On 22 June 1941, more than three million Wehrmacht soldiers crossed into Soviet territory without a declaration of war, opening a front stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea. This DW documentary reconstructs the first phase of Operation Barbarossa through archival footage, amateur film, letters and diaries left by German and Soviet soldiers and civilians. It quotes Hitler's own March 1941 instructions describing the campaign as a clash of worldviews requiring the elimination of what he called the 'Jewish-Bolshevik intelligentsia,' laying out the ideological aims behind the invasion alongside its military and economic objectives. The Luftwaffe's opening bombardment of Soviet bases, the speed of the initial advance, and the scale of unpreparedness on the Soviet side are covered through period sources rather than official propaganda reels. Personal accounts from both sides carry much of the narrative, giving the campaign's violence a ground-level texture rather than a purely strategic one. The film is the first of a two-part account of the invasion and its human cost.