Over the course of the operation, over 3.8 million personnel of the Axis powers-the largest invasion force in the history of warfare-invaded the western Soviet Union along a 2,900-kilometer (1,800 mi) front, with 600,000 motor vehicles and over 600,000 horses for non-combat operations. Following the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, the German High Command began planning an invasion of the Soviet Union in July 1940 (under the codename Operation Otto). In the two years leading up to the invasion, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed political and economic pacts for strategic purposes. Their ultimate goal was to create more Lebensraum (living space) for Germany, and the eventual extermination of the Native Slavic peoples by mass deportation to Siberia, Germanisation, enslavement, and genocide. The German Generalplan Ost aimed to use some of the conquered people as forced labour for the Axis war effort while acquiring the oil reserves of the Caucasus as well as the agricultural resources of various Soviet territories, including Ukraine and Byelorussia. The operation, code-named after Frederick Barbarossa ("red beard"), a 12th-century Holy Roman emperor, Crusader, and German king, put into action Nazi Germany's ideological goal of conquering the western Soviet Union to repopulate it with Germans. It was the largest land offensive in human history, with around 10 million combatants taking part. Operation Barbarossa (German: Unternehmen Barbarossa Russian: Операция Барбаросса, romanized: Operatsiya Barbarossa) was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during the Second World War.
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