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.

Industrial output

The Soviet victory owed a great deal to the ability of her war industry to outperform the German economy, despite the enormous loss of population and land. The Stalinist five year plans of the 1930s had resulted in the industrialization of the Urals and central Asia. In 1941, the trains that shipped troops to the front were used to evacuate thousands of factories from Belarus and Ukraine to safe areas far from the front lines.

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As the Soviet Union's manpower reserves ran low from 1943 onwards, the great Soviet offensives had to depend more on equipment and less on the expenditure of lives. The increases in production of war materiel were achieved at the expense of civilian living standards — the most thorough application of the principle of total war — and with the help of Lend-Lease supplies from the United Kingdom and the United States.

Related Topics:
Total war - Lend-Lease - United Kingdom - United States

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Germany could not compete with Soviets on quantity of military production (in 1943, the Soviet Union manufactured 24,000 tanks to Germany's 13,000). At the same time, German industry produced a number of advanced designs such as the Tiger tank, and the anti-tank panzerfaust.

Related Topics:
Soviet Union manufactured 24,000 tanks - Germany's 13,000 - Tiger tank - Panzerfaust

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