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At noon on the same day, Molotov addressed the nation, announcing the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Stalin did not speak, he was directing the battle.

The entire USSR was shocked. There was an agreement between Germany and the Soviet Union, and this agreement did not deceive any Soviet Union or German politicians, but it deceived the Soviet people and Soviet soldiers.

On the day of the outbreak of the war in the Soviet Union, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill issued a statement in support of the Soviet Union's war against Germany. ”

This speech announced their position. However, it can be seen from his conversation that he finally breathed a sigh of relief: finally someone to share our pressure.

Then, on behalf of President Roosevelt, US Acting Secretary of State Wells issued a statement on US support for the Soviet Union, and the Communist and Workers' Parties of various countries issued statements one after another to mobilize the people of all countries in the world to support the Soviet Union's anti-fascist struggle.

Two days after the start of the war, Hitler moved his new headquarters to the Wolf's Den in Rastenburg in order to command nearby.

Of course, this place belonged to Poland after the war.

In this war, the most noteworthy thing is the comparison of the military strength of the two sides.

Germany's military strength was huge, and it was the most luxurious formation in the whole of World War II. The total strength of the German army was about 7.3 million, and this figure of course included the troops captured by Germany in southern and western Europe.

Historically, the number of troops that invaded the Soviet Union was 5.5 million, including Romanian, Hungarian, and Finnish troops. There is also a claim that 2.5 million people. This figure is consistent with the establishment of 193 divisions, which are Germans.

5.5 million is the total number, the number of people who were thrown into the Eastern Front for the entire Second World War, including the armies of the client states. And 1.9 million is the military power invested in the first campaign.

Just like the information Zhukov received, the German division had 14,000 to 16,000 people, while the Soviet division, with 8,000 people, was actually half as small as the German division.

The German army had 193 divisions and 2.5 million men, including 19 tank divisions and 14 motorized divisions. There are about 4,300 tanks (3,700 in some cases), 47,200 artillery pieces, 4,980 combat aircraft in the Air Force, and 192 combat ships in the Navy.

Such a luxurious military force is indeed enough to look up to the Soviet Union. In terms of numbers alone, this scale is unprecedented.

The Germans were deployed in three clusters: Army Group North to attack Leningrad, and the German Army Group "Norway" and Army Group Finland to carry out auxiliary assaults to Murmansk and Leningrad, respectively.

Army Group Center struck at Moscow, Army Group South at Kyiv.

Look again at the Soviet side.

In terms of Soviet military strength, the total strength of the Soviet army was 5.373 million, and the number of troops deployed in the western border military districts was 2.68 million, many of whom had just arrived on the Western Front. The Soviet Army has 170 divisions and two brigades, 37,500 artillery pieces, 1,475 new tanks and a large number of old tanks, 1,540 new combat aircraft, and a large number of old aircraft, and 396 combat ships.

There were also more than a million troops in the Far East and Siberia to prevent Japan from attacking the Soviet Union. In this way, the Soviet army was inadequate compared to the vast territory of the Soviet Union.

In the early days, the USSR had a group of fortresses along the western border, a huge defensive line. The defensive line consisted of fortresses and barracks, known as the Stalin Line.

Later, the Soviet Union annexed half of Poland in the three Baltic states and began to build a defensive line on new territory, known as the Molotov Line, although this new line of defense was not completed at the beginning of the war.

At the time of the German offensive, the Soviet troops on the Western Front had not yet entered a state of war. Thanks to these lines, which did not play a role under artillery fire and tank shelling.

Although Stalin issued an order to enter a state of war on the western line at 0:30 on the 22nd, most of the grassroots units did not receive the order, so most of the troops had not yet received weapons, ammunition and other fuel, and a large number of troops were panicked in the face of the German attack.

The commander of the 9th Mechanized Army, which was directly subordinate to the Kiev Special Military District, did not receive an order from the Central Committee and himself directly opened the top-secret operational document bag, acted according to the orders inside, and became a Hero of the Soviet Union.

This shows that a large number of Soviet troops have fallen into confusion because they have cut off communication and have not opened their operational document bags.

Many troops began to retreat and began to flee.

The Soviet Air Force also did not enter combat readiness in time, and a large number of aircraft were parked at airfields. German pilots saw planes parked at the airfield, and as they saw in the same photos, more than 900 Soviet planes were destroyed on the runway in one morning, and some planes took to the air to fight the German air force, in which the Soviets lost more than 300 planes.

On the first day, the Germans advanced an average of fifty or sixty kilometers.

In the next few days, the German offensive was fierce and progressing rapidly, and a large number of Soviet troops retreated, annihilated, and fled. Tens of thousands of Soviet troops were taken prisoner.

The stubborn resistance of the Soviet troops to the Brest fortress was very rare.

After the Germans advanced for one or two hundred kilometers, the problem came.

The railways in the Soviet Union were broad-gauge railways, and the German carriage locomotives could not be passed. When the Soviets retreated, many carriages were destroyed. The capacity of the car was limited, and the logistical supply of the German army was very problematic.

Despite this, the Germans continued to attack fiercely, and at this time, the Soviets also began to counterattack. Because the airfields were almost destroyed, the infantry and tank crews did not have the cooperation of the air force, and the counterattack was weak and blind. Coupled with the fact that the tanks of the Soviet army were inferior to the Germans, the tank units and infantry failed together.

The rapid offensive of the German army made the command of the Soviet army not smooth, the situation below was chaotic, and the information could not be transmitted in time.

A day or two later, the Soviets began to return fire. The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union began in stumbling, in the miscalculation of the strategic intentions of the German army, in the successive victories of the German army. Resist, retreat, resist again, retreat again.

Italy, Romania, and Slovakia declared war on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, Finland on June 25, and Hungary on June 27, 1941. On June 26, Denmark and Vichy France severed relations with the Soviet Union on June 28.

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1. For this war, the West called it the Soviet-German war. The USSR itself called the Great Patriotic War. Because of the original relationship between China and the Soviet Union, the mainland called it the Great Patriotic War, and the research literature on Taiwan called the Soviet-German War. The so-called Soviet-German war is more objective about the facts of the war, but it feels like the Soviet Union is very bad. This does not make logical sense, because after all, it was the Soviet Union that consumed most of Germany's power. The so-called Great Patriotic War describes a lot of the actions of the Soviet army and the Soviet people against Germany, which is also illogical. If it was so powerful, why did the USSR lose so much. Only when the two points of view are viewed together can we see clearly.