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Welcome to another episode of Battleground 44 with me, Saul David.

Today I'm talking to Evan Morsleep, former professor of international history at the University of Glasgow,

about the other eastern front.

And by that, I mean the Soviet offensives in Romania, Hungary, the Balkans and East Prussia

from the autumn of 1944 to early 1945. We last heard, as listeners will know, from Evan,

talking about the Battle of Lated Gulf in the Pacific in October

94. But Evan, before he started writing about the Pacific, wrote a number of books about

Soviet Russia, including the Stalin years, Soviet Union 1929 to 1953. And more relevant, I suppose,

to our discussion today, Thunder in the East, the Nazi Soviet War,

1941 to 1945. So, Evan, welcome back to the podcast. It's your third appearance this year.

Thank you so much, Solis. Good to be back. We last discussed the Eastern Front on the podcast when

Richard Overy was talking about Operation Bagration, the huge Soviet summer offensive that recaptured Belarus

and destroyed the German Army Group Center. So to set the scene, Evan, tell us where the

front lines are at the end of Operation Bagration and what the Soviet High Command, the Stavka,

was hoping to do next. The Operation Magrion, was enormously successful and we broke the back of

Army Group Center, which rolls back into Poland, fundamentally. What Bagration does, which is so

...