Who was the leader of the Soviet Union during World War II?

Joseph Stalin was the leader of the Soviet Union during World War II.

Stalin was General Secretary of the Communist Party and head of the Soviet government when Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. The invasion opened the vast Eastern Front, where the Red Army fought some of the war's largest and bloodiest campaigns. Stalin exercised enormous authority over military strategy, government policy, and wartime production.

His leadership is closely associated with turning points including the defense of Moscow, the Soviet victory at Stalingrad in 1943, and the Red Army's advance through Eastern Europe toward Berlin. He also met with Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt at major Allied conferences, including Tehran and Yalta.

Stalin had been preceded in Soviet politics by Vladimir Lenin, who died in 1924. Leon Trotsky was a revolutionary rival who was expelled from the Soviet Union, while Nikita Khrushchev became the Soviet leader only after Stalin's death in 1953.