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The countries agreed that they would not attack each other and secretly divided the countries that lay between them.
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German troops invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, triggering World War II. In response to German aggression, Great Britain and France declared war on Nazi Germany. Nazi Germany possessed overwhelming military superiority over Poland.
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It marked the end of the 105-day Winter War, upon which Finland ceded border areas to the Soviet Union.
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Operation Barbarossa was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during the Second World War. It was the largest land offensive in human history, with over 10 million combatants taking part.
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Kiev had been in German hands for three years. The great battle of encirclement that took place in the area in August and September 1941 had cost the Soviets approximately 450,000 casualties. One of the oldest cities in Eastern Europe, Kiev is believed to have been founded in the 9th century.
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The siege of Leningrad was a prolonged military blockade undertaken by the Axis powers against the Soviet city of Leningrad on the Eastern Front of World War II. Germany's Army Group North advanced from the south, while the German-allied Finnish army invaded from the north and completed the ring around the city.
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The Battle of Moscow was a military campaign that consisted of two periods of strategically significant fighting on a 600 km sector of the Eastern Front during World War II, between September 1941 and January 1942.
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The Battle of Stalingrad was a major battle on the Eastern Front of World War II where Nazi Germany and its allies unsuccessfully fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in Southern Russia.
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The Battle of Kursk was a major World War II Eastern Front large-scale engagement between the forces of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union near Kursk in southwestern Russia during the late summer of 1943; it ultimately became the largest tank battle in history and resulted in a Soviet victory.
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During the historic meeting of Allied fronts, by the river Elbe at Torgau, Germany, April 26, 1945. Two weeks after the meeting on the Elbe, the war in Europe ended with the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany.