Despite warnings from British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, and the Soviets' espionage network in Japan, the German invasion of the Soviet Union took Stalin completely by surprise. Trains loaded with grain and oil were still heading for Germany under the terms of Stalin's trade agreement as Hitler's [G 14 / panzers] knifed past them deep into European Russia.
Recovering from the initial shock, Stalin ordered a retreat to draw the Germans further into the [P 009 / endless]
[G 18 / steppe], hoping to exhaust them with the Soviet Union's size. At the same time a 'scorched earth' policy was adopted to deny Nazi troops any food or resources to further their advance. Anything thought to be of value was either dismantled and transported east or destroyed.
In the first five months of the war, 244 factories were entirely disassembled and evacuated via the Trans- Siberian to Western Siberia. Seventy-eight were also moved to Eastern Siberia. By the second year of the war, Siberia was producing a third of the nation's pig iron, over a quarter of its steel and rolled products and half its coal. It also produced tanks, planes and self- propelled artillery. Nearly all the theaters of Moscow, Leningrad (St Petersburg), Kiev and Minsk were evacuated to Siberia. The world-famous Tretiakov Art Gallery was shipped along the Trans-Siberian in July 1941 and stored at the Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theater until 1944.
The railway infrastructure was vital for maintaining the war effort and more than 6,000 miles of additional track was laid during the war using Axis prisoners-of-war.
