Sixty-five years ago today, World War II took a turn to the East:
At 4:45 am on June 22, 1941, the Axis attacked. It is difficult to precisely pinpoint the strength of the opposing sides in this initial phase, as most German figures include reserves slated for the East but not yet committed, as well as several other issues of comparability between the two sides’ figures. A reasonable estimate is however that roughly 2.6 million German soldiers went into action on 22 June, and that they were facing a roughly similar number of Soviet troops in the border Military Districts. The contribution of the German allies would generally only begin to make itself felt somewhat further into the campaign. The surprise was complete: Stavka, alarmed by reports that German units approached the border in battle deployment, had at 00:30 AM ordered to warn the border troops that war was imminent, but not a single unit was alerted in time.
The shock of impact stemmed less from the timing of the attack however than from the sheer number of Axis troops who struck into Soviet territory all at once. Aside from the roughly 3.2 million German land forces engaged in or earmarked for the Eastern campaign, some hundreds of thousands of Romanian, Hungarian, Slovakian and Italian troops eventually accompanied the German forces, while Finland made a major contribution in the North. The Soviet forces directly facing them (not including forces in the interior and the Stavka reserve) were reinforced on such a scale that their strength had grown from roughly 2.6 million men on 22 June to more than 4 million by year’s end, despite having had to make good more than 4.5 million casualties of all types.
And it was also an eventful day in the Timeline-191 universe:
The operation was ordered on June 21 and began at 3:30 am, June 22, 1941. Confederate bombers hit Philadelphia and troops crossed into Ohio. Featherston did not even bother to declare war. The United States was unable to stop the bombings or the advance into Ohio.
Featherston’s plan was to split the US from Kentucky to Lake Erie and thus prevent raw materials from the West to reach the factories in the East. The US would be forced to surrender and return the captured Confederate territories. After one more war, the US would never be a threat again.
A good day to stay home in either universe it seems.
