Operation Barbarossa, original name Operation Fritz, during World War II, code name for the German invasion of the Soviet Union, which was launched on June 22, 1941. The failure of German troops to defeat Soviet forces in the campaign signaled a crucial turning point in the war.
German soldiers fighting in the Soviet Union as part of Operation Barbarossa, 1941.
German soldiers fighting in the Soviet Union as part of Operation Barbarossa, 1941.
NARA/U.S. Department of Defense
Operation Barbarossa, German troops in Russia, 1941. Nazi German soldiers in action against the Red Army (Soviet Union) at an along the frontlines in the early days of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, 1941. World War II, WWII
BRITANNICA QUIZ
World War II: Fact or Fiction?
Does the term "D-Day" refer to the invasion of Japan? Did Turkey fight on the side of Germany in World War II? Sort fact from fiction in this World War II quiz.
Background
Although Adolf Hitler had congratulated himself on the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact of 1939 as a matter of expediency, anti-Bolshevism had remained his most profound emotional conviction as World War II entered its second year. Following the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states and of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina in June 1940, which put Soviet forces in proximity to the Romanian oil fields on which Germany depended, Hitler’s long-standing interest in overthrowing the Soviet regime was heightened. He became acutely suspicious of the intentions of the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, and he began to feel that he could not afford to wait to complete the subjugation of western Europe, as he had originally planned, before dealing with the Soviet Union.
Hitler and his generals had originally scheduled the invasion of the U.S.S.R. for mid-May 1941, but the unforeseen necessity of invading Yugoslavia and Greece in April of that year forced them to postpone the Soviet campaign to late June. The swiftness of Hitler’s Balkan victories enabled him to keep to this revised timetable, but the five weeks’ delay shortened the time for carrying out the invasion of the U.S.S.R. and was to prove the more serious because in 1941 the Russian winter would arrive earlier than usual. Nevertheless, Hitler and the heads of the Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH, or German Army High Command)—namely, the army commander in chief, Walther von Brauchitsch, and the army general staff chief, Franz Halder—were convinced that the Red Army could be defeated in two or three months and that by the end of October the Germans would have conquered the whole European part of Russia and Ukraine west of a line stretching from Arkhangelsk (Archangel) to Astrakhan. The invasion of the Soviet Union was originally given the code name Operation Fritz, but as preparations began, Hitler renamed it Operation Barbarossa, after Holy Roman emperor Frederick Barbarossa (reigned 1152–90), who sought to establish German predominance in Europe.
For the campaign against the Soviet Union, the Germans allotted almost 150 divisions containing a total of about three million men. Among those units were 19 panzer divisions, and in total the Barbarossa force had about 3,000 tanks, 7,000 artillery pieces, and 2,500 aircraft. It was in effect the largest and most powerful invasion force in human history. The Germans’ strength was further increased by more than 30 divisions of Finnish and Romanian troops.