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German infantry during the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. See more photographs |
INVASION OF THE SOVIET UNION, JUNE 1941 |
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The German invasion of the Soviet Union, code-named Operation Barbarossa, began on June 22, 1941. It was the largest German military operation of World War II. Hitler had always regarded the German-Soviet nonaggression pact as a tactical and temporary maneuver. On December 18, 1940, he signed Directive 21 (code-named Operation Barbarossa), the first operational order for the invasion of the Soviet Union. From the beginning of operational planning, German military and police authorities intended to wage a war of annihilation against the Communist state as well as the Jews of the Soviet Union, whom they characterized as forming the "racial basis" for the Soviet state. |
German forces invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, less than two years after the German-Soviet Pact was signed. Three army groups, including more than three million German soldiers, supported by half a million troops from Germany's allies (Finland, Romania, Hungary, Italy, Slovakia, and Croatia), attacked the Soviet Union across a broad front, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south. For months, the Soviet leadership had refused to heed warnings from the western powers of the German troop buildup. Germany thus achieved almost complete tactical surprise and the Soviet armies were initially overwhelmed. Millions of Soviet soldiers were encircled, cut off from supplies and reinforcements, and forced to surrender. As the German army advanced deep into Soviet territory, Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) followed the troops and implemented mass-murder operations. |
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By early September 1941, German forces had reached the gates of Leningrad in the north. They had taken Smolensk in the center and Dnepropetrovsk in the south. German units reached the outskirts of Moscow in early December. Yet after months of campaigning, the German army was exhausted. Having expected a rapid Soviet collapse, German planners had failed to equip their troops for winter warfare. Moreover, the speedy German advance had caused the forces to outrun their supply lines, which were vulnerable due to the great distances involved (Moscow is almost 1,000 miles east of Berlin). |
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In December 1941, the Soviet Union launched a major counterattack against the center of the front, driving the Germans back from Moscow in chaos. Only weeks later were the Germans able to stabilize the front east of Smolensk. In the summer of 1942, Germany resumed the offensive with a massive attack to the south and southeast toward the city of Stalingrad on the Volga River and toward the oil fields of the Caucasus. As the Germans fought their way to Stalingrad in September 1942, the German domination of Europe had reached its furthest geographical extension. |
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