Operation Barbarossa

A strategic surprise to Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa was the German code name for its invasion of Russia on 22 June 1941. Stalin had believed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact promising nonaggression from the Germans.

Stalin's failure to prepare

Stalin received a warning document, in May 1939, about The Future Plans of Aggression by Fascist Germany, based on a German briefing obtained by Soviet spies in Warsaw. A Soviet agent first reported that Hitler planned to declare war on the Soviet Union in March 1941, and refined the estimate, by February 28, to May 20.

This intelligence was corroborated by sources in Bucharest, Budapest, Sofia and Rome, to say nothing of the information provided by the spy Richard Sorge (code-named Ramsay) in Tokyo in which the authors detail the undercover operations of the spy ring headed by Richard Sorge and Hotsumi Ozaki which transmitted highly secret information from Tokyo to the Soviet Union between 1933 and 1941. On April 17 a Prague informant predicted a German invasion in the second half of June. The precise date and time of the invasion were revealed by a reliable source in Berlin fully three days before the Germans attacked.

All of this Stalin ignored. Typically, he scrawled on the bottom of the Prague report: English provocation! Investigate! On May 19, Sorge predicted that 150 divisions were being readied by the Germans for an invasion of the Soviet Union. Stalin retorted with an expletive.

The result was that literally nothing was done to prepare for the German assault. Soviet planes were not camouflaged. Troops were not in defensive positions; indeed they were ordered not to occupy such positions, for fear of provoking the Germans.

Worse, Stalin had to the gathering storm with yet another purge of suspected threats to his own authority, having had shot Mikhail Tukhachevsky and:

• 2 of the oher 5 Marshals
• 13 of the 15 army commanders (full generals) and 8 of the 9 equivalent admirals
• 50 of the 57 corps commanders
• 154 of the 186 division commanders

Order of battle

Germany

• Army Group North (Wilhelm von Leeb), (20 divisions)
  • XVIII Army (Georg von Kuechler))
  • IV Panzergruppe (Erich von Hoepner)
  • XVI Army (Ernst Busch)
  • Luftflotte I (Alfred Keller)
  • Einsatzgruppe A (Franz Walter Stahlecker)

• Army Group Center (Fedor von Bock) (51 divisions)
  • III Panzergruppe (Hermann Hoth)
  • IX Army (Adolf Strauss)
  • IV Army (Guenther von Kluge)
  • II Panzergruppe (Heinz Guderian)
  • Luftflotte II (Albert Kesselring)
  • Einsatzgruppe B (Artur Nebe)

• Army Group South (Gerd von Rundstedt) (40 divisions; 14 Rumanian divisions; Hungarian Army Corps)
  • VI Army (Walter von Reichenau)
  • I Panzergruppe (Ewald von Kleist)
  • XVII Army (Carl-Heinrich von Stuelpnagel)
  • Hungarian Army Corps (Carpathian Group)
  • III Rumanian Army (Petre Dumitrescu)
  • XI Army (Eugen von Schobert)
    • Italian Expeditionary Corps in Russia
    • Einsatzgruppe D (Otto Ohlendorf)
  • IV Rumanian Army (Ciuperca)
  • Luftflotte IV (Alexander Loehr)
  • Einsatzgruppe C (Otto Rasch)

Soviet Union

• Baltic Special Military District (Kuznetsov) 26 Divisions including 6 armoured ones; became Northern Front (Markian Popov)
  • 8th Army (Sobennikov)
  • 11th Army (Morosov)
• 27th Army (Berzarin)
  • Western Special Military District (Pavlov) faced Army Group Centre 36 divisions including 10 armoured ones; became Northwestern Front (Fyodor Kuznetsov)
  • 3rd Army (Kuznetsov)
  • 10th Army (Golubev)
  • 4th Army (Korobkov
• Kiev Special Military District (Kirponos faced Army Group South 56 divisions including 16 armoured divisions
  • 5th Army (Potapov)
  • 6th Army (Muzychenko)
  • 26th Army (Kostenko)
  • 12th Army (Ponedelin)
• Odessa Special Military District (Tyulenev) which faced Army Group South 14 divisions including 2 armoured divisions
  • 9th Army (Cherevichenko)