Afiero, Massimiliano Barbarossa. La Waffen-SS sul fronte dell'Est Estate-Autunno

On June 22, 1941, the German armed forces attacked the Soviet Union. Together with them also military contingents from Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Finland and later also Italian units, to take part in the "crusade against Bolshevism". Along a front that stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea, millions of soldiers entered Soviet territory, starting the largest military invasion in history. The German invasion plan developed in three directions having been divided into three groups of armies. To the north, the Army Group of Marshal von Leeb (29 divisions) was to move from East Prussia, overtake the Baltic states and aim for Leningrad. Furthermore, an offensive attack was planned against the important commercial port of Murmansk in the far north of Lapland. In the center, von Bock's group of armies (50 divisions, nine of which are battleships), starting from Poland, had to circumvent the Pripjet marshes from the north and aim for Minsk and then Moscow. To the south, the von Rundstedt Army Group (40 divisions), was to invade Ukraine with the Donez basin, then the Caucasus with its oil fields. The ultimate goal was to conquer all of European Russia from Archangel on the White Sea to Astrakhan on the Caspian Sea. In view of the Barbarossa operation, all the Waffen-SS formations were transferred to the Eastern front and assigned to the various Army groups. The Totenkopf and the Polizei were assigned to the Northern Army Group, the Reich was assigned to the Central Army Group and finally the Wiking and Leibstandarte to the South. At the extreme north of the attack front, in Finnish Lapland, there was the North Kampfgruppe, engaged in the attack on the railway line to Murmansk. The SS cavalry regiments, which will later form the brigade and then the SS cavalry division (the future "Florian Geyer") were initially engaged in rear-line security. It was precisely on the Eastern front that the Waffen-SS units wrote their military history and forged their warrior spirit, experiencing victories and defeats without forgetting the numerous crimes committed against civilian populations.