Operation Barbarossa
June 22, 1941
Three million German soldiers crossed the Soviet border on a twelve-hundred-mile front in the largest invasion in human history. Stalin refused to believe it for days. Within months Panzer columns were approaching Moscow, and the war on the Eastern Front had begun, the slaughterhouse that would consume twenty-seven million Soviet lives.
In context
Also in 1941 (6 other events on record)
- Pearl Harbor · North America · War
- Japan strikes across the Pacific · East Asia · War
- Singapore campaign begins · Southeast Asia · War
- Roosevelt's Day of Infamy speech · North America · War
- Atlantic Charter issued · North America · Politics
- Bismarck sunk · Europe · War
Before and after in Europe
Before and after in War
Era
Modern Era (1901–2000), one of 590 events from that era on Saeculum.