Why does operation barbarossa fail

He believed that the defeat of the Soviet Union would force American attentions towards a then-unchecked Japan, in turn leaving an isolated Britain obliged to enter peace talks. Most important to Hitler, however, was the prospect of securing large areas of Soviet territory, including oil fields and the Ukrainian bread basket, to supply his eagerly anticipated post-war Reich. He was reluctant to entertain intelligence that suggested an impending attack and so distrusted Churchill that he dismissed warnings from Britain.

Although he agreed to bolster Soviet western borders in mid-May, Stalin remained adamantly more concerned with the Baltic states through June. This remained the case even when German diplomats and resources rapidly disappeared from Soviet territory a week before Barbarossa began. Through inverted logic, Stalin retained greater faith in Hitler than his own advisors right up to the point of attack. Nearly three million German troops were assembled for the advance along a 1,mile front that joined the Baltic and the Black Seas.

The Soviets were totally unprepared and communications became paralysed in the chaos. Summer weather and a lack of opposition allowed panzers to race through the satellite states, followed by masses of infantry and , supply horses.

Supply lines kept up a steady pace in the early stages of Operation Barbarossa during good summer weather. Within fourteen days Hitler saw Germany as being on the verge of victory and reckoned that conquest of the huge Russian landmass could be completed on the timescale of weeks rather than months. Limited Soviet counter-attacks in Ukraine and Belorussia during the first two weeks at least allowed most of the arms industry from these areas to be transferred deep into Russia.

As the Germans progressed, however, the front widened by several hundreds of miles and although Soviet losses were as high as 2,,, there was little evidence to suggest that further causalities could not be absorbed long enough to drag the fighting into winter.

Invasion also mobilised Russian civilians against their natural enemy. The Luftwaffe was able to quickly gain air superiority, destroying over 1, Soviet aircraft on the first day of the campaign. The Wehrmacht exploited this advantage to their favour, helping the ground forces smash through Soviet front lines and race across the USSR. Read more about: Battles What was the worst military decision in history? The three German army groups each had their own objective. Army Group North was to advance through the Baltic States of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia and capture the strategically and ideologically important city of Leningrad.

Army Group Centre was to capture Minsk and Smolensk before marching on the Soviet capital Moscow, whilst Army Group South was to capture the economic resources in the industrial south of Russia and Ukraine. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers had either been captured or killed.

However, fortunes for the Wehrmacht were about to change. Unable to inflict the final blow to Leningrad and with Army Group South starting to stutter, Hitler ordered Army Group Centre to reinforce both Groups, calling a temporary halt to its own advance towards Moscow. The delay enabled the Soviets to bring in reinforcements to Moscow, including over a million soldiers and a thousand T tanks.

Men, women and children began digging multiple defensive lines around the city; the Germans would soon discover the true grit and determination of the Soviet people. By September, although Kiev had fallen and progress was being made in the South towards Crimea, Leningrad in the north had turned into a siege, one that would last days.

It would end in Soviet victory. Dogged Soviet defence and heavy rains halted the German advance on Moscow as roads devolved into rivers of mud. Soviet counterattacks kept the Germans at bay and as the Russian winter set-in, a final Soviet push sent the Germans packing from the region. Moscow had held and German offensive operations were put on hold.

Whilst Hitler blamed the weather for the failure of Barbarossa, the Axis powers fell short for a multitude of reasons. The Germans had failed to prepare for a longer campaign and logistical problems meant that vital supplies, including winter clothing, did not reach the front lines.

There was no chance of any overthrow by popular revolt or anything like that. In fact, there was very little criticism because nobody really knew what was happening and the anger of the people at that particular stage was entirely focused on the Germans and their treasonous breaking of the Nazi-Soviet pact. The main risk to Stalin was a palace coup and there was a famous moment where some of the leading Soviets went to the dacha in which Stalin had gone into a complete funk.

He saw them arriving and thought they had come to arrest him, but he soon realised that they were scared too and they persuaded him that he had to carry on. The German machine guns, for example, were often freezing solid and they would have to piss on them to try to warm them up. Even before the winter, the Germans had already been slowed down by the autumn muds but the frost made things worse.

They had to light fires under the engines of their aircraft at night purely to get their motors going in the morning. The resources allocated to the Einsatzgruppen and Sonderkommandos and police battalions and so forth were not taking much away from the war effort at that point. You can make that argument much more by when you had the Final Solution and they were allocating vast quantities of the railway system to the transport of Jews, when it should have been used to support their armies.

One thing that might have given them a chance of winning in — and this was advocated by some officers — was to create a Ukrainian army, a million strong. But if they were going to have any chance of success, to make up for their lack of numbers in such a vast landmass, it had to come from turning it into a civil war.

Yet there was no question of ever giving the Ukrainians self government or anything like that, and this was one reason why those Ukrainians who did side with the Germans to begin with soon realised they were being completely conned.

Plus there was the growing threat in the far east. Winston Churchill wanted to make every effort, or impression of effort, of helping, but the trouble was that the fighter aircraft we were sending over in the convoys were, on the whole, fairly obsolete Hurricanes in pretty bad nick. Similarly, we were sending them Matilda tanks which were also obsolete at that point; greatcoats which were useless in the Russian winter; and steel-shod ammunition boots which would actually accelerate frostbite!

So, yes the Soviets were pretty angry about this, but at the same time there had to be a certain amount of superficial Allied solidarity. What Stalin really wanted was a second front: an attack on the Cherbourg peninsula in France.

It would have been throwing away , men for no purpose whatsoever and Churchill was absolutely right to stop it. There was a curious lack of co-ordination between the two countries.

There were no joint staffs at all and hardly any military attaches from each country. What the Germans had hoped, of course, was that the Japanese would have attacked the Soviet Union in the far east in the autumn of Even though this was a relatively small battle, it was one of the most influential in the war because it persuaded the Japanese that it was not worth attacking the Soviet Union.

They signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union and they stuck to it. It was. Had he maintained the new status quo after the defeat of France and steadily built up his armies using the resources of the countries he had already occupied, he would have been in a very strong position. Then, had Stalin tried to launch a pre-emptive strike himself in or , it could have been disastrous for the Soviet Union. Sign in.