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.