Operation Barbarossa
Background
Deception & Surprise
German Forces
Army Group North
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Soviet Forces
German/Soviet Comparison
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Siege of Leningrad
Operation Typhoon
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Barbarossa
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| Our Other Military Sites |
| World War II |
| Operation Barbarossa 1941 German Invasion of Russia |
| Operation Citadel 1943 The Battle of Kursk |
| Operation Dragoon 1944 Invasion of southern France |
| Operation Varsity 1945 Crossing the Rhine |
| Invasions That Never Were |
| Operation Sealion 1940 German invasion of England |
| Operation Olympic 1945 US invasion of southern Japan |
| Operation Coronet 1946 US invasion of northern Japan |
| Special Forces |
| Operation Entebbe 1976 Entebbe Airport Rescue |
| Operation Nimrod 1980 Iranian Embassy Siege |
| British Cold War Operations |
| Operation Musketeer 1956 Suez Crisis |
| Operation Corporate 1982 Falklands War |
| Operation Black Buck 1982 Vulcan raids on Port Stanley |
| Operation Granby 1990-91 Persian Gulf |
| British Post Cold War |
| Operation Herrick 2002- Afghanistan |
| Operation Barbarossa > German/Soviet Comparison |
German/Soviet Comparison
On June 22nd 1941 at the start of Operation Barbarossa, although the Germans and their Axis allies were able to deploy more troops in the theater of operations, in terms of equipment, the Soviets tend to have more. For example, the Soviets had more aircraft than the Germans, and vastly more thanks (the Soviets actually had more thanks than the rest of the world combined).
However, the Soviets were laboring under considerable disadvantages:
- The German attack caught much of the Soviet armed forces by surprise.
- After political purges of the 1930s, many experienced officers had been lost, and the quality
of leadership in individual military units was often poor.
- Much Soviet equipment was obsolete or of poor quality. While it is true that
the Soviets had some very good tanks (such as the T-34 and KV-1), at this stage of
the war, these were available in only very limited numbers, and most of the tanks
deployed were out of date, and not equipped with radios.
- The Soviet forces were re-equipping and changing their doctrine. While Soviet military theorists had speculated about armored warfare in the 1930s, at the time of the invasion, tanks were shared between infantry-based units, and a new doctrine of creating armored formations was only just being implemented.
| Germany and her allies | Soviet | |
| Divisions | 166 | 190 |
| Personnel | 4,306,800 | 3,289,851 |
| Artillery & Mortars | 42,601 | 59,787 |
| Tanks & Assault Guns | 4,171 | 15,687 |
| Aircraft | 4,389 | 11,537 |
