Barbarossa Through Soviet Eyes

June 22, 1941, not only changed the direction of the Second World War, it also roused the Russian bear from its prewar complacency. Unleashing a massive, three-pronged assault—codenamed Barbarossa—into Soviet territory, the German army unwittingly created its own nemesis and started the process by which the Soviet Union became a superpower. In Barbarossa Through Soviet Eyes, Russian historians Artem Drabkin and Alexei Isaev reconstruct a compelling account of the first day of Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union. In addition to combing Soviet archives, the authors have assembled eyewitnesses’ own vivid recollections of this critical point in their nation's history.

Though Hitler had planned the conquest of Russia for nearly a year, and despite repeated border incursions by German infantry, the underprepared Soviet military had precious little warning of the imminent Axis attack. The non-aggression pact had lulled many Russians into a false sense of security. Just one day before the invasion, a Soviet spy in Moscow’s German embassy conveyed the ominous warning that war was coming within 48 hours. By then, Panzer tanks were already lumbering toward the border of the USSR. The first blood was drawn at 3:45 pm on the 22nd, as the German navy sank a Soviet cargo ship. Less than two hours later, a Nazi air attack on railways and aerodromes in Russia and Ukraine was coordinated with an artillery barrage across the border. Not until after hostilities had commenced did Hitler declare war.

After the first day of Barbarossa, nothing would ever be the same for the Soviet Union and its citizens. Before the day’s end, Panzer tanks rolled through the Baltic states, and the city of Brest, Byelorussia (present-day Belarus) was under German control. Apparently caught off guard by Hitler’s initiative, the Soviets struggled to make sense of a disaster that had seemingly struck from nowhere. Generals scrambled to mobilize ill-prepared divisions, pilots defied orders not to grapple with the mighty Luftwaffe, suddenly leaderless soldiers performed individual acts of blind courage, and civilians—unsettled by air-raid sirens and dire radio broadcasts—bore witness to German treachery.

Now, for the first time in English, Russians speak of their experiences on that fatal Sunday, the day on which Russia’s Great Patriotic War began. Recollections come from across Soviet society—Stalin's elite, top military commanders, the veterans who faced the German onslaught on land and in the air, the bewildered civilians. Charting 24 hours that changed the course of history, as seen through the eyes of those who were there, this book provides a rare glimpse into the reality of war on a single historic day.