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In honour of Remembrance Day, also called Veterans’ Day and Armistice Day, here is an excerpt, part of a World War II soldier’s account of the reality of being a prisoner of the nazis.
Everywhere, all at once: World War 2, fall 1944—Episode 85 – Beyond Barbarossa: The Eastern Front of World War 2
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 (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
4B: 1 October
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
- Everywhere, all at once: World War 2, fall 1944—Episode 85
- A promise fulfilled: Help for Ukrainian refugees—special episode
- Warsaw rising: Episode 83 of the 1st podcast on the Eastern Front of WW2
- Special episode: Gouzenko—the man who exposed the Cold War
- Summer 1944 on the Eastern Front, north and south
This excerpt came from Army of Worn Soles: Volume 1 of the Eastern Front Trilogy, the true story of a Canadian drafted into the Soviet Red Army, 1941–1945.
Learn more about Army of Worn Soles.