What was Operation Barbarossa?
One of the largest military operations in the Second World War went to Operation Barbarossa. This operation had a long duration, from June 22, 1941 to December 5 of the same year, and was characterized for being the first military campaign of the German Nazi army, commanded by Hitler, against the Soviet Union (USSR). But if the war started in 1939, why did Germany attack the Soviet Union only in 1941? To understand the importance of this fact, let's look at its context.
Background: German-Soviet Pact (1939)
On August 23, 1939, a week and a half before World War II began – that is, before Germany invaded Polish territory (which occurred on September 1, 1939) –, adolf hitler and Joseph Stalin (top leader of the USSR), through its diplomats, J. von Ribbentrop and V. Molotov, made a non-aggression pact to ensure that the military action of the Nazis in Western Europe was not interfered with by the Soviet army. In return, the USSR would have strategic influence in the Balkan region and would retain possession of a part of Polish territory. (For more information, access this text:
German-Soviet Pact).This agreement with the USSR allowed Nazi Germany to quickly and easily develop its territorial expansion project in the front Western, using the tactic of rapid and massive attacks, which characterized the "lightning war"(Blitzkrieg). On the other hand, the USSR, in the year 1940, started military campaigns in Scandinavia, especially in Finland, also seeking to define spaces of influence. The problem is that the two countries had projects of global proportions and both heads of state (Hitler and Stalin) knew that, sooner or later, there would be a break in the non-aggression pact.
Break of the German-Soviet Pact and start of Operation Barbarossa
During the first two years of the war, Germany's main enemy, that is, the one that offered it the greatest resistance, was the British Empire. Great Britain still possessed the greatest naval power at the time and Hitler knew that, even though he ruled the countries of Western Europe, he could not lead the III Reich (Third Empire, understood by Hitler as a succession of the two great Germanic empires that had existed in Europe) beyond the Atlantic Ocean. The only momentary way out for the strengthening of the Third Reich was to mobilize the war to the east to start the expropriation (taking possession) of the fertile lands of Eastern Europe. To do so, it was necessary to dominate the Soviet Union.
Furthermore, at the end of 1940, Germany formed an alliance with Fascist Italy and the Japanese Empire, thus inaugurating the famous Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis. It so happened that the Japanese did not welcome the German-Soviet non-aggression pact, as the Soviet Union represented an obstacle to the Japanese imperialist project in Asia. Therefore, the Germany needed to break with the USSR for two main reasons: 1) the strategy of forming a gigantic agricultural colony in Eastern Europe, especially in the region of Balkans – a colony that, at first, would serve to feed the troops of the German Army –; and 2) not to displease one of its newest allies, the Japanese Empire.
The German-Soviet Pact was then broken. Stalin, who had not expected this break as far back as 1941, had to mount defensive strategies against the mighty German attack. The German general in charge of drawing up the invasion and occupation strategy of the USSR was Franz Halder, commander of the OK H (German Military High Command). Halder was responsible for "Operation Barbarossa", which took that name for referring to the Frederico Barba Roxa (Barbarossa), emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in the 12th century. Hitler, like Barbary Barbary, wanted to have the whole of Europe under his command.
Halder defined three different points for the German invasion of the Soviet Union:
The Northern armies, which were under the command of the Marshal Ritter von Leeb, were intended to march towards Leningrad, to break down the city's defenses and besiege it;
O Marchal Fedor von Bock, commander of the armies of central Europe, charged with commanding the invasion of the center of Soviet power, the capital Moscow;
O marshal Gerd von Rundstedt it would take charge of dominating the entire length of Ukraine and besieging the capital Kiev.
cruel tactic in front oriental: hunger.
Nazi military maneuvers began in the front east, towards Soviet dominions, on June 22, 1941. In the first few months, the Nazi attacks were successful, given the surprise with which Stalin's Red Army received the news that it was being invaded by several fronts at the same time. THE Wehrmacht (Force German Armed) now had two fronts, operating in virtually all of Europe. It remained for the Soviets to defend their strategic positions, such as the cities of Moscow and Stalingrad. In this process, the Soviet civilian population suffered the most.
One of the war tactics used by the Wehrmacht when besieging Soviet cities was to impose food requisitions on civilians. Many grain fields, for example, were expropriated by the Nazis so that troops could have reserves to stay in battle without having to retreat. Thousands of Ukrainians, Russians, Lithuanians, Estonians and other peoples in the region died of hunger for lack of food, as historian Timothy Snyder recounts:
The Wehrmacht never intended to kill the entire population of Kiev with malnutrition, only enough to ensure their needs were met. Still, it was a policy of indifference to human life as such, and perhaps it killed up to 50,000 people. […] In Kharkov, a similar policy killed perhaps 20,000 people. Among her, 273 children in the municipal orphanage, in 1942. It was near Kharkov that starving peasant children in 1933 had eaten each other alive inside a makeshift orphanage. The children of the city, although in lesser numbers, were subjected to the same horrendous kind of death.[1]
If this strategy on the part of the Nazis was not enough, Stalin's orders also had a similar meaning: Soviet citizens were forced to burn the plantation fields so that the Nazis would not appropriate them, having to leave their cities, on the run, abandoned to their own luck. Operation Barbarossa did not start to decline until November 1941 with the arrival of winter, but many of its battles continued until the final year of the war, 1945.
GRADES
[1] SNYDER, Timothy. Lands Among Blood – Europe between Hitler and Stalin. Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Record, 2010. pp. 216-17.
By Me. Cláudio Fernandes
