The invasion of the Soviet Union can be seen as one of Hitler's biggest mistakes. In 1941 Hitler and Stalin signed a non-aggression pact. Hitler decided to renounce that pact and invade the Soviet Union in 1941 with Operation Barbarossa. Hitler's decision to invade the Soviet Union represented a great risk and ultimately led to the fall of the Third Reich. The Soviet Union was a country rich in vast resources and with a population much larger than that of Germany. There seems to be so much risk in attacking the Soviet Union. So why was the Soviet Union attacked by Germany in 1941? Hitler wanted his country's population to grow. The German land mass was small and if Hitler had wanted population growth he would have needed more land. Hitler is reported to have said: “Population growth could only be compensated for by the growth-expansion of Lebensraum.” One of the reasons Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941 was what Hitler called Lebensraum. Lebensraum means living space. Hitler needed new land for the surplus German population. Hitler knew that most of the world had already been carved up by colonial powers, so he looked east for new lands. Hitler said: “If we talk about soil in Europe today, we can have in mind mainly only Russia and its vassal border states.” Hitler believed that Russia was the only country large enough to satisfy “Germany's territorial needs in terms of living space.” Hitler saw how vast the territory of the Soviet Union was and wanted the German people to have the rich lands they possessed for the excess German population. If Hitler had succeeded in conquering the lands east of Germany, he would have had enough room for Germany's excess population. The Soviet Union had many acres of unstable land. The Soviet Union extended from the European Union... to the center of the map... my subject. Stahel's book contributed most to my understanding of the Soviet experiment. Stahel delved deeply into the ideological aspect of the war. Many people know that the Soviets and Nazis had different ideologies, but they don't know why. It seems that Stahel's main goal in his writings is to show the difference between ideologies. The Soviet tragedy did not contain many details about Operation Barbarossa and the reasons for the attack. Malia wrote about the Soviet Union being rich in resources and about the ideological nature of the Nazi Party. Malia also wrote that Hitler's ideological nature was one of the biggest mistakes in his failure to seek a Nazi Europe. If Hitler had used people from the areas he had won in the summer months of 1941, he might have had a better chance of winning..