Monday, June 24th 1941. I have come a long way since our victory over France. I feel like I have seen half of Europe by now. And yet I have never seen anything like the battles that I have to throw my men into now. A few weeks ago, we were relocated to Reichshof. I don’t know if all the men knew, but it was pretty clear to me that the Oberkommando was preparing the great strike against Stalin’s hordes. I have heard that around 3 million of our comrades are gathered across the border into the Soviet Union. On Saturday, we finally moved into Soviet territory near Lembach, or Lviv as the locals call it. Our Luftwaffe rained hell on the Soviet hordes…
…and my men swept in to mop up the rest. The Soviets were brave but they were no match for the wave that was coming for them.
Last thing I heard of Blaskowitz was that he is still in France. But his firm command there impressed me to employ his tactics on the Eastern Front. Maybe we would have needed bigger guns though.
After the first days of this operation, I must say that it seems a great success. We have driven the Russians back on all fronts, destroyed over 2000 of their planes in one day. It was inevitable that this would happen. If we had not done it, Stalin would have wreaked havoc on our Fatherland. Still, I fear that this confrontation will set all of Europe on fire. And only ashes are left after fires.
Today is June 22nd, the 85th anniversary of the start of Operation Barbarossa. The German Reich invades the Soviet Union, and Adolf Hitler says “once the door is knocked down, the whole structure will collapse.” Almost 200 Axis divisions, almost 3 million personnel, tens of thousands of trucks and tanks, and more than a thousand planes have poured into Soviet territory. The three main targets for this operation – Leningrad, Moscow, and Kiev. It was one of the most dramatic openings in the Second World War, not that make you cry, but the one that makes your blood boil and get you hyped like Rambo and Braddock.
The operation began not with artillery, nor with the thunder of tank engines, but with silence above the battlefield.
Before the German assault could begin, the ground ahead had to be understood. Somewhere beyond the tree lines, marshy clearings, and dirt roads lay the Soviet defensive system—concealed gun positions, armored reserves, support vehicles, and hidden strongpoints prepared to tear apart any frontal attack. To commit panzers against such a line without intelligence would have been recklessness. So the first phase of the battle belonged not to the tanks, but to the eyes of the offensive: a German reconnaissance aircraft sent low over enemy territory to map the battlefield before the main force struck.
Its mission was simple in wording and critical in consequence: complete an aerial reconnaissance of the area and identify the enemy’s military assets. In practice, that meant flying sector by sector over hostile ground, circling marked areas, and uncovering whatever the Soviets had tried to hide. The aircraft was not there to fight. It was there to reveal the shape of the battle before the first German armored column rolled forward.
As the plane passed over the first marked zone, the illusion of empty countryside began to disappear. Beneath foliage and camouflage, the German crew spotted an artillery battery concealed in the open ground. The pilot’s report came quickly: the enemy guns had been found. It was the kind of discovery that could decide the fate of an advance before it even began. Left unspotted, those guns might have waited until German armor was fully committed, then opened fire into packed columns and infantry formations. Identified in advance, they became something else entirely: a known threat, a target, and a point to be planned around rather than stumbled into.
The reconnaissance flight pressed on, circling outward across the map of the battlefield, and the second discovery deepened the picture of what lay ahead. In another clearing, half-hidden among brush and near a small encampment, stood a cluster of military vehicles and support trucks. This was no mere patrol outpost. It looked like a forward transport or supply area, the kind of logistical node that sustained the Soviet defense behind the front line. Fuel, ammunition, transport, and reserve movement all seemed possible here. What had first appeared to be a simple enemy line was beginning to reveal itself as a layered defensive system with depth, infrastructure, and the ability to reinforce itself if given time.
The third position was more ominous. As the aircraft moved over another recon zone, it exposed what appeared to be a concealed anti-aircraft position, guns arranged around a central area with a grounded aircraft nearby. Whether it was a protected airstrip, a crash site turned into a defended point, or simply a camouflaged flak battery, the message was clear: the Soviets were prepared not only to fight on the ground, but to contest the sky as well. The reconnaissance plane itself was flying through a battlefield that could shoot back. This was no passive survey of rear areas. It was a dangerous penetration over enemy-held ground, and every new discovery made it clearer that the defense ahead had been built with care and purpose.
Then came the most alarming report of all. In another hidden sector, beneath camouflage and foliage, the German crew found a concentration of tanks. It was not a lone armored detachment or a scattered reserve. It was a significant grouping of Soviet armor, held back in concealment where it could either reinforce the line or launch a counterattack once the Germans committed themselves. In a single moment, the battlefield changed from a map of defensive positions into the outline of a trap. The Soviets were not merely waiting behind guns and trenches. They had armored force in reserve, ready to strike if the Germans advanced without preparation.
By the time the reconnaissance aircraft completed its circuit, the picture was complete. The objective counter had reached its end: six out of six enemy military assets identified. The German commander now had what he needed. The artillery battery had been found. The transport and support area had been exposed. Anti-aircraft defenses had been marked. Concealed tanks had been located. The battlefield, once hidden, had been forced into the open. The reconnaissance phase was over.
Only then did the second half of the operation begin.
Where the first phase had belonged to the aircraft, the next belonged to steel.
On the open ground behind the recon sectors, a broad line of German panzers and support vehicles assembled for the attack. Tracks bit into the dirt and left dark scars across the earth as the armored force spread out into battle formation. These were not vehicles moving along a road toward the front; they were forming for an assault. The German commander’s instructions made the next step plain: the tanks would break the enemy line, and the infantry would follow, mopping up resistance and attacking from the rear whenever possible. This was not to be a blind frontal charge against every Soviet position at once. The reconnaissance mission had made something more precise possible.
The Germans would strike at the weakest point.
That was the true value of the recon flight. It had not merely shown where the Soviet defenses were strongest. More importantly, it had shown where they were not. Between the artillery positions, the flak sites, the vehicle parks, and the concealed tank concentrations there had to be a seam in the line—a sector held more thinly, a stretch with fewer anti-tank guns, weaker infantry support, or terrain less favorable to defense. That seam became the target of the entire armored assault.
This was German operational doctrine in its most dangerous form: not a broad assault against the whole front, but a concentrated blow delivered with overwhelming force against one vulnerable sector. The panzers were not meant to win a slow attritional battle across every meter of the battlefield. Their task was to tear a hole in the Soviet line, drive through it, and transform a defended front into a crisis of movement. A breakthrough at the right point could make every other Soviet position unstable, even if those positions had not yet been directly attacked.
So the panzers rolled forward as the spearhead of the offensive. Their purpose was not merely to trade fire with Soviet armor or engage in a symmetrical tank battle. Their purpose was to rupture the front. They would overrun exposed gun positions, force defenders to ground, and punch through the weakest sector before the Soviets could shift reserves or reorient their anti-tank defenses. Speed was essential. Momentum was everything. If the tanks hesitated, the Soviet line might harden. If they broke through quickly enough, the entire defense could begin to unravel before it fully understood where the main blow had fallen.
Behind them came the infantry.
The commander’s earlier words now became operational reality. Once the panzers opened the breach, infantry units would follow through the gap, clearing trenches, hunting down bypassed anti-tank crews, securing gun pits, and preventing isolated Soviet defenders from reorganizing. Their role was not secondary in the sense of being unimportant. It was essential to turning a temporary breach into a permanent collapse. Tanks could smash open the front, but infantry would make sure it stayed open. They would eliminate the defenders the panzers passed by and attack from the rear wherever opportunity allowed, turning strongpoints into traps for the men still holding them.
This was where the earlier reconnaissance discoveries became deadly for the Soviet defenders. An artillery battery hidden in the woods might be formidable against an enemy advancing from the front, but far less secure when German armor had broken through elsewhere and was now threatening its rear. Anti-aircraft guns positioned to guard against planes became vulnerable when infantry began appearing behind them through a corridor blasted open by tanks. Vehicle parks and support positions, once protected by the integrity of the front line, suddenly found themselves exposed if the panzers penetrated deeply enough. Even the concealed Soviet tank reserve could be compromised if the sector it was meant to support had already collapsed before it could counterattack.
This was the real purpose of striking the weakest point. The Germans were not simply trying to gain ground in one place. They were trying to make every Soviet position around that place untenable.
As the battle shifted from reconnaissance to breakthrough, the advantage of concealment passed from the defenders to the attackers. Earlier, the Soviets had relied on hidden positions, ambush potential, and the uncertainty of the battlefield to blunt any German advance. Now that concealment had been stripped away. The Germans knew where the guns were, where the armor was waiting, and where the defensive line could be split. The Soviet defenders, by contrast, were forced into reaction. If the panzers succeeded in opening the breach, Soviet commanders would be fighting several crises at once: trying to hold the front, reposition artillery, commit reserves, and stop German armor from rolling into the rear.
The battlefield that had once looked static and prepared was now in danger of becoming fluid and chaotic. That was always the most dangerous moment in a mechanized offensive—not when the first shots were fired, but when the defensive line ceased to function as a line at all. Once a gap existed, once tanks and infantry were moving through it, every hidden gun, reserve position, and command post behind the front was suddenly part of the battle. The front was no longer a wall. It was a wound.
In that sense, the reconnaissance mission and the panzer assault were not two separate episodes, but two halves of the same operation. The aircraft had not simply “found targets”; it had created the conditions for the breakthrough. Every artillery battery spotted from the air, every anti-aircraft gun identified, every tank concentration marked on the map reduced uncertainty and gave the German commander freedom to shape the battle instead of merely reacting to it. The panzers, when they finally advanced, were not charging into the unknown. They were exploiting a battlefield that had already been exposed from above.
That is what gives the operation its campaign-like structure. It begins with silence, observation, and discovery. It moves into concentration, decision, and movement. It culminates in the moment where information becomes force—where a recon flight over hidden Soviet positions leads directly to a German armored thrust at the weakest point of the line. The aircraft saw the battlefield. The panzers moved to break it. And once the breach was opened, the infantry would follow through the gap to turn a successful reconnaissance mission into the destruction of an entire defensive system.
The battle, in other words, was won first in the air—then on the ground.
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