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Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More
Operation Barbarossa (Encore)
00:15:56
Learn more about the German invasion of the Soviet Union
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- [00:00]
Host
The following is an encore presentation of Everything Everywhere Daily On June 22, 1941, German forces crossed into the Soviet Union. It was and remains the largest military operation in human history. The force that the Germans assembled for the invasion was staggering, consisting of over 3 million men. However, the decision to go to war with the Soviets and break the alliance that Germany had with them has puzzled historians for decades. Ultimately, it was an extremely costly failure that resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people and the loss of the war for Germany. Learn more about Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
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Charles Daniel
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- [03:05]
Host
The subject of Operation Barbarossa is an enormous one. The entire invasion of the Soviet Union, if it had happened in isolation, would have been one of the largest wars in human history. And depending on the sources, there were more casualties on the Eastern front of the Second World War than than there were in the entire First World War. So you can't really cover it like you would some other battle that happened during the war. The war between Germany and the Soviet Union lasted almost four years and included many major battles, some of which were the largest in military history. So this episode is not going to be a list of battles and sieges that took place over four years. The Battle of Stalingrad, the Siege of Leningrad, and the Battle of Kursk will all be the subject of their own episodes in the future. What I wanted to do in this episode is to take a higher level look at the decision making process that went into Barbarossa and to try and figure out why Hitler did it, why Stalin was caught unaware, and why it ultimately failed. There is an argument to be made, and I think it's a pretty reasonable one, that the entire reason Germany began the Second World War was just to implement Operation Barbarossa. Their previous military efforts, which I'll get to in a bit, had strategic reasons, all of which were in support of the ultimate invasion of the Soviet Union. However, Operation Barbarossa itself was actually not a strategic decision. It was an ideological one. It had everything to do with the Nazi concept of Lebensraum. Lebensraum, roughly translated, means living space in German. The idea behind Lebensraum didn't originate with Hitler, but had been a part of German nationalism since the late 19th century. The word was first used by Oskar Paschel, a German geographer and biologist, in 1860 in his review of Charles Darwin's book the Origin of Species. The idea of Lebensraum developed with a 19th century geographer named Friedrich Ratzel. He contended that the power of a country depended on the amount and kind of land that it occupied and that nations needed to expand their territory to accommodate growing populations and to secure natural resources. However, it was Karl Haushhofer, a general and geographer, who gave the term a political meaning by explicitly stating that Germany should seek land in Eastern Europe for Lebensraum and expel the current populations. This idea gained prominence after the First World War in Germany Especially among German nationalists. When Britain was able to block the importation of food into Germany, causing food shortages. One of the people who took this idea to heart was Adolf Hitler. As early as 1925, Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf that the idea of Lebensraum was the ideological basis of the entire German Reich, in particular expansion into Ukraine. This, according to Hitler, would give the German people room to grow and it would make the Reich self sufficient in food. So at least in this case, he, Hitler telegraphed exactly what he wanted to do years before it happened. So when I say this was really the entire point of World War II for the Nazis, this is what I'm referring to. In fact, given the ideological necessity in Hitler's mind of expanding into Eastern Europe, you could make sense of everything else he did that came before it. For example, why didn't he just invade the Soviet Union directly from the start? Because if he did, he would have to deal with France and Britain in a two front war, which was something he wanted to avoid. He also wanted to placate the Soviets so they wouldn't meddle in anything until it was too late. To achieve these goals, he signed the Ribbentrop Molotov Pact with the Soviets in August of 1939, in which they agreed to divide Poland. The Germans invaded France in 1940 in a preemptive measure to take France out of the war. And in the process, they almost eliminated the British forces in continental Europe. Likewise, the invasions of Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and Norway were all about securing their flanks for their eventual invasion of the Soviet Union, which was really the main objective. Once their western flank was secured, then they could begin throwing the full might of the German army at the Soviets. The initial plan to invade the Soviet Union was named Operation Otto, after Otto the Great, who conquered lands in Eastern Europe. However, the name of the operation was changed by Hitler in December 1940 to Operation Barbarossa, in honor of the 12th century Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa. Now you might be thinking that invasions of Russia haven't historically gone very well. Napoleon famously failed in his campaign to conquer Russia, thwarted by vast supply lines and a punishing Russian winter. Why didn't Hitler have the same reservations about invading Russia? Much of it had to do with hubris. The Germans were on a roll. In 1941, they'd been able to conquer much of Western and Northern Europe with historically scant losses. Moreover, their invasion of France went far better than even they expected. And France was arguably the most powerful army in Europe at the time. Given the success that the Germans had. They thought that they were unstoppable conditions in the Soviet Union. Only help matters. Stalin had just completed a purge of most of the top Soviet generals. The most competent Soviet commanders had been removed or executed and were placed by men whose primary attribute was loyalty to Stalin. The initial plan for Operation Barbarossa was to begin the invasion on May 15, 1941. However, that didn't happen, and there's been a great deal of debate amongst historians as to why the invasion was postponed. But there are several major theories. The first is that the Germans got stuck invading Greece and Yugoslavia in April. The second is that the previous winter had been very wet and rivers and streams were still flowing near their capacity, which would have made maneuvering difficult. And finally, Germany wasn't going to be doing this alone. Romania and Finland were going to take part, and they simply needed more time. In the end, the invasion was pushed back to June 22. How important this delay was to the overall failure of the campaign has been debated for decades. On the one hand, an extra month meant an extra month fighting before winter sets in. On the other hand, many historians say that it really didn't make any difference in the long run. In the lead up to the invasion, the Germans managed to bring 3 million German troops to the Soviet border, along with another 690,000 soldiers from Axis allied countries. There were 153 divisions in total, including 104 infantry, 19 Panzer and 15 motorized infantry divisions, as well as a smattering of security divisions, reserves, and four divisions. In Finland, the Germans had amassed 6,867 armored vehicles, of which about 3,500 were tanks. There were also 4,000 aircraft and almost 20,000 artillery pieces. In addition, there were between 600 and 700,000 horses because there just weren't enough mechanized vehicles to carry everybody. By all accounts, the Soviets were taken by surprise. If you remember back to my episode on the Ribbentrop Molotov Pact and the Axis powers, Stalin didn't particularly like Hitler, but he at least saw him as an ally in fighting what he thought were the real enemies, the Western capitalist powers. Stalin simply didn't think that Hitler would break their treaty in the way he did. When he did, the Soviet army identified the German army as the biggest threat to their existence. As early as July 1940, in fact, their military planners predicted almost exactly how and where the Germans would attack. Stalin knew that Hitler mentioned invading the Soviet Union in Mein Kampf. However, he was hoping that the Soviets would have more time and at least a few Years before having to go to war with Germany. In the days leading up to the invasion, the Soviets heard reports. A Chinese spy overheard a German military attache and sent word to the Soviets. Both Soviet and American intelligence both felt that an invasion was imminent, and they sent word to Stalin. A Soviet spy in Germany gave Stalin the exact date of the invasion. A German soldier who was a committed Communist ran to a Soviet border station the night before the invasion to warn them what was going to happen, but Stalin ignored him. While the Soviets may have been caught unaware, it wasn't as if the Soviets had no defensive capabilities. Their army had 5.5 million men, with another 14 million in reserve. They had 33,000 pieces of artillery and 23,000 tanks, 14,000 of which were battle ready. However, their units were often poorly trained and their equipment was often shabby. One of the big reasons why Stalin didn't do more is that he supposedly didn't want to provoke Hitler and start a war before the Soviets were ready, which is something that just ended up happening anyhow. At 3:15am on June 22, 1941, Operation Barbarossa commenced. There were three main battle groups. A north group that was to head to Leningrad, a middle group that was to head to Moscow, and a southern group that was to take Kyiv in Ukraine. The first day was a resounding success for the Germans. They managed to take out much of the Soviet command and control system, leaving the Soviet leadership unaware of what was happening on the ground. The German Luftwaffe supposedly destroyed almost 1,500 Soviet aircraft in just the first day. Behind the German army came Nazi Gestapo units that would exterminate entire villages and round up Jews and other undesirables. To Hitler, this was total warfare and a war of annihilation. Hitler didn't want any Slavs left behind because the land was to be given to Germans to farm. By the end of 1941, over 600,000 Jews alone had been killed by these roving death squads. Soviet prisoners of war were often just starved to death. From here, you can probably fill in the rest of the story, although, as I mentioned, there will be many future episodes. On the Eastern Front of World War II, the German advance eventually slowed, the Soviets regrouped, and the Eastern Front became the biggest human meat grinder in history. And the Germans were stuck in a quagmire of their own making. In the end, what went wrong? Why did the Germans fail so miserably in their invasion of the Soviet Union when they performed so brilliantly everywhere else they invaded? One reason had to do with Hubris and ideology. The Germans took the invasion of countries in Western Europe more seriously. They were treated as the military operations that they were. Operation Barbarossa was tainted from the start with Nazi ideology, which interfered with plans. The Germans thought the Soviets to be inferior and underestimated their resolve and the amount of manpower and resources that they were able to muster. The Germans failed to take into consideration the industrial capabilities of the Soviets and what they would be able to create for their war effort. They failed to properly plan their logistics with supply lines that stretched as long as they did. The further the Soviets retreated into their vast hinterland, the longer the German supply lines got. Hitler, not the world's greatest military mind, often personally interfered in military planning, which caused enormous problems. Also, the Germans, shockingly, weren't prepared for the winter, which you would think would have been the first lesson you'd learn when studying any historical invasions of Russia. Finally, in December 1941, the Germans completely unnecessarily declared war on the United States, which forced the hand of the world's largest economy and resulted in a dramatic increase in weapons shipments to the Soviets. Operation Barbarossa was unquestionably the largest single military operation in world history. However, the decision to invade was made out of ideology, not from any deep military strategy. As a result, it became the bloodiest theater of the Second World War and mark the beginning of the end of the Third Reich.
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Charles Daniel
The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Oakton and Cameron Kiefer. I want to thank everyone who supports the show over on Patreon. Your support helps make this podcast possible. I'd also like to thank all the members of the Everything Everywhere community who are active on the Facebook group and the Discord server. If you'd like to join in the discussion, there are links to both in.
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Host
The show notes and as always, if.
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Charles Daniel
You leave a review or send me a boostogram, you too can have it read on the show.