ABSTRACT
TRAGEDY AND REBIRTH OF AN ARMY (1941-1942) Context On the morning of 22 June 1941 Nazi Germany unleashed a sudden and massive offensive aimed at destroying the Soviet state. The ambitious German undertaking, based on the premise that the bulk of the Red Army could be annihilated in the immediate border regions by use of large-scale blitzkrieg, caught the Soviets only partially prepared for war. Force reconstruction and reequipment programs were underway but incomplete, and, although the Soviets had ample warning, for as yet inexplicable reasons Stalin forbade the Soviet military from taking prudent defensive precautions, thus granting the Germans the benefits of strategic, operational and tactical surprise. German hammer blows staggered the Soviet armed forces and almost destroyed them. By Soviet admission:
our pre-war views on the conduct of armed struggle in the initial period of war did not investigate the possibility of concealed timeljC deployment and simultaneous enemy armed forces operations on the land, in the air and at sea. Mistakes in theory had a negative effect on resolving the practical questions of covering the state borders and deploying the armed forces, which, along with other reasons, caused serious misfortunes in the war.
