Eastern Front (World War II)

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Eastern Front
Part of the European theatre of World War II
Clockwise from top left: Soviet T-34 tanks storming Poznań, 1945; German Tiger I tanks during the Battle of Kursk, 1943; German Stuka dive bombers on the Eastern Front, 1943; German Einsatzgruppen death squad murdering Jews in Ukraine, 1942; Wilhelm Keitel signing the German Instrument of Surrender, 1945; Soviet troops at the Battle of Stalingrad, 1943
Date 22 June 1941 (1941-06-22) – 8 May 1945 (1945-05-08) (3 years, 10 months, 2 weeks and 2 days) Location Europe, east of Germany: Central and Eastern Europe, in later stages: Germany and Austria Result Soviet victory[k] Fall of Nazi Germany (concurrently with the Western Front) Beginning of the Cold War and creation of the Eastern Bloc and the Iron Curtain Beginning of anti-communist insurgencies Territorial changes Soviet occupation of Central and Eastern Europe Allied occupation of Germany, Austria and Partition of Germany Polish puppet state and change of borders Soviet occupation of Romania Soviet occupation of Hungary Bulgarian communist coup and Soviet occupation Soviet re-occupation of the Baltics Czechoslovakia cedes Carpathian Ruthenia East Prussia split between the Soviet Union (Kaliningrad Oblast) and Poland (Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship)
Belligerents
Axis:  Germany  Romania (until 1944)  Hungary[a]  Finland (until 1944)  Italy (until 1943)  Slovakia[b]  Croatia[c]	Allies:  Soviet Union Poland[d]  Czechoslovakia[e] Former Axis powers:  Romania (from 1944)  Bulgaria (from 1944)  Finland (from 1944) Support:  United States[f]  British Empire[g]  Free France[h] (from 1943)  Mongolia[i] Tuva[j]
Commanders and leaders
Axis leaders: Adolf Hitler † Wilhelm Keitel Alfred Jodl Walther von Brauchitsch Franz Halder Kurt Zeitzler Hermann Göring Hans Jeschonnek Wilhelm von Leeb Fedor von Bock Gerd von Rundstedt Günther von Kluge Georg von Küchler Wilhelm List Maximilian von Weichs Ewald von Kleist Erich von Manstein Ernst Busch Walter Model Johannes Friessner Georg Lindemann Ferdinand Schörner Lothar Rendulic Heinrich Himmler Ion Antonescu Iosif Iacobici Ilie Șteflea Petre Dumitrescu Horia Macellariu Miklós Horthy Ferenc Szálasi Ferenc Szombathelyi Károly Beregfy Risto Ryti C.G.E. Mannerheim Aksel Airo Benito Mussolini Italo Gariboldi	Allied leaders: Joseph Stalin Georgy Zhukov Boris Shaposhnikov Aleksandr Vasilevsky Aleksei Antonov Kliment Voroshilov Semyon Timoshenko Semyon Budyonny Nikolai Kuznetsov Ivan Isakov Pavel Zhigarev Alexander Novikov Sergei Khudyakov Markian Popov Fyodor Kuznetsov Dmitry Pavlov  Mikhail Kirponos † Ivan Tyulenev Andrey Yeremenko Pavel Kurochkin Ivan Konev Yakov Cherevichenko Rodion Malinovsky Kiril Meretskov Filipp Golikov Konstantin Rokossovsky Leonid Govorov Nikolai Vatutin † Maksim Purkayev Vasily Sokolovsky Fyodor Tolbukhin Ivan Petrov Ivan Bagramyan Ivan Chernyakhovsky † Bolesław Bierut Michał Rola-Żymierski Zygmunt Berling Michael I Constantin Sănătescu Nicolae Rădescu Kimon Georgiev C.G.E. Mannerheim
Strength
1941 3,767,000 troops 1942 3,720,000 troops 1943 3,933,000 troops 1944 3,370,000 troops 1945 1,960,000 troops	1941 (Front) 2,680,000 troops 1942 (Front) 5,313,000 troops 1943 (Front) 6,724,000 troops 1944 6,800,000 troops 1945 6,410,000 troops
Casualties and losses
Total: 5.1 million dead 4.5 million killed or missing in action 600,000 died in captivity 4.5 million captured See below.	Total: 8.7–10 million dead 6.5–6.7 million killed or missing in action 2.2–3.3 million died in captivity 4.1 million captured See below.
Civilian casualties: 18–24 million civilians dead See below.

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The Eastern Front, also known as the Great Patriotic War^[l] in the Soviet Union and its successor states, and the German–Soviet War^[m] in modern Germany and Ukraine, was a theatre of World War II fought between the European Axis powers and Allies, including the Soviet Union (USSR) and Poland. It encompassed Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Northeast Europe (Baltics), and Southeast Europe (Balkans), and lasted from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945. Of the estimated 70–85 million deaths attributed to World War II, around 30 million occurred on the Eastern Front, including 9 million children.^[1][2] The Eastern Front was decisive in determining the outcome in the European theatre of operations in World War II, eventually serving as the main reason for the defeat of Nazi Germany and the Axis nations.^[3] It is noted by historian Geoffrey Roberts that "More than 80 percent of all combat during the Second World War took place on the Eastern Front".^[4]

The Axis forces, led by Nazi Germany, began their advance into the Soviet Union under the codename Operation Barbarossa on 22 June 1941, the opening date of the Eastern Front. Initially, Soviet forces were unable to halt the Axis forces, which came close to Moscow. Despite their many attempts, the Axis failed to capture Moscow and soon focused on the oil fields in the Caucasus. German forces invaded the Caucasus under the Fall Blau ("Case Blue") plan on 28 June 1942. The Soviets successfully halted further Axis advance at Stalingrad — the bloodiest battle in the war — costing the Axis powers their morale and regarded as one of the key turning points of the front.

Seeing the Axis setback from Stalingrad, the Soviet Union routed its forces and regained territories at its expense. The Axis defeat at Kursk terminated the German offensive strength and cleared the way for Soviet offensives. Its setbacks caused many countries friendly with Germany to defect and join the Allies, such as Romania and Bulgaria. The Eastern Front concluded with the capture of Berlin, followed by the signing of the German Instrument of Surrender on 8 May, a day that marked the end of the Eastern Front and the War in Europe.

The battles on the Eastern Front of World War II constituted the largest military confrontation in history.^[5] In pursuit of its "Lebensraum" settler-colonial agenda, Nazi Germany waged a war of annihilation (Vernichtungskrieg) throughout Eastern Europe. Nazi military operations were characterised by vicious brutality, scorched-earth tactics, wanton destruction, mass deportations, forced starvations, wholesale terrorism, and massacres. These also included the genocidal campaigns of Generalplan Ost and Hunger Plan, which aimed to the extermination and ethnic cleansing of more than a hundred million Eastern European natives. German historian Ernst Nolte called the Eastern Front "the most atrocious war of conquest, enslavement, and annihilation known to modern history",^[6] while British historian Robin Cross expressed that "In the Second World War no theatre was more gruelling and destructive than the Eastern Front, and nowhere was the fighting more bitter".^[7]

The two principal belligerent powers in the Eastern Front were Germany and the Soviet Union, along with their respective allies. Though they never sent ground troops to the Eastern Front, the United States and the United Kingdom both provided substantial material aid to the Soviet Union in the form of the Lend-Lease program, along with naval and air support. The joint German–Finnish operations across the northernmost Finnish–Soviet border and in the Murmansk region are considered part of the Eastern Front. In addition, the Soviet–Finnish Continuation War is generally also considered the northern flank of the Eastern Front.

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