There was a lot of action on the Eastern Front in the autumn of 1944. In late September, the Red Army and its new allies enter Yugoslavia and connect with communist Partisans led by a man called Tito. The results will echo across the decades. 

Map 1: The Balkan military theatre, September 1944–January 1945

Map 2: The Bulgarian incursion

Map 3: The Battle of Belgrade

Photos

 

The Lockheed P-38 Lightning and the Focke-Wulf fw189

 

 

The Yakovlev Yak-9 in flight

 

The Yakovlev Yak-9 in the Russian military museum

 

Josip Broz, a.k.a. Tito, far right, with his staff.

Sources

Antony Beevor, The Second World War. New York, NY, USA: Little, Brown and Company, 2012. 

Evan Mawdsley, Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War, 1941–1945. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. 

Giles Milton, The Stalin Affair: The impossible alliance that won the war. New York, NY, USA: Henry Holt and Company, 2022.

Anthony Tucker-Jones, Slaughter on the Eastern Front: Hitler and Stalin’s War, 1941–1945. Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: The History Press, 2017.

Morse code by Thane Brown

Music composed and recorded by Nicolas Bury