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[g] 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 satellite 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 Finland cedes Petsamo 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  Croatia[b]	Allies: Soviet Union Poland[c] (from 1943)  Czechoslovakia[d] (from 1943)  Yugoslavia[e] (from 1944) Former Axis powers:  Romania (from 1944)  Bulgaria (from 1944) Finland (from 1944)  Hungary[f] (1945)
Commanders and leaders
Axis leaders: Adolf Hitler † Wilhelm Keitel Alfred Jodl Walther von Brauchitsch Franz Halder Kurt Zeitzler Heinrich Himmler 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 Erich Raeder Karl Dönitz 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 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 † Nikolai Kuznetsov 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^[h] in the Soviet Union and its successor states, and the German–Soviet War^[i] 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 the war, around 30 million occurred on the Eastern Front, including 9 million children.^[5][j] The Eastern Front was decisive in determining the outcome in the European theatre of operations in World War II and is the main cause of the defeat of Nazi Germany and the Axis nations.^[6] Historian Geoffrey Roberts noted that "more than 80 percent of all combat during the Second World War took place on the Eastern Front".^[7]

The Axis forces, led by Germany, invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa on 22 June 1941. Despite warnings and the deployment of Axis armies on his borders, Stalin refused to believe that Hitler would invade and forbade any defensive preparations. Thus the Soviets were caught completely unprepared. They were unable to halt deep Axis advances into Russia, which came close to seizing Moscow. However, the Axis failed to capture the city, and Hitler shifted his focus to the oil fields of the Caucasus the following year. German forces advanced into the Caucasus under Fall Blau ("Case Blue"), launched on 28 June 1942. The Soviets decisively defeated the Axis at the Battle of Stalingrad—the bloodiest battle in the war and arguably in all of history—making it one of the key turning points of the front. A second great Axis defeat, at the Battle of Kursk, crippled German offensive capabilities permanently and cleared the way for Soviet offensives. Several Axis allies defected to the Allies, such as Italy, 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, ending the Eastern Front and the war in Europe.

The battles on the Eastern Front constituted the largest military confrontation in history.^[8] 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 brutality, scorched earth tactics, wanton destruction, mass deportations, starvation, wholesale terrorism, and massacres. These included the genocidal campaigns of Generalplan Ost and the Hunger Plan, which sought the extermination and ethnic cleansing of more than a hundred million Eastern Europeans. German historian Ernst Nolte called the Eastern Front "the most atrocious war of conquest, enslavement, and annihilation known to modern history",^[9] 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".^[10]

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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