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.
Stalled on the Baltic Coast: USSR vs. the wehrmacht, Episode 86 – Beyond Barbarossa: The Eastern Front of World War 2
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
Sources
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
- Stalled on the Baltic Coast: USSR vs. the wehrmacht, Episode 86
- Everywhere, all at once: Episode 85—East and West, north and south, 1944
- 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
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.