The Great Patriotic War

Eastern Front
Part of the European theatre of World War II
Clockwise from top left: Soviet Il-2 ground attack aircraft in Berlin sky; German Tiger I tanks during the Battle of Kursk; German Stuka dive bombers on the Eastern Front, winter 1943–1944; Killings of Jews by German Einsatzgruppen in Ukraine; Wilhelm Keitel signing the German Instrument of Surrender; Soviet troops in the Battle of Stalingrad
Date 22 June 1941 (1941-06-22) – 9 May 1945 (1945-05-09) (3 years, 10 months, 2 weeks and 3 days) Location Europe east of Germany: Central, Eastern and Northern Europe; in later stages Southeast Europe (Balkans), Germany and Austria Result Soviet victory Soviet Union occupies Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe and establishes pro-Soviet Communist governments in countries including Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and East Germany. Establishment of the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia. Beginning of the Cold War and the creation of the Iron Curtain. The beginning of the Greek Civil War. Territorial changes Partition of Germany Borders of Poland changed.
Belligerents
Axis powers  Germany  Romania (until 1944)  Italy (until 1943)  Hungary  Bulgaria (from 5th until 9th September 1944) Axis puppet states  Slovakia  Croatia Co-belligerents  Finland (until 1944)	Allies  Soviet Union Poland Czechoslovakia (from 1943) Yugoslavia (from 1944) Tuva (until 1944) Former Axis powers or co-belligerents  Romania (from 1944) Bulgaria (from 1944)  Finland (from 1944) Aerial and naval only United States United Kingdom Free France (1943–45)
Commanders and leaders
Adolf Hitler (commander-in-chief) Walther von Brauchitsch Franz Halder Kurt Zeitzler Heinz Guderian Felix Steiner Heinrich Himmler Hermann Fegelein Gerd von Rundstedt Ion Antonescu Benito Mussolini Miklós Horthy Boris III Jozef Tiso Ante Pavelić Risto Ryti	Joseph Stalin (commander-in-chief) Georgy Zhukov Boris Shaposhnikov Aleksandr Vasilevsky Aleksei Antonov Konstantin Rokossovsky Josip Broz Tito Zygmunt Berling
Strength
1941 3,767,000 troops 1943 3,933,000 troops 1945 1,960,000 troops	1941 2,680,000 troops 1943 6,724,000 troops 1945 6,410,000 troops
Casualties and losses
See below	See below

Soviet victory

The Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of conflict between the European Axis powers and co-belligerent Finland against the Soviet Union, Poland and other Allies, which encompassed Northern, Southern and Central and Eastern Europe from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945. It has been known as the Great Patriotic War (Russian: Великая Отечественная Война, Velikaya Otechestvennaya Voyna) in the former Soviet Union, while in Germany it was called the Eastern Front (German: die Ostfront), the Eastern Campaign (der Ostfeldzug), the Russian Campaign (der Rußlandfeldzug), or the German-Soviet War by outside parties.

The battles on the Eastern Front constituted the largest military confrontation in history. They were characterized by unprecedented ferocity, wholesale destruction, mass deportations, and immense loss of life due to combat, starvation, exposure, disease, and massacres. The Eastern Front, as the site of nearly all extermination camps, death marches, ghettos, and the majority of pogroms, was central to the Holocaust. Of the estimated 70 million deaths attributed to World War II, over 30 million, many of them civilian, occurred on the Eastern Front. The Eastern Front was decisive in determining the outcome of the European portion of World War II, eventually serving as the main reason for the defeat of Nazi Germany.

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