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World War II Europe: The Eastern Front Summary

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The Second World War was history’s most brutal conflict ever witnessed over the course of mankind. The conflict bred a whole sleuth of technological innovations, death and destruction, large scale genocides, and completely reshaped the world afterwards. It set the path for a prolonged nuclear arms race between capitalist and communist countries and had huge implications for third world countries that are still affected by the events of the war today. Of all the fronts of the war; whether it is the Pacific Theatre, which pitted the Allies against the fanatical and suicidal Japanese army or Western Europe with the Allied invasion of Normandy and Operation Overlord. However, no front of the war proved to be more costly and devastating than the …show more content…

Kennedy greatly details many of the major events and battles that took place between the Allied and Axis from the initial outbreak of war and the final days of the war in Europe. Kennedy begins his article by describing the perceived plan of Operation Barbarossa, which was the Wehrmacht's plan to grant more “Lebensraum” or living space for the ever increasing population of Germany. Kennedy then shifts to discuss the major military events that had a huge impact when regarding the potential outcome of war for either the Soviets or Germans; recounting major battles of the front. Such battles included the likes of Leningrad, a massive siege on a Soviet city with the German’s intending to wipe out the city’s population of millions of citizens, Stalingrad, one of history’s largest battles in the history of mankind that ended after the Soviets cut off German supply lines and surrounded the Germans in the city, and Berlin, the final major confrontation between the two powerhouses that ended shortly after Adolf Hitler’s suicide among other high ranking Nazi officials. As for the individual details in the article, Kenedy remains relatively terse when explaining each of the events’ significance and effects in areas such as casualties, level of brutality in terms of the tactics employed, …show more content…

The prolonged battle lasted for months and was one of the most costliest battles of the war as it saw brutal urban warfare and ceaseless artillery bombing which annihilated the city. The head of the Jewish Virtual Library, Jason Levine, accounts the huge impact and aftermath the battle had claimed that “Stalingrad was also revealing of the discipline and determination of both the German Wehrmacht and the Soviet Red Army. The Soviets first defended Stalingrad against a fierce German onslaught. So great were Soviet losses that at times, the life expectancy of a newly arrived soldier was less than a day,and the life expectancy of a Soviet officer was three days… In all, the battle resulted in an estimated total of 1.7 million to 2 million Axis and Soviet casualties”(Levine). Levine details the battle as an unprecedented event as both sides suffered astronomically high casualties and highlighted the brutality of the fighting as the rate of death for Soviet soldiers was a few days. To understand the grasp of the battle; the entire four year long campaign of the American Civil War had less casualties than the singular Battle of

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