he responded with his planned Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of Russia over a thousand mile front, with 3 million men and more than 3000 tanks.

The German's Army Group Center was pointed like a dagger toward Moscow. Their Army Group North was aimed at the Baltic States and Leningrad. And, their Army Group South was to roll toward the South, the Crimea, and eventually capture Stalingrad and the Soviet oil fields near the Caspian Sea.

Soviet spies, such as those in the Red Orchestra (Rote Kapelle) and most remarkably, Richard Sorge, not only uncovered the exact date of Operation Barbarossa (June 22, 1941), but also tried to assure Stalin that the Japanese had no intention of attacking Russia, that their intentions were in the Pacific area. But Stalin refused tolisten to them or even to listen to Winston Churchill, who also tried to warn him.

And so the Germans were initially extremely successful. They conquered large chunks of Soviet territory, including the Russian breadbasket region of the Ukraine and the most populated regions in western European Russia.

The Germans did need oil and refineries to conduct the war, especially after they were not able to knock Russia out on their first blow before the winter of 1941-42 set in. In fact, one of Stalin’s reasons to “trust” Hitler in 1939-40 was the fact that he knew that Germany needed oil, and much of her oil came through the Trans-Siberia railroad that ran across the vast territory of the USSR, bringing oil and other raw material and supplies from the