1st SS Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler - Operation Barbarossa

Operation Barbarossa

Following Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler's outstanding performance during Marita, Himmler ordered that it should be upgraded to divisional status. The regiment, already the size of a reinforced brigade, was redesignated "SS-Division (mot.) Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler". There was no time to refit the division to full divisional status before the launch of Operation Barbarossa—the invasion of the Soviet Union—and so the new "division" remained the size of a reinforced brigade.

The LSSAH was attached to the LIV Army Corps and held in reserve during the opening stages of the attack. In August 1941 it was transferred to III Panzer Corps, part of Generalfeldmarschall Ewald von Kleist's 1st Panzer Group. During this time the LSSAH was involved in the Battle of Uman and the subsequent capture of Kiev. The division was involved in heavy fighting, with Meyer's Abteilung particularly distinguishing itself. According to a postwar account of a Waffen-SS journalist, after finding the mutilated bodies of six dead members of the division who had been previously captured and executed in Taganrog, the division murdered 4,000 Soviet prisoners in reprisal. For want of reliable evidence, the allegations remained unproven.

In early September, the division was transferred back to LIV Army Corps, preparing to launch an offensive to clear the Crimean peninsula. The operation was launched on 17 September 1941. The LSSAH was involved in heavy fighting for the town of Perekop before advancing across the Perekop Isthmus to assault the Soviet defensive positions near the Tartar Ditch.

In November the LSSAH was transferred back to 1st Panzer Group and took part in the heavy fighting for the city of Rostov-on-Don, which was captured in late November. During Operation Barbarossa, the division had penetrated 960 kilometres (600 mi) into Soviet territory.

Heavy Soviet counterattacks during the winter meant that Army Group South had to fall back from Rostov-on-Don to defensive lines on the river Mius. The LSSAH spent the winter fighting ferocious defensive battles in temperatures of down to −40 °C (−40 °F), with minimal winter clothing and only 150 grams of rations per man per day. Despite this, the division held. After the spring rasputitsa had cleared, the exhausted division joined in Fall Blau, participating in the fighting to retake Rostov-on-Don, which was recaptured in late July 1942. Severely understrength and completely exhausted, the LSSAH was pulled out of the line. The division was ordered to the Normandy region of occupied France to join the newly-formed SS Panzer Corps and to be reformed as a Panzergrenadier division.