Operation Barbarossa (Ger. Unternehmen Barbarossa) is a German attack on the Soviet Union that began on June 22, 1941. This operation started the German-Soviet war and also began military operations on the Eastern Front in World War II. The original plan of the attack was ready in December 1940 and assumed the attack in May 1941, but due to the need to take action in the Balkans, its date was postponed. On the Axis side, a total of over 4.5 million soldiers, about 3,600 tanks and about 2,900 aircraft were engaged for this operation. These forces were divided into three large groups, Army Groups: North, Middle and South. The first of them was aimed at conquering Leningrad, the second was to hit Moscow, and the third - to capture the entire territory of Ukraine and reach the Dnieper River. Their actions were to lead to the defeat of the Soviet Union within a few weeks! At the time of the start of the German attack, the Red Army had about 2.5-3 million people in the western part of the USSR, who had much more tanks and planes than their opponents. Operation Barbarossa is quite widely recognized as the largest German offensive operation of World War II. As a result, the Wehrmacht achieved enormous successes on a tactical and operational scale, destroying, by November-December 1941, probably about 150% of the Red Army's manpower in June of the same year! However, despite this, the USSR was not eliminated from the fight, and the operation - strategically - turned out to be a great failure for Germany.
The decisive influence on the shaping of the organization and tactics of the German infantry before the outbreak of World War II was, on the one hand, the experience of the previous World War, but also theoretical works created in the 1920s and 1930s, which often emphasized the need to perceive the German infantry as a tool waging an offensive war. This affected both the equipment and the organization of the German infantry division, which during the September campaign of 1939 consisted of 3 infantry regiments, each of which was divided into 3 infantry battalions, an artillery company and an anti-tank company. In addition, there were numerous support units, including: an artillery regiment with 4 artillery squadrons (including one heavy), an anti-tank battalion, a sapper battalion and a communications battalion. In total, the so-called infantry division In the first mobilization wave, there were approximately 17,700 people and had a significant artillery component, but also was abundantly equipped with machine guns. It also had modern and efficient - for those times - means of communication and command. In the course of the war, infantry divisions underwent transformation - in 1943 some of them were transformed into armored grenadier divisions. However, from 1943, the standard division of the "traditional" infantry consisted of approx. 12,500 men (and not approx. 17,700 as in 1939), and its artillery component - especially heavy artillery - was also reduced in it, while its anti-tank defense was significantly improved. It is assumed that during the entire Second World War, about 350 infantry divisions served in the Wehrmacht.