Welcome to Eastern Front »

The intention of this site is to give an insight into the fight to the death that occured between Germany and the USSR during World War 2.

The question is often asked : Who was worse, Hitler or Stalin?  a hard question to answer, considering Hitlers famous extermination of the jews and the way he sacrificed many of his own troops on pointless battles such as Stalingrad, but to many historians of the period Stalin wins the vote, for his sytematic extermination of his own people in the 1930s, followed by his suicide tactics during world war 2, which resulted in the deaths of many millions of his own troops.  To top it all off, there is the little publicised displacement and genocide of Eastern Germans and Poles in the period immediately following World War 2, as Stalin redrew the borders for his own benefit.

Just click the year above to get a summary of what happened at that time.

The Eastern Front in 1939

In September 1939, Germany tries out its ultra successful blitzkrieg tactics for the first time, invading Poland.  They claim that Poland began shooting first, but the truth later comes out that, in fact, Germans dressed as Poles were responsible.  Poland is hopelessly unprepared for the German attack, and their military capability is nowhere near as high, their biplane aeroplanes hopelessly outgunned by the Me109, their light tanks and tactics inferior to the German tank attacks.  Poland even still has some cavalry units, and these are gunned down easily.  Germany completes the conquest within days.

Many people do not realise that the USSR siezes upon Germanys attack to make its own territorial gains.  Invading from the East, they are able to grab much of Polands territory too.  During this time, they take some 600 Polish officers prisoner at a place called Katyn.  They are all executed, shot in the back of the head, and buried in a mass grave.  For years afterward, this atrocity is blamed on Germany before the truth finally comes out, and is only the start of many atrocities that would eventually see some 20% of the population of pre-war Poland die during the war.