Lessons From Barbarossa Still Resonate

75 years ago this morning at 0315 Central European Time, the valiant and ruthless German race was thrust into a war of annihilation against the Soviet empire, in what became the dominant theatre in the largest-scale conflict in world history, World War II.  Named after Frederick I, the red-bearded King of Germany and Holy Roman Emperor in the 12th century known for his military conquests and shrewd leadership, Operation Barbarossa involved an attack in three army groups across what soon became an 1800-mile front from the Baltic to the Caucasus.  German war aims, spelled out initially in the Führer’s War Directive #21 on December 18, 1940, were fully commensurate with Adolf Hitler’s boldness: the Führer sought domination of the entirety of European Russia and the smaller intermediary Soviet states all the way out to the Ural Mountains, including the natural resources and oil-rich regions in the Caspian Basin.