Hitler And His Generals: Military Conferences 1942–1945 from Stalingrad to Berlin

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Hitler received the final military plans for the invasion on 5 December 1940, which the German High Command had been working on since July 1940 under the codename "Operation Otto". Upon reviewing the plans, Hitler formally committed Germany to the invasion when he issued Führer Directive 21 on 18 December 1940, where he outlined the precise manner in which the operation was to be carried out. [81] Hitler also renamed the operation to Barbarossa in honor of medieval Emperor Friedrich I of the Holy Roman Empire, a leader of the Third Crusade in the 12th century. [82] The Barbarossa Decree, issued by Hitler on 30 March 1941, supplemented the Directive by decreeing that the war against the Soviet Union would be one of annihilation and legally sanctioned the eradication of all Communist political leaders and intellectual elites in Eastern Europe. [83] The invasion was tentatively set for May 1941, but it was delayed for over a month to allow for further preparations and possibly better weather. [84] Rees, Laurence (2010). "What Was the Turning Point of World War II?". HistoryNet . Retrieved 8 July 2017. Ueberschär, Gerd R. "The Involvement of Scandinavia in the Plans for Barbarossa". In Boog et al. 1998.

Throughout the 1920s, the military repeatedly violated the treaty. For example, the disbanded General Staff simply transferred its planning to the newly established “Troop Office.” The military also secretly imported weapons that had been banned by the Treaty of Versailles. It even signed an agreement with the Soviet Union, which allowed it to conduct prohibited tank exercises in Soviet territory. The Reichswehr’s mid-level officers later became the leaders of the military under Hitler. However, the SA ( Sturmabteilung, or Storm Troopers), under the control of Ernst Röhm, posed a threat to the army. Röhm wanted the SA to replace the professional military as a people’s army. Consequently, in 1934, military leaders agreed to support Hitler’s undermining of the SA’s power and the elimination of much of its leadership in exchange for a guarantee of their status as the sole national military organization. The military did not intervene on June 30, 1934, when the SS murdered Röhm and many of the SA’s top officials. They also murdered other old enemies with whom the regime had a score to settle, such as General Kurt von Schleicher, who had preceded Hitler as Chancellor. This purge became known as the Night of the Long Knives. Ward, John (2004). Hitler's Stuka Squadrons: The Ju 87 at War, 1936–1945. MBI Publishing. ISBN 978-0760319918. Glantz, David (2011) [2001]. Operation Barbarossa: Hitler's Invasion of Russia 1941. The History Press. ISBN 978-0752460703.These deaths were not the result of poor planning and insufficient resources. They resulted from intentional policy, decided upon before the invasion. These POWs were given no shelter from the heat or cold, insufficient food, and little medical care. In all, 3.3 million Soviet soldiers are estimated to have died.

Miller, Donald L.; Commager, Henry Steele (2001). The Story of World War II. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-0743227186. The German army first encountered the Einsatzgruppen in Poland in 1939, to the consternation of some generals. For example in February 1940, Johannes Blaskowitz, German military commander for the eastern territories, complained about the SS policy of slaughtering some 10,000 Jews and Poles, which he believed would hurt Germany. He argued that such actions strengthened enemy propaganda about German atrocities, united Jews and Poles against Germany, weakened the respect of the Wehrmacht, and led to the spread of mass depravity among Germans. He urged that those units found guilty of carrying out such murderous actions be held accountable by military authorities. Through October is the Soviet autumn. So what happens is you have snowfalls, thaw, snowfall, thaw, you get a completely muddy morass across all of central Russia. So the German offensive begins to grind to a halt both because they're coming up against this new defensive line that they didn't really expect. Plus the Soviet weather's getting in the way, plus the fact that now most German formations especially the armoured formations at the tip of the spear are now down to about 50 strength. They get to 20 kilometers away from Moscow and by that stage, the weather is now turned completely it's now full-blown Soviet winter. By the end of November, you've got more German troops in hospital with frostbite than you have with wounds.

Political Developments, 1933–39

Bradley, John; Buell, Thomas (2002). Why Was Barbarossa Delayed? The Second World War: Europe and the Mediterranean. Square One Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7570-0160-4.

Main article: Battle of the Sea of Azov Germans battle Soviet defenders on the streets of Kharkov, 25 October 1941. Hayward, Joel (July 2000). "Too Little, Too Late: An Analysis of Hitler's Failure in August 1942 to Damage Soviet Oil Production" (PDF). The Journal of Military History. 64 (3): 769–794. doi: 10.2307/120868. JSTOR 120868. Hitler's input has been heavily criticised, not least by his generals at the time. Moscow was always a more important objective to the German High Command than it was to Hitler, who was more concerned with destroying Soviet field armies and capturing vital industrial resources. His switching of the main thrust from the central front to Leningrad in the north and Ukraine in the south was to an extent militarily sensible given the weakness of Army Group Centre after the Smolensk battles and the threats to its flanks. Indeed, the diversion actually worked in the Germans’ favour since it surprised the Soviets and resulted in the destruction of huge Soviet forces around Kiev. But it also threw away Germany's only real chance of outright victory. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (20 June 2014). "Nazi Persecution of Soviet Prisoners of War" . Retrieved 24 March 2015. Hartmann, Christian (2013). Operation Barbarossa: Nazi Germany's War in the East, 1941–1945. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-966078-0.Kirchubel, Robert (2003). Operation Barbarossa 1941: Army Group South. Osprey Publishing. ISBN 978-1782004257. Faligot, Roger (2019). Chinese Spies: From Chairman Mao to Xi Jinping. Translated by Lehrer, Natasha. London: C. Hurst and Co. Publishers Ltd. ISBN 978-1-78738-604-4. a b c d The four Soviet military districts facing the Axis, the Baltic Military District, the Western Special Military District, the Kiev Special Military District and the Odessa Military District, at the outbreak of the war were renamed the Northwestern Front, the Western Front, the Southwestern Front and the Southern Front, respectively. A fifth military district, the Leningrad military district, became the Northern Front. [378] The Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I, was signed on June 28, 1919. Germany’s newly formed democratic government saw the treaty as a “dictated peace” with harsh terms.

On the 22nd of June 1941, Adolf Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union. It was the beginning of a campaign that would ultimately decide the Second World War.Ziemke, Earl F. (1959). The German Northern Theater of Operations, 1940–1945 (PDF). Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. ASIN B0007ETEOM. Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 October 2020 . Retrieved 5 November 2016.