Lecturer – Michael Bronstein, historian (Israel) Host – Yurii Кorohodskyi.

The cycle, which consisted of 8 lectures, is an attempt to answer one of the most interesting questions in the history of the 20th century: why was the Red Army so shamefully defeated in the first 1-2 weeks of the summer of 1941?

The relevance of this topic lies primarily in the fact that “Barbarossa Week” demonstrates the Russian “philosophy of strategy”, which is clearly visible in the war that russia has unleashed in Ukraine. And here again we will focus on the facts, and not on “speculative theories”.

We ask the question not why, but how. The “how” is the facts, the “why” is a version of the explanation, the facts must precede the explanation. Now there is no doubt that Hitler was simply ahead of Stalin by 2-3 weeks, but this knowledge, undoubtedly important, requires detail, without which it is impossible to understand the problems of the Red Army in June 1941.

We are not talking about “small mistakes”, but about “systemic problems”, which can be understood only by analyzing the “lessons” of the First World War, the processes between the wars (1920-30s) and the first stage of the Second World War (1939-1940). We also talked about military concepts of the parties, and about “schemes” of the beginning of the world wars.