And Soviet mobilization wasn’t finished by a long shot-soon there would be more than 14 million men and women called up for the war against the Germans. That adds up to a lot of wars, and making overly bold claims is rarely a good idea.īe careful about superlatives, that is, until you’re talking about Operation Barbarossa, the surprise German invasion of the Soviet Union on Jand the nearly four years of war that followed on what the Germans called “the Eastern Front.” With some 3.5 million German and nearly 700,000 German-allied troops (Romanians, Finns, Hungarians, Italians, Slovaks, and others) facing off against a Red Army that numbered some 5.5 million men, the opening phase of Barbarossa saw nearly 10 million human beings locked in mortal combat from the outset.

Human beings have been making war on one another since the origin of the species. If you’re discussing military history, using phrases like “the greatest tank battle in history” can get you in real trouble. You have to be careful about superlatives. “At dawn, countless Stuka squadrons dived on the Kerch Peninsula (in eastern Crimea), attacking the arrays of supposedly-impregnable concrete defensive positions built by the Russians.” New York Public Library Digital Collections.

Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Picture Collection, The New York Public Library. Top Image: Stuka squadrons dive on the Kerch Peninsula (in eastern Crimea), attacking the arrays of supposedly-impregnable concrete defensive positions built by the Russians.

Greatest tank battles of world war 2