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For educational purposes
"ARMY LOGISTICS"
For every one army in the field during World War Two, there were two behind, helping to cloth, feed, house, arm, and supply and organize.
It was said to take three men to put one effective man onto the field of battle and, for the High Command all armies, supplying their front line forces presented as big a problem as securing victory over the enemy.
It was once famously said that an army marches on its stomach - 'The Sinews Of War' proves that adage to be very true.
This episode highlights those whose job it was to 'keep things moving' in theatres of conflict all over the globe during World War Two plus in-depth interviews with military authorities.
"ARMY LOGISTICS"
For every one army in the field during World War Two, there were two behind, helping to cloth, feed, house, arm, and supply and organize.
It was said to take three men to put one effective man onto the field of battle and, for the High Command all armies, supplying their front line forces presented as big a problem as securing victory over the enemy.
It was once famously said that an army marches on its stomach - 'The Sinews Of War' proves that adage to be very true.
This episode highlights those whose job it was to 'keep things moving' in theatres of conflict all over the globe during World War Two plus in-depth interviews with military authorities.
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LearningTranscript
00:13It was Napoleon who said that an army marches on its stomach.
00:25During the Second World War, it became clear that an army marches not only on its stomach,
00:30but also on its ammunition magazines, on its fuel tanks, and its supply lines.
00:35It's an army's logistics, the sinews of war, that are as important as numerical superiority,
00:42the quality of equipment, and the morale of the men.
00:46Modern armies are useless if they are not fed, superior guns do not work without ammunition,
00:52and tanks cannot be run on high spirits alone.
01:05Napoleon's war of conquest came to grief in the Russian winter, and it is considered
01:10by many that Hitler's ambitions ended for the same reason.
01:13The real reason lies in the question of supply.
01:45For more information is, visit www.fema.gov.br
02:02supply and logistics are absolutely crucial to an army in the field each soldier in an army will
02:09eat about three pounds by weight of food per day and he will need half a gallon of water every
02:15day
02:15the guns need ammunition the vehicles need fuel where supply and logistics doesn't actually
02:21control strategy of a commander it is likely very much to limit his options it's all their
02:28ammunition all the food all the fuel all the clothing all the medical supplies everything
02:33that you need to keep an army fighting for that reason you end up with this enormous logistical
02:40tail which can be 10 or 12 men for every man who's in the front line and world war ii
02:47was really the
02:48first time because it was a mobile war that the sinews of war the logistics really began to be so
02:54important for the second world war the germans developed a new kind of battle strategy the
03:00blitzkrieg the idea was originally dreamt up by two british strategists major general jfc fuller and
03:08captain basil little heart they realized that the stalemate of the great wars trenches could be
03:16smashed by mechanized units attacking deep into the heart of the enemy's territory the motto was destroy
03:24the enemy's brain not the body but few were interested in this idea until a german heinz guderian picked up
03:37the
03:37idea he wrote a textbook on the subject in 1937 called akhtong panzer having created the first panzer division two
03:45years
03:46earlier the blitzkrieg strategy he helped devise involved panzer tank divisions puncturing the enemy's
03:56defenses at predetermined weak spots and driving ahead any strong points were simply bypassed
04:06stuka dive bombers were used as mobile aerial artillery the slow-moving inventory and the gunners
04:12with their horse-drawn artillery trailed behind to mop up the isolated pockets of resistance left by the attack
04:21heinz guderian was a panzer corps commander during the third reich's extraordinary successes in their
04:26attacks on poland the low countries and france that the blitzkrieg strategy bought
04:36however a rapid success in the field means a sharp creation of a long supply line
04:43this issue was first faced for real in 1939 and 1940
04:49the blitzkrieg campaign taught the german army quite a few things about supply in 1940 in france
04:56especially it taught them the crucial importance for such a fast-moving campaign of having great
05:02quantities of fuel perhaps rather less quantities of ammunition it also taught them that where there was
05:08heavy fighting to be done they would need about equal quantities of ammunition and of fuel but in a
05:15pursuit campaign such as the blitzkrieg campaign became in france you need far more fuel than ammunition
05:22a ratio of perhaps three to one at one stage some of the german tanks actually refueled from french petrol
05:31stations they simply rolled up to the pumps and used the the tanks there to supply their vehicles
05:38obviously these kind of ad hoc arrangements weren't going to work so it did teach quite a number of lessons
05:44the mobile panzer divisions who were ordered to cut into the rear of the enemy it was very difficult
05:50for for supplies to keep pace with the advances that were taking place and these were the very early
05:57attempts to introduce cooperation between the forces on the ground and the forces above them in form of
06:05the air force in order to keep supplies moving in the 18th century napoleon had conquered most of europe
06:11and turned his attentions towards russia 130 years later hitler also turned his attentions towards russia
06:21it had always been his goal to conquer the soviet union and remove the scourge of the bolsheviks forever
06:28he had clearly stated this aim as early as 1924 the first page in his political treatise mein
06:35kampf talks about the need for lebensraum living space in the east
06:52on sunday 22nd of june 1941 three great army groups crossed the russian frontier in poland
06:59and drove into russia operation barbarossa had started army group north's objective was leningrad and
07:07the baltic army group center was a giant pincer movement through belarusia towards moscow and army
07:16group south was a drive towards the vital oil fields of the caucasus the objective was to conquer the
07:23whole of western russia to a line drawn from the caspian sea along the volga river and then north to
07:29archangel before the summer gave out the attack gained 200 miles in the first four days an astounding
07:37success everything went the german's way in some places the russian population welcomed the invaders
07:44who they saw as liberating them from stalin's tyranny they were soon to learn that hitler was even worse
07:51than stalin with most of the russian air force destroyed on the ground and the luftwaffe dealing
08:00with those few that got into the air the panzers pushed on general guderian was in command of panzer
08:08group two and along with general hoth of panzer group three he moved forward at a truly astonishing speed
08:16they trapped the russian third fourth and tenth armies between them logistics and supply were
08:24profoundly affected by the conditions of the russian campaign the problems were those of distance poor
08:30roads limited railways there were periods of mud in spring and in the autumn and of course there was
08:38the dreadful cold in winter the german army had to haul up huge quantities of supplies across very very
08:46difficult terrain the problems therefore were the quantity needed versus the difficulty of getting
08:53it all up to the front the sheer scale of the theater of operations in russia was the main determining
09:01factor of of just how difficult it was going to be to keep these armies supplied the front was almost
09:082 000 miles from north to south and at its furthest point it was almost nearer to cairo than to
09:16berlin it
09:17was an enormous undertaking to try and keep these armies supplied guderian and hoth continued the race
09:25hoth beat guderian to minsk and when the two met they encircled the city minsk surrendered after a
09:32fortnight and the germans took 324 000 prisoners captured 3 300 tanks and 1800 field guns from the
09:41bialystok minsk area guderian and hoth now wanted to start the next leg to smolensk 320 kilometers away
09:50and their commander field marshal klug though worried that the infantry had yet to catch up gave them
09:57the go-ahead fast heinz as guderian became known dashed east with hoth keeping pace smolensk fell within
10:06a week and the two panzer armies met again trapping two more russian armies despite counter-attacks from
10:13the south and east the panzers held the field until the infantry arrived on july the 27th
10:22the road to moscow was now open the prize that had eluded napoleon the troops of the triumphant
10:29panzer divisions made signs which read to moscow one more race and it would all be over
10:39and then hitler decided to change direction general guderian was appalled his immediate superiors general
10:47holder and field marshal bock agreed with him so in august guderian flew to hitler's headquarters in
10:53rastenburg to plead with the furor he argued that they must be allowed to advance on moscow they were
11:00only 350 kilometers away they must finish the job hitler listened to his impassioned petition and then
11:08berated him didn't guderian realize that germany must cut off the soviet union supply of fuel hitler also
11:16wanted to destroy the crimean airfields that launched attacks on germany's oil fields in the ukraine
11:22but most of all he wanted the precious oil reserves for himself so general guderian and general hoth
11:30were split up general hoth turned north to help in the attack against leningrad and guderian was ordered
11:37south on what he saw as a thousand kilometer diversion to aid the advance on kiev and the ukraine
11:45stalin called upon the people to destroy everything as they retreated this was a scorched earth policy
11:52and he demanded that the people shouldn't leave a single railway engine a single wagon a single pound
11:58of grain this they did and now the germans found they had to bring everything they needed all the way
12:05from germany russia was not turning out to be the grain depot of the third reich the scorched earth
12:12policy ordered by stalin is obviously a very desperate measure but russia has the one thing
12:20in abundance which will allow you to adopt a policy like that and that's the fact that there's this huge
12:27amount of space so the soviets are able to fall back destroy everything behind them leaving the
12:34germans to advance into this wilderness it's a bit like what they did with napoleon in 1812
12:38they raise the countryside they take away any possibility of shelter or supply and they trade
12:46time for space drawing their enemy into this huge hinterland where you're going to find an absolute
12:53wasteland general hoth joined the german and finnish troops besieging leningrad when they surrounded
13:00the city the russians had only a month's supply of food the inhabitants found their rations reduced to
13:06a third of what an adult needs to live many didn't survive but when the winter came the russians could
13:13drive their trucks over the frozen sea to bring in food ammunition and other supplies in the end
13:20leningrad leningrad held out for 900 days before being relieved hitler was beginning to tighten
13:27his siege of britain with the battle of the atlantic pumping his war effort into the production of u-boats
13:35even so the british and later the americans were able to sneak four million tons of material across
13:41the north sea to the ports of mamansk and archangel this included five thousand tanks seven thousand
13:49aircraft and british great coats which the soviets affectionately called a present from the king of
13:55england because hitler had waited half a year before launching the russian campaign
14:12the winter was closing in before operation barbarossa's objectives had been reached even so the third
14:19reich had done amazingly well however it was during operation typhoon which finally turned the german's
14:26attention back to moscow that the first hint of trouble began general franz holder wrote in his diary on the
14:337th of october 1941 the panzer leader general fast heinz guderian's force was hampered by bad weather
14:48it was the start of rasputitsa the russians called a period of ottoman spring the muddy season
14:55napoleon back in 1806 when he was campaigning in poland called this mud the fifth element
15:06the rasputitsa the period of mud profoundly affected the campaigning season particularly in the autumn
15:13for about three weeks in october all the roads turned to seas of mud most russian roads were not tar
15:20sealed they were earth or stone surface the quantity of water that came through them turned them into
15:26mud and you had mud up to axle deep in fact you could say virtually all movement on the front
15:34stopped
15:34and it could only resume once the cold began and the mud froze and then the snow settled on it
15:41again
15:42you had a secondary period of mud in the spring as well of course when the winter snows melted and
15:49once
15:49again everything turned to mud roads just disappeared everywhere it was a quagmire
15:58vehicles sank to their axles horses to their bellies and men waded in mud nothing moved fuel
16:06ammunition and supplies couldn't get through tanks stopped guns stopped troops stopped
16:16the obsolete russian cavalry on the other hand came into their own indeed the russians never developed
16:22an all-terrain vehicle the germans had their panzer grenadier wagons the americans their half-tracks
16:29but the russians could depend upon their horses they could go where armor couldn't
16:41they could see the spires of moscow through their field glasses
17:00with the arrival of winter the mud hardened and the roads became passable again
17:05the tanks could move at last the germans thought but in the extreme temperatures minus 40 degrees
17:11centigrade the tanks seized up they had no supplies of antifreeze and the only way to keep the panzers
17:18going was to keep their engines running this used an extraordinary amount of precious fuel
17:24even the artificial rubber called buna in their automatic weapons went hard in the bitter conditions
17:30and the guns jammed the follow-up forces also ran into difficulty the german horses used to pull most of
17:39the supplies and the conventional artillery were not as hardy as their russian counterparts
17:45they couldn't take the cold and died the supplies and artillery couldn't get through to where it was needed
17:51with the onset of winter in 1941 there was a real dilemma for the logistics and supply
17:59forces they now were faced with the the fact that they had only very limited channels to get to the
18:06front
18:06the railways were under the maximum possible strain and they therefore had to prioritize whether they
18:13were going to send winter clothing or whether they were going to send ammunition obviously it was
18:18absolutely vital to keep the front some kind of cohesion so the ammunition had to be prioritized
18:24in that respect thousands upon thousands of men suffered from frostbite who really needn't have had it
18:32been possible to get supplies to the front line in the winter of 1941 the inadequacies the gross inadequacies
18:41of the german supply system were painfully exposed the german troops were short of food fuel ammunition
18:49virtually everything and while they were trying to cope with this the russians who were far better
18:55adapted to the conditions launched a counter-offensive so the winter of 1941 partly exposed the limitations of the german
19:04supply
19:05and indeed fighting capacities but it also gave the russians the opportunity to launch their first
19:11and their first successful counter-offensive of the war so you could say therefore that the campaign
19:19in the winter of 1941 gave the russians confidence that they could actually beat the germans german
19:27industry had in fact manufactured ample supplies of winter equipment for the troops but it hadn't been
19:32delivered because hitler had expected the campaign to be over long before the winter descended the russian
19:39railway lines had been relayed to conform with the european gauge but now because of the cold locomotives
19:46wouldn't run the choice became clothes or bullets the german forces fighting in world war ii used an enormous
19:55range of weapons they had lots of different variations lots of different sizes and calibers of ammunition
20:03they used captured weapons even tanks they used extensively so it was a very difficult uh formation to
20:10try and standardize and supply it contrasted very much with the allies for example who used almost
20:17exclusively the sherman tank or the churchill they didn't have the tremendous uh variety of weapons and
20:24weapon types that the germans did and this made them very difficult to supply in the field the different
20:30gauges of railways presented a great problem for the germans the german gauge was three foot six inches wide
20:36the russian gauge was four feet eight inches wide therefore there is a problem because the germans
20:42simply did not have enough motor transport to bring up all the supplies they needed they had to use the
20:48russian rail system but the difference of gauge presented problems they really had two alternatives
20:56one was to rip up existing russian rail and lay it to the german gauge and that was a dreadfully
21:02time consuming operation the other was to convert german locomotives and rolling stock to the russian
21:10gauge and so use them the problem here was that you could extend the axles of railway wagons but you
21:18can't extend the axles of railway locomotives so the germans faced very considerable problems these were
21:26exacerbated by the fact of course that the russians destroyed so much railway rolling stock railway lines
21:34bridges and so forth and the fact that the german army hadn't made sufficient provision
21:40hadn't created enough railway troops to cope with this problem so there was a constant problem with
21:48the railways all through the campaign the germans had no balaclava helmets no hats with ear protection
21:55no padded jackets no fur gloves no crampons their boots were the right size which meant they
22:02couldn't wear an extra pair of socks these boots had studded soles and they were also issued with steel
22:08helmets in the sub-zero temperatures the metal froze to their feet and their heads frostbite was a killer
22:15claiming around 400 men out of each regiment of a thousand all this time their winter kit sat
22:22used uselessly in the railway stations of kharkov and kiev
22:30the russians on the other hand were used to these arctic conditions and had the right sort of equipment
22:37the germans had to pull back the third reich lost belov the next day chern and so on
22:44soon they were 150 miles away from moscow
22:53hitler relieved 30 generals of their commands for withdrawing against his orders
22:58general bach and general runstead were amongst those to go and even general heinz guderian was sacked
23:05this brilliant general who would help develop the blitzkrieg never commanded in the field again
23:14while stalin had been moving troops west he'd also been moving his factories east
23:20the soviet union had only a third of its industrial strength left as over 3 000 factories had been destroyed
23:26by the germans to protect his remaining manufacturing he moved it all lock stock and barrel thousands of
23:35miles east beyond the range of the luftwaffe stalin set an almost impossible six-month time scale which
23:43was very nearly met plants were moved to the volga river region the ural mountains into central asia and
23:50even as far as siberia when they arrived there came the difficult task of reassembly but they managed
23:56to get these factories up and running to full capacity in less than three weeks but factories
24:02are useless without people to work in them the soviet union also moved 20 million workers east 210 000
24:10from moscow alone the passenger trains had been reserved for the military so the workers were transported
24:16on freight trains thousands died in the freezing box cars those carriages that had stoves were often
24:24as dangerous as the smoke killed just as easily this was the greatest and fastest mass migration in history
24:36a mass of material started flowing from these factories that was to turn the tide of the war
24:42often soldiers would arrive at the factory help finish off a tank and then drive it to the war zone
24:50the germans on the other hand were designing monster tanks the tiger which was difficult to
24:55manufacture and get through to the front the panzer divisions in russia weren't getting the replacements
25:11they needed field marshal rommel in north africa wasn't getting enough tanks either rommel was not an expert
25:18in logistics he reasoned that his task was to fight the war he argued that others had to find the
25:24supplies
25:24he needed his men went to any lengths to capture british supplies the british enjoyed tin fruit and other
25:32luxuries denied the africa core when to brook fell they were able to replace their uniforms which were
25:39camouflaged for the forests of bavaria for the more suitable british desert kit
25:45the north african campaign presented very particular problems of supply and logistics
25:52there was no railway line there was only one coastal road there were a few dirt tracks inland there was
25:59no water available so all of that had to be supplied plus of course all the food all the fuel
26:04and all the ammunition in addition to this the rough going driving trucks over stony desert or over sandy
26:12desert meant that they used a great deal of fuel and there was a great rate of breakdowns so you
26:18needed
26:18lots of spare parts indeed north africa could be called a tactician's paradise but a quartermaster's nightmare
26:27there is a slight element however of of overstatement in terms of the difficulties that that were
26:33encountered by the africa core because something like 90 percent of supplies that were dispatched and 90
26:41percent of the tanks were actually reached the africa core so it can be slightly overstated the the
26:48difficulties of supply they certainly did have enormous problems but nonetheless they were supplied in
26:55reasonable quantity throughout the campaign malta was the real thorn in the german supply line
27:02from the small mediterranean island the british launched bombers and submarines to attack the italian
27:07merchant navy that supplied the africa core in the middle of 1940 mussolini had 772 ships
27:153 million 292 584 tons and by early 1943 he had increased his fleet by an extra 129 ships
27:26on the other hand in the same period the allies had sunk 568 ships cutting his strength by half
27:35all this equipment going to the bottom starved the africa core of vital supplies rommel had only
27:43himself to blame as he had commandeered the luftwaffe planes that were needed to destroy malta for his own gains
27:53despite his difficulties as rommel's victories mounted so his supply line stretched the trucks bringing the
28:01essential fuel were now using as much as they were carrying as he got weaker montgomery's eighth army
28:07with its supply lines ever shrinking got stronger the german forces were not particularly expensive by
28:15comparison with for example british or american forces a british or an american division would need
28:21about 500 to 700 tons of supplies per day the germans could get by with something like 200 tons of
28:29supplies
28:30the russians and the japanese in fact could get by with rather less rommel ended his north african
28:37campaign with very few vehicles still operational not just because of allied actions but also through
28:44lack of spare parts the germans on the ground in february 1942 knew they needed everything
28:51the russians had ensnared the german second corps at demyansk cutting off 100 000 men
28:58the only way to keep them supplied was to fly their provisions to them
29:02juncker's transports dropped 65 000 tons of material and this saved the trapped soldiers
29:09after 72 days they were rescued
29:12this success was to have dire consequences for the third reich
29:17the experience of demyansk gave the germans confidence that troops could be supplied by air
29:23it was a confidence misplaced by march 1942 the russian supply lines were extended
29:30and a static front was established the germans had withstood their first russian winter
29:36and they were still deep inside russia the winter had not defeated them and the coming summer gave them back
29:43the advantage
29:57it was even more ambitious than operation barbarossa
30:03his aim was to conquer the caucasus oil fields with a massive pincer movement
30:09the left thrust would consist of the forces in russia and the right thrust would be rommel's africa
30:15corps driving through british egypt taking the arabian oil fields then advancing up through the middle east
30:22and finally driving between the black sea and the caspian sea
30:26hitler expected turkey to join the axis powers and the culmination of the scheme would be to combine
30:32the mediterranean and axis powers establishing a domain bigger than the roman empire
30:39the first acts of the 1942 german offensive was some tidying up operation busted hunt cleared the
30:47kerch peninsula and operation sturgeon took sevastopol
30:51the russ ist tot hitler declared russia is dead millions were dead 500 000 russians had been captured
31:01but it was far from over the russians had a nasty surprise for the germans they hadn't got it ready
31:07yet but it was called stalingrad in many ways stalingrad was the turning point in the war
31:17churchill called it the hinge of fate on the 28th of june 1942 the wehrmacht erupted from the kursk region
31:26making verboreness nothing stood in their way which was strange because russians usually fought back
31:35in every other engagement the red army had defended every mile every foot every inch
31:40but now they withdrew they fell back they retreated operation blau faltered how could the germans trap and
31:51destroy the enemy if they couldn't catch him the blitzkrieg tactic that had served them so well was
31:56failing they simply couldn't smash through the defenses if there weren't any defenses there however
32:03this hardly seemed to matter as they were making remarkable progress on july the 24th rostov the
32:12gateway to the caucasus fell after a bitter struggle the precious oil fields lay ready for the taking
32:21stalingrad the target given to general friedrich von paulus and his sixth army lay open badly defended
32:27an easy victory within his grasp and then the panzers ran out of fuel
32:36if you're moving supplies by land sea or air enemy interdiction enemy attack can greatly reduce the
32:44amount that you get to through to the front the other point to remember is of course there's a good
32:50deal of pilfering by one's own troops the better elements of the food packages and so forth get rifled
32:57and time and again the front soldiers whether they're germans or russians british or americans
33:02are complaining about the way in which the better items of the food have been removed and they are
33:09left with a fairly rough end of supplies themselves the hatred of the rear supply echelon was often rather
33:16greater than the hatred of the enemy for this reason by the time of the normandy campaign the allied air
33:23forces in particular are so strong that the germans are reduced to moving only by night if they move
33:31in the day anything that shows itself is immediately pounced upon by allied fighter bombers so air
33:38interdiction by this stage in the west is so strong that effectively the german forces are handicapped
33:45before they even start fritz buyer line one of the commanders taking his division to the front line
33:53on june the 6th the day of of d-day found that as much as a third of his force
34:00had been destroyed
34:01before they even got to the beachhead general paulis's panzers sat idle their tanks empty for a critical 18 days
34:15it wasn't until the 21st of august that the sixth army crossed the don river and made for stalingrad
34:23by this time the red army was ready the first general paulis knew was when stalingrad's guns
34:29opened fire these were operated by women factory workers the soviets were the only regular army of the
34:37second world war to have women as combat troops general paulis's panzers then attacked a tractor
34:46factory this had been converted to war production and out of its doors rolled brand new t-34 tanks
34:52driven by the very workers who had been building them only hours before
35:05the germans fought their way into stalingrad when the german sixth army had taken the city and its
35:12surrounding area the red army reacted their fifth tank army the 21st army the 51st army and the 57th army
35:21closed the trap a quarter of a million wehrmacht soldiers were cornered
35:37operation blau used around 100 of the 150 panzer divisions in russia
35:43the german forces needed at least another 600 000 men
35:48on top of this they had only managed to replace a tenth of the 75 000 trucks destroyed over the
35:54winter indeed production in the german war machine had switched to constructing u-boats
36:00to defeat great britain in the battle of the atlantic as hitler fully expected a quick victory over the
36:06soviets worse than that the industry was now far less efficient than at the start of the war
36:1410 000 planes had been produced in 1941 but only 4 000 were made in 1942 which was not nearly
36:22enough
36:22to make up for losses the industry was described as being like its boss fat and incompetent
36:31reich marshal hermann goering was not only in charge of german production but also in command of the
36:37luftwaffe he was just the man then he thought to organize the supplies to the beleaguered men trapped
36:44in stalingrad goering had been slowly falling from favor his luftwaffe had let the british escape at
36:52dunkirk and then lost the battle of britain goering needed to get back into the fuhrer's good books
36:59so he promised hitler that his luftwaffe would not let the third reich down
37:04he could save the sixth army just as he had saved the german second corps at demyansk
37:10so began the massive undertaking to drop supplies to general paulus's besieged sixth army
37:19some german attempts to resupply by air were very successful the russian winter offensive of december
37:261941 cut off a lot of german troops and they were ordered to form resistance of pockets and were
37:32promised resupply by air and in most cases it worked a big pocket around demyansk for example
37:39near moscow was supplied for quite a long time by the air however there were several disasters and
37:47the most notable of these was of course stalingrad the resupply of the demyansk pocket between the 1941
37:55and 42 was a was a very very successful operation unfortunately from this experience goering
38:04gets the impression that it is possible to supply trapped forces under any circumstances and he
38:11actually boasts to hitler that this is the kind of thing he can do at stalingrad and of course at
38:17stalingrad it really goes wrong and a whole army starves to death
38:24it became a battle of wills between the two great tyrants
38:29stalin couldn't see a city he named after himself fall to the third reich and told the city's defenders
38:35so not one step backward the volga has only one bank
38:43for hitler who hadn't been that worried about moscow it became an obsession he issued a fure
38:50bethel a decree to hold the city at all costs for the germans it became the rattenkrieg the war of
38:58the
38:58rats general paulus and the sixth army had had the chance to escape when general manstein in charge of
39:06the newly formed army group don which included general hoth's fourth panzer army attempted a rescue
39:15on the 12th of december general hoth started fighting his way north it took his tanks a week
39:21to get within striking distance of stalingrad all that was needed was for the sixth army to fight its
39:27way out general paulus waited for the code word donnerschlag thunderclap but hitler never issued it
39:35and paulus did not want to go against the wishes of his fuhrer in the end general manstein had to
39:42withdraw hoth and his panzers their mission a waste of time german reverses elsewhere meant that on the
39:5124th of december 1942 the luftwavre had to retreat from its bases in morozovsk and tatskinskaya and set up
39:59at salsk this meant that the distance they needed to fly to stalingrad increased from 120 miles to 200
40:07miles less than a fortnight later they had to pack up all over again and withdraw to shatky
40:13and nova cherkask 275 miles from stalingrad goering had promised 500 tons of supplies a day
40:23but on only a handful of days in the january of 1943 did he manage more than a hundred tons
40:34the daily rations for those trapped in the ruins dropped to two and a half ounces of bread seven
40:40ounces of horse meat bones included two-fifths of an ounce of fats and two-fifths of an ounce of
40:46sugar
40:46and a single cigarette
40:53they ate their horses
40:58by december 1942 the men in stalingrad are physically and mentally shattered they're starving to death
41:07they're freezing to death gradually they're beginning to develop heart conditions the shortage
41:14of the rations are just dragging down their will to resist and their will to live somehow by a superhuman
41:22effort they actually managed to keep the resistance going into january but these are almost human
41:27scarecrows by this stage uh they're fighting under the worst possible conditions there's nothing left to
41:34burn in the city all the firewood is gone all they've got is the the diminishing hope that somehow
41:41uh the relief force is going to break its way to stalingrad because the airlift just isn't working
41:48and really never was going to be working zeitzler who was responsible for the situation at stalingrad went
41:55to great lengths to persuade hitler that goering was wrong and that goering was making arrogant boss
42:02but hitler wouldn't pay attention to the numbers on the paper that showed a graph that was leading all
42:09the way to starvation for six army and in the end it was zeitzler who was proved to be correct
42:15general paulus wanted fuel but the luftwaffer preferred three parachute drop points rather
42:20than risk landings after a while landing became impossible anyway
42:28the sixth army required 120 tons of fuel 250 tons of ammunition and other supplies like food and
42:35medicines every day this worked out at 75 flights a day over hostile territory
42:42and to meet this target would have used all the transport planes that the luftwaffer had
42:47all of them those in russia the german reserve the ones in france north africa norway and so on
42:53it was clearly impossible
43:00the luftwaffer managed 84.4 tons a day and that was not the worst of it on one occasion due
43:08to an
43:08administrative error the luftwaffer planes dropped into the nightmare of starvation
43:13lice and typhoid a delivery of contraceptives millions of them
43:20the only ladies the germans met were those wearing the current fashion of army fatigues and carrying
43:25molotov cocktails
43:29general paulus's officers were throwing themselves in front of enemy fire or committing suicide
43:35there were snipers everywhere on the 10th of january 1943 the russians decided to finish them off
43:42they needed the seven armies elsewhere they began a massive bombardment planes bombed the german positions
43:49and the soviet tanks and the soviet tanks and infantry moved forward even so the germans fought on for a
43:54week
43:57on the 31st of january 1943 a final message was sent the russians stand at the door of our bunker
44:05we are destroying our equipment this station will no longer transmit stalingrad was retaken
44:26the soviet general ms shumelov when paulus was taken to the soviet general ms shumelov he began the usual
44:31salute of heil hitler but he broke off instead he greeted the soviet general ms shumelov with guten tag
44:41paulus lost faith in his furor and eventually became a member of the anti-nazi free officers committee
44:47making soviet propaganda broadcasts on moscow radio his men those that lived through stalingrad fared far
44:55worse 50 000 of them died of typhoid and exhaustion on the march to the forced labor camps
45:01those that survived were released 10 years after the war ended
45:08stalin ordered the war of rails and the russian partisan forces paralyzed the german lines of supply
45:15between july and september over 17 000 rails were destroyed the germans wiped out whole villages in
45:22retaliation but that didn't get supplies to the retreating wehrmacht troops
45:28it was all over the hammer and sickle fell on the germans and they retreated and retreated
45:35over in the west the third reich's war machine was bombed during the day by the americans
45:40and at night by the british germany could not match the production of america britain and the soviet union
45:48what little the germans could manufacture was destroyed before it could reach the front
45:52the tiger tanks the best armor of the war could not be made in the numbers required
45:56and was no match for allied air supremacy
46:03when the allies launched d-day in 1944 they knew that supply particularly fuel would be vital for success
46:12after the disaster of the diep raid both the allies and the axis powers realized
46:17that whoever held the european ports held europe the germans never expected the allies would bring
46:24their ports with them but that was exactly what they did the mulberry harbors were huge constructions
46:31brought over to france in kit form that formed safe ports as big as dover the 600 major pieces were
46:38towed across by 200 tugs to create the two harbors one at saint laurent on beach omaha and the other
46:46at
46:46aromanche on gold beach for fuel the allies laid pluto a pipeline under the ocean from the isle of white
46:55to rouen the pipeline was eventually extended as far as germany itself the fuel was desperately needed
47:03necessary because of the huge number of vehicles 37 000 in the initial landings alone to mount the second front
47:17by december 1944 the the writing is really on the wall uh for the german forces really they should have
47:25given up the fight by now and what is indicative of that is the fact that during the the last
47:32great
47:32offensive of the war they are den offensive they're actually relying upon capturing allied stocks of
47:40fuel and ammunition by the time you've got to that level of desperation that once the supply system has
47:47broken down in that way really the time has come to give in the effect upon morale when supplies of
47:56food
47:57and materials start failing to go through is a fairly complex one it depends a great deal upon the
48:04discipline and morale of the army the confidence that they have in their commanders and that sort of
48:10thing men can actually go quite short of food for quite long periods of time and they can operate on
48:17quite small quantities of water provided morale otherwise in the army is good and they have confidence in
48:24their leaders their weapons and that sort of thing where you can get problems with supply
48:31is not so much the men but the equipment guns and vehicles plainly have got to have ammunition or fuel
48:39and if they haven't they're useless similarly horses are much less tolerant of low levels of food and water
48:48than men are men will grumble tighten their belts and go on but it's very difficult to make horses do
48:55that they give up and die in a remarkably early period so it depends very greatly upon context circumstances
49:06and so on certainly the german garrison in stalingrad for example fought on and on and although hitler
49:13expected them to fight to the death they lasted an extraordinary long period of time given the
49:19appalling conditions that they were trying to exist in hitler's ambitions to conquer the europe floundered in
49:26russia just as napoleon's had nearly a century and a half earlier it wasn't the russian winter
49:33it was a fundamental inability to supply his armies he flexed his sinews of war and was found wanting
50:10at the end of the atlanta's reports by the airport they were able to thrive on and the scotland for
50:25the
50:25this time they were able to die and fight back again and they were able to survive so much the
50:26way they were able to get involved in death and so they burned away and the way that the