Best printers for Home

Best Mixer Grinder

Best wired Earphones

Best 43 Inch TV in India

Best Wi Fi Routers

Best Home Theatre in India

Smart Watch under 5000

Best Laptops for Education

Best Laptop for Students

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Early on June 22, 1941, the largest invasion in the history of warfare kicked off.</li><li>Millions of Axis troops crossed into the <keyword id="6365126" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="soviet-union">Soviet Union</keyword>, marking the beginning of <keyword id="7608658" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="operation-barbarossa">Operation Barbarossa</keyword>.</li><li>Germans troops made it to the gates of Moscow, but the invasion was ultimately Adolf Hitler's undoing.</li></ul>Just after 3 a.m. on June 22, 1941, <keyword id="397060" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Nazi-Germany">Nazi Germany</keyword> launched <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/operation-barbarossa-and-germanys-defeat-in-the-east/F6A6D6C530FA3B02E3A382169062BD1E">Operation Barbarossa</a>, the largest invasion in the history of warfare.Over 3.5 million Axis troops, along with more than 3,400 tanks and 2,700 aircraft, blitzed across the 1,800-mile border separating the Axis powers from the Soviet Union.Believing the Red Army to be weak because of its failures in Poland and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ussr-russia-finald-wwii-winter-war-photos-2017-3" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Finland</a> and because Josef Stalin's purges had largely rid it of competent leaders, Adolf Hitler reportedly <a href="https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/eastern-front" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> his generals, "We only have to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down."<div type="image" title="Operation Barbarossa" height="1019" width="1359" msid="76510375" hostid="261"></div>The Germans divided their forces into three Army Groups.The immediate objectives were for Army Group North to drive through the Baltic and take Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), while Army Group South would attack into Ukraine and take Kyiv and the Donets Basin.Army Group Center, the largest of the three, would push through Minsk and Smolensk to take Moscow.The ultimate goal was to conquer everything west of the A-A Line, a boundary between the cities of Arkhangelsk, on the White Sea near Russia's present-day border with Finland, and Astrakhan, on the Volga River near the Caspian Sea.The area west of this line held the majority of the Soviet Union's population, infrastructure, and factories, which meant controlling it was tantamount to conquering the Soviet Union. German planners believed the entire operation would take only three months.Stalin was warned <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-13862135">repeatedly</a> by military and intelligence officials that a German invasion appeared imminent in 1941, but he refused to act for fear of provoking the Germans.<div type="image" title="Operation Barbarossa" height="1485" width="2216" msid="76510376" hostid="261"></div>On the first day of the invasion, the Soviet air force lost more than 1,200 planes, most destroyed before they could get off the ground.The damage was so severe that Maj. Gen. Ivan Kopets, commander of Soviet air forces on the Western Front, killed himself after observing the damage to his airfields.The situation was just as bad for the Red Army. Its roughly 10,000 mostly outdated T-26 and BT-7 tanks were largely ineffective. German panzer groups punched through unprepared and weak Soviet lines, surrounding entire armies.In little more than a week, Army Group Center had advanced 200 miles and had captured 300,000 Soviet soldiers in the Bialystock-Minsk pocket. By the end of July, it took Smolensk and captured another 300,000 Soviet soldiers.Gen. Franz Halder, the chief of staff for the German Army High Command, <a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-312-62819-2">wrote</a> in his diary, "I think I am not exaggerating when I say that the campaign against Russia has been won in fourteen days."<h2>'Resistance, permanent resistance'</h2><div type="image" title="Operation Barbarossa Heinrich Himmler" height="1874" width="2499" msid="76510380" hostid="261"></div>The Soviets launched desperate counterattacks to halt the German onslaught.On its way to Kyiv, Army Group South <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/blog/dont-forget-battle-brody-historys-biggest-tank-battle-101847">ran into</a> a massive force of more than 3,000 tanks near the Ukrainian city of Brody. But after a week of fighting, the Soviet force was virtually destroyed.Army Group North was also running into counterattacks. At the Lithuanian town of Raseiniai, one lone Soviet heavy tank <a href="https://www.wearethemighty.com/articles/this-lone-soviet-tank-was-ready-to-fight-the-entire-nazi-invasion-of-russia">managed to slow</a> the Wehrmacht's progress for a few days before being destroyed with almost all its crew.The Soviets did have more modern tanks like the T-34 medium and KV-1 and KV-2 heavy tanks that proved to be almost impossible to kill. But they were few, and the Luftwaffe, with almost complete air superiority, methodically destroyed the Soviet supply lines needed to keep them running.<div type="image" title="Operation Barbarossa" height="556" width="800" msid="76510382" hostid="261"></div>The Wehrmacht kept up its advance. In the south, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt encircled two Soviet armies in the Uman pocket, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/kiev-1941/D4EA4D1B74338A6EA24ABE7329634424">capturing</a> 103,000 more prisoners by August 8. The Romanians and Germans also started laying siege to Odessa.Though Soviet counterattacks were <a href="https://www.historynet.com/forgotten-battles-of-the-great-patriotic-war.htm">largely futile</a>, with thousands of tanks destroyed or abandoned and even more soldiers killed, captured, or wounded, they drained Germany's reserves and strained supply lines.One German soldier reportedly <a href="https://www.starmediafilm.com/en/project/Soviet_Storm_WW2_in_the_East">wrote</a>, "We have no sensation of entering a defeated country, as we had in France. Instead we have resistance, permanent resistance, no matter how hopeless it is."<div type="image" title="Operation Barbarossa" height="558" width="799" msid="76510384" hostid="261"></div>By mid-July, a nervous Hitler was worried that Army Group Center was overextending itself and was out of sync with Army Groups North and South.As a result, Hitler issued Directive Number 33, changing the objectives of the operation. Instead of pushing to Moscow, Army Group Center's panzer groups were diverted to Army Groups North and South to help capture Leningrad and Kiev, respectively.The generals of Army Group Center were furious. They were less than 200 miles from Moscow and believed delaying the assault would drag the operation into the dreaded Russian winter. But Hitler was adamant, and the panzers were diverted.<div type="image" title="Operation Barbarossa" height="682" width="1024" msid="76510388" hostid="261"></div>While Army Group Center fended off multiple counterattacks, Gen. Heinz Guderian's 2nd Panzer Group, along with Army Group South's 1st Panzer Group, attacked the area around Kyiv, trapping almost the entire Soviet Southwestern Front.More than 450,000 Soviets were <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1gsmvk1">taken prisoner</a> in what became the largest encirclement in history.With the northern and southern flanks deemed secure, the Germans finally attacked Moscow. They had initial success, encircling Soviet forces in the Vyazma and Bryansk pockets, capturing more than 500,000 prisoners.But by the time the Germans began their drive to Moscow in October, the seasons had caught up with them. Rains turned roads and battlefields into vast stretches of mud.Supplies were having difficulty reaching the front. German losses - especially among critical panzer groups - were mounting. With November came the winter.<h2>'We underestimated the Russian colossus'</h2><div type="image" title="Operation Barbarossa" height="1608" width="2500" msid="76510392" hostid="261"></div>Operation Barbarossa was now five months into what was supposed to be a three-month campaign. By their own calculations, the Germans should have reached the A-A Line and destroyed the Red Army.But despite unparalleled losses, the Red Army was actually growing. At the start of the war, it was 5 million men. By the end of December, it had grown to 8 million.This was unexpected. Halder even wrote, "It stands out more and more clearly that we underestimated the Russian colossus." If the Germans destroyed a dozen Russian divisions, Halder wrote, "then the Russians put another dozen in their place."It was clear that this was a war of attrition and that taking Moscow wasn't possible. On December 2, three days before the end of offensive operations, a German reconnaissance unit reached the suburb of Khimki, just 8 miles from Moscow and less than 20 miles from the Kremlin.<div type="image" title="Operation Barbarossa" height="529" width="800" msid="76510397" hostid="261"></div>Operation Barbarossa had failed. Hitler's prediction of a Soviet collapse proved grossly incorrect. Almost 200,000 of his best soldiers were killed and more than 500,000 wounded. The Germans lost more than 2,500 tanks and almost 3,000 aircraft.Soviet casualties were appalling; well over 500,000 soldiers had been killed in action alone. Millions more were wounded or sick, and tens of thousands of planes and tanks had been destroyed.The Germans captured 3.3 million soldiers, and by February 1942, 60% of them had died in camps - the first Soviet victims in an extermination campaign unleashed by Hitler.The Red Army's continued counterattacks and offensives meant the Germany military never had less than 75% of its forces stationed on the Eastern Front. Hitler had led Germany into a two-front war that it did not have the resources or manpower to win.

80 years ago, Hitler picked a fight that may have cost him World War II

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Ukraine has pushed Russia's Black Sea Fleet out of Crimea after two years of strikes.</li><li>But retaking the peninsula will be extremely hard, military experts told BI.</li></ul>Ukraine has dealt a massive blow to Russia's Black Sea Fleet in Crimea.Russia has retained control of Crimea since invading and annexing the peninsula in 2014 and secured Sevastopol as the headquarters for its Black Sea Fleet.But following Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, Ukraine has repeatedly struck back in the region, destroying or damaging around half of the Russian fleet's warships, including one submarine, according to <a target="_blank" rel="" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/warships-in-russia-black-sea-fleet-that-ukraine-wiped-out-2024-2">publicly available information</a>.It has used aerial drones, <a target="_blank" rel="" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/sea-drones-change-naval-warfare-give-smaller-navies-edge-expert-2024-7">sea drones</a>, and anti-ship missiles against the fleet and the <a target="_blank" rel="" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-no-longer-using-kerch-crimea-bridge-military-supply-molfar-2024-5">Kerch Bridge,</a> to often devastating effect. Ukraine's campaign even pushed Russian warships to <a target="_blank" rel="" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/satellite-images-show-black-sea-fleet-running-away-crimea-ukraine-2024-6">withdraw</a> from Crimea to bases in the port cities of Feodosia, on the far side of Crimea, and Novorossiysk, in Russia.It is degrading the peninsula as a key logistics route to its occupying forces across southern Ukraine and tainting its attractiveness to Russians as a summertime beach destination. But if Ukraine hopes to follow through on its pledges to retake Crimea, it will need a huge assault force steeled for what's likely to be the hardest fight of a bloody war."Retaking Crimea would be extremely difficult because Crimea is essentially an island," Mark Cancian, a retired US Marine Corps colonel who's a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told BI."An amphibious assault is impossible because Ukraine lacks ships to carry large numbers of troops and their heavy equipment," he said, adding: "Further, Russia still has long-range aircraft and submarines, which are essentially invulnerable at sea."Russia has a vast military infrastructure across Crimea that will have to be severely damaged in order for Ukraine to have a chance to seize it back, according to Basil Germond, an expert in international security at Lancaster University in the UK.He said Ukraine "would first need to prepare the terrain by destroying or seriously degrading all of Russia's air, air defense, missile defense, communication, and electronic warfare equipment and capabilities in Crimea and perhaps the Kerch Bridge."<div type="image" title="The Crimea peninsula's geography poses unique risks for Ukraine to assault and challenges for Russian forces to try to hold." height="1500" width="2000" msid="112243721" hostid="261" sizebytes="269662"></div><h2 id="ec0fab4a-b338-4365-b533-ee4003786a22">A challenging location</h2>Reaching Crimea has proven challenging due to its location away from the front lines, Russia's heavily fortified defensive lines, and Ukraine's lack of manpower and airpower, military experts and analysts told BI."Crimea is deep inside Russian-occupied territory and far from the current front lines," Cancian said.And Russia has heavily <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-fortifies-600-mile-front-line-with-trenches-mines-reports-2023-5">fortified</a> its 600-mile front line with anti-tank ditches, mazes of trenches, 'dragon's teeth' barricades, and minefields, with much of its defenses in northern Crimea."The Russians are heavily fortified and well-defended in these areas, and it will take time for the Ukrainians to break these defenses," said Mark Temnycky, a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center, who added that troops are proceeding with "extreme caution."Without the options to ferry a large assault force by air or water, Ukraine will be forced to attack through Russian defensive lines to approach Crimea. Furthermore, were Russia to lose its hold on Kherson, it could mine and concentrate firepower on the few land approaches to Crimea, using similar tactics to those that stopped Ukraine's 2023 <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-the-ukrainian-counteroffensive-ran-into-trouble-2023-11">counteroffensive</a>."Without an amphibious naval force to land in Crimea, how can Ukraine project enough troops onto the peninsula to claim its control?" said Germond of Lancaster University.Ukraine <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-missile-attack-naval-base-helps-make-crimea-untenable-russia-2023-9">has</a> <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-may-have-struck-tsiklon-russia-last-missile-carrier-crimea-2024-5">resorted</a> to <a target="_blank" rel="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-prized-s400-launchers-blasted-crimea-strike-ukraine-says-2024-4">hitting</a> Russia's air defenses in Crimea with missiles and long-range weapons, including US-supplied Army Tactical Missile Systems, known as ATACMS.Last month, war analysts from The Institute for the Study of War <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-strikes-russia-crimea-air-defenses-end-military-role-experts-2024-6">said</a> Ukraine's sustained attacks against Russia's air defenses could render Crimea untenable as a military staging ground.But they also <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-puts-military-near-civilians-crimea-deter-ukraine-strikes-isw-2024-6">noted</a> that Russia was likely placing military facilities near civilians to try to deter further Ukrainian strikes.Last month, Russian-installed Sevastopol governor Mikhail Razvozhaev <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://t.me/razvozhaev/6925">claimed</a> that a Ukrainian strike killed four people and injured 151 people."Millions of citizens live on the peninsula, and the Ukrainians do not want to harm the civilian population," Temnycky said.Any Crimea assault comes down to numbers. Russia aims to <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/24/i-know-we-will-win-and-how-ukraines-top-general-on-turning-the-tables-against-russia">commit</a> 690,000 troops to the war by year's end, a large build-up that could bolster the Russian troops and Ukrainian conscripts on Crimea, a force perhaps 60,000- to 80,000-strong. It's likely Russia could commit well over 100,000 were Crimea to be threatened.To have the best chance to push through their defenses, Ukraine is likely to need a well-supplied force three to five times the size of the defenders — a guideline that would balloon any operation to many times the size of the 2023 counteroffensive.Benjamin Friedman, policy director at the Defense Priorities think tank, said that Ukraine lacks the manpower and air cover required to go on the offensive in a "major way.""Even with F-16s, I don't think Ukraine has the ability to provide its ground forces effective close air support, given Russian air defense capability," he told BI.<div type="image" title="An explosion in a field." height="729" width="1024" msid="112243722" hostid="261" sizebytes="38248"></div><h2 id="d2bc26cb-7fab-4d99-815d-d74106b0c0a6">Retaking Crimea</h2>Despite the battleground challenges Ukraine faces, some experts believe it could retake Crimea with enough weapons, troops and time.This would involve crossing the Isthmus of Pereko, separating Crimea from mainland Ukraine, or crossing the marshes to the east, called Sivash, to reach Crimea."That's what happened during World War II, when the Germans captured Crimea in 1942, and the Soviets recaptured it in 1944," Cancian said.However, to do this, Ukraine first needs to break through Russia's <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-front-line-forces-fighting-through-russia-surovikin-line-2023-9">Suvorikin Line</a>, a complex system of defensive fortifications and obstacles across Russian-occupied territory in southern and eastern Ukraine that Ukraine has never pierced through. A force that advances through this also faces a high risk of becoming bottlenecked on the few land approaches and destroyed by the short- and long-range firepower Russia would almost be certain to bear.According to Sergej Sumlenny, founder of the German think tank European Resilience Initiative Center, the question now is "when Ukraine will accumulate so much firepower, not just artillery, but also air force, so they manage to push through these defensive lines and then reach the operative space" of Crimea.If and when Ukrainian soldiers do reach Crimea, Sumlenny said, they will be able to destroy the Kerch Bridge and the last ferry road over the Sea of Azov, cutting off all of Russia's supply lines to the peninsula and isolating Russian forces. Using long-range missiles to cut-off supply lines was a crucial element of Ukraine's grinding and successful liberation of the city of Kherson in late 2022.Sumlenny added that Crimea has historically been vulnerable to offensives."There is no case in history when anyone could defend Crimea from an attack," he said.In 1921, the Soviet Union's Red Army <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-worldhistory2/chapter/the-russian-civil-war/">crushed</a> the White Russians and took control of the peninsula, and in 1941, the Axis powers <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/operation-barbarossa-and-germanys-failure-in-the-soviet-union">invaded</a> the Soviet Union during Operation Barbarossa, with their land forces laying siege to Sevastopol.The Red Army launched a massive counter-attack in late 1943 with 2.6 million men that pushed the Germans back and weakened their hold on Crimea. After two and a half years of German occupation, a Soviet force of over 450,000 <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Crimea/History">regained</a> control of Crimea in 1944.It was <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/why-did-russia-give-away-crimea-sixty-years-ago">transferred</a> to Soviet Ukraine — one of the republics of the Soviet Union — in 1954, until the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Ukrainian independence in 1991.Finally, in 2014, Russian forces invaded and occupied the peninsula before annexing it."If you look at all the cases when armies were clearly ready to fight and defend their positions, we can say that Crimea is practically an undefendable fortress," Sumlenny said."So, from my perspective, the moment the Ukrainian army will appear on the land bridge — the Isthmus of Pereko — between Crimea and the rest of Ukraine, the Russians will face a very simple choice," he said, "either they retreat immediately from Crimea or get slaughtered or captured."Other experts, however, struck a more cautious tone.Temnycky said a full-scale invasion to try to retake Crimea is "very unlikely" due to the huge Ukrainian losses that would result.Friedman, meanwhile, said such an operation would require a "cataclysmic Russian collapse," which he said is "extremely unlikely though not impossible."Indeed, there have been <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/former-general-warns-russia-nuclear-weapon-stalemate-ukraine-war-2023-1">fears</a> that Russia would consider nuclear force if its troops were on the brink of losing Crimea.Cancian said that "because of its difficulty, retaking Crimea would be the last event of the war, not an intermediate event."

Ukraine pushed Russia's Black Sea Fleet out of Crimea but retaking the peninsula will be incredibly hard

You Searched For "operation barbarossa" and got 2 results

80 years ago, Hitler picked a fight that may have cost him World War II

Benjamin Brimelow

Ukraine pushed Russia's Black Sea Fleet out of Crimea but retaking the peninsula will be incredibly hard

Thibault Spirlet

Popular Keywords

Buying Guides