After a five week delay while operations in
Greece and Yugoslavia were completed, Operation Barbarossa was launched on June 22 1941. Over 3,000,000 men, more than 3,000 tanks, and over 2,000 aircraft and approximately 100,000 men belonged to the Waffen-SS advanced east to begin the Nazi Party's crusade to destroy Bolshevism and carve out living space for the Western Europeans, the
Lebensraum programme. While the Waffen-SS represented a small percentage of troops, their role was proportionally greater than their numbers foreshadowed. Indeed, because of their power, the Leibstandarte, Reich, Totenkopf and Wiking divisions were employed within
Panzergruppen, spearheads of the German offensive. During the first few weeks of the invasion, the Germans achieved staggering results, as whole Soviet armies were annihilated, thousands of aircraft were destroyed on the ground, and hundreds of thousands of enemy soldiers were captured. For the Waffen-SS the campaign in the communist Soviet Union was to be a crusade. The war would bring spectacular victories, but would also bring a new kind of war, one which both sides gave and received no quarter. Finally, one cannot ignore the actions of cleansing carried on the rear of the German armies by troops under the direct command of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, namely the notorious SS paramilitary Einsatzgruppen. The vast majority of these mobile killing squads on the Eastern Front were made up of Balts, Ukrainians and other East European volunteers. Already by the end of 1942 there was only one German for every ten local auxiliaries. Their crimes were forever marked by the seal of infamy. Unlike the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS these SS death squads were not subordinated to the German Army High Command (OKW). Credit: French author Charles Tran. Top image: a Junker Ju 87 Stuka dive-bomber wing of Sturzkampfgeschwader 2 Immelmann with squadron sign 'Der Bamberger Reiter' being escorted by Italian Macchi C200 fighters of Benito Mussolini's Regia Aeronautica during Barbarossa in 1941. Credit: Alan Lathan. Commons: Bundesarchiv. Second image: a submersible Panzerbefehlswagen Panzer III Tauchpanzer of the 18.Panzer-Division part of Heeresgruppe Mitte fords the Bug River on June 22 1941 during the opening of Barbarossa. Private collection of Reinhard Schultz. FU. Third screenshot: a Waffen-SS man drawing two sig-runes on the wreck of a Soviet military aircraft pointing the direction of the troops movement. The film was shot in the opening phase of the Russian campaign. Footage from Die Deutsche Wochenschau. FU. Bottom image: elements of the SS motorized infantry division Totenkopf part of Heeresgruppe Nord pictured in September 1941 by the
Totenkopf war correspondent SS-Kriegsberichter Wiegand. At the end of September 1941, the Totenkopf division was at the center of a major Soviet counter-attack near
Lushno. The attacks were ultimately defeated, leaving behind a victorious, if shattered Totenkopf. Commons: Bundesarchiv.
The Soviets had massed large forces on their western frontier. They had some 5 million men available immediately and a total of 23,000 tanks.
ReplyDeleteAside from the German troops engaged in, or earmarked for, the Eastern Campaign, about 500,000 Romanian, Hungarian, Slovakian, Croatian, and Italian troops accompanied the German forces, while the Army of Finland made a major contribution in the north. Nevertheless, the Red Army had a large quantitative superiority.
ReplyDeleteThe Romanians and Hungarians, both German allies on the Eastern front against the Soviets, hated each other so deeply that the Nazis had to put a third partner, the Italians between those two.
DeleteThe Nazis started the war because they were racist. The idea that the Slavs were Untermenschen meant that the Germans were entitled to their land.
ReplyDeleteNun, diese Aussage ist überholt.
DeleteHitler saw the battle against “Jewish Bolshevism” as a battle of annihilation. For those political commissars who were captured by the Germans and identified as being associated with the Soviet political system, whether attached to military units or not, there was little hope.
ReplyDeleteFour of every five German soldiers killed in the war died on the Eastern Front.
ReplyDelete