For the 85th anniversary of the launch of the Eastern Front of World War 2, a replay of the first episode of Beyond Barbarossa.
Video, graphics and maps now available to all! https://youtu.be/rrnoEgVcRvE

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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 composed and recorded by Nicolas Bury

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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 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

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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)

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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

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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 Stalin, U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill

Kathleen “Kathy” or “Puff” Harriman, daughter of Roosevelt’s right hand and Ambassador to the USSR in 1945, Averell Harriman

Averell Harriman 

Pamela Churchill, WInston Churchill’s daughter-in-law in 1945, and later, Mrs. Averell Harriman

Stalin and Churchill at the Moscow Conference, 1944

Franklin Roosevelt in 1945Map 1: The division of Germany after May 1945

Map 2: Invasion of Poland, 1939Map 3: Poland moves 100 km west 

Sources

Giles Milton, author: https://www.gilesmilton.com/

• Books

• podcast: Ministry of Secrets 

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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 

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