German forces have invaded the Soviet Union. In a pre-dawn offensive, German troops pushed into the USSR from the south and west, with a third force making their way from the north towards Leningrad. At 0500 GMT, an hour after the invasion began, the Nazi Minister for Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, went on national radio to read a proclamation by Adolf Hitler promising that the mobilisation of the German army would be the “greatest the world has ever seen”. The invasion breaks the non-aggression pact signed by Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939. The pact has since been described by...