The failed Sieges of Stalingrad and Leningrad proved to be “nails in the coffin” for the Nazi forces because Russian civilians held out without surrender for years and exhausted Nazi efforts to take control of their cities.
As a result, the Nazi invasion took much longer than anticipated and Hitler’s troops experienced the brutal hardships of combat in the frigid Russian winter. In response to early Nazi successes in the westernmost Soviet-held territories, the Soviets employed a “scorched earth” approach-burning and destroying any resource, asset, field, or town before it could be seized and drawing the Nazi forces deeper into the Soviet Union with few means to provision their troops. In planning this latest attack, Hitler and his military leadership underestimated both Stalin’s preparedness for war and the will of the Soviet Union to resist Nazi occupation at any price. With Operation Barbarossa, Germany divided its military resources between combat on the new Eastern Front and existing Western Front. Additionally, Hitler sought to commandeer the Soviet Union’s natural resources, including natural oil and gas and vast agricultural areas of Ukraine that could serve as the Nazi “breadbasket.” This offensive, named “Operation Barbarossa,” was motivated by a desire to crush one of Europe’s last holdouts against Nazi domination as well as Hitler’s disdain for communism and the Slavic people. In June 1941, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler violated a non-aggression pact with Josef Stalin and launched a massive invasion of the Soviet Union.
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