Although Hitler does bear a good deal of responsibility for the failures of Barbarossa, the lack of winter equipment was one where there was plenty of blame to go around. Short-sighted planning within the Heer's upper echelons made the winter campaign a very tough one.

The irony was that many of the Heer's general officers had experience with the climatic conditions of Russia during the First World War and many of them were aware of these difficulties. However, both the OKW and OKH planners for Barbarossa planned to defeat the bulk of Soviet armies before the onset of winter. In January 1941, Luftwaffe quartermaster-general, Lieutenant-General von Seidel met with OKH head Halder in a conference coordinating the supply situation between the Heer and Luftwaffe, von Siedel broached the topic of winter clothing, his Heer counterparts tersely noted that the campaign would be finished by winter. For the most part, the German military establishment took a cavalier approach to the capabilities of their Soviet enemy and their thinking mirrored that of Hitler- that one swift kick would lead to a collapse of the Soviet state. The campaign planners anticipated that the winter would mostly be a mopping up operation whose troops would require a minimum of supplies.

In the case of the German Heer, the German military underwent a massive and rapid expansion in the 1930s and 40s that left many of its units underequipped or forced to substitute captured material. In the Wehrmacht, robbing Peter to pay Paul became something of a routine for its quartermasters. In the case of winter clothing, both shortages of this equipment and their inadequacy for harsh conditions like in the USSR were not readily apparent in 1941. The only winter of the war (1939/40) which, although quite severe, saw most of the Wehrmacht in its barracks inside the Reich or on leave. The preparations for Barbarossa envisioned that existing stocks of winter equipment were adequate since the expectation was that the bulk of the victorious German troops would return to the Reich and the garrison/mopping up force would use existing stocks from both the departed units and those produced in the occupied territories.

Barbarossa's overly optimistic logistical planning the Germans only envisioned an occupation force of 58 divisions for the winter of 1941/42 and as such they only prepared large supplies of winter clothing for a force of this size. By contrast, the number of German formations operating in the USSR in October/November 1941 was triple what Barbarossa planners had counted upon. The stocks of winter clothing were kept in Poland and languished there. It made very little sense to carry such equipment during the summer as weather conditions are typically quite hot in the western Soviet Union. Only belatedly did OKW and OKH realize that winter clothing needed to be distributed in amounts far greater than anticipated during prior planning sessions. Between 20 and 30 October, Operation Bogen sought to get this cold weather equipment coupled with clothing from depots in the Reich and from civilian sources into the frontline formations. Bogen failed in this because both the destruction of Soviet rail-lines and different gauges created massive bottlenecks in the German logistical tail and clothing had a lower priority than ammunition and fuel. This problem worsened as winter approached as German locomotives' did not handle cold weather very well, leasing to an epidemic of burst cooling pipes. The problems did not end with the trains, as German trucks broke down after rough treatment and horses froze. Thus, even if winter clothing reached the front, German supply officers had no adequate means to distribute them en masse to their units. The escalating transport crisis meant that the onus for winter clothing fell on the supply officers of the field armies, but were naturally a lower priority given the tempo of the fighting. The fast-moving style of warfare favored by the Germans meant that carrying equipment needed several months down the line was a non-starter for a logistical system already overburdened.

This massive underestimation of Soviet capabilities led to a disaster in late 1941 as the logistical system of the Wehrmacht began falling apart at the seams. Not only had the Red Army continued to fight despite massive losses in the various cauldron battles, but Barbarossa's logistical network was incapable of adequately supplying the German armies in the field. Instead of mopping up, German troops were engaged in offensive operations in November 1941 that ate up equipment and ammunition at a prodigious rate. In such a overburdened logistical system, winter clothing often had a lower priority than fuel or ammunition.

In short, the "titans" of the German General Staff were in a dire situation of their own making. Their planning for Barbarossa was careless and they brushed aside inconvenient details that suggested defeat of the USSR would take more than a single campaign. Victory over France in 1940, which few officers in the Heer had actually expected, had engendered a fatal overconfidence which dovetailed with other problematic components of the German way of war.

But in one small way, the German planners of Barbarossa managed to wring a victory of sorts postwar by foisting all the blame for the campaign's missteps upon Hitler. The already common trope in the West of of "Russia's General Winter" (which itself is not true- Napoleon's Grande Armee was a defeated force by the winter of 1812) lent this distorted and selective memory of 1941 a degree of legitimacy.