The largest military offensive in history began at 3:00 a.m. on June 22, 1941. The armed forces of Germany and its allies attacked the Soviet Union along a frontier 1,800 miles long. Stalin disregarded all forewarnings about the impending onslaught, leaving his army formations totally unprepared. The war was meant to fulfil Hitler's Lebensraum plans. Germany's goal was not only to defeat the Red Army, but also to destroy it and the Soviet Union in a mammoth and ruthless tide of annihilation. Hitler's strategy was simple: a blitzkrieg that would wipe out large Red Army formations quickly, by denying them the possibility of retreat or assistance from other units. To accomplish this, the Germans prepared a military offensive on an unprecedented scale: More than 3 million fighting men, 600,000 motor vehicles, 750,000 horses, 3,580 tanks, and 1,830 aircraft took part in the invasion. Hitler hoped to attain a rapid victory and to reach the Ural Mountains before the winter. German forces advanced toward the immediate targets: Leningrad, Moscow, and Kiev. The Wehrmacht attained prodigious success in the first few weeks, occupying a strip hundreds of kilometres deep. Masses of Soviet soldiers were killed or taken prisoner, and the German military juggernaut, treating the occupied civilian population with a brutality never before witnessed seemed unstoppable.
