To jump ahead a year in my World War II time
line, to June 22-23, 1941, the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, when 4.5 million German and Axis-allied troops invaded the Soviet Union, Germany's erstwhile ally, with history's largest army. A direct descendant of Napoleon's invasion of Russia, Barbarossa was the
most ambitious and foolhardy invasion ever attempted, and it culminated in the most massive and devastating
battles ever fought. Twenty million died. Our age is directly linked to that truly fateful day 69 years ago via these other links in the historical chain: the
Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe; the nuclear arms race; the collapse of
the USSR; the return of Eastern Europe to freedom and democracy;
the revival of Russia; and everything else. Nearly seventy years later, we still live with the consequences of one man's ambitions.
