 Complete the following phrase:  After an initial devastating advance, the Wehrmacht suffered its first defeat in war at Moscow. The Germans and their allies tried in 1942 to advance southward, to the Caucasus. After six months of fighting, at Stalingrad they suffered a pivotal defeat. In late 1943, in the wake of Battle of Kursk, the Soviet Red Army gained the initiative with a series of major victories, culminating in the ultimate advance of Soviet forces into Eastern Europe during 1944 and over Germany in 1945, concluded by the Battle of Berlin. The war against the USSR inflicted loss of lives both civilian and military, on a scale greater than any countries in the war. Following the end of the war in Europe and the American atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the 