Perhaps Barbarossas most famous battle was his victory at Preveza (in Greece) in 1538 over a combined fleet with elements from Venice, Genoa, Spain, Portugal, Malta, and the Papal States. [193], On 21 June, at 13:00 Army Group North received the codeword "Dsseldorf", indicating Barbarossa would commence the next morning, and passed down its own codeword, "Dortmund". [196] Roughly three million soldiers of the Wehrmacht went into action and faced slightly fewer Soviet troops at the border. [52] The main guideline for German troops was "Where there's a partisan, there's a Jew, and where there's a Jew, there's a partisan" or "The partisan is where the Jew is". The Luftwaffe found itself struggling to maintain local air superiority. [302], With the ground hardening due to the cold weather,[o] the Germans resumed the attack on Moscow on 15 November. Barbarossa defeated the combined force by using only 122 galleys against 300 sailing ships. Hayreddin Barbarossa Biography - Facts, Childhood, Family Life [208][191] Stalin's order, which Timoshenko authorized, was not based on a realistic appraisal of the military situation at hand, but commanders passed it along for fear of retribution if they failed to obey; several days passed before the Soviet leadership became aware of the enormity of the opening defeat. Furthermore we had had a very wet spring; the Bug and its tributaries were at flood level until well into May and the nearby ground was swampy and almost impassable. With Soviet resistance breaking down, the Finns were able to encircle Viipuri by advancing to the Vuoksi River. [126], The German forces in the rear (mostly Waffen-SS and Einsatzgruppen units) were to operate in conquered territories to counter any partisan activity in areas they controlled, as well as to execute captured Soviet political commissars and Jews. Russian Army Replaces Top Logistics Commander The important road junction at Loimola was captured on 14 July. According to German Army medical reports (including Army Norway):[17], Operation Barbarossa (German: Unternehmen Barbarossa; Russian: , romanized:Operatsiya Barbarossa) was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during the Second World War. Barbarossa means "red beard" - a name given to him by the Italians due to the reddish tone of his bushy beard. [265], By August, as the serviceability and the quantity of the Luftwaffe's inventory steadily diminished due to combat, demand for air support only increased as the VVS recovered. Victory will be ours!". Hitler's initial invasion of Russia, named Operation Barbarossa, met the same fate as Napoleon's campaign: a devastating defeat (Bongi, 2015). He also personally conducted an aerial inspection of the Minsk-Biaystok pocket on 30 June and concluded that his panzer group was not needed to contain it, since Hermann Hoth's 3rd Panzer Group was already involved in the Minsk pocket. [239] On the same day, some of the infantry corps of the 9th and 4th Armies, having sufficiently liquidated the Biaystok pocket, resumed their march eastward to catch up with the panzer groups. Operation Barbarossa - Army University Press Home