The Fatal Step

22 June 1941. In the hours before dawn, Germany attacked the Soviet Union with almost three million soldiers. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers from German allied nations, such as Hungary, Italy and Finland, joined in the attack.

Germany had, in a comparatively low-cost campaign, rolled up the nations of Western Europe in less than two months. The Fascists were not so fortunate this time around. The Soviet Union was a far larger nation with a population to match.

Three million Soviet soldiers were captured or killed in the first months of the war. The German advance was more costly than the Germans planned on and the Russian weather did not cooperate. The Soviet Union, in men and material, was far stronger than Germany anticipated. Germany was virtually bled out in campaigning over vast distances to conquer what was largely empty steppes.

And when the Germans made the second major mistake of declaring war on the Americans following the Japanese air raid upon the Pearl Harbor Naval Base (an incomprehensible act by Germany as Japan had not declared war on the Soviet Union), that opened the floodgates of supplies from the factories and farms of the United States.

By the summer of 1943, the Germans had been defeated at Stalingrad, where an entire German army group had laid down their weapons. The Fascists were then defeated at the Battle of Kursk, the largest tank battle ever fought. The German Wehrmacht, arguably man-for-man the finest armed force of the first half of the 20th Century, was ground into powder by the Red Army. When the Red Army began to roll them back, by then the Germans had the Western Allies coming at them from the other end of their little empire.

Historians may debate when the tide turned for Germany. It is my view, however, that Hitler sealed his fate when he unleashed his armies upon the Soviet Union.