The Savage War on the East Front

Sahith Mandala
Week 8


This week's class discussion focused on World War II. The class delved into important issues like the conditions that led to the start of war, the involvement of women in the war, and the influence that the United States played in the war. In class, we created a list/chart containing facts that we knew about the war as a class and where we learned these facts. I found the facts that were stated and the sources given very interesting. Almost all facts that were stated were concerning American involvement in the war and a majority of the sources were also American, like Hollywood movies or American produced documentaries. This leads me to believe that our thoughts, perception and knowledge of the Second World War are highly impacted by the various media outlets we interact with at home. To get a better understanding of the German perspective of war, I wanted to focus this blog post on a part of the war that the United States had very little influence on- The Eastern Front.

The United States and its allies the United Kingdom and France were involved heavily in fighting the Axis Powers on the Western Front and in Italy, but played very little roles on the Eastern Front of the war. For this reason, the Eastern front can be slightly forgotten in Western History. The responsibility of fighting off the Axis advance to the East was held by the Soviet Union. The following videos give a breakdown of the war on the Eastern front with interesting details on strategy on both sides:

The battles on the Eastern Front were costlier and deadlier than those on the Western Front. Both sides ignored international law and initiated acts of cruelty of civilians and troops. As the German army advanced through villages they spared no lives and often gathered up Jews and people of Slavic descent and shot them by the masses. Similarly, when the Soviets made a push for Berlin they murdered Thousands of German civilians. The troops of both sides perished in the Hundreds of Thousands. The leader of the Soviet Union at the time, Joseph Stalin, even issued the famous 'Order 227' or the 'Not one step back' rule which stated that any Soviet soldier that attempted to surrender or retreat would be killed. This was not a blank threat, special units called 'Blocking Detachments' were created to stay behind the battle front and gun down soldiers that tried to surrender or retreat. In total, Stalin's Blocking Detachment units called 150,000 Soviet soldiers over the course of the battle for the Eastern Front.

In hindsight, the world's largest surprise military attack was Hitler's greatest mistake and eventually led to the fall of the Axis powers in Europe. Some other facts about the Eastern Front of the war are that this was the largest tank battle in history with a total of over 6000 tanks being involved from both sides during the conflict. Also, the Soviets allowed women to fight on the front lines of the war. Communists believed more in an equality between sexes and allowed female soldiers to fight on the front lines. In the end, it is important that we are all aware of the entirety of the Second World War, not just the aspects that the United States influenced heavily. Also this holistic view of the war sheds light on the effects the war had on Germany and its people. Germany's lose in the Second World War and the acts that German Soldiers carried out like mass killing will remain as a dark shadow that haunts Germany's identity.