World War II Dates and Timeline - Holocaust Encyclopedia
World War II Dates and Timeline · September 18, 1931 Japan invades Manchuria. · October 2, 1935–May 1936 Fascist Italy invades, conquers, and annexes Ethiopia.
invade the Soviet Union
June 22, 1941–November 1941 Nazi Germany and its Axis partners (except Bulgaria) <anchor>invade the Soviet Union</anchor>. Finland, seeking redress for the territorial losses in the armistice concluding the so-called Winter War, agrees to participate in the invasion. The Germans quickly overrun the Baltic states and, joined by the Finns, lay siege to Leningrad (St. Petersburg) by September. In the center, the Germans capture Smolensk in early August and drive on Moscow by October. In the south, German and Romanian troops capture Kiev (Kyiv) in September and capture Rostov on the Don River in November.
Invasion of the Soviet Union, June 1941 | Holocaust Encyclopedia
Menu



Must Reads▾

Language
English
▾

## Featured Content

## Must Reads

Close menu

## Search the Holocaust Encyclopedia

Enter your search term here

Content typesAll categories▾

- Animated Map

- Article

- Artifact

- Audio

- Discussion Question

- Document

- Film

- ID Card

- Map

- Media Essay

- Oral History

- Photo

- Series

- Song

- Timeline

- Timeline Event

- Clear Selections

Language

English عربي (Arabic)汉语 (Chinese)فارسی (Farsi)français (French)Deutsch (German)Ελληνικά (Greek)हिंदी (Hindi)Magyar (Hungarian)Indonesia (Indonesian)Italiano (Italian)日本語 (Japanese)한국어 (Korean)polski (Polish)Português - Brasil (Portuguese-Brazil)русский (Russian)Español (Spanish)Türkçe (Turkish)Українська (Ukrainian)اُردو (Urdu)▾

Search

Trending keywords:

Close search menu

Your browser is out of date and may not support some of the features of this webpage. Please consider updating your browser or using another.

German infantry during the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.

More information about this image

# Invasion of the Soviet Union, June 1941

On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany launched a surprise attack against the Soviet Union, its ally in the war against Poland. By the end of the year, German troops had advanced hundreds of miles to the outskirts of Moscow. Soon after the invasion, mobile killing units began the mass murder of Soviet Jews. German military and civilian occupation policies led to the deaths of millions of Soviet prisoners of war and Soviet civilians.

## Key Facts

- 1

The destruction of the Communist Soviet Union and the conquest of “living space” in eastern Europe were longtime goals of Hitler and the Nazi Party.

- 2

Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, known as Operation “Barbarossa,” is considered one of the largest military operations in the history of modern warfare. Germany and its allies assembled more than 3,500,000 troops for the attack.

- 3

The German attack on the Soviet Union marked a turning point in both the history of World War II and the Holocaust.

Close Image Lightbox

Tags

This content is available in the following languages

Close language menu

View this term in the glossary

Under the codename Operation “Barbarossa,”Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. This wasthe largest German military operation of World War II.

## Goals of the Invasion

Since the 1920s, core policies of the Nazi movement included:

- the destruction of the Soviet Union by military force;
- the permanent elimination of the perceived Communist threat to Germany;
- and the seizure of prime land within Soviet borders as Lebensraum (“Living space”) for long-term German settlement.

As such,Adolf Hitler had always regarded the August 23, 1939 German-Soviet nonaggression pact (commonly referred to as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) as a temporary tactical maneuver. In July 1940, just weeks after the German conquest of France and the Low Countries(Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands), Hitler decided to attack the Soviet Union within the following year. On December 18, 1940, he signed Directive 21 (code-named Operation“Barbarossa”). This was the first operational order for the invasion of the Soviet Union.

From the beginning of operational planning, German military and police authorities intended to wage a war of annihilation against both the Soviet Union’s “Judeo-Bolshevik” Communist government and its citizens, particularly the Jews. During the winter and spring months of 1941, officials of the Army High Command ( Oberkommando des Heeres-OKH) and the Reich Security Main Office ( Reichssicherheitshauptamt-RSHA) negotiated arrangements for the deployment of Einsatzgruppen behind the front lines. The Einsatzgruppen would conduct mass shootings of Jews, Communists, and other persons deemed to be dangerous to establishing long-term German rule on Soviet territory. Often referred to as mobile killing units, theywere special units of the Security Police and the Security Service ( Sicherheitsdienst-SD). In addition, the German military planned that tens of millions of Soviet citizens would starve to death as the intentional result of German occupation policies.

## The Invasion

With 134 divisions at full fighting strength and 73 more divisions for deployment behind the front, German forces invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. The invasion began less than two years after the German-Soviet Pact was signed. Three army groupsattacked the Soviet Union across a broad front. These groups included more than three million German soldiers. The soldiers were supported by 650,000 troops fromGermany’s allies (Finland and Romania). These troops were later augmented by units from Italy, Croatia, Slovakia, and Hungary. The front stretched from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south.

For months, the Soviet leadership had refused to heed warnings from the Western powers of the German troop buildup along its western border. Thus, Germany and its Axis partners achieved almost complete tactical surprise. Much of the existing Soviet air force was destroyed on the ground. The Soviet armies were initially overwhelmed. German units encircled millions of Sovietsoldiers. Cut off from supplies and reinforcements, the Soviet soldiers had few options other than to surrender.

As the German army advanced deep into Soviet territory, SS and police units followed the troops. The first to arrive were the Einsatzgruppen. The RSHA tasked these units with:

- identifying and eliminating people who might organize and carry out resistance to the German occupation forces;
- identifying and concentrating groups of people who were considered potential threatsto German rule in the East;
- establishing intelligence networks;
- and securing key documentation and facilities.

Film

The German army (Wehrmacht) regarded the war in the east as a crusade against communism and not subject to the "normal rules" of war. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Soviet soldiers followed a "scorched earth" policy to hinder the German advance. In this German newsreel footage, German soldiers approach a burning village, one of many destroyed during the invasion of the Soviet Union.

Credits:

## Mass Murder

The Einsatzgruppen initiated mass shooting operations. These mass shootings primarily targeted Jewish males, officials of the Communist Party and Soviet state, and Roma. They established ghettos and other holding facilities to concentrate large numbers of Soviet Jews, often with assistance from German Army personnel.

In late July, Heinrich Himmler's representatives (the Higher SS and Police Leaders) arrived in the Soviet Union. The SS and police, supported by locally recruited auxiliaries, began to shoot entire Jewish communities there. Hitler decided to deport German Jews to the occupied Soviet Union beginning on October 15, 1941. Contributing to this decision were the rapid advances both on the military front and in the murder of the Soviet Jews. The decision initiated the policy that would becomeknown as the “ Final Solution.” The “Final Solution” wasthe physical annihilation not only of Jews in the German-occupied East, but of Jews throughout Europe.

Animated Map

During the Holocaust, members of mobile killing units known as “ Einsatzgruppen” (literally “operational groups”) murdered well over one million civilians, primarily in mass shootings in the Soviet Union.

Credits:

- US Holocaust Memorial Museum

## Military Offensives

The Soviet Union saw catastrophic military losses in the first six weeks after the German attack. However, the Soviet Union failed to collapse as anticipated by the Nazi leadership and the German military commanders. In mid-August 1941, Soviet resistance stiffened. This knocked the Germans off their timetable of winning the war by autumn 1941. Nevertheless, by late September 1941, German forces reached the gates of the Russian city Leningrad (today, St. Petersburg)in the north. They also took Smolensk, a city in Russia located over 200 miles southwest of Moscow, as well as Dnepropetrovsk (Dnipropetrovs’k; today Dnipro), a city in Ukraine located over 200 miles southeast of Kyiv. German forces spilled into the Crimean Peninsula in the south. They reached the outskirts of Moscow in early December.

After months of campaigning, however,the German army was exhausted. Having expected a rapid Soviet collapse, German planners had failed to equip their troops for winter warfare. Theydid not provide sufficient food and medicines, as they had expected their military personnel to live off the land of a conquered Soviet Union at the expense of the local population. Consequently, the Germans forces—overstretched along the 1,000 mile Eastern Front—became vulnerable to Soviet counterattack.

On December 6, 1941, the Soviet Union launched a major offensive against the center of the front. This drovethe Germans back from Moscow in chaos. It took weeks for the Germans to stabilize the fronteast of Smolensk. In the summer of 1942, Germany resumed the offensive with a massive attack to the south and southeast toward the city of Stalingrad (Volgograd) on the Volga River and toward the oil fields of the Caucasus. In September 1942, the Germans reached the outskirts of Stalingrad and approached Groznyyin the Caucasus, approximately 120 miles from the shores of the Caspian Sea. This marked the farthest geographical extent of German domination in Europe during World War II.

Last Edited: Jun 11, 2021

Author(s):

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

## Discussion Question

Item 1 of 2

Items 1 through 1 of 2

Items 1 through 1 of 2

## See Also

## Glossary Terms

## Series: World War IISeries: World War II

Item 1 of 2

Items 1 through 1 of 2

Items 1 through 1 of 2

•••

•••

•••

•••

•••

•••

•••

•••

•••

•••

•••

•••

•••

•••

•••

## Series: Soviet Prisoners of WarSeries: Soviet Prisoners of War

Item 1 of 2

Items 1 through 1 of 2

Items 1 through 1 of 2

•••

•••

•••

•••

Switch Series

World War II
Soviet Prisoners of War

## Critical Thinking Questions

- In what ways was the German attack on the Soviet Union different from earlier invasions of other nations?

- Why was the initial invasion so successful?

- What was the relationship between the progress of the war and the mass murder of Europe’s Jews?

## Thank you for supporting our work

We would like to thank Crown Family Philanthropies, Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation, the Claims Conference, EVZ, and BMF for supporting the ongoing work to create content and resources for the Holocaust Encyclopedia.
View the list of all donors.

## Glossary

Close glossary



100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, SW

Washington, DC 20024-2126

Main telephone: 202.488.0400

TTY: 202.488.0406

## Get the Latest News

E-mail Address

Postal Code