One source says Hitler had wanted to invade as early as 1924, even a conservative estimate has to be at least 5 or 6 years of pre-planning. And, though initial successful winter, bad roads (or no roads,) break-down of equipment are some of the major excuses as to why the invasion ultimately failed. Yet, I can find no book on the subject of German planning, solutions to.
It seems they just took the same attitude as if they were invading France w/no added precautions to the wilderness of Russia
The invasion was not planned decades in advance, the order to begin planning and preparation was given in the second half of 1940. In December, that plan was deemed to be insufficient, and Hitler issued Fuhrer Directive 21 calling for a new plan.
Certain aspects of your question have been asked before, especially the one about winter clothing. There is an answer here by u/kieslowskifan will give you some insight there. But in general I think the thrust of your question is a bit off. The Germans were unprepared for a long campaign not because they were unaware of Russian weather, or the quality of Russian infrastructure, they were unprepared for a long campaign because they did not plan to fight one. The largest variable that was underestimated was not the weather or infrastructure of equipment, it was the ability of the Red Army to absorb massive shocks and the loss of enormous formations and still be able to continue fighting and regenerating it's strength.
This might be an insufficient answer but I’m currently away from the book so I’ll try my best to recite the key points off memory.
In Robert Forczyk’s Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front 1941-42, one of the most crippling aspects of Barbarossa was due to the underestimation of the resources required to cross terrain.
Russia was far less developed than west Europe and had far fewer roads, often in worse condition than say France or Belgium. Due to this, the German standard for the amount of fuel, one V.S., to theoretically be enough for an armored group to cross about 100km, was closer to getting them only 70km.
Consistently after the first initial weeks of Barbarossa, mechanized divisions constantly fell 30km short of their destination and had to wait for resupply.
Further more on top of the paved road debacle, since infantry divisions were far less mechanized than many believe (closer to only 34% of the Wehrmacht was mechanized at the start of Barbarossa but I’m not 100% sure in that figure), and because of that as well, mechanized divisions out ran their own infantry support, and the few mechanized infantry divisions ALSO consumed more fuel than expected per distance.
On top of this, German pre-War designs were designed for west European terrain. Relatively hard ground, paved roads, open fields, things where a fast tank suited to blitzkrieg is more effective. In Russia where the ground is much softer, swamps, thick mud, and rain are far more common, early German tanks performed remarkably poorly as many of them only had 250-300mm width tracks (about 12-14” tracks) where the T-34 had 510mm tracks (20” wide tracks). This difference was what prevented T-34’s from sinking it to mud that sometimes bogged down entire armored columns for close to a day.
It’s designs like this where German equipment was designed for a war in a far different terrain that was continuously underestimated in the planning for Barbarossa.
Coming down to weather, when winter rolled around that Russia is so famous for, this caused a ton of issues in supply lines. Tanks, trucks, and halftracks all became so cold that many of them were rendered inoperable with frozen lines bursting in the engine or transmission, or pistons just freezing to cylinder walls. And because of this not only did parts get damaged and destroyed at a higher rate than what normal combat caused, they also consumed more fuel. When in static positions, Germans often attempted to leave their vehicles running on idle to keep the engine warm and prevent it from seizing. Obviously running in idle throughout the night is less than ideal for supplies. Thick snow and cold mud still plagued German supply lines throughout the winter as well as German supply trucks were simply not capable of the conditions that winter Russia pushed on them.
Tl;dr, a LOT of underestimating
I'll try not to talk about the military aspect of War in the East too much, as other answers have covered this very well.
A common misconception about Barbarossa is that the whole of OKW were uniform in their idea that Barbarossa was manageable, and that this underestimation of severities that popped along the line was uniformed. A number of high ranked german officers in both the OKW and the related procurement offices ( Like General Georg Thomas ) have raised their concerns about the supply limits of the campaign.
Adam Tooze's Wages of Destruction ( a book I'd recommend if you're interested in the logistical and planning on any part of Germany's actions in WW2 ) raises a few good points about the capability of german economy to sustain such an offensive even if supply lines were unaccounted for; here it's important to adress the split goals of the initial move of the Barbarossa offensive.
Two main goals were tying down the main bulk of the Red Army before the Dniepr/Dvina river, since it was clearly set that beyond that point, the supply would be unmanageable, and any large scale fighting beyond that point would be a logistical nightmare. The other was the occupation of Ukraine as a 'granary' of eastern europe - a move that was taught that would solve Germany's grain feed severe lacking and import dependancy. While a number of generals pointed out that Ukraine was still underdeveloped in its intended planning role, it was expected it would lighten the supply train load; as troops could utilize local resources for rations; meaning only thing that needed to be supplied were fuel and ammunition. This was not the case, and with Reinhard Heydrich's Hunger Plan ( the idea that by seizing USSR's western grain growing territories, the USSR's urban population would just starve to death ) being unfeasible, German army had civilian population in their occupied zones to feed. While there was a clear hierarchy of priority, Wehrmacht decided not to enact Heydrich's plan of starvation of the USSR people in occupied areas to full effect, out of the fear of antagonizing the local population and thus boosting partisan numbers and activity.
As for why the preparedness was found so lacking, and why have Germans underestimated the USSR so, you have to take into account the Red Army's reputation in December 1940, when planning for Barbarossa started. A few years ago, Stalin had done a political purge of his officer corps, leaving actual officers on the field unexperienced at best, which led everyone to believe the tactical efficiency and capabilities of the Red Army were non-existent. In 1939, this same Red Army attacked the Finland in the Talvisota (Winter War) and was beaten back by guerilla tactics and farmers on skis, thus 'proving' the point that the Red Army was utterly incompetent. While certain german officers constantly questioned the weight of the supply train on the Wehrmacht's capability, everyone expected that the Red Army would be tied down and destroyed before the Dniepr/Dvina perimeter, and the war in the east would be, like the war in France, quickly over with a quick and decisive blow. ( Which a large part did, as USSR prisoners during the first year of the war amounted to a staggering amount of about 3 million. This however was not nearly enough. ) A well known quote by Hitler about planning of Barbarossa summarizes this:
You only have to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.
Needless to say, a lot of things didn't come to evolve according to plan; Ukraine wasn't as beneficial as a granary as Germany expected; the occupied zones came with a lot of supply necessities themselves; the supply lines were overstretched and overcapacitated, Red Army's counteroffensives were more efficient than expected, mobility of the T-34 being a huge tactical issue for the Germans, who only a year earlier managed to deal with France's much better armoured Char Bs and Somuas 35. On July 3rd, after Ostheer crossed the Beresina, Fedor von Bock, commander of Army Group Centre stated that the war in the east was technically won, clearly saying that Germany should be shifting the armament production focus from Wehrmacht to the Luftwaffe (in the anticipated full scale air war with the US ), but this mood quickly soured in August, when the limits of the Barbarossa campaign became apparent, and it was completely obvious that the war in the east won't be wrapped up in 1941.
Sources: Adam Tooze, Wages of Destruction, the making and breaking of the Nazi economy, 2006.
I have read a number of books on this. The others have elucidated on this topic very well.
First of all: Hitler made it clear since the 1920s he wanted Lebensraum in the East to form his agrarian paradise so that Germany would never starve again as She did in WW1 . However he wasnt Fuhrer at the time. ACTUAL planning for the invasion would begin in 1940.
I ll try to sum up the biggest factors:
a) Intelligence failures
The Soviet Union was a closed society. Information about its logistics, road systems population and infrastructure were never distributed. The Nazi intelligence had failed to do their homework and underreported the true strength of the Soviet Union.
They did not expect the poor road quality in the Soviet Union. Vehicles were bogged down, trucks and tanks stalled and jammed as the heavy rains of autumn fell upon them. the rail gauge used in the Soviet Union was also very different from Germany, as it was larger and used for travel over much longer distances. The German Army needed time to update this.
They estimated they could knock out all of the Red Army's divisions but heavily underestimated the Red Army's capability to REPLACE them. As a result, the war dragged on. The Red Army often fought on bitterly despite overwhelming odds, inflicting casualties upon the crack troops of the German Army (despite suffering horrendous losses themselves). In fact in the first month of Operation Barbarossa, German casualties were already higher than the entire Western Campaign put together.
b) Poor Planning of Logistics
Nazi Germany had won spectacular victory after spectacular victory and was the seemingly unstoppable force in Europe. Poland, Norway, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Yugoslavia, Greece all fell rapidly. As a result, more and more of the German High Command came to trust Hitlers vision, and his grand plans of crafting a huge colonial empire in the East.
The Red Army, in contrast, had been purged of its best leaders and was in the process of rearmament. It had performed very poorly in the Winter War, and its doctrine was developed for offensive rather than defensive operations.
All of this led to VERY poor planning on the part of the leadership of the Wehrmacht. Most of them actually believed that the Red Army would fall within 3 months and the German would reach the fabled Archangelsk-Astrakhan line, bringing the bulk of the Soviet population under their control.
As a result of the catastophic planning in logistics, they had a shortage of provisioning for EVERYTHING. Lack of thick winter clothing, lack of fuel for their motor vehicles, lack of reserves to replace their casualties in the front lines (by September 1941 the Heer's reserves of 400000 men had completely dried up)
The vast space that Hitler wanted to conquer is also underestimated. We are estimating a land area far larger than that of Germany itself, and with a significantly greater population to boot. It is no easy feat to conquer, no matter how efficient your army is.
Another very related factor:
c) Ideology and hubris
I think most people overlook the fact that the leadership of the Wehrmacht, the OKW was heavily Nazified by 1941. Nazi ideology saw the Slavs as barbaric and inferior, puppets of the supposed Jewish Bolshevist system. In a war against inferior foes, you could expect lightning victory after lightning victory after all. Their policy to resistance was also VERY harsh.
But of course this backfired. Their brutal occupation only inspired more locals to rise up, join the red army or partisans to sabotage supply lines in occupied territories and basically hinder the Wehrmacht in every way.
All of these factors point to the largest decisive cause of failure: planning and expectations for a short campaign, overstretching supply lines.
Sources:
Glantz: The Soviet-German War 1941-1945: Myths and Realities: A Survey Essay
Snyder: Bloodlands, Europe Between Hitler and Stalin