The Battle of Russia: Operation Barbarossa, Hitler and the Eastern Front

On June 22, 1941, the very day Napoleon declared war on Russia in 1812, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa. After his brief pact with Stalin, Hitler arranges his Wehrmacht troops into three strategic groups before launching an all-out assault on Russia. The Eastern Front became the main theater of fighting in Europe: between 1941 and 1945, 80% of the losses of the Wehrmacht took place on the Russian front. This is certainly where the outcome of the war was played out, during one of the longest and most terrible battles of WWII.