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[Maus]

What do we have in the "today in history" box, Johnny?

June 22nd, 1941, 03:00: massed German artillery announces the opening of Operation Barbarossa...

Weighted down with heavy cares, condemned to months of silence, I can at last speak freely -- German people! At this moment a march is taking place that, for its extent, compares with the greatest the world has ever seen. I have decided again today to place the fate and future of the Reich and our people in the hands of our soldiers. May God aid us, especially in this fight. - Adolph Hitler


Historian Alan Clark sums it up nicely in Barbarossa:

(quote)

Hitler's proclamation was read by Goebbels over the radio to the whole nation at seven o'clock on the morning of 22nd June. Four hours earlier the glare from six thousand gun flashes had lit the eastern dawn, overwhelming the bewildered Russians in a tumult of fire and destruction. The frontier guards, awakened by the squeal and clatter of tank tracks, were shot down as they emerged from their barracks, running half-dressed through the smoke. From gun positions in the line, the Germans intercepted again and again the same message: "We are being fired on; what shall we do?"

What an appalling moment in time this is! The head-on crash of the two greatest armies, the two most absolute systems, in the world. No battle in history compares with it. Not even that first ponderous heave of August 1914, when all the railway engines in Europe sped the mobilisation, or the final exhausted lunge against the Hindenberg Line four years later. In terms of numbers of men, weight of ammunition, length of front, the desperate crescendo of the fighting, there will never be another day like June 22nd, 1941.

[JuntaJoe]

The Eastern Front was the largest war campaign in mankind's history.

Manpower, ordinance, deaths, equipment, you name it.

The war in western Europe and the Pacific were huge, but nothing compares to the Eastern Front campaign.