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Failure of operation barbarossa
Failure of operation barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa and its effects
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OPERATION BARBAROSSA
The invasion of Russia was the largest military campaign of the Second World War. Operation Barbarossa, as it was known, was launched on 22 June 1941 and completely took Russia by surprise.
The widening war raging in Africa and eastern Europe were key distractions for Hitler from his ultimate goal of attacking Russia.
Although the British army remained undefeated in the west, Hitler’s goal proved an urgency for him to begin moving on the east. Whilst planning was made throughout 1940 for the invasion of Russia, time was favorable towards the Russians and they continued to mobilize their resources and strengthen their defense forces.
The invasion of the Germans was a complete surprise as Russian dictator, Josef Stalin, had failed to acknowledge the increasing German troop concentrations on the border and he had also ignored British intelligence reports stating that Germany had intended to attack.
Hitler once again used the Blitzkrieg technique with German tanks and air power leading the attack. There were three powerful German armies, made up of over 3 million men which moved into Russia.
As one army group headed north towards Leningrad, a center group headed towards Moscow and a southern group moved to capture the food producing area of the Ukraine. By now, the Germans were thrilled with their fast advancements and initial success, including the fact that they had captured over 400 000 Russian soldiers.
In late July, the advance on Leningrad and Mosco...
Introduction Operation Anaconda was the first major joint combat operation against the war on terror that the US was committed to winning. This operation would test our military’s readiness for joint operations against a hardened and willing adversary. The primary mission was to kill/capture Taliban/Al Qaeda forces occupying towns and villages in the vicinity of Shahi Khot in order to gain control of the valley.1 The US needed the towns, villages, mountains, and more importantly, the intricate and hard to access caves cleared of enemy fighters. Units participating in the operation included elements of the 101st Airborne Division, 10th Mountain Division, Special Operations Forces (SOF), and Coalition forces from seven nations including Afghanistan.2 With so many different nations fighting along with our own branches of military, it would test our ability to conduct joint operations on multiple levels. History On September 11, 2001, Osama Bin Laden decided to “wake the sleeping giant.”
The battle of Stalingrad has often been referred to as the turning point of World War II. Stalingrad, now called Volgograd is located on the river Volga in the southern part of western Russia. It was of extreme importance because it was the last stronghold protecting the vast oil fields that lay beyond it to the east. Hitler believed his Operation Barbarossa would be an easy victory, claiming that troops would be home for Christmas. There was much symbolism in Hitler’s decision to attack Stalingrad and that was due to that it was named after the Russian leader Stalin and would cause a great loss of morale in the Russian army if the German army could capture it. The German 6th Army ran into incredibly fierce resistance on the part of the Russians. As the battle waged on for nearly 3 months the daily bloodbaths of the street battles began to take their toll on both sides. Russia’s use of snipers began to cost the Germans more and more lives everyday. Most famous of...
Did you know that over 830,000 Germans died during Operation Barbarossa? Operation Barbarossa was the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union enacted by Hitler and carried out by Nazi troops. But the Nazis were not the only ones who suffered colossal losses. The soviets had over 4,000,000 military casualties, but somehow, the U.S.S.R. defeated the Germans and was able to shove them out of their land. This defeat definitely had a major effect on WWII’s outcome due to the massive Nazi force that was allotted to Operation Barbarossa and their failure to take command of the U.S.S.R. The key points of Operation Barbarossa were who planned it, why they planned it, the events that had major effects on the war, and Germany’s failure.
... control under allied empower, Hitler appeared to look nervous from the actions that had taken place. Hitler’s force couldn’t resist the cold of Russia of which they had pushed too far into for further enhancements. Hitler would soon learn an enduring lesson since the push he had made in Russia would eventually backfire on him. The deceptive strategy by the Soviets would work perfectly on the German force. For example, Stalin let Hitler’s force into Russia but for the better of the Allied union. He knew that Hitler’s army would suffer and die from the extensive cold and lack of nourishment in Russia. He would then play an offensive move by counter-attacking and pushing all the way back into Germany. The devious tactics played by the allied force surely was a significant lesson learned from the raid, which in the end made Hitler surrender to its “Fortress Europe.”
On June 22, 1941, Adolf Hitler gave the green light for the commencement of Operation Barbarossa to capture the heart of USSR, Moscow, in order to gradually diminish the power of the Allied forces in WWII. However, Hitler’s masterminded plan eventually began falling apart due to his own carelessness and over-confidence. For instance, Hitler miscalculation of postponing the operation to focus on other matters by several weeks proved to be crucial as the ferocious Russian winter arrived significantly earlier causing many German soldiers to freeze to death, while the Russians accustomed to the weather used it to their advantage (Royde-Smith). Hitler also underestimated Stalin’s ability to prepare enough troops due to his belief of German superiority,
Russia entered the war when Nazi Germany executed Operation Barbarossa. They missed their start date by 3 months and that would lead to one of the many problems Nazi Germany faced during the war on the Eastern front. Russia delivered Germany their biggest defeats including The Battle of Stalingrad and the battle of Kursk. Without these two battles Germany would not have had the significant personnel and supplies lost they faced for the final 3 years of the war.
In September of 1942, the German commander of the Sixth Army, advanced his troops to the city of Stalingrad where Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht to secure the oil fields and take Stalingrad. Stalingrad was a target location due to its manufacturing and center of communications for parts of Russia. Hitler had extra motivation to take Stalingrad because the significance of the name, it was named after the Soviet Russian leader Stalin. Russia had been war torn and devastated from previous attacks and battles from the Germans, they knew they had to persevere and hang on along enough to defeat the German Army. The Soviets did have somewhat of a warning of the German attack, they shipped out cattle, grain, and other main supplies, but most of the civilians stayed. Hitler was very confident he could take this city down without losing major causalities. While Hitler was planning the attack the Soviet Marshall Zhukov was planning a major counterattack. Marshall Zhukov had 6 armies of 1 million men ready to attack the Germans. Both the Germans and Soviets had flaws in their attacks but, t...
...t the U.S would continue there fight with Japan and not focus on the Germans, but what Hitler didn’t know was that The U.S would join forces with the Russians and the British. When they did this they helped the Russians beat Germany and gain back control of The USSR (“BBC History”).
From July 1942 to February 1943, Soviet forces defended the city of Stalingrad from Nazi attack. The battle began during the summer offensive of 1942, Nazi Army groups A an B had already pushed past Stalingrad to take oil fields in south west Russia, when Hitler ordered Stalingrad be attacked (Trueman, n.d.). “Some historians believe that Hitler ordered the taking of Stalingrad simply because of the name of the city and Hitler's hatred of Joseph Stalin. For the same reason Stalin ordered that the city had to be saved” (Trueman, n.d.). Stalingrad was also the center of Soviet communications and manufacturing in the south. Since Stalingrad had such a significance to the soviet war effort and because the Soviets could not allow the Nazi's to hold the oil fields in south-west Russia, Stalin issued the “Not a step back” order (Trueman, n.d.). The battle would eventually turn into one of the bloodiest in World War II with enormous civilian and military casualties.
The battle in the town got desperate, so Stalin ordered his famous directive “not a step back”, furthermore, soviet secret police arrested and executed thousands of their own soldiers who tried to escape the battlefield. “The Soviet authorities executed around 13,500 of their own soldiers at Stalingrad - equivalent to more than a whole division of troops.” Ultimately, after months of fighting, stalemate happened. German forces didn’t the power to inflict the final blow to the Red Army and take the city. Similarly, Soviet forces in Stalingrad were worn out and did not have enough of the people to push Germans out of the city. Finally, Soviet Union in November 1942 launched Operation Uranus who ultimately led to encirclement and total destruction of all German
When Hitler was in power, he was slowly trying to take over Europe. Going into Russia was arguably Hitler’s downfall, which was when the Battle of Stalingrad occurred. The Battle of Stalingrad began on July 17, 1942, and continued on until February 2, 1943. The people of Russia think that Stalingrad was the greatest battle of their Great Patriotic War, while most historians recognize it to be the greatest of all of World War II. This battle stopped the Germans from advancing into the Soviet Union and marked when the Allies took over the war and began to overpower Germany. With combined military and civilian casualties of nearly 2 million, the Battle of Stalingrad was determined to be one of the bloodiest battles in history (History.com).
Though Germany rearmed in 1933, already preparing for a war, other countries were careful not to instigate a fight, even when Germany took over the Rhineland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia throughout 1938-1939 for the reason of appeasement, hope that this would please Hitler and prevent the beginning of a war. For this same reason, Stalin agreed to sign the Nazi-Soviet Pact in August of 1939. The Nazi-Soviet Pact, also known as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and the German-Soviet Non-aggression Pact, was a promise between Russia and Germany that they would not harm each other if the war occurred. After Stalin signed the peace agreement, Hitler understood that he would no longer need to fear attacks from the USSR, and could begin getting serious, launching a Blitzkrieg (lightning war) on Poland, consequently beginning World War Two. This demonstrates how Stalin was a major catalyst to World War Two, effectively starting the war. Despite this being a negative action with poor consequences, Stalin’s later contributions helped the effort against
The Soviet invasion of Poland was a Soviet military operation that started without a formal declaration of war on 17 September 1939. On that morning, 16 days after Germany invaded Poland from the west, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east.
The Battle of Stalingrad was a just turning point in the war and a crucial engagement of WW2. The Germans needed this victory to get the Volga River to launch more assaults on the Caucasus.
Regardless of Allied bombing, the superiority of the Russian army was sufficient to win the war. Overy highlights the fact that “Soviet forces destroyed or disabled an estimated 607 Axis divisions between 1941 and 1945” demonstrating the Russian’s effectiveness in battle even before Allied dominance of the skies. Secondly, the Allied bombing campaign adversely affected the Germans too late in the war to be credited with successes on the Eastern Front. By the time strategic bombing of Germany had a big enough impact to divert resources away from the Eastern Front, Russia was already on the front foot and were positioned to win the war. This is demonstrated by the fact that at the time of Russian victory in Stalingrad (February 1943) British bombing was not yet sufficiently damaging to divert essential German resources away from the Eastern Front. In summary, it must be argued, that despite the inefficiencies of the bombing campaign, it was of enormous significance to the Russian army. Although the strategic bombing campaign alone cannot be credited with Allied victory, it did prove to be the greatest single advantage enjoyed by the Allies as it was instrumental in securing Allied success at D-Day and on the Eastern Front and therefore its significance cannot be