This country is at war with Germany. We shall go on to the end. I remember the sheets of

plane which came up and almost blinded us for my guns.

Hello, welcome to another episode of the World War Two podcast, I'm Angus Wallace.

After the failure to take Moscow in the autumn of 1941, the Germans were left with a large

salient bulging into the Russian lines extending to the town of Rajev. The battles round Rajev

were some of the bloodiest of the war for the Russians. Though millions of men would fight and die

in the vast stracks of forests and swamps, the Rajev salient does not have the near recognition

of Leningrad or Moscow. I'm joined by Pritputar, author of Meet Grindr, the battles for the

Rajev salient, 1942-43. Prit was last with us, discussing the defeat of army group south in 1944

in episode 136. Prit, welcome back, so we're going to be discussing the fighting round Rajev and

the salient, so let's start with the creation of the salient, where is Rajev and how was the

salient formed? I imagine large numbers of Russians would struggle to point at it on a map, you know,

and yet it became the focus of this warning battle, you know. The salient was created almost by accident

and it was the aftermath of the fighting outside Moscow at the end of 1941. The Germans had pushed

right up towards the outskirts of Moscow, the Red Army then launched this massive counterattack,

drove the German armour away from the edges of the city and then succeeded in tearing big holes

in the German front, but lacked the skill and the expertise to bite off big chunks of the

their mark and destroy them. And gradually the front stabilized and when it did, the Germans were

left occupying this enormous salient that projected northwards. So you have the Red Army on the

east, the north and the west of the salient. So the salient is like a big thumb projecting

upwards, with Moscow further to the east. And the obsession with destroying this salient really

came out of those winter battles, where having surrounded this salient on three sides, on paper

...