Beyond Barbarossa: The Eastern Front of World War 2

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?MapsMap 1: The Red Army’s Vistula to Oder operation

"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 into Vienna Map 4a: European front line, 1 April 1945 Map 4b: European front line, 15 April 1945 Historical photos Georgy Zhukov, Marshal of 1st Belorussian Front   Ivan Konev, Marshal, 1st Ukrainian Front   Rodion Malinovsky, Marshal, 2nd Ukrainian Front   Fyodor Tolbukhin, Marshal, 3rd Ukrainian Front    

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: Upper Silesian locations in 2026    Map 7: The front lines, Europe, 1 April 1945   People Rodion Malinovsky     Fyodor Tolbukhin  Heinz Guderian   Friedrich Schorner   Walther Nehring (right)  

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 Vistula, February 1945   Child soldiers in the wehrmacht: Hitler Youth in Breslau (Wroclaw), February 1945    Breslau (Wroclaw) in fighting, 1945  

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: The Impossible Alliance that Won the War by Giles Milton   The Big Three at Yalta, February 1945. Roosevelt would be dead in two months.    Map 1: Yalta in Crimea, on the Black Sea, site of the 1945 Yalta Conference of the Big Three   Map 2: The tortured road from Saky Airfield to Yalta Sources Giles Milton, author: https://www.gilesmilton.com/ Books podcast: Ministry of Secrets 

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. Right: Roosevelt and Churchill at Malta, 2 February 1945.       Averell Harriman and daughter Kathleen   The Vorontsov Palace, quarters for the British delegation   The Livadia Palace, quarters for the American delegation    The Yusupov Palace, housing the Soviet delegation

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 Konigsberg walk across frozen Vistula Lagoon, January 1945    CIvilians flee Lodz, Poland, January 1945      Red Army arrives in Lodz, Poland, January 1945     Hitler shakes hands with Col. Claus von Stauffenberg at the “Wolf’s Lair," July 1944.   Ruins of the Wolfsschanze, “Wolf’s Lair,” Hitler’s headquarters in East Prussia Sources Antony Beevor, The Second World War. New York, NY, USA: Little, Brown and Company, 2012.  Scott Bury, Walking Out of War: Volume 3 of the Eastern Front Trilogy. Ottawa, Canada: The Written Word, 2017. Evan Mawdsley, Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War, 1941–1945. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.  Anthony Tucker-Jones, Slaughter on the Eastern Front: Hitler and Stalin’s War, 1941–1945. Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: The History Press, 2017. David Sumner, Europe at War: A podcast about lesser-known battles of the Second World War. https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/europe-at-war-a-ww2-podcast/id1788043665  Larysa Zariczniak, Wandering the Edge: Ukrainian history and culture https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/wandering-the-edge/id1547149262 David Sumner, Europe at War: A WW2 podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/europe-at-war-a-ww2-podcast/id1788043665 Morse code by Thane Brown Music composed and recorded by Nicolas Bury

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 in 1947   Source: New York photographer Henry N. Cobb, taken in 1947, via Rare Historical Photos.