Operation Barbarossa (German: Unternehmen Barbarossa; Russian: Операция Барбаросса, romanized: Operatsiya Barbarossa) was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II. It was the largest and costliest land offensive in human history, with around 10 million combatants taking part,^[26] and over 8 million casualties by the end of the operation.^[27]^[28]

Quick Facts Date, Location ...

Operation Barbarossa

Part of the Eastern Front of World War II

Clockwise from top left:

German soldiers advance through northern Russia
German flamethrower team
Soviet Ilyushin Il-2s over German positions near Moscow
Soviet POWs on the way to prison camps
Soviet soldiers fire artillery

Date	22 June 1941 – 5 December 1941 (5 months, 1 week and 6 days)
Location	Central Europe Northeast Europe Eastern Europe Mainly the Soviet Union
Result	Axis strategic failure
Territorial changes	Axis captured approximately 600,000 sq mi (1,600,000 km²) of Soviet territory but failed to reach the A-A line

Belligerents

Soviet Union

Commanders and leaders

Units involved

Axis armies:

Army Group North
Army Group Centre
Army Group South
Independent armies:
- Army of Norway
- Army of Karelia

Soviet armies:

Northern Front
- 7th Army
- 8th Army
- 48th Army
- 52nd Army
- 54th Army
- 55th Army
Northwestern Front
Western Front
- 3rd Army
- 10th Army
- 13th Army
- 16th Army
- 19th Army
- 20th Army
- 22nd Army
- 24th Army
- 28th Army
- 40th Army
- 50th Army
Southwestern Front
- 5th Army
- 6th Army
- 12th Army
- 21st Army
- 26th Army
- 37th Army
Southern Front

Strength

Frontline strength (22 June 1941)

3.8 million personnel^[1]^[2]
3,350–3,795 tanks^[3]^[1]^[4]^[5]
3,030–3,072 other AFVs^[6]^{[lower-alpha 2]}
2,770–5,369 aircraft^[3]^[7]
7,200–23,435 artillery pieces^[1]^[3]^[5]
17,081 mortars^[5]
600,000 horses^[8]
600,000 vehicles^[8]

Frontline strength (22 June 1941)

2.6–2.9 million personnel^[9]^[10]
11,000 tanks^[11]^[12]
7,133–9,100 military aircraft^[13]^[14]^[15]

Casualties and losses

Total military casualties:
1,000,000+^{[lower-alpha 3]}

Breakdown

Casualties of 1941:

According to German Army medical reports (including Army Norway):^[16]
- 186,452 killed
- 40,157 missing
- 655,179 wounded in action^{[lower-alpha 4]}
- 8,000 evacuated sick
- 2,827 aircraft destroyed^[17]
- 2,735 tanks destroyed^[4]^[18]
- 104 assault guns destroyed^[4]^[18]
Other involved country losses
- 114,000+ casualties (at least 39,000 dead or missing)^[19]
- 75,000 casualties
  (26,355 dead) in Karelia^[20]
  5,000+ casualties during Operation Silver Fox.^[21]
- 8,700 casualties^[22]
- 4,420 casualties^{[lower-alpha 5]}

Total military casualties:
4,500,000

Breakdown

Casualties of 1941:

Based on Soviet archives:^[24]
- 566,852 killed in action (101,471 of whom died in hospital of wounds)
- 235,339 died from non-combat causes
- 1,336,147 sick or wounded via combat and non-combat causes
- 2,335,482 missing in action or captured
- 21,200 aircraft, of which 10,600 were lost to combat^[17]
- 20,500 tanks destroyed^[25]

Close

The operation, code-named after Frederick I "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.^[29]^[30]

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 major 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 five million Soviet Red Army troops^[31] 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.^[32] Mass shootings and gassing operations, carried out by German death squads or willing collaborators,^{[lower-alpha 6]} murdered over a million Soviet Jews as part of the Holocaust.^[34]

The failure of Operation Barbarossa reversed the fortunes of Nazi Germany.^[35] 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. The German offensive came to an end during the Battle of Moscow near the end of 1941,^[36]^[37] 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 the invasion of Poland, analogous to the reaction Russia had during World War I,^[38] but 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 weaker and eventually failed, which resulted in the Wehrmacht's defeat. These Soviet victories ended Germany's territorial expansion and presaged the eventual defeat and collapse of Nazi Germany in 1945.