BARBAROSSA

• Lend-Lease• Rassenkampf• Stalingrad• Bagration• Georgi Zhukov• Great Fatherland

War

After the Fall of France

• Battle of Britain, 12 August to 27 September

• 121 Air Raids

• Stalemate in West

• US Lend-Lease Aid

• British Technology

The Reasons for BARBAROSSA

• Rassenkampf• Lebensraum• Fascist Ideology• Finland• Wermacht Morale• Alliances

** *

*

* = Major Oil Field

Dramatic Success of Blitzkreig

• German Success– 3.3 million German soldiers

– 60 Miles per Day

– 8 Russian Divisions Wiped Out in First Week

– 2,000 Planes Destroyed in 48 Hours

– 6,000 Tanks Lost in July Alone

– 1,500,000 Casualties in 14 Days

– By August, Germans Were 200 Miles From Moscow

Failure of the Russian System

• Army Not Ready– Stalinist Purges of the 1930s

• 80% of Colonels Purged

– Political Reliability Over Military Capability

• Late Mobilization– Distrust of British Intelligence– Hope for Diplomacy– Remembrances of 1914

JuneJulyAug-SepOctober

Approx300,000RussianPOW

Approx600,000RussianPOW

Leeb

Bock

Runstedt

North

Center

South

But the Russians Aren’t Done

• “Trading Space for Time”

• Russian Industry Out of Reach

• Reserves of Manpower

• Winter is Coming….

Limits of Blitzkrieg

• Counted on a Four Month Campaign

• Far From Supply Lines

• Not Prepared for Cold Weather

Siege of Moscow, October 1941

• Initial German Success

• Nazis 40 Miles Away• Lenin’s Coffin

Removed• 700,000 Russian

POWs

Zhukov and “General Winter”

• Nazis Have No Winter Gear

• Temperatures Hit 40 Below Zero, Celsius

• Nazis Have No Winter Oils

• Zhukov and the Siberian Reserves, December 6, 1941

“Comrade Kill Your German”

• Momentum Shift• 300,000 Germans

Killed or POW in December Alone

• Bitter Nature of the War

• American Entry• Two Front War by

Spring

Stalingrad, Sept 1942-Jan 1943

• German losses exceed 250,000 men

• Worst fighting of the war

• Major turning point in the war

• Surrender of Paulus and the Sixth Army

Reasons for Russian Recovery

• Quantity has a quality all its own

• Industry• Russian patriotism• Changes in Russian

doctrine• Lend-Lease as the vehicle

for Deep War theory• Diplomatic isolation of

Japan• Second Front?

Resources at Kursk(July/August 1943)

USSR Germany

Men 1,336,000 900,000

Tanks 3,444 2,700

Planes 2,900 2,000

Heavy Guns 19,000 10,000

Operation Bagration

Russia’s Great Fatherland War

• 20,000,000 Russian dead – at least

• Russia in firm control of Eastern Europe and plan to keep it

• Mistrust with west

• Russian army powerful, efficient by 1945

• Russians able to absorb huge casualties