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The Invasion of the Soviet Union Was the Key Turning Point of WW2
Operation Barbarossa was the name given to Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 22, 1941. The battle aims of the German forces under the command of Adolf Hitler were the following: the complete annihilation of the Soviet Union’s armed forces, the collapse of communism, and primarily the conquest of lebensraum (living space) for the Third Reich and its people.
To achieve such aims the Germans created one of the largest and least well known coalitions in history, assembling an army of 4 million men (3 million being German) and hundreds of thousands of cars, trucks, planes, and horses. They came from Finland in the far north to Romania in the far south and invaded the USSR on a 2,000 mile frontier. At approximately 3:00 in the morning on Monday 74 years ago began what many historians believe was the decisive event of the Second World War. I would concur with such a view and here is why.
First, the decision by Hitler to attack the Soviet Union in 1941 opened up an Eastern Front in the war in Europe and thus created a two-front war. This was the mistake many German generals believed had cost Germany the First World War; the surviving generals’ assessment blamed the Nazis’ decisions here for Germany losing the Second.
By May 1941 Hitler was master of continental Europe. Had Hitler decided to go with the smart options, he would have concentrated on bringing Britain to peace terms and thus ending any possible American entry into the European war. Yet he did not, thank God. As Andrew Roberts points out in his brilliant book The Storm of War, blinded by Nazi ideology (i.e., lebensraum), Hitler chose to follow the goals of the party, rather than what was “rational.” In doing so he signed his death warrant. The German Empire simply could not sustain a war in the long run on two fronts once the allied powers mobilized their full economic, political, and military resources.
Second was the sheer savagery and cost of the new front on Nazi forces. Most importantly, the operation opened up the Eastern Front, to which more forces were committed than in any other theater of war in world history. The Eastern Front became the site of some of the largest battles, most horrific atrocities, and highest casualties for Soviets and Germans alike.
The numbers that fought on the Soviet soil were daunting but the amount that died there was even more horrifying. Nearly 25 million people (and this is a conservative figure) died on this front in a four-year period. Not just soldiers but millions of civilians as well. Hitler did not call it a war of annihilation for nothing.
Fortunately for the Russian people and the world, his war had a downside for Nazi ambitions. For you see, out of every four German soldiers killed in the entire war, three died on the Eastern Front. Since German armed forces lost close to 3 million men, that is a startling figure but a telling one. In this figure, one can see how the Second World war came to be lost for Germany.
The other allied nations did not inflict such casualty rates on Germans until late 1944 when Germany was already fatally weakened. It was the ordinary Russians — ill-equipped, terrified, and fused with both hatred and patriotism — who won against their invaders at a terrifying cost. Statistically speaking, it took three to four Russian soldiers to die in order to inflict same result on one German soldier. Now you can imagine why so many Russians died and why their deaths were so crucial to the end victory.
Third, and this is crucial, was the make up of the Russian government. The USSR was a totalitarian communist state which since 1927 had been led by a genocidal communist lunatic. Joseph Stalin had wiped away several millions of his own people and others he controlled during the years leading up to WW2. He ruled with an iron fist and a vicious communist police state which had just finished purging its imagined enemies and rivals in the military and the party.
However, going up against the equally frightening totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany, perhaps it was better that Russia had such a cruel but tight, centralized police state. For no democratic government, not even the U.S., could have sustained and kept fighting against Hitler while losing the millions the Russian people did. If you doubt me, keep in mind the growing disquiet in current generation of American public when Iraq war dead of U.S. soldiers rose to 4,000.
Modern democracies and the ones in the 1940s could not have sustained the casualty rates that Russia endured then and still remained free societies or combatants. They would have sued for peace or stayed out of confrontation. While I personally believe the U.S. and U.K. could have defeated the Nazis without Soviet Union, millions more of their men would have paid with their lives and the war would not have ended in 1945 (or without a mushroom cloud in Europe).
Fourth, the resources that Russia had at its disposal proved crucial to victory. The Russians’ sheer territory meant that it was impossible for the Germans to fully conquer and police it effectively. As the initial fighting ended, the USSR armed forces learned to retreat in an orderly fashion dragging the Germans deeper and deeper into Russia and playing havoc with their very thin supply lines. This would prove crucial as the war went on and the Germans became too few on the ground.
The mineral and productivity resources of the Stalinist regime were left intact behind the Ural Mountains, easily out of reach of Stuka bombers. The Soviet war capacity could be kept alive and allowed to grow, turning out new and ever more effective tanks, armaments, and rockets. However, the biggest resource that ensured Russia’s survival was it vast population. The Russians had a population then of over 100 million people and could put millions to arms, something the Germans found out later. For all the thousands the Nazis killed, more kept coming. This sapped German morale and allowed the Russians to regroup and plan strategies and attacks with more men. This was crucial to winning the war in the East.
I probably have more reasons why Soviet entry into the war changed the course of history but, alas, as of right now I cannot think of them. But as you can see, it was necessary that they did. The outcome of the war in Europe was decided not on the beaches of Normandy but in the steppes, forests, and hill country of the Eastern Front. The greatest and cruelest conflict in history had its worst and most awful confrontations here and the results changed the history of the globe.
Hope you read it and like or comment below. I am not working for RT by the way. As of yet anyway.
Published in History, Military
Assuming a scenario where Nazi Germany and the USSR don’t fight is assuming a scenario where Hitler and Stalin aren’t in control. They were each too ambitious and paranoid to peacefully coexist with the other, and war was simply a matter of when not if.
Have any of you read Fatherland by Robert Harris about a future in which Germany has occupied Russia up to the Urals, dominates Europe and never attacked, but politically neutralized, the U.S?
That would be out of character for both Hitler and Stalin.
Germany’s need of resources was largely to sustain military production and combat operations. Stalin may have liked that when he viewed the German war against France and the UK as attrition between potential enemies (while Stalin could build up to fight the victor). Once only the Axis and the USSR were left standing, Stalin’s calculus would have to change.
I do not recall Stalin saying “we will sell the capitalists the rope with which they will hang us…”
I’m glad Gary made this point. Hitler was obsessed with destroying the city named for his arch-rival. But Stalingrad was of little strategic importance, and by focusing his efforts on taking the city (block by block) Hitler made one of the horrible tactical errors that may have cost him the war.
Another development that might have resulted in a Soviet collapse in WWII would have been if Japan had invaded from the East. That issue was very much up in the air after Hitler’s initial victories on the Russian front. Only when Stalin became convinced that Japan was not going to attack was he able to transfer forces to the European theater. Those forces were probably decisive.
Yeah, especially as tanks are not suited for urban warfare & the Germans had no experience of such-
That strikes me as a possible scenario. Germany had a land-war mentality, which I would guess is one of the main reasons Hitler attacked the USSR instead of Britain. I would wager that the Atlantic ocean would have appeared as a insurmountable to Hitler as a 3000 mile mountain range, and he would not have wanted to even try to invade the US until he had conquered Russia, and similarly would have assumed the US could never invade Europe.
There is evidence that Hitler really wanted a Russian war. He said so, for one, in that brick of a book. He had all those plans about populating the Ukraine with a race of Aryan supermen. He had the Einsatzgruppen do all the slaughtering required to prepare for that.
Yeah. We tend to view World War II as a very clear “good versus evil” story, and to a large extent it was: I don’t think modern history has given us a more pure embodiment of evil than Adolf Hitler.
But what that view tends to leave out is the fact that, on the Eastern Front, there were no good guys. The Third Reich and Stalinist Russia were arguably equally evil. And the tactics used by Stalin to defeat Germany were certainly evil: not only the brutal atrocities, but the vast number of men sent into certain death with guns at their backs, being told that if they retreated for any reason they would be shot.
You could argue that the lesser evil prevailed, but given that we spent most of the rest of the century in a standoff against the Soviets, I think it’s more a case of dealing with the more acute problem first.
Yes, I read that one many years ago. As I recall, the Holocaust was covered up, and the book was set around 1960 as the truth was finally being revealed.
Of course, I also read at least one silly (though entertaining) alternate history by Harry Turtledove in which some small lizard-like aliens landed on Earth during WWII, altering the political landscape in interesting (but apparently forgettable) ways (as I do not remember the details).
On the big question of Hitler’s motivation in attacking Russia, I think that there were 2 main reasons, both having to do with timing. First, Hitler viewed himself as indispensable as the leader of the German conquest of Russia, and he was not a very healthy man, so he wanted to get the war finished while he was still “in his prime.” Second, despite the inefficiencies of Communism, Russia was industrializing very rapidly in the 1930s, so Hitler was worried that if he delayed the war, Russia would be relatively stronger than Germany.
On the question of a German invasion of Britain: I don’t think that Germany could have conquered Britain in 1940-45, even absent the invasion of Russia. Titus, I think that you underestimate the difficulty of an amphibious invasion.
The Normandy invasion was difficult enough even with complete Allied command of the seas and overwhelming air superiority. For the Germans to invade Britain in the face of an overwhelmingly strong Royal Navy and a very tough Royal Air Force would have been to court a military disaster on the order of Stalingrad.
In short, Germany lacked the naval power, air power, and landing craft to invade Britain in 1940 or 1941. Things got worse thereafter, as Britain maintained its naval superiority and eventually built a superior air force.
I remember a Churchill quote along the lines of: “We are waiting for them. So are the fishes.”
To what extent did Hitler have to invade before winter came in 1941? Was there any reason he couldn’t wait until April or May of 1942?
I have no doubt that had Hitler wanted to reduce Britain, he could have done it. I am thinking about the resources he could have dedicated to the effort. I also believe he could have exterminated the BEF in 1940… I do not know about an amphibious invasion: I meant an air campaign that would have wiped out everything worth much to the war effort in Britain–or the collapse of the government & a surrender.
I don’t recall where I read it, but someone ran a simulation of a German invasion of Britain, which concluded any attempt would have failed rather decisively. This has a decent list of the problems that Germany would have faced. Their conclusion is that they might have forced a landing, but been unable to reinforce and resupply.
That’s possible, as I understand it the Luftwaffe’s bombing campaign was doing so, until a British counterstrike caused the Germans to initiate the Blitz.
Except that German aircraft development was best described as schizophrenic and unfocussed. They never developed a good long range heavy bomber, instead expending their development on very complicated medium range bombers with poor bomb capacities. These were difficult to produce and difficult to maintain, and had very limited ranges.
They had the same issues with fighter development and could never get the range up high enough for them to adequately escort the bombers. Their solution was to essentially build bomber frames with more guns in place of bombs, and the RAF chewed them to pieces.
So, poor range, slow replacement of equipment, and high maintenance, all up against a British home court advantage, and the Luftwaffe was out matched. One of the key miscalculations in Barbarossa was an absolute shortage of aircraft and pilots, all due to losses over Britain.
Couple of other interesting notes on German equipment:
1. Read something by a German test pilot whose job it was to test rebuilt / captured Allied aircraft. He said he knew that Germany was doomed when he flew a B24 Liberator. He said that Germany would never have allowed such an awful, ungainly, poorly handling bomber into production. They would have taken another 3-5 years to perfect the airframe, improve the controls, fiddle with the capacity – in short they cared too much about the end quality, even when their lives were on the line.
2. An American analyst had the job of dismantling captured German equipment. He took a captured German artillery piece and found it to be functionally identical to an American piece of the same caliber. However, it had significantly more parts to its mechanisms, and those parts were made to a much higher degree of finish. He said the end result was very reliable, but likely took twice as long to make when compared with the American gun. If it was to break, it was not repairable in the field.
3. German soldiers were mostly consigned to using bolt-action K98K Mauser rifles. The automatics in development were too complicated and fussy for reliable field service. Their MP40 submachine guns took too long to make, compared to the clunky STEN and Soviet PPsH equivalents. Even the vaunted Stg44 only finally made it to soldiers late in the war, and that development went on “under the table”.
I agree. It is certainly true for the 1940-1 period. The German air assault on Britain failed, they lack sealift capability for transporting troops and the British navy still controlled the Channel. Churchill and the English people were being unreasonably obstinate about negotiating in Hitler’s view. That is why he seized upon invading and defeating the Soviet Union as the mechanism for driving Britain to the negotiating table.
Reminds me of a book I read years ago in which Confederates time travel to apartheid South Africa, get equipped with AK-47s, travel back and win the Civil War!
That was Guns of the South where Boers time travel back to the South with a load of AK-47.
I read the whole series where the South wins the Civil War. It concludes with the end of a very different World War II. I don’t think Harry Turtledove is that great of a writer, but I enjoyed the series and the scenarios he imagined within it.
I too read that series, but found his retelling consisted of just replaying history but with the events happening in the US instead of Europe, with most of it seeming forced (the CSA has a prodigy rocket scientist who builds them V2 equivalent rockets, despite the South having no established history of scientific achievement in rockets).
It was good, but the strength came from the source material rather than Turtledove’s skills as a writer, which are sadly lacking.
Thank the Lord in Heaven my obnoxious quote was drowned out by smarter people than me. I stand by my point, just not the delivery. Point 12 of writing a good post is when the gin bottle is open, keep the browser window closed. Thanks to all for letting me be a jerk and not making a big deal about it.
I agree with that, but I did like how he imagined US politics would be if the CSA existed.
I read Guns of the South too, but not the sequels.
I remember reading a scifi short story about a black American scientist who invented a time machine. America was a terribly racist, apartheid state, and Germany was the leading country in the free world. I think that the black inventor was living in Germany. There had been no Civil War, just a minor insurrection put down by Robert E. Lee, who accepted command of the Union army and ended the insurrection in short order.
As a result, America never solved its race problem – I think it still had slavery. The black time-travel inventor kept traveling back to change things by making things worse for the Union, as a longer war meant an end to slavery. The ironic part was that as he changed the past to make things better for blacks in the US, it somehow made Germany more anti-semitic.
Hitler tried his best to defeat Britain by air effort in August-October 1940, and failed. I don’t think that things would have improved for Germany if the effort had continued. The British were making good planes and had a big advantage fighting over their home ground (including a fuel advantage, and the fact that many British pilots shot down survived to fight again).
I agree about the facts–I disagree about what they mean. The notion that the campaign of 1940 was the best Hitler could have done is hilarious.
I guess it depends on what you mean by “best.” I think he committed the entire Luftwaffe to defeating Britain, so it was the best he could do in that sense. I don’t think his strategy was the best it could have been, but no war is without error.
I mean the best of which he was capable at the time. I did not know that he committed the entirety of the Luftwaffe.
Did he commit the air campaign to the destruction of British defenses against his Luftwaffe? Do you think he ordered his generals to do their damnedest at the time to wipe out the BEF? Do you think he made peace offerings to the British even as he was reducing France?
But there is another thing to consider, too. Had he wanted to reduce Britain, he could have dedicated the considerable resources of Germany & her new empire to that purpose. Do you think he did that?
Hitler had a tendency to wipe out his own veterans on stupid campaigns. Even if he did not commit his entire Luftwaffe, he did commit enough of it, and lost enough of it that it was in poor shape when he invaded Russia. He then wiped out his own paratrooper forces in Crete. He also never built up his bomber forces enough to reach critical mass, nor did he build the right sort of bombers to do the job.
Now I will grant you that had he made a full commitment in 1940 / 41 he might have knocked out the British air defenses before Britain could have built itself up enough, but I would not go so far as to say it was guaranteed. The price he would have paid for it would have been very very steep, and without a large navy and landing craft (which would have taken years to build, even at full industry mobilization), it would have been a temporary victory.