The Thin Red Line

摘要

Although Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact in August 1939, there was little trust between the two nations. Adolf Hitler had long sought to carve out an empire in the east by seizing a large swathe of Soviet territory. By the early spring of 1941, as the night blitz on Britain neared its climax, preparations for an attack on the Soviet Union were moving ahead rapidly. From the end of April, seemingly as part of normal unit rotation, Luftwaffe Gruppen began to withdraw from bases in France, Holland and Belgium, and move to the east.