The correct option is: "to gain control of the rich resources that were under the control of the USSR"
Operation Barbarossa undertaken on June 22, 1941, was the code name given by Adolf Hitler to the invasion plan of the Soviet Union by the Axis Forces during the Second World War. This operation opened the Eastern Front, which became the theater of one of the largest operations of the war, scene of the biggest and most brutal battles of the conflict in Europe. The name of the operation is a tribute to Federico I Barbarroja whose name is linked to the German nationalism of the 19th century. n Hitler's ideology was the eastward expansion within his policy of "living space" (Lebensraum in German), although this was a German aspiration prior to the First World War. Already in 1918 in the Peace of Brest-Litovsk, the high command of the German imperial armies of the Eastern front had imposed their conditions for the armistice that the Bolsheviks requested. For practical reasons of survival the communist leaders had desisted to extend their government to the former regions of the Russian Empire of Poland and the Baltic countries, handing them over to the Kaiser's Reich.