By the autumn of 1944, everyone could see which way the Second World War was going — even the Axis commanders. Still, they were able to hold the Red Army back in key locations like Courland and Memel.

Map 1: The Courland and Memel pockets, to the end of 1944

Map 2: The Memel pocket, 1944

Image 1: Hovhannes Bagramyan in 1955

Image 2: Army of Worn Soles, volume 1 of the Eastern Front Trilogy

https://www.amazon.com/Army-Worn-Soles-Scott-Bury/dp/0987914197/

Image 3: Walking Out of War, volume 3 of the Eastern Front Trilogy

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1987846052

Scott Bury, Army of Worn Soles: Volume 1 of The Eastern Front Trilogy. Ottawa: The Written Word Publishing Co., 2014.

Scott Bury, Walking Out of War: Volume 3 of The Eastern Front Trilogy. Ottawa: The Written Word Publishing Co., 2014.

Prit Buttar, The Reckoning: The Defeat of Army Group South, 1944 . Okford, UK: Osprey Publishing, 2020.

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

Morse code by Thane Brown

Music composed and recorded by Nicolas Bury

Describing the Eastern Front chronologically gets very difficult in the second half of 1944, because there’s so much happening everywhere, all at the same time.

After the Warsaw Rising, as described in Episode 83, the Red Army surged past its borders into Finland, Estonia, Romania, Bulgaria, and farther.

Meanwhile, the Western Allies are taking France, Belgium and Italy from Hitler. But there is still a lot of fighting and death to come.

Map 1: The Gothic Line, Italy

Map 2: The Continuation War ends, Finland

Map 3: The advance of the Red Army, August 1943–December 1944

Maps 4A and 4B: Advances of the front lines, east and west

4A: 15 August 1944

4B: 1 October 1944

Sources

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.

Anthony Tucker-Jones, Stalin’s Revenge: Operation Bagration and the Annihilation of Army Group Centre. Barnsley, South Yorkshire, UK: Pen and Sword Books, 2009.

Morse code by Thane Brown

Music composed and recorded by Nicolas Bury

Today, Beyond Barbarossa fulfills a promised made at the start of this podcast: a meaningful donation to help refugees of Russia’s unjustifiable war of aggression against Ukraine, to the Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal.

We’re joined by Valeriy Kostyuk, Executive Director of the Canada-Ukraine Foundation, which runs the appeal.

Canada-Ukraine Foundation

Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal

Thornhill Medical and their MOVES SLC mobile life-support system.

In August 1944, the Red Army steamrolled across eastern Europe. Yet when Warsaw rose up against the nazi occupiers, they found themselves alone.

Tadeusz Bor-Komorowski (right), Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Home Army

AK fighter with flamethrower

Home Army soldiers from Kolegium "A" of Kedyw formation on Stawki Street in the Wola District of Warsaw, September 1944. Source: Wikipedia Commons

Jewish POWs freed by AK

The remains of Warsaw after the Germans “withdrew.”

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

Norman Davies, Rising ’44: The Battle for Warsaw. London, UK: Macmillan, 2004.

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

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

Music by Nicolas Bury.

Morse code from Thane Brown.

In this special episode of the podcast on the Eastern Front of World War Two, we go beyond Beyond Barbarossa and beyond the end of the Second World War.

80 years ago to the day of this publication a handsome young man approached Canadian media and officials with proof that the Soviet Union was spying on its allies. The Cold War was on.

Former Soviet cypher clerk Igor Gouzenko, hooded to protect his identity, being interviewed by Associated Press reporter Saul Pett in Montreal in 1954.

The Gouzenkos’ apartment building on Somerset Street in central Ottawa. There is no plaque commemorating Igor Gouzenko. (Photo by Scott Bury, 2025.)

Igor Gouzenko in Canada, 1946.

Sources

Winston Churchill, “The Sinews of Peace,” speech given at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, U.S.A., 5 March 1946. https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/winstonchurchillsinewsofpeace.htm

J.L. Granatstein and David Stafford, Spy Wars: Espionage and Canada from Gouzenko to Glasnost. Toronto: Key Porter Books, 1990.

John Sawatsky, Gouzenko: The Untold Story. Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1984

Wikipedia, Gouzenko Affair. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gouzenko_Affair

Wondery Podcasts, “The Spy Who, Season 7: The Spy Who Started the Cold War” https://wondery.com/shows/the-spy-who/season/7/

In summer 1944, "the Red Army’s seemingly unstoppable streamroller took Stanislav in the Carpathian foothills, Bialystok in northern Poland, Dvinsk in Latvia and the Siauliai (also spelt Shaulyai) rail junction between Riga and East Prussia.” — Anthony Tucker-Jones.

Even so, the steamroller suffered ferocious mauling.

If you can transcribe the morse code signal during “What else is happening in the war,” send an email to scott@beyondbarbarossa.ca. If you’re correct, I will send you a free autographed copy of The Eastern Front Trilogy.

Map 1a: The Eastern Front, July 1944

Map 1b: The front, August 1944

Map 2: The Lvov-Sandomierz Offensive, detail

Map 3: The Narva Offensive

Music by Nicolas Bury.

Morse code from Thane Brown.

Some sound effects from Zapsplat.com.

Stalin’s one-two punch against Germany is the Lvov-Sandomierz offensive, hitting in Ukraine as Bagration smashes into Byelorussia. It also lays bare the brutality within the Red Army.

Map 1: The Byelorussian Balcony

Map 2: The Lvov-Sandomierz Operation

Map 3: The Eastern Front, 15 June 1944

Map 4: The Eastern Front, 15 July 1944

Map 5: The Eastern Front, 15 August 1944

Ivan Konev, commander, 1st Ukrainian Front

Lt. General Pavel Rybalko, commander, 3rd Guards Tank Army

Josef Harpe, Commander, Army Group North Ukraine

Sources:

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

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

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

Anthony Tucker-Jones, Stalin’s Revenge: Operation Bagration and the Annihilation of Army Group Centre. Barnsley, South Yorkshire, UK: Pen and Sword Books, 2009.

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.