The Great Patriotic War began in the Week of All Saints, in the Land of the Russian Shining. On June 22, when many state and political figures were at a loss, the Patriarchal Locum Tenens Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) addressed the Russian people with a message. The Church, together with the people, defended the Fatherland, blessed the feat of the whole people, and by the grace of God the Russian Land was saved from a foreign yoke, from reproach and desecration. The book of Doctor of Historical Sciences Mikhail Vitalievich Shkarovsky is based on invaluable materials - documents of Russian and German archives, testimonies and memoirs of participants in the war. This book not only fully recreates the life of the Church in besieged Leningrad and in the occupied territories of northwestern Russia, but also reveals the spiritual meaning of the confrontation between the Church of Christ and the godlessness that German Nazism carried.