19411942 invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany, Germany's allies, in total, provided a significant number of troops and material to the front. [334] According to the Soviets, they had not signed the Geneva Conventions in 1929 due to Article 9 which, by imposing racial segregation of POWs into different camps, contravened the Soviet constitution. [88] Hitler, solely focused on his ultimate ideological goal of eliminating the Soviet Union and Communism, disagreed with economists about the risks and told his right-hand man Hermann Gring, the chief of the Luftwaffe, that he would no longer listen to misgivings about the economic dangers of a war with the USSR. The Soviet Southern Front launched an attack on 26 September with two armies on the northern shores of the Sea of Azov against elements of the German 11th Army, which was simultaneously advancing into the Crimea. He serves currently as the editor of Earth and life sciences, covering climatology, geology, zoology, and other topics that relate to Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. By the third week of February 1941, 680,000 German soldiers were gathered in assembly areas on the Romanian-Soviet border. The German Generalplan Ost aimed to use some of the conquered people as forced labour for the Axis war effort while acquiring the oil reserves of the Caucasus as well as the agricultural resources of various Soviet territories including Ukraine and Byelorussia. In addition, the Pripyat Marshes and the Carpathian Mountains posed a serious challenge to the army group's northern and southern sections respectively. After ten days of vicious fighting, the Germans claimed 665,000 Soviet soldiers captured, although the real figure is probably around 220,000 prisoners. [190] Air-raids were conducted as far as Kronstadt near Leningrad, Ismail in Bessarabia, and Sevastopol in the Crimea. While transportation remained insufficient for Red Army forces, when Operation Barbarossa kicked off, they possessed some 33,000 pieces of artillery, a number far greater than the Germans had at their disposal. [267] By December, the VVS had matched the Luftwaffe and was even pressing to achieve air superiority over the battlefields. To defend Moscow, Stalin could field 800,000 men in 83 divisions, but no more than 25 divisions were fully effective. He also personally conducted an aerial inspection of the Minsk-Biaystok pocket on 30 June and concluded that his panzer group was not needed to contain it, since Hermann Hoth's 3rd Panzer Group was already involved in the Minsk pocket. [220] The Soviets immediately launched a powerful counterattack against the German 4th Panzer Group with the Soviet 3rd and 12th Mechanized Corps, but the Soviet attack was defeated. Fearing he would lose his possessions to the Spanish, he offered homage to the Ottoman sultan and in return was granted the title beylerbey and sent military reinforcements (1518). [321] Anger over the failed German offensives caused Hitler to relieve Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch of command and in his place, Hitler assumed personal control of the German Army on 19 December 1941, a decision that would progressively prove fatal to Germany's war effort and contribute to its eventual defeat. Which commander was known as Barbarossa? - TimesMojo [323], Despite the rapid relocation of Red Army armaments production east of the Urals and a dramatic increase of production in 1942, especially of armour, new aircraft types and artillery, the Heer (German army) was able to mount another large-scale offensive in June 1942, although on a much reduced front than the previous summer. Nowhere was the Soviet leve en masse spirit stronger in resisting the Germans than at Leningrad where reserve troops and freshly improvised Narodnoe Opolcheniye units, consisting of worker battalions and even schoolboy formations, joined in digging trenches as they prepared to defend the city. ", Guderian wrote: "A delay was almost certainly inevitable given that the late spring thaw had swelled and in some cases flooded the major waterways, impeding mobile operations over the sodden ground.