Operation Barbarossa was the German code name for the invasion of the Soviet Union, which began on June 22, 1941. The operation was named after the 12th-century German king and Holy Roman emperor who, for modern Germans, was a symbol of German conquest and unity.

Operation Barbarossa stunningly abrogated the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, but this should have come as no surprise to Joseph Stalin because Adolf Hitler had, as early as his Mein Kampf (1924), advocated conquest of the Soviet Union, both to wipe out communism and to acquire Lebensraum.

The operational origin of Barbarossa may be traced to the summer of 1940, when, on Hitler's orders, the German military undertook a study of the prospects for invasion. The leading issue to decide was whether the principal thrust of the invasion should be against Moscow or divided between north and south flanks. Hitler favored a wheel north and south from the center, after breaking through the Soviet defensive line, whereas the army wanted to attack Moscow first and foremost. In the end, Directive No. 21, which described Operation Barbarossa (December 18, 1940), together with the Army High Command Deployment Directive (January 31, 1941), specified a "swift campaign" to crush the Soviet Union by means of offensive operations to destroy forces in the western part of the country. Army high command believed it would quickly defeat the Red Army west of the Dvina and Dnieper Rivers, then capture the industrialized Donets basin as well as Moscow.

Hitler gave the go order--in the form of the single code word "Dortmund"--on June 20, 1941, and the surprise attack was launched on a broad front between 3 and 3:30 a.m. on June 22. Barbarossa mounted a force of nearly 3.6 million German and other Axis soldiers, with some 3,600 tanks and more than 2,700 aircraft. It was the greatest invasion force ever assembled in European military history. . .

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