The Germans in the Stalingrad cauldron reject the Soviets' final offer of surrender. The Red Army responds by crushing the cauldron. 

Map 1: The end of the Kessel

Source: Military History Now 

The ultimatum to Stalingrad: 

https://www.stalingrad.net/russian-hq/the-russian-ultimatum/rusultimatum.html 

Images:

3-engine German transport plane lands at Pitomnik airfield.

Red Army soldiers attack in the ruins of Stalingrad.

Sources:

Antony Beevor, Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege 1942–1943. Penguin Books, 1998.

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

William Craig, Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad. Old Saybrook, CT, USA: Konecky & Konecky, 1973.

Anthony Tucker-Jones, Slaughter on the Eastern Front: Hitler and Stalin’s War 1941–1945. Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: The History Press, 2017

Sound effects by Zapsplat. 

For the Germans of the 6th Army, Christmas 1942 was a hungry Yule in the  freezing Cauldron.

Map 1: Operation Uranus, November and December 1942 

Map 2: Operation Winter Storm: The German relief attempt 

Map 3: Operation Winter Storm stalled 

Failure: Luftwaffe supplies the trapped 6th Army in the Kessel

Failure: Operation Winter Storm 

German soldiers in the Kessel/Cauldron

Red Army soldier writes home, December 1942 

By December, the Red Army soldiers' morale was very different from the Germans'.

Warfare usually slows down in winter. Not so in Russia in 1942. The Germans launch another huge attack to relieve the 6th Army in Stalingrad. But the Red Army has its own ideas. 

Map 1: The long, long German lines to Stalingrad

Map 2: Operation Uranus

Source: Awesome stories

Map 3a: Operation Winter Storm

Source: https://alchetron.com/cdn/operation-winter-storm-ee2a434c-cf0a-4ef4-a3c3-e87d2e84c08-resize-750.jpeg 

Map 3b: Operation Winter Storm fails

Source: WWIIincolor.com 

Historical pictures

A Panzer III on the steppe in southern Russia, December 1942 

Source: Wikimedia Commons 

Soviet forces in southern Russia, winter 1942.

Source: Wikimedia Commons 

Sources:

Antony Beevor, Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege 1942–1943. Penguin Books, 1998.

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

Anthony Tucker-Jones, Slaughter on the Eastern Front: Hitler and Stalin’s War 1941–1945. Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: The History Press, 2017

Sound effects by Zapsplat. 

As three Red Army Fronts move on the German flanks west and south of Stalingrad, two more attack the Rzhev-Vyazma salient west of Moscow. Is it a diversion, or is Mars the twin of Uranus?

Map 1: The Rzhev-Vyazma salient

Map 2: Operation Mars

Historical images

Workers from Moscow suburbs handing over new tanks to Soviet servicemen. Source: Commons:RIA Novosti

Sources

Antony Beevor, Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege 1942–1943. Penguin Books, 1998.

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

Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin's General: The Life of Georgy Zhukov. London, UK: Icon Books, 2012.

David Glantz, Zhukov's Greatest Defeat: The Red Army's Epic Disaster in Operation Mars, 1942. Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 1999.

Anthony Tucker-Jones, Slaughter on the Eastern Front: Hitler and Stalin’s War 1941–1945. Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: The History Press, 2017

Sound effects by Zapsplat. 

The Soviet high command's strategy to defeat the Germans at Stalingrad took the invaders by surprise. 

Map 1: The German flanks

Map 2: Operation Uranus in action

Red Army soldiers in winter camouflage charge across the steppe

The T-34 in action in Uranus 

Northern and southern pincers meet 

Red Army commanders from the 5th Tank Army and the 4th Mechanized Corps meet on the steppe near Kalach, 23 November 1942. The end of the beginning. 

The third installment describing the biggest single battle in history: the siege of Stalingrad. 

By November 1942, the casualties for attackers and defenders was unsustainable for both sides. The Soviet high command, Stavka, makes a new plan. 

Pavlov's House

Map 1: The city of Stalingrad

Map 2: The plan for Operation Uranus

Sources

Antony Beevor, The Second World War.

Antony Beevor, Stalingrad: the Fateful Siege 1942–1943. .

William Craig, Enemy at the Gates.

Anthony Tucker Jones, Slaughter on the Eastern Front: Hitler and Stalin’s War 1941–1945.

In the autumn of 1942, the German 6th Army with Romanian, Hungarian and Italian armies in support, ground into Stalingrad—a hell of their own making. 

Map: Stalingrad city layout

Photos

Red Army soldier prepare to defend Stalingrad suburb

Stalingrad on fire after bombing, 2 October 1942 

The Red October Factory's ruins became hiding places for Red Army defenders

Loading a Katyusha rocket launcher

Katyusha from military museum

General Friedrich Paulus 

Second from left, Gen. Vasily Chuikov in his headquarters in Stalingrad, 1942.

Sources

Antony Beevor, Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege 1942–1943. Penguin Books, 1998.

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

William Craig, Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad. Old Saybrook, CT, USA: Konecky & Konecky, 1973.

Anthony Tucker-Jones, Slaughter on the Eastern Front: Hitler and Stalin’s War 1941–1945. Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: The History Press, 2017

Sound effects by Zapsplat. 

A conversation with Romeo Kokriatski and Anthony Bartaway of the Ukraine Without Hype podcast. We talked about the Second World War in Ukraine, and the current war in Ukraine. 

• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ukraine-without-hype/id1537219548

National resistance to German and Soviet occupation played a significant role in the war on the Eastern Front. This episode takes a closer look at the large, organized and powerful resistance armies in Poland and Ukraine. 

Map: Ukrainian border shifts between 1939 and 1945

Source: Paul Robert Magosci and Geoffrey J. Matthews, cartographer: Ukraine: A Historical Atlas. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985. Used with the gracious permission of the author. 

Photos 

"To Arms!" poster recruiting members to join the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. Poster by Mieczysław Jurgielewicz and Edmunt Burke

A unit portrait from the Polish Home Army. Source: U.S. Holocaust Museum

UPA propaganda poster showing a UPA soldier standing on the banners of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. The Cyrillic text is official greeting of the OUN/UPA:  Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!. 

UPA soldiers in the forest, circa 1944. Source: Encyclopedia of Ukraine.

From Ukraine to Poland to Estonia, across the Eastern Front, partisans and guerrillas fought for the independence of their nations—from both nazi Germany and the communist USSR. 

And yes, I call communists and nazis "con artists," "fools" and "dupes."

Leave a rating and/or a review on your podcatcher of choice. Send the link to it to [email protected], and I will send you three e-books: Army of Worn Soles, Under the Nazi Heel and Walking Out of War. I will also enter your name in a draw for a signed paperback copy of The Eastern Front Trilogy, which includes all three books! 

Facebook: Beyond Barbarossa https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100082862966326 

Map: Operation Barbarossa, 22 June 1941

You can see the Baltic States and key cities, including Tallinn, Narva, RIga, and Vilnius. 

Nazi Germany's war flag

Sources

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

Robert Magosci, A History of Ukraine. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996.

Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988.

Wikipedia:

• Polish resistance movement in World War II

Larysa Zariczniak, "The Ukrainian Trial of the Century: Bilas and Danylyshyn," Wandering the Edge podcast, 15 August 2023. https://www.wanderingtheedge.net/podcast/episode/4bd50314/the-ukrainian-trial-of-the-century-bilas-and-danylyshyn