Operation Barbarossa: Hitler's Fatal Gamble
On June 22, 1941, three million German troops crashed into the Soviet Union the largest invasion in human history, and the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany.
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Breaking his non-aggression pact with Stalin, Hitler launched a massive three-pronged invasion of the USSR. Initial advances were staggering: millions of Soviet prisoners, vast territory seized in weeks.
But the Germans underestimated Soviet depth, resolve, and winter. The drive on Moscow stalled short of the city as temperatures plunged and supply lines stretched beyond breaking.
By failing to win a quick knockout, Germany committed itself to a war of attrition in the east it could not win.
"The invasion that was meant to win the war instead opened a front that would swallow the Wehrmacht whole."
Barbarossa shattered the Nazi-Soviet pact and turned the war into a continental struggle of annihilation. The eastern front consumed the bulk of Germany's forces and became the site of its greatest defeats Stalingrad, Kursk, and the road to Berlin.
The Full Story
The Largest Invasion Ever
Over three million men, thousands of tanks and aircraft advanced across a front thousands of miles wide. The early encirclements destroyed whole Soviet armies.
The Misjudgment
Hitler believed the Soviet regime would collapse under pressure. Instead, the invasion united a traumatized population behind a desperate defense and revealed Germany's logistical limits.
The Road to Catastrophe
Barbarossa set the stage for Stalingrad and the long retreat west. The eastern front would account for the vast majority of German and Soviet wartime deaths.