Operation Barbarossa

Hitler approved the plan in Directive No. 21 of 18 December 1940; the codename recalled the medieval emperor Frederick I Barbarossa. More than three million German troops, together with forces from Romania, Finland and other allies, attacked in three army groups: towards Leningrad, Moscow and Ukraine. The aim was to destroy the Soviet Union, seize ‘living space’ and raw materials, and wipe out ‘Jewish Bolshevism’.

The Wehrmacht destroyed huge Soviet forces in encirclements and took millions of prisoners but did not break the Red Army; on 5 December 1941 the counter-offensive before Moscow began. From the first days it was a war of annihilation: behind the front the Einsatzgruppen began the mass murder of Jews. The Germans also overran the eastern lands of interwar Poland, occupied by the Soviet Union since 1939.