'Kicking in the door ... '

The German army of 3 million men, 3600 tanks and 1800 planes was hurled at the totally unprepared Russians on 22 June 1941. Stalin, the Russian dictator, had refused to believe British reports that Germany was about to invade his country. He placed his trust in the 'non-aggression' pact that Germany and the Soviet Union had signed in August 1939. The German forces were split into three Army Groups. Army Group North headed for Leningrad (now St Petersburg), Russia's second city and centre of her armaments industry. Army Group Centre made directly for the capital, Moscow. Army Group South's destinations were the Ukrainian wheatfields and then the oil of the Caucasus region.

The price which Russia had to pay for Stalin's misplaced trust quickly became clear: within three days almost the entire Soviet air force of 2000 planes had been destroyed. Churchill, an anti-Communist and strong opponent of Stalin, now welcomed the Soviet Union as an ally in the war against Hitler's Germany. By the middle of July, 400,000 Russians had been taken prisoner with the loss of Minsk and Smolensk. By October, Leningrad was under siege by the Germans. The siege of Leningrad was to last until January 1944. It cost the lives of 800,000 Leningraders who died from starvation, but the city was never captured.

Echoes of 1812

Hitler was sure he had learned an important lesson of history. When Napoleon's French army invaded Russia in 1812, the Russians simply retreated. As the Russians withdrew they 'scorched the earth', destroying villages, grain and livestock to deprive the French of shelter from the winter and food. The Russian army, although in retreat, remained strong and eventually counter-attacked when the French were exhausted, cold and hungry, deep inside Russian territory. Only 50,000 of Napoleon's army of half a million men survived the campaign.

Hitler decided that the Russians, this time, would not be allowed to retreat. They would be surrounded by his motorised infantry and tanks in huge 'battles of encirclement' before they could fall back. They would then be destroyed. In this way, the Soviet forces would have no army left to launch a counter-attack.

Neil Demarco: The era of the Second World War; Oxford University Press, 1993/2000, page 38