We have arrived at the 84th anniversary of Operation Barbarossa...

The largest invasion in the history of the world began on June 22, 1941, as the German army invaded the Soviet Union with a force of roughly three million men spread across 150 different divisions. The Germans came at the Russians with three different army groups:

Army Group North - Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb
- 18th Army (General Georg von Kuchler): 170,000 men
- 16th Army (General Ernst Busch): 160,000 men
- 4th Panzer Army (General Erich Hoepner): 115,000 men

Army Group North's major objectives involved breaking through the Soviet front lines (obviously), driving rapidly toward Leningrad via Pskov and Novgorod.

Army Group Center - Field Marshal Fedor von Bock
- 4th Army (General Gunther von Kluge): 250,000 men
- 9th Army (Colonel General Adolf Strauss): 220,000 men
- 2nd Army (General Maximilian von Weichs): 200,000 men
- 2nd Panzer Army (General Heinz Guderian): 150,000 men

Army Group Center's main objectives was to smash the Red Army in Belarus, advance through Smolensk and then toward Moscow, and destroy the Red Army formations west of the Dnieper and Dvina Rivers.

Army Group South - Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt
- 6th Army (General Walter von Reichenau): 270,000 men
- 17th Army (General Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel): 240,000 men
- 1st Panzer Army (General Edward von Kleist): 170,000 men
- Romanian 3rd Army (General Petre Dumitrescu): 220,000 men
- Romanian 4th Army (General Nicolae Ciuperca): 120,000 men

Army Group's South major objective was the seizure of Ukraine, its agricultural resources, major cities (Kiev, Kharkov), and the Black Sea coast.

The offensive, which raged from June 22, 1941, to the end of the Red Army's counteroffensive in front of Moscow into the beginning of 1942, saw some of the bloodiest fighting in human history. It is estimated that some 250,000 Axis soldiers were killed, an additional 550,000 wounded, and 100,000 listed as missing/captured for the six and a half months of Barbarossa. The Red Army suffered between 4 million and 4.3 million total casualties over the same time period.

While the Germans saw initial success in the early going, the farther they advanced into the Soviet Union the tougher things got for them tactically and operationally. While the Germans did eventually make it to the gates of Moscow by December 1941, by that time they were out of gas and the Soviets were resurgent.

By the time it was all said and done, Operation Barbarossa was a tactical, operational, and strategic failure for the German army.