Eastern Front

World War II’s most infamous siege began a little over two months after the launch of “Operation Barbarossa,” Adolf Hitler’s surprise invasion of the Soviet Union. On June 22, 1941, in defiance of a nonaggression pact signed two years earlier, some 3 million German soldiers ...read more

Despite being sworn ideological enemies, Nazi Germany and the Communist Soviet Union put aside their vast differences to sign a nonaggression pact in August 1939. Thus assured that the USSR wouldn’t intervene, Adolf Hitler kicked off World War II just days later by invading ...read more

On the night of August 20, 1939, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler reached out to a bitter foe with a desperate plea. Time was running short on preparations for his planned invasion of Poland on September 1, and Hitler needed the Soviet Union to stay out of his war. In a telegrammed ...read more

1. Joseph Stalin disregarded early warnings of the German attack. 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. While the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany had ...read more

With sabers drawn, about 600 Italian cavalrymen yelled out their traditional battle cry of “Savoia!” and galloped headlong toward 2,000 Soviet foot soldiers armed with machine guns and mortars. On August 23, 1942 (some sources say August 24), the cavalrymen—part of the Axis ...read more