As the most devastating theater in the most cataclysmic war in human history, immeasurable consequences followed in its wake, and as such it remains a perennial subject of study for self-evident reasons.ĭue to the drought of portrayals of the Eastern Front in contemporary media, of particular interest to me has been the German series Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter (Our Mothers, Our Fathers), also known in its English title as Generation War. The genocidal, political, and ethnic basis for the war, motivated by German National Socialist ideology, accelerated decolonization and democratization efforts by Western liberal democracies after the war’s end, and the early 20th century’s experimentations with imperialism, militaristic fascism, and scientific racism are now viewed with nearly universal horror and critique. The Soviet Union’s repulsion of Nazi Germany’s invasion and the Third Reich’s eventual surrender in 1945 lead to Soviet hegemony over an increasingly authoritarian and communist Eastern Europe, and Western fear of communism’s advance, as well as Soviet competition with the United States, culminated into the decades-long Cold War, which included flashpoints like Korea, Vietnam, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. It is the most historically climactic war to have ever been fought.
Why is the Eastern Front important to study beyond military history? The Eastern Front not only shaped the outcome of the war, but by consequence also shaped the outcome of the 20th century. In short: we are long overdue for a solid depiction. Yet despite its significance and importance to the Second World War and to the study of war more generally, and despite the Second World War still playing a prominent role in the national mythos and psyche of the United States’ cultural and geopolitical history, it is a topic that seems to escape portrayal in popular media. By contrast, the Soviet Union fielded over 10 million personnel and had suffered over 30 million civilian and military casualties. Up to that point, they had suffered roughly 4-5 million civilian and military casualties. At the surrender of Germany in May 1945, the Western Allies fielded roughly 4.5 million personnel between all of its formations in France, the Low Countries, Germany, and Italy, with about 5.4 million personnel total having ever served in Europe. By sheer size, it comparatively dwarfs the Western Allies’ efforts.
Whether measured by landmass, casualties, or personnel involved, it is the largest war to have ever been fought, and the theater demonstrates an unparalleled capacity for human suffering. Covering a land mass of 286,000 square miles and involving over 20 million people, it is the inarguable lynchpin of the war’s focus and centrally determined its outcome. In the history of human warfare, nothing surpasses the scale or brutality of the Eastern Front of the Second World War. Screen capture of a scene from Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter.
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