THE EASTERN FRONT From Operation Barbarossa to the Fall of Berlin - The Second World War in Colour

The war between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany from 22 June 1941 to 8 May 1945 is one of superlatives in every respect.

First, it unfolded on the largest land theatre of operations of the Second World War and probably in the history of humanity. This mobile front, where German and Soviet offensives alternated, moved back and forth across the western Soviet Union and then swept through Central Europe, from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. From east to west, this front encompassed every form of warfare: positional warfare, war of movement, siege warfare, urban warfare, guerrilla fighting, armoured warfare, and more.

Furthermore, the relentless struggle waged by the two totalitarian regimes led to an extraordinary mobilisation of economies and societies. It resulted in destruction and human losses of unprecedented scale, caused by combat, the deportation of populations, massacres, war crimes, but also disease and famine. The Eastern Front was also a front of death ruled by ideology. From 1943 onwards, Germany presented itself as a bulwark against the spread of Bolshevism. For the Soviet regime, the Eastern Front was first and foremost a matter of survival. The Soviet Union responded to the war of annihilation imposed upon it by Nazi Germany with the full brutality of a totalitarian state.

Without the Soviet Union, what would have been the outcome of the Second World War? The mobilisation of the Soviet population — and the sacrifice of millions of men and women —, an industry running at full capacity and the immense material aid from the United States allowed the USSR to resist, to wear down its adversary and ultimately to extend its influence westward. The war in the East shaped the face of Europe for more than half a century. Its consequences are still felt today.