Why Hitler HAD to Invade the USSR (The Geography)

Why Hitler Invaded the USSR: a Germany that could not feed itself or fuel its tanks, a sea it could not cross, and to the east the largest country on Earth, sitting on exactly what Germany lacked. On June 22nd, 1941, Germany attacked a country more than thirty times its size, along a front 1,800 miles long. Less than two years earlier the two had signed a pact, and Soviet trains were still carrying grain and oil to Germany on the night the invasion began. This is the story of Operation Barbarossa told on the map. First, a country without fuel: synthetic oil, the Ploiesti oil fields of Romania and a Germany that could not feed its army. Then the British blockade, the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and the strange alliance that delivered 1.5 million tons of grain and more than 820,000 tons of oil to Germany. Next, what lay to the east: the black soil of Ukraine, the coal of the Donbas and the oil of Baku. Then the invasion itself: Directive 21, the Kyiv encirclement, the siege of Leningrad, the dirt roads, the wider rail gauge and the 600,000 horses. The rasputitsa, the frost before Moscow, and the Soviet factories that moved east to the Urals. And finally Case Blue, the road to the Caucasus oil, and Stalingrad — where the same geography that pulled Hitler into Russia swallowed his army whole. WW2 history explained with maps. Subscribe to Map Front for more battles, chokepoints and gambles that shaped World War II. 0:00 Attacking your own supplier 0:43 A country without fuel 1:25 The blockade 1:56 The strange alliance 2:56 What lay to the east 3:41 The plan 4:29 The invasion 5:34 The land that swallows armies 6:10 Mud, then snow 6:48 The factories that walked east 7:42 The road to oil 8:22 Stalingrad 8:56 Same map, different ending #WW2 #History #OperationBarbarossa