Live chat

Research paper topics, sample research paper free

You are welcome to search thousands of free research papers and essays. Search for your research paper topic now!

Research paper topic: When Operation Barbarossa Is Launched, The World Will Hold Its - 1342 words

.. led to the failure of Hitler's plan. The first was the ferocious fighting zeal of the Russian troops. This fighting spirit had little to do with the communist regime's inspiration but with the fact that the Russian people had been so used to intimidation and suffering under Stalin's iron fist that they had absolutely nothing to lose by fighting to the death, particularly if your only alternative was to be executed by your own government for treason. When Stalin addressed his people, he spoke to them as fellow citizens and brothers and sisters and not with the demands of obedience and submission which was commonplace in earlier times.

He spoke of a 'national patriotic war..for the freedom of the motherland' and he initiated his scorched earth policy which would not leave 'a single railway engine, a single wagon, a single pound of grain, for the enemy if they had to retreat.vii To the Germans, t! his staunch and often sui cidal determination was unnerving and it had a negative effect on their fighting morale. Stories of this Russian tenacity spread widely among the Germans. Tales of Russian fighter pilots who wouldn't bail out if shot down but would crash into German fuel trucks; of tanks that were on fire but the burning troops driving would press on into battle. It was said that Russian women had even taken up arms and that troops would find pretty teenage girls dead on the battlefield still clutching weapons. The Germans started to complain about Russians who were fighting unfairly.

They said soldiers would lie on the ground and pretend they were dead and then leap up and shoot unsuspecting Germans who were passing byviii. Or they would wave white flags of surrender and then shoot the soldiers who came to capture them. Having heard these actions, many Germans would kill anyone who tried to surrender. These tales became battlefield horror stories and raised the wars already high le! vel of hatred and barbarity. Hitler wrote to Mussolini shortly after the invasion and said: " They fought with truly stupid fanaticism..with the primitive brutality of an animal that sees itself trapped"ix As a result, in the opening weeks of Barbarossa the Germans lost some 100 000 men which was equal to the amount lost in all their previous campaigns so far. Another significant factor outlined by Bethell and Wright was the fact the Russian troops were well aware of the advantages they had in their climate and rugged terrain.

Bethell outlines excellent examples of this in the dense Forests of Poland and the soggy lands of the Pripet Marshes. No German tanks could operate in these hazardous areas and there was ample cover for small groups. Russian infantry would superbly camouflaged themselves and infiltrate the German positions through the forests and they even displayed their resourcefulness by communicating to each other by imitating animal cries. They would dig foxholes and dugouts which provided a field of fire only to the rear and when the unsuspecting German infantry walked pass them , the Russians would pick them off from behind. In open battle, the Russian people would devise ingenious weapons with what little resources they had available. They made 'Molotov cocktails' which were flammable liquid in bottles which were lit and thrown at German tanks. The glass would break and the flaming liquid would flow into the tank and ignite the interior.x Combined with the willingness to fight at any odds and the intimate knowledge of their own terrain it is plain to see that the Russian were definitely not going to fall as easily as Hitler had first thought. Besides the brutal tenacity of the resistance, Germany had another problem, the climate.

In the summer of 1941, the Ukraine was suffered a scorching summer which saw a large amount of rainfall. In the intense heat, the German tank tracks ground the baked earth to powdery fine dust which clogged machinery, eyes and mouths and made it hard for troops to function. When it rained, it brought short relief to the heat but, the roads turned into axle-deep mud paths that halted all movement while horses got stuck in mud and troops had their boots sucked right off them only to stay in the ground. Thousands of vehicles had to be left as they were because they ran out of fuel to get out of the mud and the supply paths were choked as well. These road conditions combined with partisan forces behind German lines stifled supply lines by destroying railway tracks and making all kinds of re-armament and food delivery impossible.xi While the Germans were being delayed and they struggled to get a solid foothold, figuratively and literally, in Russia, the months passed by and eventually gave way to the harsh 'general winter' which froze everything to the core. As Germany pressed on towards Moscow, the cold weather really took its toll.

All too often the Germans didn't have enough supplies to survive let alone fight. Some units only had about 1/4 of their ammunition while shipments of coats used to combat the cold, only provided 1 coat per crew. The food supplied was often frozen solid in the -40(C cold and one night spent by German soldiers in their nail studded boots and metal helmets could cripple a man for life. Machine guns froze, oil turned thick, batteries died and vehicle engines had to be kept running which wasted precious fuel supplies. One German officer wrote home to his wife: "We have seriously underestimated the Russians, the extent of the country and the treachery of the climat! e..th is is the revenge of reality."xii At this stage, the Russians had the obvious advantage. On December 5 1941, with troops that were used to the cold weather all their lives and had the proper clothing to stay outdoors for days on end, the Russians counter-attacked along a 960 km front and had great success.

The 'do-or-die' Russian troops would send out groups of darkly clad men to sacrifice themselves and draw German fire while white-clad, camouflaged Russian troops would come in along the snow and attack. While the German suffered great losses, they were able to hold on to key towns that they had previously occupied and the war in Russia swung back and forth. As the front settled into a stalemate, the Red Army could be satisfied with what it had accomplished. Despite the numerous defeats it had suffered in the early part of the invasion, Russia had managed to somehow survive, pulling back and regrouping long enough for the German Army to overextend itself and allow the winter to take its toll. It is said that hindsight is 20/20, and it is simple to point out the many factors which led to the failure of Barbarossa and we can see that the authors, Bethell, Macksey and Wright all had valid points but they just emphasized different aspects and time frames which all fit together to construct a much larger picture. It is fair to say that not one particular circumstance contributed to the failure but, a culmination of all the events mentioned.

Hitler truly was confident that the delay in launching the invasion was of no consequence and he had no way of knowing just how fiercely the Russians would oppose him. The combination of! these factors led to the failure. Near the end, Moscow and Leningrad had been saved, and enough reinforcements had been scraped together to enable the Red Army to go on the offensive. Operation Barbarossa had been halted, and the myth of German military invincibility had been shattered forever. --- BIBLIOGRAPHY i Whaley, Barton, pg. 12 ii Wright, Michael, pg.

104 iii Macksey, Kenneth, "Military Errors Of World War II", Stoddard Publishing Co., Ontario, Canada, 1987 iv ibid, pg. 47 v ibid, pg. 48 vi ibid pg.51-54 vii Wright, Michael, "The World At Arms", Readers Digest Association Ltd., London, 1989. Pg. 108 viii Bethell, Nicholas, "Russia Besieged", Time-Life Books, Canada, 1977 pg. 72 ix Wright, Michael, pg.

107 x Wright, Michael, pg. 108-109 xi Bethell, Nicholas, pg . 90 xii Wright, Michael, pg. 118.

Research paper topics, free term papers, essays, sample research papers on When Operation Barbarossa Is Launched, The World Will Hold Its