What was the turning point of the Eastern Front?

Stalingrad, fought from 1942 into early 1943. The destruction of an entire German army there ended the run of German advances and handed the strategic initiative to the Soviet Union for the rest of the war.

What was the largest tank battle in history?

Kursk, fought in July and August 1943, is usually given that title. Thousands of German and Soviet tanks met there, and it was Germany's last great offensive in the East.

Why was the Eastern Front so deadly?

It was the largest and most lethal theater of World War II. Vast distances, brutal winters, and a war fought with little mercy on either side produced casualties on a scale seen nowhere else, with several of the deadliest battles in history.

Which battle ended the war in Europe?

Berlin in 1945. The Soviet assault on the German capital brought the fighting to Hitler's bunker, the last defenders of the city laid down their arms on 2 May, and within a week Germany surrendered unconditionally, ending the war in Europe.

When was the war on the Eastern Front?

From the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 to the fall of Berlin in May 1945.

How important was the Eastern Front to the war?

It was decisive. The majority of German army casualties in World War II were suffered fighting the Soviet Union, which broke the back of the Wehrmacht.

Who won the Battle of Stalingrad?

The Soviet Union. On 19 November 1942 the Red Army's Operation Uranus began the encirclement of the German Sixth Army in the city, and the army's last troops surrendered on 2 February 1943. Its commander, Friedrich Paulus, was the first German field marshal ever to surrender, and the initiative in the East passed to the Soviets.

How many German soldiers died at Stalingrad?

No exact count exists. Germany's national history museum estimates that about 150,000 German soldiers died inside the encirclement, and the Imperial War Museums put total German losses in the campaign, including 91,000 taken prisoner, at about 500,000. Only some 5,000 to 6,000 of those prisoners ever returned home.

Who won the Battle of Kursk?

The Soviet Union. The German Operation Citadel, launched on 5 July 1943, stalled against deep Soviet defenses and Hitler called it off after about a week. Soviet counteroffensives from 12 July drove the Germans back and retook Kharkov on 23 August, and Citadel proved to be Germany's last great offensive in the East.

What was Operation Bagration?

The Soviet summer offensive of 1944 in Belarus. Launched on 22 June 1944, three years to the day after the German invasion, it destroyed Germany's Army Group Center within weeks and carried the Red Army to the Vistula and the approaches of Warsaw.

The Greatest Battles of the Eastern Front: a guide

The Children's Khorovod fountain after the air raid, Stalingrad, 23 August 1942. Photo: Emmanuil Yevzerikhin (TASS), public domain

At a glance
Rank	Battle	Date	Armies	Result
1	Stalingrad	1942 to 1943	Up to 1.14 million Soviet vs the German 6th Army and allies	Soviet victory; 6th Army destroyed, initiative to the Red Army
2	Berlin	1945	2 to 2.5 million Soviet and Polish vs 760,000 to 1 million German	Soviet victory; Berlin taken, Germany surrendered
3	Kursk	1943	1.35 to 1.9 million Soviet vs 780,000 to 800,000 German	Soviet victory; Citadel failed, initiative to the Red Army
4	Moscow	1941 to 1942	1.25 million Soviet vs 1.8 million German	Soviet victory; first major German defeat on land
5	Leningrad	1941 to 1944	872 days; about 2.5 million civilians trapped	Soviet victory; city held, 700,000 to 1 million civilians dead
6	Operation Bagration	1944	2.3 to 2.4 million Soviet vs about 500,000 German	Soviet victory; Army Group Center destroyed
7	Vistula-Oder	1945	2.2 million Soviet and Polish vs 500,000 German	Soviet victory; Poland overrun, Red Army on the Oder
8	Kiev	1941	627,000 Soviet vs Army Group South and Guderian	German victory; Southwestern Front destroyed, 665,000 captured
9	Budapest	1944 to 1945	About 156,000 Soviet and allied vs about 70,000 German and Hungarian	Soviet victory; Budapest taken
10	The Dnieper	1943	Over 2.6 million Soviet; almost 4 million in all	Soviet victory; Kiev retaken
11	Iași-Kishinev	1944	About 1.31 million Soviet vs about 905,000 Axis	Soviet victory; Romania changes sides
12	Sevastopol	1941 to 1942	Over 100,000 Soviet vs 9 Axis divisions	German victory; Crimea taken
13	Kharkov	1942	640,000 to 765,000 Soviet; German total not given	German victory; Soviet armies encircled
14	Białystok and Minsk	1941	4 Soviet armies vs 2 German panzer groups and 2 armies	German victory; Western Front destroyed
15	Smolensk	1941	42 to 66 Soviet divisions vs 2 German panzer groups	German victory; Moscow drive delayed

Quick answer

What were the greatest battles of the Eastern Front?

In our ranking the greatest battles of the Eastern Front are Stalingrad in 1942 to 1943, the turning point, then Berlin in 1945, Kursk in 1943, Moscow in 1941 to 1942 and the siege of Leningrad from 1941 to 1944, followed by Operation Bagration and the Vistula-Oder offensive of 1944 and 1945. Kursk is often called the largest tank battle in history.

The Eastern Front was a four-year struggle between Germany and the Soviet Union that decided World War II. It saw the largest troop movements and battles in history and the heaviest losses of the war. These are its fifteen greatest battles, ranked by score (see how we chose them), each told in full and set on the real ground where it was fought.¹

For the causes, the course, the crimes and the losses of the whole war in the east, read our guide to the Eastern Front of World War II.

1 Stalingrad, 1942 to 1943

Where: Stalingrad (today Volgograd) and the Don steppe, Soviet Union
War: World War II, Eastern Front
Sides: Soviet Union vs Germany, Romania, Italy and Hungary
Strength: Soviet: 547,000 at the start, 1,143,500 for the counteroffensive; Axis: German 6th Army about 430,000 at the start, plus Romanian, Italian and Hungarian armies
Result: Soviet victory; 6th Army destroyed, about 91,000 taken prisoner

In summer 1942 Hitler drove south toward the Volga and the Caucasus oil. Russian historians date the battle from 17 July, when Army Group B attacked in the great bend of the Don; the German 6th Army under Friedrich Paulus then numbered about 430,000 men. It reached the city in late August, when raids from 23 to 29 August killed about 71,000 civilians. By mid-November the Germans held 90 percent of the ruins, but Vasily Chuikov’s 62nd Army clung to the bank, supplied across the Volga.²

On 19 November Operation Uranus smashed the Romanian armies on the flanks, and on 23 November the pincers met near Kalach, trapping about 250,000 Germans and more than 30,000 Romanians and Soviet auxiliaries. Hitler forbade a breakout, and Erich von Manstein’s relief attack stalled 48 km away. Paulus, made a field marshal the day before, surrendered on 31 January 1943; the northern pocket gave up on 2 February. About 150,000 Germans had died in the pocket; of some 91,000 prisoners, only 5,000 to 6,000 came home. The losses are disputed: the tables of the Russian General Staff study led by Grigori Krivosheev, defensive and offensive phases together, add up to 1,129,619 Soviet casualties, Krinko and Medvedev put Axis losses at no more than 880,000, and estimates for both sides together run from nearly 2 million to 2.5 million or more. Since 1967 The Motherland Calls has stood over the battlefield on Mamayev Kurgan.³

Why it ranks here: It is No. 1 as the only battle here with full marks for recognition, decisiveness, consequence and memory: a whole German field army destroyed and the initiative handed to the Red Army for good. It drops a point only on certainty, because the loss estimates are disputed.

Read the full story of the Battle of Stalingrad ›

Military map of southern Russia in 1942 showing the German drive to the Volga and the Caucasus — The German advance to Stalingrad and into the Caucasus, 24 July to 18 November 1942, with an inset of the city and its approaches, from the US Military Academy atlas. Public domain (US government work). Department of History, US Military Academy, via Wikimedia Commons.

2 Berlin, 1945

Where: Berlin and the Oder and Neisse fronts, Germany
War: World War II, Eastern Front
Sides: Soviet Union and the Polish People’s Army vs Germany
Strength: About 2 to 2.5 million Soviet and Polish soldiers vs about 760,000 (dzieje.pl) to 1 million (German Historical Museum) Germans
Result: Soviet victory; Berlin surrendered on 2 May 1945

On 16 April 1945 Georgy Zhukov’s 1st Belorussian Front and Ivan Konev’s 1st Ukrainian Front attacked across the Oder and the Neisse toward Berlin. Krivosheev’s tables give the three Soviet fronts in the operation 1,906,200 men, with 155,900 more in two Polish armies; dzieje.pl puts the attackers at 2.5 million with 6,200 tanks, against about 760,000 Germans, many of them untrained Volkssturm. The first blow fell on the Seelow Heights, about 70 km east of the city, where 200,000 defenders faced 900,000 attackers; from 16 to 20 April more than 35,000 Soviet and 12,000 German soldiers fell there.⁴

A soldier looks at graffiti-covered pillars inside the ruined Reichstag — Graffiti left by Soviet soldiers on the pillars of the ruined Reichstag, photographed by a British Army Film and Photographic Unit cameraman in the summer of 1945. Public domain

Zhukov’s armies reached the suburbs on 22 April and the ring closed on 25 April, the day Soviet and American troops met at Torgau on the Elbe. On 30 April Hitler killed himself in his bunker, and hours later Red Army soldiers raised the red flag on the Reichstag; on 2 May the last units in the city laid down their arms. Myth vs fact: the famous photograph of the flag over the Reichstag is not a snapshot of the assault but a scene restaged for Yevgeny Khaldei’s camera on 2 May. Krivosheev counts 352,475 Soviet casualties, 78,291 of them killed or missing, plus 8,892 Polish; German losses are far less certain, and dzieje.pl gives about 100,000 soldiers killed.⁵

Why it ranks here: It takes full marks for recognition, consequence and memory: it took the capital, ended the Third Reich and left the flag over the Reichstag as the war’s lasting image. It trails Stalingrad because the war was already lost for Germany, so decisiveness is 4, and strength and loss figures vary by source.

Read the full story of the Battle of Berlin ›

Hand-drawn 1945 situation map with arrows converging on Berlin — US VII Corps situation map of the Eastern and Western fronts on 22 April 1945, with the Soviet fronts of Zhukov, Konev and Rokossovsky closing on Berlin. US National Archives. Public domain (US government work). HQ VII Corps, US National Archives, 1945, via Wikimedia Commons.

3 Kursk, 1943

Where: The Kursk salient, from Oryol to Belgorod and Kharkov, Soviet Union
War: World War II, Eastern Front
Sides: Soviet Union vs Germany
Strength: About 780,000 to 800,000 Germans with 2,000 to 3,000 tanks vs 1.35 to 1.9 million Soviets, rising to more than 2.5 million
Result: Soviet victory; Germany’s last great offensive in the East failed

Hitler’s Operation Citadel, opened on 5 July 1943 from Oryol and Belgorod, was meant to pinch off the salient and win back the initiative. Germany staked about 800,000 men and more than 2,000 tanks on it, some 70 percent of its armor in the East. The forewarned Red Army waited behind some 943,000 mines with about 1.35 million men and almost 4,000 tanks and assault guns in the German museum’s count, or more than 1.9 million men and 5,000 tanks in the historian David Glantz’s.⁶

Walter Model’s 9th Army gained only ten kilometers in the north and Hermann Hoth’s 4th Panzer Army just over 30 in the south. On 12 July the Soviets struck back at Prokhorovka and opened Operation Kutuzov against the Oryol bulge, and on 13 July Hitler halted Citadel, partly to send troops to Italy after the Allied landing in Sicily. Myth vs fact: Pavel Rotmistrov’s memoirs made Prokhorovka a duel of 700 to 800 tanks a side that cost the Germans more than 400, but the archives show about 910 tanks at the narrowest count, and on 12 July his 5th Guards Tank Army lost 359 against 193 German tanks put out of action, only 20 of them for good. Krivosheev’s tables for the defensive battle and the two counteroffensives add up to about 863,000 Soviet casualties, Glantz counts more than 685,000, and Karl-Heinz Frieser puts German casualties at about 185,000.⁷

Why it ranks here: Germany’s last great offensive in the East failed and the initiative never came back, so it takes full marks for recognition and decisiveness. It sits below Berlin on consequence and memory, 4 each, and disputed figures hold certainty at 4.

Read the full story of the Battle of Kursk ›

Two-panel military map of the Eastern Front and the Kursk salient in summer 1943 — The Battle of Kursk, 4 July to 1 August 1943, beside the whole Eastern Front on the eve of Operation Citadel, from the US Military Academy atlas. Public domain (US government work). Department of History, US Military Academy, via Wikimedia Commons.

4 Moscow, 1941 to 1942

Where: The approaches to Moscow, Soviet Union
War: World War II, Eastern Front
Sides: Soviet Union vs Germany
Strength: About 1.8 million Germans vs about 1.25 million Soviets at the start
Result: Soviet victory; by March 1942 the Germans driven back to some 280 km from Moscow

Hitler first sent his armor to take Ukraine, and only at the start of October 1941 did Army Group Center launch Operation Typhoon against Moscow. The Encyclopedia of Russian History counts 1.8 million German troops with 1,700 tanks against the capital; Krivosheev gives the three Soviet fronts facing them 1,250,000 men. The double pocket at Vyazma and Bryansk took about 650,000 prisoners, and by mid-October panic gripped the city: ministries left for Kuibyshev, while Stalin stayed in the Kremlin and Georgy Zhukov had civilians dig defense lines.⁸

Military map of the Soviet winter counteroffensive of 1941 to 1942 — The Soviet winter offensive from 5 December 1941 to 7 May 1942, which threw the German armies back from the approaches to Moscow. Map from the US Military Academy atlas. Public domain (US government work). Department of History, US Military Academy, via Wikimedia Commons.

After the autumn mud the Germans pushed on until, on 4 December, their tanks stood about 32 km from the city. Their soldiers had no clothing for temperatures near minus 40, and frostbite put more than twice as many men out of action as enemy fire. On 5 December the Kalinin Front attacked, and the next day Zhukov’s Western Front followed, with fresh divisions from Siberia among the attackers. For the first time the Wehrmacht had to fall back, by March 1942 some 280 km from Moscow, and Hitler took over command of the army himself. Krivosheev counts 658,279 Soviet casualties in the defense and 370,955 in the counteroffensive to 7 January; German losses are much less certain, at least 110,000 by the end of December in one estimate cited by World History Encyclopedia.⁹

Why it ranks here: It ended the German plan for a quick victory and was the Wehrmacht’s first major defeat on land, so it takes full marks for decisiveness and consequence. Recognition and memory score 4, as it is less famous abroad than Stalingrad or Kursk, and certainty 3, because casualty totals change with the dates and the source.

Read the full story of the Battle of Moscow ›

Military map of the German advance on Moscow in autumn 1941 — The German advance on Moscow, 26 August to 5 December 1941, with an inset of the front before the capital on 5 December, from the US Military Academy atlas. Public domain (US government work). Department of History, US Military Academy, via Wikimedia Commons.

5 Leningrad, 1941 to 1944

Where: Leningrad (today St Petersburg), Soviet Union
War: World War II, Eastern Front
Sides: Soviet Union vs Germany and Finland
Strength: The Red Army and about 2.5 million trapped civilians vs German Army Group North and the Finnish army
Result: Soviet victory; the city held for 872 days, with about 700,000 to 1 million civilians dead

When German troops took Shlisselburg on Lake Ladoga in early September 1941 and cut the last land route into the city, Hitler chose to starve the Soviet Union’s second city rather than fight for it street by street. Army Group North sealed it off on 8 September, and Finnish troops closed the ring to the north. About 2.5 million civilians, at least 400,000 of them children, were trapped inside.¹⁰

The first winter was the worst. From 20 November to 25 December 1941 the bread ration fell to 125 grams a day, and in each of January and February 1942, by Anna Reid’s count, more than 100,000 people died. People ate cats, rats, bark and sawdust. Food came in, and hundreds of thousands of people went out, across the frozen Lake Ladoga. The Red Army broke a narrow land corridor through in January 1943 and drove the Germans off on 27 January 1944, after 872 days. Between about 700,000 and one million civilians died, most of them of hunger, and The National WWII Museum puts the dead, soldiers and civilians together, at about 1.5 million; the Soviet figure of 632,253 given at Nuremberg was, in Reid’s words, spuriously precise. Half a million victims lie in the Piskaryovskoe Memorial Cemetery.¹¹

Why it ranks here: It also appears on our list of the greatest sieges. Here 872 days and the heaviest civilian toll of any siege give it full marks for recognition and memory, but holding the city did not decide a campaign the way Moscow did, so decisiveness is only 3, and death estimates from 700,000 to 1.5 million keep certainty at 3; it finishes one point behind Moscow.

Read the full story of the siege of Leningrad ›

Satellite view of Lake Ladoga with St. Petersburg at the lower left — Lake Ladoga in a satellite image made by NASA's MODIS team in June 2002. St. Petersburg, wartime Leningrad, lies at the lower left; the Road of Life ran across the southern part of the lake, east of the city. Public domain

6 Operation Bagration, 1944

Where: Belarus and eastern Poland
War: World War II, Eastern Front
Sides: Soviet Union vs Germany
Strength: About 2.3 to 2.4 million Soviet soldiers vs about 500,000 in Army Group Center
Result: Soviet victory; Army Group Center destroyed

By June 1944 Germany’s Army Group Center had only 40 divisions with about 500,000 men, holding a bulge around Vitebsk, Orsha, Mogilev and Bobruisk that Hitler refused to give up. Krivosheev gives the four attacking Soviet fronts 2,331,700 men, and World History Encyclopedia counts about 2.4 million troops with 5,200 tanks and 5,300 aircraft. The offensive opened on 22 June, three years to the day after the German invasion and two weeks after the Allies landed in Normandy.¹²

Once the front broke, 1.2 million Soviet soldiers with 4,000 tanks trapped the German 4th and 9th Armies and the 3rd Panzer Army, and within days the Red Army drove more than 300 km west. Minsk fell on 3 July, and on 17 July some 57,000 German prisoners were marched through Moscow. By the end of July Army Group Center had practically ceased to exist; the Red Army freed the Majdanek death camp and Lublin and stopped about 25 km from Warsaw. Germany’s national history museum counts about 350,000 German soldiers killed or captured in four weeks, and the historian Jeff Rutherford about 390,000 losses in nine weeks with 28 divisions shattered, in his words the costliest German campaign of the war. Krivosheev counts 765,815 Soviet casualties, 178,507 of them killed or missing.¹³

Why it ranks here: It destroyed a German army group in weeks and carried the Red Army from Belarus to the Vistula, so it takes full marks for decisiveness and consequence, but recognition and memory score only 3, because in the West it is far less known than Stalingrad or Kursk. It ties the Vistula-Oder offensive on points, recognition and consequence, and ranks above it as the older.

7 Vistula-Oder, 1945

Where: Poland and eastern Germany, from the Vistula to the Oder
War: World War II, Eastern Front
Sides: Soviet Union and the Polish People’s Army vs Germany
Strength: About 2.2 million Soviet and Polish soldiers vs about 500,000 Germans
Result: Soviet victory; the front moved about 500 km west in 23 days

In December 1944, against the advice of his army chief of staff Heinz Guderian, Hitler moved troops from Poland to Hungary to relieve Budapest. On 12 January 1945 the Red Army struck instead from its bridgeheads on the Vistula: Georgy Zhukov’s 1st Belorussian Front toward Warsaw and Poznań, Ivan Konev’s 1st Ukrainian Front toward Kraków, Upper Silesia and Wrocław. Krivosheev gives the two fronts 2,112,700 men, with 90,900 more in the Polish 1st Army, and dzieje.pl sets 2.2 million Soviet and Polish soldiers against about 500,000 Germans.¹⁴

Kielce fell on 15 January, Radom and Częstochowa on the 16th, and on the 17th the Polish 1st Army entered the ruins of Warsaw; Kraków and Łódź followed. On 27 January Soviet soldiers reached Auschwitz, where about 7,000 prisoners were still alive in the main camp, Birkenau and Monowitz. Konev crossed the German border east of Wrocław and took the Upper Silesian industrial region nearly intact, and by the end of January Zhukov held bridgeheads over the Oder at Küstrin and Frankfurt, about 80 km from Berlin by the German museum’s count. In 23 days the front moved about 500 km west. Krivosheev counts 193,125 Soviet casualties, 43,251 of them killed or missing; we found no reliable count of German losses.¹⁵

Why it ranks here: In about three weeks it carried the Red Army from the Vistula to the Oder and freed most of Poland and Auschwitz on the way, so it takes full marks for decisiveness and consequence, while recognition and memory score 3. It ties Operation Bagration on points, recognition and consequence, and goes below it as the later of the two.

8 Kiev, 1941

Where: Kiev (Kyiv) and the Dnieper to the east of it, Soviet Ukraine
War: World War II, Eastern Front
Sides: Germany vs Soviet Union
Strength: Soviet Southwestern Front, about 627,000 men at the start, vs Army Group South reinforced by Guderian’s 2nd Panzer Group
Result: German victory; about 665,000 prisoners by the German count

In August 1941 Hitler overruled generals who wanted to drive straight on Moscow and turned part of Army Group Center south to win Ukraine, its grain, coal and industry. Stalin refused to let the Southwestern Front withdraw from the Dnieper line around Kiev; Georgy Zhukov, who urged it, resigned as chief of staff on 30 July. Krivosheev gives the front about 627,000 men at the start.¹⁶

Heinz Guderian’s panzers swung down from the north while Ewald von Kleist’s broke out of a bridgehead at Kremenchug, 250 km to the south, and on 15 September the ring closed at Lokhvytsia. Kiev itself fell on 19 September, and the pocket east of the city fought on until 26 September. By the German count 665,000 Soviet soldiers were captured, and 884 tanks were captured or destroyed; some historians put the prisoners closer to 500,000, Robert Citino at nearly 700,000. Krivosheev’s figure for the whole defense of Kiev from 7 July, which also counts the Uman pocket, is 700,544 Soviet casualties, 616,304 of them killed, missing or captured. Within days of the fall, on 29 and 30 September, a German killing squad shot more than 33,000 of the city’s Jews at Babi Yar. Hitler called Kiev the greatest battle in the history of the world, but the weeks it cost left the attack on Moscow to begin only in October.¹⁷

Why it ranks here: It destroyed the Southwestern Front and decided the 1941 campaign in Ukraine, so decisiveness is 5, but the weeks it cost the drive on Moscow keep its consequence at 4. Recognition and memory score only 3, because outside Ukraine and Russia few general readers know it.

9 Budapest, 1944 to 1945

Where: Budapest, Hungary
War: World War II, Eastern Front
Sides: Soviet 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts, with Romanian troops, vs the German and Hungarian garrison
Strength: About 156,000 Soviet, Romanian and Hungarian volunteer troops vs about 33,000 Germans and 37,000 Hungarians (German Historical Museum count)
Result: Soviet victory; the last defenders surrendered on 13 February 1945

In the autumn of 1944 Hungary tried to leave the war. Regent Miklós Horthy signed an armistice in Moscow on 11 October, but the Germans arrested him five days later and put the fascist Arrow Cross leader Ferenc Szálasi in his place. Romania, Bulgaria and Finland had already broken with Germany, so Hungary was now its last major ally. Hitler declared Budapest a fortress in early December to hold up the Soviet advance on Vienna, and on 26 December the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts closed the ring around the city and some 800,000 people still living in it.¹⁸

Falling back across the Danube to Buda Castle, the defenders blew up the remaining bridges behind them, and by the end some 80 percent of the city's buildings were damaged or destroyed. After German relief attacks failed in January, the starving garrison tried to break out on 11 February and thousands died in a single day; the last units surrendered on 13 February 1945. Counted from the encirclement the siege lasted about seven weeks; Krisztián Ungváry's history, counting a longer stretch of fighting, is subtitled 100 Days in World War II.¹⁹

Losses are poorly documented. Germany's national history museum counts about 30,000 German, over 17,000 Hungarian and nearly 80,000 Soviet and Romanian soldiers dead, and about 38,000 civilians; RFE/RL gives 48,000 German and Hungarian and 70,000 Soviet and Romanian soldiers, with the same civilian toll.²⁰

Why it ranks here: Taking the capital of Germany's last major ally, in a siege still vividly remembered in Hungary, earns 4 for decisiveness, consequence and memory; recognition beyond Central Europe is 3, and poorly documented losses hold certainty to 3.

10 The Dnieper, 1943

Where: The Dnieper River in Ukraine and eastern Belarus, from Gomel to Zaporizhzhia, including Kiev
War: World War II, Eastern Front
Sides: The Red Army vs the German armies in Ukraine, chiefly Army Group South
Strength: Over 2.6 million Soviet troops; almost 4 million men on both sides (The National WWII Museum)
Result: Soviet victory; Kiev retaken on 6 November 1943

After Kursk, Hitler ordered an "Eastern Wall" built along the Dnieper, the third-largest river in Europe, and on 15 September 1943 he allowed Army Group South to fall back behind it. The Red Army gave him no time to finish it. Its offensive, opened on 26 August with more than 2.6 million soldiers on a front of some 1,400 km, was backed by a crushing lead in armor: in the summer offensive of 1943, by the count of Germany's national history museum, 8,400 Soviet tanks faced 2,300 German.²¹

Soviet units reached the river on the heels of the retreating Germans and crossed it at once. The first bridgehead was taken on 22 September, and by the end of the month there were 23 of them. By November the Germans in the south had been thrown back some 250 km, and on 6 November the Red Army freed Kiev, held by the Germans since September 1941; from Gomel to Zaporizhzhia Soviet troops now stood on the west bank.²²

The price is disputed. The National WWII Museum gives 1.6 million Soviet casualties, over 417,000 of them killed or missing. Focus.ua attributes 417,323 dead and missing to the German historian Karl-Heinz Frieser and 348,815 to the Russian historian Krivosheev, while President Volodymyr Zelensky said in 2021 that, by the research of several historians, the real number of dead was at least twice the official 417,000, close to a million.²³

Why it ranks here: Breaking the river line Hitler meant to hold and retaking Kiev earns 4 for decisiveness and consequence. Recognition and memory are 3, the Soviet losses are disputed, so certainty is 3, and it goes ahead of Iași-Kishinev on equal points because it is better known.

11 Iași-Kishinev, 1944

Where: Northeastern Romania and Bessarabia (today Moldova), around Iași and Kishinev (Chișinău)
War: World War II, Eastern Front
Sides: Soviet 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts vs German Army Group South Ukraine and Romanian armies
Strength: About 1,314,200 Soviet troops and 1,874 tanks and assault guns vs about 905,000 Axis troops and 170 tanks and assault guns
Result: Soviet victory; German Sixth Army destroyed, Romania changes sides

By the spring of 1944 the Red Army stood on Romanian soil north of Iași. Romania's oil fields were vital to Germany's war effort, and through the summer the US Fifteenth Air Force bombed the Ploiești refineries and the airfields around them, cutting the Axis aircraft around Bucharest and Ploiești from between 200 and 255 in April to just 40 to 45 by August. On 20 August Rodion Malinovsky's 2nd and Fyodor Tolbukhin's 3rd Ukrainian Fronts attacked Army Group South Ukraine with, by The National WWII Museum's count, 1,314,200 men against 905,000 Axis troops.²⁴

By 23 August the two fronts had encircled the four corps of the German Sixth Army, a new army under the name destroyed at Stalingrad. On the same day King Michael I had the dictator Ion Antonescu arrested and took Romania over to the Allies; the Third Romanian Army, surrounded on 24 August, surrendered the next day. After Hitler ordered Bucharest bombed, Romania declared war on Germany on 25 August. The Red Army entered Bucharest on 31 August, and an armistice followed on 12 September.²⁵

In under two weeks Germany had lost an army, an ally and its main source of crude oil. The way into the Balkans lay open: with Romania, Bulgaria and parts of Hungary occupied by October, the Germans had to pull their troops out of Greece.²⁶

Why it ranks here: Few offensives did more in less time, so decisiveness and consequence get full marks and certainty 4. Few general readers know the name, though, and it is little remembered outside Romania and Moldova, so recognition and memory score 2, and it goes below the Dnieper on equal points as the less known battle.

12 Sevastopol, 1941 to 1942

Where: Sevastopol, Crimea
War: World War II, Eastern Front
Sides: German 11th Army under Erich von Manstein, with Romanian troops, vs the Soviet army and navy garrison of the Black Sea Fleet's base
Strength: Nine German and Romanian divisions in the final assault vs over 100,000 Soviet troops (German Historical Museum); World History Encyclopedia gives 106,000 soldiers plus 80,000 naval personnel
Result: German victory; the city fell on 1 July 1942, the last bridgehead on 4 July

By November 1941 Manstein's 11th Army had cleared Crimea of the Red Army, except for one place: Sevastopol, base of the Black Sea Fleet and one of the strongest fortresses in the world, ringed by three defense lines with over 3,000 bunkers and 140,000 mines. The first attack, on 30 October, failed. A second, from 17 December, was broken off when Soviet landings at Kerch and Feodosiya forced Manstein to send divisions east. Through the winter and spring the garrison dug new positions and was supplied by sea, which the Germans, with almost no ships on the Black Sea, could barely stop.²⁷

After smashing the Soviet bridgehead at Kerch in May, Manstein massed almost 900 guns against the fortress, among them "Dora", an 800 mm railway gun and the largest artillery piece ever built. The assault began on 7 June 1942 and ground forward slowly until 29 June, when German troops crossed Severnaya Bay in assault boats and surprised the defenders. The city fell on 1 July and the Chersonese bridgehead three days later. The Soviet commanders were taken out by submarine and aircraft, and some 95,000 to 97,000 of their men went into captivity; the Germans lost nearly 6,000 dead or missing and the Romanians 1,900 men. The defense had lasted 250 days, and in 1945 Sevastopol was named a hero city.²⁸

Why it ranks here: Eight months of resistance and the title of hero city give it 4 for memory, but the fall of the fortress decided only the fate of Crimea, covering the flank of the German summer offensive of 1942, so decisiveness and consequence score 3.

13 Kharkov, 1942

Where: South of Kharkov (Kharkiv), around Izium and Barvenkovo, Ukraine
War: World War II, Eastern Front
Sides: Soviet Southwestern Front under Marshal Semyon Timoshenko vs the German Sixth Army and Army Group von Kleist, with Romanian troops
Strength: 640,000 Soviet soldiers and 1,200 tanks (German Historical Museum) to 765,000 committed (WarHistory.org); German totals not given in these sources
Result: German victory; the Soviet armies south of the city encircled and destroyed

The winter fighting had left the Red Army with a bridgehead some 100 km wide over the Donets at Izium, south of Kharkov, and a strong position at Volchansk to the north. Moscow pressed Marshal Semyon Timoshenko to retake Kharkov, which the Germans had held since October 1941. On 12 May 1942 he attacked from both, with some 640,000 men and 1,200 tanks by the count of Germany's national history museum, aiming to encircle Friedrich Paulus's Sixth Army and then drive on to the Dnieper.²⁹

The Soviet armies broke in but never closed their ring. On 17 May Ewald von Kleist's panzers and Romanian troops struck the salient from the south while the Sixth Army attacked from the north, and on 22 or 23 May the pincers met behind the Soviet armies massed south of the city. Breakout attempts east over the Donets failed, and by 28 May organized resistance in the pocket was over.³⁰

The losses are counted in different ways: about 240,000 prisoners in the museum's account, 239,000 prisoners by the German claim, and 277,190 Soviet casualties out of 765,000 men committed in the figures given by WarHistory.org, which puts Axis losses at nearly 30,000. The museum calls it the last German encirclement victory of the war. It gave Germany the start line for its summer offensive of 28 June, which carried the Wehrmacht to Stalingrad and deep into the Caucasus.³¹

Why it ranks here: A Soviet disaster that opened the road to Stalingrad and the Caucasus scores 4 for decisiveness and consequence; but it is known mainly to specialists and little remembered, so recognition and memory score only 2.

14 Białystok and Minsk, 1941

Where: Northeastern Poland and western Belarus, between Białystok and Minsk
War: World War II, Eastern Front (Operation Barbarossa)
Sides: German Army Group Center under Fedor von Bock vs the Soviet Western Front under Dmitry Pavlov
Strength: Two German panzer groups and the infantry of two armies vs four Soviet armies with 43 divisions
Result: German victory; the Soviet Western Front destroyed

When Germany invaded on 22 June 1941, Army Group Center under Field Marshal Fedor von Bock struck the Soviet Western Front of General Dmitry Pavlov. Its four armies were strung out around the Białystok salient, short of good tanks and forbidden by Stalin to retreat. Hermann Hoth's 3rd Panzer Group drove past the salient to the north and Heinz Guderian's 2nd Panzer Group to the south, and on 26 June, with the infantry following in forced marches, they closed two pockets between Białystok and Minsk around four Soviet armies with 43 divisions. On the dirt roads the dust wrecked more German engines than Soviet fire did.³²

Hoth's tanks entered Minsk, the Belarusian capital, on 28 June; Guderian, eager to press on toward Moscow, left gaps through which some Soviet units escaped. Trapped units fought on in the forests or were driven by their officers into hopeless breakout attacks, which cost them dearly but bought the Red Army time to build new lines. The battle ended on 9 July. The German count reported by Germany's national history museum is over 325,000 Red Army prisoners; World History Encyclopedia, citing the historian Robert Kirchubel, gives about 342,000, with 3,332 tanks captured. The Western Front had collapsed in less than two weeks, and Stalin had Pavlov and several of his officers arrested and executed.³³

Why it ranks here: The first great encirclement of the war in the East scores 4 for decisiveness, but it is little known and little remembered, at 2 for both. It ties Smolensk on points, recognition and consequence, and goes ahead of it as the older battle.

15 Smolensk, 1941

Where: Smolensk and the upper Dnieper, western Russia
War: World War II, Eastern Front (Operation Barbarossa)
Sides: German Army Group Center vs the Soviet Western Front under Marshal Semyon Timoshenko
Strength: Panzer Groups 2 and 3 and following infantry vs 42 Soviet divisions (German Historical Museum) to 66 (World History Encyclopedia)
Result: German victory; Soviet armies encircled, but the German drive on Moscow was put off

After Minsk, Hoth's panzers swung toward Smolensk from the north and Guderian's from the south. The city on the Dnieper was the old gateway to Moscow, which lay less than 400 km beyond it. Marshal Semyon Timoshenko, who took over the Western Front on 2 July, filled the area with fresh divisions: 42 by the count of Germany's national history museum, 66 according to World History Encyclopedia, which notes that the German commanders believed they faced 11.³⁴

The panzers bypassed the fortified Dnieper crossings at Mogilev and Orsha, and Smolensk itself fell after heavy street fighting in the second half of July. The pocket to the west, closed late and full of gaps, held out until 5 August. The museum counts over 300,000 prisoners and some 3,000 Soviet tanks lost; World History Encyclopedia adds 38,000 men taken in a second pocket. Soviet counterattacks, fiercest at Yelnya, delayed the closing of the pocket and wore many panzer divisions down to less than half their strength.³⁵

The victory had a price. Army Group Center had lost 200,000 men and 1,300 tanks since June. The army chiefs Walther von Brauchitsch and Franz Halder wanted to drive straight on to Moscow, but Hitler preferred the riches of Ukraine and sent Guderian's tanks south to the Battle of Kiev.³⁶

Why it ranks here: Another German encirclement victory, but one that slowed Army Group Center and fed Hitler's decision to turn south, so decisiveness and consequence score 3, memory 3 and recognition only 2. It ties Białystok and Minsk on points, recognition and consequence and comes after it as the later battle.

How we chose and ranked these battles of the Eastern Front

We counted a battle, a siege or a named offensive fought between Germany and its allies and the Soviet Union from June 1941 to May 1945. Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of 1941, is a campaign of many battles, so we ranked its battles one by one instead. The Warsaw Uprising was an uprising against the occupier rather than a battle of the front, and has its own article: The Warsaw Uprising, 1944. Leningrad and Stalingrad also appear in our guide to the greatest sieges in history, and the war's other fronts are in the greatest battles of World War II.³⁷

We considered 25 candidates and scored each one from 1 to 5 on five criteria. Recognition counts three times, because this page answers the question of which battles of the Eastern Front are the greatest; the other four count twice, except certainty, which counts once:

Recognition (×3). 5 if the name is known far beyond military history and appears on most published lists of its kind, 1 if only specialists know it.
Decisiveness (×2). 5 if it decided a campaign or the course of the war in the East, 1 if it settled nothing.
Consequence (×2). 5 if it changed the war as a whole or the map of Europe (an army or an ally lost, a country freed or taken), 1 if it changed nothing beyond the battlefield.
Memory (×2). 5 if it is still a living memory (a day of remembrance, a memorial, a hero city, a famous image or song), 1 if it is forgotten.
Certainty (×1). 5 if the numbers and events are confirmed by independent sources, 1 if they rest on one source or are disputed.

The list is ranked by total score, not by date. Ties go to the better-known battle, then to the one with the greater consequence, then to the older one. The scores are our editorial judgment, made on the evidence in the sources below, and the table shows every one of them, so you can see exactly why Stalingrad is first and why Leningrad, as famous as any name here, sits only fifth: the city held for 872 days, but holding it did not decide a campaign the way Moscow, Stalingrad or Kursk did.³⁸

The scores behind the ranking
Rank	Name	Recognition ×3	Decisiveness ×2	Consequence ×2	Memory ×2	Certainty ×1	Total
1	Stalingrad	5	5	5	5	4	49
2	Berlin	5	4	5	5	4	47
3	Kursk	5	5	4	4	4	45
4	Moscow	4	5	5	4	3	43
5	Leningrad	5	3	4	5	3	42
6	Operation Bagration	3	5	5	3	4	39
7	Vistula-Oder	3	5	5	3	4	39
8	Kiev	3	5	4	3	4	37
9	Budapest	3	4	4	4	3	36
10	The Dnieper	3	4	4	3	3	34
11	Iași-Kishinev	2	5	5	2	4	34
12	Sevastopol	3	3	3	4	4	33
13	Kharkov	2	4	4	2	4	30
14	Białystok and Minsk	2	4	3	2	4	28
15	Smolensk	2	3	3	3	4	28

Close calls

Five battles came close and did not make the fifteen:

Kharkov, 1943. After Stalingrad the Red Army overreached in Ukraine, and Erich von Manstein struck back from 19 February 1943; Paul Hausser's SS Panzer Corps retook Kharkov in house-to-house fighting from 11 to 14 March, and the line the counterstroke reached became the southern shoulder of the Kursk salient. It scores 28, level with the last two entries, and loses the tie as the younger battle.³⁹

Königsberg, 1945. Cut off by the Soviet winter offensive, the capital of East Prussia surrendered to the Red Army on 9 April 1945. It became Soviet not through the battle but through the postwar settlement: at Potsdam the Allies agreed in principle to transfer the city and its surroundings to the Soviet Union. Level on points with the last entries, it is the youngest of them.⁴⁰

Rzhev, 1942 to 1943. For more than a year the Red Army attacked the German salient at Rzhev, west of Moscow, at such cost that the fighting became known as "the Rzhev meat grinder"; opening a memorial there in 2020, Vladimir Putin put Soviet losses at 1.3 million killed, wounded or missing, and Soviet official history long avoided the subject. Huge losses for no decision keep its decisiveness at 2.⁴¹

Korsun, 1944. In late January 1944 the Red Army surrounded two German corps near Cherkassy, west of the Dnieper. In mid-February, against Hitler's orders, about 30,000 men broke out and about 20,000 died trying, by the count of Germany's national history museum, and Nazi propaganda hailed the escape as a feat of arms. The two sides' loss figures disagree sharply, so certainty is 3.⁴²

Lvov-Sandomierz, 1944. Following Bagration in the south, Marshal Ivan Konev's 1st Ukrainian Front attacked on 13 July 1944, took Lwów by 27 July with substantial help from the Home Army, and in August won the largest Soviet bridgehead over the Vistula, at Sandomierz, which set up the next great offensive. Strong on decisiveness, it is almost unknown to general readers: recognition 1.⁴³

Want the wider war? These battles sit inside the greatest battles of World War II and the full sweep of the greatest battles of all time. You can also rank them by their terrible human cost in the deadliest battles in history.

Why the Eastern Front decided the war

The Eastern Front was the deadliest theater of World War II, and it was there that the bulk of the German army was destroyed: Germany's national history museum reckons that well over two-thirds of all German soldiers killed in the war died in the East, and The National WWII Museum puts the share at about 80 percent. From the gates of Moscow to the ruins of Berlin, the titanic battles between Germany and the Soviet Union, Stalingrad, Kursk and the rest, did more than any other campaign to defeat Hitler.⁴⁴

Military map of the Soviet drive across Poland to the Oder in early 1945 — The Soviet offensive from the Vistula to the Oder, 12 January to 30 March 1945, which brought the Red Army within striking distance of Berlin. US Military Academy atlas. Public domain

How long did the Eastern Front last?

The Eastern Front lasted almost four years, from the German invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 to the German surrender that took effect on 8 May 1945: more than 1,400 days of continuous war. The Soviet Union marked its Victory Day one day later, on 9 May, the date it took from the surrender signed in Berlin.⁴⁵

At the start, Germany's national history museum notes, the front ran for almost 1,600 km from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The last great battle opened on 16 April 1945, when the fronts of Zhukov and Konev attacked across the Oder and the Neisse toward Berlin. On 30 April Soviet soldiers raised the red flag over the Reichstag, hours after Hitler had killed himself in his bunker a few hundred meters away, and on 2 May the defenders of the city laid down their arms. Alfred Jodl signed Germany's unconditional surrender at Eisenhower's headquarters in Reims on 7 May; at Soviet request a second act was signed in Berlin on 8 May, with Keitel and two other commanders signing for the German High Command and Zhukov for the Red Army, and it ordered German forces to cease active operations at 23:01 Central European time that day.⁴⁶

What was the biggest battle on the Eastern Front?

Measured by the number of soldiers, the biggest operations of the Eastern Front were the Battle of the Dnieper in 1943, which The National WWII Museum says involved almost four million troops, Kursk in 1943, with roughly two million to 2.7 million men at the outset, and Berlin in 1945, where the Red Army massed between 1.5 million and 2.5 million soldiers. Operation Barbarossa in 1941 was larger still, but it was a campaign of many battles.⁴⁷

At Kursk, by the count of the historian David Glantz cited by The National WWII Museum, more than 1.9 million Soviet troops with over 5,000 tanks faced more than 780,000 Germans with nearly 3,000 tanks, and as reinforcements arrived the Red Army grew to more than 2.5 million men. Germany's national history museum puts the German attack force at about 800,000 soldiers and more than 2,000 tanks, some 70 percent of all German armor in the East. For the final battle, Britannica counts more than 1.5 million Soviet soldiers before Berlin, while the Imperial War Museums and Germany's national history museum give 2.5 million, with more than 6,000 tanks; by the museum's estimate about a million German soldiers held the Oder front against them.⁴⁸

Operation Bagration in 1944 was on the same scale: World History Encyclopedia gives the Red Army about 2.4 million troops, 5,200 tanks and 5,300 aircraft for the offensive. To compare these clashes with battles of every era, see the largest battles in history.⁴⁹

What was the deadliest battle of the Eastern Front?

Stalingrad, fought from July 1942 to 2 February 1943, was the deadliest battle of the Eastern Front and, by most estimates, of the whole World War II. Britannica estimates Axis losses at about 800,000, counting the missing and captured, and Soviet losses, by the count of official Russian military historians, at about 1.1 million. Only the siege of Leningrad, a blockade rather than a battle, and the long Dnieper campaign of 1943 come close.⁵⁰

The fighting began on the approaches to the city on 17 July 1942, though many histories date it from 23 August, when German spearheads reached the northern outskirts and Luftwaffe incendiary raids set much of the city ablaze. By October most of the city was in German hands, but the Soviet defenders clung to the banks of the Volga and ferried reserves across the river. On 19 November the Red Army launched Operation Uranus against the Romanian armies guarding the German flanks, and within days it had closed a ring around the Sixth Army. Hitler forbade a breakout. Friedrich Paulus, promoted to field marshal on 30 January, surrendered the next day, the first German field marshal ever to do so, and on 2 February 1943 the last troops in the city laid down their arms.⁵¹ › Operation Uranus, 1942

The figures differ because sources count differently. The Imperial War Museums put German losses in the campaign at 500,000 men, including 91,000 taken prisoner. Germany's national history museum estimates that about 150,000 German soldiers died inside the pocket and that probably more than 400,000 Soviet soldiers were killed. Counting killed, wounded, missing and captured on both sides, estimates of the total run from about 1.9 million to 2.5 million or more. Of the 91,000 prisoners, only some 5,000 to 6,000 ever came home. The day-by-day story is in our account of the Battle of Stalingrad.⁵²

If sieges count, the blockade of Leningrad was even more lethal. German and Finnish forces cut the city off on 8 September 1941, and the siege was not fully lifted until 27 January 1944, 872 days later. Estimates of the dead vary widely: the historian Anna Reid puts the civilian toll at 700,000 to 800,000, Germany's national history museum at 800,000 to one million, and The National WWII Museum counts about 1.5 million soldiers and civilians. Read how the city held out in the siege of Leningrad.⁵³

West Point map of the Eastern Front in autumn 1941, with the German advance in red reaching Leningrad and Lake Ladoga — Map of the German advance in the east from 26 August to 5 December 1941, from the atlas of the US Military Academy at West Point. At the top, Army Group North reaches Lake Ladoga and cuts Leningrad off by land. Public domain (US government work). Department of History, US Military Academy, via Wikimedia Commons.

How many people died on the Eastern Front?

No exact count exists. Soviet deaths, soldiers and civilians together, are usually put at more than 20 million, and often at 24 to 25 million, with roughly 8 million to 10.7 million of them soldiers. Between about 3.8 million and 4 million German soldiers died in the East.⁵⁴

The figures depend on what is counted. Military deaths cover soldiers killed in action and those who died of wounds, disease or in captivity; casualties, the measure usually given for single battles, also include the wounded, the missing and the captured. Civilian deaths include the victims of partisan warfare, of the mass murder of Jews and others behind the German lines, and of bombing, siege and hunger.⁵⁵

For the Soviet Union, Britannica reports Soviet estimates of well over 20 million war dead, 8 to 9 million of them soldiers. The National WWII Museum gives 8.8 million to 10.7 million Soviet military deaths and about 24 million Soviet dead in all, and World History Encyclopedia counts more than 8 million Red Army dead and at least 25 million military and civilian deaths in the German-Soviet war as a whole. On the counts of Britannica and the museum, civilians made up more than half of the Soviet dead. Prisoners of war suffered terribly: of some 5.7 million Red Army soldiers who fell into German hands, about 3.3 million were dead by the end of the war.⁵⁶

On the German side, Germany's national history museum counts more than 3.8 million Germans who died on the Eastern Front, 800,000 of them in the last four months of the war, and The National WWII Museum puts the toll at about four million of the five million German soldiers killed in the war. Germany's allies also paid heavily: at Stalingrad alone, by World History Encyclopedia's count, Italy lost about 110,000 men killed or wounded, Hungary 143,000 and Romania 160,000. For the long sieges of this war and others, see the greatest sieges in history.⁵⁷

What was the turning point on the Eastern Front?

Stalingrad is the usual answer: the destruction of the German Sixth Army in the winter of 1942 to 1943 handed the strategic initiative to the Red Army. Two other battles have a claim. Moscow in 1941 was Germany's first major defeat on land, and after Kursk in 1943 the initiative never returned to Germany.⁵⁸

The case for Moscow rests on the end of the quick victory Germany had planned. Within six months, Germany's national history museum notes, the Wehrmacht had driven more than 1,200 km east to the approaches of Moscow. By 4 December 1941, World History Encyclopedia records, German tanks stood about 32 km from the city; on 6 December Georgy Zhukov opened the first great Soviet counteroffensive of the war, and by March 1942 Soviet attacks had driven the Germans back to some 280 km from Moscow. The case for Kursk is that Operation Citadel was Germany's last great offensive in the East, and that after it failed the Red Army held the initiative until the end of the war. Stalingrad still carries the most weight because it cost Germany an entire field army, and with it the initiative in the East.⁵⁹

Why did Germany lose on the Eastern Front?

Germany planned a short war and found itself in a long one. It underestimated the size of the Red Army and the Soviet will to fight, stretched its supply lines across vast distances, went into the first Russian winter unequipped for it, and was outnumbered and outproduced once Soviet manpower and industry were fully mobilized.⁶⁰

The Imperial War Museums single out the tenacity of the Soviet defenders as perhaps the most important reason why Barbarossa failed: the Germans badly misjudged the Red Army's numbers and its will to fight. The Red Army absorbed enormous losses and kept fighting: by December 1941 it had suffered about four million casualties, yet over the war the Soviet Union called up more than 14 million men and women.⁶¹

Space and climate worked against the invader. By late summer 1942 the German front ran for more than 2,000 km, too long for Germany's forces and reserves, and its supply lines across huge distances were cut again and again by partisans. In the first winter the Wehrmacht was not equipped for a winter war: as temperatures fell to minus 35 or minus 40 degrees Celsius, fuel and lubricants froze and engines and automatic weapons failed.⁶²

Then production and numbers told. World History Encyclopedia notes that Stalin had moved heavy industry east, out of the invader's reach, and that in 1942 the Soviet Union built 24,446 tanks to Germany's 9,200 and 25,436 aircraft to Germany's 15,409; by 1943, by the same account, about three million German soldiers in the East faced 6.6 million Soviet troops. Hitler's refusal to allow retreats cost whole armies, at Stalingrad and again in Belarus in 1944. And Germany was fighting on more than one front: troops were pulled from the East to Italy after the Allied landing in Sicily in July 1943, and in June 1944 the Western Allies opened a second front in Normandy.⁶³

Five of these battles, Stalingrad, Berlin, Kursk, Moscow and Leningrad, have their own full accounts, linked above. See them in the wider war in the greatest battles of World War II.

Test yourself with the World War II battles quiz, try Which Battle Was Bigger?, or play today's Battle of the Day.