The Sandbag Times Issue No:23

The Historical Tommy Atkins
Operation Barbarossa
22nd June 1941
75th anniversary of the launch of
Operation Barbarossa. An invasion that
the USSR didn’t think Hitler would ever
attempt
On December 18, 1940, Hitler issued a secret order to Germany’s
top generals instructing them to begin preparing a massive surprise
attack on the Soviet Union. This attack he believed would deliver all
of Russia's industries and farm lands into his hands.
Originally given the code name Operation Fritz, Hitler renamed it
Operation Barbarossa, after 12th century Holy Roman emperor
Frederick I, who sought to establish German predominance in Europe.
The element of surprise was crucial, to prevent the Red Army from
withdrawing into Russia’s vast interior. German troops would drive
deep into Soviet territory and capture millions of enemy troops in huge
encirclements before their commanders had time to react. To
accomplish this, Hitler’s generals planned a ‘blitzkrieg’ or ‘lightning
war’, similar to the ones that destroyed Poland and France in 1939-40,
but on a much larger scale.
As originally planned, the attack would begin in the spring (no later
than May 15th), to give German armies a reasonable amount of time
to fight before the bleak Russian winter arrived. They knew that the
Red Army would have to be defeated before the winter, or they risked
German troops freezing to death.
Underlying this ambitious strategy was Hitler’s conviction that the
Red Army had been fatally weakened by Stalin’s purges in the late
1930s, when the paranoid Soviet dictator executed half of his own top
officers totalling 40,000 men. Hitler also believed that he had lulled
Stalin into a false sense of security with a non-aggression pact signed
in 1939 when the two dictators divided up Poland. However even
though this pact existed, both sides remained suspicious of one
another, and the agreement merely gave them more time to prepare for
a probable war.
In the final months before Barbarossa, personnel and materials
moved around Europe on an unprecedented scale, as roughly 3.8
million men massed in four giant armies along a 1,800 mile front
stretching from Finland to Romania. 3.2 million German troops would
be supported by 600,000 troops drawn from the Third Reich’s vassal
states and allies, including 300,000 Finns, 250,000
Romanians and 50,000 Slovaks.
In preparation for Barbarossa, the German military
stockpiled 91,000 tons of ammunition, 500,000 tons of
fuel (40% of all fuel available to Germany at the time),
600,000 trucks and 750,000 horses to carry supplies.
Hitler had originally intended to launch Operation
Barbarossa around May 15, 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 week delay, shortened the time for carrying out the
invasion of the Soviet Union. Hitler was unconcerned
about this delay since he believed the Russian Red Army
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