Barbarossa

On 22 June 1941, Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa, sending millions of troops across the Soviet frontier in an invasion conceived as both a military campaign and an ideological war of annihilation. Jonathan Dimbleby follows the offensive from its political origins and initial German advances through the battles, occupation policies and mass killing that turned the Eastern Front into the most destructive theatre of the Second World War.

The narrative examines the decisions of Hitler, Stalin and their commanders alongside the experience of soldiers and civilians caught in the invasion. As German forces outrun supplies and Soviet resistance hardens, the drive on Moscow falters and the campaign becomes the strategic disaster that Germany had failed to anticipate. Dimbleby places Barbarossa within the wider war and argues for its decisive importance in the eventual destruction of the Third Reich.