Barbarossa

On this day in 1941, Germany launched its invasion of the Soviet Union.  Nearly 3 million German soldiers attacked in three main groups over a 1500 mile front.  Within days most of the Soviet air force was destroyed by German planes as they sat on their air fields - and soon the Germans had surrounded entire Soviet armies, taking massive tracts of territory.

Germany's plan was to knock the Soviets out of the war, then turn to the West and take on Britain - or force them to sue for peace.  They had already conquered France, Denmark and Norway.  Recall that the U.S. was not yet in WWII, as Pearl Harbor was still more than 5 months away.

For the first 5 months it seemed nothing could stop the Germans and that the Soviets would be crushed.  They captured more than a million Soviet soldiers and killed nearly as many in just the first 10 months of the campaign code named Barbarossa, after the German Holy Roman Emperor of the middle ages, Frederick Barbarossa - "red beard" - who perished in the Third Crusade.

Of course, the Soviets held even with tremendous losses, and counter-attacked at Stalingrad to inflict a mortal wound on the German Army.  From that point on, the Germans were on the defensive, eventually overwhelmed by the Soviet armies and rebuilt air force.  We supplied our ally, the Soviets, with thousands of pieces of  equipment plus trucks and weapons that Stalin, the Soviet leader, never would acknowledge as important to Soviet victory.

Hitler's master plan of conquering the east and resettling it with millions of good Germans was shattered, as was Germany after this greatest of miscalculations.