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We don’t know. And anyone who says differently is just idealizing or extrapolating from their guesses at why there’s an imbalance now.Are fewer women firefighters because most women genetically aren’t drawn to jobs like that? Or because culture discourages women from thinking of themselves as firefighters? Or because women find the atmosphere in a fire station hostile to women?We don’t know. My guess is it’s all those things. I think there will always be fewer women in some professions but there are far fewer than there would be if all other barriers were gone.Men and women are different. But how are they different? What differences are genetic and what are cultural? And are the differences significant?Born This Way? Gender-Based Toy Preferences in PrimatesTo what degree are gender differences innate and biological, and to what extent do they arise out of societal modeling and environment? -- In humans, studies have shown that boys gravitate strongly to stereotypically “masculine” toys such as trucks and other vehicles, while girls are less rigid, spending relatively equal amounts of time playing with boy-favored toys and with more traditionally “feminine” toys such as dolls. One hypothesis put forward to explain this difference has been that boys face greater societal discouragement when they play with “girl toys” than girls do in the reverse situation. The researchers figured that by looking at rhesus monkeys, who don’t face comparable social pressures to conform to gender roles, they might be able to illuminate biological influences on toy selection as well."As with human boys, male rhesus monkeys clearly preferred wheeled toys over plush toys, interacting significantly more frequently and for long durations with the wheeled toys. Also mirroring human behavior, female rhesus monkeys were less specialized, playing with both plush and wheeled toys and not exhibiting significant preferences for one type over the other. Here’s a chart illustrating the similar gender preferences of humans and rhesus monkeys (the information regarding human preferences comes from a 1992 study by Sheri Berenbaum and Melissa Hines):Women find the male-dominated professions hostile. Men dismiss women’s complaints as being too sensitive. How could men possibly know something they can’t experience? Transwomen know, though. They’ve experienced treatment on both sides of the gender-coin.How did transitioning from male to female change the way men treat you?NOTE: These are former men noticing how different they are treated now that people see them as women.I think the worst experiences I had were at work. When I was male, my ideas were lauded. What I decided was executed without question. After I transitioned, even junior developers would rewrite my code overnight. I remember being a cowboy coder, writing code late into the night and being unconcerned with what others thought. After I transitioned, after experiencing myriad problems from teammates rewriting my code over night and leaving me to handle the merge conflicts, I realized that women in this industry have an uphill battle. In my most recent position, I wasn’t looked to for what I could produce, but how I could teach. I was a professor for a decade. I love to teach. But I found myself teaching instead of doing. It wasn’t an expected experience. As a male. I was expected to do and not teach.The other reaction is one that is a little disappointing and is usually men who cannot believe a woman could possibly have skills that they are not in possession of. They question everything I do and I can tell that they hold little faith that what I repair will remain serviceable. I almost cried the first time I had someone actually say to my face, “You actually do know what you are talking about”!It is strange to experience what feels like a sentiment that women really are not equal to men and this is persistent in both genders. For all of the strides towards equality, there is a lot of progress that looks good on paper but is really only a shallow veneer.When you transition you can expect to be treated female. In business you will find many myths that women talk about are truths. You’ll find that the male privilege is real. I never noticed it, but I certainly did once I had to give up my membership card to the boys club!Mostly it’s been an increase in “man-splaining” where someone assumes I only know “girl” stuff and proceeds to explain things in granular detail about something I’ve known for years. This includes buying a road bike, teaching someone how to smoke ribs (that’s right, I was teaching HIM), anything video game or comic related. … People are much more inclined to recognize my appearance over my accomplishments, which is just as demoralizing as it is affirming. … Online dating went from a desert to a hive of scum and villainy.Cultural sexism in the world is very real when you’ve lived on both sides of the coin"... experiences of trans men can provide a unique window into how gender functions in American society. In the last few months, I’ve interviewed nearly two dozen trans men and activists about work, relationships and family. Over and over again, men who were raised and socialized as female described all the ways they were treated differently as soon as the world perceived them as male. They gained professional respect, but lost intimacy. They exuded authority, but caused fear."Boys and girls are raised differently. Sometimes it’s unconsciously done by parents who believe they’re enlightened.The BBC did an interesting experiment. They dressed small children in opposite gender clothes and gave them opposite gender names. Then they let adults entertain them with toys. The “girls” were encouraged to play with quiet and soft things. The “boys” were encouraged to play with spatial awareness toys and big muscle movement toys. Both men and women showed their bias.Men hugely dominate careers prizing maths, spatial awareness and physical confidence. Are boys born “better” at these? Is it nature or is it nurture?When children play spatial awareness games frequently their brains change physically within just three months.How much do both of these affect women in male-dominated careers?We don’t know.I earned a degree in Electrical Engineering in 1980 from Carnegie Mellon. At the time they offered a graduate degree in Computer Science but not an undergraduate so I just took all the programming and computer science classes I could. I was one of 6 women in a class of 400. When I got a job in 1982 as a programmer rather oddly the entire 6 person programming department was all women.I didn’t face a hostile environment. But times were different. I don’t think men saw engineering as theirs. It was just odd to have women in it. Women also didn’t have special programs to boost women’s participation in STEM, which, perhaps, have led to resentment by some men.Things have changed since then.CMU’s Proportion of Undergraduate Women in Computer Science and Engineering Soars Above National AveragesWomen make up more than 48 percent of first-year undergraduates this fall in the university’s School of Computer Science, setting a new school benchmark. By contrast, according to the Computing Research Association’s annual Taulbee Survey, 16.5 percent of undergraduates in 121 computer science programs across the country in 2015 were women.In the College of Engineering, about 43 percent of this fall’s first-year undergraduates are women. Nationally, the proportion of women undergraduates in engineering has stalled below 20 percent, according to a 2015 study by the National Science Foundation.“If the United States is to remain a leader in discovery and innovation, we must engage the enormous talent pool represented by our young women,” said CMU President Subra Suresh. “These fields are key to shaping the 21st century, and Carnegie Mellon University’s distinctive program offers young women and men the opportunity and environment to make a real difference.”The steady climb of women enrolling in these fields at Carnegie Mellon highlights a combination of factors: a strong commitment by leaders at the university, college and department levels; influential pipeline programs for middle- and high-school students; targeted recruitment; closer scrutiny of applications; support and mentorship programs; and attention to diversifying the faculty.The increases have occurred as the quality of incoming students continues to rise across the board.

Taking a break at the Eastern front.It was hell on Earth, will be the simplest answer, but that will not suffice to describe the War, without knowing why?First, you had at the top, two ideological ruthless persons commanding, Adolf Hitler, and Joseph Stalin, not his real last name but a nickname he was born as Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, in Georgia in the Caucasus Stalin means Steel, now figure out anybody proud to be known as such, not a sweetheart, a despot compared with the likes of Ivan the Terrible, and Peter the Great.Joseph StalinJoseph Stalin or Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin, was the leader of the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953. Among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who took part in the Russian Revolution of 1917, Stalin was appointed general secretary of the party's Central Committee in 1922. He subsequently managed to consolidate power following the 1924 death of Vladimir Lenin through suppressing Lenin's criticisms and expanding the functions of his role, all the while eliminating any opposition. By the late 1920s, he was the unchallenged leader of the Soviet Union. He remained general secretary until the post was abolished in 1952, concurrently serving as the Premier of the Soviet Union from 1941 onward. Under Stalin's rule, the concept of "socialism in one country" became a central tenet of Soviet society. He replaced the New Economic Policy introduced by Lenin in the early 1920s with a highly centralized command economy, launching a period of industrialization and collectivization that resulted in the rapid transformation of the USSR from an agrarian society into an industrial power.Adolf Hitler an Austrian corporal, who fought in WWI and become the leader of Germany, an ideologist of the now day infamous Nazi party, also fairly well known today, to speak too much about his atrocities, and ruthlessness.Suffice its to say their different ideologies, antithetical in nature made them mortal enemies.Germany was bound by the Geneva, and Hague conventions on Warfare, but not the Soviet Union, when Germany captured Millions of prisoners of War Hitler suggested to Stalin to have some sort of accord for prisoners of War through the Red Cross."Hitler himself urged Red Cross inspection of [German] camps [holding Soviet prisoners of war]. But an appeal to Stalin for prisoners' postal services received a reply that clinched the matter: 'There are no Soviet prisoners of war. The Soviet soldier fights on till death. If he chooses to become a prisoner, he is automatically excluded from the Russian community. We are not interested in a postal service only for Germans'."Stalin's Order No. 270.If ... "instead of organizing resistance to the enemy, some Red Army men prefer to surrender, they shall be destroyed by all possible means, both ground-based and from the air, whereas the families of the Red Army men who have been taken prisoner shall be deprived of the state allowance [that is, rations] and relief."The commanders and political officers ... "who surrender to the enemy shall be considered malicious deserters, whose families are liable to be arrested [just] as the families of deserters who have violated the oath and betrayed their Motherland."Just a few lines, but they stand for the hundreds of thousands of children and old folks who died from hunger only because their father or son happened to be taken prisoner.Those few lines, but they amount to a verdict on those who never even thought of a crime, who were only waiting for a letter from the front.Well, Hitler in turn abandoned the issue, and turned on the Russian prisoners as slave labor, and worst.Given this situation, the German leaders resolved to treat Soviet prisoners no better than the Soviet leaders were treating the German soldiers they held. As can be imagined, Soviet treatment of German prisoners was harsh. Of an estimated three million German soldiers who fell into Soviet hands, more than two million perished in captivity. Of the 91,000 German troops captured in the Battle of Stalingrad, fewer than 6,000 ever returned to Germany.As an anecdote Stalin’s eldest son was taken prisoner by the GermansThe Germans announced the capture of Dzughashvili on 19 July. Stalin reacted negativity to the news: he had previously ordered that no soldiers were to surrender, so the idea that his own son had done so was seen as a disgrace.He was angry that Dzughashvili had not killed himself instead of being captured, and suspected that someone had betrayed him Meltzer the wife of Stalin’s son was not immediately told the news and, suspicious of her motives and the idea that Dzhugashvili surrendered, Stalin had her arrested. With Meltzer imprisoned, Svetlana took care of Galina.German Tanks at the start of Barbarossa June 1941Now its said that the Russians were caught by surprise by the German attack, its half true, both knew that War between them was inevitable, Hitler claimed Lebensraum.Lebensraum "living space") comprises policies and practices of settler colonialism which proliferated in Germany from the 1890s to the 1940s. First popularized around 1901, Lebensraum became a geopolitical goal of Imperial Germany in World War I (1914–1918) originally, as the core element of the Septemberprogramm of territorial expansion. The most extreme form of this ideology was supported by the Nazi Party (NSDAP) and Nazi Germany until the end of World War II.Following Adolf Hitler's rise to power, Lebensraum became an ideological principle of Nazism and provided justification for the German territorial expansion into Central and Eastern Europe.[5] The Nazi General plan Ost policy (the Master Plan for the East) was based on its tenets. It stipulated that Germany required a Lebensraum ('living space') necessary for its survival and that most of the indigenous populations of Central and Eastern Europe would have to be removed permanently (either through mass deportation to Siberia, death, or enslavement) including Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, Czech and other Slavic nations considered non-Aryan. The Nazi government aimed at repopulating these lands with Germanic colonists in the name of Lebensraum during World War II and thereafter. Entire indigenous populations were decimated by starvation, allowing for their own agricultural surplus to feed Germany.Hitler in VienaDespite the fact a War was expected, and Stalin knew a war was coming, but been a dictator, and politically minded, was not a General, or had a clear view of what an Army should be like, to him a General was just another fellow comrade, subordinated to his all powerful command, and he played the game he knew how to play, being the supreme boss, and highly indoctrinated on his Marxist ideology, who played at his will deciding what was better for everybody, with little knowledge of how his decrees or policies affected, the effectiveness of his own Armies.THE COMMISSARIn the military, a political commissar or political officer (or politruk, a portmanteau from Russian "political leader", "political official", is a supervisory officer responsible for the political education (ideology and organization of the unit they are assigned to, and intended to ensure civilian control of the militaryThe function first appeared as ‘commissaire politique’ (political commissioner) or 'représentant en mission' (representative on mission) in the French Revolutionary Army during the Revolution French_Revolution 1789–99.It also existed, with interruptions, in the Soviet Red Army from 1918 to 1942, as well as in the armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1943 to 1945. The function remains in use in China's People's Liberation Army.“Politruk” Alexey Yeremenko leads his men into combat, armed with a Tokarev TT-33. He was killed minutes after this photo was taken. Khorosheye, near Voroshilovgrad, Ukraine, July 12, 1942.Well, the Russian Army was practically run by ideology not by the Military Generals, it was as like if the Ministry of propaganda will be leading the military decisions of the Army, and Navy, during the peacetime they run the Army on Stalin’s name, it was a good thing, and a bad thing, a good commissar instilled patriotism, and unity between the soldiers, a bad one undermined military authority, questioned superiors, and got on everybody soldier business, and not a few of them, were shot by their own soldiers due to long held animosity, when hostilities between the two countries started on June 22 1941.It fell to the men to express their views, political officers reports were full of comments, like: “ If I end in combat I will stick my revolver in your throat first!” or “The first person I will shoot will be politruk Zaitzev!” Two run away deserters caught without getting punished returned to their post said: “ As soon as we get to the front, I will kill the deputy politruk!” Some soldiers maliciously will paint swastikas, and leave German leaflets on the belongings of the politruk.Tensions and resentments between politruks, and the men were common, during peace time the soldiers took constant instruction from the political deputies, and the hours of real soldier’s training reduced, to accommodate them, when war broke and the need for real training was necessary, the political training become to get on soldiers nerves, since there was hardly time for resting, and considered useless, and not essential at least for the moment, when other things were more urgent.Commissar Nikita Khrushchev (center) and Nikolai Vatutin (right), 1940s ww2dbaseA military run by ideologies rather than to accomplish victory by Strategical, Logistics, and Tactical priorities in any Army, subservient to the political necessities, rather than practical needs of a functioning Army.And the reason why on the beginning of the War the Germans inflicted so heavy casualties on the Russians, totally impaired by ideological political concerns, than the practicalities, and necessities of a conflict of such magnitude.Rostov 1942The Great Purge or the Great Terror was a campaign of political repression in the Soviet Union which occurred from 1936 to 1938. It involved a large-scale purge of the Communist Party and government officials, repression of wealthy landlords and the Red Army leadership, widespread police surveillance, suspicion of saboteurs, counter-revolutionaries, imprisonment, and arbitrary executions. In Russian historiography, the period of the most intense purge, 1937–1938, is called Yezhovshchina (literally, "Yezhov phenomenon", commonly translated as "times of Yezhov" or "doings of Yezhov"), after Nikolai Yezhov, the head of the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, who was executed a year after the purge. Modern historical studies estimate the total number of deaths due to Stalinist repression in 1937–38 to be between 681,692 and 1,200,000.Soviet dictator Josef Stalin (center) and Soviet secret-police head Nikolai Yezhov (right) walk near Moscow in 1937, the same year Yezhov signed Order No. 00447, which began the Great Terror.VICTIMS OF THEIR OWN PROPAGANDAMovies, news, propaganda, and indoctrination, was the real accomplishment of the Soviets before WWII.The communist ideology by itself superior to the Fascist ideology was reason enough for their triumph, everyone in Russia of school age, since the Revolution, knew that, and believed it, despite the fact that the Russian Army was totally ill equipped at the time, regardless of its size, was of little concern to them, they even had movies were the war was more of a pleasant affair, were there was hardly any shootings, and instead of bombs, over Berlin, the planes will release leaflets for all the Capitalistic workers to raise in arms, and join their communist, fellow brethren.Well, all those dreams come to a crash, when the German Army unleashed its power, on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941.Operation Barbarossa.The operation opened up the Eastern Front, in which more forces were committed than in any other theater of war in world history. The Eastern Front became the site of some of the largest battles, most horrific atrocities, and highest World War II casualties (for Soviet and Axis forces alike). All of which influenced the course of both World War II and the subsequent history of the 20th century. The German armies captured some 5,000,000 Red Army troops during the war,a majority of whom never returned alive.The start of the war June 22 1941.Their near failure, in The Winter War in Finland did little to alert them. 30 November 1939 – 13 March 1940. To the operational low level of the Soviet Army. Even the victory of Georgi Zhukov at Khalkhin Gol, in Mongolia 11 May – 16 September 1939. Against the Japanese Imperial Army. Following the battle, the Soviets generally found the results unsatisfactory, despite their victory. Though the Soviet forces in the Far East in 1939 were not plagued by fundamental issues to the same extent as those in Europe during the 1941 campaigns, their generals were still unimpressed by their army's performance. As noted by Pyotr Grigorenko, the Red Army went in with a very large advantage in technology, numbers, and firepower, yet still suffered huge losses, which he blamed on poor leadership. However Zhukov’s experience was vital to stop the Germans at the gates of Moscow.German Tanks on the AttackThe first five Marshals of the Soviet Union in November 1935. (l-r): Mikhail Tukhachevsky , Semyon Budyonny , Kliment Voroshilov, Vasily Blyukher Aleksandr Yegorov . Only Voroshilov and Budyonny survived the Great Purge.The purge of the Red Army and Military Maritime Fleet removed three of five marshals (then equivalent to four-star generals), 13 of 15 army commanders (then equivalent to three-star generals), eight of nine admirals (the purge fell heavily on the Navy, who were suspected of exploiting their opportunities for foreign contacts), 50 of 57 army corps commanders, 154 out of 186 division commanders, 16 of 16 army commissars, and 25 of 28 army corps commissars.At first it was thought 25–50% of Red Army officers had been purged; the true figure is now known to be in the area of 3.7–7.7%. This discrepancy was the result of a systematic underestimation of the true size of the Red Army officer corps, and it was overlooked that most of those purged were merely expelled from the Party. Thirty percent of officers purged in 1937–1939 were allowed to return to service, during the War.And the purges were not only in the Army, every field of Soviet society got affected, Arts, Science, Intellectuals, Writers, Farmers (Kulaks) , Merchants, etc.Kulaks were purged and murdered in great number (in Ukraine, for example) by deportation and starvation under the Soviet campaign of dekulakization.Iconic picture of the start of the offensive.Well needless to say propaganda, and make believe its one thing, reality its a whole different matter, despite of the big Army, it was badly trained, its weapons mostly antiquated, but for a few new innovations, the fact the German advance overtook large portions of Western Russia, and that the Industry had to be dismantled and sent beyond the Urals in a rush, and a lot of people evacuated with it, didn’t help the Soviets either, at the time.“In the Soviet army, they were very poor. Very little food, the boots were poor, and the discipline was not good. For example, we walked in the Caucasus Mountains with blisters on your feet. You could barely walk, and had to go so slow. Officers on horseback would come by with a whip and say, "Comrade, you're walking too slow, you must walk fast. You must walk fast for this country and for Stalin." Once someone fought back against an officer, and was shot. This scared us into keep walking, no matter what.”Michael Mirson Russian soldier.The Russian soldier was caught in a terrible quandary, patriotic or not, fanatic, or demoralized, it didn’t matter if you were loyal, or secretly a defeatist, you were sacrificed stupidly, and squandered right, and left, expected to counterattack the enemy with your bare hands if it was necessary, against armored units, the word retreat, was unmentionable, or you could be shot on the spot, even if logic demanded such a move, to fight another day, surrendering was treason, and your family will suffer for it, friends will tell each other, if I disappear, get prisoner, or left wounded behind, please tell you saw me shot to death, so my family will not suffer.Soviet soldiers killed during the Toropets–Kholm Offensive, January 1942.Officially, roughly 8.7 million Soviet soldiers died in the course of the war, including millions of POWs.Just Military deaths there’s no agreement but range between 8,668,000 to 11,400,000, not counting civilians deaths by war, or famine, also enormous, with a total between 20,000,000. To 27,000,000.But the Soviet Army by the end of 1942, had learned its lesson and helped by the US, and Britain, were able to turn the tide, and reverse the situation, to a great cost nevertheless.The German Army now bleed white, of men and power it was their time to be on the retreat.The siege of Leningrad.The siege of Leningrad started on 8 September 1941, when the Wehrmacht severed the last road to the city. Although Soviet forces managed to open a narrow land corridor to the city on 18 January 1943, the Red Army did not lift the siege until 27 January 1944, 872 days after it began. The blockade became one of the longest and most destructive sieges in history, and possibly the costliest in casualties suffered.Historian Michael Walzer summarized that "The Siege of Leningrad killed more civilians than bombing of Hamburg, Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined." The US Military Academy evaluated that Russian casualties during the siege were bigger than combined American and British casualties during the entire war.Soviet soldiers at Stalingrad during a short rest after fightingHitler’s war against the Soviet Union fused ideological aggression with racial impetus and colonial aspirations that resulted in a conflict of unsurpassed brutality. Rather than being an unwilling participant in this brutal struggle, the Wehrmacht was a loyal and enthusiastic player.In March 1941, Hitler issued what has come to be known as the ‘Commissar Order,’ which clearly spelled out the future nature of the war in Russia. The coming conflict was to be ‘one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be waged with unprecedented, unmerciful, and unrelenting hardness.’ It also instructed Hitler’s subordinates to execute commissars and exonerated his soldiers of any future excess. ‘Any German soldier who breaks international law will be pardoned,’ the Führer stated. ‘Russia did not take part in the Hague Convention and, therefore, has no rights under it.’At a subsequent gathering to explain the application of this order to senior army officers, General Edwin Reinecke, the Reich officer responsible for the treatment of POWs, told his audience: ‘The war between Germany and Russia is not a war between two states or two armies, but between two ideologies — namely, the National Socialist and the Bolshevist ideology. The Red Army [soldier] must be looked upon not as a soldier in the sense of the word applying to our western opponents, but as an ideological enemy. He must be regarded as the archenemy of National Socialism and must be treated accordingly.’ Reinecke continued with the admonishment that this must be made plain to every officer taking part in the operation,’since they were apparently still entertaining ideas which belonged to the Ice Age and not to the present age of National Socialism.’ Under the direction of the Commissar Order, immediately after capture all Soviet political officers should be killed and that thereafter, under a’special selection program of the SD [Sicherheitsdienst, the Nazi Party’s security service], all those prisoners who could be identified as thoroughly bolshevized or as active representatives of the Bolshevist ideology’ should also be killed.War turned into an ideological criminal enterprise.The War doesn’t stop just because you are wounded.German patrol running into Russian patrolGerman Soldier after firefight.Oorah!! Soviet soldiers on the attack.Furious combat aftermath, German forces counterattacking.Of the 403,272 tank soldiers (including a small number of women) who were trained by the Red Army in the war, 310,000 would die. Even the most optimistic troops knew what would happen when a tank was shelled. The white-hot flash of the explosion would almost certainly ignite the tank crew’s fuel and ammunition. At best, the crew—or those at least who had not been decapitated or dismembered by the shell itself—would have no more than ninety seconds to climb out of their cabin. Much of that time would be swallowed up as they struggled to open the heavy, sometimes red-hot, hatch, which might have jammed after the impact anyway. The battlefield was no haven, but it was safer than the armored coffin that would now begin to blaze, its metal components to melt. This was not simply “boiling up.” The tank would also torch the atmosphere around it. By then, there could be no hope for the men inside. Not unusually, their bodies were so badly burned that the remains were inseparable. “Have you burned yet?” was a question tank men often asked each other when they met for the first time. A dark joke from this stage in the war has a politruk informing a young man that almost every tank man in his group has died that day. “I’m sorry,” the young man replies. “I’ll make sure that I burn tomorrow.”― Catherine Merridale,Furious combat aftermath, German forces counterattacking.Conditions in Russia were not as the rest of Europe, mostly rural, with great expanses of land between mayor cities, it mean long lines of supply on muddy, or frozen roads through hundreds of miles, and a war of attrition for almost four years, were the Russian steppes, virtually devoured men, and material from both armies, Russians could afforded them, the Germans could not.Rasputitsa is a Russian language term for two periods of the year (or "seasons") when travel on unpaved roads becomes difficult, owing to muddy conditions from rain or thawing snow. That is, it is applied to both spring and autumn. The word "rasputitsa" is also used to refer to the condition of roads during both periods.Russian quagmire known as Rasputitsa.Their Armies, slowly but surely deteriorated, and become more sparse, and scattered, with weaker numbers on everything, men, and equipment.Until it reached the point of no return after Stalingrad 1,379 miles from Berlin, the German Army already weakened, meanwhile the Russian becoming stronger, and with enough experience from his Generals to conduct a war in their favor, and after the error of Kursk, a totally unnecessary battle for the Germans, and too weak to penetrate the Russians defenses, the fate of the German Army was sealed.German soldiers at Stalingrad 1942Stalingrad (23 August 1942 – 2 February 1943) was the largest confrontation of World War II, in which Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad (now Volgograd) in Southern Russia.Marked by fierce close quarters combat and direct assaults on civilians in air raids, it was the largest (nearly 2.2 million personnel) and bloodiest (1.8–2 million killed, wounded or captured) battle in the history of warfare. After their defeat at Stalingrad, the German High Command had to withdraw vast military forces from the Western Front to replace their lossesNo battle in history was more ferociously waged. In house-to-house, factory-to-factory fighting, snipers were used to great effect by both sides, and the butcher’s bill ran high.Stalin considered his losses necessary. The surrender of the city would have been an irreversible victory for the Nazis.German Soldiers killed at Stalingrad January 1943The rest of the War it was a retreating defensive War, with no hope to stop the Soviet Juggernaut, and a fierce war it was, a desperate fight for avoid the inevitable end, total defeat.War not a pleasant business, their faces tell us, during a respite after battle.“What happened next? I retain nothing from those terrible minutes except indistinct memories which flash into my mind with sudden brutality, like apparitions, among bursts and scenes and visions that are scarcely imaginable. It is difficult even to even to try to remember moments during which nothing is considered, foreseen, or understood, when there is nothing under a steel helmet but an astonishingly empty head and a pair of eyes which translate nothing more than would the eyes of an animal facing mortal danger. There is nothing but the rhythm of explosions, more or less distant, more or less violent, and the cries of madmen, to be classified later, according to the outcome of the battle, as the cries of heroes or of murderers. And there are the cries of the wounded, of the agonizingly dying, shrieking as they stare at a part of their body reduced to pulp, the cries of men touched by the shock of battle before everybody else, who run in any and every direction, howling like banshees.Unrelenting War.There are the tragic, unbelievable visions, which carry from one moment of nausea to another: guts splattered across the rubble and sprayed from one dying man to another; tightly riveted machines ripped like the belly of a cow which has just been sliced open, flaming and groaning; trees broken into tiny fragments; gaping windows pouring out torrents of billowing dust, dispersing into oblivion all that remains of a comfortable parlor...”― Guy Sajer,Death the daily bread at the Eastern frontSS with Sturmgewehr 44 assault rifle.Guderian wrote:“With the failure of Zitadelle (Kursk)we have suffered a decisive defeat. The armoured formations, reformed and re-equipped with so much effort, had lost heavily in both men and equipment and would now be unemployable for a long time to come. It was problematical whether they could be rehabilitated in time to defend the Eastern Front ... Needless to say the [Soviets] exploited their victory to the full. There were to be no more periods of quiet on the Eastern Front. From now on, the enemy was in undisputed possession of the initiative”Tiger Tanks at Kursk July 1943.With victory, the initiative firmly passed to the Red Army. For the remainder of the war the Germans were limited to reacting to Soviet advances, and were never able to regain the initiative or launch a major offensive on the Eastern Front.[295] The Western Allied landings in Italy opened up a new front, further diverting German resources and attention.The Vicious Katyusha Rocket LauncherOn the march again2nd Fallschirmjäger Division troops on a Tiger tank near Berdychiv during the successful Zhitomir operation in November/December 1943. They are hitching a ride with the 8th Company of the 2nd SS Panzer Regiment of the 2nd SS Panzer Division "Das Reich." This is Battlegroup (Kampfgruppe) Lammerding.The enemy showing unexpectedly, you got to act quick.Abandoned vehicles of the German 9th army at a road near Titowka/Bobruisk, BelarusBagration a military campaign fought between 23 June and 19 August 1944 in Soviet Belorussian in the Eastern Front of World War II. The Soviet Union inflicted the biggest defeat in German military history by destroying 28 out of 34 divisions of Army Group Center and completely shattered the German front line.Russians soldiers attacking summer 1944.German POWs after liberation of Minsk, Operation Bagration. 1944Russian soldiers taking a break after battle.The tremendous numbers of men involved in the conflict from June 22, 1941 to May 8, 1945 was just mindbogglingly , as well as the number of battles, through a front that stretched from the North in Leningrad, to the South in the Caucasus, 1585 miles long, I read somewhere that if you divide the number of casualties, in both armies, plus the amount of civilians killed, by the amount of days of the conflict it was the equivalent of losing two divisions a day!On a conflict that lasted 1,433 days, you do the count.German Soldier pay last respect to lost comrades, before moving on.German prisoners of war in Moscow. 15 July 1944German soldiers pass by an immobilised Soviet IS-2 tank, during the fighting in Jelgava (Mitau) central Latvia. In 1944.Russian Soldiers of the 1st Baltic Front in action. Jelgava, 16 August 1944Grenadiers of the German SS Panzer Division "Totenkopf" change position during the battle of Warsaw, running past a burning Soviet T-34 tank. August 18, 1944.The battles on the Eastern Front of the Second World War constituted the largest military confrontation in history. They were characterized by unprecedented ferocity, wholesale destruction, mass deportations, and immense loss of life due to combat, starvation, exposure, disease, and massacres. The Eastern Front, as the site of nearly all extermination camps, death marches, ghettos, and the majority of pogroms, was central to the Holocaust. Of the estimated 70–85 million deaths attributed to World War II around 30 million occurred on the Eastern Front. The Eastern Front was decisive in determining the outcome in the European theater of operations in World War II, eventually serving as the main reason for the defeat of Nazi Germany and the Axis nations.German snipers at the battle that was fought in the town of Bautzen. The German operation successfully recaptured Bautzen and its surroundings, which were held until the end of the war.Russian soldier dragging German soldier from hiding trench.Hitlerjung the last of the Germanic warriors defending Festung Breslau 1945The Siege of Breslau, also known as the Battle of Breslau, was a three-month-long siege of the city of Breslau in Lower Silesia, Germany (now Wrocław, Poland), lasting to the end of World War II in Europe. From 13 February 1945 to 6 May 1945, German troops in Breslau were besieged by the Soviet forces which encircled the city as part of the Lower Silesian Offensive Operation. The German garrison's surrender on 6 May was followed by the surrender of all German forces two days after the battle.Festung Breslau War to the end, the aftermath May 1945.The Siege of Breslau consisted of destructive house-to-house street fighting. The city was bombarded to ruin by artillery of the Soviet 6th Army, as well as the Soviet 2nd Air Army and the Soviet 18th Air Army, and the destruction caused by the German defenders.On 6 May, after 82 days of siege and shortly before the unconditional surrender of Germany in World War II, General Niehoff surrendered Festung Breslau to the Soviets. During the siege, German forces lost 6,000 dead and 23,000 wounded defending Breslau, while Soviet losses were possibly as high as 60,000. Civilian deaths amounted to as many as 80,000. Breslau was the last major city in Germany to surrender, capitulating only two days before the end of the war in Europe. Gauleiter Hanke had fled to Prague by the time of the city's surrender and was killed soon after.The end of the War Russians Soldiers from the Soviet Red Army after capturing Berlin, a Continent in Ruins.According to Grigoriy Krivosheev's work based on declassified archival data, Soviet forces sustained 81,116 dead for the entire operation, which included the battles of Seelow Heights and the Halbe; another 280,251 were reported wounded or sick during the operational period. The operation also cost the Soviets about 1,997 tanks and SPGs. Krivosheev noted: "All losses of arms and equipment are counted as irrecoverable losses, i.e. beyond economic repair or no longer serviceable". Soviet estimates based on kill claims placed German losses at 458,080 killed and 479,298 captured, but German research puts the number of dead at approximately 92,000 – 100,000. The number of civilian casualties is unknown, but 125,000 are estimated to have perished during the entire operation.The fighting on the Eastern Front was terrible and incessant, brutal beyond belief. Both sides fought with demonic fury—the Germans to crush the hated Slavs, and the Soviets to defend the sacred soil of Mother Russia. Atrocities including beheading and mass rapes occurred daily. Millions of captured soldiers died of exposure and maltreatment.A war unlike any other war, in horror, victims, and destruction.Destroyed Reichstag May 1945