The true scale of the military catastrophe of 1941 is still hidden - trying to find at least some justification for the crushing defeat of the Red Army, the historical officialdom is silent about the fact that the ratio of Soviet and German losses in the Border Battle reached an incredible figure of 1:35 (35 of our fighters for one Nazi who was out of action)! “This is a “miracle” that does not fit into any canons of military science. Such a ratio of losses is only possible in the case when the white colonialists, who sailed to Africa with cannons and rifles, attack the aborigines armed with spears and hoes. But in the summer of 1941, on the western borders of the USSR there was a completely different situation: the defending side as a whole was not inferior to the enemy either in numbers or in weapons, quantitatively superior to it in the means of delivering a powerful counterattack - tanks and aircraft, and even had the opportunity to build its own defense on a system of natural barriers and long-term defensive structures...” Unique in scale and depth, the study of the leading military historian provides a comprehensive answer to the question: what kind of war was Stalin preparing for and why did the real war begin with the catastrophic defeat of the Red Army? Using tens of thousands of pages of primary documents stored in Russian and German archives, and providing 37 original maps illustrating the description of the fighting in the first days of the war, Mark Solonin makes a final diagnosis of the Stalinist regime, for which even its own army did not want to fight in 1941. This is exactly the book that everyone who wants to deeply and impartially study the history of the greatest tragedy of our people has been waiting for decades.