On June 22, 1941 Hitler set in motion Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. The Germans had seven armies and four panzer groups, totaling 3,150,000 men poised to attack Russia along with 530,000 troops of Axis Allied armies.

The Soviets were defending Russia with Field forces in the Western Theater that included three Fronts ( Northwestern, Western and Southwestern) formed on 22 June from the Baltic, Western and Kiev Special Military Districs, a seperate Army (the 9th) and a fourth Front (Northern) created on 24 June from the Leningrad Military District. These forces contained 15 Armies, 20 Mechanized Corps, 32 Rifle Corps, 3 Cavalry Corps, 3 Airborne Corps, 163 Divisions (97 Rifle, 40 Tank, 20 Mechanized and 6 Cavalry) 41 Fortified Regions, 2 Seperate Rifle Brigades, 10 Antitank Brigades, 87 Artillery Regiments (52 Corps Artillery and 35 STAVKA Reserve), and 18 Engineer Regiments with a total strength of about 2.9 million men.

STAVKA reserve consisted of 6 Armies, 14 Rifle Corps,5 Mechanized Corps, 57 Divisions (42 Rifle, 10 Tank, 5 Mechanized), and 17 Artillery Regiments (13 Corps and 4 STAVKA)

Hitler and his generals envisioned a quick campaign of no more than five months that would crush the Soviet military and end the war on the Eastern Front. What transpired was the greatest single military campaign in world history.

Within the first 72 hours the Luftwaffe destroyed over 2,000 Soviet aircraft, mainly on the ground. The German ground forces conducted four encirclement battles in the Army Group Center area of operations. These were at Bialystok, Volkovysk, Minsk and Smolensk. These four encirclements in the first seven weeks of the war cost the Red Army over 600,000 men taken as prisoners alone. Many more thousands were killed and wounded. The equipment loss was just as high with over 5,000 tanks being destroyed as well. By early August Army Group South had accomplished one encirclement that added another 100,000 prisoners to the total. The Germans also lost troops during this period. From the beginning of the operation, to the 3rd of August, the Germans took 232,000 casualties of all kinds.

Generals Hoth and Guderian captured Smolensk in mid-July. Blitzkrieg was alive and well, but then Soviet resistance stiffened. German supply routes were becoming longer and supply trains were not arriving as expected. Army Group North by the end of July, seemed poised to capture the old Czarist capitol, of Leningrad. Army Group South was having a tough time with the Red Army in front of Kiev. Stalin had put a tremendous force in southern Russia. His intent was to attack into Romania and Hungary if war started and there was a formidable force in the area.

After the encirclement battles around Smolensk were concluded Hitler sent the panzers south to finish the encirclement of forces in the Kiev area. All the German commanders voiced their opposition to this move. Moscow was the capital of the Soviet Union and it was within striking distance. Now was the time to end the war.

Hitler decided not to listen to his greatest generals and decided that the southern Ukraine, a large area of great economic importance, and the Crimea, the Soviet "aircraft carrier" that threatened the Romanian oilfields of Ploesti, were to be the next targets for the Axis armies. He also wanted to smash the Soviet armies of the Ukraine before they had a chance to fall back behind the Dnepr River in good order. He ordered General Guderian to wheel his Panzer Group Guderian south and west, away from Moscow, to link up with General Kleist's panzer group moving northeast from several points along the Dnepr River below Kiev. The resulting pocket was finally eliminated on 26 September. The pocket produced over 665,000 Soviet prisoners, 880 tanks and over 5,000 guns. This was the largest single loss of men and equipment during the entire war on the eastern front by the Red Army.

It didn't seem to matter as new Soviet armies just kept on coming to the front replacing the losses. At the start of the campaign the Germans had faced about 170 Soviet Divisions. By mid July , even with all the losses suffered in the battles of encirclement, the number of divisions facing the Germans had risen to 212. During the battle from 22 June to 1 December the Germans sent at most 100,000 replacements to the Eastern Front. In that same time period the Red Army received 3,241,000 men inducted into it's ranks.

About this time the Germans closed in around Leningrad, cutting it off from the rest of the Soviet forces. That was the best they could acheive on the northern front even with the limited help of the Finish Army which was active until it had regained all the territory lost to the Russians in the 1940 war. Then the Finns mostly stopped participating in the war.

As the fall rains started to turn Russia into a quagmire Hitler once again ordered that Moscow be taken. Although hampered by the mud the Germans made fair progress towards Moscow. The winter snows came early in October and the Germans were finally able to move about the Russian countryside unhampered by the mud. However the lack of adequate winter clothing, lubricants, and other essential winter equipment started to take their toll on the German Army. The Soviets were also bringing in major forces from the Far East where they no longer feared Japanese attacks. The German attack reached its climax in early December, within 19 miles of Moscow and within sight of the spires of the Kremlin. The Soviets launched their winter counteroffensive on December 3rd, just as the German attack ran out of strength.

Operation Barbarossa was over. The Red Army ended it with an offensive of it's own. The Germans had won an operational victory but only managed to obtain a strategic draw. They had come close to winning the war. Close would not count in the months and years ahead. The Germans could only look back and lament at how close they had come.