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Operation Barbarossa is currently a Warfare good article nominee. Nominated by Jonas Vinther • (speak to me!) at 13:07, 20 March 2015 (UTC) An editor has indicated a willingness to review the article in accordance with the good article criteria and will decide whether or not to list it as a good article. Comments are welcome from any editor who has not nominated or contributed significantly to this article. This review will be closed by the first reviewer. To add comments to this review, click discuss review and edit the page.

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Germany plans the invasion

This section is getting pretty cluttered with material about the "strategic" case for war with the USSR, not a discussion of "operational plans". Don't people think that the strategic level material about overall German objectives, such as material gain of resources and manpower, would be better placed in the Eastern Front article? The operation Barbarossa article should be more about the conduct of operations, and this segment about the planning for the operation. These things are linked, but the focus should be there, no?

Also this is interesting but is fairly awkward and can be condensed:

In a 1978 essay "Das Russlandbild der führenden deutschen Militärs" ("The Picture of Russia held by the Leadership of the German Military"), the German historian Andreas Hillgruber examined the views about the Soviet Union held by the German military elite in the period June 1940 to June 1941. According to Hillgruber, the following were the case:

• The Wehrmacht was ill-informed about the Soviet Union, especially the military and the economy.
• Because of the paucity of information, Wehrmacht thinking about the Soviet Union was based upon traditional German stereotypes of Russia as a primitive, backward "Asiatic" country, a "colossus with feet of clay" that lacked the strength to stand up to a superior opponent.
• The leadership of the Wehrmacht viewed war with the Soviet Union from an extremely narrow military viewpoint with little consideration given to politics, the economy, or culture. The industrial capacity of the Soviet Union was not considered at all as a factor that might influence the outcome of a German-Soviet war.
• The average soldier in the Red Army was considered brave and tough, but the Red Army officer corps were held in contempt.
• The Wehrmacht leadership after the victory over France was in a state of hubris with the Wehrmacht being seen as more or less invincible.
• As such, it was assumed that the Soviet Union was destined to be defeated, and that it would take Germany between six to eight weeks to destroy the Soviet Union.

Hillgruber argued that these assumptions about the Soviet Union shared by the entire military elite allowed Hitler to push through a "war of annihilation" against the Soviet Union with the assistance of "several military leaders", even though it was quite clear to the military that such a war would violate all accepted norms of warfare and would be waged in the most inhumane fashion possible.

I am going to replace that with this:

In 1978 Andreas Hillgruber made the case that the invasion plans drawn up by the German military elite were coloured by hubris stemming from the rapid defeat of France at the hands of the "invincible" Wehrmacht and by ignorance tempered by traditional German stereotypes of Russia as a primitive, backward "Asiatic" country -- a colossus with feet of clay. Red Army soldiers were considered brave and tough, but the officer corps was held in contempt. The leadership of the Wehrmacht paid little attention to politics, the economy or culture and the considerable industrial capacity of the Soviet Union was ignored as a factor, in favour of a very narrow military view. As a result the Wehrmacht was ill-informed about the Soviet military and economic capacity. It was assumed that the Soviet Union was destined to be defeated, and that it would take Germany between six to eight weeks to destroy the Soviet Union. Hillgruber argued that because these assumptions were shared by the entire military elite, Hitler was able to push through a "war of annihilation" that would be waged in the most inhumane fashion possible with the complicity of "several military leaders", even though it was quite clear that this would be a violation of all accepted norms of warfare.

Livedawg (talk) 15:07, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Three Soviet Directives from 22 June 1941:

I tried to put this into the article, however my edition was deleted:

What Clausewitz really said about Russia

"it was a country which could be subdued only by its own weakness and by the effects of internal dissension. In order to strike these vulnerable spots of its body politic, Kussia would have to be agitated at the very center."

That might be a good place to start for any discussion of grand strategy, Russia and Clausewitz. In a study released in 1955 by the US Army on German planning and operations for Barbarossa the authors said in their forward that "in reading this study, the military student will realize how dearly the Germans had to pay for ignoring Clausewitz's advice." Lowercase sigmabot III (talk) 00:09, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Copypaste

Can anyone confirm that https://books.google.com/books?id=JzXtBgAAQBAA is copying off of this article instead of the other way around? The Google preview is too limited and doesn't show whether or not this article appears in that book's references. Lowercase sigmabot III (talk) 00:09, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

The entire book seems to be a collection of Misplaced Pages material.--MWAK (talk) 08:37, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Alright; that works. 204.234.74.238 (talk) 15:12, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Bad source

led me to , which states Source #36 in this article is a fraud.

Edit: "Hitler Speaks: A Series of Political Conversations With Adolf Hitler on His Real Aims" by Rauschning seems to be an unreliable source. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.234.74.238 (talk) 15:20, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Article update

Hey everyone. I stumbled across this article a few days ago and was shocked about how poorly it structured, giving its historical importance! Having a huge interest in Barbarossa, I spend the last two days significantly improving this article in my sandbox with the purpose of getting it to GA-status. The main problem I faced was the sheer length of this article, which went way beyond 10,000 words. It would be fair to say that 70-80% of all my recent work on this article has been copyediting, collection sources, converting everything to Harvard references and reformulating long sentences. But I have also, of course, as every copy editor does in large projects, omitted large parts of this article. Namely, I have removed the section "Events" as it contained a bunch of mixed information which importance I failed to see sometimes. It also contained information which was already in the article somewhere else, reformulated. I have removed the section "Reasons for initial Soviet defeats" because the reasons behind the Soviet defeats are explained early in the article. It seemed to me to be, for the most part, a section of extended material which was already stated. For pretty much of the same reasons, I have removed the section "Outcome", although placed some parts of the information from there into other ones. Lastly, I have removed the section "Causes of the failure of Operation Barbarossa" because, like the one with the Soviets, the reasons behind the German defeats are explained early in the article, but I have also copied parts of that section and used it elsewhere. It's also worth noticing that some of these sections simply had to be removed per WP:MOS which calls for articles to be under 10,000 words. With that being said, I have managed to source everything in this article and made some other not-to-important changes here and there to make the article look better. I'm totally aware that nobody owns pages on Misplaced Pages and that the project is a collaboration of millions of editors. Therefore, I would be more than happy to discuss re-adding any material which was removed in my improvement, but I also suggest you click here to see how the article looked before my changes if you haven't already. Regards, Jonas Vinther • (speak to me!) 02:35, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Well, the result is not too bad and you have respected much of the previous text. However, there are (still) some issues with your change:

1. WP:Length (not MOS) does not impose a strict 10,000 words limit. It just suggests that this is normally "beneficial". Certainly, you should not block any substantial future edits by other users arguing that otherwise the mandatory maximum length would be exceeded. There isn't any :o).
2. The general narrative is too "Germanocentric". The Red Army had a strategy too, involving a tactic of active defence. Much of the lack of fortification and the abundance of dispersion can be explained by this. The strategy horribly failed. In this context the enormous tank battles in the Western Ukraine should mentioned. You refer to Kirchubel a lot and his work is indeed excellent, the best popular-science books available on the subject. But you don't seem to have grasped the essence of it.
3. The maps! Where are the maps? There is room for maps. Most people can read maps. Put the maps back in.--MWAK (talk) 08:31, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments, MWAK, I've made further changes accordingly. I've also added some maps back in. I've gone ahead and nominated it for GA-status. I'm sure any other, if any, issues with the article will be voiced there. :) Jonas Vinther • (speak to me!) 12:13, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Einsatzgruppen inclusion?

As the article stands now, there is only one passing mention of the Einsatzgruppen units, and only in the context of anti-partisan operations. Should we include more on the Einsatzgruppen killings in the East? I'd be interested in working on it in cooperation with any others interested.

GeneralizationsAreBad (talk) 23:42, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

Good catch. The Einsatzgruppen backed by the Orpo battalions were a major terror instrument behind the front lines. I'm puzzled how this article existed for so long without even one proper paragraph about them. Poeticbent talk 00:49, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

1. ^ Wette, Wolfram, The Wehrmacht, Harvard University Press, 2006, p. 21–22.

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