Looking for a break in the Christmas season sweetness? Beyond Barbarossa returns you to the Eastern Front in December 1942. Hitler and Stalin's mutual stubbornness collide on the Russian steppe.

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

By December, the Red Army soldiers' morale was very different from the Germans'.

Episode 63: at the end of 1943, the situation for nazi Germany and communist USSR on the Eastern Front is radically different from the end of 1942. Plus, the Cairo and Tehran Conferences promise to reshape the geo-political world.

Map 1: The Red Army advances to, and past the Wotan Line

Map 2: The front lines, 15 November 1943

Map 3: The front lines, 31 December 1943

Historical photos: The German Panther (Panzer V) vs. the Soviet T-34-85

Soviet photo loading artillery at Nikopol bridgehead

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.

Author Clare Mulley and I discuss her latest book, the story of one of the Allies' most valuable intelligence agents, Elzbieta Zawacka, known as Agent Zo.

Visit Clare Mulley's website: https://claremulley.com/

Clare Mulley's books:

The Woman Who Saved the Children

The Spy Who Loved

The Women Who Flew for Hitler

Agent Zo: The Untold Story of a Fearless World War II Resistance Fighter

Map 1: Molotov and Ribbentrop's division of eastern Europe

Map 2: German invasion of Poland, 1 September 1941

Map 3: Soviet invasion of Poland, 17 September 1943