At 4:31 AM, an unauthorized photo taken of Stalin inside of the Kremlin shows the very moment he was informed that Germany had began their invasion of the Soviet Union. It was taken by Komsomolskaya Pravda, editor in chief. He was ordered to destroy it, but instead saved it. June 22, 1941

Despite being sworn ideological enemies, Nazi Germany and the Communist Soviet Union put aside their vast differences to sign a nonaggression pact in August 1939.

Hitler, however, considered ethnic Russians to be an inferior “mass of born slaves who feel the need of a master,” and he dreamed of clearing out much of the Soviet Union so that German settlers could procure “living space.”

Before the nonaggression pact was even a year old, he began plotting a surprise assault against the USSR, later dubbing it “Operation Barbarossa” after a medieval German emperor.

U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill both tried to forewarn Stalin, with Roosevelt telling him “it was as certain as that the night followed the day that as soon as Hitler had conquered France he would turn on Russia.” But the Soviet dictator distrusted their intentions and stubbornly clung to his belief that the Germans wouldn’t fight on two fronts (which had doomed them during World War I).