Barbarossa - Hitler invades the Soviet Union

22nd June 1941: The largest army ever assembled strikes without warning in the early hours of the morning

Panzerjager troops of a Grenadier regiment man a Pak 37mm anti-tank gun during an assault along a road on the Eastern Front. In the distance, a vehicle is burning fiercely.

Dawn breaks on the 22nd June 1941 as some of the millions of German troops begin their march east.

Hours before the launch of the largest invasion the world had ever seen, a German soldier with communist sympathies had swam across the Bug river to give a warning to the Russians. Stalin ordered that he be shot for spreading disinformation.

In June 1812, Napoleon invaded Russia. His supplies were horse-drawn, and only his officers and the cavalry were mounted. Most troops marched hundreds of miles. Apart from the panzers, Hitler’s army was little different, using over 600,000 horses to haul supplies, and only a small proportion of his infantry were in motorised units.

Max Kuhnert¹ was a soldier in a cavalry reconnaissance unit attached to an infantry regiment. In the early hours of the morning, he was taking his horses to be watered:

At exactly 3.15 a.m., in the faint first light of day I was on my way to water the horses at the river when the whole area exploded. All hell was let loose and I prayed for the strength to hold my two horses.

The noise and sight were indescribable, the earth seemed to tremble, all the batteries came alive out of the darkness of the pine trees. Flames shot towards the border followed by the explosion of the shells on the other side. All around us were what appeared to be great sheets of lightning, torn through by flames while thunder crashed and boomed.

The barrage kept on and on, no one could hear anything else and orders had to be given by hand signal. We were ordered to march towards the river, where special units had already erected a pontoon bridge, over which, although we could not hear them, we could see our tanks rumbling.