Everywhere, all at once: World War 2, fall 1944—Episode 85

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