After joining Germany in the invasion and dismemberment of Poland, Soviet premier Joseph Stalin shifted his attention north to the Baltics, threatening dire consequences unless Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia permitted Soviet bases on their soil. The bullying worked, and Stalin next demanded territorial concessions from Finland. When his northern neighbors refused, Red Army forces barreled across the shared border in the winter of 1939. Though the Soviets significantly outnumbered the Finnish defenders, the Finns were skilled and toughened winter fighters and bloodied the invaders badly. The Kremlin sent in reinforcements, forcing Finland to capitulate in early 1940, but the Red Army’s spotty performance was noted by many, including Adolf Hitler.
The Soviet Union was an alluring prize for the German leader. Beyond vast resources that could fuel his military and industrial base, Hitler also sought to resettle Soviet lands with the sons and daughters of Germany after disposing of their Jewish and Slavic occupants. Such a race war was at the core of Operation Barbarossa, his long-planned invasion of the Soviet Union.
It began in June 1941, with more than three million Axis soldiers and 3,400 tanks pouring into Soviet territory and advancing across a front as wide as Chicago to Los Angeles. They achieved much in the opening weeks, encircling entire Soviet armies as they swept across the Soviet frontier and drove toward Leningrad in the north, the Ukraine and Caucasus in the South, and Moscow in the center.
The seat of Soviet authority was the primary objective. The German High Command believed if Moscow fell the entire regime would collapse, and in late 1941, a bitter struggle began for the capital. By early December, German tanks had battled to the city outskirts, but they would get no farther, halted by the arrival of Soviet reinforcements and the Russian winter. The weather had confounded the Germans since autumn, when torrential rains produced rivers of mud that impeded the movement of tanks and troops. The misery continued into December, with plummeting temperatures and heavy snow quite literally freezing the German army. Machinery became inoperable, and overstretched supply lines left the Germans—already lacking winter clothing—with fast-depleting stores of food, ammunition, and medicine.
The Germans had been stopped short of Moscow and Leningrad, as well as the precious oil fields in the south, but they had also captured a huge swath of Soviet territory, including much of the Ukraine and three million Red Army prisoners. It had been a costly campaign to date—more than 900,000 casualties and rising—but Hitler still had a powerful army deep in Soviet territory and was far from through with his quest to conquer the East.
