Operation Barbarossa - Outcome

Outcome

The climax of Operation Barbarossa came when Army Group Center, already short on supplies because of the October mud, was ordered to advance on Moscow; forward units of the 2nd Panzer Division's 38th Panzer Pioneer Battalion (38PzPi.Abtl.)(armored engineers) came within sight of the spires of the Kremlin when they reached the rail line just south of the town of Lobnya, 16 km (9.9 mi) from Moscow, on 1 December 1941. Soviet troops, well supplied and reinforced by fresh divisions from Siberia, defended Moscow in the Battle of Moscow, and drove the Germans back as the winter advanced. The bulk of the counter-offensive was directed at Army Group Center, which was closest to Moscow.

With no shelter, few supplies, inadequate winter clothing, chronic food shortages, and nowhere to go, German troops had no choice but to wait out the winter in the frozen wasteland. The Germans avoided being routed by Soviet counterattacks but suffered heavy casualties from battle and exposure.

At the time, the seizure of Moscow was considered the key to victory for Germany. Nowadays, historians debate whether the loss of the Soviet capital would have caused collapse; but Operation Barbarossa failed to achieve that goal. In December 1941, Germany joined Japan in declaring war against the United States.

The outcome of Operation Barbarossa hurt the Soviets at least as badly as the Germans, however. Although the Germans had failed to take Moscow outright, they held huge areas of the western Soviet Union, including the entire regions of what are now Belarus, Ukraine, and the Baltic states, plus parts of Russia proper west of Moscow. German forces had advanced 1,050 mi (1,690 km), and maintained a linearly measured front of 1,900 mi (3,100 km). The Germans held up to 500,000 sq mi (1,300,000 km2) of territory with over 75 million people at the end of 1941, and went on to seize another 250,000 sq mi (650,000 km2) before being forced to retreat after defeats at Stalingrad and Kursk. However, the occupied areas were not always properly controlled by the Germans and underground activity rapidly escalated. Wehrmacht occupation was brutal from the start, due to directives issued by Hitler himself at the operation's start, according to which Slavic peoples were considered a race of Untermenschen. This attitude alienated the population, while in some areas (such as Ukraine) it seems that some local people had been ready to consider the Germans as liberators helping them to get rid of Stalin. Anti-German partisan operations intensified when Red Army units that had dissolved into the country's large uninhabited areas re-emerged as underground forces, and under the German repressive policies. The Germans held on stubbornly in the face of Soviet counterattacks, resulting in huge casualties on both sides in many battles.

The war on the Eastern Front went on for four years. The death toll may never be established with any degree of certainty. A recent estimate of Soviet military deaths is 8.7 million that lost their lives either in combat or in Axis captivity. Soviet civilian deaths remain under contention, though roughly 20 million is a frequently cited figure. German military deaths are also to a large extent unclear. The most recent German estimate (Rüdiger Overmans) concluded that about 4.3 million Germans and a further 900,000 Axis forces lost their lives either in combat or in Soviet captivity. Operation Barbarossa is listed as the single most lethal military operation in world history.

The Soviet Union had not signed the Geneva Convention (1929). However, a month after the German invasion in 1941, an offer was made for a reciprocal adherence to the Hague convention. This 'note' was left unanswered by Third Reich officials.