Eastern Front (World War II) in the context of "Stalin era"

World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated, with many nations mobilising all resources in pursuit of total war. Tanks and aircraft played major roles, enabling the strategic bombing of cities and delivery of the first and only nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II is the deadliest conflict in history, causing the death of 70 to 85 million people, more than half of whom were civilians. Millions died in genocides, including the Holocaust, and by massacres, starvation, and disease. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were put on trial for war crimes.

The causes of World War II included unresolved tensions in the aftermath of World War I, the rise of fascism in Europe and militarism in Japan. Key events preceding the war included Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931, the Spanish Civil War, the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, and Germany's annexations of Austria and the Sudetenland. World War II is generally considered to have begun on 1 September 1939, when Nazi Germany, under Adolf Hitler, invaded Poland, after which the United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany. Poland was divided between Germany and the Soviet Union under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. In 1940, the Soviet Union annexed the Baltic states and parts of Finland and Romania. After the fall of France in June 1940, the war continued mainly between Germany, now assisted by Fascist Italy, and the British Empire, with fighting in the Balkans, Mediterranean, and Middle East, the aerial Battle of Britain and the Blitz, and the naval Battle of the Atlantic. Through campaigns and treaties, Germany gained control of much of continental Europe and formed the Axis alliance with Italy, Japan, and other countries. In June 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union, opening the Eastern Front and initially making large territorial gains.

Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country in Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the largest country in the world, spanning eleven time zones and sharing land borders with fourteen countries. With a population of over 140 million, Russia is the most populous country in Europe and the ninth-most populous country in the world. It is a highly urbanised country, with sixteen of its urban areas having more than 1 million inhabitants. Moscow, the most populous metropolitan area in Europe, is the capital and largest city of Russia; and Saint Petersburg is its second-largest city and cultural centre.

Human settlement on the territory of modern Russia dates back to the Lower Paleolithic. The East Slavs emerged as a recognised group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. The first East Slavic state, Kievan Rus', arose in the 9th century, and in 988, it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire. Kievan Rus' ultimately disintegrated; the Grand Duchy of Moscow led the unification of Russian lands, leading to the proclamation of the Tsardom of Russia in 1547. By the early 18th century, Russia had vastly expanded through conquest, annexation, and the efforts of Russian explorers, developing into the Russian Empire, which remains the third-largest empire in history. However, with the Russian Revolution in 1917, Russia's monarchic rule was abolished and eventually replaced by the Russian SFSR—the world's first constitutionally socialist state. Following the Russian Civil War, the Russian SFSR established the Soviet Union with three other Soviet republics, within which it was the largest and principal constituent. The Soviet Union underwent rapid industrialisation in the 1930s, amidst the deaths of millions under Joseph Stalin's rule, and later played a decisive role for the Allies in World War II by leading large-scale efforts on the Eastern Front—rising as a global superpower. With the onset of the Cold War, it competed with the United States for ideological dominance and international influence. The Soviet era of the 20th century saw some of the most significant Russian technological achievements, including the first human-made satellite and the first human expedition into outer space.

Operation Barbarossa was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and several of its European Axis allies starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II. More than 3.8 million Axis troops invaded the western Soviet Union along a 2,900-kilometer (1,800 mi) front, with the main goal of capturing territory up to a line between Arkhangelsk and Astrakhan, known as the A–A line. The attack became the largest and costliest military offensive in human history, with around 10 million combatants taking part in the opening phase and over 8 million casualties by the end of the operation on 5 December 1941. It marked a major escalation of World War II, opened the Eastern Front—the largest and deadliest land war in history—and brought the Soviet Union into the Allied powers.

The operation, code-named after the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa ("red beard"), put into action Nazi Germany's ideological goals of eradicating communism and conquering the western Soviet Union to repopulate it with Germans under Generalplan Ost, which planned for the removal of the native Slavic peoples by mass deportation to Siberia, Germanisation, enslavement, and genocide. The material targets of the invasion were the agricultural and mineral resources of territories such as Ukraine and Byelorussia and oil fields in the Caucasus. The Axis eventually captured five million Soviet Red Army troops on the Eastern Front and deliberately starved to death or otherwise killed 3.3 million prisoners of war, as well as millions of civilians. Mass shootings and gassing operations, carried out by German paramilitary death squads and collaborators, murdered over a million Soviet Jews as part of the Holocaust.

The Soviet occupation of Romania refers to the period from 1944 to August 1958, during which the Soviet Union maintained a significant military presence in Romania. The fate of the territories held by Romania after 1918 that were incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940 is treated separately in the article on Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina.

During the Eastern Front offensive of 1944, the Soviet Army occupied the northwestern part of Moldavia as a result of armed combat that took place between the months of April and August of that year, while Romania was still an ally of Nazi Germany. The rest of the territory was occupied after Romania changed sides in World War II, as a result of the royal coup launched by King Michael I on August 23, 1944. On that date, the king announced that Romania had unilaterally ceased all military actions against the Allies, accepted the Allied armistice offer, and joined the war against the Axis powers. As no formal armistice offer had been extended yet, the Red Army occupied most of Romania as enemy territory prior to the signing of the Moscow Armistice of September 12, 1944.

Hero City is a Soviet honorary title awarded for outstanding heroism during World War II (the Eastern Front is known in most countries of the former Soviet Union as the Great Patriotic War). It was awarded to twelve cities of the Soviet Union, today located in Belarus (1 city), Russia (7 cities), and Ukraine (4 cities). Brest Fortress in Belarus was awarded the equivalent title of Hero Fortress. This symbolic distinction for a city corresponds to the individual distinction "Hero of the Soviet Union".

According to the statute, the hero city was issued the Order of Lenin, the Gold Star medal, and the certificate of the heroic deed (gramota or hramota) from the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Also, the corresponding obelisk was installed in the city.

The end of World War II in Europe occurred in May 1945. Following the suicide of Adolf Hitler on 30 April, leadership of Nazi Germany passed to Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz and the Flensburg Government. Soviet troops captured Berlin on 2 May, and a number of German military forces surrendered over the next few days. On 8 May, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel signed the German Instrument of Surrender, an unconditional surrender to the Allies, in Karlshorst, Berlin. This is celebrated as Victory in Europe Day, while in Russia, 9 May is celebrated as Victory Day.

Some fighting continued after the German surrender. Some battles continued on the Eastern Front such as the Courland Pocket in western Latvia surrendering on 10 May, and the Prague offensive in Czechoslovakia ending on 11 May. On 25 May 1945, the Battle of Odžak ended in a Yugoslav Partisan victory. Following the conclusion in the European theatre, with the war continuing in the Pacific theatre.

The European theatre of World War II was one of the two main theatres of combat during World War II, taking place from September 1939 to May 1945. The Allied powers (including the United Kingdom, the United States, the Soviet Union and France) fought the Axis powers (including Nazi Germany and the Kingdom of Italy) on both sides of the continent in the Western and Eastern fronts. There was also conflict in the Scandinavian, Mediterranean and Balkan regions. It was an intense conflict that led to at least 39 million deaths and a dramatic change in the balance of power in the continent.

During the 1930s, Adolf Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany, expanded German territory by annexing all of Austria and the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia in 1938. This was motivated in part by Germany's racial policy that believed the country needed to expand for the pseudoscientific "Aryan race" to survive. They were aided by Italy, another fascist state which was led by Benito Mussolini. World War II started with Germany's invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, and the Soviet Union, led by Joseph Stalin, joined the invasion later that month. The two nations then partitioned Poland between them.