On the eve of Operation Barbarossa, Adolph Hitler’s long-desired invasion of the Soviet Union, the German high command issued a chilling edict to the Axis armies waiting for their marching orders, setting the tone for one of the most horrific and prolonged episodes of mass barbarity ever recorded.
“This will be a war of annihilation,” said the German Army chief of staff, General Franz Halder, relaying the wishes of his Führer. “Commanders must make the sacrifice of overcoming their personal scruples.”
Beyond the scope of Hitler’s four million-man operation spanning a front line some 1,200 miles from Finland to the Black Sea, it was the viciousness, indeed the racial hatred, that underpinned the assault on the detested Slavs, Bolsheviks, and, of course, Jews, that made this crime and others of Hitler and his Nazi hordes so unique in the annals of warfare.
Barbarossa…
