The German Attack on USSR and the Uneasy Polish Alliance with Russia

Abstract

In the early morning of 22 June 1941 the German attack on territory in the hands of the Soviet Union began. On a front more than 3000 km wide, stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea, struck three army groups — North, Centre and South — with a strength of 135 divisions, seventeen of them panzer, with more than 3500 tanks supported by more than 4500 aircraft. The additional Finnish front, about 700km wide, contained twenty divisions supported by 600 aircraft. The reserve consisted of twenty-four divisions, two of which were armoured. Altogether this came to about 5.5 million men equipped with modern weapons and already to a large extent hardened by fighting in Poland, Norway, France and the Balkans. Within a few days later, the Germans were joined by Italian, Romanian, Slovak, Finnish and Hungarian divisions. Amongst the German units and usually in the Waffen SS were detachments of Belgian, French, Dutch, Norwegian and Spanish volunteers. There were even also around 800 Swiss.¹