"When ‘Barbarossa’ begins, the world will hold its breath and lose the power of speech![/b]” — that was what Hitler said. And after the defeat of France, the Führer declared: “Believe me, compared to this, the campaign against Russia will be a child’s play.” However, the very first day of the war against the USSR showed how wrong he was—already on June 22, 1941, the German forces had to admit: “The enemy fights stubbornly and bravely to the last. No information is given about defectors and those who surrendered. The battles are much more serious than during the Polish and Western campaigns…”
In this book, the leading military historian not only reconstructs the course of the Invasion on all fronts—from the Baltics to the Black Sea—but also debunks numerous myths about the first day of the Great Patriotic War:
“What makes it possible to look at June 22 from a different angle? First of all, it’s work with the enemy’s documents, which—when compared with domestic data—gave plenty of food for thought. It turned out that already on the first day of the war, the German command was forced to seriously adjust the initial plan of actions for its troops in Ukraine under the influence of the stubborn resistance of the Red Army. This is the deepest misconception—that on June 22, 1941, the forces of the invasion were unfolding ‘as if on cue’…” (Aleksey Isaev)