Eastern Front

The Eastern Front refers to the East European battlefront during World War I and World War II.

World War I Eastern Front
In World War I, the Central Powers (consisting of the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Empire, Hungary and Bulgaria) fought against the Allied forces (primarily Russia and Romania). The Eastern Front during this time was very different from the Western Front; unlike the constant stalemate created by trench warfare on the Western Front, the Eastern Front was more mobile due to the lack of development in trench warfare (due to the geographical nature of the region). The fighting between the Axis and Allied forces ended with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, in which Russia (then the Russian Soviet Federalist Socialist Republic) surrendered to the Axis forces. However, the treaty lasted only eight and a half months when the Bolshevik government annulled the treaty on November 13, 1918.

World War II Eastern Front
In World War II, the Eastern Front was mainly fought between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany after Operation Barbarossa (when Hitler broke the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of Non-Aggression and attacked the Soviet Union). Before 1944, Finland, Romania and Bulgaria supported Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union. However, after 1944 those nations switched sides as the Soviet Union launched a counter-offensive against Nazi Germany.

The Eastern Front was heavily propagandized by both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union; "The Crusade Against Bolshevism" was the Nazi's justification for war with the Soviet Union, which glorified war against Nazi Germany as the "Great Patriotic War." Because of the intense hostility from both sides, the Eastern Front has also been called a war of extermination. More people fought and died on the Eastern Front than the Western Front (currently calculated at over 30 million casualties). The majority of Holocaust victims also came from the Eastern Front. The Eastern Front resulted in the end of the Third Reich and widespread devastation across Eastern Europe, from Stalingrad to Berlin. In Nazi Germany, a soldier re-assigned to the Eastern Front was considered a severe punishment because of the high fatality rate.

1941 Eastern Front
Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June of 1941, breaking the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of Non-Aggression. The Germans offensive was organized into three main army groups, Army Group North, Army Group Centre, and Army Group South. The initial overall German offensive encircled unprepared Soviet forces, resulting in the capture of hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers. By autumn of 1941, the German offensive had penetrated into the Soviet Union as far as Leningrad to the north and Rostov to the south. However, the harsh Russian winter (combined with the German's over-extended supply lines) and desperate Soviet resistance managed to stall the German offensive in the winter of 1941. By January of 1942, the Soviet resistance had turned into a counter-offensive with additional Soviet reinforcements armed with Katyusha rocket launchers and T-34 tanks, managing to push the Germans back.

1942 Eastern Front
However, the Soviet counter-offensive was short-lived as the German offensive regrouped and successfully defended against the Soviet attack. By the summer of 1942, the German offensive had resumed, regaining progress lost during the Russian winter counter-offensive. By the autumn of 1942, the German Army Group South had penetrated even deeper into the southern Soviet Union. However, they encountered stiff Soviet resistance at the city of Stalingrad and all over the Volga River, preventing the German southern offensive from advancing further into the Soviet Union.

The German Army Group South was directly ordered by Hitler to secure both the Volga and Don Rivers (by capturing Stalingrad) as well the Caucasus oilfields simultaneously in Operation Blau ("Blue"). This forced the German Army Group South into two separate forces, which considerably weakened both forces. The Battle for Stalingrad became a bottleneck point as both the Soviet Union and the German forces fought literally block-by-block in the city, stalling the German offensive for 3 months. South of Stalingrad, the other German force comprising the rest of Army Group South was also bogged down in the Caucasus from a combination of Soviet resistance and diverting of manpower north to help break Stalingrad.

As the German 6th Army and 4th Panzer Army gradually pushed the Soviets out of Stalingrad, the Soviets prepared for a new offensive to break the German hold on Stalingrad. Codenamed Operation Uranus and initiated on November 19, the Soviets used bridges built over the Don River (which the Nazi-allied Romanian forces failed to destroy) to break the Romanian lines and then encircle the German forces in the Stalingrad. The Soviet offensive successfully trapped some 300,000 German forces in Stalingrad on November 23. The Nazi-Germany rushed to relieve the besieged 6th Army and 4th Panzer Army in Stalingrad, but the operation was delayed almost two weeks into December. By then, the German forces in Stalingrad were too weak to break the Soviet encirclement.

The German counter offensive, known as Operation Winter Storm, was initiated on December 12. However, the Soviets launched a new operation to defeat the German relief attempt on December 16. The Soviet offensive, in addition to stopping the counter-offensive 40 miles south of Stalingrad, also managed to destroy many of the aircraft delivering supplies to the encircled German forces in the Stalingrad. The failed attempt to relieve the Germans in Stalingrad convinced Hitler to pull out the remaining German forces out of the Caucasus and back over the Don River. On January 31, 1943, the 90,000 remaining German forces in Stalingrad surrendered to the Soviet Union.

1943 Eastern Front
By February, the Soviets had managed to retake land in southern Russia all the way to the Donnets River. The Germans forces regrouped and then launched a successful attack into Ukraine. The Soviet line now formed a salient (a line confronted on three sides by enemy forces) at Kursk. On July 4th, the Germans attacked the Soviet salient in Kursk form the north, south and west. However, the attacks resulted in a stalemate and wasted resources. The Germans continued to apply pressure to the northern section, but to no avail as the Soviets bleed the German offensive dry while managing to sustain their own loses with their vast numerical advantage.

The Battle of Kursk was a slaughterhouse for all sides involved, as the Soviets fought with tactics of attrition to exhaust the Germans. The Battle of Kursk marks the last major German offensive in the Eastern Front. After the failed Kursk offensive, German forces were constantly pushed back and never again managed to advance. The Red Army pushed the Wehrmacht back, encircled Army Group Center in Operation Bagration in 1944, and invaded eastern Prussia in January 1945. The final campaign of the Red Army against Germany in World War II was the decimation of the city, resulting in a half million casualties for both the Soviet Union and Nazi-Germany. The Battle for Berlin marked the last stand of Hitler's Third Reich.