Introduction

In terms of the scope, scale, and ferocity of the fighting, the staggering human and material costs incurred, as well as the impact it had on the course of the war as a whole, arguably no combat during the Second World War was more decisive than that which took place on the Soviet-German front. With the possible exception of the China theater, no theater of war exacted a greater human toll than the Soviet-German theater of war. As a gruesome measure of this conflict’s intensity, out of over 30 million Soviet soldiers who served in the Red Army during this immense struggle, well over 8.9 million perished on the field of battle or in German prisoner-of-war or labor camps. Tragically, while death prevented many Red Army soldiers from sharing their experiences with the generations that followed, the Soviet Union’s political system prevented most of the many millions of soldiers who survived the ordeal of war from telling their stories as well.