ABSTRACT
On 22 June 1941, Germany launched an all-out attack on the Soviet Union. It committed that act by surprise and despite the existence of the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact that had been negotiated less than two years before. The Nazi High Command counted on routing the Red Army’s main forces within a short period, destroying or capturing the Soviet Union’s major industrial centres, and winning the war before winter arrived. The main objective specified in the directive for Operation ‘Barbarossa ’was ‘to crush Soviet Russia in a quick campaign before the end of the war against England’.1
