Most modern students know when the Great Patriotic War began. They also know the date of the attack on Poland: 1939, September 1. It turns out that nothing special happened in our country for a year and a half, people just went to work, met dawn over the Moskva River, sang Komsomol songs, well, maybe sometimes they even allowed themselves to dance tango and foxtrot. Such a nostalgic idyll.
In fact, the picture created by hundreds of films, apparently, is somewhat different from the realities of that time. All the people of the Soviet Union worked not as they do now. Then there were no image makers, office managers and merchandisers, only specific cases related to the production of necessary items for the country were considered work. Mostly weapons. This situation existed for more than one year, and when the Great Patriotic War began, it just became even harder.
On Sunday morning, when German troops attacked our borders, what happened was inevitable, but it did not happen as expected. They did not rattle with fire, military vehicles did not sparkle with steel, going on a furious campaign. Huge stocks of weapons, food, medicine, fuel and other necessary military supplies were destroyed or captured by the advancing Germans. Aircraft focused on airfields pushed close to the borders were burned to the ground.
To the question: “When did the Great Patriotic War begin?” - it would be more correct to answer: "July 3". I.V. Stalin called her that during his radio address to the Soviet people, "brothers and sisters." However, this term was also mentioned in the newspaper Pravda on the second and third day after the attack, but then it was not taken seriously, it was a direct analogy with the First World War and the Napoleonic Wars.
Numerous experts in the history of the Great Patriotic War pay undeservedly little attention to its initial period, which is characterized as the largest military catastrophe in the entire existence of mankind. The number of irretrievable losses and those captured was in the millions, the vast territories fell into the hands of the invaders, together with the people living on them and the industrial potential, which they had to hastily incapacitate or evacuate.
The Nazi hordes were able to reach the Volga, it took them a little over a year. During the First World War, the Austro-Hungarian and German troops did not penetrate deeper into the "backward and bast" Russian Empire beyond the Carpathians.
From the moment the Great Patriotic War began, until the liberation of all Soviet land, about three years passed, filled with grief, blood and death. More than a million citizens who were taken prisoner and ended up in occupation went over to the side of the invaders, from them divisions and armies were formed that entered the Wehrmacht. During World War I there was no question of anything like that.
Due to the enormous human and material losses of the USSR after the Great Patriotic War, it experienced enormous difficulties, expressed in the famine of 1947, the general impoverishment of the population and the devastation, the consequences of which are still felt partly now.