The Soviet Union’s expansion into Western Europe began with one man’s greed, and then followed by another’s need for retribution. During WWII, Adolf Hitler had brokered a policy with the Soviet Union, the German-Soviet Pact, with promises not to attack one another and to supply one another with manufactured goods from Germany, and raw materials from the Soviets. As we, all know from High School History class, this was only a temporary way to keep the Soviets from countering Hitler’s defeat of Poland. The National Socialist and Adolf Hitler considered the mass Russian lands to be a prime location for a future long-term settlement, and their politics to be an expansion of the Jewish community. Since the German assault on the world began, they always viewed the USSR to be an enemy with intentions to deliver the same fate to the Soviet Jews as he did in the European countries. In June 1941, Germany launched its first invasion against the Soviets, with complete disregard of the nonaggression pact. Three German army groups overwhelmed the unsuspecting Soviets and easily advanced deep into the Russian territory, with troops following with mass murder operations, and eventually stopping in September 1941, at the gates of Leningrad. The German forces occupied a large portion of Western USSR for nearly two years. However, in the winter of 1943, the German army suffered a massive defeat, with nearly 100K soldiers surrendering, at Stalingrad to the Soviet military. The USSR forces went on winning several battles along their way to Germany’s defeat and the end of WWII in Berlin, Germany. With the War over, the Soviet Union began its overtaking and expansion of Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Albania, and East Germany. All of which, became part of the USSR or became a communist satellite states that did nothing without the permission of Moscow. The expansion of such a mass amount of territory was initially to rid them of the lingering bad taste of land lost after WWI, and seek out complete destruction of German. Additionally, the expansion provided a strategic buffer from the USSR and the U.S. supporting European countries. Lastly, the USSR utilized the expansion by continuously receiving a supply of machinery and raw materials to support the Soviet Union, which had more than 25% of the capital’s resources destroyed, with the reconstruction process.

The sheer size of Russia comes with good and bad advantages. The first would be the positive advantage of having an enormous allotment of natural resources, oils, natural gases, diamonds, gold, and lumber. Another positive attribute gained is due its massive size the overall effect of pollution does not ruin the entire countries recourses and living areas. One of the most important and unavoidable weakness of Russia is the ability to control within its borders. This is not as a prevalent issue in the modern day advances in communication, but was impoosible ability in the past years. The length of surrounding borders present a military advantage of available naval and ground force exit points, it also increase the chance of failing to a multi front assault. The last mixed quality is the climate of Russia; the harsh arctic terrain has hinder assaults on them throughout the ages from Napoleon to Hitler, but negatively the extreme harsh temperatures and frozen terrain has prevented exploration and development of much of Russia.