Some five million Red Army troops will be captured eventually by the Nazis; the latter deliberately starve to death or otherwise killed three point three million Soviet POWs, and a vast number of civilians, as the "Hunger Plan" seeks to fulfill Generalplan Ost.

Although the Wehrmacht has considerable early success, their attack is halted in the Battle of Moscow.

Subsequently, the Germans are dealt major defeats first at the Battle of Stalingrad in the winter of 1942–1943, and then in the Battle of Kursk in the summer of 1943.

Another German failure is the Siege of Leningrad, in which the city is fully blockaded on land between 1941 and 1944 by German and Finnish forces, and suffers tarvation and more than a million deaths, but never surrenders.

Soviet forces steamroll through Eastern and Central Europe in 1944–1945 and capture Berlin in May 1945.

In August 1945, the Red Army invades Manchuria and ousts the Japanese from Northeast Asia, contributing to the Allied victory over Japan.