On 22 June 1941 Germany and its allies launched the biggest land invasion in history. After an artillery barrage had opened up along a thousand-mile front, three million German troops, along with half a million more from Romania and other allied countries, poured across the border with the Soviet Union in an attack spearheaded by 3,600 tanks and assisted by more than half a million motor vehicles. Over a thousand combat aircraft bombarded Soviet military positions and airfields from above.
Within a few weeks, the Red Army had been driven back hundreds of miles. Its armies were encircled, its tanks and equipment destroyed, and more than half a million of its men captured. Panic and chaos reigned in the Soviet armed forces as communications broke down, generals did not know what to do, and head-on confrontations with the invaders only led to huge loss of life. On 3 July 1941, Franz Halder, chief of the German Army general staff, wrote ecstatically in his diary: “It’s really not saying too much if I claim that the campaign against Russia has been won in 14 days.”
