wwii operation barbarossa

Operation Barbarossa was the code name for the blitzkrieg attack on the Soviet Union by the Axis forces on the wwii. The operation was planned to crush the Russian army before the winter, but the red army demonstrated an enormous regeneration capacity. The German armies were divided into three groups for the operation:

Barbarossa operation begun on June 22nd 1941with massive air strikes and blitzkrieg attacks

On June 22 1941 the German advance begun without any serious resistance from the Russians. On the 26th Brest-Litovsk and Daugavpils were conquered after being surrounded. between June 22 and July 9 the German forces reached Minsk, after surrounding and destroying the soviet forces several times in its way. After that the panzers resumed the advance and surrounded 7 soviet divisions in Moguiliov, 4 divisions in in Vitevsk and conquered Smolensk surrounding 14 divisions. On the southern flank the Pripet marshes where located, a rough territory for the panzers, those marshes where used by Timoshenko as a departure zone for a counterstrike on the German flank. Although the sacrifice of the Russian men the attack failed. On August 5 the Russian units surrounded around Smolensk surrendered, but the German attacks in the area stopped because Hitler wanted to send reinforcements to conquer Ukraine before taking Moscow.

At the beginning of the operations the axis advance was slow. In the southern region the Germans were fighting together with the Rumanian army. Despite the slow advance the Germans surrounded the soviet forces in Uman on August 3rd. On August 5 the Odessa siege begun, the city resisted the axis attacks for 73 days. On August the reinforcements coming from the central group begun to arrive. On August 25 the Guderian armies crossed the Dnieper river, on September 15 the Germans surrounded 665.000 Russian men in Kiev, on the 17 the Germans took the city and on September 27 the surrounded soviet forces surrendered. That defeat weakened the red army and in the following days the Germans took the cities of kharkov and Rostov. But the will to resist of the Russians wasn't destroyed and in November 27 the Russians attacked the Germans and re conquered the city of Rostov, stopping the axis penetration until 1942 summer.

On June 26 the northern armies attacked and took the bridges over the Dvina river. On July 10 the Finnish army attacked the Soviet Union in order to recover the territories they lost on the 1940 war, adding one more enemy to the Russians . On July 16 the Germans reached the Luga river and the Ladoga lake. Between august 3 and 4 the advance stopped and the Germans regrouped for the final assault on Leningrad. On August 8 the Germans finally crossed the Luga river and conquered Novgorod on the 16. Finally they reached Leningrad outskirts but they weren't able to conquer it beginning a siege that lasted for 900 days. On October 7 the Finnish army offensive stopped. For the next months the northern armies saw very little action.

After the conquest of Ukraine the central armies had the resources to resume their advance over Moscow. On October 7 the Germans managed to surround 6 soviet armies in Viazma and 3 armies in Briansk once again. The advance went on with very rough resistance until November 27 when the Germans spearheads reached the outskirts of Moscow where they stopped and forced to retreat. The soviet will to resist combined with the "winter general" finally stopped the German offensive.

On November-December 1941 the climatic conditions for the German operations worsened. The climate was very cold and the snow and mud made all vehicle movement including tanks very difficult. The German men lack of winter clothes caused a lot of casualties. Finally this situation gave the Russians time to train more soldiers, build defenses and stop the German attacks. During the 1941-1942 winter the red army mounted attacks in all the combat fronts pulling back the Germans some miles away but they wasn't even close to victory.