The Eastern Front of the European Theatre of World War II encompassed the conflict in central and eastern Europe from June 22, 1941 to May 8, 1945. It was the largest theatre of war in history in terms of numbers of soldiers, equipment and casualties and was notorious for its unprecedented ferocity, destruction, and immense loss of life. It was here that the bulk of the European war was fought; where the Red Army halted the Germans in 1941 and then inflicted the first major defeats at Stalingrad and Kursk in 1943. The fighting involved millions of German and Soviet troops along a broad front hundreds of kilometres long. It was by far the deadliest single theatre of World War II, with over 5 million Axis deaths; Soviet military deaths were about 10.6 million (out of which 2.8 - 3.5 million Soviet prisoners of war (of 5.5 million) died in German captivity), and civilian deaths were about 14 to 19 million. More people fought and died on the Eastern Front than in all other theatres of World War II combined; the German army suffered 80% to 93% of all its casualties there.Although the Soviet Union was victorious in the war, the cost to the nation was an estimated 27 million dead, about half of all World War II casualties and the vast majority of Allied deaths, and had devastated the Soviet economy in the struggle. In Soviet and Russian sources, the conflict is referred to as the Great Patriotic War.
