June 22, 1941, Germany invades the Soviet Union
Why did they invade the Soviet Union?
Operation Barbarossa was an operation created out of necessity as much as anything else. The previous successful campaigns against Poland and France were successful, but were costly to the German economy. Germany lacked key resources, particularly oil. Germany’s attempts to produce synthetic oil in any great quantity had been unsuccessful. Russia offered Germany a huge supply of oil, plentiful supplies of labor for German industry and to a more ideological degree, lebensraum, the notion of living space for the German people.
Since the 1920s Hitler had been openly talking about the taking of Lebensraum (living space) from the peoples of the East. Everything Hitler did was to invade the East. Every public work, every job creation project, etc was about building up the German military and then invading and taking the East.
The idea was to invade Poland and the the western Soviet Union, starve the people already living their, use the survivors as slave labour, and then resettle millions of Germans to become farmers. It was Hitler’s dream.
As I said, he didn’t even try to hide it. Mein Kampf talked about it and his public speeches talked about it. No one should have been surprised when he did it.
