Wars on Map

The Nazi-Soviet war

Eastern Front Map: Germany vs the Soviet Union, 1941–1945

The war between Germany and the Soviet Union was the largest land campaign ever fought, and the one where the Second World War in Europe was decided. It also animates better than any other theatre: a front nearly three thousand kilometres long that swung east to the Volga and then west to the Elbe, twice crossing the same ground.

Sources checked 2026-09-11 · Estimates are given as ranges, not single figures

2,900kmApproximate length of the front on 22 June 1941, from the Baltic to the Black Sea.
26–27mSoviet deaths, military and civilian, the range most demographic reconstructions give.
5.3mGerman military dead in the whole war, from Overmans’s record-based study. The majority died fighting the Soviet Union.

Barbarossa: the plan and its arithmetic

Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 with three army groups: North toward Leningrad, Centre along the Minsk-Smolensk-Moscow axis, and South into Ukraine. The intention was to destroy the Red Army west of the Dnieper and Dvina in a campaign of weeks, before Soviet industrial and manpower depth could be mobilised.

The first part worked spectacularly. Encirclements at Minsk, Smolensk and Kyiv took hundreds of thousands of prisoners each; German records claimed roughly 3.3 million Soviet prisoners in 1941 alone, and the majority of them died in captivity, most by the spring of 1942. This was not an accident of logistics but a consequence of policy, and it belongs in any account of the front.

The second part failed. The Soviet Union kept generating armies, and every kilometre east lengthened German supply lines while the front itself widened from 2,900 kilometres toward 4,000. By the time Operation Typhoon reached the approaches of Moscow in early December, forward units were some twenty to thirty kilometres from the city and could go no further.

Sources
Glantz, D. M. & House, J. M. (1995), When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler. University Press of KansasAustralian War Memorial — The Nazi-Soviet war ↗United States Holocaust Memorial Museum — World War II key dates ↗Overmans, R. (1999), Deutsche militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Oldenbourg

Timeline of the Eastern Front

Each of these phases is a separate layer in the atlas, so you can watch the same ground change hands in both directions.

  1. 22 June 1941Operation Barbarossa begins

    Germany, Romania, Finland, Hungary, Italy and Slovakia attack along the whole western frontier of the Soviet Union.

  2. June – September 1941The great encirclements

    Minsk, Smolensk and then Kyiv, where German forces claimed some 665,000 prisoners in September — one of the largest encirclements in the history of war.

  3. 8 September 1941The siege of Leningrad closes

    It lasts 872 days, until 27 January 1944. At least 600,000 and possibly more than a million civilians die, most in the first winter.

  4. 2 October 1941Operation Typhoon

    The drive on Moscow opens with further encirclements at Vyazma and Bryansk, then slows in mud and then frost.

  5. 5–6 December 1941The Soviet counter-offensive at Moscow

    Fresh armies drive the German front back 100 to 250 kilometres. The idea of a short war is finished.

  6. 28 June 1942Case Blue

    The German summer offensive drives southeast toward the Volga and the Caucasus oilfields, dividing its own strength between two objectives.

  7. 23 August 1942The battle for Stalingrad begins

    German forces reach the Volga north of the city; the fighting becomes a street-by-street attritional battle.

  8. 19 November 1942Operation Uranus

    Soviet forces break through the Romanian-held flanks and encircle the Sixth Army within four days.

  9. 31 January – 2 February 1943Stalingrad surrenders

    Roughly 91,000 prisoners are taken from the pocket. Very few ever return home.

  10. 5 July 1943Operation Citadel at Kursk

    The last German strategic offensive in the east is fought against defences prepared in depth and called off within ten days.

  11. 12 July – 23 August 1943The Soviet counter-offensives

    Operations Kutuzov and Rumyantsev retake Orel, Belgorod and, on 23 August, Kharkiv. The initiative does not change hands again.

  12. 6 November 1943Kyiv is retaken

    The Dnieper line, which Germany had hoped to hold as a permanent barrier, is broken.

  13. 22 June 1944Operation Bagration

    Launched on the third anniversary of Barbarossa, it destroys Army Group Centre: some 28 divisions and German losses of roughly 400,000 men in two months.

  14. 12 January 1945The Vistula-Oder offensive

    Soviet forces advance from central Poland to within 70 kilometres of Berlin in three weeks.

  15. 16 April – 2 May 1945The Battle of Berlin

    Soviet irrecoverable losses in the Berlin operation alone are about 78,000 killed. The garrison surrenders on 2 May; Germany capitulates on 8 May.

Sources
Glantz, D. M. & House, J. M. (1995), When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler. University Press of KansasKrivosheev, G. F. (1997), Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century. Greenhill BooksU.S. Army — Operation Bagration (Combat Studies Institute report) ↗Australian War Memorial — The Nazi-Soviet war ↗Beevor, A. (2012), The Second World War. Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Why this front decided the European war

Until the middle of 1944 the great majority of German ground forces were committed against the Soviet Union, and the great majority of German military deaths occurred there. Overmans’s study of the German military dead, built from personnel records rather than wartime returns, puts the total at about 5.3 million; the balance of it falls on the east.

That is not an argument that the western Allies were marginal — the bombing campaign, the Atlantic, North Africa, Italy and the second front in France all bore directly on German capacity, and Allied supply to the Soviet Union was substantial. It is an argument about scale. Any map of the Second World War that gives the Eastern Front the same visual weight as any other theatre is misrepresenting the war.

Sources
Overmans, R. (1999), Deutsche militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg. OldenbourgGlantz, D. M. & House, J. M. (1995), When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler. University Press of KansasWeinberg, G. L. (1994), A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II. Cambridge University Press

Losses on the Eastern Front

These are the figures most often cited in the specialist literature, with their ranges. Soviet accounting distinguishes irrecoverable losses — killed, died of wounds, missing, captured and not returned — from total casualties, and the two are frequently confused in general sources.

CategoryEstimateBasis
Soviet military irrecoverable lossesAbout 8.7 millionKrivosheev’s archival study; some scholars argue for a higher figure
Soviet total deaths, all causes26–27 millionDemographic reconstruction, including civilian deaths under occupation, from famine and from the siege of Leningrad
Soviet prisoners of war taken in 1941About 3.3 millionGerman claimed totals; the majority died in captivity
German military dead, all frontsAbout 5.3 millionOvermans, from personnel records; the majority on the Eastern Front
Axis allies — Romania, Hungary, Italy, FinlandSeveral hundred thousand eachRomanian and Hungarian losses were concentrated on the Don and in the retreats of 1944
Leningrad civilian deaths600,000 – 1,000,000+The uncertainty is inherent: the city’s records and its population both broke down

The Soviet civilian total includes deaths from causes a battlefield map cannot show — starvation, deportation, reprisal and the deliberate destruction of food supply.

Sources
Krivosheev, G. F. (1997), Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century. Greenhill BooksEllman, M. & Maksudov, S. (1994), "Soviet Deaths in the Great Patriotic War: A Note". Europe-Asia Studies 46(4)Overmans, R. (1999), Deutsche militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg. OldenbourgGlantz, D. M. (2001), The Siege of Leningrad 1941–1944: 900 Days of Terror. CassellClodfelter, M. (2017), Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Encyclopedia, 4th ed. McFarland

Open the atlas at 1943 — Stalingrad’s aftermath, Kursk, and the Soviet advance west ↗

Mapped battles and campaigns on this subject

Each of these is a layer in the atlas with dated movements and its own sources. Opening one sets the timeline to its date and takes the camera to it.

Full notes on all 23 layers are on the battles page.