Operation Barbarossa: Hitlers Invasion of Russia 1941

From a world expert on Hitlers war in Russia, this book on the operation that changed the course of World War II includes updated information on casualty numbers and opposing forcesHere, David Glantz challenges the timehonored explanation that poor weather, bad terrain, and Hitlers faulty strategic judgement produced German defeat, and reveals how the Red Army thwarted the German Armys dramatic and apparently inexorable invasion before it achieved its ambitious goals. On June 22, 1941 Hitler unleashed his forces on the Soviet Union. Spearheaded by four powerful Panzer groups and protected by an impenetrable curtain of air support, the seemingly invincible Wehrmacht advanced from the Soviet Unions western borders to the immediate outskirts of Leningrad, Moscow and Rostov in the shockingly brief period of less than six months. The sudden, deep, relentless German advance virtually destroyed the entire peacetime Red Army and captured almost 40 percent of European Russia before expiring inexplicably at the gates of Moscow and Leningrad. An invasion designed to achieve victory in three to six weeks failed and, four years later, resulted in unprecedented and total German defeat.