku in an offensive, codenamed Case Blue.
By , Soviet armaments production was fully operational and increasingly outproducing the German war economy. While the Soviet Union had not signed the Geneva Convention, this did not mean their soldiers were entirely exempted from the protection it afforded; Germany had signed the treaty and was thus obligated to offer Soviet POWs treatment according to its provisions as they generally did with other Allied POWs. Even if the Soviets had signed, it is highly unlikely that this would have stopped the Nazis' genocidal policies towards combatants, civilians, and prisoners of war.
Before the war, Hitler issued the notorious Commissar Order , which called for all Soviet political commissars taken prisoner at the front to be shot immediately without trial. Collective punishment was authorized against partisan attacks; if a perpetrator could not be quickly identified, then burning villages and mass executions were considered acceptable reprisals. Organized crimes against civilians, including women and children, were carried out on a huge scale by the German police and military forces, as well as the local collaborators.
Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg puts the number of Jews murdered by "mobile killing operations" at 1,, According to a post-war report by Prince Veli Kajum Khan, they were imprisoned in concentration camps in terrible conditions, where those deemed to have "Mongolian" features were murdered daily. Asians were also targeted by the Einsatzgruppen and were the subjects of lethal medical experiments and murder at a "pathological institute" in Kiev.
Burning houses suspected of being partisan meeting places and poisoning water wells became common practice for soldiers of the German 9th Army. At Kharkov , the fourth largest city in the Soviet Union, food was provided only to the small number of civilians who worked for the Germans, with the rest designated to slowly starve. The citizens of Leningrad were subjected to heavy bombardment and a siege that would last days and starve more than a million people to death, of whom approximately , were children below the age of Some desperate citizens resorted to cannibalism; Soviet records list 2, people arrested for "the use of human meat as food" during the siege, of them during the first winter of — Rape was a widespread phenomenon in the East as German soldiers regularly committed violent sexual acts against Soviet women.
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Operation Barbarossa was the largest military operation in history — more men, tanks, guns and aircraft were committed than had ever been deployed before in a single offensive. Operation Barbarossa and the subsequent German failure to achieve their objectives changed the political landscape of Europe dividing it into Eastern and Western blocs.
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German soldiers advance through Northern Russia; German flamethrower team in the Soviet Union ; Soviet Ilyushin Il-2s flying over German positions near Moscow ; Soviet prisoners of war on the way to German prison camps; Soviet soldiers fire artillery at German positions. Racial policy of Nazi Germany. Germany—Soviet Union relations, — We only have to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down. Order of battle for Operation Barbarossa.
Axis and Soviet air operations during Operation Barbarossa. Battle of Smolensk and Leningrad Operation Battle of Kiev Battle of the Sea of Azov. Finnish conquest of East Karelia Romanian Armed Forces in the European War, — The German Invasion of Soviet Russia. But all the same there was a definite delay in the opening of our Russian Campaign. Furthermore we had had a very wet spring; the Bug and its tributaries were at flood level until well into May and the nearby ground was swampy and almost impassable.
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