June 22, 1941 - Eastern Europe German Chancellor Adolf Hitler launches “Operation Barbarossa (“Red Beard”, named for Frederick the First, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire from 1155-1190, who was known as “Barbarossa for his colorful beard), sending three million German troops, plus 650,000 soldiers from German allied nations, along with 4,300 tanks, supported by 7,200 artillery pieces and 4,400 aircraft, across the borders of Chairman Joseph Stalins USSR, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south. The ensuing epic four year struggle between two of the most despotic, savage regimes the world had ever seen did not end well for Hitler. Just counting the period up to the end of 1941, it cost the German’s over 800,000 military casualties, and Stalin over 4,000,000 (the true total will never be known). By the end of the war, German losses in the East were five to eight million (dead, wounded, captured, missing); the Soviets, over eleven million (again, the actual number is unknown). Civilian deaths, for Russia, Poland, Ukraine, the Balkans, and other countries caught up in the titanic struggle, were in the tens of millions. The outcome changed the face of Europe for the next five decades.
Posted on: Wed, 25 Jun 2014 14:11:45 +0000
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