Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor

When Hitler turned on France the following spring Stalin stood aside, continuing to supply his ally with grain, metals, rubber and other vital commodities. Though it is clear from what we now know of StalinБЂ™s conversations with his Politburo that he expected to be forced into war with Germany sooner or later, the timing of the Nazi attack БЂ” code-named Barbarossa or БЂRedbeardБЂ™ after a crusading Holy Roman Emperor БЂ” came as a devastating shock. The new, poorly defended border through Poland was overrun almost immediately, and within weeks the panic-stricken Red Army found itself defending the major cities of Russia herself. Chief victim of this unpreparedness was Leningrad. Immediately pre-war, the city had a population of just over three million. In the twelve weeks to mid-September 1941, when the German and Finnish armies cut it off from the rest of the Soviet Union, about half a million Leningraders were drafted or evacuated, leaving just over 2.5 million civilians, at least 400,000 of them children, trapped within the city ...»