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Invasion of the Soviet Union

Operation Barbarossa
Part of the Eastern Front of World War II
Operation Barbarossa Infobox.jpg
Clockwise from top left: German soldiers advance through Northern Russia, German flamethrower team in the Soviet Union, Soviet planes flying over German positions near Moscow, Soviet prisoners of war on the way to German prison camps, Soviet soldiers fire at German positions.
Date 22 June – 5 December 1941
(5 months, 1 week and 6 days)
Location Eastern and Northern Europe
Result See Aftermath
Belligerents
 Soviet Union
Commanders and leaders
Units involved
Strength

Frontline strength (initial)

  • 3.8 million personnel
  • 3,350 tanks
  • 2,770 aircraft
  • 7,200 artillery pieces

Frontline strength (initial)

  • 2.6–2.9 million personnel
  • 11,000 tanks
  • 7,133–9,100 military aircraft
Casualties and losses

Total military casualties:
1,000,000+

Total military casualties:
4,973,820


Frontline strength (initial)

Frontline strength (initial)

Total military casualties:
1,000,000+

According to German Army medical reports (including Army Norway):

Other Axis losses

Total military casualties:
4,973,820

Based on Soviet archives:

Operation Barbarossa (German: Unternehmen Barbarossa) was the code name for Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II, which was launched on Sunday 22 June 1941. The operation was driven by an ideological desire to conquer the Western Soviet Union so that it could be repopulated by Germans, to use Slavs as a slave labour force for the Axis war-effort, to seize the oil reserves in the Caucasus and the agricultural resources throughout the Soviet territories.

In the two years leading up to the invasion, the two countries signed political and economic pacts for strategic purposes. Nevertheless, the German High Command began planning an invasion of the Soviet Union in July 1940 (under the codename Operation Otto), which Adolf Hitler authorized on 18 December 1940. Over the course of the operation, about four million Axis personnel invaded the western Soviet Union along a 2,900-kilometer (1,800 mi) front, the largest invasion force in the history of warfare. In addition to troops, the Wehrmacht employed some 600,000 motor vehicles, and between 600,000 and 700,000 horses for non-combat operations. The offensive marked an escalation of the war, both geographically and in the formation of the Allied coalition.

Operationally, the German forces achieved major victories and occupied some of the most important economic areas of the Soviet Union, mainly in Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, and inflicted, as well as sustained, heavy casualties. Despite their successes, the German offensive stalled in the Battle of Moscow and was subsequently pushed back by the Soviet winter counteroffensive. The Red Army repelled the Wehrmacht's strongest blows and forced the unprepared Germans into a war of attrition. The Wehrmacht would never again mount a simultaneous offensive along the entire strategic Soviet–Axis front. The failure of the operation drove Hitler to demand further operations of increasingly limited scope inside the Soviet Union, such as Case Blue and Operation Citadel – all of which eventually failed.


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