Eye-watering numbers, unmatched in all history
History is no stranger to large scale military invasions. Since the beginning of time, states have been invading one another for the purpose of economic and political expansion. However, no invasion was ever larger than the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Dubbed Operation Barbarossa, after a former German conqueror, the invasion was the largest of all time both in terms of geographic scope and military material.
The invasion stretched along a front nearly 2,000 miles long from Leningrad all the way to the Black Sea near Crimea and beyond. Along that front, nearly 6 million soldiers clashed.
Operation Barbarossa itself was, in fact, larger than most wars in human history. The only other conflicts that come close to matching it in sheer scale were the Japanese actions in the Pacific, also during World War II, and World War I.
The German invasion of the Soviet Union was designed to be a crushing blow. A closed fist. A wrecking ball. Once the boot went through the door, the whole thing was supposed to collapse. While the invasion was massive and initially impressive, it was not designed to hold up for a year, two years, and beyond. The invasion ended up becoming one of the greatest reversals of…