Most of the items we sell were recovered on the Eastern Front, in places whose names belong to the largest battles of the Second World War. These pages tell the history behind those places and the people who fought there: short, factual accounts, checked against published sources that are listed at the end of every article.
Battles
- The Battle of Moscow, 1941–1942 – Operation Typhoon, the closest German approach to the Kremlin and the Soviet winter counteroffensive.
- The Siege of Leningrad, 1941–1944 – 872 days of blockade, the Road of Life across Lake Ladoga and the lifting of the siege.
- The Battle of Stalingrad, 1942–1943 – from the German advance to the Volga to the surrender of the encircled 6th Army.
- The Don front and the Ostrogozhsk–Rossosh offensive, 1942–1943 – Voronezh, and the destruction of the Hungarian 2nd Army on the Don.
- The Battle of Kursk, 1943 – Operation Citadel, Prokhorovka and the Soviet counteroffensives at Orel and Belgorod.
- The Battle of Berlin, 1945 – the Seelow Heights, the encirclement and the fall of the city.
Heroes of the war
- Vasily Zaitsev, the sniper of Stalingrad – 225 enemy soldiers in the ruins of the city, and the snipers he trained there.
- Lyudmila Pavlichenko, Yakov Pavlov, Zinoviy Kolobanov, Alexei Maresyev, Ivan Kozhedub, Alexander Matrosov, Alexander Pokryshkin, Roza Shanina, Lydia Litvyak, Audie Murphy, Desmond Doss and Witold Pilecki – see all heroes of the war.
How we write these pages
Every article is written by us from several independent sources, not copied or translated from one. Where historians disagree, or where a well-known story cannot be confirmed, we say so. Photographs and maps come from public archives and Wikimedia Commons, with the author and licence named under each image. If you find a mistake, please tell us through the contact form.
For help identifying helmets and equipment, see our collector guides, including the guides to German and Soviet soldiers’ equipment.