The military disaster of 1941 was so monstrous, the defeat of the Red Army was so unexpected, and the losses were so great that this wound in the people's memory has not yet healed - to this day, fierce debate continues about the causes and culprits of the tragedy. And the main question: could it have been avoided? Was there a real alternative to the Great Patriotic Catastrophe? In their new book, leading military historians convincingly prove: such an alternative did not exist. The tragedy of 1941 was inevitable and programmed, determined by objective reasons - the nature of the state system of the USSR, the state of its economy, the standard of living and education of the population, the system for making the most important decisions, the real state of combat and mobilization readiness of the Red Army.