Beyond Barbarossa: The Eastern Front of World War 2

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/ 

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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 [email protected]. 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.

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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. 

Map 1: The Byelorussian Balcony

Map 2: The Lvov-Sandomierz Operation

Map 3: The Eastern Front, 15 June 1944

Map 4: The Eastern Front, 15 July 1944

Map 5: The Eastern Front, 15 August 1944

Historical photos
Ivan Konev, commander, 1st Ukrainian Front

Lt. General Pavel Rybalko, commander, 3rd Guards Tank Army

Josef Harpe, Commander, Army Group North Ukraine

Sources:

Antony Beevor, The Second World War. London, UK: Little, Brown and Co., 2012. 

Prit Buttar, Retribution: The Soviet Reconquest of Central Ukraine, 1943. Oxford, UK: Osprey Publishing, 2019.

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. 

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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.

Photos
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

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. 

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

Map 1: The Vyborg-Petrozavodsk Offensive, the end of the Continuation War against Finland 

Map 2: The "Byelorussian Balcony” 

Map 3: Attack on Vitebsk

Map 4: Rokossovsky’s attack on Bobruisk

Map 5: Attack on Minsk

Photos

Minsk, July 1944

Destroyed German armour on road to Minsk

German POWs in Moscow, July 1944

Soviet and Polish Home Army (AK) soldiers together in Vilnius, July 1944. The AK soldiers were then arrested by the NKVD and sent to Gulags.

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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. 

Craig W.H. Luther

The First Day on the Eastern Front: Germany Invades the Soviet Union, June 22, 1941 

Barbarossa Unleashed: The German Blitzkrieg through Central Russia to the Gates of Moscow, June–December 1941 

Guderian’s Panzers: From Triumph to Defeat on the Eastern Front, 1941

Maps
Map 1: Operation Barbarossa, 22 June 1941

Map 2: The Byelorussian balcony, June 1944

Map 3: Operation Blue, summer 1942

Craig W.H. Luther Archive: https://www.barbarossa1941.com/

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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.

Map 1: German invasion of Poland, September 1939

Map 2: Soviet invasion of Poland, September 1939

Historic photos

Flag of the Armia Krajowa, Polish Home Army

Gen. Michal Tadeusz Tokarzewski-Karaszewicz second-in-command of the Army of Warsaw

Wladyslaw Sikorski, Prime Minister of Polish Government-in-Exile

Elzbieta Zawacka, “Agent Zo"

Elzbieta Zawacka’s story, Agent Zo by Clare Mulley

Jewish resistance fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, 1943

SS burns the Warsaw Ghetto, 1943

SS transports Jewish survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto to extermination camps

AK fighters 

Polish Boy Scouts in AK, 1944

Women members of AK

Enigma, the German coding machine

The three Polish cryptologists who broke the German Enigma code: left to right, Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Rozycki, and Henryk Zygalski

Sources:
Antony Beevor, The Second World War. London, UK: Little, Brown and Co., 2012. 

Richard Lukas, The Forgotten Holocaust. New York: Hippocrene Books, 1986, and University of Kentucky Press, 1986.

Home Army Museum/Muzeum Armii Krajowej, https://muzeum-ak.pl/

Wikipedia, various pages.

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It’s been a year of stunning, swift change on the Eastern Front of World War 2. And momentous events are coming soon — so it’s high time for a recap of the past year.Links

Episode 50: Looking back, taking stock https://beyondbarbarossa.podbean.com/e/looking-back-taking-stock-episode-50/

The Battle(s) of Kursk

Episode 67: The Red Army has the momentum https://beyondbarbarossa.podbean.com/e/the-red-army-has-the-momentum-episode-67/

Friedrich Paulus, commander of the German 6th Army in 1942, the only German Field Marshal ever to surrender.

Maps
Map 1: The Axis’ high-water mark, Europe

Map 2: Axis’ high-water mark, Asia-Pacific

Map 3: North Africa, summer 1942

Map 4: Germans advance to the Volga

Map 5: Operation Winter Storm

Map 6: 4th Battle of Kharkiv

Map 7: Battle of Kursk

Map 8: Operation Little Saturn

Map 9: Rzhev Salient

Map 10: Korsun/Cherkassy pocket

Map 11: Crushing blows: the front lines in the Eastern Front, April 1944

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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.

“Raising a Flag over the Reichstag” shows Red Army soldier Aleksei Kovalev hoisting the Red Banner over the cupola of the Reichstag. This was staged on 2 May 1945, after the Red Army had taken full control of the building.

Historian and author Anthony Tucker-Jones

Two of his books 

Learn more about Anthony Tucker-Jones on his website. 

Map 1: Three Red Army Fronts advance on Berlin

Map 2: The final battle for Berlin

Movies cited: 

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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 the author of The Fall of Berlin: The Final Days of Hitler’s Evil Regime. 

Author Anthony Tucker-Jones

His website and books: https://atuckerjones.com/

Maps

Map 1: The front lines, 15 April 1945 

Map 2: The front lines, 1 May 1945

Map 3: Final operations, April-May 1945 

Map 4: The Red Army’s Vistula-Oder offensive 

Map 5: 1st Belorussian Front’s drive through the Seelow Heights to Berlin

Map 6: The battles for Berlin at the end of April 1945 

Books

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