For those who are unfamiliar with the history of the Eastern Front in World War 2, Operation Barbarossa was the name of the Third Reich's invasion of the Soviet Union.

Hitler feared Soviet might, and had always considered the existence of Communism incompatible with the survival of the Reich. But also, on an ideological level, the Fuhrer considered the Slavic peoples a sub-human race while personally resenting a tyrant (Stalin) who could compete with him for world domination. In addition, the Nazi regime coveted the agriculturally rich lands of the East dominated by Stalin (particularly Ukraine), and saw them as an economically vital part of a flourishing future.

So, while feigning cooperation via the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the Reich planned what might be considered in retrospect a desperate lunge into the logistically and demographically superior Soviet Union. This was rationalized as a preemptive necessity, as the Reich assumed - demonstrating that infamous fascist Projection we've all come to know and loathe in this generation - that Stalin intended to invade Germany.

Former KGB agent and bitter sociopath Vladimir Putin had watched the Soviet empire he served collapse around him, and Russia's power become a global joke. He watched, with seething rage, as democracy grew and flourished around the world, growing out of the ashes of despotic republics in the 1990s and 2000s. In his mind, Russia was being surrounded and corrupted by the American "freedom bug," and it was simply incompatible with Russian authoritarian values as he saw them.

Once personally in control of Russia, and having crushed its troubled and brief experiment in democracy (yet another parallel to Hitler), Putin's regime began plotting the rollback of global democracy through a program of aggressive espionage, bribery, blackmail, and election manipulation. Incipient moves toward liberalism were easily crushed in Central Asian former Soviet Republics, as were separatist movements in unstable parts of Russia on its Caucasus fringes.

But more sustained campaigns led to the rise of pro-Russian authoritarian "strongman" dictators in Eastern Europe, first in Ukraine and then Hungary, and eventually Poland. But in the meantime, the Ukrainian people threw a monkey wrench into the smooth unfolding of the plan by overthrowing Putin's chosen puppet in Kiev, making Ukraine a hostile frontier rather than the reliable imperial territory Putin had assumed.

This drove the Russian tyrant into a fit of rage, and led to the Russian invasion of Crimea and the fomenting of astroturf rebellions in Eastern Ukraine - an alleged "civil war" funded entirely by Moscow and in many cases directly fought by Russian troops, with Russian tanks and artillery.

NATO, politically indifferent to Ukraine, was nonetheless forced to take action to avoid looking weak in the face of such aggression on the alliance's doorstep, and crushing sanctions were imposed on Russia. Putin felt his grand ambitions under threat, and increasingly decided that the existence of NATO and the geopolitical relevance of the United States were incompatible with Russian survival (at least as he defined Russia - an authoritarian state as perverse as himself).

His regime created an elaborate plan to undermine and infiltrate an enemy it could not hope to compete with economically or by conventional military conflict, beginning with the establishment of a vast and well-documented troll army to spam the internet with unhinged propaganda commentary. This propaganda was at first laughably inept: Slavishly pro-Putin and anti-Western comments spammed in broken English beginning in 2014, promoting ridiculous conspiracy theories and alternate history.

But as time went on, and both the numbers and experience of the trolls grew, the operation also grew in sophistication. Legions of professional analysts were tasked with analyzing Western internet behavior and formulating ways to essentially brainwash publics through internet trolling.

What they found was that the key to undermining Western - and especially American - strength was to play up racism and xenophobia, encouraging isolationism while dragging public discourse in authoritarian directions more amenable to the Russian mentality.

While political sabotage operations proceeded apace in Poland and Britain with the Brexit issue, Putin smelled a potentially decisive gambit in the 2016 US Presidential election. A completely insane narcissist, racist, and xenophobe who would rule as a dictator was once again running for the Republican nomination (he had run in 2012, but the results were a pitiful failure). And this maniac was knee-deep in business interests with Russia, not to mention being one of the most blackmail-able people of all time.

If Russia could rig a single election, Putin could see, Russia might be able to unravel the entire bulwark of NATO and American power in one fell swoop - an economically and militarily invincible enemy undone by simply corrupting one election. This was irresistible.

The Russian troll army - now vast and highly sophisticated on a granular level of brainwashing - set about manipulating Republican voters. And since Republicans are generally very stupid and suggestible - especially when the message panders to their inclinations toward racism and xenophobia - an unlikeable, unhinged prick with no political backing was gradually "talked up" by fake internet traffic until many Republicans believed he was the Second Coming of Ronald Reagan.

Russia fabricated whole internet sites, whole conversations written by single authors for American conservatives to later show up and read, thinking they were "joining" a "discussion" in a "community" when they were just conversing with one or two Russians working from a prewritten response-tree.

On top of this framework of lies - this Potemkin Internet - the "Alt-Right" grew: A newly organized and focused version of the previously disparate and disorganized white supremacist, Neo-Nazi, and anti-immigrant militia movements. It became difficult to distinguish the Russian trolls from redneck imbeciles brainwashed by them.

These people's violent fanaticism was carefully stoked from abroad, and the GOP royalty had no idea what was going on. Their operations, built around fighting Democrats, had no way to detect let alone resist such a massive operation; no way to understand tactics so cynical they shocked and baffled even the most vicious right-wing scumbags.

Conservatives within the party fought it, to no avail, because they didn't know what they were fighting. The Putinbots sprayed a "firehose of lies" at them, and there was just no practical way to combat it. Even Fox News (try to remember) tried to fight it, also to no available: The resources of the Russian state vastly exceeded those brought to bear in a mere party primary in the US.

Trump still didn't get a majority of Republicans to support him, merely a plurality - but it was enough. He got the nomination, and then Democrats, also not understanding what was going on, assumed it would be a cakewalk because they thought they were fighting Donald Trump - not the entire Russian propaganda state. Had it been just Donald Trump, he would never have been nominated in the first place; and if he had, his ultimate numbers would have been in the teens or twenties.

So then the same process ensued again. Only American voters in general are quite a bit smarter than Republican primary voters, so it was not easy for Putin's operation. People saw what was going on, especially after the DNC was hacked by Russians, and fought back. Trump kept pissing on himself with outrageous behavior, and the Potemkin Internet would have to rescue him by manufacturing some new Fake News against Clinton, unleashing hordes of bots to falsify social media and search engine rankings.

Still there was resistance among Republicans and Fox News, but Putin had hacked voter registrations in key battleground states, and we have no idea how that information was used. Ultimately Trump got millions of fewer votes than his opponent, but somehow magically achieved vastly better performance than the polls indicated in exactly the states he needed - exactly the states where Putin had hacked voter registrations - and this allegedly made him "President-elect."

Fast-forward, and nearly all the Republicans who fought him have fallen into line; Fox News is now his loyal propaganda machine, fulfilling the Fake News purpose that before had to come exclusively from RT and Putin's troll army; and Vladimir Putin is now essentially the head of the Republican Party, and is running the Executive Branch of the US government.

The general media increasingly shows signs of Stockholm Syndrome, praising a lie-filled tyrannical speech as "presidential" for merely not being as batshit insane as his usual standards. But nationwide protests continue, resistance builds, cities and states are resisting the occupation, Russian puppets are being exposed all over the place in the Trump regime, and liberals are arming and becoming more assertive.

Putin's Operation Barbarossa has reached the Volga, but the Battle of Stalingrad remains to be fought. If his puppets secure power in the United States, global democracy will fall and possibly never recover.

If he fails, then a headlong retreat of Russofascism will begin, and the vengeance against Putin's plots to destroy sacred multi-century republics will be terrible.

He should reflect on the foolishness of stoking American nationalism, lest it merely unite the Free World in fury against him.