On June 22, 1941, Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich launched its invasion of the Soviet Union, named after Barbarossa, the Holy Roman Emperor of the Middle Ages.
That bare, declarative sentence can in no way convey the magnitude of the military, societal, and political catastrophe that began that day with the German artillery bombardment at 2 a.m. No contemporary media can adequately portray the military events that occurred during the next four years in which tens of millions of people lost their lives or were driven from their homes. The scale is too large; the consequences were too cataclysmic.
It began on a summer morning in eastern Poland when millions of German troops streamed out of their start lines, breached the Bug River and entered Soviet territory. It ended in the smoking rubble of Berlin almost four years later; the German Führer was dead, his corpse immolated and lying in a shallow grave near the ruins of his once grandiose Reich Chancellery.
But let’s step back from the horrifying big picture and focus on the tactical military events of June 22, 1941. The Reich’s armed forces, mostly the army and the air force, were at their peak that morning. Except for the British Royal Air Force, no enemy force had stopped the Wehrmacht whose conquests encompassed continental Europe.
Hitler issued a proclamation to his troops that morning with the salutation, Soldaten des Reiches, or soldiers of the Reich. In it he exhorted the Landsers and Panzertruppen to wage a merciless war of annihilation on the lands and the citizens of the Soviet Union. It was to be a new war, one whose terrible manifestations would cause misery and grief on a scale previously unknown to the human race.
Of course, the average Landser that morning had no conception of what the ensuing years would bring. He was focused on his responsibilities and duty. He checked his rifle, a bolt action Karabiner 98, and listened to his squad leader. Each Landser was a small part of what may have been the finest land army any nation has ever assembled. In every way, the German soldier that morning was superior to his counterpart. He was better equipped, better trained, better educated, and most certainly better led. The German army was battle tested and blooded by the battles already won in Poland and France.
After years of National Socialist propaganda, the German soldier in his youthful naivete mostly believed that his quest to destroy the Soviet state was justified to protect the German people from the hated Jewish Bolshevist menace. Most of the German soldiers believed they would win the war against the Soviet Union before Christmas; many tens of thousands of those soldiers would never see another Christmas in the Reich and would perish in the forests, swamps, and plains of European Russia.
Arranged in three groups, the strongest of which was Army Group Center on the Moscow axis, the German army lunged into Soviet territory, the armored formations taking the lead. The Panzer IIs, IIIs, and IVs trundled across pontoon bridges, quickly established bridgeheads and began rolling deeply into White Russia. Above them raged the Luftwaffe, aiming for the Soviet airfields. Despite the massive buildup in Poland during the previous months, the Soviet Red Army was not prepared for the German attack. Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin had finally agreed to raise the readiness of Soviet forces, but it was too late and most of the units were caught by surprise.
The foolish forward deployment of the Soviet units, much like Poland in 1939, was tailor made for the German Panzer groups of Army Group Center. Panzer Group II led by Col. Gen. Heinz Guderian and Panzer Group III led by Col. Gen. Hermann Hoth easily overcame or bypassed early resistance and forged ahead toward Minsk, the first large city in their path. In the coming days, the two lethal spearheads would converge east of Minsk, creating the first of many double envelopments in which hundreds of Soviet units and millions of Red Army soldiers would disappear.
The Panzertruppen were the crown jewels of the German Army. On the first day of Barbarossa, the German tankers, clad in their black uniforms with their silver death’s head insignia glistening on their collars, were the finest in the world. Hoth and Guderian were among the most capable officers in the German Army; both were deeply experienced combat officers who led from the front. The troops believed in their commanders, and they believed in their ability to overcome any obstacle and defeat any enemy. Their teamwork, leadership, and tactical combat skill were unsurpassed.
The Luftwaffe that day also held a massive qualitative advantage over its Soviet opponent. Eager to prove their superiority after leaving the RAF unconquered in the Battle of Britain, the Luftwaffe bombers and fighters roared into Soviet air space and attacked the Soviet airfields. Their attacks were wildly successful and most of the Soviet air force was destroyed on the ground on Day One in front of Army Group Center. The inexperienced Soviet pilots who did sortie against the Germans that day fell easy prey to the vastly more accomplished Luftwaffe pilots.
Army Group North had similar success with its Panzer group commanded by Col. Gen. Erich Hoepner. The LXI Panzer Corps under Gen. Erich von Manstein raced into Lithuania and achieved incredible gains on Day One, oustripping any of the most optimistic forecasts of the German General Staff.
For the Red Army soldiers stationed in the border units, June 22, 1941, would be a day of horror, fear, confusion, and death. Mass confusion reigned as Soviet commanders, ever mindful of the Stalinist purges of the 1930s, were paralyzed, afraid to take the initiative for fear of crossing the General Secretary. German special forces had severed communication lines and Soviet units were isolated and overwhelmed. With total air superiority the Luftwaffe provided expert air support for the advancing Panzers and infantry, blasting Soviet defenders and clearing the way for rapid German advances. Despite being badly overmatched, there was much heroism in the Red Army positions, and there was evidence of the stubborn, often fanatical resistance that eventually would overcame and defeated the German army.
For the Soviet soldiers who did survive and surrendered to the Germans, their ordeal was just beginning. In the early days of Barbarossa, millions of Red Army soldiers fell into German captivity. Herded into vast, amorphous groups, the Germans subjected the helpless Soviet POWs to the most barbaric treatment. Corralled in open pens like livestock with little water and virtually no food, some 3 million Red Army soldiers died in German POW and extermination camps.
Another ominous element of this new war would soon materialize behind the advancing German troops: the Einsatzgruppen of Reinhard Heydrich’s SS Security Service, or Sicherheitsdienst. These SS volunteers were ideological murderers, tasked with finding Jews and Communists and killing them. The special commandos would begin their sinister work almost immediately in White Russia, Lithuania and Ukraine. They were the vanguard of Hitler’s Final Solution, the culmination of Hitler’s and his National Socialist Party’s obsession with racial purity and ethnic domination. Soon the citizens of conquered Soviet territory would learn the awful nature of this new war and this new breed of German.
But on Day One, June 22, 1941, the stage belonged to the armed forces. And the Wehrmacht was supremely successful as the Soviet forces reeled back and milled about in disorder, hampered by dysfunctional leadership and inadequate preparation. The German attack plunged the Soviet state into an existential crisis it would barely survive.
Eventually, the Red Army would find its footing, wear down the overextended German invaders, and turn the tide. The German Volk would pay a terrible price for following Hitler’s racist arrogance as avenging Soviet forces and allied bombers would destroy and dismember much of Germany.
But on this day in June, that retribution was far into the future.
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