Eastern Front (World War II)

The Eastern Front of World War II was the theatre of war covering the conflict in eastern Europe. Many sources include the German-Polish War of 1939 in this World War II theatre but this article concentrates on the much larger conflict which was fought from June 1941 to May 1945 in which the two principal belligerent nations were Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. It resulted in the rise of the Soviet Union as a military and industrial superpower, the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, and the partition of Germany.

Casualties

(source) The Eastern Front was unparalleled for its high intensity, ferocity, and brutality. The fighting involved millions of German and Soviet troops along a broad front. It was by far the deadliest single front in World War II, with over 4 million deaths on the Axis Forces, Soviet battle deaths were about 7 to 8 million, and civilian deaths were about 14 million. The genocidal death toll was attributed to several factors, including brutal mistreatment of POW's and captured partisans by both sides, multiple atrocities by the Germans against the civilian population, the wholesale use of weaponry on the battlefield against huge masses of infantry, and Joseph Stalin's draconian policies against supposed enemies. The multiple battles, and most of all, the use of scorched earth tactics employed first by the Soviets and afterwards by Germans destroyed agricultural land, infrastructure, and whole towns, leaving much of the population homeless and without food.

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