Pätzold:Der Überfall

June 2016 marks the 75th anniversary of Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union. Millions of people fell victim to this war of conquest and annihilation, and it ended in 1945 with a national catastrophe for Germany. What did the German people think of this campaign, which came to a halt outside Moscow in 1941? How did the propaganda apparatus react? How was the "home front" to be stabilised? The renowned historian Kurt Pätzold has studied sources that have received little attention to date, analysing, among other things, the daily reports of the SD and other informer documents. He thus offers a new perspective on the beginning of the war in the East and comes to some astonishing conclusions.