Operation Barbarossa

Operation Barbarossa
	Part of World War II, Eastern Front
Date	June 22 1941 - December 1941
Location	Belarus, Ukraine, Western Russia.
Result	Strategic Soviet victory; Tactical Axis victory
Belligerents
Axis Powers	Soviet Union
Commanders and leaders
Supreme commander: Adolf Hitler	Supreme commander: Josef Stalin
Strength
~ 3,200,000	~ 2,600,000
Casualties and losses
830,903 (174,000 dead, 36,000 missing, 604,000 injured)	2,600,000 (dead, missing, injured and prisoners)

Operation Barbarossa (Unternehmen Barbarossa) was the German codename for Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that commenced on June 22, 1941. The operation was named after the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa of the Holy Roman Empire.

The original goal for this operation was rapid conquest of all of European Soviet Union and the Ukraine, west of a line connecting the cities of Arkhangelsk and Astrakhan, often referred to as the AA line. The failure of Operation Barbarossa arguably resulted in the eventual overall defeat of Nazi Germany, and was a turning point for the fortunes of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. The Eastern Front which was opened by Operation Barbarossa became the biggest theatre of war in World War II, with some of the largest and most brutal battles, terrible loss of life, and miserable conditions for Soviets and Germans alike.

German intentions

Ostensibly, the Germans feared that the Red Army was preparing to attack them, and their own assault was thus presented as a preemptive war. Readers of Hitler's Mein Kampf ("My Struggle") should, however, have expected an invasion of the Soviet Union. In his book, he makes clear his belief that the German people needed Lebensraum ("living space", i.e. land and raw materials), and that it should be looked for in the East. It was the stated policy of the Nazis to kill, deport, or enslave Russian and other Slavic populations, whom they considered inferior, and to repopulate the land with Germanic peoples. The entire urban population was to be exterminated by starvation, thus creating an agricultural surplus to feed Germany and allowing their replacement by a German upper class.

The German nazi-ideologist Alfred Rosenberg, who himself believed Slavs were Aryan, while preparing to implement these general ideas, suggested that conquered Soviet territory should be administered in the following Reichskommissariates:

Ostland (The Baltic countries and Belarus)
Ukraine (Ukraine and adjacent territories),
Kaukasus (Caucasus area),
Moskau (Moscow metropolitan area and the rest of European Russia)

Nazi policy aimed to destroy the Soviet Union as a political entity in accordance with the geopolitical Lebensraum idea ("Drang nach Osten") for the benefit of future "Aryan" generations in the centuries to come.

The "Führer" anticipated additional benefits from conquest:

When the Soviet Union was defeated the structural labour shortage in the German industry could be ended by demobilising many troops.
The Ukraine would be a reliable source of cheap food.
Having the Soviet Union as a source of cheap slave labour would vastly improve Germany's geostrategic position.
Defeat of the Soviet Union would further isolate the British Empire.

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact had been signed shortly before the German and Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939. It was ostensibly a non-aggression pact in which secret protocols outlined an agreement between the Third Reich and the Soviet Union on the division of the border states between themselves. The pact surprised the world because of their mutual hostility and their opposed ideologies. As a result of this pact, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union had reasonably strong diplomatic relations and were important trading partners. The Soviet Union supplied oil and raw materials to Germany, while Germany provided technology to the Soviet Union. Despite the pact, however, both sides remained strongly suspicious of each others intentions, and as both sides began bumping up against each other in Eastern Europe it appeared that conflict was inevitable.

Hitler had long wanted to conquer western Russia in order to exploit its untermensch (subhuman) Slavic population. So he had signed the pact simply for (mutual) short-term convenience. In addition to the territorial ambitions of both Hitler and Stalin, the contrasting ideologies of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union made an eventual conflict between them likely.

Stalin's reputation contributed both to Nazi justification of the assault and to their faith in success. During the late 1930s, Stalin had killed and imprisoned millions of people during the Great Purge, including large numbers of competent and experienced military officers and strategists, effectively leaving the Red Army weakened and leaderless. The Nazis often emphasized the brutality of the Soviet regime when targeting the "inferior" Slavs in their propaganda.

Operation Barbarossa was largely the brainchild of Hitler himself. Some members of his military and diplomatic staff advised finishing off Great Britain before undertaking a second front against the Soviet Union, but for the most part his General staff agreed with that an invasion would be necessary at some point. Hitler considered himself a political and military genius, and indeed at this point in the war he had achieved a whole series of lightning victories against what appeared to be insurmountable odds, often against the advice of Germany's military leadership. First, his brashness and willingness to take risks, combined with the discipline of his troops and the Blitzkrieg tactics, had won him the Sudetenland, Austria and Czechoslovakia with hardly any struggle, then Poland, Denmark and Norway with only slightly more trouble. Then he had achieved the rapid collapse of the French armies by slashing through Luxembourg north of the Maginot Line, pocketing large numbers of Allied troops, and then south to the Swiss border. The northern pocket collapsed and its troops fell back on Dunkirk. The forces of Britain, driven from French soil, held out in their home country because of their aerial superiority and naval parity. Unable to force Britain's capitulation - though vacillating toward an invasion - lacking sufficient naval assets and a strategic bomber force, Hitler, impatient to get on with his long desired invasion of the east, was convinced that Britain would sue for peace once the Soviet Union was knocked out of the war.

We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down
— Adolf Hitler

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Adolf Hitler

Hitler was overconfident due to his rapid success in Western Europe, as well as the Red Army's ineptitude in the Winter War. He expected victory in a few months and did not prepare for a war lasting into the winter; his troops lacked adequate clothing. He hoped a quick victory against the Red Army would encourage Britain to accept peace terms.

German preparations

In preparation for the attack, Hitler moved 3.2 million men to the Soviet border, launched many aerial surveillance missions over Soviet territory, and stockpiled vast amounts of materiel in the East. Yet the Soviets were still taken by surprise. This has mostly to do with Stalin's unshakeable belief that the Third Reich was unlikely to attack only two years after signing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. He also was convinced the Nazis would probably finish their war with Britain before opening a new front. Despite repeated warnings from his intelligence services, Stalin refused to give them full credence, fearing the information to be British misinformation designed to spark a war between the Nazis and the USSR. The German government also aided in this deception. They told Stalin that the troops were being moved to bring them out of range of British bombers. They also explained that they were trying to trick the British into thinking they were planning to attack the Soviet Union, while in fact the troops and supplies were being stockpiled for an invasion of Britain. As a result of all this, Stalin's preparations against a possible German invasion in 1941 were half-hearted. One should note, though, that communist spy Dr. Richard Sorge gave Stalin the exact German launch date; Swedish cryptanalysts led by Arne Beurling knew the date also beforehand.

The Germans set up deception operations, from April 1941, to add substance to their assertions that Britain was the real target: Operations Haifisch and Harpune. These two operations simulated preparations taking place in Norway, the Channel coast and Brittany, together with the tales about troop concentrations mentioned above. There were supporting activities such as ship concentrations, reconnaissance flights and training exercises. Invasion plans were developed and some details were allowed to leak.

Germany had trouble attempting to devise a strategy that would ensure a successful invasion of the Soviet Union. Hitler, the OKW (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht) and the various high commands were in disagreement about a comprehensive plan for the assault on the Soviet Union and as to what the main objectives should be. OKW desired a straight line to Moscow, but Hitler wanted to march into resource-rich Ukraine and the Baltics before taking on Moscow. The resulting squabble disrupted logistical planning for the invasion, delaying it for more than a month after the originally planned invasion date of May.

The ultimate strategy Hitler and his generals agreed upon involved three separate army groups assigned to capture specific regions and large cities of the Soviet Union once the invasion began. The three main German thrusts were conducted along historical invasion routes of the past. Army Group North was assigned to march through the Baltics, march into northern Russia, and either take or destroy the city of Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg). Army Group Center would take the straight line to Smolensk, and ultimately Moscow, marching through what is now Belarus and through the west-central regions of Russia proper. Army Group South was poised to strike the heavily populated and agricultural heartland of Ukraine, taking Kiev, before continuing eastward over the steppes of Southern Russia all the way to the Volga and the oil-rich Caucasus.

Soviet preparations

Coming into the 1940s, the Soviet Union was by no means a weak country. Rapid Soviet industrialization in the 1930s had resulted in industrial output being second only to that of the United States, and equal to that of Nazi Germany. Production of military equipment grew steadily, and in the pre-war years the economy became progressively oriented toward military production. In the early 1930s a very modern operational doctrine for the Red Army was developed and promulgated in the 1936 field regulations.

In 1941 the Soviet armed forces in the western districts were outnumbered by their German counterparts. The overall size of the Soviet armed forces in early July 1941 though, amounted to a little more than 5 million men, which was more than the German land forces deployed for Barbarossa. Moreover, on mobilisation the Red Army gained steadily in strength, and it could also deploy a greater share of that strength on this front than the Germans could. While the strength of both sides varied, in general it is accurate to say that the 1941 campaign was fought on terms of approximate numerical parity.

In some key weapons systems, however, the Soviet numerical advantage was considerable. In tanks, for example, the Red Army had a large superiority. The Red Army possessed about 24,000 tanks overall, of which about 12,782 were in the five Western Military Districts (three of which directly faced the German invasion front). The German Wehrmacht had about 5,200 tanks overall, of which 3,350 were committed to the invasion. This yields a balance of immediately-available tanks of approximately 4:1 in the Red Army's favor. The most advanced Soviet tank, the T-34, was the most modern in the world; the BT-8 was the fastest. With regards to German counterparts, as Viktor Suvorov claims, preliminary designs of first German heavy tank date back to May 26, 1941(!)[1]. The number of artillery pieces and aircraft was also heavily in the Soviets' favor, and the Soviet A-19 field gun was arguably the best in the world. However, the most advanced Soviet tank models were not available in large numbers early in the war.

The Soviet numerical advantage was also more than offset by the greatly superior average quality of German planes along with the much superior training and readiness of German forces. The Soviet officer corps and high command had been decimated by Stalin's Great Purge (1935–1938), during which almost one-third of experienced Red Army officers and almost all of its generals were executed or shipped to Siberia, replaced with officers deemed more "politically reliable." Of the five pre-war Marshals, three were executed; about two-thirds of the Corps and Division commanders were shot. This often left younger, less well-trained officers in their places; for example, in 1941, seventy-five percent of Red Army officers had held their posts for less than one year. The average Soviet Corps commander was 12 years younger than the average German Division commander. These officers tended to be very reluctant to take individual initiative, and often lacked training for their jobs.

Most Soviet units were on a peacetime footing, explaining why aviation units had their aircraft parked in closely-bunched neat rows, rather than dispersed as they would have been under normal wartime procedure, thereby making easy targets for German ground-attack aircraft in the first days of the conflict. The Red air force was forbidden to shoot down German reconnaissance aircraft despite hundreds of pre-war flights into the USSR's airspace. The Soviet fighter force was equipped with large numbers of obsolescent aircraft such as the I-15 biplane and the I-16, with only a few of the newer MiG and LaGG fighters available. Few aircraft had radios; the few radios available were unencrypted and did not work reliably; air combat tactics were primitive.

The Red Army was dispersed and unprepared, and units were often separated and without transportation to concentrate prior to combat. Although the Red Army had numerous, well-designed artillery pieces, many of the guns had no ammunition. Artillery units often lacked transportation to move their guns into combat. Tank units were large and well-equipped, but lacked training and logistical support. Maintenance standards were very poor. Units were sent into combat with no arrangements for refuelling, ammunition resupply, or personnel replacement. Often, after a single engagement units were destroyed or rendered ineffective. The fact that the Army was in the midst of reorganizing the armor units into large Tank Corps added to the disorganization.

As a result, although on paper the Red Army in 1941 seemed at least the equal of the German army, the reality in the field was far different; incompetent officers, as well as partial lack of equipment, insufficient motorised logistical support, and poor training placed the Red Army at a severe disadvantage when facing the Germans. For example, throughout the campaign, the Red Army lost about six tanks for every German tank lost.

Counterarguments to this interpretation are available in the book Icebreaker, by former GRU defector Viktor Suvorov. This book argues that Soviet ground forces were extremely well organized, and were mobilizing en masse all along the German-Soviet border for a Soviet invasion of Europe slated for Sunday July 6, 1941. The German Barbarossa, he claims, actually was a pre-emptive strike that capitalized on the massive Soviet troop concentrations immediately on Germany's borders. Suvorov argues therefore that Soviet troop concentrations on Germany's borders were offensive in nature, not defensive as usually described. His interpretation has been thoroughly rejected by various respected historians, in particular David Glantz, and has not found serious support among Western academic historians. However, things look different in the Eastern Europe, including Russia, where the debate over the nature of the German-Soviet conflict goes on. A serious study by Russian military historian Mikhail Meltyukhov (“Stalin's Missed Chance”) supports the claim that Soviet forces were concentrated in order to attack Germany. He rejects nevertheless the statement that German invasion was a pre-emptive strike: Meltyukhov believes both sides were preparing for the assault but neither believed in the possibility of an attack by the other side.

Soviet propaganda in pre-war years, of course, invariably stated that the Red Army was very strong and could easily defeat any aggressor.

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Joseph Stalin

Having fielded officers who were certain to tell him only what he wanted to hear, together with having an ill-founded confidence in the non-aggression pact, Stalin was led to believe that the position of the Soviet Union in early 1941 was much stronger than it actually was. In the spring of 1941, Stalin's own intelligence services made regular and repeated warnings of an impending German attack. Stalin's belief in his officers and military strength was so strong that he and his general staff, although acknowledging the possibility of an attack in general and making significant preparations, decided not to run the risk of provoking Hitler. Consequently, the Soviet border troops were not put on full alert and even forbidden to fire back without permission when attacked — though a partial alert was implemented on April 10 — and they were simply not ready when the German attack came. This may be the source of the argument cited about by Viktor Suvorov. Stalin also refused to fully mobilise the army.

Nevertheless, enormous Soviet forces were massed behind the western border in case the Germans did attack. However, these forces were very vulnerable due to changes in the tactical doctrine of the Red Army. In 1938 it had adopted, on the instigation of General Pavlov, a standard linear defence tactic on a line with other nations. Infantry divisions, reinforced by an organic tank component, would be dug in to form heavily fortified zones. Then came the shock of the Fall of France. The French Army, considered the second strongest in the world (after the Red Army), was defeated in a mere six weeks. Soviet analysis of events, based on incomplete information, concluded that the collapse of the French was caused by a reliance on linear defence and a lack of armoured reserves. The Soviets decided not to repeat these mistakes. Instead of digging in for linear defence, the infantry divisions would henceforth be concentrated in large mobile formations. All tanks would also be concentrated into 31 gigantic mechanised corps, each planned to be larger than a German Panzer Army (though few had attained this size by June 22). Should the Germans attack, their armoured spearheads would be cut off and wiped out by the mechanised corps. These would then cooperate with the infantry armies to drive back the German infantry, vulnerable in its approach march. The Soviet left wing, in Ukraine, was to be enormously reinforced to be able to execute a strategic envelopment: after destroying German Army Group South it would swing north through Poland in the back of Army Groups Centre and North. Then the complete annihilation of the encircled German Army would be inevitable, followed by the triumphant liberation of Europe.

Strength of the opposing forces on the Soviet Western border. June 22 1941

	Red Army	German Army (inc allies)	Ratio
Divisions	190	166	1.1 : 1
Personnel	3,289,851	4,306,800	1 : 1.3
Guns and mortars	59,787	42,601	1.4 : 1
Tanks (incl assault guns)	15,687	4171	3.8 : 1
Aircraft	10,743	4846	2.2 : 1

Source: Mikhail Meltyukhov “Stalin's Missed Chance” ^[2], table 47

The attack of June 22

At 4:45 am on June 22, 1941, the Axis Forces attacked. It is difficult to precisely pinpoint the strength of the opposing sides in this initial phase, as most German figures include reserves slated for the East but not yet committed, as well as several other issues of comparability between the two sides' figures. A reasonable estimate is however that roughly 2.6 million German soldiers went into action on 22 June, and that they were facing a roughly similar number of Soviet troops in the border Military Districts. The contribution of the German allies would generally only begin to make itself felt somewhat further into the campaign. The surprise was complete: Stavka, alarmed by reports that German units approached the border in battle deployment, had at 0:30 AM ordered to warn the border troops that war was imminent, but not a single unit was alerted in time.

The shock of impact stemmed less from the timing of the attack however than from the sheer number of Axis troops who struck into Soviet territory all at once. Aside from the roughly 3.2 million German land forces engaged in or earmarked for the Eastern campaign, some hundreds of thousands of Romanian, Hungarian, Slovakian and Italian troops eventually accompanied the German forces, while Finland made a major contribution in the North. The Soviet forces directly facing them (not including forces in the interior and the Stavka reserve) were reinforced on such a scale that their strength had grown from roughly 2.6 million men on 22 June to more than 4 million by year's end, despite having had to make good more than 4.5 million casualties of all types.

At first, the speed of the German attack made all of the Soviet defensive plans useless. Lack of radios and other communications equipment caused a great deal of Soviet orders to be out-of-date.

Later events

While being initially successful, the Germans ultimately ran out of time — by the time they reached the outskirts of Moscow in early December, the Russian winter set in. It is often proposed that the fatal decision of the operation was the postponement from the original date of May 15 because Hitler wanted to intervene against an anti-German overthrow in Yugoslavia and Greek advances against Mussolini's Italy in Albania. This action cut five weeks off the already short Russian summer. However, this was just one of the reasons for the postponement — the other was the late spring of 1941 in Russia, compounded by particularly rainy weather during June 1941 which made a number of roads in western parts of the Soviet Union impassable to heavy vehicles. During the campaign, Hitler ordered the main thrust that had been heading toward Moscow to be diverted southward in order to help the southern army group capture Ukraine. This move delayed the assault on the Soviet capital, although it also helped to secure Army Group Center's southern flank. By the time they turned their sights on Moscow, the fierce resistance of the Red Army, assisted by the mud following the autumn rains and eventually the winter snowfall, ground their advance to a halt.

In addition, resistance by the Soviets, who proclaimed a Great Patriotic War in defence of the motherland, was much fiercer than German command had expected it to be. The border fortress of Brest, Belarus illustrates that unexpected tenacity: attacked on the very first day of the German invasion, the fortress was expected to be captured by surprise within hours. Instead, German forces and the Soviet garrison kept fighting bitterly inside the besieged fortress for an entire month. German logistics also became a major problem, as supply lines became very long and vulnerable to Soviet partisan attacks in the rear. The Soviets carried out a scorched earth policy on any land they were forced to abandon, in order to deny the Germans the use of food, fuel, and buildings on occupied land.

The Germans continued to advance despite these setbacks, however, often destroying or surrounding whole armies of Soviet troops and forcing them into surrender. The battle for Kiev was especially brutal. In mid October, Army Group South seized control of Kiev, and took more than 650,000 Soviet prisoners. Kiev was later awarded the title Hero City for its heroic defence.

Army Group North, which was to conquer the Baltic countries and eventually Leningrad, advanced as far as to the southern outskirts of Leningrad by August 1941. There, fierce Soviet resistance stopped it. Since capturing the city seemed too costly, German command decided to starve the city to death by a blockade, starting the Siege of Leningrad. The city held out, however, despite several attempts by the Germans to break through its defenses, unrelenting air and artillery attacks, and severe shortage of food and fuel, until the Germans were driven back again from the city's approaches in early 1944. Leningrad was the first Soviet city to receive the title Hero City.

Causes of initial Soviet defeats

The overall reason that the Soviet Army was so badly defeated in 1941 was a German surprise attack for which they were ill-prepared. The German armed forces were, in 1941, the most experienced and well-trained in the world. They had a doctrine of mobility and annihilation, excellent communications (c3) and the confidence that comes from repeated low-cost victories. The Soviet armed forces, in contrast, lacked leadership, training, and readiness. Much of their planning assumed that no war would take place before 1942; thus the German attack came at a time when new organizations and promising, but untested, weapons were just beginning to trickle into operational units. Also, a large part of the Soviet Army in Europe was concentrated along the new western Soviet border in former Polish territory, which lacked significant defences, so it was overrun and destroyed in the first weeks of war. Initially, many Soviet units were also hampered by Timoshenko and Zhukov's prewar orders (as it was demanded by Stalin) of non-engaging and "non-responding to provocations", followed by the first reaction "stand-and-fight-then-counterattack" order from Moscow (which left them vulnerable to German encirclements), a lack of experienced officers (this claim is contested, though), and bureaucratic inertia.

The initial tactical errors of the Soviets in the first few weeks of the German offensive proved catastrophic. Initially, the Red Army was fooled by a complete overestimation of its own capabilities. The Mechanised Corps, far from wiping out the German Panzer Divisions, were ambushed and were themselves destroyed after Luftwaffe dive bombers inflicted heavy losses. Soviet tanks, poorly maintained and driven by inexperienced drivers, also suffered from an appalling breakdown rate. A lack of spare parts and trucks ensured a logistical collapse. The decision not to dig in the infantry divisions proved disastrous. Without tanks and lacking sufficient motorisation, Soviet troops were incapable of waging mobile manoeuvre warfare against the Germans.

Then Stalin issued orders to his troops not to retreat or surrender, resulting in a return to static linear positions which the German tanks still easily breached, again quickly cutting supply lines and surrounding whole Soviet armies. Only later did Stalin allow his troops to retreat to the rear wherever possible and regroup to execute a defence in depth or to counterattack. More than 2.4 million Soviet troops had been taken prisoner by December 1941, when German and Soviet forces fought in the suburbs of Moscow.

Despite the German failure to achieve Barbarossa's initial goals, the huge Soviet losses caused a shift in Soviet propaganda attitudes. Whereas in pre-war years the government stated that the Soviet army was very strong, by autumn it took the line that the Soviet army had been weak, that there had not been enough time to prepare for war, and that the German attack had come as a surprise, etc.

An alternative explanation is given by Viktor Suvorov in his book Icebreaker, where Suvorov depicts the war as being intentionally facilitated by Stalin. This claim is strongly disputed and is generally considered by Western historians to be without any factual basis.

Outcome

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The Battle of Moscow

The climax of Operation Barbarossa came when Army Group Centre, already short on supplies because of the mud in October, was ordered to advance to Moscow; forward units came within sight of the spires of the Kremlin in early December 1941. This was as close as they would ever get, for Stalin's troops, well supplied, defended Moscow ferociously in the Battle of Moscow, and drove the Germans back into the frozen wastes of the Soviet Union as the winter advanced. Not surprisingly, the bulk of the counter-offensive was directed at Army Group Center, which was closest to Moscow. Moscow later also received the honorary distinction of Hero City.

With no shelter, few supplies, little winter clothing, chronic food shortages, and nowhere to go, German troops had no choice but to wait out the winter in the frozen wasteland. The Germans managed to avoid being routed by Soviet counterattacks but suffered heavy casualties from battle and from exposure.

At the time, the seizure of Moscow was considered the key to victory for Germany. Historians currently debate whether or not loss of the Soviet capital would have defeated the Soviet Union, but Operation Barbarossa had failed to achieve that goal. In December 1941 war had been declared against the United States. Within six months, the strategic position of Germany had become desperate, since German military industries were unprepared for a long war.

The outcome of Operation Barbarossa was at least as detrimental to the Soviets as it was to the Germans, however. Although the Germans had failed to take Moscow outright, they held huge areas of the Western Soviet Union, including the entire regions of what are now Belarus, Ukraine, and the Baltic states, plus parts of Russia proper west of Moscow. The Germans held up to 500,000 sq.mi. of territory with over 75 million people at the end of 1941, and would go on to seize another 250,000 sq. mi. before being forced to retreat after military defeats such as Stalingrad and Kursk. In all the occupied areas, anti-German partisan activity rapidly escalated, and so did brutal German reprisals. The Germans also held on as stubbornly as possible in the face of Soviet counterattacks, resulting in huge casualties on each side in many battles.

The war on the Eastern Front went on for four bloody years. The death toll may never be established with any degree of reasonable certainty. Estimates of Soviet military deaths alone vary from roughly 8.5 million to as much as 15 million. Soviet civilian deaths remain under contention, though roughly 20 million is a frequently cited figure. German military deaths are also not clarified to a large extent. The highest and most recent estimate (Rüdiger Overmans) concluded that about 4.3 million Germans and a further 900,000 Axis forces lost their lives either fighting against the Red Army or in Soviet captivity.

Stalin deported to labour camps German POWs and Soviet soldiers who had been captured by Germans. Ethnic groups were also deported en masse to the east and to concentration camps. Examples include: in September 1941, 439,000 Volga Germans (as well as more than 300,000 other Germans from various locations) were deported mainly to Kazakstan as their autonomous republic was abolished by Stalin's decree; in May 1944, 182,000 Crimean Tatars were deported from Crimea to Uzbekistan; and the complete deportation of Chechens (393,000) and Ingushs (91,000) to Kazakstan took place in 1944 (see Population transfer in the Soviet Union).

Causes of the failure of Operation Barbarossa

The main cause of German failure was underestimating the capabilities of the Soviet Union and the fierce resistance of the Soviet Army, and planning of the war turned out to be faulty from the lack of coherent mutually supporting phased goals, to the hugely inadequate logistical scheme.

The grave and perilous situation in which the beleaguered German army found itself towards the end of 1941 was due to the increasing strength of the Red Army, compounded by a number of factors which in the short run severely restricted the effectiveness of the German forces. Chief among these were their overstretched deployment, a serious transport crisis affecting supply and movements, extreme weather and the eroded strength of most divisions. The infantry deficit that appeared by 1 September 1941 was never made good. For the rest of the war in the Soviet Union, the Wehrmacht would be short of infantry and support services.

Parallels have been drawn with Napoleon's invasion of Russia.

Underestimated Soviet potential

The Germans had grossly underestimated the mobilisation potential of the Red Army: its primary mobilisation size (i.e. the total of already trained units that could be put on a war-footing in short time) was about twice as large as they had expected it to be. By early August, new armies had taken the place of the destroyed ones. This fact alone implied the failure of Operation Barbarossa, for the Germans now had to limit their operations for a month to bring up new supplies, leaving only six weeks to complete the battle before the start of the mud season, an impossible task. On the other hand, the Red Army proved capable of replacing its huge losses in a timely fashion, and was not destroyed as a coherent force. When the divisions consisting of conscripts trained before the war were destroyed, they were replaced by completely new ones, on average about half a million men being drafted each month for the duration of the war. It was this Soviet ability to mobilise vast, if often also badly trained and equipped, forces in a short time and on a continual basis which allowed the Soviet Union to survive the critical first six months of the war, and the grave underestimation of this capacity which rendered German planning unrealistic.

In addition, data collected by Soviet intelligence excluded the possibility of the war with Japan, which allowed the Soviets to transfer forces from Far East to the European theatre in critical moments.

And even if the Germans had fulfilled the original plan—reached the Arkhangelsk–Volga line—it probably would not have ended the war. The Soviet Union still had vast reserves in the eastern part of the country and managed to move its war industry to the Urals, Central Asia, and Siberia, so the war could have continued for a long time.

Faults of logistical planning

The objectives of Operation Barbarossa were quite unrealistic from the very beginning. The start of the war, in the dry summer, was the most favorable for Germans, as they took the Soviets by surprise and destroyed a large part of the Soviet army in the first weeks. When favorable weather conditions gave way to harsh conditions of the fall and winter and the Soviet Army recovered from the initial setbacks, the German offensive began to fail. The German army could not be sufficiently supplied for a prolonged combat; indeed there was simply not enough fuel available to let the whole of the army reach its intended objectives.

This was well understood by the German supply units even before the operation, but their warnings were disregarded. The entire German planning was based on the premise that within five weeks the German troops would have attained full strategic freedom due to a complete collapse of the Red Army. Only then would it have been possible to divert necessary logistic support to the fuel requirements of the few mobile units needed to occupy the defeated state.

German infantry and tanks stormed 300 miles ahead in the first week, but their supply lines struggled to keep up. Russian railroads could at first not be used due to a difference in railway gauge, until a sufficient supply of trains was seized. The convoys of slow-moving vehicles and railroad tracks were also favorite targets of Soviet partisans, although partisan activity was still low in 1941. Lack of supplies significantly slowed down the blitzkrieg.

Weather

Probably no other factor has been as misunderstood as the effect of the weather on the German invasion. Weather is a neutral factor in warfare. The side that is best prepared to use weather conditions will gain advantage; the side that ignores it will suffer accordingly. The underestimated strength of the Soviet Army brought about the peril of unfavourable weather.

The German forces were not prepared to deal with harsh weather and the poor road network of the USSR. In autumn, the terrain slowed the Wehrmacht’s progress. Few roads were paved. The ground in the USSR was either a very loose sand in the summer, a sticky muck in the fall, or heavy snow during the winter. The German tanks had narrow treads that gave little traction and poor flotation in mud. In contrast, the new generation of Soviet tanks such as the T-34 and KV were far more mobile. The 600,000 large western European horses the Germans used for supply and artillery movement did not cope well with this weather. The small ponies used by the Red Army were much better adapted to this climate and could even scrape the icy ground with their hooves to dig up the weed beneath.

German troops were mostly unprepared for the harsh weather changes in autumn and winter 1941. Equipment had been prepared for such winter conditions, but the ability to move it up front over the severely overstrained transport network did not exist. Consequently, the troops were not equipped with adequate cold-weather gear, and some soldiers had to pack newspapers into their jackets to stay warm while temperatures dropped to record levels of at least −30 °C. To operate furnaces and heaters, the Germans also burned precious fuel that was difficult to re-supply. Soviet soldiers often had warm, quilted uniforms, felt-lined boots, and fur hats.

Some German weapons also malfunctioned in the cold. Lubricating oils were unsuitable for extreme cold weather, with the result that engines malfunctioned and automatic weapons would not fire. To load shells into a tank’s main gun, frozen grease had to be chipped off with a knife. Soviet units faced less severe problems due to their experience with cold weather. Aircraft were supplied with insulating blankets to keep their engines warm while parked. Lighter-weight oil was used. Gasoline, which powered all German tanks and most of their trucks, was subject to freezing in the harsh winters. Most Soviet trucks and pre-war tanks also used gasoline, but the diesel fuel used in the new-generation of Soviet tanks did not freeze in winter.

A common myth has it that the combination of deep mud, followed by snow, stopped all military movement in the harsh Russian winter. In fact, military operations were slowed by these factors, but much more so on the German side than on the Soviet side. The Soviet December 1941 counteroffensive advanced up to 100 miles in some sectors, demonstrating that mobile warfare was still possible under winter conditions.

When the severe winter began, Hitler became fearful of a repeat of Napoleon's disastrous retreat from Moscow, and quickly ordered the German forces to hold their ground defiantly wherever possible in the face of Soviet counterattacks. This became known as the "stand or die" order because the Germans were to stand their ground and fight, or die trying. This prevented the Germans from being routed altogether but inflicted heavy casualties on them from battle and from the cold.

References

Упущенный шанс Сталина. Советский Союз и борьба за Европу: 1939-1941 (Документы, факты, суждения). - М.: Вече, 2000 [3]
Суворов В. Последняя республика. М.,1995.

External links

Relationship between the campaigns in the Balkans and the invasion of Russia and associated timeline on a US Army website
Multimedia map - Covers the invasion of Russia including Operation Barbarossa
^ M.Meltyukhov ’’Stalin's Missed Chance’’ (electronic version of the book, in Russian) a study covering Soviet preparations

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