Beyond Barbarossa:
The first English-language podcast to focus on the history of the eastern front of the Second World War.
Episodes
On 25 April 1945, 700 bombers and fighters of the U.S. 15th Air Force raided Linz, Germany, the town where Adolf Hitler grew up. Although neither the air crews nor the people of Linz could know it, it would be the last major Allied air raid of the Second World War. And one of the costliest in terms of U.S. casualties.
Mike Croissant's uncle Ellsworth Croissant was one of the bombardiers on that air raid. That connection led the re...
Mussolini was not happy about being in the Axis by 1943. And Stalin refused to attend the Casablanca Conference with Churchill and Roosevelt. Meetings of the summit and other senior leaders of the Axis and Allied powers through the war show the evolution of each side's war aims between 1939 and 1945.
Map: The Kursk salient, spring 1943
Image 1: Roosevelt and Churchill aboard the HMS Prince of Wales at the Argentia Conference, A...
In April 1943, Jewish people forced into the grossly overcrowded ghetto in Warsaw rose up against the nazis, killing hundreds of SS soldiers. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising failed, but its memory lives on.
SS members force Jewish people out of shelters for deportation to death camps, spring, 1943. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
A map of the Warsaw Ghetto, the area nazi oppressors forced Jewish people to remain in.
SS-Brigadeführer...
After their stunning, bloody defeat at Stalingrad, the Germans withdrew west to the Donets River in Ukraine, and the Red Army swept ahead as much as 800 km. But the Germans were still a potent force, and in March 1943, were ready to retake Kharkiv.
Map 1: The counter-attack in the Donbas
Map 2: The advances on Kharkiv
Map 3: Withdrawal from the Rzhev salient
Maps 4 and 5: The front in March 1943
After the 6th Army's surrender at Stalingrad, rapid, far-ranging mobility returns to the war on the Eastern Front, as German and Soviet forces advance and retreat hundreds of kilometres.
Map 1: The Kuban Bridgehead
Map 2: Operation Star
Map 3: Von Manstein's counter-offensive
A Tiger tank near Kharkiv, 1943
Source: Pinterest.
The Red Army finally scores two major victories in January 1943 — in the two cities where it mattered most.
The surrender of the Sixth Army:
https://stalingrad.net/german-hq/surrender/surrender.htm
Map 1: End of the battle of Stalingrad
Map 2: Operation Iskra
Source: Wikipedia
Photos: The surrender at Stalingrad
Left to right: Field Marshal F. Paulus, C-in-C, 6th Army; Gen. W. Schmidt, Chief of Staff; Col. Adam, Paulus' ...
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.
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
...
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: Operat...
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. Pengui...
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 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 Fa...
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 m...
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.
Ukraine Without HypeNational 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 graci...
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."
Get your free books!Leave a rating and/or a review on your podcatcher of choice. Send the link to it to contact@beyondbarbarossa.ca, and I will send you three e-books: Army of Worn S...
Lend-Lease sent 17 million tonnes of ammunition, food, fuel, weapons, tanks, airplanes and even railroad locomotives to the USSR during the Second World War—most of it from the USA. This episode describes how the icon of capitalism saved the workers' and peasants' paradise from fascism.
Map1: Lend-Lease routes
Map 2: Arctic convoy route
Map 3: Persian corridor
Map 4: Pacific route
Sources:
Antony Beevor, The Second World War....
The greatest siege in history begins as the German 6th Army and the Luftwaffe assault Stalingrad.
Map 1: Fall Blau, Operation Blue. Note the positions of Voronezh, Stalingrad, the proximity of the great bends of the Don and Volga Rivers, and the Volga's route that leads from the Caspian Sea all the way to Moscow.
Map 2: Stalingrad in 1942, showing the German advance
Places
The Children's Khorovod in front of Railway Station N...
Nazi Germany opens up its second summer of the war in the East with a campaign of eerie echoes with the previous summer, and the Soviets respond in the same way. History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes.
Map 1: The Caucasus
Map 2: The plan for Case Blue
Map 3: Into the Caucasus
Credit where credit is due
Anthony Beevor, The Second World War. London: Little, Brown and Company, 2012.
William Craig, Enemy at the Gates: The Batt...
What's coming up in Season 2.
Thank you to all the Patreon supporters. https://www.patreon.com/BeyondBarbarossa
Popular Podcasts
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Anna Sale explores the big questions and hard choices that are often left out of polite conversation.
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people.
A straightforward look at the day's top news in 20 minutes. Powered by ABC News. Hosted by Brad Mielke.