In the first 6 months of Hitler's World War II Nazi invasion, over 5 million of Stalin's Russian troops were killed, wounded, or captured defending their Motherland. Germany's surprise assault on the Soviet Union in June 1941, Operation Barbarossa, aimed at nothing less than the destruction of the Soviet Union. Adolf Hitler saw this as the last vital step in the establishing of 'Lebensraum' for the German people in the East.Three German Army Groups, supported by numerous European allies, poured across the Soviet border crushing all before them in a lightning campaign that threatened to eliminate all Soviet resistance and secure an easy victory. However, the vast resources and size of Soviet Russia caused the German armoured spearheads to slow and the advance finally ground to a halt within sight of Moscow itself, and with it Hitler's dreams of a quick victory.
