Editing Operation Barbarossa (section)

==Historical significance==
Barbarossa was the largest military operation in history—more men, tanks, guns and aircraft were deployed than in any other offensive.{{sfn|Overy|1996|p=68}}{{sfn|Anderson|Clark|Walsh|2018|p=7}} The invasion opened the [[Eastern Front (World War II)|Eastern Front]], the war's largest theatre, which saw clashes of unprecedented violence and destruction for four years and killed over 26 million Soviet people, including about 8.6&nbsp;million [[World War II casualties of the Soviet Union|Red Army soldiers]].{{sfn|Moskoff|2002|p=236}} More died fighting on the Eastern Front than in all other fighting across the globe during World War II.{{sfn|Weinberg|1994|p=264}} Damage to both the economy and landscape was enormous, as approximately 1,710 Soviet towns and 70,000 villages were razed.{{sfn|Hartmann|2013|p=160}}

Barbarossa and the subsequent German defeat changed the political landscape of Europe, dividing it into Eastern and Western blocs.{{sfn|Hartmann|2013|pp=152–153}} The political vacuum left in the eastern half of the continent was filled by the USSR when Stalin secured his territorial prizes of 1944–1945 and firmly placed the Red Army in Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the eastern half of Germany.{{sfn|Hartmann|2013|p=153}} Stalin's fear of resurgent German power and his distrust of his erstwhile allies contributed to Soviet pan-Slavic initiatives and a subsequent alliance of Slavic states.{{sfn|Roberts|2014|pp=258–260}} The historians David Glantz and [[Jonathan House]] assert that Barbarossa influenced not only Stalin but subsequent Soviet leaders, claiming it "colored" their strategic mindsets for the "next four decades".{{efn|Glantz and House use the expression "The Great Patriotic War", the Soviet name for World War II—but this term represents by and large, the contest between the U.S.S.R. and Nazi Germany.}} As a result, the Soviets instigated the creation of "an elaborate system of [[Buffer state|buffer]] and [[client state|client]] states, designed to insulate the Soviet Union from any possible future attack".{{sfn|Glantz|House|2015|p=364}} In the ensuing [[Cold War]], Eastern Europe became a [[Eastern Bloc|Soviet sphere of influence]], and Western Europe aligned itself with the United States.{{sfn|Hartmann|2013|pp=154–155}}