Today is the 70th anniversary of "Operation Barbarossa," the German invasion of the Soviet Union. It was the most massive invasion of a country in history--3 million German and other Axis soldiers.

While the exact total will never been known with certainty, the most accepted estimate today is that 26.6 million Soviet citizens died in the war--the majority of them civilians. By comparison, around 400,000 Americans died in WWII. In the siege of Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) alone, more Russians died than the number of Americans and Britons combined who died during the entire war.

We should always remember the incredible tenacity and sacrifice of the Russians and other former Soviet peoples during the war, and the enormous and critical contribution they made to the defeat of Nazi Germany.