Operation Barbarossa gets underway. German soldiers await the order to advance - 22nd June 1941

Soviet soldiers taking positions on the Red October Steel Plant during the battle of Stalingrad, 1942-43

Leutnant Günter Kremer of 4./JG 53 Pik As (Ace of Spades), with his Messerschmitt Bf 109G-6/R-6, "White 7", Wien-Seyring, Österreich (Austria), March 1944. 4./JG 53 means the fouth Staffel (squadron) of the 53rd Jagdgeschwader (Fighter Wing). Not all Luftwaffe units had official nick-names, JG 53s being Ace of Spades (see emblem on LHS of engine). For more, see my Facebook group - Eagles Of The Reich

Equipage d'un char Joseph Staline IS-2 à Breslau (aujourd'hui Wrocław)– Siège de Breslau – Offensive de Basse-Silésie – Allemagne – 27 avril 1945

Photographe : Anatoly Egorov

Jello in the pit. (Eastern Front outdoor punk rock festival in Berkeley, 1981) // Steve Harlow

The best thing about Biafra was that he was a fan.

This shot illustrates the more friendly nature of the pit at Eastern Front. Note that Jello's wearing aviator shades, which would be dangerous if it was a violent pit. Also the foreground guy in the black jacket holding a cigarette. At this point, in this area, it was casual.

With the Armistice in negotiation, the conditions of the agreement demanded the entire German U-Boat fleet be surrendered and confiscated near the Orkney Islands. German admiral Ludwig von Reuter, who refused to let his ships become the spoils of war, ordered his crews to open seacocks, torpedo tubes and portholes on the ships to flood them, hoist their flags of the Imperial German Navy, and sink them off the coast of Scotland. It was the single greatest loss of warships in history, and the nine German sailors killed that day were the last to die during World War One. The final peace treaty was signed just a week later.

THE COMPOSITE PHOTOGRAPHY OF THE EASTERN FRONT -- MAN VERSUS NATURE.

PIC INFO: Resolution at 1600x1067 -- Spotlight on a composite photograph titled "Reindeer Yasha beyond the Arctic Circle," World War II, Murmansk Area, USSR, c. 1941. 📸: Yevgeny Khaldei.

MINI OVERVIEW: "World War II planes bomb a hillside while a shellshocked reindeer looks on. The stark interface between the killing machines of man and the natural grandeur and beauty of the reindeer was not "natural."

Yevgeny Khaldei, the famous Soviet photographer who took this photo, frequently staged or manipulated his photos to (as he defended the practice) enhance and strengthen the “truth” of the visual moment."

-- RARE HISTORICAL PHOTOS, "Reindeer in Murmansk," 1941

Source: https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/reindeer-murmansk-1941.

Destroyed vehicles of the Russian 36th Guards Heavy Tank Regiment in Pskov oblast, March 1944

from here

I have very specific feelings about The Slaughter and also the Eastern Front, so here's my OC, Natali, as an Avatar. The only ethical Avatar is the one who feeds off murdering nazis.

The Eastern front, 1917-1918

Unlike the West, the Eastern front continued to evolve between 1914 and 1918. From the end of 1917, the decomposition of the Russian army accelerated and the Bolshevik power signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on 3 March 1918. Russia will remain in the throes of war until 1921.

by @LegendesCarto

German Emperor Wilhelm II discussing military details during the Winter battle of the Masurian Lakes, Eastern Front of the First World War, modern-day Poland

German vintage postcard

Soviet soldiers occupy a trench during the defence of Leningrad - Jan 1943

Poet Yevgeniy Dolmatovsky poses with a bronze bust of Adolf Hitler in Berlin, May 1945

Messerschmitt Bf 110E-2/N (S9+EH) from 1./SKG 210, Eastern Front, June 1941. For more, see my Facebook group - Eagles of the Reich

Des soldats roumains à leur poste d'observation – Bataille du Caucase – Kouban – Union soviétique – Avril 1943

Hot take: I know it started as backlash towards America centric view of history and implicit lionification of American jingoism, but the "USSR won the WW2, they single-handedly kicked the Nazi ass with no help" is, if not equally tiresome, at least getting there. Yes, we get it, the biggest piece of shit in modern history got defeated by the second biggest who pretty much destroyed his country to do it, you don't have to be so smug about it.

I"m sorry for taking so long to get back to that Covid was...Covid was a hell of a time.

So to get into the history of this, no one country won WWII by itself, the whole point of WWII was that a bunch of powerful nations allied together to crush Fascism (eventually). So no one nation did it all by thesmelves, American jingoism of "We showed up inad crushed the Nazis by ourself, no Canadians or Brits at DDay" is obviously nonsense. And that also applies to the Soviet Union.

So the Sovets 100% did the most killing of the nazis, and they certianly did most of the dying. 9 out of every 10 europeon fascists. And they also lost the most people, somewhere between 27-35 million soviet citizens died during the war, some historians think it might even be as high as 40 million, like the level of fighting on the Eastern Front is a nightmare. However the Soviets were doing that fighting with American bullets, american uniforms, American jeeps, American tents, American food, and American medical supples. If the US had stayed neutral in WWII after 1941, then the Soviets might have won the war anyways but it would have been far harder, taken far longer and probably destroyed the soviet union. Hell Japan might have taken another shot at the East. The US was the great "arsenal of democracy" in WWII and that ultiamtley mattered as much as fighting. Both sides pretending they were the only protagonists of the fight.

Now many nations are pretty justified for calling the US out not joining for the first 3 years of WWII, like when Brits are like "Hey you guys were staying neutral when you shouldn't." fair enough. But when people from the former Soviet Union call the US out, I'm like "We joined six months later" There is a six month period where the USSR is fighting Fascism and the US is not, between June 1941 (start of Operation Barbarossa) and September 7th 1941 (Pearl Harbor). Before that, the US was staying neutral in the war (bastards) and the Soviets were worse than neutral, being the main suppler of oil to Hitler and engaging in imperalism (Poland, Finland).

Also part of the reason why the Soviet Union took so many losses was because of how badly run the Soviet union was run.

TLDR: no one nation can take full credit for the war, and the US and the USSR are both really annothing about trying to pretend they were the only winners of the war