The launch of Operation Barbarossa, combined with issues with the Luftwaffe's needs for equipment outstripping Germany's production capacity and increasingly poor relations with the Nazi Party, caused Udet to commit suicide on 17 November 1941 by shooting himself in the head. "Our defeat was caused by Udet," Hitler would claim. "That man concocted the most nonsensical state of affairs ever seen in the history of the "Luftwaffe"."