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The Eastern Front of World War II was the theatre of war in eastern Europe, in which fighting began in June 1941 and ended in May 1945; the two principal belligerent nations were Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Fighting on this front, along with other Allies on other fronts, led to the defeat of Nazi Germany, the the rise of the Soviet Union as a military and industrial superpower, the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, and the partition of Germany.

In Russian, the conflict is referred to as the Great Patriotic War (Великая Отечественная Война, Velikaya Otechestvennaya Voyna), a name which alludes to the Russo–Napoleonic Patriotic War on Russian soil in 1812. The Russo-Finnish Continuation War may be considered the northern flank of the Eastern Front. Some scholars of the conflict use the term Russo-German War, while others use Soviet-German War or German-Soviet War. In the Soviet Union the end of war is considered to be 9 May, when the surrender took effect Moscow time. This date is celebrated as a national holiday, Victory Day, or День Победы in the Russian Federation and some other post-Soviet countries.

Some German armies initially refused to surrender and continued to fight in Czechoslovakia until about 11 May.

Overview

The war between Germany and the Soviet Union began on 22 June 1941, when Germany invaded Soviet teritory on a broad front. Details of the initial invasion campaign can be seen at Operation Barbarrossa. Causes of the war are available in the World War 2 article. In the initial period of the war, German forces defeated large Soviet forces and inflicted staggering casualties. However, they did not achieve their objectives of destroying the Red Army and causing a collapse of the Soviet Union.

The unexpected survival of the Red Army and Soviet state led to a long, brutal series of campaigns. In the winter of 1941-42, the Red Army took the offensive and drove the German forces back up to 100 miles in a broad attack that left both sides exhausted. In the spring of 1942, Soviet forces again took the offensive around Kharkov. This was defeated. In the summer of 1942, Germany again launched a massive offensive operation, this time aimed at the oil-rich Caucasus region. This led to the Stalingrad campaign. The stunning defeat of the Germans at Stalingrad, coming within a few months of western Allied victories at Midway and the North African campaign, led to a sense that the tide of the war had turned against the Germans.

After Stalingrad, there was an unusual pause on the Eastern Front while both sides recovered their strength and considered their next moves. In the summer of 1943 at the Battle of Kursk the Red Army inflicted a decisive defeat on the Germans. Thereafter, in a series of increasingly large offensives, the Red Army drove the Germans out of the USSR, then out of the rest of Eastern Europe, and finally to Berlin. The fighting on the Eastern Front ended on 8 May 1945, when Germany's armed forces surrendered unconditionally following the Battle of Berlin.

Belligerents

The Soviet Union was allied informally with the British Empire and United States of America during most of the conflict. By mid-war, the Soviet Union had help from an increasing partisan movement in the USSR and other countries in Eastern Europe, notably those in Poland and Yugoslavia. In addition the 1st and 2nd Polish armies, armed and trained by the Soviets, fought alongside the Red Army at the front. Smaller contributions came from Czechoslovakia, Romania(after switching sides late in the war) and Bulgaria.

Germany was able to call on the manpower of other satellite or Axis Powers nations, including Fascist Italy, Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania with some assistance from anti-communist partisans as well as a volunteer Spanish division from nominally neutral Fascist Spain.

Major Campaigns

Operation Barbarossa Battle of Moscow Siege of Leningrad Soviet Winter Counteroffensive of 1941 Battles of Kharkov Stalingrad Campaign (including fighting in the caucasus) Spring battles of 1943 Battle of Kursk Battle of the Korsun Pocket Operation Bagration Battle of the Crimea Lvov-Sandomir Offensive Vistula-Oder Offensive Battles in East Prussia Battles around Budapest and Lake Balaton Battle of Berlin Liberation of Prague

Industrial Management and Output

World War Two was a war of materiel. The differences in the economic management of the belligerents had a major impact on the course of the fighting.

In general, the Soviet state was more highly centralized, and was able to make better use of the industrial base to produce weapons. The USSR was aided in this effort by substantial Lend Lease shipments of key materials and goods. Civilian standards of living were quite low and declined further during the war.

Germany was less centralized; although Hitler had dictatorial powers, the German economy operated in 'fiefs' with little coordination. Starting with a much larger industrial base, with the economies of much of Europe under their control, the Germans did not equal the Soviet output of key weapons or supplies.

See World War Two Industrial Management for details.

Human Cost

The Eastern Front was by far the largest and bloodiest theatre of World War II, and generally accepted as the most costly conflict in human history at anywhere from 25-30 million dead as a result. It involved more land combat than all other World War II theatres combined; much of this combat took place in populated areas including major cities. There was tremendous brutality both to combatants and civilians, which was not often paralleled on the Western Front.

See World War 2 Casualties for details.

The war inflicted huge losses and suffering onto the civilian populations of the affected countries. Behind the front lines, atrocities against civilians in German-occupied areas were routine. Much of the Holocaust took place in areas of eastern Europe occupied by the Nazis. German and German-allied forces treated civilian populations with exceptional brutality, massacring villages and routinely killing civilian hostages. Both sides practiced widespread scorched earth tactics. After the war, following the Yalta conference agreements between the Allies, the German populations of East Prussia and Silesia were displaced to the west of the Oder-Neisse Line, in what became one of the largest forced migrations of people in world history.

See Eastern Front Atrocities for details.

Irregular Warfare

See Eastern Front Partisan Warfare for details.

A variety of partisan groups carried out guerrilla warfare in the rear areas of the belligerents. In the initial period of the war, irregular warfare was very limited. However, the seeds of later partisan operations were sown as thousands of Red Army personnel, cut off from their retreating units and bypassed by fast-moving German units, dispersed into the forests or small towns of occupied areas. A combination of pre-war planning and wartime insertion of Soviet special operations troops provided leadership, direction and resources to the partisan movement. By mid-war, particularly when it became clear that the Germans might not win, the partisan movement gained power and succeeded in tying down substantial Axis units policing their own rear areas. Partisans provided intelligence to Soviet forces and occasionally were able to disrupt German logistics.

Some smaller partisan movements grew up in the uncertainty of war. In Ukraine, the nationalist OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) fought both sides for an independent Ukraine. This group fought Red Army units until about 1950.

In Poland, a very large and higly-organized 'Home Army' fought the Germans at the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. The Red Army, located in the Warsaw suburb of Praha at the time, did nothing to aid these partisans to fight the Nazi German forces.

Controversies of the Eastern Front

"Preemptive war"? Warsaw Uprising German treatment of conquered people Stalin's war leadership Hitler's war leadership

Historiography

Postwar German source bias problems with the German sources Postwar Soviet sources - Stalin era - Krushchev era - Post-Krushchev - New views since the collapse of the USSR Other sources

==See also==

• Timeline of the WWII Eastern Front.
• Military history of Germany during World War II.
• Operation Silberfuchs, Axis attack on the Soviet Arctic.
• Operation August Storm, the Soviet campaign against Japan in Manchuria.
• Historiography of World War II.
• Captured German equipment in Soviet use in Eastern front

References

• Antony Beevor, & Artemis Cooper, Stalingrad, Viking, 1998.
• Antony Beevor, Berlin: The Downfall 1945, Penguin, 2002.
• John Erickson, The Road to Stalingrad, Harper & Row, 1975.
• John Erickson, The Road to Berlin, Harper & Row, 1982.
• John Erickson and David Dilks, Barbarossa, the Axis and the Allies, Edinburgh University Press, 1994.
• David Glantz and Jonathan House, When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army stopped Hitler, University Press of Kansas, 1995.
• Heinz Guderian, Panzer Leader, Da Capo Press, New York, 2001.
• Basil Liddell Hart, History of the Second World War, Cassel & Co; Pan Books, 1973.
• Rolf-Dieter Müller and Gerd R. Ueberschär. Hitler's War in the East, 1941-1945: A Critical Assessment (1997)
• Rudiger OvermansDeutsche militarische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg
• Richard Overy, Russia's War: A History of the Soviet Effort: 1941–1945, Penguin, 1997.
• Albert Seaton, The Russo-German War 1941–45, Praeger, 1971.

External links

• Russian veterans of World War II memories(In English and Russian)
• OnWar maps of the Eastern Front
• Erinnerungen des Leutnants d.R. Wilhelm Radkovsky 1940-1945
• Pobediteli: Eastern Front flash animation (photos, video, interviews, memorials. Written from a Russian perspective)
• Feldgrau.com The German Armed Forces 1919-1945

da:Østfronten de:Russlandfeldzug 1941 - 1945 es:Frente Oriental ja:独ソ戦 ko:독소 전쟁 it:Fronte Orientale (Seconda guerra mondiale) he: מלחמת המולדת הגדולה ro:Frontul de răsărit (al doilea război mondial) Template:Link FA ru:Великая Отечественная война 1941-45 sr:Источни фронт (Други светски рат) zh:东方战线 sv:det stora fosterländska kriget

• World War II Eastern European Theatre
• Soviet-German War