Racial policies of Nazi Germany
As early as 1925, Adolf Hitler vaguely declared in his political manifesto and autobiography Mein Kampf that he would invade the Soviet Union, asserting that the German people needed to

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The Germans had begun massing troops near the Soviet border even before the campaign in the Balkanshad finished. By the third week of February 1941, 680,000 German soldiers were

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In 1930, Mikhail Tukhachevsky, a prominent military theorist in tank warfare in the interwar period and later Marshal of the Soviet Union, forwarded a memo to the Kremlin that lobbied for colossal investment in the resources required for the mass production of

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The initial momentum of the German ground and air attack completely destroyed the Soviet organizational command and controlwithin the first few hours, paralyzing every level of command from the infantry platoon to the Soviet High Command in

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On 2 July and through the next six days, a rainstorm typical of Belarusian summers slowed the progress of the panzers of Army Group Center, and Soviet defences stiffened. The delays gave the Soviets time to organize a massive counterattack against Army Group

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After Kiev, the Red Army no longer outnumbered the Germans and there were no more trained reserves directly available. To defend Moscow, Stalin

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At around 01:00 on 22 June 1941, the Soviet military districts in the border area were alerted by NKO Directive No. 1, issued late on the night of 21 June. It called on them to "bring all

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