Public Talks

**YouTube: World War Two TV - Planning and Preparation for Operation Bagration by the Soviet High Command - JULY 2024**

In 1926 Boris Shaposhnikov wrote his classic study on the subject of High Command in his book "The Brain of the Army" and he was Chief of the General Staff in the dark days of 1941 when the German Army. His writings inspired the creation of the Soviet system of High Command: the State Defence Committee (GKO), Stavka, Genstab, Strategic Direction Commands, Stavka Representatives and Front Commands. How did these bodies work together to control an army of 12 million especially in the climactic days of the summer of 1944? How does this system compare to the Allied system of multi-national command? One of the problems facing historians is that there is no single work in English on the Soviet High Command during the war. John Erickson's classic study only covers the period 1918-1941 and little has been written since then. Today's talk will look at all levels of the Soviet High Command and how they interacted together, how we might interpret the role of Stalin and the implications of the structure in delivering Soviet victories. We will compare Soviet accounts of the war and see how they differ from Anglo-Saxon interpretations and what this reveals. Then using this understanding, we will look at the details of the planning that went into the successful Operation Bagration.

**YouTube: World War Two TV - RAILWAYS in German occupied Eastern Europe - OCT 2023**

By 1942, Germany controlled most of the railways of Europe as far east as the Caucasus mountains. The question is how did they organise and manage this vast network and harness it to Germany's war aims? Also given the German's racial philosophy, how did they operate the railways in Eastern Europe, vital for their war against the Soviet Union? The story of Germany's Eastern railways is one of contradictions and controversary which reveals some surprising elements of the chaotic nature of German rule in the Ostraum, a story carefully concealed after the end of the war.

**YOUTUBE: WORLD WAR TWO TV - The Red Army Motor Fleet and Lend-Lease - DEC 2022**

It has long been accepted that America's contribution to victory in the Second World War was both through her military efforts and through her industrial prowess in giving weapons to the rest of the world through Lend-Lease. The US contributed a huge tonnage of supplies to the USSR to help it sustain its war effort and a significant part of this was in motor vehicles. In fact, some authors have claimed that much of the success of the Red Army from 1943 onwards was due to these vehicles. It's a view point even supported by many Soviet historians. But is it all too good to be true?

**YOUTUBE: WORLD WAR TWO TV - THE INVISIBLE ARMY: HORSE DRAWN ARMIES in the age of the motor vehicle - June 2022**

Why study horses? Well the reason is that Horses have provided the motive power for armies for literally thousands of years yet the number of studies on them can be measured on the fingers of one hand. The reality is that the standard European army in SWW used railways for strategic transport, motor vehicles for operational transport to connect the railway to the army and to pull heavy artillery and horses for tactical transport and to pull field artillery. Germany, France, Soviet Union, Italy all used horses and in this way and were little different from armies of FWW. US and Britain are the exception because they are by far the richest countries in the world at the time. Their populations owned more motor vehicles than any other nations but more importantly neither used large mass armies.

HIstory Goes On - British Commission for Military History Covid Lockdown Seminars: Logistics of a Combined-Arms Army of the Red Army - 2021

HGW Davie, The Logistics of Combined-Arms Army (no longer available)