Germany launched its massive invasion of the Soviet Union
On this day · 22 June 1941
On June 22, 1941, Hitler broke his pact with Stalin and sent millions of troops east in the largest land invasion ever attempted.
Despite a 1939 non-aggression pact, Adolf Hitler had long intended to conquer the Soviet Union. Before dawn on June 22, 1941, Germany unleashed Operation Barbarossa, a surprise assault along a front stretching some 1,800 miles from the Baltic to the Black Sea.
Germany and its allies, chiefly Finland and Romania, massed more than 3.5 million troops, including over three million German soldiers, backed by thousands of tanks and aircraft. Soviet forces, caught unprepared, suffered staggering early losses as the Wehrmacht drove deep toward Leningrad, Moscow, and the Ukrainian heartland.
It opened the Eastern Front, the largest and deadliest land war in history.
The gamble failed. Soviet resistance, vast distances, and a brutal winter halted the advance short of Moscow by December. Barbarossa brought the USSR into the Allied camp and committed Germany to a war of attrition it could not ultimately win.
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