Sunday the 22nd of June 1941, the longest day of the year. The last moments of peace. Sprawling from Europe into farthest Asia, Russia was a sleeping giant. As Winston Churchill put it, for the rest of the world she was a riddle wrapped in a mystery. Like the United States, Russia was at peace. But through the mists of dawn the German army were moving into assault positions.

The hour was 4 a.m. The front, 1800 miles long. The German planning had been meticulous. Nearly 5,000 planes and 6,000 guns had been deployed, the greatest mass of artillery the world had ever seen. Russian airfields,

railroad crossings, road junctions and everything that moved on them was hit hard. The Soviet forces were stunned. Hitler had told his generals, you have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down. Hitler had not thought it necessary to declare war on the Soviet Union until after the attack had begun.

It was to be a familiar pattern, a blitzkrieg, and its ferocity was appalling. At the end of the first day, many Soviet border troops were disseminated and 1,200 planes were destroyed. The border garrisons bore the brunt. In the first minutes of the Nazi attack, the fortress of Brest on the border was surrounded.

The Germans had brought siege weapons to destroy it. The fortress sent out a message. This is Fortress Brest. We are fighting. Civilians sought safety where they could.

From Moscow the message came out that the Russian people had been invaded by Germany. Our cause is just, it said. Victory will be ours. That night Winston Churchill announced that Britain would come to the aid of the Soviet Union. Russian danger is our danger, he declared, and the danger of the United States.

America was still neutral, but partisan, and President Roosevelt promised aid to the Soviets. Russia had not faced such a mortal threat since Napoleon, or since the Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan had poured in 500 years before. Under assault, many wondered how it had all happened. The Soviet intelligence system had revealed exactly what the Germans were planning, and American and British intelligence had confirmed it.

But Stalin, convinced that the West wanted to push the Germans into war with the Soviet Union, remained silent. He avoided anything that might be seized on as a provocation. It was a very complex situation. Against all the evidence, the Soviets had hoped for just one more year of peace. In the years before the war, in less than a generation, Russia had created an independent economy.

The Soviets had collectivised their agriculture, then initiated a crash programme of industrialisation. The workers learnt as they laboured, hungry for new skills, for mastery of technology. Factories were given priority over creature comforts. Hydroelectric power provided energy for new plants to build cars, trucks and tractors.

In the 1930s the quality of life in the Soviet Union was improving. There were more goods in the stores. There was little luxury, but the people were well clothed. They seemed contented. Over in Spain civil war had broken out. The first fight against fascism. Hitler and Mussolini had backed General Franco. The Soviet Union supported the Republicans and many Soviet citizens volunteered to fight.

Also joining the Republican side were American volunteers from the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Ernest Hemingway was there, so was Paul Robeson. The Soviet pilots fought Hitler’s aces in the air over Madrid. The soldiers of the Nazi Condor Legion had already brought misery to the civilians of Barcelona and Madrid.

Their bombs had obliterated the town of Guernica, creating a poignant symbol of the horrors of war. Picasso memorialized it with a masterpiece. Hitler had proclaimed that his Third Reich would last for a thousand years. In Nuremberg, Hitler had declared Germany’s right to living space. The living space he lusted after lay to the east.

Any ideas that counted his own, Hitler set out to obliterate. The works of Tolstoy and Whitman, of Hemingway and Darwin, of Voltaire and Heine were thrown into the fire. All culture but Hitler’s was to be exterminated. Today we own Germany, tomorrow the world. In 1933 the United States and the Soviet Union signed a treaty establishing diplomatic relations.

They hoped for peace. Hitler’s cause was war. Speaking today of our lands and territories in Europe, he said, we look first and foremost towards Russia. Hitler had the full backing of Germany’s military-industrial complex. What was good for Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party was good for Alfred Krupp, the armaments tycoon.

Swiftly Hitler reoccupied the Rhineland, took back the Saar Basin and absorbed Austria. He seemed unstoppable. Then at Munich, bowing to Hitler’s promise of peace, Chamberlain and Deladier, the premiers of England and France, forced Czechoslovakia to relinquish the Sudetenland. Chamberlain said, In spite of the harshness and restlessness I thought I saw in Hitler’s face, I got the impression that he was a man who could be relied upon when he gave his word.

For Hitler, Munich was another victory. Others called it appeasement. In London, Chamberlain said it meant peace in our time. When the Nazis entered Czechoslovakia, Poland became the last country separating the Nazi troops from the Soviet border. England had already signed a pact with Poland, and France was moving in that direction.

On August 12th 1939, the Soviets proposed a defensive pact with Britain, France, Poland and other European states. As part of it, Russia sought permission to move troops through Poland if necessary. By the 15th of August, the Nazis seemed set to attack Poland. Britain and France sent junior officials to Moscow.

They requested a postponement of talks until the 21st of August. Poland steadfastly refused to allow Soviet troops to pass through. Stalin became convinced that the Western powers hoped to turn the Nazis to the East. On the 21st of August, the Minister of Defence, Voroshilov, asked Britain and France their intentions regarding a mutual alliance, in view of Poland’s attitude.

There was no reply. The Soviets believed they had no choices left. Two days later, Hitler’s propaganda minister, Loachim Ribbentrop, arrived in Moscow. On 23 August 1939, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Non-Aggression Pact was signed. For the Russians it was a way to buy time. Poland was now at war. On the 1st of September 1939 Hitler had invaded.

On the 17th of September the Red Army crossed the Polish border, reclaiming territories seized by Poland 18 years before. The pact had only delayed the inevitable. For Hitler and his henchmen, the inevitable was only a matter of planning. The Soviet Union was to be invaded. They called the invasion plan Barbarossa, after a German emperor of exceptional ferocity.

It would be a three-pronged drive into the heart of the Soviet Union. The target in the north was Leningrad, in the centre Moscow, and in the south Kiev and the whole of the Ukraine. The Soviet Union was to be totally annihilated and the land occupied up to a line drawn from Archangelsk to Astrakhan. 1st May 1941.

A traditional Soviet holiday. The day of the big parade. A show of strength and solidarity. But this year it was plagued with anxiety. Atop Lenin’s tomb in Red Square, Marshal Timoshenko warned the people of the extremely complicated international situation. Tremendous efforts were being made to rearm the Red Army with modern weapons, including new tanks.

But these efforts had just begun, and the capabilities of these armaments remained in doubt. The Germans watched the difficulties the Soviet Army experienced with great interest. Was it a reliable indicator of the Soviet strength? Could the Soviet army withstand a Nazi blitzkrieg? The foreign observers at the May Day parade saw the latest Soviet equipment and pondered the Russians’ chances.

Stalin watched and continued to hope for at least one more year to prepare. On 21 June 1941, Molotov asked the German ambassador in Moscow to explain the rumours of war. Unaware of Hitler’s plans, the ambassador reassured Molotov that the German intention was peace. On the 22nd of June 1942, one day later, the attack began at 4am.

On a front stretching from the Arctic Circle to the Black Sea, over 1800 miles, Hitler unleashed his legions. At dawn in the Kremlin, the German ambassador Schullenberg read to Molotov Hitler’s declaration of war. Molotov was stunned. The strike force consisted of 190 divisions, 5 million infantry, 47,000 guns and mortars, 4,300 tanks and almost 5,000 aircraft.

The full murderous might of a highly advanced industrial nation. The Blitzkrieg. The Lightning War. Hitler’s principal ideologist, Alfred Rosenberg, had already worked out his plan for the East. After victory over Europe, Russia would be settled by Germans and become part of the Third Reich. The native Russians, millions of them, would be killed or removed.

And the first to be executed would be the Communist Party members. The German high command ordered its advancing troops to punish the opposition by executing 50 to 100 Russians for every German killed by partisans. Hitler often watched the latest news from the front.

He was delighted. The surprise attack was beyond all expectations. The Soviet cities fell. Krodno, Minsk, Bobrysk, Gomel, Mogilev, Kaunas, Vilnius, Ostrov, Buzgov. The massive destruction rent on Poland, Belgium, Holland and France was being repeated here, only on a much grander scale. Churchill had declared that Hitler’s plan was undoubtedly Poland in 38, France in 40, Russia in 41, England in 42 and America in 43.

In the opening phases of Operation Barbarossa, tens of thousands of Soviet troops died or were imprisoned. General George Marshall told President Roosevelt that Russia would fall in less than three months. British Field Marshal Waywill believed it would take only six weeks. Hitler declared that the Soviet Union was already crushed.

His boast was premature. Gradually the terrible toll on the Soviet troops and materials slackened. The German commanders became impressed by the Soviet resistance.

General Gunther Blumentrieg said, even when encircled, the Russians stand their ground and fight. The small garrison of the Brest Fortress was still holding up after a month’s siege.

This is the fortress, the message came, and we are still fighting. Hitler himself announced the fall of the fortress. He took his ally Mussolini on a sightseeing tour of the German army achievements on the Eastern Front. His highlight was Brest. There was an inscription on the wall incised with bayonets. I am dying, but I will not surrender.

Farewell, my country. At the time, the West knew almost nothing of the scale of the sacrifice that the Soviet Union was being forced to make. or the depth of Russian strength. On 3 July 1941,

Joseph Stalin addressed the nation by radio. The German army was heading for Leningrad, Moscow and Kiev. Stalin’s message spoke of life or death for the Soviet Union. Comrades, Citizens, brothers and sisters, I am speaking to you, my friends. The vicious military attack by Nazi Germany against our country that began on the 22nd of June continues despite the heroic resistance of the Red Army.

A serious danger hangs over our country. Stalin called on the nation to hold the aggressor, to keep the Germans from penetrating far into Russia and to launch a broad partisan war. The entire nation was to become one vast military camp. Stalin became head of the State Defence Committee. Soon he would be commander-in-chief.

The Russians gave the war their own name. It became the Great Patriotic War. All our efforts must be put towards supporting our heroic Red Army, our glorious Red Navy, and the nation’s efforts must be channelled towards smashing the enemy. Onward to victory. The war produced its first great song, the Sacred War.

Aided by civilian volunteers who built tank traps and defensive positions, and by partisans who fought behind the lines, the Red Army gradually slowed the German advance. What they were forced to give up, they destroyed. The Red Air Force made it difficult for the Luftwaffe to gain absolute control in the air.

On the ground, the Soviet infantry contested every yard, and the Russian artillery proved extremely formidable. In August,

Marshal Zhukov even won a victory, driving the Nazis back in Jelena. It was the first German retreat in the Second World War. By now the Wehrmacht had lost half the tanks with which it had entered Russia, 1,300 aircraft and over half a million men. The Russian counter-attacks were something that the Wehrmacht had not encountered before.

Also the Germans had not foreseen the problems of supplying their spearheads, as the speed of their initial advances had carried them far across the plains of Russia. The familiar scene began to reverse. A captured German command post. The first German prisoners were stunned. Their Fuhrer had promised them a quick and easy victory, but this was the first bitter taste of defeat.

Steadily the fighting grew more intense. Gradually the Red Army reorganized its communications with Stavka, the Soviet high command, bringing heavier and heavier force to bear. The terrifying crescendo of the Katyusha, the multi-barrel rocket launcher, was heard for the first time. The Soviet secret weapon.

In the air the struggle was as intense. The Soviet Air Force had heavy casualties. Now it gradually deployed its latest bombers and fighters. No one in Russia sought to minimise the danger.

The great cities of Leningrad and Kiev were in peril and day by day the Germans pressed closer to Moscow itself. Hitler confidently announced… Soldiers, Moscow is ahead of you. You have marched in the streets of the finest cities of Europe. Only Moscow remains. Make her bow. Show the strength of your weapons.

Walk through her squares. Moscow will be the end of the war. They cheered before they died. In these days of extreme crisis, party members prided themselves on being the first to fight, the first to die. Bloodstained party cards honored that claim. They could be called the pioneers of victory,

the soldiers of 1941. And in 1,418 days of war, millions would fight and millions would die.