Beyond Barbarossa: The Eastern Front of World War 2 – Details, episodes & analysis

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.

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. 

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.

Beyond Barbarossa is no longer the only podcast focusing on the Eastern Front of World War II. David Sumner, host and producer of the Europe at War podcast, joins to discuss the Battle of the Halbe Pocket. 

The Europe at War podcast on all platforms: https://pohttps://tr.ee/faCigcYaE5

David Sumner, podcaster

Map: The Battle of the Halbe Pocket, April 1945

Photos from David Sumner

The Halbe forest, 2025

A defensive hole dug in the floor of the Halbe Forest

A bullet shell with the round still inside it, the outer shell which corroded from being in the ground for eight decades. 

The comb David Sumner found in the Halbe Forest

From the Halbe Pocket battle

General Theodor Busse

General Walther Wenke 

Arden nazi Ferdinand Shorner 

Russian occupation of Ukraine today is not the first time. Here are some readings that can make it real for today’s listeners. 

Map: Ukraine under occupation, 1941–1943

Source: Ukraine, A Historical Atlas by Paul Robert Magosci and Geoffrey J. Matthews

Sources

Lubomyr Luciuk, The Galicia Division: They Fought for Ukraine. The Kashtan Press, 2023.

Scott Bury, Under the Nazi Heel. Ottawa, ON: The Written Word Communications Co., 2016.

A special episode of Beyond Barbarossa.

What happened in Washington DC on 28 February 2025 has echoes of 1938, and ominous omens for the future.

In the north and the south, the Red Amy makes great advances in the Eastern Front in February 1944. 

Map 1: The Eastern Front, February 1944

Map 2: Popov’s Baltic Front pushes the Germans back to Lake Peipus

Map 3: German forces in the Dnipro Bend, February 1944

Map 4: The European theatre at the end of February 1944. 

Map 5: The Pacific theatre 

Markian Popov 

Nikolai Vatutin

The Chindits in Burma, 1944

In January and February 1944, Stalin's "broad front" strategy takes hold and the Red Army gains the momentum in the war on the Eastern Front.

Map 1: The Korsun-Cherkassy Pocket

Map 2: The Advance on Narva

Map 3: The Battle of Narva and Lake Peipus

What looks like "Hapba" is Cyrillic script for "Narva." The inset shows the southern end of Lake Peipus and the Red Army's temporary  bridgehead on the west side.

Map 4: The Panther Line 

Map 5: The breakout to Lysyanka

Map 6a: The Eastern Front 15 January 1944  

Map 6b: The Eastern Front 15 February 1944 

Image 1: Ivan S. Konev, commander of the 2nd Ukrainian Front

Image 2: Nikolai Vatutin, commander of the 1st Ukrainian Front

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

Evan Mawdsley, Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War, 1941–1945. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.

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

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

Map 1: The Zhitomyr-Berdichiv Offensive

Map 2: Cherkassy or Kherson Pocket    

Map 3: Leningrad, 1941–1943

Map 4: Leningrad lifeline 

Map 5: Operation Iskra

Map 6: Operation Polar Star

Map 7: Liberation of Leningrad, push to Panther Line

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

Evan Mawdsley, Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War, 1941–1945. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.

Anna Reid, Leningrad: Tragedy of a City Under Siege, 1941–44. Toronto: Allen Lane Canada, 2011.

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

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

What was the USSR doing between September 1939 and June 1941? It was allied with nazi Germany, of course. Historian Roger Moorhouse, author of books including The Devils' Alliance, describes the lasting impact of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, and the strategic factors that ended it. 

Roger Moorhouse

The Devils' Alliance 

Roger Moorhouse's books: https://www.rogermoorhouse.com/books 

Map: The division of eastern Europe according to the secret protocols of the pact 

The nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact of 1939 gave Hitler and the nazis the green light to invade Poland and start World War 2. Two weeks later, Stalin's Red Army joined the nazis in dismembering Poland. 

Historian and author Roger Moorhouse has dived deep into this notorious but poorly understood alignment in The Devils' Alliance: Hitler's Pact with Staline, 1939–1941. He joins the podcast in a two-part discussion of the importance of the agreement between the 20th century's two bloodiest tyrannies.

Roger Moorhouse

The Devils' Alliance

Roger Moorhouse's books: https://www.rogermoorhouse.com/books

The famous  cartoon by David Low

Hitler: "The scum of the earth, I believe?"

Stalin: "The bloody assassin of the workers, I presume?"

Map: The division of eastern Europe according to the secret protocols of the pact