On 21 July 1940 Hitler referred to attacking the Soviet Union for the first time. It was in a conversation about the continuation of the war with the head of the German army, Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch and it was noted in a report sent to Colonel-General Franz Halder, the Chief of the Army General Staff. Halder, in turn, noted in his diary, ‘To smash the Russian Army.’ Between eighty and 100 divisions would be enough to annihilate between fifty and seventy-five ‘good’ Soviet divisions. The attack would be able to take place very early in autumn: everything would depend on the efficiency of the Luftwaffe over England.