June 22, 1941 is the day of the beginning of the most brutal, most ruthless war that has ever been held on the territory of the Russian state. Treacherously without declaring war, German troops invaded Soviet territory. Only courage, courage, devotion to their country of simple Soviet people allowed to defeat the fascist invaders.
The Great Patriotic War, which lasted almost four years, affected every home, every family, claimed millions of lives. This concerned everyone, because Hitler did not just go to conquer the country, he went to destroy everything and everyone, sparing no one and nothing. The first information about the attack began to arrive at 3:15 in the night from Sevastopol, and already at four in the morning the whole western land border of the Soviet state was attacked. And at the same time, the cities of Kiev, Minsk, Brest, Mogilev and others were bombed.
For a long time, it was believed that the top leadership of the Union, led by Stalin, did not believe in the attack of Nazi Germany in the summer of 41. However, recent studies of archival documents have allowed several historians to believe that the order to bring the western districts on alert was issued by a Directive of the General Staff of the Red Army on June 18, 1941.
This Directive appears in the interrogation protocols of the former commander of the Western Front, General Pavlov, although so far the Directive itself has not been found. According to historians, if it had been completed a few days before the outbreak of hostilities, then by the winter of 1941 German troops would have reached a maximum of Smolensk.
In the first months of border battles, the Red Army lost about 3 million people dead and captured. Against the backdrop of the general retreat, the Brest Fortress, heroically defending for a month, stands out, Przemysl is a city where the Soviet army not only withstood the blow of German troops, but also managed to launch a counterattack and throw the Germans two kilometers deeper into Poland.
The troops of the southern front (the former Odessa military district) repelled enemy attacks and plunged into the territory of Romania for several kilometers. The Soviet Navy and naval aviation, put on full alert several hours before the attack, on that tragic day did not lose a single ship, not a single aircraft. And in the fall of 1941, naval aviation bombed Berlin.
One of the most significant events of the beginning of the war was the capture by German troops of the suburbs of Leningrad on September 8, 1941 and the taking of the city in a tight ring. The blockade, which lasted 872 days and was removed by the Soviet troops only in January 1943, caused tremendous damage to the city and its inhabitants. Unique architectural monuments were destroyed, palaces and temples that were considered the pride of the Russian people were burned. 1.5 million people, including young children, died of starvation, cold and constant bombing.
The selfless and heroic resistance that a simple Russian soldier showed at the very beginning of the war thwarted the Germans' attempt to conduct a blitzkrieg on the territory of the USSR - a blitzkrieg and to bring the great country to its knees in a short half a year.
