Beyond Barbarossa: The Eastern Front of World War 2
You know about Stalingrad, the siege of Leningrad, maybe Kursk. But how well do you know the history of the ”Russian front” of the Second World War? Join this detailed description of the largest part of WW2 in Europe, the titanic clash between tyrants Hitler and Stalin. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information. Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.
Episodes
The fighting has ended in Europe—but with millions of displaced people surging in all directions across Europe, it cannot be called peace. While millions of POWs look forward to going home, forced labourers and people of eastern Europe know they have no home to return to. And try to escape the communist yoke.
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When Berlin surrendered, the war in Europe continued for another week—in Czechoslovakia and its capital, Prague.
Sources
Antony Beevor, The Fall of Berlin 1945. New York, NY, USA: Penguin Random House, 2002.
Antony Beevor, The Second World War. New York, NY, USA: Little, Brown and Company, 2012.
Evan Mawdsley, Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War, 1941–1945. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.
Morse code by Thane Brown
Music com...
David Sumner of the Europe at War podcast joins to provide deeper insight into the last major battle in the European Theatre of the Second World War.
Two huge Red Army fronts, the 1st Belorussian and the 1st Ukrainian, crush the nazi capital between them, and bring an end to the Second World War in Europe.
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In the 99th episode of the first English-language podcast that focuses on the full story of the Eastern Front of World War 2, Stalin’s top Marshals, Georgy Zhukov and Ivan Konev, race to be the first to raise the Red Banner over the Reichstag. Who will get there first?
Maps
Map 1: The Red Army’s Vistula to Oder operation
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"From the moment Stalin heard that the Americans were across the Rhine, he knew that the race for Berlin was on.”—Antony Beevor.
WIth the Allies on the Elbe, and the Red Army on the Oder, nazi Germany was being terminally squeezed by April 1945. But before they can drive on the prize, Berlin, the Red Army must take Vienna.
Map 1: The Red Army’s advance, 1944–1945
Map 2: The Red Army on the Oder and Niesse
Map 3: Advance int...
The #6 Top World War 2 podcast continues following the Red Army’s advance into Hungary and Germany—and the expensive failure of the German Operation Spring Awakening.
Map 1: Front lines in Europe, 1 March 1945
Map 2: Operation Southwind/Sudwind
Map 3a: German plans for Operation Spring Awakening
Map 4: The Soviet counter-attack, The Lake Balaton counter-offensive Map 5: Following Operation Spring Awakening
Map 6: Up...
The Red Army penetrates deep into Germany, leading to the redrawing of eastern European borders after.
Map 1: The Oder offensive–March 1945
Map 2: The Lower Silesian Offensive
Map 3: The East Pomeranian Offensive
Map 4a: European fronts, 15 February 1945
Map 4b: European fronts, 15 March 1945
Photos
Marshal Ivan Konev, Commander of the 1st Ukrainian Front
General Walther Wencke, chief of staff, Army Group Vistu...
Why did the Yalta Conference end the way it did? Why did Churchill try an end-run around Roosevelt? Why did Roosevelt try to curry Stalin’s favour? What would this mean to post-war history?
Author Giles Milton joins to discuss some of the Second World War’s most perplexing questions.
People
Author Giles Milton
His latest book, The Stalin Affair: The impossible alliance that won the war
The Big Three: Soviet Premier Josef S...
Why were the Yalta Conference’s decisions so vague? Why did Stalin get everything he wanted? And why did Roosevelt act so naively?
Giles Milton, bestselling author of The Stalin Affair: The Impossible Alliance that Won the War, joins the podcast today to help understand the relationships that had the greatest impact on the second meeting of the Big Three of the Second World War.
Photos
Author Giles Milton
The Stalin Affair: T...
Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt meet in Malta in the Mediterranean in February 1945, to prepare to meet Josef Stalin in the second Big Three conference on Soviet territory—Yalta.
It was a meeting that shaped the world for decades.
Map 1: Malta to Yalta
Map 2: The Western Front, 1 February 1945
Map 3: The Pacific Theatre, 1 February 1945
Map 4: Poland’s shift west, 1945
Photos
Left: Franklin Roosevelt in 1944...
The Red Army continues its continual advance onto German soil—and the flight of German civilians and military.
Map 1: The siege of Kongisberg
Map 2: Samland
The Samland Peninsula in 1905, showing city and town names still present in 1945.
Map 3: The (second) East Prussian Offensive
Map 4: The advance across Poland
Historical photos
Franklin Roosevelt meets Winston Churchill in Malta, 2 February 1945
Civilians from Konigs...
After 10 shattering blows on the Eastern Front in 1944, the Western Allies and the USSR continue to compress nazi Germany in January 1945.
Map 1: The compressing front
1a: 1 January 1944
1b: 1 January 1945
1c: 15 January 1945
Map 2: The siege of Budapest, January 1945
Map 3: The Vistula-Oder campaign, January 1945
Map 4: The East Prussia offensive
Photos
The Budapest Chain Bridge destroyed, January 1945
Ruins of Warsaw, even...
"Budapest lay athwart the main entry route to Austria and Bohemia. It was the main railway hub of the region and also the largest Danubian port. The Red Army could not bypass it. This was the first time in the war that the Red Army had to lay siege to a major city."
The Red Army assaults the capital of nazi Germany’s final remaining partner in the Second World War. The war appears to be almost lost—but that’s seen through hindsight...
There was a lot of action on the Eastern Front in the autumn of 1944. In late September, the Red Army and its new allies enter Yugoslavia and connect with communist Partisans led by a man called Tito. The results will echo across the decades.
Map 1: The Balkan military theatre, September 1944–January 1945
The Lockheed P-38 Lightning and the Focke-Wulf fw18...
In October 1944, the Red Army entered East Prussia, the heart of German militarism. Horrific war crimes ensued.
Map 1: The Red Army’s advances all across the broad front
Map 2a: European Theatre, 1 October 1944
Map 2b: European Theatre, 1 November 1944
Map 3a: The Pacific Theatre, 1 October 1944
Map 3b: The Pacific Theatre, 1 November 1944
Map 4: The Gumbinnen Operation
Historical photos
Konigsberg Castle before Worl...
In the autumn of 1944, nation after nation abandons the cruel, insane Axis to join the Western Allies or USSR: Romania, Bulgaria, Slovkia … as Finland signs an armistice with the USSR. With the Red Army on the border of Germany itself, Hungary faces the choice: to fight on with, or against, the nazis.
Map 1: The Red Army invades Slovakia
The Dukla Pass is to the right.
Map 2: The Battle of Debrecen
Photos
General (later Mars...
By the autumn of 1944, everyone could see which way the Second World War was going — even the Axis commanders. Still, they were able to hold the Red Army back in key locations like Courland and Memel.
Map 1: The Courland and Memel pockets, to the end of 1944
Map 2: The Memel pocket, 1944
Image 1: Hovhannes Bagramyan in 1955
Image 2: Army of Worn Soles, volume 1 of the Eastern Front Trilogy
Describing the Eastern Front chronologically gets very difficult in the second half of 1944, because there’s so much happening everywhere, all at the same time.
After the Warsaw Rising, as described in Episode 83, the Red Army surged past its borders into Finland, Estonia, Romania, Bulgaria, and farther.
Meanwhile, the Western Allies are taking France, Belgium and Italy from Hitler. But there is still a lot of fighting and death to...
Today, Beyond Barbarossa fulfills a promised made at the start of this podcast: a meaningful donation to help refugees of Russia’s unjustifiable war of aggression against Ukraine, to the Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal.
We’re joined by Valeriy Kostyuk, Executive Director of the Canada-Ukraine Foundation, which runs the appeal.
Links
Medical javelins
In August 1944, the Red Army steamrolled across eastern Europe. Yet when Warsaw rose up against the nazi occupiers, they found themselves alone.
Historic photos
Tadeusz Bor-Komorowski (right), Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Home Army
AK fighter with flamethrower
Home Army soldiers from Kolegium "A" of Kedyw formation on Stawki Street in the Wola District of Warsaw, September 1944. Source: Wikipedia Commons
Jewish POWs f...
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