Operation Barbarossa - Aftermath

Aftermath

With the failure in the Battle of Moscow, all German plans of a quick defeat of the Soviet Union had to be revised. The Soviet counter offensives in the Winter of 1941 caused heavy casualties on both sides, but ultimately lifted the German threat to Moscow. Nevertheless despite this setback, the Soviet Union suffered heavily from the loss of large parts of its army, allowing the Germans to mount another large-scale offensive in the summer of 1942, called Case Blue, now directed towards the oil fields of Baku. This offensive again failed in the same way as Barbarossa, the Germans conquering vast amounts of no-mans-land, but ultimately failing to achieve their final goals with the defeat at Stalingrad. With the now fully operational Soviet war economy, the Soviet Union was able to simply outproduce the Germans, who were not prepared for a long war of attrition. This way, the last German all-out offensive in 1943 at the Battle of Kursk failed. After three years of constant warfare the Germans were exhausted and so the Soviets were finally able to defeat the Germans decisively in Operation Bagration in summer of 1944. This led to a chain of fast Soviet victories which pushed the Germans back to Berlin in just one year, leading to the surrender of Germany on 8 May 1945.