Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Battleground 44 with me Saul David and Patrick Bishop.

Today we're talking to award-winning historian Richard Overie about the Eastern Front.

Richard is an honorary professor of history at the University of Exeter and the author of many

brilliant books on the Second World War, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, including Russia's

War, the dictators, Blood and Ru, the great imperial war 1931 to

1945, and the forthcoming Y War, which is out in June. So we're going to talk about

1944 and the developments on the Eastern Front, but just to set the scene, can you give us a little

bit of a resume of what's happened in the previous year? And that really, since the big turning point, I suppose, which was the Battle of Stalingrad,

that ends in early February, 1943. And how much has the line moved since then?

Well, I've never seen Starlingrad is quite the turning point. I think that other people see.

I mean, to me, the turning point

for the Red Army comes at the Battle of Kursk in July in 1943. It's the first time they confronted

the German army in summertime, campaigning weather, and resoundingly defeated Wehrmark.

Vermont, after that was always in retreat.

And that's really, for me, the critical turning point.

Red Army had a lot of lessons to learn, and they'd finally learnt them by the summer of

1943.

Can I just ask you about that aspect, Richard, because it is extraordinary, isn't it?

By the time we get to what we're going to be

talking about mostly today, Operation Bagration, the Red Army has gone from being this, you know,

blundering, incompetent, completely sort of incapable of reacting to the shock of Barbarossa.

And by early 1944, there's been this complete turnaround.

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