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Operation Barbarossa
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Operation Barbarossa
Part of the Eastern Front of World War II
Clockwise from top left: German soldiers advance through
Northern Russia; German flamethrower team in the Soviet
Union ; Soviet Ilyushin Il-2s flying over German positions near
Moscow ; Soviet prisoners of war on the way to German prison
camps; Soviet soldiers fire artillery at German positions.
Date
22 June – 5 December 1941
(5 months, 1 week and 6 days)
Location Central , Northeast , and Eastern Europe
Belligerents
 Germany
 Romania
 Finland
 Italy
 Hungary
 Slovakia
 Croatia
Soviet Union
Commanders and leaders

 Adolf Hitler
 Walther von
Brauchitsch
 Franz Halder
 Fedor von Bock
 Gerd von Rundstedt
 Wilhelm Ritter von
Leeb
 Ion Antonescu
 Gustaf Mannerheim
 Joseph Stalin
 Georgy Zhukov
 Aleksandr
Vasilyevskiy
 Semyon Budyonny
 Kliment Voroshilov
 Semyon Timoshenko
 Markian Popov
 Fyodor Kuznetsov
 Dmitry Pavlov
 Ivan Tyulenev
 Mikhail Kirponos †
Units involved
Axis armies [show] Soviet armies [show]
Strength
Frontline strength (initial)
 3.8 million personnel
[1]
[2]
 3,350–3,795 tanks [3] [1] [4]
[5]
 3,030–3,072 other
AFVs [6] [a]
 2,770–5,369 aircraft [3] [7]
 7,200–23,435 artillery
Frontline strength (initial)
 2.6–2.9 million
personnel [8] [9] [10]
 11,000 tanks [11] [12]
 7,133–9,100 military
aircraft [13] [14] [15]
14,000,000 reserves (former
conscripts who finished their
mandatory service) [16] [17]

pieces [1] [3] [5]
 17,081 mortars
[5]
Casualties and losses
Total military casualties:
1,000,000+
Breakdown [show]
Total military casualties:
4,973,820
Breakdown [show]
 v
 t
 e
Operation Barbarossa
 v
 t
 e
Eastern Front
Operation Barbarossa (German: Unternehmen Barbarossa ) was the code name for the Axis
invasion of the Soviet Union , which started on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II . The
operation stemmed from Nazi Germany 's ideological aims to conquer the western Soviet Union
so that it could be repopulated by Germans , to use Slavs as a slave-labour force for the Axis war
effort, and to seize the oil reserves of the Caucasus and the agricultural resources of Soviet
territories. [24]
In the two years leading up to the invasion, Germany and the Soviet Union signed political and
economic pacts for strategic purposes. Nevertheless, the German High Command began planning
an invasion of the Soviet Union in July 1940 (under the codename Operation Otto ), which Adolf
Hitler authorized on 18 December 1940. Over the course of the operation, about three million
personnel of the Axis powers - the largest invasion force in the history of warfare - invaded the
western Soviet Union along a 2,900-kilometer (1,800 mi) front. In addition to troops, the
Wehrmacht deployed some 600,000 motor vehicles, and between 600,000 and 700,000 horses for
non-combat operations. The offensive marked an escalation of World War II, both geographically
and in the formation of the Allied coalition .

Operationally, German forces achieved major victories and occupied some of the most important