David Sumner of the Europe at War podcast joins to provide deeper insight into the last major battle in the European Theatre of the Second World War.

Two huge Red Army fronts, the 1st Belorussian and the 1st Ukrainian, crush the nazi capital between them, and bring an end to the Second World War in Europe.

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In the 99th episode of the first English-language podcast that focuses on the full story of the Eastern Front of World War 2, Stalin’s top Marshals, Georgy Zhukov and Ivan Konev, race to be the first to raise the Red Banner over the Reichstag. Who will get there first?

Maps

Map 1: The Red Army’s Vistula to Oder operation

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"From the moment Stalin heard that the Americans were across the Rhine, he knew that the race for Berlin was on.”—Antony Beevor.

WIth the Allies on the Elbe, and the Red Army on the Oder, nazi Germany was being terminally squeezed by April 1945. But before they can drive on the prize, Berlin, the Red Army must take Vienna.

Map 1: The Red Army’s advance, 1944–1945

Map 2: The Red Army on the Oder and Niesse

Map 3: Advance into Vienna

Map 4a: European front line, 1 April 1945

Map 4b: European front line, 15 April 1945

Historical photos

Georgy Zhukov, Marshal of 1st Belorussian Front

Ivan Konev, Marshal, 1st Ukrainian Front

Rodion Malinovsky, Marshal, 2nd Ukrainian Front

Fyodor Tolbukhin, Marshal, 3rd Ukrainian Front

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The #6 Top World War 2 podcast continues following the Red Army’s advance into Hungary and Germany—and the expensive failure of the German Operation Spring Awakening.

Map 1: Front lines in Europe, 1 March 1945

Map 2: Operation Southwind/Sudwind

Map 3a: German plans for Operation Spring Awakening

Map 4: The Soviet counter-attack, The Lake Balaton counter-offensive Map 5: Following Operation Spring Awakening

Map 6: Upper Silesian locations in 2026

Map 7: The front lines, Europe, 1 April 1945

People

Rodion Malinovsky

Fyodor Tolbukhin

Heinz Guderian

Friedrich Schorner

Walther Nehring (right)

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The Red Army penetrates deep into Germany, leading to the redrawing of eastern European borders after.

Map 1: The Oder offensive–March 1945

Map 2: The Lower Silesian Offensive

Map 3: The East Pomeranian Offensive

Map 4a: European fronts, 15 February 1945

Map 4b: European fronts, 15 March 1945

Photos

Marshal Ivan Konev, Commander of the 1st Ukrainian Front

General Walther Wencke, chief of staff, Army Group Vistula, February 1945

Child soldiers in the wehrmacht: Hitler Youth in Breslau (Wroclaw), February 1945

Breslau (Wroclaw) in fighting, 1945

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Why did the Yalta Conference end the way it did? Why did Churchill try an end-run around Roosevelt? Why did Roosevelt try to curry Stalin’s favour? What would this mean to post-war history?

Author Giles Milton joins to discuss some of the Second World War’s most perplexing questions.

People

Author Giles Milton

His latest book, The Stalin Affair: The impossible alliance that won the war

The Big Three: Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill

Kathleen “Kathy” or “Puff” Harriman, daughter of Roosevelt’s right hand and Ambassador to the USSR in 1945, Averell Harriman

Averell Harriman

Pamela Churchill, WInston Churchill’s daughter-in-law in 1945, and later, Mrs. Averell Harriman

Stalin and Churchill at the Moscow Conference, 1944

Franklin Roosevelt in 1945Map 1: The division of Germany after May 1945

Map 2: Invasion of Poland, 1939Map 3: Poland moves 100 km west

Sources

Giles Milton, author: https://www.gilesmilton.com/

• Books

• podcast: Ministry of Secrets

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Why were the Yalta Conference’s decisions so vague? Why did Stalin get everything he wanted? And why did Roosevelt act so naively?

Giles Milton, bestselling author of The Stalin Affair: The Impossible Alliance that Won the War, joins the podcast today to help understand the relationships that had the greatest impact on the second meeting of the Big Three of the Second World War.

Photos

Author Giles Milton

The Stalin Affair: The Impossible Alliance that Won the War by Giles Milton

The Big Three at Yalta, February 1945. Roosevelt would be dead in two months.

Map 1: Yalta in Crimea, on the Black Sea, site of the 1945 Yalta Conference of the Big Three

Map 2: The tortured road from Saky Airfield to Yalta

Sources

Giles Milton, author: https://www.gilesmilton.com/

• Books

• podcast: Ministry of Secrets

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Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt meet in Malta in the Mediterranean in February 1945, to prepare to meet Josef Stalin in the second Big Three conference on Soviet territory—Yalta.

It was a meeting that shaped the world for decades.

Map 1: Malta to Yalta

Map 2: The Western Front, 1 February 1945

Map 3: The Pacific Theatre, 1 February 1945

Map 4: Poland’s shift west, 1945

Photos

Left: Franklin Roosevelt in 1944. Right: Roosevelt and Churchill at Malta, 2 February 1945.

Averell Harriman and daughter Kathleen

The Vorontsov Palace, quarters for the British delegation

The Livadia Palace, quarters for the American delegation

The Yusupov Palace, housing the Soviet delegation

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