Operation Barbarossa

Operation Barbarossa was the codename for the military operation undertakne by Nazi Germany against Soviet Russia. It was named after the Medieval German Emperor Frederik I Barbarossa, who led the Third Crusade. As far as Hitler was concerned this was a modern Crusade against Communism, hence the name was apt.

Lasting from 22 June, 1941 – 5 December 1941, the Germans conquered vast territories of the Soviet Union and inflicted untold amount of casualties, but overall it was an operational failure and would have devastating consequences Nazi Germany.

This article will give further information about Operation Barbarossa within the context of the IAS Exam.

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Background and Preparation of Operation Barbarossa

Before Hitler began his blitzkrieg against Poland on September 1st, 1939, he signed a nonaggression pact with Josef Stalin. This was to stop the Soviet Union from coming to the aid of the Poles when war would begin. In addition this would also isolate the Soviets from making an alliance with the rest of Europe.

The pact held till 1941 by which time most of Western Europe, except for Britain and the neutral countries of Switzerland and Spain, had fallen under the Nazi Jackboot. With most of Europe subdued, Hitler wanted to turn his attention towards the East. As far as the Non-Aggression Pact with the Soviets was concerned, it was a piece of paper that could be torn anytime.

He had several reasons to launch an offensive against the Soviets:

• Communism and Nazims were ideologically different and hence it made the clash between the two, in Hitlers eyes, inevitable.
• Hitler had asserted, in his book Mein Kampf, that the German people would need Lebensraum (Livin Space), a feat only possible with the conquest of the Soviet Union.
• Nazi propaganda had portrayed the peope of the Soviet Union as subhumans who threateneeed the very culture of Germany and by extension of Europe itself. Hence war was necessary to protect German itself from an inevitable onslaught of the ‘Eastern Horde.
• The rich resources of Western Russia would give Germany the means to continue the war for years to come.

The preparations were conducted in strictest secrecy. The attack was scheduled for May to give a summer of good fighting weather for German tanks and aircraft. The pretence was maintained that Britain was still the object of the new campaign, but by the late spring there was growing intelligence evidence that German forces were swinging to the east.

Efforts to persuade Stalin that his German ally was about to betray him was brushed aside as Western Propaganda.

Then in April 1941 Hitler diverted his forces to the Balkans in response to the failure of the Italian attack on Greece and an anti-German coup in Yugoslavia. On 6 April Belgrade was bombed and after a brief campaign both Yugoslavia and Greece were defeated and occupied by a mixed Italian-German force.

The Balkan conflict meant the postponement of Operation Barbarossa until 22 June. Stalin considered the date too late for the onset of hostilities that year and Soviet defences were not alerted to any threat.

Though Soviet forces outnumbered those of Germany – 20,000 tanks to 3350 and 10,00 aircraft to the Luftwaffe’s 3400 – they were poorly organized and short of modern equipment. The German army of 146 divisions, organized into three army groups, North, Centre and South and spearheaded by 29 Panzer and motorized divisions, achieved complete surprise when the orders were given to roll across the Soviet frontier on 22 June.

Progress of Operation Barbarossa

The German forces achieved a series of spectacular victories against a poorly prepared and demoralized Red Army. Huge pincer movements by mobile forces enveloped Soviet armies: two million prisoners were taken in the first three months.

By the autumn almost all Soviet tanks and aircraft in the western areas had been destroyed, Leningrad and Moscow were threatened and German armies in the south had penetrated deep into the Ukraine, where food supplies and industrial production were concentrated.

In October 1941 Hitler returned from his headquarters behind the battle lines to Berlin, where he announced to an ecstatic crowd that the Soviet Union was on the point of complete defeat and that the time had now come for Germany to begin the construction of a New Order in Europe.

In the east the plan was to destroy the Soviet state and raze its major cities to the ground. The bulk of the Slavic population would be pushed back beyond the Urals. The rest of the of the Soviet Union was to be broken into colonial regions ruled by Nazi commissars and permanently settled and garrisoned by Germans.

The rest of Europe was to be organized hierarchically: the more developed and racially superior areas would hold privileged positions within the German empire; those less developed and inhabited by Slav or Latin peoples would form a lower tier of poorer rural states. At the centre was to be the rich and industrialized Germany, dominating the continent as the Roman Empire had once done.

The declaration of the New Order proved premature. The German campaign in the east slowed with the onset of autumn rains and high losses of equipment and men. Confident of a quick victory, little effort had gone into supplying equipment and clothing for winter warfare. Soviet forces fought fiercely when they stood their ground.

At Moscow, whose outskirts was reached in December 194, a young Soviet General Georgiy Zhukov, organized a frantic but effective defence. Supported by fresh troops from the Soviet east. Equipped with winter clothing and weapons newy produced in the industries now relocated to the Urals. The Red Army inflicted the first reversals on German forces.

The battle of Moscow was decisive in halting the German war machinary in its tracks. The failure to capture the Soviet capital signalled the end of Operation Barbarossa and eventually the might of the German army itself.

Aftermath of Operation Barbarossa

The failure of Operation Barbarossa reversed the fortunes of Nazi Germany. Operationally, German forces achieved significant victories and occupied some of the most important economic areas of the Soviet Union (mainly in Ukraine) and inflicted, as well as sustained, heavy casualties. Despite these early successes, the German offensive stalled in the Battle of Moscow at the end of 1941, and the subsequent Soviet winter counteroffensive pushed the Germans about 250 km back.

The Germans had confidently expected a quick collapse of Soviet resistance as in Poland, but the Red Army absorbed the German Wehrmacht‘s strongest blows and bogged it down in a war of attrition for which the Germans were unprepared.

The Wehrmacht‘s diminished forces could no longer attack along the entire Eastern Front, and subsequent operations to retake the initiative and drive deep into Soviet territory—such as Case Blue in 1942 and Operation Citadel in 1943—eventually failed, which resulted in the Wehrmacht‘s retreat and collapse.

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