On the 85th anniversary of the Nazi invasion, a look at why the Red Army nearly broke in 1941 – and why the USSR did not Every country has its catastrophic moment – the date that goes down in history as the nation’s darkest day. For Russia, disaster struck on June 22, 1941. The Nazi attack on the USSR resulted in the deaths of 27 million people; around half of them were unarmed civilians – innocent victims of the war and the Nazis’ genocidal plans. The Soviet territory occupied by the Nazis