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The crippled German squadrons re rned to their bases on the continent. Though no one lly realized it at the time, the Battle of Britain had been won.
Eventually even Goering had to admit that Britain was not to be con­ quered, and the air war died down. Said Winston Churchill of the brave men of e RAF, who with the help of Ultra had s ed England: "N er hs so much been ed so many to so w."
The Invasion of Russia
A r Napoleon iled to de at England, he attacked Russia. N Hitler did the same thing. He had in nded to keep the Ribbentrop ct only as long as it suited him to do so, and in the ll of 1940, he made up his mind that the time to break the treaty had come. He was rti ed in this decision ssian aggression during the summer. In June, the Soviet Union had taken over Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, three small countries on the border of the U.S.S.R. The residents of these countries were not ssian, and Stalin began a vicious persecution of them. The hardest hit was Lithuania, a Catholic country where the S iet persecution attacked the Church. Also, on June 27 the S iet Union took over part of mania. This was getting too close to Germa r Hitler's com rt, so he and his generals began preparing an i asion plan of Russia, with the code name of e tion rbarossa.
In the meantime, things had not been going well r the Axis powers on other onts. Mussolini's troops had met disaster in Egypt and Greece because the Italians were poor ghters. And Spain's Franco absolutely re­ sed to help Hitler in his conquests of the Mediterranean lands. Then a revolt in Yugoslavia overthrew a pro-Nazi government. Hitler was so ri­ ous that he postponed Barbarossa ur weeks in order to teach gosl ia a lesson. On April 6, 1941 the Germany army smashed through Greece and into Yugosl ia in a m ement known as "Operation Punishment." The Nazis wiped out the capital city of Belgrade. Yugosl ia was utterly de at­ ed, satis ing Hitler's desire r revenge, but the del in Barbarossa was to h e deadly consequences r Germa .
As the Russian secret agents brought in in rmation that pointed to a German invasion, Stalin re sed to believe it. Su risingly, there is evi­ dence to show that he trusted Hitler's assurances that Germany still regarded the S iet Union as a iend. He should have known better.
On June 22, 1941, a three-pronged German a ack smashed into the Soviet Union, with armies heading r Moscow in the center, Leningrad in