Beyond Barbarossa: The Eastern Front of World War 2

• Nuances of Lend-Lease with Angus Wallace: Episode 79

  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.     

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• Operation Bagration: Episode 78

  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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• On the eve of Bagration: the next crushing blow in World War 2’s eastern front

  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   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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• The Forgotten Army: Poland’s Armia Krajowa

  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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• Where we were in World War 2 in ’44: Episode 75

  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 51: Summer 1943 planshttps://beyondbarbarossa.podbean.com/e/summer-1943-plans-season-3-opener-episdoe-51/ Episode 52: Zitadelle, the Battle of Kursk, Part 2https://beyondbarbarossa.podbean.com/e/zitadelle—the-battle-of-kursk-part-2-episode-52/ Episode 53: The Battle of Kursk, part 3https://beyondbarbarossa.podbean.com/e/the-battle-of-kursk-part-3-episode-53/ 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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