Spring 1941 - the Third Reich triumphant! Having taken over Germany in
1933, Hitler launched a series of lightning campaigns across Europe that
crushed Poland, Denmark, Norway, France, the Low Countries and then the
Balkans. Only Great Britain had withstood the Nazis, but even it was
battered and bruised and close to defeat. Then, on 22 June 1941 - in the
most momentous decision of the war - the Nazi dictator turned East and
flung his victorious armies into the vastness of the Soviet Union.
Having signed a Non-Aggression Pact with Hitler back in 1939, Stalin was
taken completely by surprise by the German attack. Hitler's Wehrmacht -
buoyed by years of untrammelled success and led by some of the greatest
commanders Nazi Germany had to offer - crashed across the border and
sent the Red Army reeling. The German plan was simple and its scale
staggering; over three million men, armed with over three thousand
panzers, the same number of aircraft, more than seven thousand guns and
carried by over six hundred thousand vehicles and even more horses,
would be joined by over half a million soldiers from allied countries,
and together they would destroy the largest army in the world while
advancing a thousand miles to the very borders of Asiatic Russia. There
they would halt and what remained of the Soviet Union and the communist
faith that spawned it would wither and die. In the newly conquered
lebensraum, Hitler and the Nazis would then commence the biggest mass
human extermination programme in history. Barbarossa was huge, but it
was fought by men; and on the German side in particular, it would be
fought by junior officers and simple soldiers as the Wehrmacht tried to
win the war once and for all.
