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Operation Barbarossa Case Study

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Chapter 2: Operation Barbarossa and the USSR's eventual defeat of Germany
How the USSR industrial strength helped it win the WWII?
Operation Barbarossa driven by Adolf Hitler’s ideological ambitions marked German invasion onto the Soviet territories since 22 June 1941. During the operation, the Axis powers sent more than four million soldiers onto the Soviet territories that comprised a staggering 2,900-kilometer front. With mass amount of troops, the Germans deployed an estimated 600,000 motor vehicles and over 600,000 horses. This way, the war rapidly escalated to the unprecedented volumes. The Germans won strategic victories by occupying strategically important economic areas and causing heavy casualties. In the course of warfare the German offensive was pushed back by a Soviet counteroffensive that had forced Nazis into attrition, which it failed to survive. All further German operations on the Soviet territories (Operation Nordlicht, Case Blue, and Operation Citadel) failed unsuccessfully (Baker 37).
During the initial stages of the war, Brits much helped the Soviet Union with the tanks and aircraft. While the Soviet industry was in disarray, the industrial …show more content…

At that, Stalin never thought about people. He used them only as a defense in the face of external attack and subsequent Nazi invasion. By destroying peasants as self-sufficient and capital-oriented class, Stalin managed to enslave millions of people by means of mass propaganda and terror. For the sake of FYPs and industrialization, Stalin’s regime forces the output regardless of quality and workforce suffering, starving and dying in inhuman conditions. He deployed red terror to spread horror in people’s minds and therefore manipulate millions of

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Without much warning, on June 22, 1941, Hitler’s German army invaded the Soviet Union, his goal was to destroy communism, and turn a large population of the Soviet Union into slaves. This invasion became the largest force in the whole European history. Joined by the Romanians and Finnish allies, the Nazis destroyed 3.6 million troops and thousands of tanks and planes along the 1,800 miles from the Arctic to the Black sea. At that time, the German armies went through western Russia, destroying and capturing entire Soviet armies. This rounded up to, 3 million captured in the year of 1941.

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Overy contests that it was not just Hitler’s opening of a second front or sheer Soviet numbers that turned the tide, but Soviet central planning and organization, and Stalin’s yield to his commanders. German advance into the southern Soviet Union in 1942 was prompted by Hitler’s desire for the wealth of resources there, and it was relatively easy. The Soviet Union expected another assault on Moscow and thus the southern line wasn’t heavily reinforced. Germans hastily advanced while the Soviets retreated to Stalingrad. In his characteristic harsh style, Stalin directed the meager two armies there to hold the city until there was a plan developed to save it.

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The West side got the Berlin Airlift on their side from the American and British Air Forces. Considering the West was Democratic, they were not going to lose their land to the Soviets by no means. The Soviets thought they could take over all of Germany, but they could not. This was because the Americans and the British helped to support West Berlin and Germany all throughout the war. Unfortunately though Germany was known under the Soviets, “In

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Stalin did not tolerate anyone who opposed him, and this is where his cruel methods come into play. He utilized a harsh forced famine in Ukraine, with 4.5 to 7 million victimes. “Stalin used the forced famine as part of a political strategy..” to oppress his people. Another cruel method of his were public trials of his “great purges”, purging anyone opposing him. In these trials, “[defendants] confessed...to a number of crimes.

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Furthermore, Stalin was paranoid that the Soviet Union only had a decade to build up their industry in comparison to the western war before Germany would

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He thought up two plans, known as the first and second five year plans, to catch Russia up to the rest of the world in ten years. To do this, Russia’s economy would turn into a command economy. Each industry had a target goal to reach and all government money was invested into industry, energy, and transportation. This had both positive and negative consequences. The production of consumer goods decreased but amazing progress was made.

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On June 22nd, 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union under the codename, “Operation Barbarossa”. Operation Barbarossa is the second largest military conflict in the military history. In 1939, Hitler signed a nonaggression pact with Joseph Stalin, the Soviet Union’s dictator, in which they would have no military action for the next ten years. However not even two years later, Hitler ordered to invade the Soviet Union. This invasion was only suppose to last three to six months; instead it lasted for about three years.

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The USSR’s GNP (Gross National Product) was significantly lower than the United States, but the USSR still spent over thirty billion more dollars on their military program. The Soviet Union had more of everything, besides money. The military was known as the “Red Army,” and they had more troops, tanks, artillery guns, and nuclear weapons than any other nation on the planet. In Document E, Time Magazine compares the USSR’s Nuclear Arsenal to that of the United States, and its more than double the size. The USSR went to extreme lengths to have the most powerful army in the world, yet it greatly damaged their economy years before it collapsed.

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Stalin on his way to contribute terror on the people was to proceed on to purge the party rank, file, and to terrorize the entire country with widespread arrest and executions. Millions of innocent Soviet citizens were sent off to labor camps or killed in prison. Hitler’s quote for terror is “ Demoralize the enemy from within surprise, terror, sabotage, assassination. This is the war of the future” Adolf HitlerMussolini, Hitler, and Stalin used a mass of terror to get the people to do what the wanted them to do. Terror means to use violence and provide a threat to the people giving fear so that they will obey the

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The military-industrial complex along with the mass recruitment drive for the Red Army changed the Soviet military. This was one of the most important changes the Soviet Union went through under Stalin. Ultimately, it was this change that made the Soviet Union into a military superpower. The Soviet Union’s position as a world power contributed to the defeat of Nazi Germany. After all, it was them alone that fought the Nazis on the Eastern Front.

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Stalin though little of the deaths, and focused on his competition. When war threats arrived in 1939, Stalin quickly ignored them, citing his non-aggression pact with Hitler to divide Poland and leave each other alone. When the attacks came, the army was unprepared and suffered horrible losses. Stalin had previously purged much of the military after many reports possible attacks, so the recovery process took time before the country could make a credible defense. The Red Army, Russia’s defense military, liberated many Eastern European countries well before any US threats.

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The other countries and theaters of war which Germany sought to overpower were each ultimately affected by the impractical invasion of the Soviet Union: ‘Operation Barbarossa’, on the 22nd of June 1941. Nazi Germany’s mismanagement of its aggression, beginning with the North African Campaign (1940 -1943), the Italian Campaign (1943 -1945), and finally the war in Western Europe (1944 – 1945), enabled the Allied forces to gain victories in each of these theaters of war. As Gerhard L. Weinberg offers in A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II, the campaign during the summer of 1941 was meant to be a brief one.[4] It turned out anything but brief. The failures in the other theaters can all be attributed to Germany’s sustained focus on the Eastern Front, an effort whose sheer enormity left themselves spread too thin and unable to be operational elsewhere.

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The Dream Act Everyone that went to get an education competed for the best grades. This gave them motivation to achieve better results. Each person is equal and given the same opportunity. Having excellent grades in and out on report cards demonstrated their dedication. In the United States they have a simple dream to get an education and enter a top university.

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It set ridiculously high quotas and impossible goals to increase the Soviet Union’s coal, steel, oil, and electricity output. According to Document 2 the goal was to increase electricity output by 11.95 million kWh, increase coal production from 35.4 million tonnes to 68 million tonnes, oil production from 11.7 million tonnes to 19 million tonnes, and steel production from 4 million tonnes to 8.3 million tonnes in only 5 years. These goals were impractical and inaccessible. Stalin released another Five-Year Plan in 1933, where he wanted to increase steel production by 25%. Because of the excessive objectives that had to be reached the government limited production of the consumer’s goods. This lead to famine, and housing, clothing, and other necessities shortages.

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It also facilitated the Russians, who were appropriately clothed and equipped for winter fighting, to launch their counter-offensive and repel the German advance. Looking at the overall conduct of Operation Barbarossa, it was highly probable that the Germans could have succeeded in invading the Soviet Union if the operation was started in late April or mid-May as planned, and if no further changes

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