Europe’s Last Primeval Forest

Operation Barbarossa

“We only have to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.”

Adolf Hitler on attacking the Soviet Union Operation Barbarossa

Statue at Entrance to Park

That was savage. Operation Barbarossa was really savage. But, Hitler wasn’t quick enough. “General Winter” stepped in to defeat his armies. Germany blitzkrieged the Soviet Union and approximately 800,000 Russians were killed in the initial action. Millions more were taken prisoner, starved, and used as slave labor, the majority of whom were never heard from again. Germany’s biggest force pushed right through what is now Belarus and Belovezhskaya Pushcha. The people and the forest bore the full brunt of the Nazi war machine. It is fitting to pay tribute to what took place here.

Operation Barbarossa failed. It failed for a few reasons one of which was the Russian determination to not give up. One German soldier reportedly wrote, “We have no sensation of entering a defeated country, as we had in France. Instead, we have resistance, permanent resistance, no matter how hopeless it is.” At the beginning of the war, there were 5 million fighters in the Red Army. By the end of December 1941, that number had grown to 8 million. Instead of beating them down, the Soviets fought back even harder. Let’s give credit where credit is due. In the case of the Soviet Union’s role in WWII, no country lost so much or fought as hard as they did.