German declaration of war on the Soviet Union

The German declaration of war on the Soviet Union, officially Note of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Germany to the Soviet government from 21 June 1941 (German: Note des Auswärtigen Amtes an die Sowjetregierung vom 21. Juni 1941), is a diplomatic note presented by German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop to Soviet ambassador Vladimir Dekanozov in Berlin on 22 June 1941 at 4 a.m. local time (5 a.m. MSK), informing him about the German invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II and preceding casus belli. Later in the morning of that day German ambassador to the Soviet Union Friedrich-Werner Graf von der Schulenburg presented the note to Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov in Moscow.^[1] On the same day The New York Times published an abridged English translation of the declaration.^[2]

The existence of the German declaration of war on the Soviet Union had long been concealed by Soviet authorities, because it mentions the secret protocol to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact which was revealed only in 1989.^[1] In the Soviet press, the German note was first published in 1991 in the Journal of Military History, although the journal denied the allegation that "in the 1930s and immediately before the war" the Soviet government "ceased all ideological struggle against fascism in order to appease Hitler".^[3] The declaration is presently kept in the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation.