The 22nd of June, 1941. With 134 divisions at full fighting strength and 73 more divisions for
deployment behind the front, Nazi Germany, under the codename Operation Barbarossa,
invades the Soviet Union, its ally in the war against Poland.
Hitler considers the invasion as part of his plan to provide the German nation with “Lebensraum”
meaning “living space” and an opportunity to destroy Communism, which he loathes.
The Soviet Union sees catastrophic military losses in the first six weeks after the German attack but
fails to collapse, as anticipated by the Nazi leadership and German military commanders,
which knocks Germans off their timetable of winning the war by autumn 1941.
After months of campaigning, the German army is exhausted. Having expected a rapid Soviet
collapse, German planners have failed to equip their troops for winter warfare. They have not
provided sufficient food and medicines, as they expected their military personnel to live off the
land of a conquered Soviet Union at the expense of the local population. Consequently, the Germans
forces—overstretching along the 1,000 mile Eastern Front—become vulnerable to Soviet counterattack.
On the 6th of December 1941, the Soviet Union launches a major offensive against
the center of the front which drives the Germans back from Moscow in chaos.
Much has been written about the German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941,
but not all of it is true. Let us look together at five of the most widespread false myths.
Number 1: Stalin's collapse after the beginning of the German attack
On the 22nd of June 1941, at about three o'clock in the morning,
Stalin went to bed. In the preceding days, he had ignored warnings about massing German
troops on the Soviet borders not only from his spies and soldiers in the field but also heads
of state as both Churchill and Roosevelt had warned him of Germany's intentions.
An hour after he lay down, Operation Barbarossa – the German invasion of the Soviet Union
which would become one of human history's most extensive and brutal military campaigns, began.
Many works dealing with the Second World War, particularly Eastern Front,
state that Stalin had a nervous breakdown after the first news of the German attack on the 22nd
of June 1941. It is often said that he even had to utter the sentence, "All is
lost. Lenin founded our state, and we destroyed it." He then reportedly withdrew from Moscow to
Kuntsevo Dacha, his personal summer residence just outside Moscow, expecting his subordinates
to depose him and come to execute him. None of this, however, is true. Historian Steven
Main of the University of Edinburgh did detailed research on Stalin's meetings and work calendar
from the first week after the German attack and produced an exciting fact: during 22-28 June 1941,
Stalin worked nearly 80 hours out of 168. In addition, he did not leave Moscow at all.
The myth of Stalin's collapse is credited to Nikita S. Khrushchev, who came out with it at the
20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in February 1956. It was the first congress
after Stalin's death. It was made famous and ground-breaking primarily by Nikita Khrushchev's
report named "On The Cult of Personality and Its Consequences," in which he criticized Stalin.
The Khrushchev report is popularly known as the "Secret Speech" because it was delivered at an
unpublicized closed session of party delegates, with guests and members of the press excluded.
According to Khrushchev, Stalin was supposed to have collapsed on the 23rd of June, a day
on which, according to Steven Main's findings, he had been working for 22 hours and 35 minutes.
Number 2: Germans were defeated by the Russian winter
One of the most widespread myths about the German offensive is the myth of "General Winter" or
"General Frost", that is the proverbial Russian winter. That winter was to cause the failure of
Operation Barbarossa and Germany's defeat at the gates of Moscow. It is a myth created primarily by
German generals who considered themselves military geniuses and the Red Army inferior and incapable
of defeating them. They, therefore, often gave the Russian winter as the sole cause of their defeat.
On the 4th of December 1941, the German Army made a frontal assault and, at the cost of
enormous casualties, got about 30 km from Moscow. The next day, on the 5th of December,
the temperature dropped to around -30 ºC. The German Army was not prepared for this.
It is traditionally reported that the Germans could not start the engines of tanks, cars,
or planes and that the soldiers had no winter clothing or supplies.
While this is true, it is also true that a massive counterattack by the Red Army of the Kalinin Front
north of Moscow on the same day was repulsed by the Wehrmacht – the German Armed forces. The
next day, in the same temperatures, the Germans were even able to attack - the German 9th Army,
supported by the 3rd Panzer Group, pushed the Soviet 31st Army back across the Volga,
nearly wiping out the Soviet 250th Infantry Division in the process. Between the 5th and
7th of December, in the days of the harshest winter, the Germans were able to win.
On the contrary, when the weather suddenly changed on the 8th of December 1941, and temperatures rose
to +4ºC, the Red Army started to win. And it did not stop there. On the 9th of December,
with temperatures between -5 and zero ºC, Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, German Army Group Centre
commander, desperately pleaded with Hitler for help. He failed. The Soviet offensive was not
halted until the 7th of January 1942, when the German troops were 100 to 250 km from Moscow.
The Battle of Moscow marked the first major disaster for the German Army on the Eastern Front.
In response, Hitler deposed thirty-five marshals and generals and commanded the Army. This victory
significantly boosted the self-esteem and prestige of the Red Army. The Russian
winter played a vital role and caused enormous problems for the Germans, unprepared for such
conditions. In December alone, the Wehrmacht recorded more than 130,000 cases of frostbite.
But this was not the sole cause of the halt in the German advance.
It was primarily the Red Army that stopped the Wehrmacht. As with Napoleon, Hitler's plans began
to fail long before winter. Although the Russian climate eventually had no doubt a considerable
influence on their subsequent problems, it cannot be singled out as the sole cause of their defeat.
Number 3 The Red Army at Moscow was saved by fresh divisions from Siberia
After several crippling defeats, the Red Army defeated the German Army as far as 30 km from
Moscow. According to many sources and literature, the Red Army owed this to the Russian winter and
fresh divisions from Siberia and the Far East. Stalin supposedly kept these in the east in case
of a Japanese invasion. When a Soviet spy in Tokyo, the well-known Richard Sorge, assured
him that Japan would not attack, Stalin was to withdraw many divisions from the east to Moscow.
In fact, in the entire period between August and December 1941, only fourteen divisions
in total were moved from east to west. Of these fourteen, there were two minor cavalry divisions,
two tank divisions, one mechanized division and nine rifle divisions.
However, all were transferred to the west before December 1941, when the Soviet
counteroffensive began. Moreover, of all these divisions, only the 32nd, 93rd, 78th, and 238th
Rifle Divisions were involved in the actual defense of Moscow while the others performed
combat tasks on other parts of the front. Although the "Siberian" divisions contributed
to the halt of the German offensive at Moscow, they were indeed not the determining factor
or the most significant force that would have caused the turning point. At Moscow,
the Germans were fought primarily by newly formed divisions from freshly conscripted
conscripts. The contribution of the "Siberian" divisions was almost invisible by comparison.
Number 4 The Red Army had significantly more men
Nazi propaganda often worked with the image of Bolshevik hordes rolling in from the east, against
which Europe was protected by the courageous fighters of the Wehrmacht. In these images,
they were always overwhelming in numbers and outnumbered, which the brave German "knights"
resisted. As is the way with Nazi propaganda, this was not true. At the very beginning of
Operation Barbarossa, the German Army and its allies had about 3.8 million men (about 3.4
million Wehrmacht, 14 Romanian Army divisions, 14 Finnish divisions, over sixty thousand Italians,
the Royal Hungarian Army of 40 thousand men, and the Slovak state contributed its bit). That was
opposed in the initial phase by approximately 2.6 to 2.9 million men of the Red Army.
Of course, all figures are just estimates. Historians have been trying unsuccessfully to
find the exact numbers of soldiers on both sides for decades, but this is likely not
possible. Moreover, the Red Army's numbers increased significantly during the German
offensive - the Soviet Union had a population of nearly 200 million, by contrast, the Third Reich
had less than 80 million. In addition the Russians outnumbered German Army in both - the number of
tanks - 11,000 to 3,350 – and aircraft 9,000 to 2,770. The Red Army recovered from the initial
shock and defeats, could call up additional men and women and increased its production capacity.
However, during the whole time of Operation Barbarossa, which lasted a little over five
months from June until December 1941, the Germans had an advantage in the number of men.
Number 5 The omnipresent Luftwaffe In many Red Army commanders' reports
from Operation Barbarossa, one thing is repeated: the omnipresent German air force – the Luftwaffe,
which made any operations impossible, eliminated defensive lines or cut off supply routes.
In this, the reports of the Soviet commanders resemble British and French counterparts in
May and June 1940. The myth spread that by day and in pleasant weather,
the Red Army had virtually no chance of any operations. The Luftwaffe was supposed to control
the skies and destroy everything on the ground. But a look at the real strength of the Luftwaffe
in the summer of 1941 tells a different story. During the west offensive in the summer of 1940,
out of 3,385 aircraft, the Germans had 1,530 bombers and aircraft capable of attacking ground
targets. However, in the summer of 1941, in the attack on the Soviet Union, they had only 1,427
out of a total of 2,770. The numbers are even more interesting if we convert this to the square km
the Luftwaffe had to cover. In the summer of 1940, 1530 aircraft operated over an area of about 69
thousand km2 (1 aircraft had to cover 45 km2); in the summer of 1941, they fought over a vast area
of more than 700 thousand km2, one aircraft, thus had to cover almost 500 km2, over 11 times more.
The Luftwaffe operated 1450 km from the Baltic to the Black Sea and flew up to 480 km east.
The individual German squadrons thus essentially lost the ability to help each other. Moreover,
airfields and equipment had to be moved rapidly eastwards in the early months,
which was logistically extremely difficult, reducing the number of hours flown. In the
Battle of Britain between the 10th of July and the 31st of October 1940, the Luftwaffe lost 961
aircraft, which it could not replenish before the attack on the Soviet Union.
The swarms of Stuka dive-bombers are thus the stuff of legend.
Operation Barbarossa was the largest German military operation of World War II.
The destruction of the Communist Soviet Union and the conquest of Lebensraum in eastern Europe were
longtime goals of Hitler and the Nazi Party. The German attack on the Soviet
Union marked a turning point in both the history of World War II and the Holocaust.
Hundreds of thousands of Jews managed to flee into the depths of the Soviet Union,
but millions of Jews remained under Nazi occupation and approximately 1.5 million
of them were the victims of mass murder carried out by the Einsatzgruppen units which were Nazi
mobile death squads operating behind the front line in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe. In less
than half a year, by the end of 1941, about half a million Jews had been murdered within the areas
of the Soviet Union conquered by the Nazis. Towards the end of 1941 the Germans realized
that they would not defeat the Soviet Union in a lightning war as they had originally planned.
The German army would require a workforce that would help in paving roads, clearing minefields,
producing ordinance and equipment. The decision was thus made to temporarily leave Jewish
prisoners alive in camps and ghettos in order to employ them for the German war effort. The
extermination was renewed in its full intensity in the spring of 1942. By winter of 1943 most of
the Jews of Belorussia and almost half of the 2.5 million Jews of Ukraine had already been murdered.
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