June 22: Operation Barbarossa

Over four million troops of the Axis Powers invaded the Soviet Union on this date in 1941 in “Operation Barbarossa.” It was the largest military operation in human history in terms of both manpower and casualties. Four mobile killing groups, the Einsatzgruppen, with roughly 1,000 men in each, accompanied the invading armies to round up and kill communist leaders and Jews. By year’s end, the Einsatzgruppen had been beefed up to 60,000, and the mass-shooting of over a million Jews in the Ukraine, Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, and eastern Poland was well underway. During the same months, three million Soviet troops would be taken prisoner and eventually starved, beaten, and worked to death.

“Fifteen of the twenty-five Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzcommando commanders had doctorates.” —Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands