The official Soviet position on The Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 is that the USSR won World War Two in Europe, and they did it virtually single-handedly. At Stalingrad, the USSR finally proved that the Wehrmacht was not invincible, and could be beaten. Stalingrad was the turning point, the end of the beginning. At Kursk, the USSR inflicted such huge losses in men and materiel that Germany was never able to recover. Kursk was the beginning of the end.

The Soviet position that they won the war by themselves is based on the fact that, aside from (what they consider to be) limited supplies provided by Great Britain and the USA, the Allies provided no assistance whatsoever. Germany had arguably well over 75 percent of its total armed forces based on the Eastern Front, and by the time the Allies finally opened a second front on the coast of France, Germany was already all but beaten. Precious little of the German army was pulled out of the Eastern Front and sent to the West.

Now, one could argue that this is a very simplistic and chauvinistic argument, that the Soviet position fails to take into account the Allied contribution in terms of the air and naval campaigns, scientific advances and technology, and the Pacific Theater of Operations. But even after the bravado and hyperbole have been filtered out, the fact remains that the German invasion of and ultimate expulsion from the USSR between 1941 and 1945 represents the single greatest campaign, in size, scale and ferocity, of any war before or since.

War in the East