Nazi Germany's assault on the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, Operation Barbarossa, was the largest invasion in history. Almost 3.5 million men smashed into Stalin's Red Army, reaching the gates of Leningrad, Moscow and Sevastopol. But not all of this vast army was German, indeed by the summer of 1942 over 500,000 were Romanians, Italians, Hungarians, Slovaks and Croatians - Hitler's Axis allies. As part of the German offensive that year, more than four allied armies advanced to the Don only to be utterly annihilated in the Red Army's Saturn and Uranus winter offensives. Hundreds of thousands were killed, wounded or captured and the German Sixth Army was left surrounded and dying in the rubble of Stalingrad.
Jonathan Trigg served in the 1st Battalion The Royal Anglian Regiment, reaching the rank of Captain and completing tours in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, and the Middle East. He is an established writer on military history. He is the author of "Hitler's Vikings," "Hitler's Gauls," "Hitler's Flemish Lions," "Hitler's Jihadis" and "Battle Story: Hastings 1066." He lives in Sheffield.
