Operation Barbarossa was to begin in May, 1941. It consisted of three German army groups: Army Group North, Army Group South, and Army Group Center. Army Group North would take the Baltic, Army Group Center would drive toward Moscow, and Army Group South would take the Ukraine and Caucasus. The invading force consisted of over 3 million soldiers, 3,350 tanks, and 600,000 vehicles.

Unforeseen military developments in the Balkans delayed the onset of Operation Barbarossa for five weeks. Hitler was unconcerned about this since he believed the Russian Red Army would be overran long before winter. An over-confident Hitler proclaimed, “When Operation Barbarossa is launched, the world will hold its breath.”

The largest military campaign in history finally began on June 21, 1941 at 3:15 A.M. Russia was caught unprepared even though the Red Army was the numerically strongest army in the world. It was composed of 230 divisions of 14,000 soldiers each. Though st

The Germans headed toward Moscow on November 25th. They came within 20 miles of the capital but were stopped in their tracks by Russian resistance and the harsh cold of a brutal winter. Hitler stopped operations for the winter. The Germans were ill equipped for such severe weather. They did not have enough supplies and the extreme cold froze machine guns and thickened oil. This reprieve gave the Russians time to manufacture more weapons and also allowed them to take the offensive since they were used to the icy conditions.

On August 19, 1941 German troops surrounded Leningrad and by September 8th the German army had cut Leningrad off from the rest of Russia. Leningrad was on the brink of falling when Hitler decided to switch focus back toward Moscow. Hitler decided to lay siege to Leningrad rather than taking it over. He did not want to be responsible for feeding nearly 3 million people through the winter. The siege on Leningrad would last almost 900 days and take a terrible toll. There would be starvation and cannibalism. The human death toll would total more than 1.5 million.

rong in numbers they were weak in other areas. The Red Army had 20,000 tanks of which many were obsolete and an air force of 18,000 planes, most of which were obsolete. Also the Russian commanders had standing orders not to provoke the Germans.

On September 12th the Germans were greeted with the first snow of the Russian winter. Though winter had begun, the Germans were still able to forge forward to capture Kiev and 650,000 soldiers.

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