In June 1941 the Germans launched Operation Barbarossa, their invasion of the Soviet Union. Later, in the autumn of 1941, the Germans launched Operation Typhoon, the attempt to take Moscow before the Russian winter descended on the combatants. Involved in this operation was Das Reich Motorised Division, including the lorryborne Deutschland and Der Fuhrer Panzer Grenadier regiments. As with the attacks across Meuse in 1940, in 1941 the German armed forces advanced with a mood of optimism borne of continual military success. Das Reich Division, part of XL Corps, was attached to Panzer Group 4, and formed part of the spearhead that thrust east up the road to Moscow. Das Reich was an elite SS unit, later destroyed when fighting in Normandy in 1944, which, with motorisation and ideological fervour, was the ideal unit to spearhead any attack. This dedication to battle meant that SS units such as Das Reich were often brutal in and out of combat. The barbarisation of the war on the Eastern Front led to many ordinary German joldiers committing appalling atrocities on civilians and Soviet POWs. In this respect, SS units were particularly lotorious: following an incident where German POWs were found shot, SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler pa. nzergvena. diers :ook no prisoners for several months. All captured Soviet soldiers were shot. This attitude was not restricted to the racial war on the Eastern Front: when Das Reich was transferred to France it massacred 642 unarmed villagers at Dradour-sur-Glane in southwest France in reprisal for supposed resistance activity.
World History
