The war against Germany required maximum efforts from all countries of anti-Nazism coalition. But the US waged the war against Japan too. Roosevelt was very worried by the fact that the properly Japanese territory was inaccessible for the American air forces that were incapable to strike at it. In Tehran and later Stalin promised to start the war against Japan in 2−3 moths after victory in Europe. Yet the US President was preoccupied with the question how to use the USSR in this war. In 1943−1944 the Americans arranged with Moscow to make use of the Soviet airfields in Siberia and in Far East. However by 1945 it became obvious that this plan was impractical. Besides that, Americans had got B-29 bombers that could reach the Japanese Islands and strike at them. However the effect of these air raids was less than it was anticipated. Meanwhile the most difficult and bloody battles on the Japanese Islands and in China lied ahead. Being aware of the Japanese fanaticism the Americans did their best to avoid major land battles that took a terrible toll in lives. It was considered that the war would possibly continue for a year and losses would amount to 1.5 million people. Then an idea came: exerting the maximum effort aimed at destruction of Germany the USA had to wait for the deadline Stalin had indicated for attack on Japan (3 months) when the USSR would attack the most battle-worthy Japanese forces deployed in the mainland of Asia (i.e., in Manchuria, North China, Korea) and would assume the main brunt of land battles. Indeed, even after the atomic bombardments the Japanese continued to fight. Only destruction of main land forces of Japan made by the Soviet troops in 23 days accelerated the fall of the Japanese aggressor considerably.

1943 proved to be the turning point of the WW II. The states of the Nazi block lost their chance to win the war. On the Soviet-German front the roll of war started to move westwards. The battle of Kursk (April, 5, 1943 to August 23, 1943) became the key event. Mountains of books have been written about the battle on Orel-Kursk bulge. However these books, as a rule, elucidate only military aspect of the war. The aim of this article is to demonstrate interdependence of our strategy and policy during the year which became the turning point of the war, to demonstrate how the strategic successes of the Red Army on the battlefields were converted into the political victories (Tehran) and how all of that changed image of our army and image of the USSR in the world.

The author considers events of 1942 in a new light. He believes that the Russian politicians and military commanders who had overestimated the failure of Hitler’s blitzkrieg near Moscow and the USA entry to the war experienced a fit of euphoria and assumed that the Germans could be defeated as soon as in 1942. Sobering came only after the Russian winter offence failed and disasters in the Crimea and under Kharkov opened for Germans the way to Stalingrad and the Caucasus. Heavy fighting’s of summer and autumn of 1942 gradually taught the Russian troops the art of modern war. Powerful military-industrial base established in the east of the country, readiness of the people for self-sacrificing and maximum straining of all their forces allowed to reverse the military fortunes on the fronts in autumn of 1942. The author reveals the inseparable relationship between «Uranus» operation in the south and «Mars» operation in the central Russia, analyzes roles of these operations in the autumn-winter campaign of 1942. According to the author, the failure of «Mars» operation was a single operation’s defeat, which nevertheless allowed win the strategic victory under Stalingrad. Thus the military leadership sacrificed the operational success to the strategic one. Achievement of the radical turning point of the war was finally ensured.

The author investigates the version about the «preventive» nature of German attack on the USSR in 1941. Recently the version has gained a considerable popularity in historical literature and in mass media. On the basis of numerous facts and documents the author demonstrates that the Kremlin had no intention to attack Germany and in the case of war the combat capabilities of the Red Army did not allow to achieve a success in a massive strategic offensive against the Wehrmacht which was the world’s strongest army at the time. The author argues that the Soviet failures at the beginning of the war were due to the inadequate appraisal of the international situation by the Soviet political leaders, miscalculations of the Red Army high commanders, their misjudgments about the nature of the forthcoming war and the foe’s strength. Underdevelopment of the USSR which just recently had taken the path of industrialization and still lagged behind the developed capitalist states also had its negative impact on the preparation of the USSR.