The final German assault began on 19 November 1942. While in the south they had actually bypassed Moscow and had entered the city's suburbs from the west. By the end of November the German attack had stalled. Soviet Marshal Zhukov stated, "By the beginning of December he [the Germans] had worn himself out, and had no reserves. . ."

Secure in the knowledge Japan was about to attack the United States and Great Britain, Stalin transferred his armies from Siberia and the Far East, and with other reserves on 6 December 1941, began a counterattack all along the Moscow front. The Russian attack caused a crisis in the German command. While many generals proposed a withdrawal, Hitler ordered his soldiers to stand firm and "not to fall back one foot." Carell states, ". . .it cannot be denied that, from a purely military point of view, Hitler's simple and Draconic hold-out order probably offered the only real chance of averting the terrible danger of collapse. Subsequent events entirely justified Hitler."

Operation Barbarossa, an attempt to "overthrow Soviet Russia by a rapid campaign," had failed. The Soviet Union had survived the German onslaught by trading the lives of millions of its soldiers and huge tracts of its territory for time. In the months following the invasion, the Soviet Union had relocated hundreds of industries and millions of workers, which were now producing weapons. Everything they could not dismantle and move was destroyed to prevent its use by the invaders. Communist, religious, and patriotic sentiments, as well as hatred of the fascist invaders, were all tapped in support of the war effort. Civilians worked long hours, lived in cramped accommodations, and consumed meager rations. The entire nation was mobilized, and, in particular, vast reserves were assembled to replace the tremendous losses experienced by the Soviets. The author Walter Kerr claims that the Russians had 800,000 men alone in a secret reserve force "that was almost half as strong in numbers as all German forces on the front line in the spring of 1942. . ." In addition, the Soviet Union was concerned with establishing close ties with Britain and the United States. Stalin was eager to receive supplies from its new allies and obtain assurances on the quick opening of a "second front" to take pressure off the Russian armies. On 13 September 1941, Stalin wrote to Churchill that if a second front couldn't be begun at the time "it would seem to me that Britain could safely land twenty-five to thirty divisions at Archangel or ship them to southern areas of the USSR via Iran for military co-operation with Soviet troops on Soviet soil in the same way it was done during the last war in France."

While the Russians had been forced on the defensive by the Germans, they knew that only by eventually taking the offensive would they liberate the occupied territories. Mikhail Frunze, a Bolshevik revolutionary and later Soviet defense commissar, had written, "The victor will be the one who finds within himself the resolution to attack: the side with only defense is inevitably doomed to defeat." As the 1942 campaigning season drew nearer, the Russians believed the strategic balance had shifted to their advantage, and Stalin planned offensives to relieve the encircled city of Leningrad, lift the siege of Sevastopol, and recapture Kharkov. Expecting the Germans to renew an attack on Moscow, large reserves were concentrated in that area.

Unfortunately for the Soviets, while the German army had been mauled, it was still a potent force. Hitler, believing he had been defeated by the winter weather, planned on new offensives with the objectives of capturing Sevastopol, destroying Soviet forces west of the Don River, and occupying the oil regions in the Caucasus. The Russians struck first, but again suffered tremendous defeats. Armies landed at Kerch in the Crimea to be used in relieving Sevastopol, but were destroyed, and in early June, 1942, the Germans succeeded in taking Sevastopol itself. In the north, the Russian armies that attacked with the goal of lifting the siege of Leningrad were encircled and crushed. The most serious calamity occurred at Kharkov, where 239,000 men alone were captured. More importantly, it greatly weakened the Soviets in the south where the Germans had planned to launch their summer offensives.

When the Germans began their southern offensives, the military situation quickly began to appear desperate. The failure of the Russian attacks and the renewal of the German drive deeper into the Soviet Union resulted in a change in Soviet strategy. The Russians began to withdraw. They no longer stood and fought in defense of every position. By now familiar with the German encirclement strategy, the Russians decided to withdraw to the Volga River and into the Caucasus Mountains. The Germans, believing the Russians had no remaining substantial reserves, now decided to undertake the two objectives of reaching the Volga River and the Caucasus Mountains simultaneously. The new result was that the German Army was unable to take Stalingrad or achieve a breakthrough in the Caucasus. German supply lines reached intolerable lengths, and weak allied Italian, Hungarian, and Rumanian forces had to be used to cover large portions of the greatly lengthened front. The Germans had won every battle but the last one. Of the fighting in the Caucasus, Carell writes, "The battle-weary German formations were too weak to break this last resistance. Here as elsewhere the German forces lacked the last battalion."

As the German offensive petered out and another Russian winter approached, the Russians amassed huge forces both north and south of Stalingrad. On 19 November they struck and destroyed flanking Rumanian armies, and encircled German forces in Stalingrad. The Germans attempted to launch an attack to breakthrough to Stalingrad, but in the meantime, the Russians had began another gigantic offensive farther north that smashed an Italian army and threatened the entire German position in the south. The Germans had to stop their relief attack towards Stalingrad in order to meet this new threat. The Germans were forced to withdraw from the Caucasus and all along the southern sector of the front. The Russians, believing the Germans were in full retreat and that they could liberate the Ukraine up to the Dnieper River, overextended themselves. They were caught in overextended positions and thrown back when the Germans began a counterattack in late February, 1943.

The Soviets had experienced terrible defeats during the summer of 1942, as they had in 1941, and it seemed that they were successful only in the winter months. The Russian strategy of rigid defense had cost tremendous losses and their attacks were artless and were usually based on overconfidence. The Germans expected that the summer of 1943 would witness new victories, and Hitler planned an offensive designed to encircle a Soviet salient around Kursk in central Russia. The Russians learned of the German intentions and made plans of their own. The Germans began their attack on 5 July, 1943 and, in spite of some initial successes, could not achieve a breakthrough. Losses on both sides were considerable, and Hitler discontinued the attack due to Allied landings in Sicily and Russian threats to Orel in the north and in the Donets basin farther south.

Kursk marked the last major German offensive on the Russian front. The strategic initiative had now passed to the Soviets, who now possessed crushing superiority. Mobilization of the entire country, together with Allied assistance, had provided the Red Army with "a vast increase in the quantity of equipment that was equal or in some cases better than that possessed by the Germans." The quality of the highest Soviet leadership had improved and acquired flexibility. Additional assets were the excellent Soviet espionage system and the partisan movement, which began to effectively operate behind the front.

Following the Battle of Kursk, the Russians began a series of offensives that would drive the Germans out of Russia and eventually bring them into the Balkans and Central Europe. In the fall of 1943, they succeeded in pushing the Germans back across the Dnieper River. They also liberated Smolensk and cut off German forces in the Crimea. In early 1944, they completed the liberation of the Ukraine and completely relieved the long besieged city of Leningrad. In the summer and fall, they inflicted a crushing defeat on the Germans in what is now Belarus, invaded Rumania, and crossed into Poland and the Baltic States. On 12 January, 1945, the Russians began an offensive into Central Poland and quickly penetrated into Germany itself. In the south they completed their conquest of Hungary and captured Vienna. In the north they isolated East Prussia, overran Eastern Pommerania and Silesia, and thrust into Central Germany. General Weidling surrendered Berlin on 2 May.

After Kursk, Geoffrey Jukes states:

The war in the east became a continuous story of Soviet advances,great lunges from one river barrier to the next, halted only when the Red Army outran its supply lines, and punctuated by victory salvoes in Moscow. Able German generals were able to conduct the retreat with such skill that the inevitable collapse did not take place until nearly two years had passed. But the process of weakening was an inexorable one, and though accelerated by the need to fight a war on other fronts, it had set in before any Allied troops had set foot on the continent.

Soviet strategy for the remainder of the war was to methodologically regain every inch of territory captured by the Germans. Against the well trained and entrenched German soldiers, they employed tremendous amounts of artillery. After gaps had been created in the front, the Russians sent in their tank forces to enlarge and expand the breakthrough. they did not opt for encirclements like the Germans, but "preferred to achieve a decisive effect by a few deep thrusts. . .with limited objectives, their intention being no so much to achieve a deep penetration along one line of advance as to force the opponent back along a broad front." Russian plans were aided by Hitler, who continuously ordered his troops to hold every line and defend every locality. The most glaring example of the failure of Hitler's rigid thinking was the destruction of Army Group Center in June and July of 1944, where the Germans lost about 350,000 men.

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