Map to help with studying chapter 6 of The Two Trotskyisms
The war had begun to "turn" in late 1942, with Russian success in defending Stalingrad and British victories in North Africa stalling what seemed a likely German conquest of Egypt and the Suez Canal (and Palestine). In July 1943 Italy's Fascist Grand Council deposed Mussolini, and the new government soon moved to realign Italy with Britain and the USA. Although the overthrow of Mussolini was greeted with enthusiasm by the people of Italy, the German army quickly took over control of most of Italy from the new Italian government, and the British-US troops took from July 1943 to 2/5/45 to fight their way up the peninsula. They took Rome on 2/6/44.
Stalingrad is shown on the right of the map.
The deepest red is Russian advances from 1/8/43 to 1/12/43
Next deepest red - from 2/12/43 to 30/4/44
Next - from 1/5/44 to 19/8/44
Next - from 20/8/44 to 30/8/44
Lightest red - from 31/8/44 to 31/12/44.
Warsaw is shown (but not labelled) on the Vistula river near the north of the "Gobierno General" ("General Government") area. There was no Polish state during World War 2. The Warsaw rising ran from 1/8/44, soon after Russian troops reached the outskirts of Warsaw, to 2/10/44. The Russian army eventually entered the city on 17/1/45.
The Russian army conquered Berlin between 16/4/45 and 2/5/45.
D-Day (the landing of British and US troops in France) was 6/6/44.
Today's Poland is, roughly, the area to the right of a north-south line just to the west of Szczecin (Stettin) (on the Baltic between Rostock and Danzig/ Gdansk) over to an eastern border roughly similar to that shown as demarcating Belarus from the "General Government" and from "Prusia Oriental" (East Prussia, then German but now Polish). One exception is the area round Kaliningrad (Königsberg) and its hinterland, which since 1945 a Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania.
Leopolis, on this map, is today the Ukrainian city of Lviv.
Source: Wikimedia
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