{mosimage}Operation Barbarossa was a strategic move by the Nazis in order to end shortages of man power as well as oil and other requirements like cultivable land for the Germans. The policy of the Nazis in this war was to kill, enslave or to deport Russians from their space which would give the Nazis more living space.

This war was started by leaving the war with Great Britian half way and suddenly attacking the Russians. This war was planned by Hitler himself; this was the reason why the British were not further attacked. Hitler, according to his nature, was willing to take risks in this war too, therefore he disregarded the military top brass’s suggestion that they should finish of their fight with Britain first and later move on to Russia.

In order to start a war against Russia, Hitler created propaganda that the Germans now required living space. Most importantly what readied everyone for this war was the propaganda that the Russians were preparing to attack Germany. So this war would not be German attack but a pre emptive war for protecting themselves.

Operation Barbarossa began in June 1941 and lasted till December 1941, however on the Eastern front the war started in June 1941 to May 1945, this was when Nazis surrendered. Operation Barbarossa was one of the most deadliest and brutal war fought between any two countries.

Total number of soldiers involved in this war from the German side was more than four million including the German and the Axis armies, whereas the number of soldiers from the Soviet side was only 2.6 million. It is now a known fact that the Soviets were better at mobilizing their ground forces, than the Germans, this was the main reason for German defeat.

There were also factor which worked against the Soviets, one of them was due to Stalin’s rule several senior Army officials were serving terms in Siberia and Stalin had now kept Army chiefs who were more politically stable than were able for the job, this resulted in a general loss of direction for the troops. Since Stalin wanted to hear only what he wanted to hear he was misinformed about the strength of his troops. He also ignored repeated warnings from his own intelligence agencies that the Germans were preparing for war against the Soviets. This was the reason, though Soviets had time to prepare for the war, they were not ready when German actually attacked them. They were only able to carry out partial mobilization of troops.

Also the Russians were supposed to be on peace postings during the time they should have been preparing for the war. When the Axis and Germans carried out air attacks, they found all the air planes parked in clusters instead of being separated from each other, thus these made ready targets to the Germans and there was heavy duty loss of air support for the Russians.

The size of the German army along with the Axis forces and the Hungarian, Slovakian, Italian and Romanian troops joined them and formed additional five million troops against the mere 2.6 millions Russians. Russians therefore hugely outnumbered during this war.