The Soviet-German War 1941 - 1945

Page 5 of 6

• 1. Roots of war
• 2. Soviet response
• 3. Turnaround
• 4. People's input
• 5. Price of victory
• 6. Find out more
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Price of victory

The war in the east was fought with a particular ferocity. The so-called 'barbarisation of warfare' has a number of explanations. Conditions were harsh for both sides, and losses were high. German forces entered the USSR with instructions from Hitler's headquarters to use the most brutal methods to keep control, and to murder Communist commissars and Jews in the service of the Soviet state.

'Soviet resistance made possible a successful Allied invasion of France ...'

By the autumn of 1941 these instructions had expanded to include all suspected partisans and other categories of Jew. In 1942 the remaining Jewish population was rounded up and killed on the spot or sent to extermination camps. The mass-murder of the Jews illustrates the importance of ideology in the conflict. Both sides fought in effect a civil war - the Soviets against imperialist invaders, the Germans against Jewish Bolshevism. The nature of the dictatorships determined the savage character of the eastern conflict.

Soviet victory came at a high price, but a combination of total-war mobilisation, better fighting methods and high operational skills defeated a German army that in 1944 was a formidable, heavily armed and modern fighting force. Soviet resistance made possible a successful Allied invasion of France, and ensured the final Allied victory over Germany. The Soviet state was transformed in the process into a superpower, and Communism, close to extinction in the autumn of 1941, came to dominate the whole Eurasian area, from East Germany to North Korea.

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Published: 2003-06-01