June 22: The Black Day of the Calendar

June 22, 1941. This Sunday forever marks itself in national calendars with a black mourning color. This is one of the most terrible dates in our history. It is the day of the greatest military catastrophe. How could this happen? Whose fault was it that the Germans managed to catch the USSR off guard? Why was German aviation allowed, on the very first day of the war, to shoot down hundreds of our planes at airfields with impunity, and why were numerous divisions of the Red Army smashed and destroyed within a few weeks? How did it happen that the colossal military machine of the Soviet state malfunctioned at the most critical moment?

A detailed hour-by-hour and minute-by-minute chronicle of the tragic events of June 22, 1941, and an analysis of the reasons for the defeat—memories of veterans and testimonies of eyewitnesses—are presented in a joint project by leading military historians.