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00:01The Battle of Stalingrad is said to have been the bloodiest of the whole of the Second World War.
00:07It's a struggle between the German fatherland and the Russian motherland.
00:12The Soviet troops moving into that city know that it's essentially a death sentence.
00:19If Stalingrad falls, that's it for the Soviet Union.
00:25Hitler had no understanding of the enormous will of the Soviet people.
00:30The Battle of Stalingrad is one of the most brutal engagements of World War II.
00:37Now, rare footage from around the world, expertly restored in full color, tells the story as you've never seen it
00:47before.
00:54In August 1939, Hitler and Stalin sign a non-aggression pact. The world is taken by surprise.
01:07Hitler is expanding the borders of Nazi Germany eastwards, annexing Austria and occupying Czechoslovakia.
01:20And from the earliest days of his career, Hitler made no secret of his hatred for communism, nor his desire
01:29for Soviet territory.
01:31For Hitler, the Soviet Union was the home of this new ideology which he detested.
01:37Communism stood in the way of Aryan supremacy.
01:42And that was his fundamental concern.
01:44The ten-year pact flies in the face of everything the two great dictators stand for.
01:51The Russian public, and the military in particular, could not understand that these had been the enemy, and how could
01:57they now have any kind of a deal?
02:00Stalin himself had actually read Mein Kampf.
02:04He was not naive about Hitler's aims.
02:09This was a deal with the devil for both sides.
02:13But while Western diplomats struggle to understand this baffling alliance, Hitler and Stalin revealed their hands.
02:23The Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east.
02:24In the beginning of September 1939, Germany invades Poland from the west.
02:30Shortly after, the Soviet Union invades from the east.
02:37Within a few short weeks, Hitler and Stalin's armies complete their conquest.
02:43Poland surrenders.
02:49As they carve up the spoils and redraw Poland's borders.
02:57The true meaning of the Nazi-Soviet pact becomes clear.
03:04It was a marriage of convenience.
03:07As Poland was consumed by fascist and communist expansionism.
03:14But while Stalin consolidates his land grab, Hitler is far from finished.
03:27Over the next two years, Stalin watches on.
03:31As the Nazi war machine blitzes its way across Europe.
03:36Smashing through democracies like Norway.
03:44Belgium.
03:47The Netherlands.
03:51And France.
03:58At first, the overthrow of major democracies plays into Stalin's hands.
04:04But as the dust settles, it becomes increasingly obvious.
04:08Hitler has no intention of merely expanding to the west.
04:17Hitler is in control of all of Western and Central Europe.
04:22Russia really is the last frontier for him.
04:24Russia.
04:27With Hitler's troops busy holding his gains across Europe.
04:31And the Nazi-Soviet pact in place.
04:34Nobody expects the Fuehrer to open a second front of the war.
04:40Although so many national leaders have learned that Hitler's promises mean nothing.
04:47When the betrayal comes, it is still unexpected.
04:59On the very early morning of the 22nd of June 1941, everything changed.
05:05Operation Barbarossa started.
05:08And Hitler attacked the Soviet Union.
05:11And from this very moment onwards, the two countries were again arch enemies.
05:19Hitler's hunger for Soviet territory is all-consuming.
05:24Communism had to be defeated.
05:26The Soviet had to be defeated.
05:28And Stalin had to be defeated.
05:30And Hitler wants him defeated quickly.
05:33The initial idea of the Germans was to crush their army within six, eight weeks.
05:43They used the now textbook Nazi tactic of Blitzkrieg.
05:48An overwhelming attack.
05:51First by planes.
05:53Followed rapidly by tanks.
05:58Artillery.
06:00And infantry.
06:06Hitler at this point believed that the Red Army would collapse like a house of cards.
06:11All they had to do was kick in the door and the whole rotten structure would collapse.
06:16By December 1941, the German army has stormed through Soviet territory, holding a line that stretches from Leningrad to Rostov.
06:28The Red Army suffers astonishing casualties, losing three million soldiers.
06:36But the Nazi onslaught is finally halted at Moscow.
06:45By the following spring, it is clear that Russia isn't going to fall as easily as France.
06:51And Hitler's war machine needs feeding.
06:57Germany is going to continue fighting the war.
07:00It needs oil. It needs vital resources.
07:02And that means heading down to the Caucasus of the southern part of the Soviet Union.
07:06So in the summer of 1942, as the Wehrmacht continues its assault on Russia, Hitler and his generals plan to
07:16send German army groups south to take the rich oil fields.
07:21But as Hitler plots the route to the Caucasus, he spots the opportunity to strike a humiliating blow to his
07:29adversary.
07:32The German high command, when they're going over the plan for that summer, they notice that there's this city named
07:37Stalingrad there.
07:39Just a juicy morsel that caught their eye.
07:43There are strategic reasons for taking Stalingrad.
07:47The large industrial city supplies the Red Army with tanks and armaments.
07:54And sits right on the bank of the mighty river Volga.
08:01The capture of Stalingrad would cut off this major Soviet supply route.
08:08But the main reason Hitler wants Stalingrad is because of its name.
08:16Wouldn't this be a coup to really embarrass Stalin by taking a city that has his name?
08:23Hitler changes his plan and splits his forces into two.
08:27One group continues towards the oil fields, while the other heads for Stalingrad.
08:33The seeds are sown for a major battle of wills.
08:39Just as important as it was for Hitler to take the city for reasons of prestige,
08:43it was exactly the same for Stalin to keep it.
08:49Stalingrad not only bears Stalin's name, but also holds a deep personal significance.
08:56This was the city where he had fought and won in the Russian Civil War.
09:03There is an emotion to defend that city during this new great patriotic war.
09:09Stalin, already furious that so many Soviet towns had fallen so easily,
09:14is determined that Stalingrad will be different.
09:20On the 28th of July, he issues Order 227, urging not one step back.
09:29Stalin heaped shame on the Red Army.
09:34But the Red Army could redeem itself by fighting heroically and by not ceding one step of holy Soviet soil.
09:44If the defenders of Stalingrad are to stand firm against the Nazi assault,
09:51Stalin has to inspire them like never before.
09:56He puts the internationalist communist ideal to one side and appeals to pre-revolution sentiments.
10:05Patriotism.
10:06Love of the motherland.
10:09Fighting for the motherland, the homeland, resonated intensely with virtually any Soviet citizen.
10:16The overriding motivator was love for the motherland and deep hatred toward the invader.
10:24And the people of Stalingrad have more than patriotism to motivate them.
10:32By the summer 42, most Russian people had a very good idea of what the Germans had been doing,
10:38particularly to civilians and to Jews in the occupied areas.
10:42Murdering thousands of people, cutting a swath of death and destruction.
10:49They were scarcely an atrocity that didn't go unnoticed,
10:53and they were broadcast widely through the population and through the military.
10:59When you've got an enemy who is saying,
11:01I will kill you, I will kill your wife, your children, and I'll be the master here.
11:07What sort of reaction do you expect from local population?
11:13For the people of Stalingrad, patriotism and fear are powerful motivators.
11:19They rally to create local defences, digging anti-tank ditches to slow the Wehrmacht.
11:26They call everyone out to contribute, men, women and children.
11:31Ahead of the German advance, the Soviets destroy their own property,
11:36laying waste to anything that might be useful to the German army.
11:40They are really creating kind of scorched earth landscape for the Germans to finally come up against.
11:52Leading the German charge towards Stalingrad is General Paulus.
11:59Friedrich Paulus, some said was quite an imposing figure, tall, slim, but was regarded by his fellow soldiers as a
12:07bit of a backroom star rather than a frontline soldier.
12:13Paulus is a classic standoffish German commander who prefers to win by using longer range weaponry and by intimidating the
12:22opponents if he possibly can.
12:24The Soviets brace themselves for Paulus's ground attack.
12:29But when the barrage comes, it doesn't come from his artillery.
12:39The bombing no one expected.
12:42Theatres were running, children were going to school.
12:47This hit them out of the blue.
12:49On the 23rd of August 1942, the skies over Stalingrad turned black with swarms of Nazi bombers.
13:00And we're talking some 600 aircraft.
13:04A thousand tons of bombs are dropped on the city.
13:13The Soviet air force is too poorly equipped to defend against the onslaught.
13:21Planes were just able to come over again and again and again, dropping their bombs.
13:29As the city was mainly built from wood, it went up like a funeral pyre.
13:36It lit fires that did not go out for months.
13:43By day, pillars of smoke.
13:48By night, the flames of these fires that were never extinguished.
13:55By the end of it, the landscape was apocalyptic.
14:01German bombers had smashed everything in sight.
14:04Buildings, factories, parks, anything in the city was essentially rubbled.
14:09Turned neat city blocks into nothing more than piles of steel and stone.
14:17The German aerial attack on Stalingrad is the most intense of the entire war on the Eastern Front.
14:26It claims the lives of over 40,000 Soviets.
14:31And the tanks and artillery under General Paulus haven't even arrived.
14:37And if the survivors have any plans to flee the burning city, they are soon quashed.
14:46Stalin mandated that everyone in Stalingrad stays put.
14:52No one is leaving the city.
14:55The only escape route is across the Volga.
15:00And the Soviet Navy has other priorities.
15:04The naval body on the river itself was devoted almost entirely to moving food, ammunition and troops either to Stalingrad
15:13or wounded back from Stalingrad.
15:15Among the defenders with no option but to stay and fight are soldiers the Nazis would never dream of deploying.
15:26There were about one million Soviet women who served in the Red Army.
15:34As the country was invaded, women volunteered on just about the same proportion as men.
15:42What's so significant about that is not just the number but also about half of them served in active combat
15:48roles.
15:49They were in tank crews, they were snipers, they were gunners.
15:54Even as nurses and medics, they were expected to go onto the battlefield to recover wounded and many nurses actually
16:01died on the battlefield.
16:04Even in those so-called support roles, these were women who were armed, who were trained to use their weapons
16:09and who fought.
16:13When the advancing German army first encounter women with guns, they are stunned.
16:23They were used to women in Germany being exalted by the Nazis, they were mothers, they were home makers, but
16:29they were not combat soldiers.
16:32Germans thought that women serving with weapons in hand were proof of the denatured essence that is Soviet communism.
16:44And it must have told the Germans, actually, if the Russian women are prepared to throw in their lot alongside
16:49their men,
16:52we've got to defeat a whole people, it's not just the army.
16:56The relentless advance continues.
17:00By the end of August, German tanks hit the suburbs of Reinach within sight of the city and the river
17:06Volga.
17:08Confidence is running high.
17:10They had reached a price that they knew was important to the Führer back in Germany,
17:16and they were going to take it probably, they felt, within a week or two.
17:23Stalin was furious.
17:25What are you doing there, my generals?
17:27That was his question.
17:30Stalin reissues his order to defend the city at all costs.
17:34There will be no more retreat.
17:38The river Volga is the last defendable position before the Ural Mountains.
17:43Stalin makes sure that every Soviet knows what is at stake.
17:52The slogan that goes through the Soviet defense is, there is no land beyond the Volga.
17:57As if this is the last ditch, literally, that if Stalingrad falls, that's it for the Soviet Union.
18:06Suddenly, the German advance grinds to a halt.
18:12Stopped not by the Soviet ditches, but by the Luftwaffe.
18:18The city had been so thoroughly wrecked, it was almost impossible to move their tanks through the rubble.
18:27Paulus had to change tactics.
18:28He switches to more maneuverable artillery units to soften up Soviet resistance before German infantry can storm the city.
18:39Very quickly, Hitler's troops make strategic gains, taking the main railway station.
18:46And the important high ground of Mamaev-Kurgan.
18:53From Mamaev-Kurgan, they are able to see the whole of the rest of the city.
18:58And artillery observers on that height would be able to completely dominate the fighting.
19:03By the middle of September, it must have seemed to most of the German attackers that they were almost there.
19:10Surely, within a very short space of time, the Russian defenders are going to melt away and they will have
19:14the whole of the city.
19:16But the Soviets show no sign of submitting.
19:21To halt Nazi games, Stalin sends in one of his best generals.
19:28General Tchaikov was very much in the new breed of Russian general.
19:32He was tough, he was stoical, he was arguably quite ruthless, and he was the right man for the job.
19:39And Tchaikov couldn't be less like his German counterpart, General Paulus.
19:45He was a real soldier's soldier.
19:49He was approachable, genuinely concerned about his troops.
19:54He was someone who went to the front lines.
19:57He kept his headquarters very near the front lines.
20:01People said everything changed after Tchaikov took command.
20:05And the biggest effect he had was on morale, just totally turned around morale for his troops.
20:12And General Tchaikov knows a thing about Paulus' tactics.
20:17As commander of the Soviet 64th Army on its retreat towards Stalingrad,
20:22he knows Germans like to fight at a distance.
20:26In the open, with tanks, air power and artillery.
20:32He's lost a lot of men under his command when he's been trying to fight that.
20:37Then in the city of Stalingrad, he comes into his own.
20:41He can see that they need mobility and they need speed and they need space.
20:45And what he's going to do in Stalingrad is deny them space.
20:51Now commanding the 62nd Army defending the city,
20:55Tchaikov reorganizes it into small units or storm troops to downsize the battle.
21:03The storm troop tactic came to be called hug the enemy because he would say you need to get close.
21:09You should be no more than a grenade throw apart.
21:14What he means is get so close to them that they dare not use their artillery and air power because
21:20their own troops will be too much at risk.
21:23The strategy neutralizes Paulus' greatest advantage.
21:28With it, Tchaikov heralds in a new era of urban warfare.
21:34Brutal, bloody, extreme close quarters combat.
21:41You essentially have Soviet and German troops meters apart in adjacent rooms and buildings.
21:51Urban warfare is something that every army hates.
21:55Nobody wants to fight in a city, and especially a city that's been destroyed into a rubble heap.
22:01They fought even in the cellars, in the tunnels.
22:06It was really a dirty war.
22:08The Germans called it the Rattenkrieg, the rats' war.
22:15As the bitter, bloody fight unfolded, the question was why the Germans had chosen Stalingrad as the place to cut
22:23the Soviets' Volga supply route.
22:26They could do that anywhere along the Volga River.
22:28They didn't have to go through the city to do it.
22:31In some senses, it was a really poor military decision.
22:37In the confined conditions, troops use every weapon they have to hand.
22:42Pistols, grenades, machine guns, flamethrowers, even sharpened spades.
22:51But there's one key weapon that the ruins of Stalingrad offer the perfect conditions for.
22:58Snipers were sighted all over the city.
23:01Troikov realized how important they were.
23:05The rubble of Stalingrad offers concealment and cover.
23:11All the time, troops are hiding behind these scraps of rubble.
23:15But, of course, they need to stick their heads out occasionally.
23:20And then they will be vulnerable to the snipers who become the plague of Stalingrad.
23:26And Soviet women are at the forefront of the fight.
23:32There were women that were there in the Red Army as snipers.
23:37Many women were good shots because what it takes to be a good sniper is precision and patience.
23:42And women tended to be very good at that.
23:47Nevertheless, the Germans killed Soviet defenders at an alarming rate.
23:52It's a meat grinder, is what it amounts to.
23:55And you're constantly feeding new meat into the grinder.
23:58There was endless counter-attack.
24:01And the Germans were machine gunning them down again and again and again.
24:06Troops sent into the city, on average, will last for 24 hours before they're killed or wounded.
24:12But frustratingly for Paulus, Troikov always seems to have just enough soldiers to keep the Nazis at bay.
24:20And the pressure to cling on is unrelenting.
24:25The orders given by Stalin to his fronts and his armies and his divisions were to stand fast and fight
24:31for every inch of terrain.
24:34It was the fortress Stalingrad that was to be defended at all costs.
24:39Lives were not important.
24:42For Stalin, it was, we defend.
24:47The general motto of the Red Army was, we'll never surrender, no step back.
24:55We'll die here, but Germans will not capture it.
25:00The sacrifice made by the men and women of the Red Army unsettled the German attackers.
25:08The Soviet soldier was imagined as this brutish, beastly mass, subhuman,
25:14dogged and determined and completely disregarding their own survival instinct.
25:22But by October, it is clear that heroism won't be enough to stop the inevitable.
25:29Troikov is desperately holding on to landmarks.
25:33But the Germans are taking more and more of the city.
25:38Before long, they've actually forced the defenders back to just this really narrow strip ahead of the river.
25:44It seems only a matter of time before Stalin's cherished city will be in the hands of his hated enemy.
25:52To Hitler, it looks as though the battle is won, because on a map, almost all of Stalingrad is now
25:59in German hands.
26:01And he can take the rest at his leisure with small assault groups.
26:06The attitude of the German high command is we're superior.
26:10And we're going to remain superior and no Soviet attack will succeed.
26:15By the start of November, with 90% of Stalingrad in German hands, the battle was virtually won.
26:24When the pace of the fight slowed dramatically.
26:28The Soviet winter had arrived.
26:31The Germans are still not fully equipped for the tremendously low temperatures around minus 30 degrees.
26:40They have some winter clothing, but they're still resorting to newspaper and captured boots and so on in order to
26:48try to protect themselves against the cold.
26:51And the German army are running short of supplies.
26:57One big problem that the Germans are facing is the length of their supply lines.
27:04It's impossible to advance for many, many months and weeks.
27:10You have to stop somewhere.
27:12You have to reach your target.
27:14You have to wait for more resources coming.
27:18Surrounded by a wasteland, everything of potential value have been destroyed or removed.
27:25By the Soviet defenders.
27:27The Wehrmacht were counting on a rapid collapse of the enemy and getting a lot of access to resources on
27:32enemy territory.
27:33Which they don't get in Russia.
27:35Because of scorched earth policies, Stalingrad reveals the absolute limits of German logistics.
27:45Paulus and his troops regroup for a final push.
27:49If they can claim the last scraps of the city, they can cross the Volga and extend Hitler's empire to
27:56the Urals.
27:57But still the Soviets refuse to give way.
28:01Clinging to tiny enclaves along Stalingrad's river back.
28:05The Soviet resistance holds out until November the 19th.
28:10The day the war changes.
28:27The Soviet counter-offensive took them by total surprise.
28:39The Germans find themselves facing an offensive by over a million men and women stretched across the front.
28:46An enormous drive.
28:48Tanks, artillery in huge numbers concentrated at points of breakthrough.
28:56And everybody on the German side is completely mesmerized, paralyzed.
29:01Well, this has never happened before.
29:03We've never had this happen before.
29:06The Nazis have been duped on a grand scale.
29:12Stalin's deputy commander-in-chief, General Zhukov, had been plotting the massive counter-attack since mid-September.
29:21The orders that he gives to Zhukov and Stalingrad are fight, fight, fight, hang on at all costs.
29:29Reinforce the city with just enough forces to keep the Germans occupied and to hold on to as much of
29:36the city as he can.
29:37For two months, while Zhukov is hanging on by his fingernails, Zhukov comes up with this concept, Operation Oran.
29:46Zhukov had amassed one million soldiers without Paulus suspecting a thing.
29:53And the Soviets played him for a sucker.
29:56They transport all these troops in secret.
29:59The deception operation, the Maskarovka operation that they pull off is amazing.
30:04The German intelligence service never really realized that the Soviets were capable of such an operation.
30:13Sixth Army intelligence officers did notice suspicious troop movements on the flanks.
30:19And they did report them to the army command, but they were not believed.
30:25Everything had to be done at night.
30:27Troops had to be hidden during the day.
30:28And they don't just need to do this in one place, they need to do it in two.
30:36Zhukov realizes that the cream of the Nazi force are concentrated up front, fighting in the city, leaving their flanks
30:43and rear guard poorly defended.
30:47Most of the people doing the guarding in those areas, those vulnerable areas, were not Germans.
30:52They were affiliated armies like the Italians, the Romanians and the Hungarians.
30:57The Romanians had only joined Hitler's forces to reclaim the areas that the Soviet Union had already taken from them.
31:05They now find themselves hundreds of miles further into Soviet territory.
31:11They have no particular interest in being that far.
31:13And they certainly don't want to be there in the depths of the Russian winter.
31:18Zhukov's calculation proves devastatingly accurate as the Axis allies collapse.
31:24The Romanians just can't cope with this onslaught of Soviet troops.
31:30The flanks of the seemingly invincible Sixth Army find themselves overwhelmed by this surprise twin-pronged attack.
31:49This pincer movement is remarkable on account of its scale and its ambition.
31:55But it's also remarkable on account of the fact that it essentially copied German blitzkrieg tactics.
32:03The Soviets are able to break through the demoralized, overstretched Romanian forces in the open steppe.
32:10And amazingly rapidly, they link up the pincers.
32:15After just four days of progress, the Soviet pincers close, west of Stalingrad, near Kalash.
32:23The Red Army has ensnared 300,000 Nazis and their Axis allies.
32:31They had encircled all the German troops in Stalingrad inside and had closed this noose around them.
32:38And they were ecstatic.
32:40During the entire operation, every soldier and every officer knew what he was doing.
32:48And when they achieved those tremendous results, I mean, everybody was elated.
32:53It must have been a hell of a shock to the Germans to realize that this Slavic people that they'd
32:58always looked down on,
32:59these Untermensch, were actually capable of launching an operation of this type of sophistication.
33:04Ahead of the secret counteroffensive, the Red Army had undergone a huge rearmament program.
33:11They can bring in some new airplanes.
33:14They can bring in the first full tank army into combat in this counteroffensive.
33:18And they out-blitzkrieg the Germans.
33:24Not just the ground forces, but the air forces, which in the meantime had been undergoing a complete reorganization.
33:32It's an amazing rebirth.
33:35Again, women play a pivotal role.
33:38They had women fighter pilots who were sent to Stalingrad.
33:42These were women flying yak fighters, which was one of the most modern Soviet fighters of the day.
33:48And of those women, one, Lilia Litvyak, got two kills on her second day in combat and went on to
33:57become the highest scoring female ace in the war.
34:01The skies over Stalingrad are no longer dominated by Goering's Luftwaffe.
34:08General Paulus struggles to come to terms with the new reality.
34:15General Paulus, with his sixth army, now find themselves encircled by enemy infantry and armor.
34:21They are within what the Germans called a Kessel, and they are vulnerable and having to resist the tremendous pressure
34:29of lack of supplies and encroaching Soviet forces.
34:33General Paulus has to decide on his next move, quickly.
34:38300,000 men in this Kessel.
34:41If you leave troops in exposed positions, you're going to eventually lose all of them.
34:46They've got two options now. They either fight their way out, or another relieving army has got to fight their
34:51way in.
34:52Paulus and most of his subordinate commanders correctly concluded that we'd better get out of here and get out of
34:58here now.
35:00But Paulus's urgent appeals to Berlin are rebuffed by the Fuhrer.
35:06Hitler would not contemplate retreat. You don't retreat before Slavs.
35:10You don't retreat before the inferior, under mentioned. You stay and you win. If you can't win, you stay and
35:17die.
35:19Hitler gave the order, you stay in Stalingrad. We would not give up Stalingrad.
35:25And Paulus decided, I will follow that order.
35:29Facing annihilation, the doggedly loyal Paulus refuses to disobey Hitler.
35:37One suggests a brighter person might have said, Mein Fuhrer, this is the position.
35:42But all Paulus ever seemed to do was to obey the instruction that came from above.
35:46That he was perhaps too sensitive to be a leading soldier.
35:54Paulus was a good staff officer, a good theorist on war.
35:59But he was possibly not the right person, the right character in this very difficult situation.
36:06You need a strong character. You need people with their own will.
36:10And Paulus was, in this regard, a bit weak.
36:16By the end of November, it is clear that without help, the trapped Nazis are doomed.
36:24Paulus watches as his divisions in Stalingrad bleed themselves white, get weaker and weaker and weaker.
36:32They're running out of everything.
36:33They've got to get help from the outside, or they are going to survive.
36:37Goering feeds Hitler's delusion by telling him that his Luftwaffe can supply the army with food and ammunition.
36:45This was a strong argument for Hitler.
36:48So if Goering is promising that, we are going to do that.
36:51And the 6th Army should stay where it is, and we will organise an airlift.
36:57Not for the first time in this war, Goering is inflating the capabilities of his air force.
37:03Just to support the entire German army, they needed 800 tons of food every day.
37:15Could you imagine?
37:18Hitler has this delusion that the Luftwaffe has the resources to do that.
37:23Using everything.
37:25They fly about 10 or 15 tons a day.
37:31The fact is that they can't do it.
37:33There's no way they can resupply an entire army by air.
37:38The new Soviet air force is more than a match for the Luftwaffe.
37:42The Russian air force conducted an air blockade, which is just a brilliant operation of shutting down the Luftwaffe attempts
37:49to transport food in to the 6th Army.
37:54The air lift is an abject failure, and by early December, it is obvious that the 6th Army's only hope
38:01is a ground-based rescue.
38:04Field Marshal von Manstein, who was commander-in-chief of that region, tried to assemble some forces to relieve the
38:126th Army and to push the Soviets back.
38:15Manstein optimistically causes offensive Operation Winter Storm.
38:20He launches it from the south towards the Kessel.
38:23But Manstein's plan has one major flaw.
38:27The great combat power that the Germans had is within the pocket, not outside.
38:32So Manstein has a tremendous shortage of forces and gets about halfway to the Kessel, but he is forced to
38:40break off.
38:42Resolute Soviet forces stop Manstein's troops 48 kilometers short of Stalingrad.
38:49Inside the pocket, a senior officer urges Paulus to ignore Hitler and punch through to Manstein's relief force.
38:57Paulus had one commanding officer of one of his corps, Walter von Zeitlitz.
39:03And Walter von Zeitlitz always tried to persuade Paulus, break out.
39:08Break out. It's on you. Don't follow the orders from Hitler. It's on you. Just do what you want.
39:16If Paulus stays put, his men are bound to suffer further.
39:23The situation within the Kessel for the Germans is unbelievably bad.
39:29They are freezing to death. They are being bombarded by artillery and air power.
39:36And it's cold, so there's nothing to eat.
39:39They go for regular meat, horse meat, no meat. It's just a progression.
39:45And if you don't eat, you can't fight.
39:47And if you don't have fuel, you can't move your tanks or your trucks.
39:50And if you can't move your tanks and your trucks, you can't move your troops.
39:54This is the problem for the soldiers in Stalingrad area.
39:57Still, the Fuhrer demands that Paulus stays and fights.
40:01Hitler is still pursuing his delusional ideas that the Sixth Army can hold fast and create a fortress and somehow
40:09live on thin air.
40:12Nazi propaganda did its best to present events in a rose light that everything is all right.
40:18Yes, it's difficult, but we'll do our best.
40:23But Paulus knows sending his exhausted troops out to confront a revitalized Soviet army will carry a terrible cost.
40:31He did care for his men. He didn't like losing them in the numbers they were losing.
40:38And contemplating a breakout, he calculated, was perhaps just too big a risk.
40:44Once again, Paulus chooses to follow Hitler's orders and sit tight.
40:49By Christmas 1942, there was no relief, there was no hope.
40:55As the New Year dawns, the Red Army offers the stubborn Nazis a way out.
41:02They've already got the Sixth Army trapped and starving to death, and why don't they surrender?
41:07They should surrender. Can't they see they can't possibly win?
41:11The Soviets offer surrender. The Germans reject it.
41:16Therefore, the Soviets have to take more active measures.
41:19When Soviet generals initiate Operation Ring, a move to squeeze down the Kessel, they discover the Germans are a spent
41:28force.
41:29The capability the Germans to resist is virtually gone, and they are a mob. Not much more than a mob.
41:36They are daily being shelled and shot at. Casualties are mounting. Enormous numbers of wounded.
41:44People are cold. They're clinging to survival.
41:48Realizing that they are expected to die in Stalingrad, Paulus pleads with Hitler.
41:55General Paulus again and again asked Hitler, are we allowed to surrender? Does it make any sense if we fight
42:02on?
42:03And Hitler again and again said, yes, you have to fight the last bullet.
42:07It was really a nightmare for them because they realized the only way we can do this is dying.
42:14And this desert of snow, blood and tears.
42:19The Red Army squeezes the remaining German defenders into two small pockets that lose contact with each other.
42:29Through January, Paulus is in a bad way. We know he was suffering from dysentery.
42:34There's a kind of sense that Paulus' spirit is broken.
42:36He's becoming obviously desperate. And he didn't always say to Hitler what he really wanted.
42:42And that's tragic in a general.
42:45On the night of January the 30th, Hitler promotes Paulus.
42:51But the honour carries an ominous coded message.
42:55Hitler's last throw of the dice is to make Paulus a field marshal.
42:58He's calculating that, you know, this great honour that is only given to a few German soldiers is actually going
43:05to keep Paulus fighting for as long as possible.
43:08I feel Marshall has never surrendered. It's never happened in the history of German armed forces.
43:13Hitler thinks that Paulus will either shoot himself or somehow find a magical way out.
43:19An officer comes to Paulus in the basement of the Stalingrad department store and says, here's this wire from Hitler.
43:26Paulus looks at it and says, I'm not going to kill myself. I'm a Christian.
43:32The next day, Field Marshal Paulus, the ever faithful Yes Man, finally disobeys his Führer.
43:43Paulus decides that further resistance is useless and that he will surrender.
43:47Ironically in the square of the fallen soldiers in Stalingrad.
43:52Well, actually, the 31st of January was the birthday of Shukofi.
43:59What a coincidence. He captures Paulus on his birthday.
44:08It's not quite the end, of course, because the northern pocket is no longer in communication with the south.
44:13It doesn't know about the surrender order and it carries on fighting for another couple of days until it too
44:18finally surrenders.
44:20Over two thirds of the trapped German army had lost their lives.
44:24Those who survived the Soviet onslaughts succumbed to the cold or starvation.
44:31What was unique was the starving. There was no other place on the Eastern Front where German soldiers, in the
44:39thousands, in the tens of thousands, starved to death.
44:4391,000 German troops surrender to the Soviets in Stalingrad.
44:52Back home, Goebbels spins the story of an heroic Sixth Army fighting to the last drop of blood.
45:01Very few would return to tell the truth.
45:06Of that 91,000 who were still breathing, only 5,000 ever returned to Germany after long years of captivity
45:16in Russia.
45:17It had been five months since the first bombs dropped on Stalingrad, and the slaughter had continued right through to
45:25the surrender.
45:27The Battle of Stalingrad is said to have been the bloodiest of the whole of the Second World War.
45:31Average estimates, Russian military losses exceeded one million people.
45:36The total number of Axis forces lost, about 800,000.
45:41Hitler's vanity campaign cost him far more than lives and equipment.
45:47It sends a signal to everyone fighting his tyranny.
45:52Stalingrad was a clear symbol of victory for the Soviets and a clear symbol of defeat for the Germans.
46:01Here you have a town, a symbol, a pocket, a formal surrender, a proper battle, which was lost by the
46:11Germans.
46:11It's the very first time that anywhere in the world the Germans were defeated colossally.
46:19The Germans are not invincible.
46:22That's the take from it, and that is extraordinary.
46:27It was not just defeat of the German army, it was humiliation of the German army.
46:34The Germans try to blame their defeat on the elements.
46:38Most of the Battle of Stalingrad happens before winter ever hits.
46:42The winter factor's been greatly exaggerated as a way of not admitting that the Russians were better than they were
46:49at something.
46:50They claim that the superior Nazi forces were let down by their allies.
46:56The Germans explain their defeats in part by blaming the Italians and Romanians for not doing their part, which I
47:03consider to be a travesty.
47:05The Germans said they're a bunch of cowards.
47:08That's the way German generals perceived their allies, as weak sisters who didn't have a stomach for a fight.
47:14In truth, the Romanians and other Axis allies guarding the Sixth Army's flanks were not as well armed as their
47:22German counterparts.
47:24They had been warning the German high command that they were vulnerable, that they needed reinforcements, and all of those
47:30warnings were ignored.
47:32Hitler believed that his generals could roll through Russia, as they had through Europe, that the Slavs, the Untermensch, would
47:41offer little resistance.
47:43Hitler had hoped that what he saw as the rotten Bolshevik Soviet regime would crack as soon as he kicked
47:52in the door in Operation Barbarossa.
47:55His perception of the Soviet Union was that this giant of the Soviet Union is already nearly on its knees.
48:02Stalingrad was a battle that he'd never have been fought, an exercise in hubris.
48:10It was arrogance that prompted the Germans to do what they did in 1942.
48:16They set the objectives, then added Stalingrad to it, almost cavalierly, in the middle of the operation.
48:24That was clearly a bridge too far.
48:26The German defeat does more than expose Hitler's vanity to the world.
48:32It reveals a fiercely patriotic people and a well-armed Soviet war machine.
48:38Hitler had no understanding of the enormous resources of the Soviet Union, of the enormous will of the Soviet people,
48:47men and women, to defend the motherland.
48:53Huge numbers of Soviet men and women gave their lives in order to stall the German war machine.
49:01And in large part this was the Germans' own fault.
49:04The Germans were such barbaric occupiers that the Soviets felt they had nothing to lose.
49:12The unprecedented Soviet victory at Stalingrad forces the Germans onto the defensive for the first time in the war.
49:22It certainly changes the map of the war.
49:26This is the farthest east the Wehrmacht ever gets.
49:28From this point it's all going to be retreat.
49:33Not only is it the bloodiest battle, it's probably the most significant battle of the Second World War, because this
49:38is the great turning point.
50:10Erin Ramos
50:10So we continue to welcome this compan gold.
50:14Just at the end of your work building in Rome.
50:15By the end of your work building, we can communicate with the Russians and protesters who have the plungeology
50:24and now will be delivered in Germany.
50:24And today is theενer framed by his history.
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