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   Image 3: Walking Out of War, volume 3 of the Eastern Front Trilogy Sources Prit Buttar, The Reckoning: The Defeat of Army Group South, 1944 . Okford, UK: Osprey Publishing, 2020.  Evan Mawdsley, Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War, 1941–1945. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.  Morse code by Thane Brown Music composed and recorded by Nicolas Bury

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 come.  Map 1: The Gothic Line, Italy     Map 2: The Continuation War ends, Finland    Map 3: The advance of the Red Army, August 1943–December 1944    Maps 4A and 4B: Advances of the front lines, east and west  4A: 15 August 1944 4B: 1 October 1944   Sources Antony Beevor, The Second World War. London, UK: Little, Brown and Co., 2012.  Evan Mawdsley, Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War, 1941–1945. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.  Anthony Tucker-Jones, Stalin’s Revenge: Operation Bagration and the Annihilation of Army Group Centre.  Barnsley, South Yorkshire, UK: Pen and Sword Books, 2009.  Morse code by Thane Brown Music composed and recorded by Nicolas Bury

Beyond Barbarossa makes a meaningful donation to help Ukrainian war refugees. Valeriy Kostyuk of the Canada-Ukraine Foundation describes the work of the Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal.

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 freed by AK   The remains of Warsaw after the Germans “withdrew.”    Sources Antony Beevor, The Second World War. London, UK: Little, Brown and Co., 2012.  Norman Davies, Rising ’44: The Battle for Warsaw. London, UK: Macmillan, 2004. 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.  Music by Nicolas Bury. Morse code from Thane Brown. 

In this special episode of the podcast on the Eastern Front of World War Two, we go beyond Beyond Barbarossa and beyond the end of the Second World War. 80 years ago to the day of this publication a handsome young man approached Canadian media and officials with proof that the Soviet Union was spying on its allies. The Cold War was on.   Former Soviet cypher clerk Igor Gouzenko, hooded to protect his identity, being interviewed by Associated Press reporter Saul Pett in Montreal in 1954.    The Gouzenkos’ apartment building on Somerset Street in central Ottawa. There is no plaque commemorating Igor Gouzenko. (Photo by Scott Bury, 2025.)   Igor Gouzenko in Canada, 1946.   Sources Winston Churchill, “The Sinews of Peace,” speech given at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, U.S.A., 5 March 1946. https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/winstonchurchillsinewsofpeace.htm J.L. Granatstein and David Stafford, Spy Wars: Espionage and Canada from Gouzenko to Glasnost. Toronto: Key Porter Books, 1990. John Sawatsky, Gouzenko: The Untold Story. Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1984 Wikipedia, Gouzenko Affair. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gouzenko_Affair Wondery Podcasts, “The Spy Who, Season 7: The Spy Who Started the Cold War” https://wondery.com/shows/the-spy-who/season/7/ 

In summer 1944, "the Red Army’s seemingly unstoppable streamroller took Stanislav in the Carpathian foothills, Bialystok in northern Poland, Dvinsk in Latvia and the Siauliai (also spelt Shaulyai) rail junction between Riga and East Prussia.” — Anthony Tucker-Jones. Even so, the steamroller suffered ferocious mauling.  If you can transcribe the morse code signal during “What else is happening in the war,” send an email to scott@beyondbarbarossa.ca. If you’re correct, I will send you a free autographed copy of The Eastern Front Trilogy. Map 1a: The Eastern Front, July 1944 Map 1b: The front, August 1944   Map 2: The Lvov-Sandomierz Offensive, detail     Map 3: The Narva Offensive Music by Nicolas Bury. Morse code from Thane Brown.  Some sound effects from Zapsplat.com.

Stalin’s one-two punch against Germany is the Lvov-Sandomierz offensive, hitting in Ukraine as Bagration smashes into Byelorussia. It also lays bare the brutality within the Red Army.

Did the Lend-Lease program save the Soviet Union? For the Season 3 finale, Angus Wallace of the World War 2 podcast joins to offer a nuanced interpretation.    Angus Wallace, host and producer of The World War 2 podcast     The Lend-Lease Act      British Valentine tanks to be sent to USSR under Lend-Lease, 1942.   The Bell P-39 Aircobra, one of the fighters the U.S. sent to the Soviet Union under Lend-Lease.    A Hawker Hurricane fighter sent for the Red Air Force.     Fleets of Studebaker, Ford and Chevrolet trucks sent to the Soviet Union under Lend-Lease.    U.S. jeeps sent to the Soviet Union under Lend-Lease made Life magazine.       The Western Allies sent millions of tons of food aid to the Soviet Union during World War 2.    The Red Army moved tanks to the front by rail, on flatcars, with locomotives often supplied by the U.S. Much of the rail was also supplied by the U.S.     The “Big Three,” Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, at the Yalta Conference in 1945. Roosevelt was clearly unwell by this point. This conference decided the post-war division of Europe between West and East, meaning USSR. Maps Map 1: Lend-Lease shipping routes Lend-Lease shipping literally spanned the globe.   Map 2: The Arctic route (polar projection)      Map 3: The Persian Corridor. Ships arrived in Persian Gulf ports, then goods were transshipped by train through Iran to be loaded onto ships again at the Caspian Sea.    Map 4: The Pacific route.   Note the proximity to Japan as ships approach Vladivostok in the Russian Far East.     

The USSR’s answer to D-Day in June 1944 takes the Germans by surprise—and annihilates a whole army group.

Author Craig W.H. Luther joins us to compare two anniversaries on the same date, 22 June, three years apart: Operations Barbarossa in 1941, and Operation Bagration in 1944.

A major army, 400,000 strong, made a major difference in World War 2. Yet it doesn’t get enough attention in the West (nor, unfortunately, on this podcast). It’s the Armia Krajowa, the Polish Home Army. From exposing the Holocaust, to breaking the German Enigma Code, to helping destroy V-2 rockets, the AK bridged the Eastern and Western Fronts of the Second World War.

It’s been a year of stunning, swift change on the Eastern Front of the Second World War. With more momentous events coming soon, it’s high time to recap the past 12 months of World War II in Russia.

On 2 May 1945, Red Army soldiers raised the Soviet Red Banner with hammer and sickle on the cupola of the Reichstag in Berlin. For the 80th anniversary of that famous photograph, Anthony Tucker-Jones joins the ‘cast to discuss the Fall of Berlin.

This episode, we jump forward for the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe. To guide us through the battles for Berlin, we are joined by Anthony Tucker-Jones, author of The Fall of Berlin: The Final Days of Hitler’s Evil Regime.

In 1944, the Red Army delivers its third crushing blow on the Axis forces in eastern Europe: two major offensives to recapture the rest of Ukraine, and the Crimean peninsula.

From the beginning of Russia’s illegal and brutal assault on sovereign Ukraine, Ukraine: The Latest has covered the war every week day. Francis Dearnley, Executive Editor for Audio for Ukraine: The Latest, joins the podcast to look at the historical links and parallels with the Eastern Front of World War 2.

David Sumner of the Europe at War podast joins to discuss the battles at the end of World War II.

Russian occupation of Ukraine today is not the first time. Here are some readings that can make it real for today’s listeners.

What happened in Washington DC on 28 February 2025 has echoes of 1938, and ominous omens for the future.

In the north and the south, the Red Amy makes great advances in the Eastern Front in February 1944. Hit that Follow button!