1068 Ch. 26 • World War 11Molotov replied, “Then whose bombers are those overhead, and why are
we in this bomb shelter?”
Hitler intended “Operation Barbarossa,” the invasion of Russia, to be a
“quick campaign” of no more than ten weeks’ duration. He hoped that
Japan would attack Siberia, thereby forcing Stalin to divert troops there.
Some German generals held the Russian army in such contempt that they
ordered no serious assessment of Russia’s existing or potential military
strength. If the Finns on skis had been able to hold off Russian divisions
with seemingly little more than snowballs, how could German fighters and
tanks fail to break through with relative ease?
The opening of a Balkan front delayed Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet
Union, which had been planned for May 1941. Britain had sent forces to
Greece following the Italian invasion, which made German bases in Yugo
slavia even more crucial. An anti-German faction had overthrown the
Yugoslav government in March and refused to join the Axis or to allow Ger
man troops into the country. Hitler ordered an invasion of Yugoslavia in
April. German armies then pushed into Greece. As in World War I, Bul
garia in March cast its fate with Germany. Bulgarian troops occupied parts
of Greek Macedonia and Thrace. The German army forced a British with
drawal from the Greek mainland to the Aegean island of Crete, which
soon itself fell to German paratroopers. Greece was occupied by German,
Italian, and Bulgarian troops. Five percent of the Greek population died of
starvation, along with hundreds of thousands killed in the fighting or exe
cuted. By the end of May 1941, Hitler’s armies held all of the Balkans.
Hitler could now concentrate on an invasion of the Soviet Union. Stalin,
however, failed to heed warnings from Britain and the United States that
Russia was Germany’s next target. Believing these warnings, including some
of his own army’s military reports, to be part of a conspiracy to turn him
against his German ally, Stalin ordered the execution of some of his intelli
gence officers.
On June 22, 1941, German planes, tanks, and more than 3 million troops
attacked the Soviet Union. The German generals were convinced that the
Soviet forces could be easily defeated. However, the Soviets had many more
men, field artillery, tanks, and aircraft than Germany, and for the most part
their weapons were of quality equal to or even superior to that of the Ger
mans. But German forces quickly devastated Soviet defenses and communi
cation and transportation networks. One army pushed toward Leningrad in
July 1941, laying siege to the city. But Leningrad held. The battleship
Aurora, which had served the Bolshevik cause in the Revolution of 1917,
was pressed into service, its guns commandeered from a museum. A second
German army captured more than 250,000 prisoners near Minsk (now in
Belarus), 250 miles northeast of Warsaw; a third, finding support from anti
Russian Ukrainians, took Kiev in September 1941. Hitler rejected his gener
als’ suggestion that the attack on Moscow be given priority. Instead, armored
units were transferred to the northern army besieging Leningrad.