Field

The Eastern Front

The war between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in eastern Europe, 1941–1945 — the largest land campaign of the Second World War, and the costliest for both sides.

1 casePeriod: 1942

The war in the east is usually told through the scale of its losses. What actually worked in this case was not quantity but placement: hold the enemy's best troops where their advantages do not apply, and settle the matter at a flank he is not holding himself. This is where a design of fixation is read.

Patterns found in this field

05
A design of attachment

Make a place he cannot leave, let his strength be drawn in, and decide somewhere else.
Stalingrad — the ring that closed at the seams →

A pattern is not a template to apply but a tool for checking conditions. The conditions under which each one fails are set out on the patterns page. The thirteen patterns

Stalingrad — the ring that closed at the seams

What won it was not tenacity in the streets but a design that fixed the enemy's best troops where their advantages did not work and decided the matter at the allied-held flank he was not holding himself.

Pattern: a design of attachment

Decisive Soviet victory (the German Sixth Army surrendered) Read →

Other fields

Napoleonic Wars Second Punic War The Pacific War The Hundred Years War The American Civil War Japan's Warring States period The Western Front, 1940–45 The Vietnam War The Western Front, 1914–18