This is an A grade (21/25) essay about Stalin's leadership in the great patriotic war. It's perfect as a model essay for you to use to see how to improve your essays. It comes with the feedback my teacher wrote so you can see why I did not get the A* and how you can improve to get it!
‘Stalin’s victory in the great patriotic war owed more to luck than his good leadership’
Assess the validity of this view?
21/25 - A
Stalin’s victory in the Great Patriotic War was indeed owed more to luck than to his
good leadership. In this context, luck should be defined as something out of Stalin’s
control that benefited him. This occurred with many of the factors that aided him to
win the war. For example, although Stalin was a good war time leader as he
instructed to move industry to the Urals which contributed heavily to the USSR’s
victory, ultimately this was due to Russia’s geographical size and thus Stalin’s luck.
Furthermore, Russia’s large population together with the harsh winters of 1941-1942
coupled with the failures of Hitler can be accredited to luck as Stalin did not have
control over these factors yet they played a pivotal role in the USSR’s victory in
1945. Therefore, Stalin’s victory was owed more to luck than to his own good
leadership.
Although it cannot be disputed that Stalin did play a pivotal role in securing the
USSR’s victory in 1945 through exploiting Russia’s natural resources such as oil and
more importantly instructing workers to move industries further east, ultimately these
factors have luck embedded in them. For instance, Stalin’s decision to move
Russia’s industries to the Urals contributed heavily to their victory in 1945. For
example, industries were packed on 20,000 trains and moved to areas out of the
reach of German bombs which resulted in resources such as guns, tanks and aircraft
being produced to match the Germans. The battle of Stalingrad in 1941-1942 for
example consisted of 3,400 tanks and over 21,000 guns. This outweighed the
German resources and was pivotal for Russia’s victory because it allowed them to
fight and produce weapons at a speed which outweighed the Germans. As such, it is
clear that Stalin’s decision to move industry further to the east was pivotal for
Russia’s victory. However, much of this was owed to luck. Although Stalin instructed
for industry to be moved to the east, had it not been for Russia’s massive
geographical size this would not have been able to occur. It is only due to Russia’s
size from which Stalin had the option to transfer Russia’s industries to the east and
this is, thoroughly due to luck as Stalin did not control Russia’s geographical size.
Thus, it should be clear that Stalin’s victory in the great patriotic war owed more to
luck than his own good leadership.
Furthermore, the argument that Stalin’s victory in the war was more due to luck than
his good leadership can be further justified by the fact that although he placed highly
competent generals like Zhukov to lead the army, ultimately this can further be
accredited to luck. This is because although he placed highly competent generals in
positions of power which contributed to Russia’s victory because they instilled high
morale in soldiers resulting in them fighting better, ultimately this is mostly due to the
sheer population of Russia which was an estimated 171 million in the 1940s.
although indisputably morale in soldiers was intrinsic to winning the war, replacing
casualties however was paramount. Russia’s population allowed generals to replace
dead soldiers faster than Germany could do due to their smaller population. This was
also pivotal in Stalin’s victory as the army could supply men to fight rapidly as
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