Operation Barbarossa

The operation, code-named after Frederick Barbarossa ("red beard"), a 12th-century Holy Roman Emperor and Crusader, put into action Nazi Germany's ideological goals of eradicating communism, and conquering the western Soviet Union to repopulate it with Germans. The German Generalplan Ost aimed to use some of the conquered people as forced labour for the Axis war effort while acquiring the oil reserves of the Caucasus as well as the agricultural resources of various Soviet territories, including Ukraine and Byelorussia. Their ultimate goal was to create more Lebensraum (living space) for Germany, and the eventual extermination of the native Slavic peoples by mass deportation to Siberia, Germanisation, enslavement, and genocide.^[27][28]


In the two years leading up to the invasion, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed political and economic pacts for strategic purposes. Following the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, the German High Command began planning an invasion of the Soviet Union in July 1940 (under the code-name Operation Otto). Over the course of the operation, over 3.8 million personnel of the Axis powers—the largest invasion force in the history of warfare—invaded the western Soviet Union along a 2,900-kilometer (1,800 mi) front, with 600,000 motor vehicles and over 600,000 horses for non-combat operations. The offensive marked a massive escalation of World War II, both geographically and with the Anglo-Soviet Agreement, which brought the USSR into the Allied coalition.


The operation opened up the Eastern Front, in which more forces were committed than in any other theatre of war in human history. The area saw some of history's largest battles, most horrific atrocities, and highest casualties (for Soviet and Axis forces alike), all of which influenced the course of World War II and the subsequent history of the 20th century. The German armies eventually captured some five million Soviet Red Army troops^[29] and deliberately starved to death or otherwise killed 3.3 million Soviet prisoners of war, and millions of civilians, as the "Hunger Plan" worked to solve German food shortages and exterminate the Slavic population through starvation.^[30] Mass shootings and gassing operations, carried out by German death squads or willing collaborators,^[e] murdered over a million Soviet Jews as part of the Holocaust.^[32]


The failure of Operation Barbarossa reversed the fortunes of Nazi Germany.^[33] 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 (160 mi) back. German high command anticipated a quick collapse of Soviet resistance as in Poland, analogous to the reaction Russia had during WWI.^[34] However, no such collapse occurred, and instead 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. Following the heavy losses and logistical strain of Barbarossa, 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—were smaller in strength and eventually failed, which resulted in the Wehrmacht's defeat. These Soviet victories ended Germany's territorial expansion and presaged the eventual collapse of the Nazi German state in 1945.

Historical significance[edit]

Barbarossa was the largest military operation in history – more men, tanks, guns and aircraft were deployed than in any other offensive.^[375][376] The invasion opened the Eastern Front, the war's largest theatre, which saw clashes of unprecedented violence and destruction for four years and killed over 26 million Soviet people, including about 8.6 million Red Army soldiers.^[377] More died fighting on the Eastern Front than in all other fighting across the globe during World War II.^[378] Damage to both the economy and landscape was enormous, as approximately 1,710 Soviet towns and 70,000 villages were razed.^[379]


Barbarossa and the subsequent German defeat changed the political landscape of Europe, dividing it into Eastern and Western blocs.^[380] The political vacuum left in the eastern half of the continent was filled by the USSR when Stalin secured his territorial prizes of 1944–1945 and firmly placed the Red Army in Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the eastern half of Germany.^[381] Stalin's fear of resurgent German power and his distrust of his erstwhile allies contributed to Soviet pan-Slavic initiatives and a subsequent alliance of Slavic states.^[382] The historians David Glantz and Jonathan House assert that Barbarossa influenced not only Stalin but subsequent Soviet leaders, claiming it "colored" their strategic mindsets for the "next four decades".^[p] As a result, the Soviets instigated the creation of "an elaborate system of buffer and client states, designed to insulate the Soviet Union from any possible future attack".^[383] In the ensuing Cold War, Eastern Europe became communist in political disposition, and Western Europe fell under the sway of the United States.^[384]