Operation Barbarossa

Operation Barbarossa

Adolf Hitler, one of the most notorious and ruthless personalities of the 20th century, was responsible for the deaths of over 6 million Jews as well as being the driving force behind the start of World War II. Had Hitler and his Nazi regime been able to allocate their troops more efficiently, the Nazis' ultimate goal of taking over the world and exterminating international Jewry might have been a plausible goal. As it was, Nazi troops were spread thin like butter by 1943, making defense on all fronts nearly impossible. But why did Hitler and his Nazi regime attack the Soviet Union in 1941 after signing the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact of 1939? By attacking the Soviet Union, Hitler was playing a number of strategic chess moves, which he hoped would increase his ability to win the war in the long run. Along with the strategic advantages that the Soviet invasion offered, Hitler also had many racially motivated, ideological goals which he hoped to accomplish by attacking Stalin's empire. The problem with the invasion was that Hitler failed to adequately calculate the obvious difficulties which the Nazi's would face while fighting against the Soviet Red Army, ultimately making the invasion of the Soviet Union a fatal decision for his Reich. Nazi troops were left ducking for cover, fighting a war on three different fronts. Had Hitler up-kept his truce with Stalin and the Soviets, history as we know it today quite possibly might have been very different.

Together with Germany and Italy, Japan completed the triangle of Axis powers. With similar fascist agendas, the Axis powers were on a path of conquest and expansion during the mid 20th century. Naturally, the all mighty United States, with its love for freedom and democracy, was the biggest threat to large scale domination by the three countries. From Hitler's point of view, a strong Japan was vital for future attacks on the US. Russia posed a great threat to Japanese supremacy and Hitler was willing to break the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact in order to ensure Japan's powerful position in the Pacific. "The elimination of Russia means, at the same time, a tremendous relief for Japan in East Asia, and thereby the possibility of a much stronger threat to American activities through Japanese intervention" (Adolf Hitler- 1941). On June 22, 1941 Hitler ordered the attack on Stalin's Soviet Union with what is known as operation "Barbarossa." The attacks came without an official declaration of war in the middle of the night, leaving Soviets astonished. In a radio broadcast to the Soviet public on June 22, 1941 Soviet ambassador to Germany Vyacheslav Molotov said, "Today at 4 o'clock a.m., without any claims having been presented to the Soviet Union, without a declaration of war, German troops attacked our country, attacked our borders at many points and bombed from their airplanes our cities; Zhitomir, Kiev, Sevastopol, Kaunas and some others, killing and wounding over two hundred persons." It had only been two years since the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact had been signed, but already Hitler was thinking strategically in terms of the future. He knew that defeating the United States would be a huge step in world domination, and believed that Japan was worth taking a huge gamble on by invading the Soviets.

At the rapid rate at which the Reich was expanding, and was expected to continue to grow, it was clear to Hitler that the German population desperately needed vast amounts of additional food supplies to support the people in years to come. The Baltic States, part of the Soviet Union, were an object of desire for Hitler precisely because of this reason. With their wide open plains, Baltic States such as Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and the Ukraine, were ideal for providing the German population with tremendously large harvests of corn and wheat. Along with wheat and corn, the Baltic States also had many other valuable natural resources, the most important being oil. "I hope, above all, that it will then be possible for us to secure a common food-supply base in the Ukraine for some time to come, which will furnish us such additional supplies as we may need in the futureÐ'...It is conceivable that Russia will try to destroy the Rumanian oil region. We have built up a defense that willÐ'--or so I thinkÐ'--prevent the worst (Adolf Hitler-1941). Another "natural resource" of sorts was the population of the conquered territory. Hitler, being the tyrant he was, quickly utilized the prisoners to his advantage by using them as forced laborers in concentration camps, mainly for agricultural purposes. Hitler's saw it as a necessity to increase Germany's territory, to ensure a healthy future for what he deemed as a superior Arian race. Additional oil reserves and slave laborers would essentially allow the German economy to flourish. A booming economy, of course, would allow for increased industrial capacity, which in return would also allow the Nazi's a higher military spending budget. Again, Hitler was greatly concerned with allowing his countries population to flourish under the best circumstances possible in the impending future, giving his Hitler youth a world to grow up in free of Jews, Gypsies, Gay's, and Bolsheviks.

It had always been one of Hitler's goals to increase the living space (Lebensraum) for the German population in the East. Long before his rise to power, Hitler had made it very clear what his intentions toward the Soviet Union were. "What India was for England the territories of Russia will be for us... The German colonists ought to live on handsome, spacious farms. The German services will be lodged in marvelous buildings, the governors in palaces... The Germans - this is essential - will have to constitute amongst themselves a closed society, like a fortress. The least of our stable-lads will be superior to any native." This is a direct excerpt from Hitler's 1924 book, Mein Kampf. In this book, which he wrote while imprisoned, Hitler goes on and on about the importance of increasing German territory at Soviet expense. Sixteen years later, when the Nazi empire was at the height of its power, Hitler and his military advisors saw it fit to start attacking Soviet troops. What they did not estimate was the Soviet capability for defending their country, as well as their industrial resilience. Joseph Goebbels, one of Hitler's main military noted in one of his diaries: "They (the Soviet troops) will be rolled up with ease. The Fuehrer estimates the length of military activity to be 4 months. In my opinion it will take even less than that. Bolshevism will collapse like a house made of cards. Military victory is guaranteed." (My translation from