The German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 sparked a guerilla resistance unparalleled in modern history in scale and ferocity. In the wake of the initial invasion, the German Army began its struggle to secure a territory encompassing one million square miles and sixty-five million people and to pacify a growing partisan resistance. The German endeavor to secure the occupied areas and suppress the partisan movement in the wake of Operation Barbarossa illustrates the nature of the problem of bridging the gap between rapid, decisive combat operations and “shaping” the post-major conflict environment-securing populations and infrastructure and persuading people to accept the transition from a defeated government to a new one. In this regard, the German experience on the Eastern Front following Operation Barbarossa seems to offer a number of similarities to the U.S. experience in Iraq in the aftermath of OIF. This study highlights what may be some of the enduring qualities about the nature of the transition between decisive battle and political end state-particularly when that end state is regime change. It elaborates on the notion of decisive battle, how the formulation of resistance movements can be explained as complex adaptive systems, the potential of indigenous security forces and the influence of doctrine, cultural appreciation and interagency cooperation on operational-level transition planning.

Recent experience in Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) suggests that the cause and effect correlation between high-velocity major combat operations and achieving a complex political endstate such as regime change is becoming less certain in the contemporary strategic environment. The transition to stability operations in a non-linear, dynamic environment is proving more difficult, and perhaps more decisive, than the major combat phase of a campaign. The aim of this study is to examine the difficulty in planning and executing these transitions from the historical perspective of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. In the wake of the initial invasion, the German Army began its struggle to secure a territory encompassing one million square miles and sixty-five million people while pacifying a growing partisan resistance. This study primarily focuses on the cognitive tension between decisive battle and the need to secure populations and infrastructure and persuade the occupied country to accept the transition from a defeated government to a new one. It also examines the formulation of resistance movements as complex adaptive systems, the potential of indigenous security forces and the influence of doctrine, cultural appreciation and interagency cooperation on operational-level transition planning.

The aim of this book is to examine the difficulty in planning and executing these transitions from the historical perspective of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. In the wake of the initial invasion, the German Army began its struggle to secure a territory encompassing one million square miles and sixty-five million people while pacifying a growing partisan resistance. This book primarily focuses on the cognitive tension between decisive battle and the need to secure populations and infrastructure and persuade the occupied country to accept the transition from a defeated government to a new one. It also examines the formulation of resistance movements as complex adaptive systems, the potential of indigenous security forces and the influence of doctrine, cultural appreciation and interagency cooperation on operational-level transition planning.

The last place a German soldier wanted to be in 1944 was the eastern front. That summer, Stalin hurled millions of men and thousands of tanks and planes against German forces across a broad front. In a series of massive, devastating battles, the Red Army decimated Hitler's Army Group Center in Belorussua, annihilated Army Group South in the Ukraine, and inflicted crushing casualties while taking Rumania and Hungary. By the time Budapest fell to the Soviets in Febuary 1945, the German Army had been slaughtered--and the Third Reich was in its death throes.

"Provides more than ample strategic and operational detail and context about the operation...The human view of combat... is most revealing and significant."--"Journal of Slavic Military "Studies. It was a battle worse than the one at Stalingrad, and World War II's turning point, thanks to Hitler's strategic miscalculations. Succinct and groundbreaking, this analysis of the largely ignored, bloody conflict in Byelorussia reveals how the Nazis lost the Eastern Front. Their defeat cost 350,000 casualities--and left the war effort doomed and broken.

Army Historical Series. CMH Pub. 30-5-1. Describes the German-Soviet conflict in World War II and the events that resulted in the Soviet Union becoming a dominant military power in Europe. Frist published in 1968. Illustrated.