largest tank battle, eastern front collapses

Despite these early setbacks, the Soviets’ seemingly inexhaustible supply of troops ultimately proved too much for the Germans to overcome. As German tanks and troops swarmed through Soviet territory in a three-pronged attack, most outside analysts began predicting that a Soviet defeat was only weeks or even days away. German troops killed or wounded 150,000 Soviets in the first week of the campaign, while the Luftwaffe-the Nazi air force-destroyed over 2,000 Soviet planes in just the first two days. Operation Barbarossa was intended to deal a total defeat to the Soviets in only three to six months, but in the early days of the invasion, many thought the fall might come even sooner. Most people believed Germany would quickly crush the Soviet Union.

Stalin’s puzzling trust in the Third Reich was finally dashed on June 22, 1941, when the Germans launched Operation Barbarossa and invaded the Soviet Union with more than three million men.

He also accepted Hitler’s cover story that the sudden presence of German troops on the Soviet border was merely a move to keep them out of range of British bomb strikes, and even ordered his troops to not fire on German spy planes despite numerous “accidental” invasions of Soviet airspace. In the months before the German advance, he brushed off dozens of reports from Soviet spies warning that an invasion was imminent.

Nevertheless, Stalin appeared blind to the Nazi leader’s true intentions. While the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany had signed a famous non-aggression pact in August 1939, many anticipated that Adolf Hitler had designs on attacking the Soviets-whom he viewed as an inferior race-as soon as the time was right. Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union was the largest surprise attack in military history, but according to most sources, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise at all. Joseph Stalin disregarded early warnings of the German attack.

Largest tank battle, eastern front collapses