ABSTRACT
The German goal in 1941 was to reach a line running from Archangel to Kuibyshev and then down the Volga to Astrakhan. This would then permit the German air force, the Luftwaffe, to bomb industrial centres in the Urals. The Red Army and air force were quite unprepared for war. Politically German policy was almost suicidal. The blocking of the German offensive before Moscow was a turning-point in the war. The invasion led to a restructuring of the Soviet military command. Stalin presented the German invasion as the greatest challenge the nation had ever faced the Russian nation. Stalin addressed his compatriots as brothers, sisters, friends and appealed to them not in the name of the Communist Party but in the name of the motherland. Hitler's troops have captured Lithuania, most of Latvia, the western part of Belorussia and part of the western Ukraine. Hitler saw communism as a great future danger.
