A paper published by the U.S. Army's Combat Studies Institute in 1981 concluded that Hitler's plans miscarried before the onset of severe winter weather. He was so confident of quick victory that he did not prepare for even the possibility of winter warfare in the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, his eastern army suffered more than 734,000 casualties (about 23 percent of its average strength of 3,200,000 troops) during the first five months of the invasion, and on 27 November 1941, General Eduard Wagner, the Quartermaster General of the German Army, reported that "We are at the end of our resources in both personnel and material. We are about to be confronted with the dangers of deep winter."^[50]

The German forces were not prepared to deal with harsh weather and the poor road network of the USSR. In autumn, the terrain slowed the Wehrmacht’s progress. Few roads were paved. The ground in the USSR was very loose sand in the summer, sticky muck in the autumn, and heavy snow during the winter. The German tanks had narrow treads with little traction and poor flotation in mud. In contrast, the new generation of Soviet tanks such as the T-34 and KV had wider tracks and were far more mobile in these conditions. The 600,000 large western European horses the Germans used for supply and artillery movement did not cope well with this weather. The small ponies used by the Red Army were much better adapted to this climate and could even scrape the icy ground with their hooves to dig up the weeds beneath.

German troops were mostly unprepared for the harsh weather changes in the autumn and winter of 1941. Equipment had been prepared for such winter conditions, but the ability to move it up front over the severely overstrained transport network did not exist. Consequently, the troops were not equipped with adequate cold-weather gear, and some soldiers had to pack newspapers into their jackets to stay warm while temperatures dropped to record levels of at least -30 °C (-22 °F). To operate furnaces and heaters, the Germans also burned precious fuel that was difficult to re-supply. Soviet soldiers often had warm, quilted uniforms, felt-lined boots, and fur hats.

Some German weapons malfunctioned in the cold. Lubricating oils were unsuitable for extreme cold, resulting in engine malfunction and misfiring weapons. To load shells into a tank’s main gun, frozen grease had to be chipped off with a knife. Soviet units faced less severe problems due to their experience with cold weather. Aircraft were supplied with insulating blankets to keep their engines warm while parked. Lighter-weight oil was used.

A common myth is that the combination of deep mud, followed by snow, stopped all military movement in the harsh Russian winter. In fact, military operations were slowed by these factors, but much more so on the German side than on the Soviet side. The Soviet December 1941 counteroffensive advanced up to 100 miles (160 km) in some sectors^{[citation needed]}, demonstrating that mobile warfare was still possible under winter conditions.

When the severe winter began, Hitler became fearful of a repeat of Napoleon's disastrous retreat from Moscow^{[citation needed]}, and quickly ordered the German forces to hold their ground defiantly wherever possible in the face of Soviet counterattacks. This became known as the "stand or die" order. This prevented the Germans from being routed, but resulted in heavy casualties from battle and cold.

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Aftermath

Stalin deported German POWs to labour camps. Ethnic groups were also deported en masse to the east. Examples include: in September 1941, 439,000 Volga Germans (as well as more than 300,000 other Germans from various locations) were deported mainly to Kazakhstan as their autonomous republic was abolished by Stalin's decree; in May 1944, 182,000 Crimean Tatars were deported from the Crimea to Uzbekistan; and the complete deportation of Chechens (393,000) and Ingushs (91,000) to Kazakhstan took place in 1944 (see Population transfer in the Soviet Union).

Germany's inability to achieve victory over the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa opened up the possibility for Soviet counterattacks to retake lost land and attack further into Germany proper. Starting in mid-1944, the overwhelming success in Operation Bagration and the quick victory in the Lvov-Sandomierz Offensive led to an unbroken string of Soviet gains and unsupportable losses for the German forces. Germany would never again mount a successful attack on the Soviet Union. Operation Barbarossa's failure paved the way for Soviet forces to fight all the way to Berlin, cementing the ultimate fall of Nazism and Germany's defeat in World War II.

[

See also

• Eastern Front (World War II)
• Timeline of the Eastern Front of World War II
• Siege of Leningrad - the siege began in 1941 and was ended in 1944.
• Continuation War – the war at Finnish front
• Operation Silberfuchs – the attack on the Soviet Arctic
• Molotov Line – An incomplete Soviet defence line at the start of Operation Barbarossa
• Operation Nordlicht – Summer of 1942 was another major attack against besieged Leningrad
• Operation Blaufuchs – German–Finnish general operational plans
• Captured Tanks and Armoured cars for German use in Russian Front
• Captured German equipment in Soviet use in Eastern front
• Pobediteli – Russian project celebrating the 60th anniversary of World War II
• The Battle of Russia – film from the Why We Fight propaganda film series

[

Notes

[

Further reading

[

External links

• Relationship between the campaigns in the Balkans and the invasion of Russia and associated timeline on a US Army website
• Multimedia map—Covers the invasion of Russia including Operation Barbarossa
• Operation Barbarossa—Detailed analysis of the operation by author Bevin Alexander.
• Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Current Intelligence. The Soviet History of World War II, 28 October 1959.

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