The enormity of Hitler’s ambitions and Nazi brutality had by this time provoked the formation of a global counter-coalition solely aimed at defeating Germany and its Axis partners. All that was asked of any available ally was that it should share faithfully this one major purpose. Among the members of the Allied coalition, however, only the Soviet Union, which had already suffered serious losses the year before, was actively fighting German land forces in Europe. And unlike in 1941, when the Wehrmacht had stalled in the snow outside Moscow and Leningrad, the renewed German offensive of 1942 had carried the spearheads of Hitler’s panzer armies to Stalingrad and deep into the Caucasus, where they threatened Russia’s richest oil fields and, by extension, the Red Army’s ability to continue the struggle against Germany.
