Operation barbarossa was not such a failure in some

Operation Barbarossa was not such a failure in some kind of ways. One of the good sides was
because Germany’s army seemed unstoppable, were confident and had high-morale after
shocking Europe with their successful attacks. Germany had a highly trained army with
well-trained troops, high quality armaments, a large air force and good tactics such as
Blitzkrieg. Blitzkrieg were tactics required the concentration of offensive weapons (such
as tanks, planes, and artillery) along a narrow front. These tactics had already worked
especially well in France, Holland and Norway and they were very experienced in
Blitzkrieg. Apart from Britain, Germany was virtually controlling all of Europe and, after
only a couple of months into Operation Barbarossa, huge parts of Russia as well. This
meant that combined with the Red Army weaknesses in defence, it was easy to advance
very quickly towards Moscow. Stalin could have avoided any serious problems and not
experienced any of the German tactics in the same way if he had have pulled troops from
the Eastern border to the western border and heavily defended that border. Another reason
why they were successful because Germany’s early success can mainly be because Stalin

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and his weaknesses that he showed during the invasion. There are many examples of this
such as when he was given intelligence by Britain and America that Germany would
attack Russia but he chose to ignore the warnings because he believed it was just a sign
of Western ill-will against him.
In my opinion Operation Barbarossa was a complete failure because the mission to completely
destroy Soviet fighting power and force was not achieved at all.One of the most
important reasons for this was very poor strategic planning(Carter, Operation
Barbarossa).Also because the ‘General Winter’ weather scenario made things way worse
and helped Russia to win Barbarossa. The Russian winter caused many of the roads to
become frozen and very slippery and when that melted it became wet and muddy. Not
safe at all. -40 Celsius temperatures meant that the Germans couldn’t advance as the oil
froze in the vehicles and the machinery wouldn’t fire because it was jammed(Taylor,
World War II: Operation Barbarossa). This caused the illness or frostbite and it started to
go through the German army groups many started to die. To make things worser than
they were already were, the commanders did not pack in winter clothing as they believed
that the battle would be won by winter, this was another fault of Hitler’s as his
overconfidence. Hitler’s overconfidence caused the main problem as he decided to
defend his reputation in the Balkans which wasted time and then his decision to divert the
troops from Moscow made it even worse. Russian people knew what to expect every
winter: feet of cold snow and bitterly freezing temperatures. In the middle of their battle
with the Germans, those cold winters were an unexpected advantage. Hitler may have

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been intelligent enough to rise to power, but the dictator wasn’t smart enough to believe
weather reports regarding Soviet winters. Frustrated by the failure of Barbarossa, Hitler