Question

Why did the Nazis invade the Soviet Union and why did their invasion end in defeat?

Answer 1

The destruction of the Soviet Union by military force, the permanent elimination of the perceived Communist threat to Germany and the seizure of prime land for long-term German settlement within the Soviet borders had been the core policy of the Nazi movement since the 1920s. The German-Soviet nonaggression pact, signed on 23 August 1939, had always been regarded by Adolf Hitler as a temporary tactical maneuver. Hitler planned to assault the Soviet Union in the following year in July 1940, just weeks after the German invasion of France and the Low Countries. He signed Directive 21, the first operational order to enter the Soviet Union, on 18 December 1940.

With 134 divisions at full combat strength and 73 more divisions behind the front for deployment, German forces invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, less than two years after the signing of the German-Soviet Pact. Three army groups including more than three million German soldiers, backed by 650,000 troops from Germany's allies (Finland and Romania), and later enhanced by units from Italy, Croatia, Slovakia and Hungary attacked the Soviet Union across a broad front. This front stretched from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south.

The troops were followed by SS and police units as the German army advanced deep into Soviet territory. The Einsatzgruppen were the first ones to arrive. These units were tasked by the RSHA to identify and eliminate people who could organize and resist the German occupation forces, identify and concentrate groups of people who were "hostile" to German rule in the East, establish intelligence networks and secure key documentation and facilities.

Beginning in late July, with the arrival of Himmler 's representatives (the Higher SS and Police Leaders) and significant reinforcement, the SS and police began physically annihilating entire Jewish communities in the Soviet Union, supported by locally recruited auxiliaries. Success on both the military front and in the murder of the Soviet Jews contributed to Hitler 's decision to deport German Jews to the occupied Soviet Union starting on 15 October 1941, initiating what would become the "Final Solution" policy: the physical annihilation of the European Jews.

The German army was exhausted, after months of campaigning. German planners had failed to equip their troops for the winter warfare, having anticipated a rapid Soviet collapse. They didn't provide enough food and medicine. German planners expected their military personnel to live off the land of a conquered Soviet Union at the expense of the local population who would be starving to death in the millions in German calculations. German troops also outstripped their supply lines, advancing rapidly. This made their thinly defended flanks open to Soviet counterattack from Berlin to Moscow along the 1,000 mile line.

The Soviet Union launched a major counterattack against the center of the front on 6 December 1941, driving the Germans back from Moscow in chaos. The Germans were only able to stabilize the front east of Smolensk weeks later. In the summer of 1942, Germany renewed the offensive with a major assault on the Volga River towards the city of Stalingrad (Volgograd) and the Caucasus oil fields to the south and southeast. As the Germans entered Stalingrad's outskirts and invaded Groznyj in the Caucasus, about 120 miles from the shores of the Caspian Sea in September 1942, Europe's German hegemony achieved its furthest geographical extension.