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As the sun rose on June 22, 1941, history’s greatest war erupted on the frontiers of the Soviet Union. More than three and a half million men poured across the border to begin their eastern crusade. In the first day alone, 1200 Soviet aircraft were destroyed on the ground, parked wingtip-to-wingtip, and a further 400 blown out of the sky. Three divisions collapsed in the first six hours. Troops native to the Baltic states, making up nearly half of the defenders in the northwest sector, walked peacefully into captivity. Belorussia suffered the greatest disaster when Minsk fell in only seven days. The commander of the Minsk Military District General Pavlov ordered his decimated and separated units into attack, regardless of loss and shortages. This lunacy and absolute lack of understanding of the front’s situation, coupled with the paralyzing fear that ran through every officer’s veins, brought about contradicting orders that created confusion and mass defeat. He would be shot as an example to the others. In the pincer attack that enveloped Minsk, 300,000 prisoners were taken, in the fall of the Kiev group another 660,000 POWs, and in the September debacle of Vyazma, an even half million walked into captivity. The question he