Wednesday, June 22, 2022

Visualizing the Invasion of the Soviet Union with Luftwaffe Locations

On June 22 1941 (81 years ago) Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union with the largest military force assembled in history. Behind the ground troops the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) quickly setup forward bases to support the campaign. Using data from http://ww2.dk I put together an infographic visualizing the monthly movements of the Luftwaffe during this time (map borders are current not the ones that existed in 1941). 

One can see planes flying into Poland from the west (Denmark, Norway, France, Belgium, and The Netherlands were conquered the previous year) and Greece (conquered the previous month) right before the campaign. As the Germans advanced along the Northern, Central, and Southern fronts one can also see the indecisive plan of attack. First they locate more planes to the North to attack Leningrad and then shift focus to the attack on Moscow. 

Stopped outside of Moscow in the winter of 41/42 the invasion did not succeed in taking over the USSR. Instead the conflict lasted another three and a half years and ended in May 1945 when the USSR took over Berlin - about 1000 miles from Moscow.

Code can be found here https://github.com/samcarlos/luftwaffe_locations



If you like this plot and want to see the first two years of the war through plane movements check out this post I wrote up here

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