357: No Retreat


German soldiers surrendering during the Soviet winter counteroffensive.

As the German Army suffered through a record-setting Russian winter, Soviet army formations no German knew existed began a counterattack. Hitler refused to permit his army to retreat.

In North Africa, the British began Operation Crusader, which relieved the besieged garrison in Tobruk and pushed Rommel’s Afrika Korps all the way back to El Agheila—the place where he had begun his own offensive almost a year earlier.

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Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening War Theme

Prelude from Parsifal
Composed in 1882 by Richard Wagner. Public domain.
Public domain recording. Source.

Closing War Theme



Except when otherwise indicated, the contents of this podcast are © and ℗ 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 by Mark Painter, all rights reserved. Some music and sound effects used by arrangement with Pond 5.

One thought on “357: No Retreat

  1. Did Churchill really referenced a Mongol invasion of the 16th century, of all centuries?

    In my view complementing this episode by a few numbers about deployment of German troops would provide more context to this episode. In 1941 Germany engaged more than 3m troops against the USSR and if I am not mistaken only about 90000 in the North Africa. So from German prospective North Africa was definitely a secondary front.

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