Why Did Operation Barbarossa Fail?

More than 5.5 million German troops invaded the USSR along the 1800 mile front of the Soviet Union. Operation Barbarossa still remains as one of the biggest military operations ever executed. The aim of Operation Barbarossa was a quick victory in the European part of the Soviet Union. This was planned to be done by splitting the German Troops into three parts, the northern group, which travelled through Latvia heading for Leningrad, the central group which travelled through Belorussia towards Smolensk and the Southern group which travelled through the Ukraine heading for Stalingrad. Yet there were several other reasons Hitler were attacking Russia. Firstly Hitler had always hated Communists and at this point in time Russia were a Communist state. If he destroyed Russia he could wipe out the Communist “virus”. The other reason for attacking Russia was that in the Ukraine there were vast wheat fields which could be easily taken and used to feed his own people. Also Russia h

Despite this in December 1941 the Red Army repelled the strongest blow of the Wehrmacht, Germany had made a lot of grounds and important sieges, most notably the oil fields in the Ukraine, but were pushed back by a weak Russian army from Moscow and were unable to mount a counter attack. The main reason for this failure of Operation Barbarossa was the weather, but this only happened due to Hitler’s underestimation of Russia and the delay at the start of Operation Barbarossa. Hitler felt that his army was much stronger than that of Russia and Hitler had expected that his “battles of encirclement” strategy would cut off and trap most of the Russian army. But Hitler miscalculated the size of the Soviet army. This meant that Hitler could not circle the Russian army, and also meant that the Soviet Union could launch a counter attack. Since Hitler thought he would be able to gain a quick victory over the Russians he did not to expect to end up fighting in the harsh Russian winter. Tanks and planes froze up, and German soldiers were fatigued quickly, Russians since they were used to the conditions were well prepared and were able to repel the German invasion even after losing 20 million soldiers and civilians. Another contributing factor to why Germany ended up fighting in the winter of 1941/1942 was the five week delay at the start of Operation Barbarossa, which meant that instead of the Operation starting in mid may it ended up beginning in June, even closer to the start of winter.