In the summer of 1941, Hitler’s military efforts in Western Europe consumed vast amounts of resources, particularly oil, and more would be needed to prevent Germany’s war machine from grinding to a halt. The Soviet Union possessed an abundance of these resources. All Hitler would have to do is take it.
On June 22, the Germans launched Operation Barbarossa, an invasion of the Soviet Union that spanned an 1,800 mile front. Employing over 4.5 million troops, the attack targeted the territory up to Arkhangelsk and Astrakhan. If taken, the line between these two Soviet cities would mark the eastern border of the new Reich. The Germans would not only gain the territory’s resources, they would also secure a safe border to the East.
The Germans secured several major economic centers, including the Ukraine, and in October of 1941, they launched Operation Typhoon, the military offensive that targeted Moscow. But the Soviets would not go quietly. And by then, Germany’s supplies began to run low and the notoriously brutal Soviet winter took a devastating toll.
Furthermore, Soviet master spy, Richard Sorge informed Stalin that Japan was focused on Southeast Asia and the Pacific and had no plans to attack the Soviets. Soviet troops from Siberia and the Far East who had been prepared to repel the Japanese were reassigned. These reinforcements made it possible for the Soviets to launch counteroffensives to force the withdrawal of German forces.
By December of 1941, Soviet forces had acquired fresh troops, including several ski battalions. Armed with the new T-34 tank and Katyusha rocket launchers, they launched an attack that drove the Germans back over 150 miles.
In the summer 1942, a new plan to ransack the Soviets’ natural resources was taking shape. This time, Hitler targeted the Don River and the Volga River, and the oilfields in the Caucasus that lay beyond them.
Instead of a single unified attack, however, Hitler ordered the taking of multiple objectives simultaneously. As a result of this order, Germany’s troops advanced without the necessary support, even as Soviet defenses were being bolstered.
Meanwhile, the Soviets launched two offensives, one to the city of Kalach and one to Smolensk. The Kalach offensive successfully trapped 300,000 Axis troops behind the Soviets. And in Smolensk, the Soviet army was successful in preventing the arrival of fresh troops and supplies to relieve the exhausted German armies in Stalingrad, which had been surrounded by German forces in September of 1941 in one of the longest and bloodiest sieges in history.
Finally, in January of 1943, the German armies in Stalingrad surrendered, and the door westward opened for the Soviets as they pushed to take back Kursk and Kharkov.
Germany, now on the defensive, executed a counteroffensive helmed by renowned strategist Erich von Manstein. With the support of a specially trained SS Panzer Corps equipped with Tiger tanks, his troops fought their way back into Kharkov. Germany now concluded that a decisive victory at Kursk would keep the Soviet armies at bay while they tended to matters on the Western Front.
However, the Soviets were regularly building up defensive measures. In the face of depleted troop counts, the Soviets drafted soldiers from territory liberated from Nazi control.
Not only did the Germans have to wait months for new equipment and troops, the Germans’ intelligence regarding the defenses at Kursk was poisoned by a misinformation campaign. When their offense was finally mounted, they found the Soviets had reinforced the city with the largest amount of anti-tank firepower ever assembled. The Germans launched attacks from multiple sides, but the Soviet defenses held. At Prokhorovka, almost 1,000 tanks clashed until the Soviets, despite heavy losses, fought the Germans to a standstill.
In retaliation, the Soviet army mounted a large offensive in the north and broke through on the flank of the German 9th army. Kursk cost Hitler 500,000 men and 1,000 tanks – a crippling loss for Germany’s military operations on the Eastern Front.
This attack on Germany’s 9th army ignited the Soviet juggernaut. The Germans were forced to make a tactical retreat to the Dnieper line, giving up the industrial resources and half of the farmland that had made the region such an appealing target. The Germans had hoped to build a defensive wall at the Dnieper, but there was no time. By the time they evacuated eastern Ukraine, Stalin’s forces were right behind them.
Once the Soviets crossed the Dnieper line, they dug in. Constant fortification of the bridgeheads made retaking the line an impossibility for the Germans. And one by one, the towns near the line started to fall to the Soviets.
The following summer, Hitler moved troops from the center of the Eastern Front to defend a strategic point to the south, the most direct route to Berlin. However, in an operation codenamed Bagration, the Soviets struck the now depleted center of the front in Belorussia instead of marching straight to Germany’s capital city. The Soviet army outnumbered the German troops almost three to one and attacked with seven times the aircraft of the Germans and ten times as many tanks. Hitler’s forces would never recover from this devastating blow.
Afterwards, the Soviet army pressed forward, capturing eastern Germany and finally turning their attention to Berlin. Using a broad front, the Soviets punched holes in the German defenses and surrounded the city. The Soviets had come to deliver a fierce retribution for the attack on their nation, and in the face of Berlin’s impending capture, Hitler committed suicide.