Beyond Barbarossa: The Eastern Front of World War 2

"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  
SourcesGiles 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
SourcesGiles Milton, author: https://www.gilesmilton.com/
Books
podcast: Ministry of Secrets 
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