The Eastern Front: The Deadliest Theatre of World War II | FD History

An in-depth analysis of Operation Barbarossa and the brutal Eastern Front conflict during WWII, highlighting strategic, political, and human aspects.

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Key Takeaways

Operation Barbarossa was a pivotal and brutal campaign that shaped WWII's outcome.
The Eastern Front was marked by ideological extermination and total war tactics.
Stalin’s purges and miscalculations initially weakened Soviet defenses but did not prevent ultimate Soviet victory.
The German-Soviet pact was a temporary and cynical arrangement that delayed but did not prevent conflict.
The war demonstrated the resilience and sacrifice of the Soviet people and military.

What the video covers

Operation Barbarossa was Germany's desperate gamble to invade the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, involving three million troops.
Hitler aimed to subjugate Europe and create the Grossraum, a vast Germanic superstate stretching to the Urals, eliminating Slavs and Jews.
The war on the Eastern Front was intended as a war of extermination targeting the Soviet political and military structure.
Stalin's purges severely weakened the Soviet military leadership before the war, contributing to initial unpreparedness.
The Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact of 1939 temporarily divided Eastern Europe but was shattered by Barbarossa.
Stalin underestimated Hitler’s willingness to fight a one-front war and delayed Soviet full mobilization.
The German deception campaign aimed to convince Stalin that negotiations were still possible despite military buildup.
The Eastern Front saw extreme brutality, massive casualties, and a war of attrition with significant Soviet resilience.
Soviet forces, despite initial setbacks, adapted and fought fiercely, including women soldiers and penal battalions.
The conflict shaped the eventual downfall of Nazi Germany and the geopolitical landscape of post-war Europe.

Chapters

What was the main objective of Operation Barbarossa?

Operation Barbarossa aimed to invade and subjugate the Soviet Union, securing resources and eliminating the USSR as a military threat to Nazi Germany.

How did Stalin's purges affect the Soviet military before the war?

Stalin's purges decimated the Soviet military leadership, removing many experienced officers, which contributed to the Red Army's initial unpreparedness during the German invasion.

Why did Stalin delay full mobilization before the German invasion?

Stalin feared that full mobilization would provoke Germany into war and was partly in denial about the imminence and scale of the German attack, hoping to avoid provoking Hitler.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

Speaker A

The launch of Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union on the 22nd of June 1941, was Germany's most desperate gamble of the Second World War. It was a gamble Hitler felt compelled to take if his ambition of the complete subjugation of Europe were to become a reality. Four-fifths of Germany's total armies, three million troops, were committed to the most appalling conflict in the history of warfare. In little more than one year, Hitler's armies had reduced vast areas of Western Russia to dust and rubble and subjected the Soviet peoples to unimaginable brutality. While the Allies looked on, Russia was in agony and being dragged through a nightmare of slaughter to the edge of extinction.

Speaker A

[music] [music] Heat. Heat. [music] [music] [music] [music] In 1941, the conquest of Russia would not only have provided Germany with the agricultural [music] and industrial supplies to ensure Hitler's mastery of Europe, it would have simultaneously rid him of the only military power capable of challenging his domination. The deaths of tens of millions of Russians was not simply an economic necessity.

Speaker A

Their destruction would pave the way for the Grossraum, a concept already under development by Heinrich Himmler as the culmination of Hitler's call for Lebensraum. The Grossraum was envisaged as a gigantic Germanic state stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the mountains of the Urals in the east. The Grossraum would be ruled by the master race of Germans, served by the more acceptable of the subhumans within its borders, but eliminating those like the Slavs and the Jews who were too unredeemably decadent to be allowed to survive. Once established, this superstate would provide Hitler with the ideal platform for his ultimate aim, complete domination of the world.

Speaker A

His vision was of a world in which nationalism would cease to exist, replaced by a universal society of masters and slaves.

Speaker A

Standing between Hitler and the realization of this vision were the armies of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Speaker A

A fighting force whose condition of unpreparedness paid tribute to the paranoia of its political leadership and the excesses of a state which vied with Germany in the extent of its totalitarian oppression.

Speaker A

The whole ideological thrust of the German plan for war, which was not just a normal, a nominal war of conquest, was intended to be a war of extermination. It was intended first and foremost to root out what they called the Jewish-Bolshevik gang who ran Russia. It was designed to destroy the political structure both of the Soviet Union and of the Red Army. So the degree of barbarization which set in at a very early stage in the Soviet-German war, the Great Patriotic War, was a feature which persisted until the very last day of that war. While Hitler, having dealt with his political opponents during the Night of the Long Knives, was by the late 30s industriously nurturing the leadership of Germany's armed forces, Stalin was busily destroying Russia's.

Speaker A

In 1936, Tukhachevsky, chief of staff of the Russian army, was executed for treason following a trial which lasted only a single day. Six of the eight generals forming the court-martial which condemned him were themselves to follow suit soon after.

Speaker A

By the end of the purge, the Russian army had lost three of the five remaining marshals of the Soviet Union. All 11 deputy ministers of defense, 75 of the 80 members of the military Soviet, all the commanders of the military districts, 13 of the 15 army commanders, more than half the corps commanders, and approximately 30% of the officers below brigade level.

Speaker A

Stalin, however, controlled the balance of power in Europe. And when a German-Soviet non-aggression pact was announced in August 1939, the world was shocked. Cynically burying their ideological differences, fascist Germany and communist Russia agreed to take no military action against one another for the next 10 years.

Speaker A

In a secret additional protocol, they also agreed to divide the independent states of Eastern Europe between them.

Speaker A

The Soviet Union then threatened the Baltic states with invasion unless they allowed Soviet armies to be stationed within their borders.

Speaker A

The Balts had little option but to comply. Rigged plebiscites gave a gloss of legitimacy to this invasion.

Speaker A

Stalin now controlled eastern Poland and Galicia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Stalin's overall strategy was to create a barrier of Russian territory between the Soviet Union and Germany. Snug behind this defensive wall, he planned to allow the Allies to fight a mutually destructive war in the West.

Speaker A

One year later, however, Stalin's hopes of a protracted war seemed to have evaporated with the brilliant success of Hitler's Blitzkrieg tactics.

Speaker A

The failure of the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain only made the Soviet position more vulnerable. An invasion of Britain had been postponed indefinitely. It would still be 18 months to two years before Britain would be capable of mounting an attack on the mainland of Europe. The German submarine blockade of her shores and the relentless bombing of her war industries might delay such preparations even further.

Speaker A

On the 18th of December 1940, Hitler's manic gaze turned firmly towards Russia. The first Barbarossa directive ominously stated that the USSR might be invaded even before the war with Great Britain was over.

Speaker A

What was built into Barbarossa was not just a German operational military plan, but a huge deception scheme. And the aim of this deception scheme was actually very simple. It wasn't to introduce into Stalin's mind or the Russian mind uncertainty. It was to introduce certainty. And the certainty was as follows: that this is how the Russians proceeded. Yes, they knew there was going to be a German attack. The Germans produced various bits of information or leaked information that was certainly clear. Stalin was well aware that sooner or later the Germans would attack. There was also the assumption very deftly introduced by the Germans that in fact before this attack there could well be negotiations. There might even be—and the Russians now have disclosed this—there might even have been a personal meeting between Hitler and Stalin. There were two elements to this German position. One was that the massive German military buildup was in fact, if you like, not an inducement, but a form of coercion to force him into a negotiating position.

Speaker A

And on June the 14th, he made this perfectly plain by the famous task statement saying, "Look, we know what you're up to. We know all about these concentrations, but there is nothing to prevent a settlement of Soviet-German relations." That was the first thing. The second thing was a certain element of self-deception on Stalin's side to the effect that one, he strongly believed that Hitler would never embark on a two-front war.

Speaker A

It would be folly. Actually, what he didn't realize was Hitler was embarking on a one-front war because the war in the West, though not wound down, wasn't all that active. And the second thing was again Stalin's great concern, actually, and I think this went back to the First World War, that although the Soviet general staff Zhukov and Vasilevsky and others were particularly Timoshenko were urging Stalin to mobilize, Stalin argued actually, and he shouted at Timoshenko, "What do you want? A war?" Because the act of mobilization, full formal mobilization, essentially would trigger war. And the final thing was an important element of his strategy was not to provoke the Germans. And indeed, even on the morning of the 22nd of June 1941, when the German army is advancing, he's still partly persuaded of what he thought was a provocation. He even imagined it was some breakaway German generals who were trying it on, as it were. This wasn't the real thing.

Speaker A

As the German buildup toward Operation Barbarossa continued, Stalin's attempts to pacify Hitler grew more desperate.

Speaker A

He had already stated in an interview with Pravda in November 1939 that it was not Ger-

Speaker A

One year later, however, Stalin's hopes of a protracted war seemed to have evaporated with the brilliant success of Hitler's Blitz Creek tactics.

Speaker A

The failure of the Luvafer in the Battle of Britain only made the Soviet position more vulnerable. An invasion of Britain had been postponed indefinitely. It would still be 18 months to 2 years before Britain would be capable of mounting an attack on the mainland of

Speaker A

Europe. The German submarine blockade of her shores and the relentless bombing of her war industries might delay such preparations even further.

Speaker A

On the 18th of December 1940, Hitler's manic gaze turned firmly towards Russia. The first Barbarosa directive ominously stated that the USSR might be invaded even before the war with Great Britain was over.

Speaker A

What was built into Barbarosa was not just a German operational military plant, but a huge deception scheme. And the aim of this deception scheme was actually very simple. It wasn't to introduce into into Stalin's mind or the Russian mind uncertainty. It was to introduce certainty. And the certainty

Speaker A

was as follows. That this is how the Russians proceeded. Yes, they knew there was going to be a German attack. The Germans produced various bits of information or leaked information that was certainly clear. Stalin was well aware that sooner or later the Germans would attack. There was also the

Speaker A

assumption very deafly introduced by the Germans that in fact before this attack there could well be negotiations. There might even be and the Russians now have disclosed this there might even have been a personal meeting between Hitler and Stalin. There were two elements to this German position. One

Speaker A

was that the massive German military buildup was in fact, if you like not an inducement, but a form of coercion to force him into a negotiating position.

Speaker A

And on June the 14th, he made this perfectly plain by the famous task statement saying, "Look, we know what you're up to. We we know all about these concentrations, but there is nothing to prevent a settlement of Soviet German

Speaker A

relations." That was the first thing. The second thing was a certain element of selfdeception on Stalin's side to the effect that one he strongly believed that Hitler would never embark on a two-front war.

Speaker A

It would be folly. Actually, what he didn't realize was Hitler was embarking on a one-front war because the war in the west though not wound down wasn't all that active. And the second thing was again Stalin's great concern

Speaker A

actually and I think this went back to the first world war that although the Soviet general staff Zhukov and Vasilvki and others were particularly Toshenko were urging Stalin to mobilize. Stalin argued actually and he shouted at Tashenko what do you want a war? Because the the act of mobilization full formal

Speaker A

mobilization essentially would trigger war. And the final thing was an important element of his strategy was not to provoke the Germans. And indeed, even on the morning of the 22nd of June 1941, when the German army is advancing, he's still partly persuaded of what he what he

Speaker A

thought was a praakatia. He even imagined it was some breakaway German generals who were trying it on, as it were. This wasn't the real thing.

Speaker A

As the German buildup toward Operation Barbarasa continued, Stalin's attempts to pacify Hitler grew more desperate.

Speaker A

He had already stated in an interview with Profa in November 1939 that it was not Germany who had attacked Britain and France, but Britain and France who had attacked Germany.

Speaker A

Stalin now forbade any criticism of Germany to be printed in the newspapers. When Hitler successfully invaded Greece and Yugoslavia, Stalin expelled the Yugoslavian ambassador to Moscow and refused a request to recognize the Greek government in exile.

Speaker A

Stalin felt he was continuing to buy time by these unrequited concessions. But his use of the breathing space which he had already obtained was totally devoid of any worthwhile attempt to remedy his military disadvantages.

Speaker A

By May 1940, 170 Soviet divisions were stationed in newly occupied territory with the result that over half the army were occupying positions whose fortifications and rear ward communications were incomplete.

Speaker A

Indeed, by June, with a German attack imminent, Western's special military district was a shambles. Many formations were between 6 to 7,000 [music] men short of wartime establishment.

Speaker A

Levies of experienced personnel had been hived off to build new tank and aviation units. Only one of six [music] mechanized core had received their full complement of equipment.

Speaker A

Three of the four motorized divisions had no tanks and four out of every five vehicles in the tank fleets were obsolete.

Speaker A

Four of the core had only one quarter of their designated motor vehicles and in another four one in three motor vehicles needed repairs.

Speaker A

Therefore, although the opposing forces had amassed vast amounts of weaponry along their common borders, the Soviet Red Army and the German Veymach were anything but equal adversaries. The Red Army consisted of about [music] 5 million men. That is in in the western part of Russia, never mind those who are

Speaker A

in the far east. And the tank strength of the Red Army on the 21st of June 1920 1941 was 23,18, of which you can argue possibly that 8,000 tanks were uh battle ready and in good condition. On the German side, the

Speaker A

German strength was roughly about three and a half million men, possibly with their allies, the Finns, the Slovacs, the Hungarians, and so on. You can bring that up to let us say about 4 million. In terms of armor, the Germans were able

Speaker A

to employ something like 3,300 tanks. But numbers don't tell the whole story. Indeed, numbers are extremely misleading. [music] The interpretation has really got to be on a the operational readiness of the armies in which the Vermacht was clearly absolutely superior and ready to go and

Speaker A

was wellprepared and brief for its task. If you look at the Red Army, there were severe problems of manning, organization, training, logistics, supply. Even more important, uh the Germans were operating according to a plan. And indeed, the work I've done and many of my Russian colleagues showed

Speaker A

this that the Red Army was in an extraordinary position. There was no plan. In spite of what people say, the Red Army could neither defend nor attack.

Speaker B

The awesome German armies which the 170 under strength divisions of the Russian troops faced were divided into three large groups. These consisted of 148 fully manned and equipped divisions of which 19 were panser and 15 panser grenadier divisions. The army group south was commanded by field marshal ge fonet

Speaker B

and was charged with seizing Kief and taking control of the Ukraine as far as the river Denipra. Field marshal Fonbach's army group center was to strike towards Smealinsk. Army group north under Field Marshall Fonibb was to attack through the Baltics and seize Leningrad.

Speaker B

The three German army groups were supplemented by 500,000 Finnish troops advancing from their homeland in 14 divisions and 150,000 Romanians attacking along the Black Sea toward Adessa.

Speaker B

These forces together with the Luftvafer, which had devoted 80% of its operational strength, 2,770 aircraft to the buildup for Barbarasa, fielded over 3,350 tanks, over 7,000 artillery pieces, 60,000 motor vehicles, and 625,000 horses.

Speaker B

The Russian army still clung to its peaceime structure. Should war occur, then each military district would be transformed into army groupings similar in structure to the Germans.

Speaker B

The North Soviet front was to repel advances through the Balkans and defend Leningrad from Finnish attack. The northwest, west, and southwest fronts would engage the three main German army groups, and the southern front would deal with any advance toward Adessa.

Speaker B

Behind these lines, the contrast between the waring nations could not have been greater. While Germany boasted one of the finest industrial infrastructures in the world, Russia had still not completed its industrial revolution.

Speaker B

Stalin had declared in 1931 that one feature of the history of old Russia was the continual beatings that she suffered for falling behind for her backwardness, for military backwardness, for agricultural backwardness.

Speaker B

We are 50 or 100 years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in 10 years. Either we do it or they crush us.

Speaker B

By 1941, a generation of upheaval had left its mark economically and psychologically. Revolution and civil war had been followed by the destruction of the peasantry and their enforced collectivization. Whole segments of the population had been uprooted and transported to work the new industries set up in the

Speaker B

mineral-rich regions of Siberia, the Urals, and Kazakhstan. The Russian people, deprived of news of the buildup on their borders and subject to a media devoid of any mention of the increasingly antis-siet rhetoric of Hitler, were totally unprepared for the latest disaster which was about to

Speaker B

descend on them. [music] At 0400 hours on the 22nd of June [music] 1941, the maelstrom which was Barbarasa finally erupted.

Speaker B

The German armies of the Blitzkrieg sliced through [music] the Russian forces on every front. Faced by the results of his [music] intrigent refusal to act, Stalin panicked.

Speaker B

While his army headquarters desperately tried to piece together the most rudimentary picture of what was happening, he ordered an immediate counteroffensive on all fronts.

Speaker B

As the first reports of the devastation his own command had helped to create filtered through, he was shattered. "All that Lenin created, we have lost forever," he declared. He finally retreated to his dacer, not to emerge until the 3rd of July.

Speaker C

That what stunned the Red Army commanders was that the German army proceeded without any artillery support.

Speaker C

It simply sliced through. And what the Red Army command had expected was there would be a meeting engagements. You would have opening actions that would develop over let us say something like 10 days. you would have large complex

Speaker C

frontier engagements and then the real war would be when in 48 hours in army group north German panza columns were actually approaching Ria.

Speaker C

So this technique if you like of the of the Germans and the use of their armor in that respect came as I say as an extraordinary and uh totally disorganizing surprise even to senior Russian commanders and within 48 hours if you read the general

Speaker C

the Russian general staff reports it's perfectly plain they have lo totally lost control of the situation the thing is chaos they don't know where their troops are they don't know what's happening they don't have accurate reports of German movements they're not quite sure where German thrust is going

Speaker C

to be. All that they did know actually was to the south in army group south under under Rad that was being slightly delayed and there the Russians had a little more time to prepare and if you look at compare the operational

Speaker C

narrative there yes the Germans are somewhat held up not for very long but in the northwest and in the west there's total collapse and of course the consequence was that Stalin operated his usual practice. He took out the front

Speaker C

commanders and shot them.

Speaker D

At the front, the rapier thrusts of the German panser divisions were skewering through the chaotic Russian defenses.

Speaker D

The panser groups created deadly breaches in the Soviet line, slicing the Red Army forces into isolated segments.

Speaker D

The supporting German divisions then moved forward in encircling advances which surrounded these pockets of defenders.

Speaker D

The ferocity and effectiveness of the panser attacks was so great that some of the pockets were gigantic. Groups of up to 15 Russian divisions were surrounded and mercilessly pummeled into surrender.

Speaker D

The encirclement of Minsk by the right flank of Army Group North and the left flank of Army Group Center yielded 300,000 prisoners, 2,500 tanks, and 1,400 artillery pieces. 32 of the 43 Russian divisions were gutted within a week, and the road [music] to Moscow penetrated to a depth

Speaker D

of 300 km. The remainder of army group north sthed into the Baltics, capturing Ria, the Latvian capital. Only in the south were the German forces limited to shallow advances towards Luof and Runo.

Speaker D

In the skies, the Soviet air force was fairing worse than the land army if that were possible. The mainly obsolete Russian fighters, 20 to 100 mph slower than the messes 109s, were constantly outfought.

Speaker D

Many of them never got the opportunity of aerial combat. The Luftvafa claimed to have destroyed 1,500 aircraft on the ground during the first day of Barbarasa on the ground. Chaos reigned. The Luftvafer were pulverizing the road and rail links behind the Russian lines. Many officers were not even bothering to

Speaker D

use code in their desperate pleas for instructions from their headquarters. Struggling masses of uncoordinated troops were being slaughtered by the German troops as they attempted to obey Stalin's orders to counterattack.

Speaker D

Others were being machine gunned by their own military police for fleeing from positions which were worse and hopeless.

Speaker D

The reality was that they were left needless. First of all, they really had no orders. Sometimes they had guns but no ammunition. Sometimes they they had many on many occasions they had tanks but no fuel or they had tanks which

Speaker D

broke down or they had orders which were contradictory. And there was the usual uh uh situation whereby the order simply was advance.

Speaker D

What you mean advance against crack German divisions. And many of the uh Red Army divisions simply simply broke up. And what you got were very large pockets of um of Red Army troops for example within a matter of uh four or five days

Speaker D

the the Vermach the German army in the east had managed to encircle 350,000 Red Army soldiers. 350,000. That was the first of the beginning actually of a number of huge encirclements.

Speaker E

By the 3rd of July, the battle for the frontier was over. The German armies had advanced along a line from the river Deina in the north to the Denip in the south.

Speaker E

General Holder, chief of German general staff, declared that the war against the Soviet Union had taken only 14 days to win.

Speaker E

But the German intelligence had totally underestimated the reserves which Russia could command. By July the 1st, 5,300,000 men had been mobilized. Stalin had emerged from his isolation to broadcast a message of patriotism and resistance to the nation.

Speaker E

For once, the Russian people were told the truth. The pre-war complacency which Stalin had done so much to foster had now rapidly to be undone.

Speaker E

In Lenningrad, when news of war reached the factories, the general consensus was that it would be over within the week. Well, it won't necessarily be over in a week. One Russian worker was reported as saying it will take them 3 or 4 weeks to

Speaker E

get to Berlin. Stalin now took direct control of the Red Army, but the general mobilization of Russian troops failed to curtail the German advance. Four reserve armies of 37 divisions were dispatched to bolster west front in the general area of Smealinsk.

Speaker E

The Germans countered with yet another encirclement, and the panser groups of generals Hoth and Gdderion smashed through the Soviet line and maneuvered 300,000 Russian troops into an indefensible pocket.

Speaker E

Another 150,000 prisoners, 2,000 tanks, and 2,000 artillery pieces fell into German hands. Gerbles announced that the eastern continent lies like a limp virgin in the mighty arms of the German Mars.

Speaker E

Army Group South finally broke through the Russian Southwest Front and another pocket yielded a further toll of 100,000 prisoners.

Speaker E

Now the scale [music] of these encirclements half a million men and by the uh the last week in November Red Army strength dropped to a level which was its lowest during the war because the Germans had taken 3.1 million

Speaker E

prisoners. 3.1 million prisoners is an enormous number indeed. That was basically the um pre-war Red Army destroyed.

Speaker E

Uh more than 30 divisions have been completely wiped out. Uh what astonished the Germans of course was as these divisions were literally wiped out from the order of battle, more and more divisions took their place. And while the Germans were calculating on the fact that they they thought they

Speaker E

knew the Russian order of battle, what came as an astonishing and disturbing shock to them was that more and more divisions are coming into the line, not all was fully manned, but the Russian order of battle was in fact being

Speaker E

steadily built up. The devastating speed of the German advance was due to the power and tactical brilliance of its pancer divisions. The concept of an integrated armor force had intrigued the German military since the close of the First World War.

Speaker E

By the early 30s, 10 prototype tanks had been designed and built in secret. Ironically, the initial development of what would become the most technically accomplished and cost-effective tank program ever seen took place at the German Soviet tank school at Kazan in Russia.

Speaker E

At the outbreak of war in the east, the backbone of the Panser Corps was the Panser MarkV. Designed by Coupe and weighing 17.3 tons, the Panser KMF Varagen 4 carried a crew of five at a maximum speed of 18.5

Speaker E

mph. Its armor varied in thickness from 8 to 30 cm, and it was armed with a 75 mm turret gun and two machine guns.

Speaker E

Supported by the lighter Mark III, which was similar in size and appearance, the MarkV swept all before it until the Russian T34 tank made its appearance in numbers.

Speaker F

What the Russians had uh tried to do in between 1940 and 45 was to bring in two new tanks. The T-34, which actually was the tank which had been tested in 39, and the rather heavier tank, the Climov,

Speaker F

but it only produced uh about a thousand of each. So therefore, these uh T-34s were were distributed in very small packets. And remember, the battlefront is about 2,000 mi long. So what do you do with a thousand tanks? On the other

Speaker F

hand, it did come as an enormous shock the first time that the Germans encountered the T-34 because the T-34's armor, mobility, speed, and gunpower was something they simply hadn't suspected. and Gudderian as you will remember actually in no November 1941 ran into a T-34 ambush and was completely

Speaker F

destroyed. Russian armored warfare was inhibited by Stalin's disenchantment with tank divisions which had led him in the 30s to utilize his armor only in the support of infantry formations. After witnessing German successes on the Western Front, Stalin changed his mind. But the reorganization of Russian armor

Speaker F

was not completed before the launch of Barbarasa. Even though Russian tanks outnumbered German 2 to1 at the front and 6 to1 overall, tactical ineffectiveness, obsolete models, and widespread disrepair tipped the advantage overwhelmingly in favor of Germany during the first stages of the conflict.

Speaker F

But it wasn't just the quality of the German tank. It was the the capability of the Panza commanders to to do with their armor what was essential. That is they had excellent command and control facilities at that time they had very

Speaker F

good support logistical facilities and indeed essentially they knew what they were doing. So that uh although German MK2 tank 3es might run up against a huge elephantine climil of tank, the KV1, the big heavy tank, and German shells might

Speaker F

bounce off them. Nonetheless, such was the I must say the haphazard and untrained manner in which the Russians handle their armor anyway that the Germans soon made short meat of them. After a month of victorious progress, the German high command were disconcerted by the rapidity of their

Speaker F

own advance. Their armies were now fighting on a front 1,000 mi wide. Bookers could no longer deliver the concerted hammer blows which had punched the holes in the Russian lines which the pancers had so mercilessly exploited. Even though the Soviet Air Force had by

Speaker F

now lost approximately 5,000 aircraft, the supply of replacements seemed endless. The factories in the east, which were churning out more effective fighter models, were out of Luvafa bombing range. The German air assault began to run low on fighters. The Luftvafer also had serious supply

Speaker F

problems. The distance from home base and the destruction of the transport infrastructure meant that aircraft replacement parts had to be flown to forward airfields.

Speaker F

The lengthening supply lines were also affecting the German ground forces. Tank commanders hundreds of miles from their Polish depots nevertheless pressed for the final thrust toward Moscow. They argued that only the continuation of the offensive would prevent the Russians from organizing a fresh line of

Speaker F

resistance. While many of Hitler's generals disagreed that such an attack should be launched immediately, they were almost unanimous in recommending that Moscow should become the primary objective of the next phase of the war. Hitler on the other hand was worried

Speaker F

about the possibility of the gaps between the panser divisions and the main armies being exploited by Russian reinforcements.

Speaker F

He also feared that the hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops left behind the German lines in the wake of the advance might coordinate their actions into an effective guerilla movement. According to the account of one witness to the disarray behind the German advance, he need hardly have worried.

Speaker F

One Russian soldier reported, "Thousands of mobilized men from various places which have already been captured and from near the frontline zone roam from place to place. They lack any purpose, any sense of order. They have no uniforms. 20% are barefoot. The leaders are leaving and they are

Speaker F

abandoning us to ruin. Hitler had never been fully convinced of the importance of Moscow and continued to regard it as a secondary objective. The debate stretched out until mid August. A vital month of summer weather was wasted.

Speaker F

The Russians had the breathing space to throw reserve divisions into the gaps in their defenses. Barely trained, poorly equipped, some in the battered remnants of their civilian clothing, their stubborn ferocity meant that they were still a force to be reckoned with.

Speaker F

A rapid campaign to to crush Russia should have been over by August wasn't. They had to think again. And the first thing, of course, that they had to think about were logistics and supply. No great preparation been made for a winter

Speaker F

campaign in Russia. The second thing was that the um German high command and German intelligence and the German military as a whole had vastly underestimated the ability of the Red Army to to resist. They their aim was to

Speaker F

destroy the Red Army west of the deeper but they hadn't done they whatever they did to the Red Army and they battered it mercilessly.

Speaker F

They didn't destroy it. It was still basically there at the end of December. And uh when you compare uh both the Red Army and the German army at that time, you will see the the Germans pushing their last their very last battalion

Speaker F

down to the line and the and the Red Army on the on the other side is desperately trying to push its its final and important reserves into position as well. So it was two armies which were desperately stretched. But in terms of

Speaker F

if you like survivability if ter in terms of responsiveness the red army just had the edge only just but they had that vital and important edge.

Speaker F

Eventually the generals were silenced and two major objectives were prioritized. The capture of Leningrad and the fall of the Ukraine.

Speaker F

A giant pinser movement involving half of army group center and the left flank of army group south began to close its jaws on a huge pocket of Russian forces to the rear of Kiev.

Speaker F

Field Marshall Jhukov, the Soviet chief of staff, pleaded with Stalin for a strategic withdrawal of the troops defending the city.

Speaker F

He was dismissed from his post. Marshall Timoshenko, the newly appointed Southwest commander, arrived just in time to see the trapped Soviet divisions. The 600,000 prisoners taken by the Germans remain the highest number ever captured in a single engagement.

Speaker F

The battle for the Ukraine now centered on the Crimean Peninsula where the right flank of Army Group South pressed the Soviet 51st Army back towards Sebastapol.

Speaker F

While half of the German group center were engaged in subduing the Ukraine, Marshall Zukov, transferred the reserve forces behind West Front, seized the opportunity to attack the German Fourth Army. Occupying a salient near Smelinsk, the Germans were now themselves vulnerable to

Speaker F

encirclement. The fourth army were thrown back 12 kilometers. But without sufficient tanks and aircraft, Shukov failed to tighten the noose he had made. However, in terms of morale, Zhukov's counter thrust was highly significant. His action was the first substantial

Speaker F

Soviet counterattack of the war. Hitler's response was to regroup Army Group Center and prepare the most critical operation of the campaign. Operation Typhoon. The drive towards Moscow was finally underway. 70 divisions spearheaded by 1,500 tanks would race toward the Russian capital before the rains of autumn or the snows

Speaker F

of winter could halt their progress. On September the 30th, General Gudderion's second pancer group almost inevitably broke through the Soviet line and had encircled the defending Briansk front by the 6th of October. Simultaneously, the Western front commanded by Marshall Timoshenko fell into a similar trap.

Speaker F

The pockets of Vasma and Brians containing nine armies of 71 divisions were almost completely destroyed. Another 660,000 troops faced the grim hospitality that the German army meated out to prisoners of war and the road to Moscow lay open

Speaker F

in the Baltics. By the 16th of August, Fon Leb's army group north had captured the city of Nogarod, a vital target in the approach to Leningrad. The belleaguered defenders had fought to the death following the German discovery of

Speaker F

the city's defensive plans on the corpse of a Soviet officer. General Hopner's fourth pancer group resumed its drive towards Leningrad, but without supporting infantry, [music] its progress was limited.

Speaker F

Leningrad was a vital center of the wartime production industry, and reserves and equipment were poured into the defense of the city.

Speaker F

The citizens themselves formed into militia, divisions which were flung against the Germans more in despair than hope.

Speaker F

Following a basic training period averaging 16 hours, the first militia division was sent to the front 6 days after being formed, the second two days, and the third the same day it was established.

Speaker F

There certainly was a surge of patriotism, but there was also as the war went on a deepening vengeful feeling, a feeling of revenge. And there was also a sense, and I think whatever artificiality there may be about it, it

Speaker F

is true. There was a sense of the kind of morality of this. This is something you had to do. Well, why otherwise did you get kids of 14 working 12, 14 hours a day in in ammunition plants? Why did you get uh a lot of these uh

Speaker F

extraordinary sacrifices on the part of ordinary people who didn't have to do it and yet under a really ferocious Soviet system which either abandoned the population or or brutally coerced them. I mean they were caught between two fires. I do remember talking to one senior Soviet officer and asking him

Speaker F

what really happened in in sense in terms of a choice. He said, "We were faced with a choice between two dictators, Hitler on the one hand and Stalin on the other, but we preferred to pick the one who spoke Russian." Despite such gargantuan efforts, the

Speaker F

first shells began to pour down on Leningrad early in September. With the arrival of the 18th Army to reinforce the pancers on the 8th, the German strangle hold on the city tightened further.

Speaker F

The capture of Schusselborg to the east signaled the end of rail transport. When Marshall Zhukov arrived to take over the defense of the city on the 10th of September, he found the defenders in an advanced state of disorganization and

Speaker F

the inhabitants close to panic. Undaunted, he briskly set about bolstering its defenses. A shortage of anti-tank guns was dealt with by converting anti-aircraft artillery to the task of attempting to halt the pancers. Six brigades of naval infantry and

Speaker F

students were formed and reinforcements drafted in from the Curelians. Zhukov began to take the fight to the Germans through raids and counterattacks. But by now, the German troops had pierced the inner circle of defenses and were rampaging through the suburbs.

Speaker F

After a furious exchange of advances and retreats, at the end of the month, the defenders were still hanging onto their city by their fingernails.

Speaker F

It seemed inevitable that Leningrad would capitulate. But as Zhukov awaited a renewed assault, the fourth pancer group suddenly departed to join the battle for Moscow. and the remaining German forces began to build defenses. Leningrad would not now be taken by

Speaker F

force. It would be starved into submission. All normal rules of warfare in so far as they apply were abandoned. And this applied on both sides. For example, as the Soviet partisan movement grew up, then the war became very savage. But I have asked many many Russians whom I

Speaker F

know very well, really what really happened. I mean what why did the war change and basically their explanation was this both soldiers and civilians and indeed many of my contemporaries they said in the first three months of the

Speaker F

war that's from June until December it was it seemed to be a war like anything else they realized something terrible had happened and they heard the Soviet government's statements about uh German atrocities but they didn't really believe them but when the survivors came back

Speaker F

and back into Soviet territory and told the real truth about what was happening. I mean, the ghastliness of this. Then it suddenly dawned on the Russians that something quite quite unbelievably terrible had happened. And then you get a change in Russian propaganda, not just government propaganda, not just Stalin

Speaker F

on the July the 3rd, 1941 beginning his broadcast, brothers and sisters, and half the Soviet population nearly fainted. I mean, coming from Stalin, then you get propaganda about kill. You get propaganda about uh destroy the Germans. You get propaganda about really the the full ferocity of this kind of

Speaker F

thing on a purely personal base. It is your responsibility. I mean I've talked to to to women uh soldiers in the Red Army who were tank commanders who were uh served in artillery battalions and you ask them why did you go? Why women

Speaker F

why were you there? Why were you handling 100 pound shells manning anti-aircraft guns? because they said my mother and father said you should go.

Speaker F

The German invaders controlled all of western Russia on a line from Lennenrad in the north to Rosttov on the Black Sea and the Red Army was still retreating before them. The countryside they left behind was a [music] wasteland. The first few months of the war had

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robbed the nation of nearly 50% of her grain producing lands. Where the armies had fallen back, vast tracts of crops lay ruined in the fields. The rotting carcasses of livestock slaughtered to deprive the Germans of food mingled their stench with the

Speaker F

corpses of soldiers and peasants. Villages tumbled into ruins became the silent memorials of their former inhabitants. The mangled wreckage of sabotaged industries smoldered [music] beneath the skies.

Speaker F

Amid the ruin, thousands of starving, orphaned children searched vainly for their parents. But the fighting spirit of the Russians was far from crushed.

Speaker F

It had been inflamed by accounts of the slaughter of prisoners of war and the murder and torture committed by the German invaders.

Speaker F

Even the constant series of military reverses failed to dampen the arder of defenders whose motherland had been ravaged.

Speaker F

Their system wasn't perfect. It had sacrificed millions of men. It wasn't all that efficient. But when it was all boiled down, what are they left with? I mean this [music] barbarous murderous genocidal regime which exploited the country and even more actually and this

Speaker F

is a point which has never much been explored but which actually humiliated the Russians denigrated them as a people and this coming from the Germans whom they'd always respected as Beethoven and Gertahina what kind of people were these

Speaker F

wasn't just the SS it was the whole German uh impress of this which I think shocked the Russians tremendously. It's also a shock from which I think they haven't recovered even to this day.

Speaker F

Who could have foreseen that the siege of Leningrad was not the final stage of a bitter struggle that would bring Hitler domination over the Soviets and Europe. Only in later years could it be recognized as the first move in a conflict of inhumane savagery that had

Speaker F

brought Russia to the edge of annihilation, but which eventually led to one of Hitler's greatest failures, the total collapse of the Gramm.

Speaker F

By the 14th of October 1941, the forces of Operation Typhoon, Hitler's plan to capture Moscow, had struggled through a week of torrential rain and tenacious Russian resistance. The roads had disintegrated into canals [music] of bottomless mud along which wheeled vehicles could drive only at a

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snail's [music] pace and only if they were towed by tanks. Despite [music] the conditions, the Germans had advanced to within 100 kilometers of the Russian capital. The Russians had passionately defended every inch of their motherland with little regard for their own lives.

Speaker F

Their suffering had been intense. But there was still more and worse to come. Less than one year later, they were to be engulfed in a massive German onslaught as Hitler's campaign in Russia reached its bitter zenith at Stalingrad.

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[music] [music] [music] [music] [music]

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In Moscow, the nerve center of the Soviet Union, the proximity of the German army's threw the inhabitants into total disarray. Mass evacuations were organized while some citizens simply fled of their own accord.

Speaker A

Even Stalin and his government prepared to abandon their capital. There are lots of rumors about uh Stalin and and Moscow. But Stalin for all his faults actually and from what one can gather from talking to some of his

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closest aids, he had no intention of leaving Moscow and made that quite plain. and he and he asked Shukov actually in a in the middle of October actually when there was a huge panic in Moscow and Moscow virtually evacuated itself. It's called in Russian Balshy, the big

Speaker A

scadal. This was an unauthorized evacuation. And Stalin, although the city had been mined and everything was ready to be blown up, Stalin said the Zhukov, can we hold Moscow? And Zukov said, "Yes, we can." Then said, "Right, that's it." And um he remained in Moscow and he was there and genuinely there. It

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was very important he was there on the 7th of November 1941. I mean, he was physically there. He made the broadcast. I mean, it was perfectly apparent that Stalin was there and Stalin was there to stay.

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The remaining citizens of Moscow were scoured for recruits to a civil reserve force which was hastily mobilized to the front.

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Stalin now learned from his spies in Japan that the Japanese government did not intend to attack in the east. Freed of the nightmare of war on a second front, he ordered the transport of 22 fresh divisions of welle equipped

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Siberian forces to Moscow. The November frosts came late but sharp. General Gooden had earlier requested winter supplies, but had been rebuked for negative [music] thinking.

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The Germans began to find a concrete use for the propaganda leaflets they had been issued with, stuffing them into their uniforms to keep the cold at bay.

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[music] In Moscow, Stalin struggled to kindle the flame of citizen morale by staging the traditional Revolution Day parade despite the dangers of aerial bombardment. In his speech at Lenin's tomb, he again appealed to the ancient Russian tradition of heroism in the face of

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adversity. The war you are waging is a war of liberation, a just war. May you be inspired in this war by the heroic figures of our great ancestors.

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Hitler had insisted that his armies should divine and approach Moscow from the north and south simultaneously. By the end of November, they were only 30 km from their target. The spires of the Kremlin were tantalizingly within their gaze. But Hitler's arrogance in failing to provide

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winter supplies was now disastrously limiting their progress. Without antifreeze, motor vehicles would not start and planes could not fly.

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In a final [music] assault which had begun on the 1st of December, the Germans came as close as 15 kilometers to Moscow.

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Zukov's western front then began to drive back the northern arm of their encirclement and southern front halted Gdderian's forces around Tula to the south.

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Mobile groups of Russians destroyed fugal dumps and artillery deep behind the German lines. The troops of the Third Reich now faced fully equipped Russian infantry, snuggly clad in their felt boots and great coats.

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Harried by ski battalions, they watched their enemies T34 tanks crash through snow and woodland while their own paners sluggishly negotiated the roadways.

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German morale wilted. The hard-pressed soldiers, most of them still clad in their summer uniforms and tight leather boots, fell back rapidly, often abandoning huge caches of equipment in their haste.

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Encouraged by their breakthrough, the Russian high command attempted to turn the German tactics on themselves and encircle their entire army group center.

Speaker A

Despite Hitler's orders to stand firm, by the end of the year, the Germans had withdrawn up to 150 km from Moscow.

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Generals Gdderian and Herpner had been dismissed for retreating without permission. the Red Army line was shortening and Zhukov and Rakosovski were by moving up the reserve front were beginning to be able I think to have a more a more coherent defense although it wasn't all

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that uh all that powerful at least it it it began to react and uh the Germans in a sense it it literally that phase of the offense ran into the ground and then as you remember the Germans had to in a sense catch

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their breath again and make a second and final uh lunge as it were. The Russian counterattack was further strengthened by the reinstatement of officers condemned to the prison camps during Stalin's great purges.

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They were ferocious warriors. As the wounded [music] commander of the 222nd rifles told his German interrogators, "If a man has a penal camp behind him, death holds no terror for him." Less distinguished prisoners were released into penal battalions, which

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performed the most dangerous tasks, such as clearing minefields and storming strong points. The casualty rate in these battalions was the highest in the Red Army. But prisoners still volunteered for military service. The death rate in the camps had

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increased sevenfold since 1940. This was when Stalin sounded the most alarming and warning note. This was when he issued the order not one step backwards. And he meant not one step backwards. He imposed, for example, penal battalions on the Red Army, anybody moving out of line. And if you

Speaker A

look at the fact for example that perhaps some 400,000 Russian soldiers were put in penal battalions in the war show you the scope and the scale of discipline at the battle of Stalingrad 13,500 men in the Red Army were put in

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penal battalions and very probably shot. At Lenningrad food supplies to the besieged city had been worsening [music] throughout the autumn.

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By late November they were at their lowest eb of the whole siege. Manual workers were receiving only 250 gram of bread per day, onethird of their normal requirement.

Speaker A

Without water for sanitation and basic medical supplies, disease became rampant. As temperatures fell to the minus 20s, thousands began to die each day.

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Total starvation threatened constantly. To the Germans, collapse seemed imminent. Back in Berlin, a reception with Adolf Hitler as guest of honor was organized to celebrate the fall of the stricken city.

Speaker A

The invitations were printed but never posted. A very interesting picture you get is to talk to women soldiers in the Red Army who were in combat units by the way. And if you talk to the medical sisters actually they were up with with

Speaker A

sections and platoon fighting handto-h hand with the Germans. And there you get a really perhaps a more vivid picture of of the kind of life that was led uh with women trying to sometimes these women medics had to pick up a a machine

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pistol and deal with the Germans themselves. So you've got women into and those reminiscences and recollections of that kind of fighting is absolutely ghastly or of women who are at Stalingrad trying there and seeing for example there's one terrible scene lady was telling me about on an ice flow

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floating down the vulgar here were two groups of German and Russian soldiers dead frozen into immobility at this I mean the the ferocity and the the uh inhumanity of the conflict big as the imagination.

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The Russians marked a road across the frozen southwest corner of Lake Lagoda. And by the 22nd of November, convoys of lorries were barely staving off famine in the city.

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It was a hazardous passage through the biting northeastern gales which swept across the lake.

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Yet for all its horror, the Russians knew that defending this lifeline to the city was the only possibility of keeping the inhabitants alive.

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But the food coming across the ice was too little, too late for some. Victims of starvation, suffering from falling blood pressure and the wasting of the heart and internal organs would never regain their health.

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Many would die months after food and medical supplies finally arrived. The children who survived would emerge totally traumatized by the siege.

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It was reflected in the way many of the children played all by themselves. in the way that even in their collective games they played in silence with grave faces. I saw faces of children which reflected such thoughtfulness and sorrow that those eyes and faces told one more than

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could be gathered from all the stories of the horrors of famine. As the new year approached, there was every reason for Stalin to feel optimistic about the outcome of the war.

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The German Blitz Creek had slowed to a crawl, halted, and was now grinding into reverse.

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It also seemed that the great exodus of industry to the east had been successfully accomplished. They had managed to move out considerable elements of tank factories and aircraft factories. It wasn't so much a question of the proportion. It was a question of which particular

Speaker A

plants for example the Harkov tractor works which produced tanks was very that was take they managed to get that out. The um the workers in that factory walked along the railway line by the way under German gunfire to getting the

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trains to be moved out. They got the equipment out then they took the workers out. So what happened of course was in 1942 as as the Vermach bit deeper into Russia then there had to be a second wave of evacuation.

Speaker A

But by 1943 towards the end of autumn they're beginning to move. There's there's a re-evacuation. So that was a colossal it was the largest industrial migration in the history of the world. well over I think it's about 1,900

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plants were moved uh eastwards which was a and then even without um infrastructure there factories were put on the bare ground and in one aircraft factory within I think it was about 17 days of being relocated they were

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producing their first aircraft while the next 3 months would prove critical the economic war had been put on on a sound footing. Before November, the Soviet Union had lost between 1/2 and 2/3 of its productive capacity in coal, pig iron,

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steel, and aluminium along with one quarter of its engineering capacity. Its total industrial output had been harved. The eastern industrial enclaves rapidly became the cornerstone of the Russian war effort.

Speaker A

The instant expansion of the Eural, Siberian, and Kazakhstan centers of production in the first year of the war was nothing short of miraculous.

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The conditions of work were horrendous. Many of the evacuated workers were laboring in sub-zero temperatures while the factories were still being constructed around them. They slept on the floors beside their machines or in crude dugouts next to the factories. Food was scarce and medical resources

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virtually non-existent. In the first phase of the relocation, output per head was poor and the mortality rate among the workers was high. By the summer of 1942, output had begun to climb. As conditions improved, the production levels rose until the contribution of these areas reached two and a half times

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the production of the entire pre-war Soviet economy. On land, the T-34 tank was now becoming standard to the dismay of the German pancer groups. When the first of these medium tanks was met by the 17th pancers, they found that their shells simply bounced off its

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heavy sloped armor while its high velocity 76 mm turret gun proved devastating. It plowed through the advancing Germans for 9 miles before being halted by a field artillery howitzer at short range.

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Its powerful diesel engine enabled it to sail over terrain that the pancers totally balked at.

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But despite Soviet optimism, the war was far from nearing its end. The Russian defenders had paid a terrible price for their resistance, and the toll in human terms would continue for the next 3 years.

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If you talk to the Russians, they will say and they will tell you and many will tell you that 1942 was a was a worse year than 1941 because two things happened. Stalin had a rush of blood to the brain and decided

Speaker A

on premature offensive operations in the early the late winter if you like in early spring of 1942. And what happened as a result of that?

Speaker A

You had perhaps the greatest disaster which befell the Red Army in the summer of 1942 when in the German drive to the south into the Caucuses and and further east, the Red Army really was nearly destroyed.

Speaker A

Uh but what happened there mystified Hitler because instead of the great big encirclement operations of 41, the Red Army wasn't there. It had actually begun sensibly to retreat. The Soviet casualties in the first 6 months of the invasion had been staggering.

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It was only 50 years later that it would be admitted that 1 and a2 million troops had perished in the defense of Moscow alone.

Speaker A

Many of those who were taken prisoner by the Germans fared worse than the dead.

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The German high command alleged that the Russians had refused to abide by the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war and encouraged German troops to seek revenge on such barbarous subhumans.

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The Soviet Union had in fact undertaken to observe the Geneva protocols and through neutral Sweden had requested that Germany do the same.

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Germany's response was to shoot Russian prisoners out of hand, to gas them, starve them, and deprive them of the medical supplies necessary for their survival.

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Many were crammed into [music] rail carts and left in sidings to perish. Others were force marched until they died from exhaustion.

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more were simply exposed to the deadly cruelties of the Russian winter. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet prisoners had been murdered by 1942.

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And this was to set an horrendous trend which would continue throughout the course of the war.

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The Germans [music] made no provision for their prisons of war. They were left in the open. They were starved. They were beaten. They were shot. uh they were used uh as a matter of fact the German army very frequently used the

Speaker A

bodies of Russian prisoners as uh uh emergency British equipment you know to try so the the degree of barbarization which set in at a very early stage uh in the uh Soviet German war the great patriotic war was a feature which

Speaker A

persisted until the very last day of that war and it was deliberate and it was organized it was systematic and although Oh, the German army has tried to make excuses for itself. Sean had no part of it. This is simply not true.

Speaker A

Indeed, if you if you look at Manstein's early orders in 1941, he is as enthusiastic for this barbaric policy as was anybody else. So, it simply wasn't the Einats group or the SS who did it. The German soldier finally was relieved of all sense of criminal responsibility under

Speaker A

German military law. He was from that point of view an unbridled uh and unchecked agent. And don't worry, he took full advantage of it.

Speaker A

The total number of Russian prisoners to [music] be captured would eventually be reckoned at 5 12 million.

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Herman Guring told Chano, Mussolini's envoy, that Russian prisoners, having been forced to eat the souls of their own boots, had then resorted to cannibalism and had also eaten a German [music] sentry. Some nations, he continued, must be decimated. There is nothing to be done about it.

Speaker A

The poultry [music] figure of three and a half million slaughtered Russian PS was a drop in the ocean for Reichfura SS Hinri Himmler. [music] Himmler's plans for the new order in Europe [music] envisaged the reduction of its Slav population by at least 30 million.

Speaker A

And it was Himmler and his deputy Hydrich who were the real masters [music] of occupied Russia. Field Marshal Kitle when asked why the supposedly civilized commanders of the German army allowed the barbarators of the Russian invasion to occur protested that even the commanderin-chief of the

Speaker A

army did not have the executive power or authority to issue and enforce laws in the occupied East. This prerogative belonged strictly to Hydra and Himmler who had de facto discretionary powers over the life and death of population and prisoners including prisoners of war.

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Himmler's sinister executioners, the Shutten or SS, became the supreme rulers of Western Russia. Even before Barbarosa, the SS had discussed with the army officers how they could be facilitated in the campaign of terror they were to unleash in the wake of the invasion.

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In May 1941, four Inzatk were formed with the primary aim of eliminating the ideological opponents of the Reich.

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Soviet officials, commisars, and Jews were to be rounded up and shot to death. In the event those who were dispatched swiftly by a bullet were the fortunate.

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Local Jewish leaders in Russia were forced to assemble their people in designated areas. From these collection points, they were transported to killing fields where they were stripped of their clothing [music] and riddled with machine gunfire.

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The sheer numbers involved often meant [music] that the wounded were also tipped into the burial pits and covered up to suffocate.

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At Kief in September 1941, over 33,000 Jews [music] were murdered in a single operation which lasted 2 days. In Pinsk, the carnage was accomplished with the use of grenades, dogs, axes, and the cavalry of the SS.

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It was difficult, demanding work, and soldiers were rewarded with treble pay and long holidays. Eric Olundorf, one of the Inzatkum commanders, boasted that he had personally disposed of 90,000 victims, mainly Jews, in the first year of the war.

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But it was not only Jews who suffered. Anyone could be accused of being an official or a commisar and summarily executed.

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German [music] troops were actively encouraged to commit outrage on an occupied population which was to be subjugated by terror.

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People were brutalized for real or imagined offenses despite regulations and women were raped in the streets in full view of horrified onlookers.

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As well as carrying out this policy of repression and ethnic sanitation, officials in Russia were also obliged to provide forced labor for the German war economy. This allowed male civilians in the Reich to be freed for military service. The German officials in Russia went

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about the task with an eerie mixture of barbarity and incompetence. Potential recruits were gathered without any discrimination as to their suitability. They were often left unfed for long periods, and conditions on the westbound freight trains which carried them were

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insanity and inhuman. Babies born on the journey were ripped out of their mother's arms and flung onto passing embankments to perish. Not surprisingly, by the end of 1941, 100,000 of those transported from the Ukraine were sent back as unfit to work.

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Many did not survive the return journey. Those waiting to travel westwards were forced to watch the dead comrades being unloaded from the trains they themselves would have to occupy. This treatment of occupied peoples, some of which had welcomed the Nazis as saviors from the tyranny of Stalin

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eventually gave rise to resistance movements, determined to exact revenge for the brutalities which had been inflicted on them.

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The atrocities were etched deep into the psyches of those who witnessed them and inspired an implacable hatred for the perpetrators.

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Hitler was rapidly losing faith in the commanders who had failed to bring Barbarasa to a successful conclusion. He had already dismissed both the cautious Fonr runet and the audacious Gudderion.

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The friction between Hitler and his generals became vocal and more rancerous as the winter wore on. Despite this, as the January initiative became bogged down in the spring Thor, Stalin had little to show for an offensive which was so ruthlessly driven that it produced more Russian than

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German casualties. The Vulkoff front managed to penetrate Von Leb's army group north, but its second shock army were isolated at the spearhead of the penetration and the attack was repulsed. Further south, Northwest Front encircled 90,000 men of Fonib's army in an 800 square mile area near Densk.

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However, in an heroic operation which won the personal praise of the Fura, the Luftvafer managed to stave off a withdrawal by providing the Densk pocket with 270 tons of supplies each day until eventually a corridor was pushed through

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to relieve the defenders. The 29th Army of the Kanin Front, which had almost completed an encirclement of a large portion of Army Group Center, was itself surrounded and destroyed.

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Army Group South managed to contain the bulge that was developing under attack from the Russian South and Southwest fronts.

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In the Crimea, Russian gains were restricted to the Kersh Peninsula. It had been the most brutal winter in living memory, and both sides emerged exhausted, although the German armies should have been well prepared for the terrible conditions.

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Army General Moretskcoll wrote, "I will never forget the endless forests, the bogs, the waterlogged Pete fields, the potholed roads, the punishing battle with the forces of the enemy that went on side by side with the equally punishing battle with the forces of nature.

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The German armies emerged from the winter fighting in a state described by General France Halder, Hitler's chief of staff, as disastrous.

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Of the 162 divisions facing the Red Army, only 11 were fully capable of offensive operations. For the 16 Panser divisions in the east, only 140 serviceable tanks were available and most divisions were only 20% mobile. Nevertheless, Hitler was determined that

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a full-scale attack should be resumed. It was a question of advance or retreat. The Velmat wasn't entirely an armored army. Of course, it had large and important components of infancy. What people forget actually is that while the tanks are streaking across the Russian

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plane, the German infantry is marching. It conducted incredible infantry marches. You know, the infantry did the marching by the way to cover the ground.

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And so you've got a proportion, I think, of about 160 German 68 divisions of which 19 panza divisions. Some of them certainly spread out as it were. So the impression that the Soviet German war was a series of dramatic uh uh

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high-speed armored lunges and advances. If you look closely at the Soviet German war, it's rather different actually. One, and this is very often ignored. It was really uh a war of great sieges. Leningrad, Adessa, Seastoppel, Moscow.

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Uh and then that was reversed as the Red Army advanced. The sieges are then on the German side. And the second thing was if you look at the the operations on the central part of the Soviet German front, it was very importantly a

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struggle for control of the railway lines because this facilitated um a logistical movement and when the Germans were deprived of much of their their rail communications they were in serious trouble. One of the great successes of the Red Army by the way was it didn't wait to capture huge stretches of

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railway line. They would they would simply advance a short distance and build a railway line. Halder even considered recommending a withdrawal to the pre-war border in Poland.

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Quite wisely, he never mentioned this to Hitler. If the German armies stepped back, then Russia could regroup her forces, recover her raw materials, and rebuild her western industries.

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Hitler had been informed by the economic lobby in Germany that without fresh oil reserves, it could not sustain the war effort.

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The oil fields of the Caucuses beckoned temptingly. All thoughts of withdrawal were pushed aside.

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The losses of manpower, vehicles, and tanks which had been suffered since the outbreak of hostilities could not be fully made good for the new offensive.

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Infantry divisions were now to total seven battalions instead of nine. The battle strength of companies was reduced from 180 troops to 80.

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Between November 1941 and March 1942, only 7,500 vehicles were supplied to replace the 75,000 which had been lost, and fuel oil was in short supply. Mobility had been seriously affected.

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The Panser divisions, which would take part in the summer offensive in the south, contained barely 135 tanks each. Even this had only been achieved by seriously weakening northern and central divisions. The one weapon that Hitler did have on his side was surprise. Stalin had assumed that Hitler would

Speaker A

resume his attack on Moscow and heavily reinforced its defensive [music] reserves. But when the Germans struck on the 8th of May, it was the Crimean front which was torn apart by Fon Menstein's 11th Army. The German strategy was to clear its flanks for a concerted drive towards

Speaker A

the oil fields of the Caucuses. While Fon Mannstein subdued the Crimea, Timosenko's southwest front, which lay on the northern flank of the drive, was to be destroyed by the 9th and 57th armies.

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When the German encirclement was completed, almost the total reserve of T34 and KV1 tanks built up over the winter months was in German hands along with over 2,000 guns and almost 250,000 prisoners.

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In the south, Fon Manstein had by now entered the final phase of his Crimean campaign, and only the fortress of Sebastapole, besieged since the previous year, was still under Soviet control.

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After 250 days of dogged resistance, Sebastapole finally capitulated on the 4th of July. The victorious troops were ordered north to Leningrad despite pleas to cross the Kersh strait and bolster the main offensive.

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The German forces were now organized into two groups. [snorts] Army Group B struck eastwards from Kursk to the north and Karkov to the south, but failed to encircle the retreating Soviet forces.

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Hitler, convinced that the main body of the Red Army had retreated to the area north of [music] Rosto, ordered a huge encirclement of the city.

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In doing so, he pulled the fourth Panser army away from its advance down the donuts corridor [music] towards Stalingrad.

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It was a fatal mistake. Fon [music] was to right later. The fourth Panser army was advancing on my left. It could have taken Stalingrad without a fight at the end of July, but was diverted south to help me in

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crossing the dawn. I did not need its aid. It merely congested the [music] roads I was using. When it turned north again a fortnight later, the Russians [music] had gathered just sufficient forces at Stalinrad to check it. After

Speaker A

taking Rosto, Army Group A continued along the Black Sea coast toward the foothills of the Caucuses. Hitler had planned to take Stalinrad and then proceed southwards. He was now committed to achieving both objectives simultaneously. By late August, Army Group A was running into

Speaker A

stiff resistance from the newly formed Trans Caucus' front, defending the span of the huge mountain chain from the Black Sea to the Caspian.

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A Russian southeast front was also established to protect the plains to the northeast of the mountains. The Caucus' front contained Georgians, Armenians, and Aeserians who were well aware of what a German invasion would mean for themselves and their families.

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Their resistance was desperate and determined. Approximately half the adult males of Georgia would eventually sacrifice themselves [music] in the bitter struggle for their homeland.

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Not only was resistance hardening in front of Army Group A, but their strength was constantly being eroded to bolster the battle for Stalingrad to the north. The Caucasian oil wells had been the primary target of the German summer

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offensive. The taking of Stalingrad was at first simply an obvious target to protect the left flank of Army Group A.

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Had Stalinrad not been named in honor of the Russian leader, it might have remained a subsidiary target.

Speaker A

Stalingrad became, if you like, a symbol of German endurance, of German capability. It also had important strategic significance, by the way, because if they'd cut across the vulgar, they sliced right through Russian lines of communication for oil, for transport. So

Speaker A

it wasn't a a fasile thing but it became invested with uh enormous psychological significance both sides really in this ghastly chest chest struggle from which they couldn't be unlocked from which no one could see how they could be unlocked except one had to be destroyed and the other become victor

Speaker A

and it had the quality of that uh that kind of struggle. So the political importance which attached to Stalingrad was immensely important and it worked once the Red Army mounted its counteroffens of and was successful. Of course that worked to the advantage of the um uh Soviet Union.

Speaker A

Hitler began to find the symbolism of its name increasingly difficult to resist. On the 23rd of July, its capture was placed on a par with the southern advance.

Speaker A

By September, defeat at the city named after his arch rival was unthinkable. Stalin too was aware of the symbolic significance involved.

Speaker A

As early as the 1st of July, with the German 6th Army approaching the big bend of the dawn and threatening the road to the city, Stalin told Timoshenko, "I order the formation of an army group Stalingrad.

Speaker A

The city itself will be defended by the 62nd army to the last man. If the Stalingrad had caved in and and the Red Army as it planned to do was to move westwards at high speed, it would have been able to seal off uh the German

Speaker A

army group in the caucuses and that would have trapped trapped an an enormous number of men. So the argument is that uh by holding on in Stalingrad until February the 3 and and obviously constraining a certain element of

Speaker A

Russian forces, it enabled German troops who'd penetrated deep in the caucuses to get out and pull back and Manstein to uh to build up an improvised um defense line and thus more or less stabilized the position which appeared at one stage

Speaker A

the whole of the German um southern wing appeared to be in great jeopardy at the time of Stalin's border. The 62nd Army were desperately preparing a defensive position at the Clatch Bridge head west of the Dawn, supported to the

Speaker A

south by the 64th Army and First Tank Army. On the 30th of July, the German 6th Army struck north and south of this formation, and by the 8th of August, it was encircled. The remnants of the 62nd and 64th army

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pulled back to former defensive perimeter around Stalingrad, leaving the approach road virtually undefended. On the 23rd of August, the sixth army under General Friedel Powus and the fourth Pansa army crossed the dawn and sped towards the city.

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Despite the resolute defense of the outnumbered Soviet forces, the Germans crashed through the suburbs. Only a rapid withdrawal to the inner city on the 30th of August prevented a complete encirclement of the forward defenses. The depleted Russian ranks were

Speaker A

bolstered by the addition of 125,000 adult citizens and 7,000 male youths between the ages of 13 and 17. Workers in the munitions factories handed over weapons and equipment to their soldiers as soon as they came off the production lines. As the battle grew in intensity, they

Speaker A

were forced to use them themselves. In their eagerness for a rapid victory, the Germans made a severe tactical error. While the firebombing of the Luftbuffer, which was ordered as a prelude to the final assault, created major structural damage, it also constricted the mobility of the attackers.

Speaker A

It turned the struggle for occupation into a raten creek, a rat's war through the rubble choked thorough affairs of the city.

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German tank superiority and aerial dominance counted for very little. The German army's whole tactical training had been concerned with how to avoid such a war of vicious attrition. The defenders, on the other hand, proved adept at this hideandsek struggle through the labyrinth of ruined

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buildings and blocked alleyways to which Stalingrad was reduced. The battle zones contracted to minuscule proportions.

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In the larger buildings, floors and even stairways were transformed into centers of conflict. Any overview became almost impossible as the individual buildings changed hands several times in a single day.

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Back in Germany, the slow progress of its army gave rise to jokes, parodying the official reports from the front. Today, our troops captured a two- roommed flat with kitchen, toilet, and bathroom.

Speaker A

They managed to retain two/3s of it despite hard-fought counterattacks from the enemy. Nevertheless, the sheer weight of the German attack began to tell. By midepptember, the defense of the city seemed on the point of being overwhelmed.

Speaker A

The answer to the question, how close were the Germans to winning the battle of Stalingrad? Is a sobering one. about 400 yards because the final stages of the German attack in November had driven Marshall Chuikov right down to the water's edge and he had his headquarters actually on

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the water's edge. They were never pushed off but it got to the stage where the battle which is a horrendous affair was grinding down Russian battalion after Russian battalion as it was with the Germans by the way. Uh, and

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there was also the argument who could hang on the longest, but that I think was very probably between November the 24th and the last week, yes, of November, running into the first few days of December, it appeared to be touch and go.

Speaker A

The result of the war in the east hung once again in the balance. Hitler was disregarding the tactics of the ficta, the idea of annihilation by swift blows to the flanks and rear which had been the basis of all German successes to date.

Speaker A

He was disregarding the needs of the campaign in the caucuses by diverting crucial amounts of manpower to Stalingrad.

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and totally out of character. He was ignoring the weaknesses of the German flanks along the 60-mi salient which the attack on Stalingrad had created.

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Hitler was risking everything in his growing obsession with this one city. The Red Army pressed back against the vulgar with the smoking ruins of Stalingrad in front of them were once again on the rack.

Speaker A

The optimism of the early spring had turned sour in a soul destroying series of defeats which saw further huge trackcts of their homeland fall into enemy hands. Should Stalingrad now capitulate, the blow to their morale would be immense. More ominously, the fall of Stalingrad

Speaker A

would seal the fate of the Caucuses and pave the way for the final breach of the only barrier [music] to stand between Nazi Germany and absolute control of the European continent.

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For all the excesses and brutalities of Stalin's Russia, its collapse would unleash an era of coldblooded slaughter and mayhem such as the world [music] had never before witnessed. In the words of Joseph Gerbles, a time of brutality approaches [music] of which we ourselves have absolutely no

Speaker A

conception. In fact, we are in the middle of it. We shall only reach our goal if we have enough courage to destroy laughingly to shatter what we once held holy, such as tradition, upbringing, friendship, and human love.

Speaker A

The battle for Stalinrad was to continue unabated for another four agonizing months during which time the Germans had captured 90% of the city.

Speaker A

But with a display of heroic courage in the face of defeat, the Russians finally threw out their tormentors and with them Hitler's demented vision of Russian enslavement and world domination.

Speaker A

In the autumn of 1942, only the grim resistance of the Red Army stood between Hitler and the conquest of the city which he sought above all others Stalingrad.

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Heat. [music] [music] Heat. [music] [music] [music] [music]

Speaker B

The terrible ferocity of the fighting in the ruined city has become a byword of savagery and tenacity.

Speaker B

But the Germans had almost succeeded in capturing the city without street fighting. The German sixth army could conceivably have won at Stalingrad, but only under one condition. That is before or by September the 13th, 1942. They had managed to encircle outside the city of Stalingrad, the two Soviet armies which

Speaker B

subsequently defended the city, namely the 62nd Soviet army and the 64th Soviet Army. But once that chance was missed, what happened was the two Soviet armies and the rest of Soviet defenders fell back on Stalenrad and that was really

Speaker B

the onset of the enormous cataclysmic battle which took place. Despite this heroic resistance, by October, the Germans occupied 7/8s of the city.

Speaker B

The Russian 62nd Army under its newly appointed commander, General Vihukov, was pinned back against the Vular River. However, battered feries from the Russian- held East Bank running a gauntlet of bombs and artillery fire kept the encircled defender lifeline in place.

Speaker B

They were supplied with just enough food and munitions to continue the fighting. Nonetheless, in the third week of October, it seemed as if the Russians would finally be overrun. Only the inspirational leadership of Jacov rallying his forces from the thick of the action and the Red Army's

Speaker B

capacity to regain under cover of darkness the strong points they had lost by day prevented the fall of the city. The conditions in Stalingrad were unbelievably ghastly. In fact, this was a complete and utter orgy of horror.

Speaker B

Stalingrad had been reduced to rubble by heavy German bombing. Therefore, you didn't have a front line. What you what you really had throughout the city by day and by night was constant uninterrupted fire. Fire from the Soviet artillery from rather heavier guns, but mostly small arms fire and combat really

Speaker B

man-to-man and hand-to-hand fighting. It wasn't a question of controlling a sector of the front. Was a question of controlling the room of a house or a partial section of a house or a piece of a road or a piece of a building. It's

Speaker B

generally regarded, I think, as one of the most horrendous battles in the history of the world. Both for its ferocity, also for its inhumity and also for these conditions which were quite unbelievably nightmarish and got worse, of course, as the weather got colder. To add to the inhuman demands of their

Speaker B

fighting, nature now added her own burden. During the first half of November, the vulgar was blocked by ice. Without the feries, the Russian position became almost intolerable.

Speaker B

There was some relief because the German Luftwaffer, hampered by snow, now flew only half the number of sorties it had managed at the outbreak of the battle.

Speaker B

But this was still twice what the Red Air Force could achieve. Again, the German army came within a whisker of overpowering the Russian defenses. After months of bloody house-to-house fighting of unimaginable horror, a final German attack was planned for November

Speaker B

the 18th. But it was already too late. Behind the Russian lines, preparations were already underway for a counter offensive which would doom the Sixth Army's effort and spell the collapse of the whole German campaign in the south.

Speaker B

As early as August, the German high command had warned Hitler of the dangers of advancing Army Group A into the Caucuses while simultaneously using Army Group B to attempt the capture of Stalingrad.

Speaker B

German military resources were totally inadequate to safeguard the flanks of this double spearhead. A gap soon developed between groups A and B, which was 200 m wide and guarded by just a single division.

Speaker B

Not only did Hitler ignore the warnings of his generals, which grew more rockous as the campaign developed, but he continuously weakened the flanks of the two groups by siphoning off forces to feed his ongoing obsession with capturing the city named after his deadly rival.

Speaker B

As Fon Munchstein wrote later, to leave the main body of the army group at Stalinrad for weeks on end was a cardinal error. It amounted to nothing less than presenting the enemy with the initiative and it was a clear invitation

Speaker B

for him to surround the sixth army. By the 19th of November, the Soviet counterattack routed the Romanian troops to the north of Stalingrad. While 100 miles to the south, the Red Army overran a mixed German and Romanian force. The Soviet counter offensive,

Speaker B

which opened on the 19th of November, 1942, came as a huge and catastrophic surprise to the Germans. There had been hints. They suspected that something was going on, but they didn't realize the scale of what was going to happen. And

Speaker B

the first thing that happened was that is to the north of the dawn to the north of Stalingrad several Soviet armies including a tank army fell on the German flank. But it wasn't a German flank. It was a flank manned by Romanians by the

Speaker B

Romanian army and at sight of this Russian advance hurtling upon them. The Romanians broke and fled. And that was the first northern wing of this encircling movement. Well, down to the south of Stalingrad, a second Pinser movement then began in equal strength and in equal force. So the Germans

Speaker B

discovered actually that they were really fighting on virtually on two fronts, to the north and the south.

Speaker B

On November the 22nd, the two Russian armies met and Stalingrad was encircled. Fon Powus, the inexperienced commander of the sixth army, requested that he be allowed to reform his troops and withdraw.

Speaker B

During those first days of the encirclement, the Sixth Army had barely six days rations of food and ammunition for only two days.

Speaker B

Many of its artillery batteries were completely out of shells. Hope of Salvation for six, the German sixth army, rested on a rapid and speedy breakout. If they'd done that, there are many arguments to suggest that they would have escaped. they would have been able to move through a fairly thinly

Speaker B

held Russian or Soviet line of encirclement both to the north and the south but they didn't. The orders were quite the opposite. The orders were a to standfast and the orders were then finally of course to move back into

Speaker B

Stalinrad which then proved to be the area and the place of their actual inunement. So once that chance was missed then I think the situation became critical and this can be proved by looking at the other part when attempts

Speaker B

were made to conduct a large-scale breakthrough operation from outside the Soviet ring became more and more difficult and it became finally impossible. So unless the chance had been seized to move fast and move quickly and get out of that encirclement to get away then I

Speaker B

think six army was inevitably and inescapably doomed. On the 26th, Hitler delivered a personal message to the belleaguer troops of Stalingrad, ordering them to stand fast and promising to do all in his power to support them.

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The problem of supplies was turned over to the Luftbuffer, which had so valiantly supplied the pocket of Demansk the previous spring.

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Guring, its commander, was summoned before Hitler and agreed to guarantee 550 tons of supplies per day. Despite the skepticism of the army chiefs of staff, the airlift began on the 25th of November.

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The results of the first days of the operation were ominous for the troops still fighting the rats war among the cellers and ruins of the city.

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Only 65 tons were delivered on day one. The same quantities arrived on day two.

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On the third day, no supplies whatsoever reached the desperate German forces. The Luftvafa had no safe landing grounds in the vicinity of the Sixth Army.

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As the German perimeter of control around the city shrank under Russian pressure, this situation consistently deteriorated.

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Thick fogs made flying hazardous, if not impossible. Freezing temperatures meant that aircraft servicing became a torturous task for the German mechanics.

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Added to this, the Red Air Force was increasing its sortters and the tactics of its pilots were sharpening as the conflict wore on.

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The airlift proved a fiasco and the German troops began to starve. However, the airlift was only part of Hitler's strategy to relieve the situation in Stalingrad.

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Fonmanstein was ordered to form a relief force to be known as Army Group Dawn.

Speaker B

Its immediate objective was to bring the enemy attacks to a standstill and recapture the positions previously occupied.

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One manstein's strategy involved an attack by Army Group Dawn towards Stalingrad and a breakout westwards by part of the Sixth Army.

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When both assault forces met, they would provide a corridor through which the remnants of the Sixth Army, still engaged in Stalingrad, could be withdrawn.

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Fon Manstein's problems began even before his forces could attack the Russians. The reinforcements which would give Army Group Dawn its only hope against vastly superior Russian numbers failed to arrive.

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Worse, the Russian strength in the area was increasing. The fourth Pansa army was forced to launch the offensive alone.

Speaker B

Against all the odds, by the 17th of December, Fon Manstein had reached a position only 35 miles short of Stalingrad, forcing sections of the Red Army surrounding the city to break away from the siege to block the advance.

Speaker B

By the 19th, the relief had gained another five miles and was just 30 miles from making contact with sixth army.

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You can look at the Soviet German war at that period between 42 and 44 as a duel between Mannstein and Zhukov. They were two very similar commanders. What was characteristic of them is they had an acute grasp of the strategic situation.

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The second thing which made them very similar by the way they both had to deal with very difficult masters. Minstein had Hitler and Zhukov had Stalin and although both Munchstein and Zhukov had ideas of their own they were not always

Speaker B

actually free well take the Stalingrad situation not entirely free to pursue the course of action which was militarily most sensible and from that point of view yes there is a a similarity between them. So as strategic analysts if you like and as strategic commanders and of perhaps the two

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commanders on the eastern front who were capable of handling not just a division a core or even an army but groups of army. I mean this this enormous strategic command this I think um illustrates the the nature of the

Speaker B

commands which both of these men exercised. Fonmanstein urgently requested Hitler to allow the Sixth Army to retreat towards him and bring the Russians under fire from east and west.

Speaker B

Once the German forces met, then the 3,000 tons of supplies assembled behind the fourth Pansa army could be pushed through to those retreating from the city.

Speaker B

Faced with silence from Fur headquarters, Fon Mannstein himself gave the order for the breakout to begin.

Speaker B

It would be a desperate gamble for the Sixth Army. Only 100 of its tanks remained operational, and these held sufficient fuel for a journey of 20 m or less.

Speaker B

The physical ability of Fonpala's half-st starved troops to mount any sort of mobile campaign was also questionable.

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Faced with these risks and in possession of previous orders from Hitler to stand firm, Fon Powz disobeyed the direct order of Fonstein, his superior officer, and did not attempt to break out.

Speaker B

In doing so, he doomed the majority of the quarter of a million soldiers under his command to slow and painful death.

Speaker C

One of the great arguments at the time for the so-called sacrifice of Palis army in Stalingrad that in fact it was doing something very noble and very important. In other words, it was actually holding back uh Soviet forces so they would not be able to advance

Speaker C

further and cut off the other German army group which was operating in the caucuses. In other words, it allowed the German armies which were in the caucuses time to withdraw, time to fall back, time to escape an even bigger Soviet

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trap. That has a certain amount of force to it. That is perfectly true in the first part of the encirclement operation. But as time went on and certainly by let us say mid December this argument had less and less force.

Speaker C

First of all because the Russians realized from their point of view they needed less troops to contain Stalenrad and therefore troops are actually being released. And the second thing the Russians were also developing plans themselves for a gigantic a much huger uh encirclement operation. So in

Speaker C

historical terms, yes, for a while, six army and fourth panza did did execute that particular role and it was important. But as time went on, that kind of justification, if you like, for holding so many troops in this ghastly

Speaker C

hell hole of Stalingrad lost more and more justification, and finally it really didn't have any effect at all. Events to the north and the south of the city now began to draw attention away from the plight of the army marooned in

Speaker C

Starling. Far more than the struggle for one city was now at stake. The issue was no longer the fate of a single army, but the entire southern wing of the front and ultimately of all the German armies in the east.

Speaker C

By Christmas Eve, the Red Army was within striking distance of Rustoff. Only two days earlier, Army Group A had begun its withdrawal from the Caucuses.

Speaker C

Should the Russians reach Rusttoff [music] before them, their retreat would be cut off. The ordinary German soldiers only gradually became aware of the magnitude of the disaster which was upon them.

Speaker C

By the new year, the fourth panser army, having abandoned the sixth army to its fate, had withdrawn as far as Rosto. It provided the only effective barrier between the advance of Soviet forces and the capture of the city.

Speaker C

By January the 7th, the Red Army was only 30 mi from Rosto, but remained slow to exploit its superiority. Hitler also remained slow to order a complete evacuation of the south.

Speaker C

He waited until the 27th of January when Army Group A seemed doomed to finally allow its retreat through Rosto.

Speaker C

In Stalingrad, the situation of the sixth army had deteriorated rapidly throughout January. On the 8th, Fon Palace was offered terms for a surrender by the Russians. Hitler refused to capitulate.

Speaker C

German troops were collapsing from starvation and exhaustion. They were dying of exposure and some were committing.

Speaker C

Even when Army Group A had been withdrawn beyond Rosto and Sixth Army's continued resistance served little strategic purpose, Hitler refused to allow them to surrender.

Speaker C

On January the 31st, he made Fon Powas a field marshal. The following day, Fon Powas surrendered.

Speaker C

He became the first field marshal since the unification of [music] the state to fall into enemy hands. This was the first time for 130 years that a German a German army had surrendered in the field. So historically speaking it was a if you like a body blow at German um prestige.

Speaker C

The second thing was of course it had an enormous impact on on the on the myth if you like or the the image which Hitler projected of himself as being the great master planner and and master strategist who had the mightest touch. He simply

Speaker C

had to speak and everything would fall into place. I think the effect largely was more psychological, deeply psychological than in fact it was catastrophically milit military in that sense because the Germans were able to recover. But the profound sense of shock which the

Speaker C

surrender of an entire German army in the field for the first time affected the civilian population. It affected the high command of the German armed forces.

Speaker C

By the way, it also affected the civilian morale at home and it also had a profound effect on the morale of soldiers in the field. And from that point of view, the defeat at Stalingrad, I think, was most relevant and most

Speaker C

important. And those effects, it's possible to argue in fact never wore off. Announcing the disaster at Stalingrad to the rest of the forces in the [music] east, the German high command requested that officers in the field read out the last message [music] received by shortwave radio from the

Speaker C

ruins of the tractor factory red October. We are [music] the last survivors in this place. Four of us are wounded.

Speaker C

We have been entrenched in the [music] wreckage of the tractor factory for 4 days. We have not had food for 4 days.

Speaker C

I have just [music] opened the last magazine for my automatic. In 10 minutes, the Bolevixs [music] will overrun us.

Speaker C

Tell my father that I have done my duty and that I shall know how to die.

Speaker C

Long live [music] Germany. Hile Hitler. Stalingrad [music] cost the Russians about 800,000 men. But what happened to the Red Army actually uh after at Stalingrad and after Stalingrad would Stalin gave them a big boost. He did two things which were very important. He

Speaker C

kicked out the the commisars, the political officers. He demoted them and he turned the Red Army into a professional army. The second thing he gave them lots of medals and lots of braid. They got a great deal of praise.

Speaker C

And I think what they also got as well was suddenly a greater confidence in their command. People like Rakosovvski, people like Zhukov, people like Vasilvki, people like Vatutin. I mean these were commanders who knew their job and were able to do the job properly. And they also began to see the fact that

Speaker C

what they were fighting with by the way was their own equipment. 99% of the weapons, tanks, guns, and aircraft used at Stalingrad was Soviet produced. So this sense of um I think vindication of uh how they had behaved. They hadn't

Speaker C

given up Stalingrad. This sense somehow that victory was a long long long way off but it was vaguely possibly imperceptibly discernable. The fact that they' crushed a German army and destroyed a German field marshal and the fact that their own army had a as I say a sense of increasing professionalism

Speaker C

was really very important and morale of course was skyhigh. After Stalingrad, the full fury of the Russian counteroffensive was unleashed against the retreating Germans. The jubilant Russian forces now surged westward to bring the fight to the enemy.

Speaker C

To the north of Vines, the Soviet attack had taken Kursk by the 7th of February.

Speaker C

Karkov fell on the 16th despite the orders of Hitler that it be held to the last man.

Speaker C

A major push southwards toward the sea of Azovv and westward toward the river Denipa threatened to completely encircle the remaining forces of Army Group Dawn and the section of Army Group A which had escaped from the caucuses.

Speaker C

The defeat of Stalingrad was catastrophic. It uh at the front itself it was a question of trying to hold this defensive force together and that was their first job. But outside the problem was really to reestablish a stable front

Speaker C

in the south. The threat was that with the Russians virtually on the rampage, which is what it amounted to across large areas of step, that the whole of the German southern wing might be unhinged, that the whole lot could just

Speaker C

be shoved aside and if the Russians had achieved their major strategic objective, it is quite certain that the entire southern wing, not the southern front, the southern wing of the German armies in the east would have been unhinged. But it was left to Field Marshall Manstein who was rushed in if

Speaker C

you like as the fireman by Hitler to begin to restore the situation. What he did he very steadily built up uh what he intended to be a more stable and a more effective dawn front. So the first job of stabilizing the the southern wing if

Speaker C

you like was completed. The second job was obviously to bring in reinforcements and then the third thing was uh which is very strange but in in a sense was for the Germans to think once again offensively.

Speaker C

The numbers with which the Russians attacked and the speed of their own advance now proved their downfall. Crippled by lack of transport, bogged down in the early Thor and short of supplies, the Soviet thrust suddenly ran out of steam only 30 m from the Denipa crossing.

Speaker C

Fonstein immediately seized this opportunity to methodically chop off the spearheads of the Russian attack and stabilize the German front.

Speaker C

Only a month after being retaken by the Russians, Karkov was once again in German hands.

Speaker C

By the 19th of March, Belgarod, more than 50 mi northeast of Karkov, was also retaken.

Speaker C

The Thor was now in full flood, and the annual spring lull descended on the whole of the Eastern Front. For the German army, it marked the close of a disastrous winter campaign. The caucuses had been lost as well as a

Speaker C

large section of the donuts basin and the strategic dawn bend. Sixth army had been destroyed. Four other axis armies had been gutted and stalingrad now lay 500 [music] m to the west of the German lines.

Speaker C

Yet in the end the German generals counted themselves lucky that the situation was not far worse. Once again during the winter of 1942, the Germans had found themselves retreating, having come tantalizingly close to realizing their ambitious objectives.

Speaker C

It's easy to concentrate on Stan, but it's also easy to forget there were other operations which were extremely important. The object of of the Soviet high command was not just the destruction of the German army in the south. The Soviet high command was also intent in trying to destroy the German

Speaker C

army in the center. And also they had this extreme obligation of trying to relieve the pressure on Lenrad in the north. So you've got a very complex situation as it were almost a series of concertina relationships. One expands

Speaker C

the other contracts. Yes, it did have some effect. The intensity of the fighting was concentrated certainly in the south in 1942, late 42, 1943.

Speaker C

But it's interesting to notice that if you examine the stalingrad operations closely from the Soviet point of view, you see the operation steadily moving northwards. They take the German six army, then they move upward to the Italians. They take up to the Hungarians. They move they're moving all

Speaker C

the time up the front that is in a northerly direction and they're al also expanding to the south. In other words, it was a very complex strategic picture.

Speaker C

But much much of course depended on the outcome of Stalingra. The twin failures of Stalingrad and the Caucuses were enormous psychological [music] bombshells for German morale. The German army's belief in its own invincibility, dented by the retreat from Moscow, had now completely

Speaker C

disintegrated. As Supreme Warlord, most of the blame for this lay squarely on the shoulders of Adolf Hitler.

Speaker C

However, while the military tactics of Hitler were proving increasingly impossible for his generals to stomach, the political blunderings of the brutal and debortched administrators of occupied Russia were presenting them with a problem no less indigestible. For long stretches of the previous year,

Speaker C

as many as 24 divisions of the German army had been diverted to attempting to suppress the growing menace of partisan sabotage.

Speaker C

The rapid massacre of Soviet Jews, the indiscriminate torture and slaying of simple resistance had totally backfired [music] against the rich commissads of the conquered territories. In May of 1942, the first attempt was [music] made to coordinate the disperate bands of partisans which had formed in

Speaker C

response to the savage unto mench policies of the German occupation. Republican and regional partisan headquarters were set up and an official liaison between the movement and the Red Army was established for the first time.

Speaker C

This meant that the activities of the partisans could now be directed against objectives of crucial importance to the overall military strategy.

Speaker C

By 1943, the conditions of the Russian troops at the front had improved tremendously. The spring lull meant that soldiers who had gone for months without washing could now visit the steam baths, which had been erected behind the lines. The break in the fighting gave the field

Speaker C

tailor shops the chance to repair damaged uniforms, sped up the delivery of the precious letters from home, and allowed the exhausted troops a much needed period of rest and relaxation.

Speaker C

While the conditions of the Russian soldiers continued to improve as the war went on, a lot of their German counterparts began to deteriorate.

Speaker C

In fact, by the spring of 1943, the German army in the east was almost on the point of collapse. In March, the eastern front, still extending from Finland in the north to the Black Sea in the south, was almost

Speaker C

half a million men short of establishment. Divisional strength had been reduced from 9 to six battalions, while the casualty rate among experienced officers and NCOs had been particularly high. Equipment levels were low. By February, only 500 German tanks remained serviceable, and most of these were

Speaker C

still inferior to the Russians T34s. The situation in the panser brigades became so desperate that Hitler was forced to recall General Heint Gudderion to active service.

Speaker C

Gudderion, one of the most able and audacious of the panser leaders, had been dismissed from his command in the winter of 1941, ironically for withdrawing forces without permission.

Speaker C

He was now charged with the responsibility for the future development of the armored troops along lines that will make that arm of the service into a decisive weapon for winning the war.

Speaker C

Gudderion was encouraged by the continued upswing in the production of Panser 6 Tiger tanks 56 tons of wellarmored mobile artillery armed with a modification of the devastating 8.8 8 cm anti-aircraft gun.

Speaker C

The Tiger boasted a top speed of 23 mph on the road. Combined with the PZ KW5 Panther, the Tiger gave the Germans qualitative parity with the Russians for the first time since the beginning of the war.

Speaker C

The Panther, weighing 45 tons, was lighter and more mobile than the Tiger with a top speed of 34 mph. While its 7.5 cm gun possessed considerable penetrative ability, improved assault guns and tank destroyers were also appearing. Taking into account the upgunning of the panser marks three and four. The potential for

Speaker C

Gdderion was to supply these weapons in such quantities that their possession by experienced crews would offset Soviet numerical superiority.

Speaker C

The new German tanks in which Hitler placed huge faith in in the Tigers, the new Tigers and the Panther tanks. Of course, they were superior to the Russian tanks. That is certainly to to the T34. Even more important, of course,

Speaker C

they were impervious to the fire of Soviet anti-tank guns. In 1943, Stalin was deeply deeply concerned about the upgrading, the modernization and and the refitting of the Soviet tank force. And so you find from about the midsummer, the summer of 1943, the appearance on the eastern front of

Speaker C

large numbers of modernized German tanks, Tigers and Panthers, self-propelled guns and so on. And from the Soviet side, the same attempt to update and improve their armor. So the Russians improved the T-3485.

Speaker C

The second thing they began to develop a much heavier tank, which later became, of course, the the Joseph Stalin ones, which were really very formidable heavy tanks indeed. But the problem from the Russian side was not just the tanks. The

Speaker C

problem was that of anti-tank defenses. And they found the answer certainly increasing the number of anti-tank guns. But what they really did was to develop self-propelled guns with quite heavy calibers. And they actually were the instruments which took on the Tigers at the battle of Kuska 1943.

Speaker C

Gderian's need for time to reorganize and re-equip the panser divisions mirrored the requirements of the German army as a whole.

Speaker C

The idea of any immediate victory in Russia was now simply the stuff of rhetoric.

Speaker C

Given the inability of the German army to defend its complete front, a draw could not be achieved by defensive tactics.

Speaker C

The reverses to be imposed on the Red Army would have to be forced by a series of limited assaults. Von Mannstein's counteratt attacks which had prevented complete disaster during [music] the previous winter had impressed Hitler. He was invited to put forward a plan for

Speaker C

the crucial summer campaign. Fonmanstein presented Hitler with two offensive alternatives. The first was to prepare for a Soviet assault which would almost certainly be launched in the Ukraine and withdraw before it. Wheeling to the left, German forces would then mount a decisive

Speaker C

attack on its exposed northern flank, encircling the leading spearhead of the Russian advance. The second alternative was to cut off the enormous Soviet salient which had emerged to the north of Karkov and to the south of Orurel, a bulge extending 70 mi westwards from Kursk and measuring

Speaker C

approximately 100 m in width. Hitler chose the second alternative despite the dilemma which it posed for the attacking forces. It was vital to attack before the Soviet generals got wind of the plan and could prepare defenses.

Speaker C

It was also crucial to Fon Manstein that the offensive be launched before the Russians recovered from the losses incurred the previous winter.

Speaker C

On the other hand, if the attack were to take place in mid-May, as Fon Mannstein insisted, German manpower and equipment might not be sufficient to ensure victory. Hitler's intention certainly was to was to strike the decisive blow on the Eastern Front. This was to destroy the

Speaker C

the Red Army completely, to destroy its armored forces, to break through, to take Moscow. And this was to be the final decisive blow on the Eastern Front. In terms of the force that the Germans assembled, in terms of uh their

Speaker C

armored troops, in terms of their battle tested, thoroughly professionalized, very capable divisions. If you if you look at it in terms of military statistics, then the chances were very much uh I would have said in favor of the German army. It had done it before, it could do it again. But this is not to

Speaker C

say, of course, that that's the way the um the operation itself went. But in terms of the command, in terms of the competence, in terms of the armor, in terms of the experience, and indeed very possibly in terms of the German estimate

Speaker C

of of Russian capabilities in defensive actions, and remember the Russians had never fought a major defensive action on the Eastern Front at all. Then the chances I suppose were were reasonable, bordering perhaps on perhaps a gamble.

Speaker C

Gdderion was against the operation from the start, arguing that the new Panther and Tiger tanks must be held back until they were available in sufficient quantities to ensure a decisive success. Hitler postponed the date of the attack until July in the hope that by then the number of new tanks would tip the

Speaker C

balance of firepower in Germany's favor. By now, Russian air force reconnaissance had improved to the point where Stalin's awareness of German dispositions was comprehensive and generally accurate.

Speaker C

He had also managed to infiltrate German headquarters and was supplied with additional intelligence by his spy ring in Switzerland cenamed Lucy which had many highlevel contacts inside Germany. Stalin's knowledge of German preparations was so precise he even knew the date chosen by Hitler for the launch

Speaker C

of Operation Citadel.

Speaker D

Kusk is a is a salient. It's very large and it was a large arrow really sticking right into the German center. You had the northern face and the southern face and across it you had the town of Kusk

Speaker D

of course at the center of this and the Russians the Soviet command for the first time decided to fight a major a major sustained deliberate defensive battle. They had never done this before. Stalin had no confidence in the Red Army

Speaker D

fighting defensively. He always wanted the Red Army to fight offensively and offensively and offensively no matter the what the casualties were, what the losses were. the Red Army must always attack. And even in the on the eve of

Speaker D

Kusk, he was tempted to try a preemptive Soviet uh first strike as it were and was dissuaded from this partly by Zhukov and partly by others who said, "Look, let us now proceed with the defensive measures we have put in trade."

Speaker E

Stalin advised by Shukov prepared patiently and thoroughly for the German advance. The Soviet lines consisted of six belts of defenders composed of anti-tank posts, thick minefields, and 3,000 mi of trenches supported by 3,000 tanks and 20,000 guns. The general Soviet system was this. They

Speaker E

had really three lines of defenses. There was the first line, of course, which was really to break up the German attack. The second line, which hopefully would, in fact, enable them to bring their anti-tank defenses to bear. And

Speaker E

the last line of course was really this was where the battle or the engagements would be um uh conducted. You would break up and generally deflect the German attack as such. And this went all the way down from core level indeed from

Speaker E

army down to core down to division down to regiment to battalion. Each had its own defensive sectors. So it really was a colossal undertaking on a scale I think which really taxes the imagination.

Speaker E

With every passing moment, the successful outcome of the Kursk offensive grew more necessary for Hitler.

Speaker E

German morale, depleted by the failures at Stalingrad and in the Caucuses, was now further undermined by defeat in West Africa.

Speaker E

Hitler's inability to adequately supply RML with men and materials led to disaster at Medanine in March and the eventual collapse of the Axis African forces in May. By June, southern Europe laid totally exposed to the threat of Allied attack. In Britain, the RAF and the American Air

Speaker E

Force prepared to launch massive bombing raids against German industrial and civilian targets as a prelude to invasion from the west.

Speaker E

Hitler not only needed a victory at Kursk, he needed victory on a scale which would allow him the breathing space to fend off the enemies which were beginning to close around him. Anything less would prove a catastrophe.

Speaker E

On the Russian side, for the first time, the Red Army would be prepared for [music] a major German offensive.

Speaker E

It was determined to make the most of its advantage. On July the 5th, 1943, as Fon Manstein and Fon Kluger approached the Kursk salient in a classic pinser movement involving 1 million men and 2,700 tanks, the death ride of the pancers was about to commence.

Speaker E

Hitler intended that Operation Citadel, the great attack on the Coilant in 1943, would be the decisive blow. He'd argued in 1941 that the Red Army was destroyed, which it wasn't. He argued again in 1942 that the Red Army was destroyed, which

Speaker E

it wasn't by the way. Here in 1943, Hitler was determined to deliver the Cudigrass. This is what it was to be. It was to be the largest armored operations in world history. A gigantic assembly of tanks and guns and aircraft and assault

Speaker E

troops. And Hitler had uh placed enormous hopes upon it. It was, I think, meant to be a war-winning blow. It was meant to correct, if you like, the lingering impression of of Stalingrad. It was to wipe that out. It was to afford the Germans uh something which was extremely

Speaker E

important which is to say it it was intended to ensure that the German army retained the strategic initiative on the eastern front. This under no circumstances must pass to the Russians. Adolf Hitler was fully aware of the absolute necessity of success at Kursk. But when the roaring waves of German

Speaker E

armor crashed into the salient in July 1943, the attack which the German army was about to unleash was already doomed to fail. The essence of Fun Manstein strategy for the battle had been to exploit the mobility and tactical superiority of the

Speaker E

German penser units. Instead, the German tanks drove confidently towards a grinding war of attrition where the advantage lay squarely with the defenders.

Speaker E

The effectiveness of a Russian defense limited the progress of Fonluger's [music] 9inth army to an advance of some 6 miles. It was then ground to a halt by Roasovski's central front to the north of the Kursk salient.

Speaker E

In the south, Fon Munchstein's fourth Pansa army advanced 25 mi by the 10th of July and threatened to penetrate the Veronish front under Marshall Vatutin.

Speaker E

Reserves from the steps front had to be pumped into the battle to bolster the salient defenders and prevent the fourth pancer from breaking through into open country.

Speaker E

The Germans had fallen into Zhukov's cunningly prepared trap. As Goodion acknowledged, by the failure of Citadel, we had suffered a decisive defeat. The armored formations reformed and re-equipped with much effort had lost heaven in both manpower and equipment

Speaker E

and would now be unemployable for a long time to come. There was the real prospect that they would never be rehabilitated in time to defend the eastern front. From now on, the Russians were in undisputed possession of the initiative. In the battle, of course, although it's

Speaker E

a ghastly affair, what really staggered the German commander was the speed with which the Russians moved from the defensive to the counteroffensive on a very large scale. By the way, it was only a matter of about 4 days after the

Speaker E

German defeat that COVID's uh reserve stepfront was changed and was was moving into action. So from every point of view from defensive preparation to the actual conduct of the battle and indeed the subsequent move to the counter offensive

Speaker E

was really quite an astonishing undertaking. Adolf Hitler was fully aware of the absolute necessity of success at the battle of Kursk. He needed a success to reestablish the month [music] lost in the disaster at Stalingrad.

Speaker E

It was a gamble which was not destined to succeed. [music] [music] In the north, the effectiveness of a Russian defense limited the progress of Fon Klunger's ninth army. In the south, Fon Mannstein's fourth panser army advanced 25 mi and threatened to penetrate the Bores front.

Speaker E

Reserves from the steps front had to be pumped into the battle to bolster the salance defenders and prevent the fourth pancers from breaking through into open country.

Speaker E

They succeeded and the Germans had fallen into Zhukov's trap. From now on, the enemy was in undisputed possession of the initiative.

Speaker E

Having enticed the Germans into total but disastrous commitment to their armored forces, the Red Army swiftly exploited their advantage.

Speaker E

Even while the gargantuan tank struggle was still being bitterly contested, on the 12th of July, the Russians counteratt attacked towards Orel, which was itself a salient in German hands. The respectable army grouped center, reinforced by units from the fourth panser army, which had broken off its

Speaker E

attack on Kursk, attempted to check the advance. German Army Group Center was the implacable enemy of the Red Army. It had been its most implacable enemy since 1941 and it was still its most implacable enemy in 1944. Numerous attempts have been made by the

Speaker E

Red Army and high command to destroy Army Group Center and they couldn't. They tried and tried. Army Group Center held fast absolutely and completely.

Speaker E

uh even at Stalingrad. By the way, what is very little is known about this while Zhukov was actually organizing the counterattack at Stalingrad. He was also by the way on the 25th of November 1942 organizing an attack against Army Group

Speaker E

Center. He was not distracted by Stalingrad, but he understood as every Soviet commander did that the enemy was Army Group Center stationed right in the center of the Soviet German front. Not only was it strategically important, it covered lines of communication. It covered important population centers and

Speaker E

above all actually it covered one thing the Russians desired above all the shortest route to Germany and to Berlin. You couldn't go well you could go around you could go down to but really the only way was to blast their way through and

Speaker E

get on to the highway to Berlin. So Army Group Center was as a an object of vital strategic importance for the Soviet high command. But by now the Eastern Front was not the only theater of disaster for the German armies.

Speaker E

On the 10th of July, Allied forces had invaded Sicily. By the 25th, Mussolini had been arrested and a provisional government set up in Italy.

Speaker E

Fearing the defection of his Mediterranean ally, Hitler [music] desperately needed to make troops available for the defense of the peninsula. On August the 1st, he ordered an immediate withdrawal from the Oral salient.

Speaker E

By the 5th of August, the provincial capitals of Orurel and Belgarod had been liberated.

Speaker E

Near Belgarod, the Germans attempted a counterattack with 60,000 troops and 18,000 Hitler youth who arrived at the front carrying flags with the ironic inscription, "The world belongs to us." The frenzy German counterstroke succeeded in pushing back the Red Army, but the Russian tide of resurgence was

Speaker E

irresistible. After clawing their way forward for 10 days, the German advance was again flung backward towards the Deniper.

Speaker E

The great retreat was about to begin. The allconquering German army, which had disdainfully swept aside the Russian border defenses only two years previously, was now struggling to maintain a presence in the field of battle.

Speaker E

The penser units, which had sliced the Red Army to pieces in a series of dazzling pinser movements, now flung themselves headlong at the Russians in the desperate hope of slowing their progress.

Speaker E

For the ordinary German soldiers, the notion of victory ceased to have meaning. The survival of themselves and their immediate comrades became the central concern of their lives. The situation 1944 for the German army uh in the east looked catastrophic and was catastrophic. They had lost army

Speaker E

group center. Army group north was breaking up very rapidly. Army group south was desperately trying to hold onto the remnants uh of Soviet territory in Ukraine. So it appeared that the German army was on the run and in some

Speaker E

respects that was true. The losses were very considerable. They had lost many many hundreds of thousands of men. their losses in armor were considerable and I suppose speaking objectively one should argue that yes this was the end of the

Speaker E

line but it wasn't uh first of all the German commanders as opposed to Hitler decided that one way in which uh they had a fighting chance more than a fighting chance was would be to adopt an elastic mobile defense in other words

Speaker E

not take all these Russian blows on the chin directly but move back then there was a reasonable chance that the German army in east would a be able to survive and even more important what it would be able to do would in fact to be able to

Speaker E

establish if you like some form of coherent defensive line certainly further to the west but against which very possibly the Red Army would throw itself and finally exhaust itself. The problem was that Hitler kept giving the opposite orders. On the Russian side, the liberation of

Speaker E

the cities and towns was proving a bittersweet experience. In Orel, the Soviet troops arrived to find half the town and all its bridges destroyed by the retreating Germans.

Speaker E

Of the pre-war population of 114,000, only 30,000 haggarded souls survived to greet their [music] saviors. 25,000 had been sent as slaves to the labor camps of the Reich. 12,000 had been murdered by their German overlords and thousands had died from disease and starvation.

Speaker E

As the German forces began to move back, the Partisan movement really exploded into life. Partisans taught demolition procedures, wireless operating, intelligence gathering, and how to forge and amend official German documentation. Soviet partisans really consisted of of of three elements. One, there were certainly [music] or there was a

Speaker E

wellorganized but very smallcale organized underground movement. Key members of the communist party were assigned to stay behind and build [music] up resistance groups. But that was very specialized. The second group were civilians who were forced out by German terrorist action. Their homes

Speaker E

were burned, blown up, relatives shot, people killed. slave labor was pretending who took to their heels and hid as best they could and would perhaps organize. The third part of course was as I've said earlier that uh the German

Speaker E

army surrounded very large numbers of Red Army troops in 1941. You had encircumments of 300,000 men. Not all of these men were taken prisoner and gradually broke up. um were able to establish themselves as, if you like, small independent combat units and would either get in touch with

Speaker E

the local population to see what could be done or in fact a form of partisan organization was um was built up very primitive but nonetheless uh in existence. But gradually by 1944 the Soviet partisan movement had become very

Speaker E

substantially organized and in placed and was conducting its operations more or less in coordination with the Red Army. That was certainly the case as the Red Army crossed the Soviet frontiers and then had to make use of uh certainly

Speaker E

of partisans. Yes. For scouting, for intelligence, for um support. So the partisan movement passed through those several stages and u by 1944 had become I would say it was and established a a very considerable feature of the Soviet

Speaker E

war machine. Besides the damage they inflicted on German troops and their morale, the partisans offered hope and example to those still in the midst of Nazi tyranny.

Speaker E

Zorya Cosmo Deianskaya, an 18-year-old member of the Moscow Consumol, was caught setting fire to German stables in the village of [music] Pestrial.

Speaker E

Although tortured, she revealed nothing about her comrades to the German interrogators. As she was led to the gallows with a placard around her neck describing her crime, she turned to her German captives and proclaimed defiantly, "You can't hang all 190 million of us."

Speaker E

[music] The story of Zoya was circulated widely and she became a national heroine. Zya grew to be a symbol not only of partisan resistance but the defiance of Russian womanhood in the face of the most terrible adversity.

Speaker E

The necessities of the war in the east smashed through most of the remaining barriers to women's contribution to the Soviet war effort.

Speaker E

Despite the suffering which the German invasion had brought about, the people of the Soviet Union had taken everything that the Germans could throw at them, and the nation had held. By now, the majority of the population were willing cogs in a gigantic war machine.

Speaker E

Civilians and soldiers alike seemed to grasp a new awareness of their role in the bitter conflict which raged all around them.

Speaker E

The mood of the retreating Germans was one of intense frustration and manic desperation. Each man knowing he was staring death in the face.

Speaker E

Their fury at certain death was unleashed towards civilians and soldiers alike. The Germans had been decisively [music] defeated, but the war in the east was far from over.

Speaker E

Even though a strategic withdrawal to the river Denipa seemed the only possible option for the ragged German formations, [music] Hitler initially stuck to his policy of holding territory to the last man.

Speaker E

Fontibilskier, [music] one of the German generals in the east, summed up the helpless rage of [music] the field commanders, forced to sacrifice men and material to a principle of no withdrawal, which had now [music] been elevated to a moral necessity. A series of withdrawals by

Speaker E

adequately large steps would have worn down the Russian strength, besides creating opportunities [music] for counterstrokes when the German forces were numerous enough to make them effective.

Speaker E

The root cause of the German defeat was the way her forces were [music] wasted in fruitless efforts and above all fruitless resistance at the wrong time and place.

Speaker E

By the 23rd of August, Karkov was once again in Russian hands. By the 30th, Tagenrog had fallen. The capture of Donbass was followed by Novasi. And by the 25th of September, Smealinsk had also been retaken.

Speaker E

The waters of the Denipa represented the only possibility of regrouping the decimated German divisions.

Speaker E

For the pursuing Red Army, the liberation of the towns and villages east of the Deniper continued to fill the hearts of its soldiers with a succession of contrasting emotions. The scenes of devastation and cruelty on a scale never even considered before. Pits full of dead children and the

Speaker E

starved remains of whole families could only make their determination [music] to totally crush their opposition complete.

Speaker E

[music] Even in retreat, the elite units of the German army such as the G Deutsland division managed to maintain something of their reputations by mounting a ferocious defense of the German rear.

Speaker E

But the Deniper was not to prove the refuge the battered German troops had been promised. Even as their defensive perimeter finally withdrew to the river's edge, they found the Russians already established there. Goed onward by their commanders, by the

Speaker E

atrocities they had witnessed and the prospect of sweeping the enemy from the motherland, the Russians dispatched the German rear guard and immediately prepared to continue their pursuit.

Speaker E

Between the 22nd and 30th of September, the Russians had forced numerous crossings of the 300-mile stretch of the river between the Pryyat marshes and Zopo Oia. Further south, by the 23rd of October, Zaparajia and Meltop were taken by the Russians and the 17th Army was isolated

Speaker E

in the Crimea, reducing the dwindling strength of their eastern forces by a further quarter of a million. To the north, Kiev fell on the 6th of November, threatening the northern flank of Army Group South's defense of the Denipa Bend.

Speaker E

This Soviet pressure continued throughout November and December. Despite Fon Mannstein's pleas to abandon what was now a vulnerable salient, Hitler remained adamant that the Denipa Bend was to be held at all costs.

Speaker E

By the new year of 1944, the line of German resistance from the Baltic to the Black Sea had either collapsed or was suffering such Russian pressure as to make it untenable. In Italy, the Allies had landed on September the 3rd and were battling their way up the peninsula.

Speaker E

Back in Germany, the Reich was being subjected to destruction from the air on a scale never before experienced by any nation in the world.

Speaker E

In the first major blow against Hamburg, 30,000 people perished in a series of raids which left many more scarred and burned.

Speaker E

The noose around Germany was tightening rapidly and a new year on the eastern front offered no relief from the process of strangulation.

Speaker E

By January Idians had advanced north of Kiev and were now just 18 mi from the Polish border. On the 14th of January, the offensive which came to be known as the liberation of Leningrad was launched.

Speaker E

Soviet forces smashed through the German defensive positions around the city, clearing the territory southwards as far as Nogarod. On the 17th of January, the besieged city was finally liberated. Leningrad had endured 900 days of isolation and unbelievable hardship. 1 million people had died.

Speaker E

From the point of view of the Leningraders, the lifting of the siege of Leningrad could not really accommodate too soon. Remember it was 900 days of starvation, bombardment, hunger, death, privation. Even now, as the Russians admit to days of cannibalism. So Russians were down to

Speaker E

very little. There was malnutrition. There was fortunately there was very little disease. I think many people explain that thanks to the climate. It was very cold.

Speaker E

But nonetheless, this was a city which had really suffered so dreadfully and and appallingly. People were falling dead at their desks or their workshops or at their places of work. There was a problem with children. Although many civilians had been evacuated, including civilians, there was still a large urban

Speaker E

population. So the lifting of the siege of Leningrad is also very important militarily because really what the Soviet command wanted to do and it it was crucial to the Soviet command was to break the power of army group north

Speaker E

which in fact that was the the German army group holding Leningrad and indeed the western approaches of the Soviet Union and the Baltic states. So releasing Leningrad and then once again striking into the rear of Army Group North did two things. Yes, it liberated Leningrad. gave the Russians an

Speaker E

important psychological boost, but even more important, it pushed this army group away. And again, it gave the Soviet uh command access to the Baltic states, which was yet another route into the west, which was the obviously the main direction of their strategic strike.

Speaker E

On the 4th of March, the northern flank of Fon Manstein's army group south was pierced by the first Ukrainian front under direct command of Marshall Zhukov.

Speaker E

By the 7th, after advancing 100 miles, the Russians were a stride the Warsaw Adessa railway line. And by the 28th, Nicad on the Boog had been captured.

Speaker E

Further south, the river Desta was crossed and Cleron at the mouth of the Deniper overrun. By April, the Red Army's overstretched supply lines and the spring floods dictated an end to what was now being named the Mud Offensive

Speaker E

in the Crimea. However, the Russians continued to attack and Sevastapole was taken on the 19th of May, bringing the northern shore of the Black Sea into Soviet hands once more.

Speaker E

While the Russians were threatening the southern sector of the Eastern Front with collapse, events were unfolding off the south coast of England, which would completely alter the complexion of the war in the east.

Speaker E

The long- awaited second front was about to be created. Until now, the Allied practical support had been limited to sending vehicles to support the Russians. What happened was Great Britain and the United States sent the um the Soviet Union during the war about 22,000

Speaker E

aircraft and about 12,000 tanks. But when you consider the fact that the Russians produced 16,000 tanks during the war and therefore our tank supplies were roughly about somewhere about 10%. Though they were used actually um but I think the Russians found the tanks not very much use. I mean they weren't like

Speaker E

the T-34. they weren't fitted for operational conditions of you know the eastern front but clearly the important thing from the uh lendley's point of view was the 400,000 vehicles that we delivered to to the red army it made the

Speaker E

red army mobile jeeps dude bakers you know the the whole paniply of motor transport that that gave the red army a degree of mobility which was extremely important certainly once the red army started to move westwards that is after

Speaker E

or slightly before but certainly after the battle of kusk the red army was not only an army of tank armies, it was also from that point of view a highly mobile army.

Speaker F

Now, in addition to supporting the Russians with supplies, the Allies were about to make a real contribution in the field. A fleet of over 5,000 vessels had been gathered together for the invasion of France.

Speaker F

1,200 naval vessels were on hand to sweep for mines. bombarded the German coastal defenses and protect the invaders from airborne and naval assault. [music] 4,000 ships, barges, tugs, and amphibious craft were available for the transportation of the 2 million men and

Speaker F

their weapons which were to be landed on the northern coast of France over a two-month period.

Speaker F

Two Malbury harbors as large as medium-sized ports were to be towed across the channel in sections and constructed close to the French shore.

Speaker F

In the air, 7,500 aircraft were mastered for the direct support of the invasion. In the early hours of the morning of the 6th of June, the first Allied paratroopers were dropped behind the targeted beaches.

Speaker F

At dawn, five landing parties approached these beaches from the sea. By the first week in July, 1 million Allied soldiers had been landed. While the attention of the world focused on the D-Day landing and its aftermath, the Red Army launched a fresh offensive against Army Group Center in

Speaker F

Bellarussia. Starting actually opened that attack on June the 22nd, 1944, which was the anniversary of the German invasion of Russia. By the way, the point was not lost on lots of soldiers and many civilians. So army group centers say was a a formidable mass of of infantry and

Speaker F

of armored concentrations. It was it really its extent was also very considerable. It covered both in the north and moving down to the south as say it covered the key areas which the Russians wanted both for access and

Speaker F

also for movement and therefore it simply had to be destroyed. And this involved actually a Russian plan which was really quite complex. It meant first of all conducting what you might call a limited encirclement. First of all to

Speaker F

encircle the nearest German armies and then break them up. And the next stage was quite different. And that happened around about uh well it only took them about 10 days to do this, even less perhaps and then to move out with with

Speaker F

mobile columns at high speed to conduct an even larger encirclement. And what the Russians did actually towards the end of June 1944 was to repeat almost in the same place the gigantic encirclement of German soldiers which the German army

Speaker F

had done to the Red Army in June and July of 1941. The destruction of Army Group Center moved at lightning speed. Most of the Third Panser army was destroyed within a few days.

Speaker F

At the beginning of July 1944, 100,000 German [music] troops were encircled at Minsk. Within the week, Army Group Center had been effectively [music] destroyed.

Speaker F

An incision 250 mi wide had been sliced in the German front, and German casualties were estimated at 300,000. The Russian army now had a clear pathway to East Prussia and the Baltic. The failure of the Germans to deal with the

Speaker F

summer offensive was emerging as a disaster on such a scale that even the debacle of Stalingrad pald in comparison.

Speaker F

The war correspondent Alexander [music] Vet reported from the Russian capital in Moscow today. All hearts are filled with joy. The new places now being captured by the Russians are in distant Lithuania or in western Bellarussia.

Speaker F

Division after division has been encircled and wiped out. Hundreds of thousands killed and about 100,000 taken prisoner. The score of generals captured is about 25. Of these 100,000 or so prisoners, 57,000 were paraded throughout the streets of Moscow with their generals at their

Speaker F

head. The Germans had finally arrived in Moscow. When the parade was over, Russian sanitation trucks disinfected the streets.

Speaker F

By the middle of July, the Germans had been swept from Bellarussia and the Russians held much of northeast Poland. As they drove northwards into Lithuania, Army Group North was threatened with encirclement.

Speaker F

Army Group North was a very formidable force contained veteran battle tested soldiers who were extremely hard not to crack and the fighting in the north even after the liberation of Lenigrad was very severe and very intensive and the

Speaker F

Red Army made relatively slow progress coming up against opposition like that. did finally begin to break into the Baltic states bit by bit. But that fighting went on largely until about March 1945, which shows you the nature of that resistance and the very considerable importance of that corridor

Speaker F

which led westwards and northwestwards. South of the Pryyat Marsh, the Russians were making faster progress. Army group north Ukraine were flung back beyond Lav and Lublin. By the end of the month, units of the Red Army had reached the

Speaker F

Vistula and were attacking the Warsaw suburbs. On the 1st of August, the Polish Home Army Command in London, anxious that the Polish capital should not fall into the hands of the advancing Soviets, ordered the Warsaw Partisans to rise against their Nazi oppressors. It was to prove a

Speaker F

tragic mistake. The 20,000 insurgents held only enough ammunition for [music] 7 days fighting. By the end of the battle, after 2 months of bitter struggle, 9/10 of the city had been destroyed. 200,000 people had been massacred and the rest deported to extermination camps.

Speaker F

The SS had organized an orgy of savagery, sousing people with petrol and setting them a light, gassing them in the sewers, and subjecting them to a nightmare regime of torture and outofhand execution.

Speaker F

During this period, the Red Army remained on the outskirts of the city. Stalin was accused of standing by while this barbarous campaign of reprisal wiped out any opposition to Russian domination of Poland.

Speaker F

On the 20th of August, the Soviet army unexpectedly launched a huge offensive against Romania, which was a major issue for Hitler.

Speaker F

Hitler was obsessed with the southern flank. Um he maintained that if it was at all possible to destroy uh Soviet access [music] to the oil fields, if it was possible, if if you like to cut the the lifeline of the Soviet Republic, then in fact the war

Speaker F

would come quickly to an end. He was intent. He said actually that one of his main objectives was to seize the oil of the caucuses. And even in 1940, that is long before the German invasion of Russia, Hitler had taken great care to

Speaker F

send a very powerful German military mission to Romania and to make absolutely sure that the remaining oil fields were heavily protected. So his concern, if you like, for the economic potential of southeastern Europe, which obviously involved Romania, was very important and it had a political

Speaker F

importance as well. This was to show, for example, that this wasn't just a German invasion of the Soviet Union. It was in fact the axis in action. And if you look at the composition of the forces which invaded the Soviet Union,

Speaker F

they included Italians, included Slovaks, they included uh there was a Spanish element as well. Later on, there were Romanians, there were Hungarians.

Speaker F

So from that point of view it was I think if you like in Hitler's terms a kind of multinational political uh and military crusade which he was both organizing and which he was intending to commit in what was his own

Speaker F

crusade for the elimination of what he called Jewish bulsheism. By the 23rd, 20 divisions of the German Sixth Army had been encircled in a giant pocket between the rivers Desta and Prut. An action which was admired by the

Speaker F

eminent military historian Zima who noted in executing their breakthroughs. The Russians showed an elegance in their tactical conceptions, economy of force and control that did not fall short of the Germans own performance in the early war years.

Speaker F

The effect of these reverses on Hitler was catastrophic. Increasingly, he retreated into a semifantasy world, which did not correspond to the realities of the battlefield.

Speaker F

It seemed that he hoped to hide from the public eye until he could once again force [music] events to conform to the pattern he had enjoyed until 1942.

Speaker F

So he continued to hide himself away in his headquarters, embarrassed to face up to the hollowess of his boasts. Hitler's ostensible reason for shutting himself away was the demands made on him by the war. In reality, he was hiding

Speaker F

from the humiliating pattern of failure. The commanders in the east nevertheless had to deal with the orders of this shambling reclusive [music] who was now a pathetic shadow of the decisive, intuitive, and supremely arrogant leader who had launched Operation Barbarosa.

Speaker F

Stalin sent the Red Army of liberation northwards. And by the 31st of August, Bucharest had been entered. An essentially communist government was formed and Romania was compelled to ratify its 1940 loss of territory to Russia.

Speaker F

It was also forced to pay the Soviet Union a financial indemnity and use its army to fight against its urswire allies.

Speaker F

The Red Army had advanced 250 mi in 12 days. In the next 6 days, it dashed a further 200 m to the Yugoslav border at Tu Sein.

Speaker F

From here, the Soviets launched a giant flanking maneuver against the Axis defenders of Hungary. By the 24th of September, the southeast salient of Hungary had been removed. The Russians had advanced to within 100 miles of Budapest.

Speaker F

From a strategic point of view, the whole of that southeastern area was of great importance and its importance was no more dramatically demonstrated than in the summer of 1944 when Romania defected from the Axis alliance from from the German alliance. What happened then was the whole of the the not the

Speaker F

southern wing but the southern front began to cave in. In other words, Hungary uh and and Romania were in many respects a strategic buttress if you like or a strategic glaci which were very important to Hitler and signs of

Speaker F

disaection after the defeat of and destruction of the Romanian armies in Stalingrad or the Hungarian armies. Signs of disaection in southeastern Europe I think were more than uh slightly alarming to Hitler. I mean the realization that the that if you like the structure of his alliance and the

Speaker F

nature of his military organization that is in strategic terms was beginning to crumble. Further south the Yugoslav capital Bgrade was liberated with the aid of the Yugoslavian resistance under Tito.

Speaker F

[cheering] Bulgaria, until now at war only with Britain and the United States, was pressurized by Germany into declaring war on the USSR as well.

Speaker F

4 days after this declaration of the 5th of September, the Bulgarians surrendered. Further west, Slovakia, formerly a co-elligerant of Germany, had been in a state of upheaval since the previous year.

Speaker F

A general uprising began in the second half of 1944, but a Russian advance, which began in September, was held up in the Kapathians by stiff German resistance and failed to reach Slovakia before the middle of October.

Speaker F

By then, the 65,000 strong uprising had been quelled. The by now sickeningly familiar results of Nazi barbarity greeted Russian liberators and more than 200 mass graves had been filled with slaughtered Slovaks.

Speaker F

In the north, an armistice was concluded with Finland and the Germans driven back into Norway before climatic conditions put an end to the fighting there.

Speaker F

The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were overrun, and the German army group north isolated in the Kurland Peninsula.

Speaker F

By January 1945, with all German troops finally driven from the holy soil of mother Russia and Stalin in control of the Balkans and the Baltic states, the Red Army prepared for its final drive towards the Vice.

Speaker F

Between June and November, the German army in the east had suffered over 1 million casualties, 214,000 killed, and 629,000 missing in action. Another approximately 600,000 men had been seriously wounded. 1944 had proved Germany's most disastrous year of the war in the east. 106 divisions had been destroyed, three

Speaker F

more than the total number mobilized in September 1939. [music] German intelligence estimated that in the assault on the Reich, the Red Army would possess a superiority of 11 to1 in infantry, 7 to1 in tanks, and 20 to1 in

Speaker F

guns. Hitler dismissed such estimates as bluff. On the 12th of January, the Soviets launched their expected offensive from the Vistula against the German Central Front.

Speaker F

The 70 divisions of Army Group Center and Army Group A were pierced over an area of 200 m and almost 200 divisions of the Red Army poured through the brereech.

Speaker F

By the end of the month, Soviet forces [music] reached the lower reaches of the river Oda and were now only 40 mi from Berlin.

Speaker F

The remnants of Army Group Center had been encircled in East Prussia. Falling back on the ancient city of Kernigborg, they pathetically attempted to carry out Hitler's order to defend the region to a man.

Speaker F

The Soviet tide was finally halted on the line of the river Oda and Nicer in February, but the limited German counterstroke was merely postponing the inevitable.

Speaker F

A fresh Russian offensive in Hungary progressed to the borders of Austria by April the 1st, and 6 days later, the outskirts of Vienna were coming under Soviet fire.

Speaker A

Hitler was not a German, he was an Austrian. And this uh if one looks at his attitudes and his predelections, his commitments and if you like uh his emotional drive, it is towards all right southeastern Europe to Hungary, Romania and other areas if you like it's it's

Speaker A

some kind of reflection almost the shadow of the Hapsburg Empire which was of course crucially crucially strategically important. It was politically important. And it was economically important, but also I think uh it it had for Hitler this emotional attraction, this sense that if this

Speaker A

entity or these entities broke up, if the Bolevik hordes broke into this area, then indeed this was the final cataclysm and this spelt actual doom. To the north on April the 16th, the final thrust towards Berlin began. On the first day

Speaker A

of the assault alone, 42,000 artillery pieces and mortars fired 2,450 freight car loads of shells towards the German lines.

Speaker A

Shukov, excited at the prospect of being the first Soviet commander to reach Berlin, opened the attack, lighting the battlefield with search lights to blind the enemy.

Speaker A

Having retreated to the capital, Hitler alternated between vitriolic outbursts about betrayal and demonic delight in the Holocaust which was descending on Germany. In the words of Albert Spear, he deliberately attempted to make everything perish with him.

Speaker A

Army, state, and economic leaders tried to mediate Hitler's destructiveness with varying degrees of success. By the 22nd of April, with Russian troops now fighting on the streets of the German capital, the insanity was about to end.

Speaker A

But the street warfare in Berlin was bitter. The threat of a Bulvic invasion had been hyped by the Nazi propaganda machine as the end of Germany and the German people.

Speaker A

Even in the last chaotic days of the Reich, there was a common joke. Enjoy the war while you can. The peace will be terrible.

Speaker A

On the night of the 28th of April, with the Russian forces grinding ever closer to his headquarters, Hitler married his mistress, Ava Brown.

Speaker A

After the wedding meal, he retired to write his last will and testament. He defiantly reaffirmed his belief in Laben's realm and indulged in one vitriolic attack on the Jewish race. On the afternoon of the 30th of April, having made his farewells, he poisoned his wife and his dog and shot himself.

Speaker A

The Hitler's bodies were burned on a petrol- soaked p to be joined the following night by Dr. and Fra Gerbles and their six children which they had poisoned. On the same evening that Hitler, sergeants Yagarov and Canaria planted the victory banner of the Soviet flag on

Speaker A

the rice tag at 2250 hours. It symbolized the triumph of the Soviet Union over Nazi Germany.

Speaker A

But the cost had been horrendous. By the 8th of May, when the German act of surrender was ratified at Russian headquarters in Berlin, 28 million Russians, one in seven of the population had died as a direct result of the war. They had died as soldiers, partisans, prisoners of war, slaves, or

Speaker A

innocent civilians. They had met their end through bombs, bullets hunger torture burning and exposure.

Speaker A

Less than 5% of the young people aged between 17 and 21 had survived. For each of the 1,418 days of the war, almost 19,000 Russian people had perished.

Speaker A

The German invaders destroyed or burnt 1,700 towns and more than 70,000 villages and hamlets. Decommissioned 60% of the steel works and 60% of the coal [music] mines. Destroyed 65,000 km of railway lines and 4,100 stations, 36,000 communication centers and tens of thousands of state

Speaker A

farms. They looted and demolished 40,000 medical establishments, 84,000 schools, and 43,000 [music] public libraries.

Speaker A

25 million people had been left homeless. But in the end, the Germans had been defeated.

Speaker A

Throughout Western Europe, Germans from the SS, the Army, and the Civilian Administration were put on trial for offenses committed during the Nazi occupation. However, the number punished and the severity of their sentences was astonishingly limited given the massive

Speaker A

scale of the crimes against humanity which had occurred. Even though the Russian government had the right to hold its own trials under article 10 of the four power ordinance, none took place.

Speaker A

Stalin was far more concerned about taking vengeance on traitors to the Soviet Union. Some 250,000 prisoners of war, now in Allied hands, were Soviet citizens who had been captured in German uniform.

Speaker A

Under agreements affirmed at the Yalttar Conference in 1945, those accused of treason or desertion were to be returned to their native countries for judgment. Those who had fought for the Germans were now forcibly repatriated.

Speaker A

Some took the only escape route open to them and committed. The Soviet authorities regarded these traitors as human scum and treated them with a barbarity which reflected their hatred.

Speaker A

Another 2 and a4 million Russian prisoners of war had been captured during the occupation or had surrendered on the fields of battle. Tragically, Russian administrators seemed to view their very survival as an act of treachery.

Speaker A

Many who had lived through years of gruesome warfare and the savage inhuman degradation [music] of the German work camps were now to spend the remainder of their time in the penal colonies of their own motherland.

Speaker A

Inside Russia, the pre-war status quo was rapidly reestablished and strengthened. [cheering] The cult of Stalin as a personalization of victory ensured that his position as dictator of an authoritarian centralized society was unassailable. [cheering] The reforms and liberalizations which

Speaker A

had occurred during the organized chaos of the war years were gradually retracted. religious toleration, a greater modum of democratic involvement in civilian administration, and the virtues of individual and collective initiative became incompatible with the need for the entrenched elite to control all

Speaker A

aspects of social development. But none of this should detract from the awesome achievement of the Soviet people. Through their bravery, their labor, and their sacrifice, they managed to halt and eventually crush a seemingly invincible war machine, which with chilling efficiency had conquered almost

Speaker A

the entire Western European continent in a matter of months. They annihilated a German army which had unleashed in its wake a regime of apocalyptic terror. A tyranny which had turned vast tracks of Europe into a surreal playground of sadists and perverts.

Speaker A

The victory of the Soviet people may not have ensured an era of justice and democratic ideals, but rid the world of the cancerous malignancy of national socialism, which had for long periods threatened to engulf it.

Topics:Operation BarbarossaEastern Front WWIIHitlerStalinSoviet UnionNazi GermanyGrossraumLebensraumWorld War IIRed Army

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