Eastern Front of World War II - a look at the Great Patriotic War from the West

We all know very well that the beginning of World War II refers to the military operations against Poland organized by the German intelligence services, which began on September 1, 1939. After two days, England and France declared war on Germany. Canada, New Zealand, Australia, India and the countries of South Africa came out in support of the states. Thus, these three days turned into a war on a global scale.

It took the German army only two weeks to completely occupy Polish territory. Unfortunately, the heroism of the Polish soldiers was not enough to defend the country, and no real help was received from other states. The Western and Eastern Fronts of World War II suffered many victories and defeats. Read about significant events further in the article.

Role of the Eastern Front in World War II

As already noted, after Germany attacked Poland on September 1, 1939, there was no response from the West. On September 8, the Germans repulsed resistance and captured Warsaw. Already on September 17, the Soviet Union sets off for Poland from the East, through Western Ukraine and Belarus.

The country's government saw only one way out - flight from Poland. In fact, the army remains destined for itself, without command. These events led to the burning of Warsaw on September 28.

By October 5, the Soviet Union and Germany were dividing Poland between themselves. With these events, active operations began on the Eastern Front of World War II.

Attack on the USSR

Let's look at the main events of World War II on the Eastern Front. On June 22, 1941, German troops attacked the Soviet Union without declaring hostilities. Germany's allies included Italy, Finland, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia.

The surprise attack, of course, played into the hands of the Germans. That is why, already in the first weeks of the war, Germany penetrated as deeply as possible into the territory of the USSR. In just ten days, German troops occupied Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, a huge part of Ukraine and Moldova. For the Soviet Union, this was a big blow, because all counterattacks ended in complete failure, many soldiers and officers of the Red Army were captured.

At the end of October, Germany set a course for Moscow. Initially, the German troops were successful, however, already in December 1941 the Red Army managed to defend the capital, the Germans suffered a serious defeat.

Death in the East

Just as Verdun symbolizes the highest losses of the First World War, the Eastern Front - and especially the fate of General Paulus's 6th Army, which capitulated at Stalingrad - is associated with the mass death of German soldiers and officers in the Second World War. During the war, the Wehrmacht fought its fiercest battles in the east, and it was there that the German armed forces lost the largest number of soldiers. Let's try to figure out how true this statement is and what problems the researcher faces when studying this issue.

Simple question, complex answer

Unfortunately, it is not so easy to account for Wehrmacht losses. The word “loss” itself has been interpreted in different ways. The sum of dead, missing, captured and wounded who had to be evacuated from the battlefield was called bloody (blutige) losses. On the other hand, demographic losses stood out - in this case we were talking about missing people, people who did not return home and whose death was not confirmed by any documents.

German prisoners in Stalingrad, 1943. waralbum.ru

In the Wehrmacht there were two types of casualty reports. Report IIa was compiled daily by the personnel department of each unit and transmitted to the higher unit. There, the information was summarized in ten-day reports and transmitted to the high command. Report IVb was prepared by officers of the sanitary units. The command received these reports every three days and every ten days.

The reports of the orderlies often included lower figures than in the reports of the personnel departments - there is an opinion that the officers did not inform the orderlies about all the losses in their units. The IVb reports contained underestimated figures, but the command received them faster than the IIa reports, and this played an important role in the operational planning of combat operations. The data from both reports was later compared and supplemented at the combined arms level by employees responsible for recording losses and reinforcements. This provided more accurate data that was used for strategic planning of combat operations.

German losses on the Eastern Front on average per month

The table is compiled based on data collected by the German historian Rüdiger Overmans. Data is available only until December 1944 - after that many soldiers tried to escape to the West and surrender to the Allies, and it became increasingly difficult to attribute losses to a specific front. Losses during surrender were almost 100%, so the researcher did not include this data in the table

Note that at the beginning of the war one division consisted of 15,000 people, but over time its regular size was reduced by several thousand. The table below shows that even in times of comparative calm, losses rarely fell below 50,000 people. It turns out that even in the calmest periods on the Eastern Front, the Wehrmacht lost three full divisions in a month. And on average, losses were just over 120,000 people per month, which is approximately the same as an army. In September 1944, losses reached 439,953 people, which is the size of an entire army group. The number of men who reached conscription age in Germany was 400,000–500,000 per year, that is, on average, in three to four months, a whole year of conscripts “burned out” in the furnace of war.

About the accuracy of reports

The figures given in the table do not always reflect losses in large front-line operations: for example, the high losses of the 6th Army in the winter of 1942-1943 (170,000 people) or the destruction of Army Group Center in June-July 1944, as well as Army Group " Southern Ukraine" in the Balkans that same summer. Since the fall of 1944, more and more gaps have appeared in the reports on losses, since information either did not reach the command or was seriously delayed. “Late” reports were entered into documents for the next accounting period.

Difference in German casualty reports by month

If some units or entire armies were surrounded and ceased to exist, there was no report from them - as was the case with the 6th Army in Stalingrad. These losses were recorded in subsequent accounting months - in this case February 1943, as can be seen from the large difference between the reported losses and the actual picture.

Prisoners at Stalingrad. Source: Bundesarchiv , Bild 183- E 0406-0022-010 / CC - BY - SA 3.0
In the first years of the war, casualties were so low that conscription easily covered them. Since June 1941, they have increased many times, and the Wehrmacht was no longer able to compensate for them.

The German command was aware of the problem of the accuracy of the information provided in the reports, but when planning operations, these run-ups did not play a big role. But the headquarters needed accurate numbers to resolve issues of organization and replenishment. Therefore, on October 1, 1941, a statistical department (Sachgebiet Statistik) appeared in the Wehrmacht loss department (Abteilung Wehrmachtsverlustwesen), which prepared a summary of losses for previous campaigns.

The difference in accounting for Wehrmacht losses in the three campaigns of 1939–1940

As you can see, according to the reports, the losses were much lower than the real ones. Separately, we note that these figures are not final: they do not take into account the losses of the Wehrmacht auxiliary services (Wehrmachtsgefolge), which by law were considered combatants. These include numerous organizations - for example, the Technical Emergency Service (Technische Nothilfe), the Air Defense Service (Luftschutzwarndienst) and many others.

Punch cards to help

The main problem was that the reports were prepared by the warring formations, and they did not have enough time. Therefore, special processing headquarters were involved in the work of recording losses, which were in charge of the personal files of the deceased and the paperwork associated with them - right up to the assignment of pensions to widows. Their employees created a separate punched card for each deceased, on which they entered all the available data about the person. Using such punch cards, they transmitted information about losses to the Reich statistical service. Punch cards helped analyze data according to various criteria - for example, by rank or age.

However, this system, although very advanced, had its drawbacks. It only took into account the dead, but not the wounded or missing, because it was created precisely to count the dead. The same soldier could be listed as killed according to the new method, but at the same time considered missing in action according to the old one: sanitary inspectors in their reports could report him as missing in action, and the commander, if he believed that the soldier had no chance to survive , reported to the processing headquarters about him as dead. It was not possible to prevent double counting.

Punch card invented by Herman Hollerith, 1895.

The punch card system began working in May 1944, that is, just at the time when the Allies began to regularly carpet bomb Germany. Some of the punch cards and reports were lost in the fire. Nevertheless, since August, losses were recorded exclusively using this new system, and its higher accuracy immediately brought results. The difference between monthly reports and total calculated losses began to decrease.

Where did the losses come from? From the infantry we know

Most of the losses were among ground forces. Fleet losses were extremely low (less than 0.5%), and the Luftwaffe accounted for only 3.7% of losses - and these were not pilots.

Wehrmacht losses by type of troops

In the summer of 1942, Adolf Hitler ordered a reduction in Luftwaffe personnel. The freed personnel were formed into 20 separate Luftwaffe field divisions (Luftwaffenfelddivisionen). They were commanded by officers who had no infantry experience and had not undergone appropriate training. It was precisely these formations, according to Rüdiger Overmans, that accounted for the main losses of the Luftwaffe.

The ratio of Wehrmacht losses by type of troops

By July 1, 1944, there were 9,570,000 soldiers in the Wehrmacht. Of these, 22.6% fought on the Eastern Front. At the same time, the Eastern Front accounted for 87.1% of losses in the ground forces. Together with Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine losses, losses in this theater of operations accounted for 90.4% of all losses. If we take into account only ground forces, then 93% of their losses occurred on the Eastern Front. It turns out that 22.6% of the Wehrmacht were ground forces that fought on the Eastern Front, which suffered 87.1% of all Wehrmacht losses there. For comparison, the fleet, with a share of 8.6% of the Wehrmacht forces, suffered 1.1% of all losses, of which 0.2% occurred on the Eastern Front.

The table does not take into account losses before the attack on the USSR, but their number - 50,000 soldiers - has a minimal effect on the final data. All the data presented are the bloody losses that were mentioned at the very beginning of the article.

We see that approximately a quarter of the Wehrmacht, fighting on the Eastern Front, suffered approximately 93% of all bloody losses of ground forces and approximately 87% of the total bloody losses of the Wehrmacht. In other words, the Eastern Front was indeed the theater of war that cost the German armed forces the highest casualties.

These figures are correct only as of July 1, 1944. In the second half of the year, the loss ratio was affected by the Allied landings in Normandy, and the Eastern Front lost several percent.

Before that, we talked about bloody losses - the amount of killed, captured, missing and wounded soldiers evacuated from the battlefield. The approximate ratio looks like this.

Types of Wehrmacht losses on the Eastern Front by the end of December 1944

A little less than 40% of losses were irrecoverable - these were missing or killed soldiers. Overmans writes that approximately half of the wounded also did not return to duty and no longer joined the ranks of the Wehrmacht.

The following table shows demographic losses divided by theater of war - that is, we are talking about missing persons.

In this case, the ratio changes, but the Eastern Front still remains the leader in terms of losses. In addition, in the final battles, the demographic losses of the Wehrmacht amounted to 1,230,000 people - 23% of the total. By final battles the author means all battles that took place after January 1, 1945. According to Overmans, the greatest losses in these battles again occurred on the Eastern Front. The reasons for this were confusion, the replenishment of units with young untrained soldiers, the involvement of the Volkssturm (militia of civilians and cadets), etc.

Demographic German casualties in the war amount to 5.3 million people. Of these, 3.5–4 million can be “credited” to the Red Army, which is 70–75%. According to Overmans, although in this case the share of losses attributable to the Eastern Front is lower than in the first tables, it is still clear that this theater of operations accounted for the highest number of Wehrmacht losses. At the same time, if we talk about the role of the Eastern Front in World War II, it should be taken into account that military units from other countries also acted on the side of Germany. These units did not necessarily fight - they could carry out other army or police tasks, suppress unrest or exterminate partisans, thereby freeing up Wehrmacht and SS forces for action at the front. Of course, they also suffered losses.

Wehrmacht losses on the Eastern Front compared to its total losses

Not only soldiers

In the last months of the war, chaos and confusion reigned in Germany. Reinforcements from young untrained soldiers, Volkssturm militia, as well as various partisan organizations like the Werwolf were sent to the front. The losses grew, and it became increasingly difficult to take them into account.

Almost the entire civilian population was recruited into the militia of cities proclaimed fortresses. For example, in Königsberg in April 1944 there were 63,000 inhabitants, and almost all of them were required to spend a certain number of hours in service. One townsman recalled that, as an eight-year-old boy, he had to carry shells, while his mother and grandmother sewed bags for cartridges. Civilians were mining streets and bridges. Their losses are not taken into account in the tables - just like teenagers from the Hitler Youth involved in air defense. Let us recall that according to the law of 1936, all children from the age of 10 were subject to enrollment in this youth organization. Two years later, the Hitler Youth counted up to 7 million teenagers in its ranks, and in 1939 another 1.7 million young men were added to them.

Shooting training in the Hitler Youth organization. Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1981-053-35A / CC-BY-SA 3.0

Shooting training began from a very young age. At the age of 17, some young men joined the SS Panzer Division “Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler”. Since 1940, teenagers from the Hitler Youth carried out police service and were involved in air defense. Losses among them especially increased towards the end of the war, but the exact numbers are still unknown.

Most members of the Hitler Youth were recruited into the Volkssturm, a people's militia organized in October 1944. All men aged 16 to 60 were subject to conscription. Since February 1945, girls and women began to be recruited into it. They served not only in protected buildings, but also in positions that were under attack - for example, they controlled air defense searchlights.

16-year-old Willi Hübner awarded the Iron Cross 2nd class, March 1945. Source: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-G0627-500-001 / CC-BY-SA 3

It is difficult to name the exact number of girls and women who served in the Wehrmacht itself. Women have been called up for service since 1935. It is known, for example, that the Reich Air Defense Service during the war had approximately 20 million employees, 70% of whom in 1939 were women. Formally, although they did not wear military uniforms, they were in the service, and therefore the losses among them should be considered combat. However, there is no exact data on how many women joined the ranks and how many of them died.

There is also no data on the total losses of the Volkssturm. It was mainly deployed on the Eastern Front and suffered heavy losses there. For example, 15,000 Volkssturm fighters defended Breslau (today's Polish Wroclaw) until May 1945. About 175,000 militia members are missing in action, the minimum number of deaths.

Wehrmacht losses on the Eastern Front do not include the so-called hiwis (voluntary assistants of the Wehrmacht) and collaborators who also participated in the hostilities. Their total number reached 900,000 people. These included local police forces and soldiers of the Russian Liberation Army of General Vlasov, as well as security forces and volunteer corps of other countries - for example, Denmark or Norway.

A Cossack who participated on the side of the Wehrmacht in the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. commons.wikimedia.org

The historian Overmans does not take into account the forces of the Wehrmacht's allies when accounting for losses on the Eastern Front. However, we note that the losses of Hungary in World War II are estimated by researcher Rolf Dieter Müller at approximately 360,000 soldiers, Finland - at 89,000 people, Romania - at 378,000 soldiers, most of whom died on the Eastern Front. It is also unknown to what extent German statistics take into account the demographic losses of Austrian soldiers who fought in the Wehrmacht and SS. According to reports, Austrian losses amounted to 247,000 soldiers killed or missing, and only 1.25 million Austrians served in the Wehrmacht and SS. The Italian veterans organization UNIRR reported that about 100,000 Italians died in the USSR. Their fate was shared by a number of Spaniards, Croats and representatives of other nationalities.

Taking into account all these considerations, according to the author’s estimates, from 1 to 1.5 million people can be added to the dead and missing in battles with the Red Army.

Alexander Polishchuk

/ Andrey Ulanov

Strike through the Carpathians

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The battle for the city of Ostrov on July 4–5, 1941 is a virtually unknown page of the war, full of drama and reconstructed literally by the clock

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“So as not to incur unnecessary losses...”: Luftwaffe against the 1st Panzer Corps

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Literature and sources:

1. OKW/WFSt, Verlust- und Verbrauchszahlen der Wehrmacht, Juni 1941 - December 1944, BArch, RW 6.
2. Sachgebiet Statistik in der Abteilung Wehrmachtverlustwesen des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht, Saalfeld/Saale, den 30.August 1944, Geheime Kommandosache, Betr.: Zentralstatistik der Menschenverluste. im Kriege, Bundesarchiv RM 7/807.
3. OKH, Gen.St.dH, Org. Abt. Nr I/19225/44gKdos. vom 9.9.1944, BArch, RH 2/1339.
4. Rüdiger Overmans. Deutsche militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg. - Munich: Oldenbourg, 1999.
5. Rüdiger Overmans. Das andere Gesicht des Krieges: Leben und Sterben der 6. Armee // Jürgen Förster. Stalingrad. - Munich: Piper, 1992.
6. Hermann Weiß. Luftwaffenhelfer. Enzyklopädie des Nationalsozialismus. — Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart, 1997.
7. Kurt Haß. Jugend unterm Schicksal - Lebensberichte junger Deutscher. - Hamburg, 1950.
8. Krieg und Partizipation. „Volksgenossinnen“ in den NS-Frauenorganisationen, Christine Hikel, Nicole Kramer und Elisabeth Zellmer: Lieschen Müller wird politisch. — Geschlecht, Staat und Partizipation im 20. Jahrhundert. — Munich, 2009.
9. Rolf-Dieter Müller (Hrsg.). Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg. — Band 10: Der Zusammenbruch des Deutschen Reiches, 1945.

Summer Campaign

Another important period for the Eastern Front. Both sides, the Soviet and the German, waited until the early summer of 1942 to carry out their offensive plans. Germany had a goal for the summer - the Caucasus and Leningrad, and also to establish contact with Finland. That is, the original plans on the eastern front remained in force.

But the Soviet Union suffered another failure. In May 1942, an offensive was carried out near Kharkov, but it was not successful. The Germans repulsed the attack without any problems, defeated the Red Army troops and went on the offensive.

An important event on the Eastern Front was the Battle of Stalingrad, which began in mid-July 1942. Here the Soviet army managed to stop the enemy’s advance, but this entailed huge losses.

The turning point of the Eastern Front of World War II

A significant event on the Eastern Front was the period from November 1942 to December 1943. It was November 19 that marked the beginning of the counterattack of the USSR army at Stalingrad. In four days, the troops managed to unite in the city of Kalach-on-Don and encircle twenty-two enemy divisions. The victory in the south was the first significant defeat of German troops in the world war. This battle became a radical turning point on the Eastern Front.

In July 1943, Germany decided to strike at Soviet troops on the Kursk Bulge, however, the Red Army managed to restrain and literally exhaust the German troops. The result is that victory in this battle remained with the USSR.

By the autumn of 1943, Soviet troops managed to liberate part of Ukraine and Belarus from the Nazi invaders.

Important events of 1944-1945

These major battles of World War II on the Eastern Front were decisive. The Soviet Union managed to liberate Crimea, unblock Leningrad, reach the Carpathians and enter the territory of Romania. And also to defeat large groups and make a breakthrough of the German front by 600 kilometers.

During operations Iskra, Bagration, Baltic, and Lvov-Sandomierz, 26 enemy divisions were destroyed, and 82 Nazi groups suffered serious losses.

During the Karelian Campaign, the Lapland War, the Iasi-Kishinev and Budapest operations, the governments of Romania and Bulgaria were overthrown, and Finland broke the agreement with Germany.

Already in January 1945, Hungary capitulated. The war ended with the Vistula-Oder and East Prussian operations, as well as the Battle of Berlin. In Karlhorst, on the night of May 8–9, the act of surrender was signed.

World War I: causes and essence of the conflict

After a series of successful wars against Denmark in 1864, Austria in 1866, and especially after victory over France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, Prussia, under the leadership of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, managed to unite the disparate German lands under its rule.

On January 18, 1871, in the Palace of Versailles near Paris, Bismarck, in the presence of German princes, read the text of the proclamation of the Prussian king as German emperor. Thus, a new strong player appeared on the European stage - the German Empire.

German Empire / Photo: wikimedia.org

The Russian Empire did not initially prevent the unification of Germany, since Prussia, the only great power, did not oppose Russia during the Crimean War. In addition, Bismarck promised Alexander II to support Russia in revising the Treaty of Paris of 1856, which prohibited Russia from having a Black Sea navy.

Moreover, in 1873, Alexander II and the Emperor of Austria-Hungary Franz Joseph I signed an agreement in the Schönbrunn Palace near Vienna, which Kaiser Wilhelm I joined a little later. This marked the beginning of the Alliance of the Three Emperors.

The agreements were extended twice more: in 1881 and 1884.

But the growing contradictions, primarily between Russia and Austria-Hungary due to the desire for dominance in the Balkans and Germany’s support for the latter, led to a cooling of relations between the countries.

In parallel, the Austro-German Alliance was formed in 1879, which was joined in 1882 by Italy, which competed with France for dominance in North Africa.

As a counterbalance to the formed Triple Alliance, a Russian-French military alliance was concluded in 1891, called “Cardiac Consent” (French Entente Cordiale - Entente).

Relations between France and Great Britain were tense due to colonial differences, but in 1904 an agreement was reached between these countries on major colonial issues, which served as the basis of the British-French Entente.

Russia entered into a similar agreement with Great Britain in 1907. Thus, two opposing military-political blocs were formed: the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy) and the Entente (Russia, France and Great Britain).

Photo: mycdn.me

Main contradictions between the parties

Great Britain:

- German support for the Boers in the war with Britain;

- German intervention in the economic affairs of East and South-West Africa - spheres of influence of Great Britain;

- preservation of maritime and colonial power;

— waged an undeclared economic and trade war against Germany.

France:

- sought to take revenge for the defeat inflicted on her by Germany in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870;

- the desire to return Alsace and Lorraine to its composition;

— suffered losses in its traditional markets in competition with German goods;

- sought to preserve its colonies, in particular North Africa, at any cost.

Russia:

- claimed free passage of its fleet into the Mediterranean Sea, insisted on weakening or revising in its favor the regime of control over the Dardanelles Strait;

- regarded the construction of the Berlin-Baghdad railway as an unfriendly act on the part of Berlin;

— insisted on the exclusive protection of the Slavic peoples in the Balkans.

Germany:

- sought political and economic dominance in Europe;

- wanted to acquire new territories;

- having joined the struggle for colonies only after 1871, it claimed equal rights in the colonial possessions of the British Empire, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Portugal. She was particularly active in obtaining markets.

Austria-Hungary:

- sought to retain Bosnia and Herzegovina, which it captured in 1908;

- opposed Russia, which took on the role of protector of all Slavs in the Balkans, and Serbia, which claimed the role of a unifying center of the southern Slavs.

Despite all the above contradictions, the main reason for the First World War was the colonial issue: Britain and France did not want to share the captured colonies, and Germany and its allies sought to get part of these colonies for themselves.

As the 28th US President Woodrow Wilson said: “Everyone is looking and not finding the reason why the war began. Their searches are in vain; they will not find this reason. The war did not start for any one reason, the war started for all reasons at once.”

Bialystok-Minsk and Smolensk battles in the West

This battle lasted from June 22 to July 8, and the troops of the Western Front suffered a serious defeat. These numbers are terrifying. Before the battle began, the front consisted of about 625,000 people, and about 420,000 souls were lost.

The Battle of Smolensk was also disappointing for the Western Front, resulting in a new defeat. However, due to the fact that in the rear there were troops from the front of the Reserve Armies, the enemy was not able to enter the operational space. By July 30, 1941, the Western Front had increased from four to six armies. All summer until September there were difficult battles, after which the Western Front was ordered to go on the defensive.

Unknown War

After the death of I. Stalin, the politics of memory in relation to the Second World War ceased to be strictly taboo. Khrushchev's "Thaw" created an opportunity for artistic expression outside the propaganda template. The works of front-line writers Vasil Bykov, Grigory Baklanov, Viktor Astafiev, Yuri Bondarev, Viktor Kurochkin and others are published. Nevertheless, the attitude of the Soviet leadership towards such works was ambiguous. And the USSR certainly did not plan to broadcast these narratives abroad. State publishing houses at that time translated military works of classics of Soviet literature - Boris Polevoy, Mikhail Sholokhov, Alexander Fadeev - into the languages ​​of capitalist countries.

The Foothold (An inch of land), Grigory Baklanov, 1962

Some works that went beyond the canon still leaked abroad and were published in tamizdat, but each time this was accompanied by a scandal and brought serious trouble to the author. This, for example, happened with the novel “In the Trenches of Stalingrad” by Viktor Nekrasov and the story “An Inch of Earth” by Grigory Baklanov - both works were translated into English and published in London in 1962. The “export” of Thaw war cinema, symbolic the triumph of which was the awarding of the main prize at the Cannes Film Festival to Mikhail Kolotozov’s film “The Cranes Are Flying” (1957) [].

At the same time, during the Khrushchev period, the USSR still did not actively seek to use the victory in World War II either for domestic political purposes or as a foreign policy asset. Collaboration with loyal Western writers such as Louis Aragon or Jean-Paul Sartre took place primarily along the communist and World Peace Council lines.

The situation changed after Leonid Brezhnev came to power. Since 1965, May 9 has again become a day off, and the tradition of holding large parades on Red Square has been resumed. The emerging cult of Victory was intended to unite Soviet society in the context of the growing crisis of communist ideology, as well as to consolidate the authority of the new General Secretary as a front-line soldier and war hero. During the same period, the narrative of the heroism of the Soviet people became an important tool of Moscow’s soft power, whose authority among Western “leftist” intellectuals was significantly undermined by the suppression of the Hungarian uprising in 1956 and the “Prague Spring” in 1968. A small but indicative fact - report L. Brezhnev at a ceremonial meeting in the Kremlin Palace of Congresses dedicated to the 20th anniversary of victory in the Great Patriotic War, was translated and published in English as a separate brochure.

Unknown War, 1978

At this time, works by Konstantin Simonov, Yuri Bondarev, and Boris Vasiliev were published in large editions. Some of them are translated into Western languages. A huge number of films about the war are being produced and participating in international film festivals. The Soviet-American documentary series “The Unknown War” (1978), which, according to some estimates, was watched by 145 million American television viewers, enjoyed great success among foreign viewers []. Under the title “Pages from His Life” (1978), excerpts from the speeches and works of Leonid Brezhnev, a significant part of which are devoted to the theme of war, are published in English.

At the same time, the canon of military literature is again becoming quite rigid - works where the front is described in a way disapproved by the party go on the shelf for many years. Against the backdrop of a general softening of morals and the abandonment of mass repression, an increasing number of authors are publishing their works abroad or even emigrating. This, for example, happened with Anatoly Kuznetsov, who was able to publish the full version of his novel about the occupation of Kyiv “Babi Yar” (published in English in 1970) only after he fled the USSR. Front-line soldiers Viktor Nekrasov and the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whom the Soviet press branded a “literary Vlasovite” after the release of “The Gulag Archipelago,” ended up abroad.

We can say that during the Brezhnev period, the theme of the Eastern Front became one of the dominant ones in translated Russian literature. The main participants in the debate about the nature and various features of the Great Patriotic War were Soviet writers and emigrant writers. Given the abundance of translations of works by Russian-speaking authors, Western writers found themselves, with rare exceptions [], “pushed away” from the themes of the Eastern Front, which for a time became the arena of “dispute among the Slavs.”

Moscow Battle

On October 2, 1941, the German Army Group Center launched an attack on the Western Front. And it turned out to be very successful for Germany. Next, it was decided to unite the Western and Moscow Reserve Fronts. All this happened under the leadership of General Zhukov and Colonel General Konev. The armies concentrated on the Mozhaisk defense line.

On November 15, German troops launched an attack on Moscow, and on December 6, the Western Front launched a counteroffensive, as a result of which Army Center groups suffered a crushing defeat.

Already in 1942, the Western Front again launched an offensive, the goal of which was to destroy the main forces of the German troops, namely Army Group Center. The Rzhev-Vyazemsky operation was headed by General Zhukov, but it was not successful.

Cold silence

In the first post-war years, the Eastern European theater of military operations was mentioned quite rarely in English-language literature. However, the reason here is not only the confrontation between two military-political blocs that began immediately after the end of World War II. There are a number of other important factors that can be identified.

1. The distance is too short for reflection. Literature (if we are not talking about newspaper feuilleton) comprehends and processes reality with a certain time lag. Suffice it to remember that the two most famous works about the Patriotic War of 1812—Mikhail Lermontov’s poem “Borodino” (1837) and Leo Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace” (1863–1869)—were written several decades after its completion. After the end of World War II, publishing houses were flooded with memoirs and “truth from the trenches,” but writers sought primarily to talk about personal experience, that is, about the occupation, resistance, and combat on the Western Front.
2. Passive position of the Soviet Union. In order to maintain strict control over society, the leadership of the USSR and Joseph Stalin personally sought to limit in every possible way the public discussion around the victory in World War II and the cult of national heroism that was emerging around it. Since 1948, May 9 became a working day, all publications about the war were subject to strict censorship, many memoirs and works of fiction ended up “on the shelf” for many years. The theme of victory was practically not used to promote the external image of the country; communist ideology was mainly “exported”.
3. Lack of translations of Soviet works about the war. The third point partially follows from the second. Stalin's censorship restricted front-line soldiers who wanted to talk about their experiences. The best examples of “trench truth” will appear in print later, during the “Thaw” era. But even the works that were included in the canon of socialist realism were practically not translated into Western European languages ​​during the Stalinist period. For example, one of the most popular novels about the war written in the 1940s, The Young Guard by Alexander Fadeev (1946), was published in English only in 1958.

Radiation. Ernst Junger, 1949

1943-1944

Active actions on the part of the Red Army forced Germany to begin withdrawing its troops from the Rzhev-Vyazma bridgehead. An important event was the Battle of Kursk, where troops of the Western and Bryansk fronts launched a counterattack. However, only the liberation of Smolensk ended in success.

The Western Front reported failure in eleven operations. On April 24, 1944, the front was renamed the Third Belorussian. Preparations for the Belarusian strategic offensive operation began immediately.

It is worth noting that the war greatly influenced the economic situation of European countries. Now the United States is leading the way in this sector on the world stage. The creation of the UN gave hope that in the future all conflicts could be resolved through agreements, excluding military clashes.