Operation Barbarossa

Also called: German invasion of the Soviet Union

Breaking the non-aggression pact, Germany launched a surprise invasion of the Soviet Union. It drove to the gates of Moscow but was halted by winter and a Soviet counter-attack.

On 22 June 1941 more than three million German and allied troops attacked the Soviet Union along a front from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Millions of Soviet soldiers were killed or captured in the first months; the Germans besieged Leningrad and overran Ukraine.

Slowed by autumn mud, bitter cold and stubborn resistance, the Germans stopped just short of Moscow, and in December Soviet forces under Zhukov counter-attacked. Germany’s plan for a quick victory had failed. The German–Soviet war that followed for almost four years became the largest and most terrible theatre of the Second World War.