Video: '096a - Operation Barbarossa - Biggest Land Invasion in History - WW2 - June 22 1941'

(Sunday, June 22, 1941, at around 3:15 a.m. Central European Summer Time; during Operation Barbarossa, part of the Eastern Front of World War II) — Nazi Germany and some of its Axis allies began bombing major cities in Soviet-occupied Poland and an artillery barrage on Red Army defenses on the entire Eastern Front of World War II this morning, launching Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union.

Video: 'Battlefield - World War II - The Battle For Russia - Documentary' (Operation Barbarossa launched at 1:07:52)

Over the course of the operation, about three million personnel of the Axis powers — the largest invasion force in the history of warfare — invaded the western Soviet Union along a 1,800-mile front, with 600,000 motor vehicles and over 600,000 horses for non-combat operations.

The operation put into action Nazi Germany’s ideological goal of conquering the western Soviet Union so as to repopulate it with Germans. The German Generalplan Ost aimed to use some of the conquered people as slave labor for the Axis war effort while acquiring the oil reserves of the Caucasus as well as the agricultural resources of various Soviet territories.

"The World At War: Barbarossa (June – December 1941)" (Operation Barbarossa launched at 21:24)

Their ultimate goal included the eventual extermination, enslavement, Germanization and mass deportation to Siberia of the Slavic peoples, and to create more Lebensraum (living space) for Germany.

The Eastern Front would see some of the world’s largest battles, most horrific atrocities, and highest casualties (for Soviet and Axis forces alike), all of which influenced the course of World War II and the subsequent history of the 20th century.