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00:00I
00:35The Soviet Union fought and won the biggest war of the 20th century,
00:41a war in which more than 30 million people died.
00:47Close to Red Square, in a private museum in the General Staff headquarters,
00:53lie trophies of that war, snatched from an enemy which had been crushed.
01:27The Soviet Union
01:29and the soldiers were captured, wounded or killed.
01:33The scale of Germany's defeat was unprecedented in her history.
01:40So it's hardly surprising that Hitler's decision to invade the Soviet Union
01:44has come to be seen as a catastrophic mistake,
01:48almost the action of a madman.
01:50But that's not what many people thought at the time.
01:53Lass die Maschinen laufen, und ja, das wollte wissen wir,
02:01denn die nicht eines hassen wir, der Teufel...
02:07Da hat man gedacht, man geht spazieren.
02:09Es hat ja genügend gegeben, die singend vormarschiert sind.
02:16Es ist unglaublich, aber es ist so.
02:19Es ist unglaublich, aber es ist so.
02:34Also nicht bloß, dass der Roter Mist schlechter kämpft
02:37und dass er so eine schlechte Moral hat,
02:39sondern wir waren der Meinung, eben das ganze System bricht zusammen.
03:05Kommunismus had always been a repugnant and dangerous ideology to the Nazis.
03:13And when, in the 1930s, the Nazis looked at the communist regime in the Soviet Union,
03:18they hated and they feared what they saw.
03:23Es hieß, Bolschewismus ist der Weltfeind No. 1.
03:28Jetzt wurde uns gesagt, die haben als Ziel haben die Deutschland zu überrennen und dann Frankreich
03:34und dann haben sie Europa natürlich im ganzen, Spanien und so weiter.
03:43At the heart of this world conspiracy, as the Nazis saw it, was one man,
03:49someone whose character would help shape and determine the course of the forthcoming war,
03:54Josef Stalin.
03:57Musik
03:59The most people loved him, as it sounds strange, loved him, and believed him as a god.
04:14They believed him, of course.
04:16If Stalin entered the room, it was a feeling of something like something very high.
04:24And, of course, the pressure to not do something wrong, not say something wrong.
04:49Boris Godunov. Stalin's favourite opera. A story of suspicious death, intrigue and a czar's double dealing.
04:57He was not a person who made a decision.
05:07He could do something wrong for the reason why he wanted to do it.
05:11If it was needed for a deal, he always wanted to do it.
05:17And so he promised and others, that every person may become a threat and a threat.
05:44The Nazis watched as, beginning in 1937, Stalin purged the Red Army of anyone suspected of
05:51the merest hint of disloyalty. 7,000 army officers were sent to the Gulag. Another 35,000 were
05:59expelled from the armed forces.
06:11In 1939, the newly purged Red Army invaded Finland. The Soviets had a more than two-to-one
06:18advantage over the Finns, and the Germans took careful notice of what happened next.
06:48Они мелкими группами, по 10-15 человек в масс-халатах, подкрадывались к этим кострам, делали короткие
06:58залпы из автоматов и винтовок и тут же убегали из 4 тысяч. Вышло только 500 человек. Все остальные
07:09были убиты, ранены или обморожены. Конечно, это немцам открыло глаза на слабость советской
07:21армии, потому что тут очень неудачная была со стороны советской армии операция, очень
07:31неудачная. Это была трагедия, по сути дела.
07:37In the summer of 1940, only months after the Soviet army had failed in Finland, Adolf Hitler
07:44celebrated the Nazi's conquest of France. But despite these ecstatic scenes, Hitler knew he still
07:51had a problem. Great Britain wouldn't make peace, and a German invasion across the English
07:57Channel remained a risky option. So Hitler's eyes turned to the Soviet Union. In spite of
08:04signing a non-aggression pact with Stalin in 1939, Hitler still considered the Soviets his
08:09ideological enemy.
08:12By invading the Soviet Union, Hitler believed he would eliminate the greatest potential threat
08:17the Nazis faced on mainland Europe, and gain living space and raw materials for the Germans.
08:23He thought his three-pronged attack would also destroy any hopes the British had that the Soviet
08:28Union might one day come to their aid. At the time, to his military planners, all this seemed
08:35perfectly logical.
08:36We knew that in two years, at the end of 1942, at the beginning of 1943, were the English
08:43countries, the Americans, the Russians, the Russians, all three-pronged together, and all four-pronged together.
08:51We had to try, until the end of 1942, the greatest threat of the East, which would have come to
09:00us, to shut down.
09:12At the time this film was taken, during Red Army military exercises in the autumn of 1940, the Soviet high
09:20command knew of German troop movements East. But what did it mean? Was the Soviet Union about to be invaded?
09:29Surely, Stalin felt, Hitler would not embark on a war against the Soviet Union, while still fighting the British.
09:43In spring 1941, some senior officers in the Red Army, including Georgi Zhukov, suggested one option was to mount a
09:50pre-emptive strike against the Germans. Stalin never approved the plan. He wanted to do nothing to provoke
09:57Hitler, and still didn't believe the Germans would risk an invasion.
10:03This recently declassified Soviet intelligence report, dated June 1941, predicts that the German
10:10army will attack at any moment. Stalin has scrawled over it.
10:15Comrade Merkloff, you can send your source from the headquarters of the German Air Force to his
10:20fucking mother. He is not a source, but a disinformant.
10:25But Stalin's spies were right. The Germans were about to invade.
10:35An armed force of more than three million Germans and their allies massed along an invasion front of 1,800
10:41miles.
10:46This bridge over the river Buch was just one of hundreds of crossing points.
10:55At 3.15, on the morning of June the 22nd, 1941, the German invasion began.
11:29I enjoyed the strength of our
11:32the German army sending thousands of shells into the Russian border line defenses and so on.
11:39So it was partly a great feeling also about the power being unleashed against the dubious and despisable enemy.
11:55We had been victorious in Yugoslavia, in Norway, and in France and so on and so on.
12:02So we felt we might make it because we are experienced troops.
12:06We were well trained, well equipped, so we might make it, maybe.
12:12We are not in the way.
12:14The army, our land, our God.
12:16We are not able to forgive the enemy, who is on us.
12:22We're not able to forgive the enemy.
12:24The enemy to the enemy is, the synth to the enemy.
12:27Not exactly the first day before we saw the blood, when we saw the blood, people who saw the blood.
12:40There, you understand, they already didn't give them.
12:44Did you see when-нибудь a person of a crazy person?
12:50No.
12:53To participate in this fight,
12:57in this fight,
13:00we need to get out of the way.
13:09In this fight,
13:12if someone who was angry,
13:15he died.
13:18Because, you understand, the Germans were very prepared.
13:23By the end of the first week of the invasion,
13:26150,000 Soviet soldiers were dead or severely wounded,
13:30and the Germans were more than 200 miles inside Soviet territory.
13:35First of all, you thought of Napoleon.
13:38That was always very contrary.
13:41And on the other hand, you thought of the land.
13:45Russia is quite big.
13:49And so,
13:51you were encouraged that this first success was achieved,
13:55which was a very impressive success.
13:58The tactic of Blitzkrieg, the lightning attack,
14:02was the chief reason for the Germans' success.
14:05Conventional military theory had said that armoured attacks should be in waves,
14:09but the Germans' tanks, artillery, and Stuka dive bombers
14:12all focused their attacks simultaneously on one narrow point of the enemy line.
14:18The whole panzer spearhead advanced swiftly on a front sometimes no wider than one road.
14:25Then the German infantry forced on through the gap
14:28and encircled the confused Soviet troops.
14:35And they did a shooting in the back.
14:39And it created a moral effect, that we were surrounded.
14:46They immediately shouted,
14:48we were surrounded.
14:49When they started shooting,
14:50there were German tanks,
14:52and then they shot with the enemy.
14:59Some Soviet troops surrendered.
15:02Others retreated and watched,
15:04as their officers deserted them.
15:06Stephen the captain and the scourge
15:09The kilos of the captain and the senior sergeant wasploaded
15:15guns on the right.
15:16The headlights were flying.
15:16The sergeant was accompanied by the officer of the officers'
15:20with the officers aged their army.
15:23The sergeant was carried out on the left.
15:24The sergeant was cut off the line,
15:25We thought that this was a bad sign.
15:28Me a doubt that it was a bad sign.
15:29it was not very pleasant.
15:30But we went into such a situation that there was more commanders.
15:35and we can't do anything.
16:05It looked inevitable that Minsk, the capital of Belorussia,
16:09would shortly be captured.
16:11It was much worse than Stalin had feared.
16:16Stalin stormed out of the meeting, saying,
16:19Lenin left us with a great legacy.
16:21We, his heirs, we fucked it up.
16:32As the rest of the world learned of the Germans' advance,
16:35many were pessimistic about the Soviets' chances.
16:38The US Secretary of the Navy wrote to President Roosevelt
16:41that it would take between six weeks and two months
16:44for Hitler to clean up in Russia.
16:48The British War Office told the BBC not to give out the impression
16:51that Soviet armed resistance would last more than six weeks.
16:57The Soviet Union and Stalin seemed to be facing catastrophe.
17:12One of the greatest secrets concealed in Russian archives
17:15is whether or not at this desperate moment
17:18the Soviets tried to contact the Germans to negotiate peace.
17:23It has long been rumoured that an approach was made,
17:26but no document from the Communist period
17:28has ever been found to confirm what happened.
17:31Until now.
17:33One of the consultants for this programme
17:35recently uncovered a top-secret report
17:37from a Soviet intelligence officer called Pavel Sudoplatov.
17:43The report tells how on the orders of the head of the secret police,
17:47Lavrenti Beria, there was a meeting held at the Aragvi,
17:50a Georgian restaurant in the centre of Moscow.
18:05Sudoplatov met the ambassador of Bulgaria,
18:08the country which now represented Germany in the Soviet Union.
18:15They met at the end of July 1941 in Beria's private room,
18:20high above the main dining room.
18:23Sudoplatov asked the Bulgarian ambassador
18:25if he could find out whether Germany would make peace
18:28in exchange for large portions of Soviet territory.
18:32No one can be sure if this was a genuine attempt
18:34to buy the Germans off or a way of stalling for time.
18:39After the war, victory won.
18:41The very fact of the meeting was cause for shame.
18:45Pavel Sudoplatov, the man who ate the meal,
18:48was charged with treason.
18:50For this and other alleged crimes,
18:53he was sentenced to 15 years in the Gulag.
19:10CHOIR SINGS
19:11But the Germans were not about to let the Soviet Union make peace,
19:18even a humiliating one.
19:21When we made 30, 40 kilometres a day,
19:24we said, well, we can achieve it.
19:27Now, blitzkrieg tactics still also works in Russia.
19:30It was professionalism, you see.
19:33We are better, you see.
19:34Where we come, we will clean that up.
19:37That was absolutely sure.
19:44As the avalanche of Soviet prisoners continued,
19:47the very sight of them confirmed in many German soldiers
19:50their own racist beliefs.
19:53Man suchte vor sich selber fast unbewusst auch eine Rechtfertigung,
19:57dass man in diesen Krieg gezogen ist.
20:00Und nun sah man da Leute,
20:03die man von ihrem zivilisatorischen Zustand,
20:09von ihren geistigen, also ihren mentalen Fähigkeiten,
20:16sich doch unterlegen fühlte.
20:18Ich schäme mich das jetzt zu sagen.
20:21Wir denken heute da ganz anders drüber.
20:29Hitler despised the entire Slavic population of the Soviet Union
20:33and declared this conflict to be a war of annihilation.
20:36Sie hätten ein Blutbad ohnegleichen unter unserer Bevölkerung angerichtet.
20:41Allein im schnellen Zufall...
20:42But he felt a special hatred for the Jews,
20:45believing that Moscow was the home of a Judeo-Bolshevist world conspiracy.
20:49Die Gesichter dieser Untermenschen sind von Raubgier und Mordlust gezeichnet.
20:54In der Tat würdige Verbündete Churchills und seiner Plutokraten-Klicke.
21:01Jüdische Bolshevismus, das war ja der große Fall.
21:04Und das war eben zu bekriegen.
21:07Weil das eben die Gefahr für Europa darstellte.
21:09In unserer damaligen Sicht wohlgemerkt.
21:14Und da hat man eben die Juden als die Führungsschicht
21:17oder als diejenigen angesehen,
21:19die die Sache drüben in der Sowjetunion fest im Griff hatten.
21:23Having joined the Hitler Youth when he was 10 years old,
21:27Karl-Heinz Benke volunteered for the Waffen-SS in 1940.
21:31Ich finde es einfach unvorstellbar,
21:33dass man eine Rasse an sich für ein Phänomen wie den Bolshevismus
21:38pauschal verantwortlich macht.
21:42Sehe ich heute auch so.
21:43Aber damals, Ausfluss, hat man das eben nicht gesehen.
21:48Weil man da auch über diese Dinge also gar nicht so viele Gedanken macht.
21:52Wir nahmen an, dass was hier geschieht, ist rechtens.
21:55...
22:13Конечно, если бы я была нееврейка,
22:16я бы их боялась меньше.
22:19It was a big fear that Jews lived in the place.
22:26I saw this case, how they took this woman and were killed only because she was a Jew.
22:35Of course, she left, she left, she went home to mom.
22:40It was near our parade.
22:41I expected that at any point they could enter our room and shoot at the place of these people who
22:49were hiding us.
22:50And, of course, the three of us.
22:53It was such a horror.
22:54It was always a horror.
22:56For three years.
22:58From 1941 to 1943.
23:09While special killing squads in the occupied territories were hunting down one hated enemy, the Jews,
23:15ordinary German soldiers like these were expected to cooperate in the elimination of the Soviet commissars,
23:21the political officers within each army unit.
23:28This infamous order, calling for German soldiers to select and hand over Soviet commissars to be shot,
23:35was issued before the war began.
23:39One of the witness signatures on the order is that of Bernhard Bechler,
23:43an officer in the German army's high command.
23:48What have you thought, what have you felt, as you gave this commissar?
23:53Nothing.
23:54Nothing.
23:55I was glad that my name came out as a request.
23:59I can't say that.
24:01I can't say that.
24:02You can't see that.
24:04That's a very special one.
24:06That's 20, 30 Ereignisse.
24:08That's the same thing.
24:09And that's the same thing.
24:11And that's the same thing.
24:12Fertig, unterschrieben.
24:13Here is it.
24:14Verschicken.
24:15Fertig.
24:16And that's the next task.
24:20There were German divisions who didn't carry out the commissar order.
24:24But most did.
24:29From the beginning of the war in the east,
24:32the leadership of the German army was complicit in the criminal policies of the Nazis.
24:36Also was für eine Moral war das dann noch, wenn man sich über das Kriegsrecht hinwegsetzt
24:42und solche Befehle rausgibt?
24:44Ja, wenn ich der Meinung bin, dass das eine Gefahr für die westliche Welt ist,
24:50wenn die Sowjetunion eine Gefahr ist für die Zivilisation,
24:58dann ist das schon auch von der Seite aus gesehen, wenn ich das anerkenne, wenn ich das glaube,
25:06ist das schon eine Moral, die da aufgebaut ist.
25:09Dann muss ich das moralisch verhindern und die Moral sagt mir,
25:15dann muss ich auch dort zu Mitteln greifen, die ich sonst nicht anwende.
25:28Ich habe gesehen, wie kommunisten und komzomolisten
25:32sie verabschieden und verabschieden,
25:34verabschieden und verabschieden.
25:38Das waren es, das waren es, das waren es, das waren es, das waren es, das waren es, das waren
25:42es.
25:43Das waren es nicht nur diejenigen,
25:45die Komunisten waren, die immer noch nicht,
25:49sondern es war es nicht nur die Komunisten,
25:51weil ich mir so gefragt,
25:53da war es immer,
25:53wenn alle die Kinder oder die Stadt waren,
25:54da waren die Komunisten,
25:55oder in der Stadt.
25:57Und diese Weaselisse,
25:58wir haben es gesehen,
26:00ich habe es gesehen,
26:02in den Schulen selbst,
26:03sie wollten nicht filmen,
26:05noch ein paar Tage zu machen,
26:06um es zu beherzustellen.
26:09drei, vier Tage aufstehen.
26:11Das war drei, vier Tage.
26:13Another consequence of the way the war was conceived was the mistreatment of the Soviet
26:17prisoners of war, here being fed scraps of food by their German guards.
26:50But we saw their relationship to us, so they didn't consider us for people.
27:07The first case of cannibalism came out of the night, they would cut the or the other part of the
27:15dead body,
27:17and then the other people tried to cut it out of the dead body.
27:25The skin, of course, no one will cut, no one will cut.
27:31Other parts may be somehow infected,
27:37the skin, let's say.
27:40But the blood can be used in the blood.
27:47Sometimes the blood could be cut.
27:55The blood from the Wehrmacht's Economic Agency for the East, dated May 1941,
28:00casts light on why the German army didn't care about their prisoners of war.
28:04It predicts that in the forthcoming war...
28:07Tens of millions of men will undoubtedly starve to death
28:10if we take away all we need from the country.
28:15Once the war had begun, Göring even joked...
28:19Things have got out of hand.
28:21Soviet prisoners have just eaten one of our German guards.
28:25At the moment, the victory was still clear.
28:28If we had victory, everything would be right.
28:31We shouldn't forget it.
28:34If we had won the war against the Soviet Union,
28:37everything would be right.
28:47But it wasn't only the Germans who were fighting a cruel and brutal war.
28:52Just before the Red Army retreated, Stalin's secret police killed many of their political prisoners.
29:03And on the battlefield, as these photographs of mutilated bodies show,
29:09Soviet forces were capable of venting their fury on captured German prisoners.
29:14It was a completely different type of war.
29:17This was the kind of brutality doing it that way.
29:20And that made all the soldiers make them furious when you threw your front there brutally killed.
29:25And the reaction was from our side that people didn't want to fall wounded into their hands and they shot
29:34themselves.
29:35I still remember a young officer from our infantry regiment.
29:40I knew very well who was left behind wounded.
29:44And when we got back in our counter-attack, he had shot himself in the meantime.
29:50We could have rescued him otherwise as a wounded one.
29:52And thereafter, we decided what never happened to me myself.
29:57We kept over the last bullet for ourselves.
30:04In August 1941, Adolf Hitler visited the captured city of Minsk.
30:10In less than two months, his Nazi empire had expanded 400 miles into the Soviet Union.
30:16But problems still existed.
30:19German forces had advanced so far and so fast that there were difficulties supplying them on the bad Soviet roads.
30:27And Blitzkrieg as a tactic had been designed to conquer countries the size of France.
30:31Whether the same strategy would work in a country 40 times bigger had always been a gamble.
30:38As Hitler studied the situation map that August,
30:41he saw that in places the Red Army was putting up more resistance than expected.
30:47West of Kiev, the German army was finding it hard going.
30:52So Hitler ordered his army groups to capture the city in a pincer movement
30:57and delayed the advance on Moscow.
31:09nearly a million Soviet troops were positioned to protect Kyiv and the surrounding area.
31:26But Soviet defence tactics were still extremely primitive.
31:30And no match for German Blitzkrieg.
31:33These forces were simply ordered to stand fast and wait for the Germans.
31:43In the face of the oncoming pancers, the Soviet commanders of Kyiv believed that they were in danger of being
31:49encircled.
31:50They communicated their fears to Stalin in messages received by Stalin's personal telegraphist.
31:57But, we used to stand on their Ahmadinej's army to continue make peace for the airport.
32:04And, of course, we asked that to stop,
32:09We talked about it.
32:10We asked them to continue to keep the Germans.
32:15We asked them to keep it.
32:15No, no, no, no, no s-point.
32:16We asked them to stop Kive.
32:17To stop Kive and stop Kive.
32:20We said he was asking for the left.
32:22Not the only ri-opener to Kive.
32:22And, of course, we asked them to continue to keep it.
32:26It was a way, as if possible.
32:27The General Staff said, we have to send this city.
32:31He said, hold on, we can't send this city.
32:41Stalin's stubbornness led to more than 40 Soviet divisions
32:44being trapped around Kyiv, many cut off by the Dnieper River.
32:55650,000 Soviet soldiers were captured at the Battle of Kyiv.
33:00It was the largest encirclement in military history.
33:04The situation was desperate for the Soviet Union.
33:07Leningrad was surrounded, and Kyiv, Minsk and Smolensk
33:11were now all in German hands.
33:13There were just mistakes, why they send it,
33:18because there was very little information.
33:20This tragedy was, we were experiencing it.
33:22It was hard to express words how we were experiencing it.
33:26How could it all be?
33:30The Red Army was floundering.
33:33Many of its recruits were poorly equipped and badly trained.
33:41This propaganda archive shows each new soldier
33:45at least receiving a rifle.
33:47But the reality could be very different.
33:50There were rifles.
33:53For 5 people, they had one rifle.
33:56They had about 100 of them.
33:58We thought that it was only when we were going.
34:02And when we were training,
34:04this was enough.
34:06And then, when we got into battle,
34:10they would give us a new weapon.
34:13But there was no such thing in our batteries.
34:23The town of Vyazma, just 130 miles west of Moscow,
34:28now stood between the German army and the Soviet capital.
34:38In October 1941,
34:40this was the site of a battle in which, in 12 days,
34:44150,000 Soviet soldiers were killed.
34:48More dead than the British lost in the five months of the Somme.
35:04Out on the great plains of Vyazma stood five Soviet armies.
35:21Just as at Kiev, the Soviet forces were swiftly encircled.
35:33Desperate to escape, Soviet soldiers even attacked the German line without weapons.
35:40You see, the first line had rifles.
35:42The second line had even no rifles.
35:43They took the rifles from the dead.
35:45No German soldier would have attacked without any weapon.
35:48Incredible for us.
35:49You are destined to attack even without weapons.
35:55If you are, there will be weapons of the dead.
36:09You are the men who were conquered.
36:11It will be suffered from the frontier.
36:13This is the smoke of the underground.
36:17The people have destroyed the underground.
36:21where the enemy is, where we are, where we are,
36:25because the corresponding team didn't come to us.
36:29We knew that we were forced,
36:32and we didn't do anything with our two guns,
36:36if we were to fight against the Germans.
36:38But it was lucky at this moment that we didn't fight against the Germans.
36:43It was just a coincidence, it was a fate.
36:51There were two forces trapped in the plane.
36:53I saw one of these attacks coming.
36:56We are sitting on the top of the hills,
36:59and then, like a herd, vehicles and men coming up by the thousands.
37:05And what I always say, make you blood freezing, you see.
37:10And then the Russians came into these grounds
37:14where the creek was there, and it was a swampy area,
37:17and then all the vehicles once sunk in the mud,
37:22then the people coming out,
37:24and now like a herd of sheep coming against us, you see.
37:28And then also, let them come, let them get near, let them come on, you see.
37:33And then, at the same time, our machine guns then mowed them down.
37:38They were lying then by the thousands,
37:41like the battlefield of the old history, you see.
37:54In another part of the encirclement,
37:57some of the Soviet soldiers run into Wolfgang Horn and his men.
38:01The Russians came out of the forest,
38:03and the Russians were so cowardly
38:06that some of the crew of these tracks
38:09hovered behind the vehicle, took cover,
38:12and bent down, forward, totally,
38:15crouching on the ground and not moving at all.
38:19Rookie Wiersch, I said, Rookie Wiersch, raise your hands,
38:21they pretended to be dead.
38:24And we started shooting them, naturally.
38:28Under the impact of the bullets, they wavered a bit,
38:30they shook a bit.
38:37Wolfgang Horn is still convinced he was right
38:39to kill those crouching Soviet soldiers.
38:44When they don't raise their hands, what can we do, you see?
38:47What can they do?
38:48You see, they might throw a hand grenade, they might...
38:51What can they do?
38:52If they don't surrender, we shoot them.
38:55It was natural for us to do.
38:58Then we joined, several ones joined me,
39:00and we naturally shot them all, crouching there.
39:03Cowards didn't deserve any better anyhow.
39:06That was our feeling.
39:21That October, with German soldiers winning victories at Vyazma
39:25and the nearby Battle of Bryansk,
39:27German newspapers announced that the war was as good as won.
39:53The Germans had now captured nearly three million Soviet soldiers.
40:26The Germans pressed on towards Moscow,
40:29where in mid-October only 90,000 men stood defending the capital.
40:37Stalin called on General Zhukov to prepare the defence of Moscow
40:42and told Zhukov to meet him at his dacha.
40:46When Zhukov arrived, he heard Stalin talking to Beria.
40:50In the 1960s, Zhukov confided to a military historian
40:54just what he had overheard Stalin saying.
40:56But this was not a story the Soviet people could hear until after perestroika.
41:02Zhukov told me, the poet, and I said, he heard the following words.
41:08All Noises!
41:09Make his gels on your MMAüğ always together.
41:13From that army, joins again.
41:13Let'sifi Labour, pass with German corps.
41:15Get in direct�� by seeh-g PM and tell you what Germany is needed to bore here.
41:30Only now, because of the discovery of the secret document dating the first meeting to July,
41:36is there evidence of at least two separate discussions within the Soviet leadership
41:40about approaching the Germans.
41:47Panic was growing inside Moscow as the Germans neared the city.
41:56Panic, some people who wanted to greet the Germans, sent to Arbati a letter,
42:07saying, welcome to Arbati.
42:12Many directors of shops opened their shops and said to them, take what you want,
42:20let the Germans will not be able to.
42:22Maya Berzina rushed with her three-year-old son to the city's southern port on the river Moscow.
42:40Crammed on board one of the last ships to leave, they fled the capital.
42:44I said to them, death, and fear, and worry about what's going on,
42:52and thinking about where to go, and what's going on, and how to go.
42:57But that's all.
42:58And we thought, how will it be?
43:00If the government leaves, then probably Moscow will be taken.
43:04Now the question was, would Stalin and his entourage desert Moscow too?
43:11Evidence that they were about to leave is provided by this recently declassified document,
43:16signed by Stalin, and dated by him the 15th of October, 1941.
43:21The State Defence Committee has resolved to evacuate today
43:24the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet and the top levels of government.
43:27Comrade Stalin will leave tomorrow or later, depending on the situation.
43:35At Moscow's Yaroslavsky railway station, Stalin's armoured train waited to head east,
43:41towards the Ural Mountains.
43:44On the night of October the 16th, having been ordered to clear his office in the Kremlin,
43:49Nikolai Ponomaryov sat on the train and waited to leave Moscow.
43:53There was a place where I took place in a car, but I felt bad,
44:01that we leave, that Moscow will be taken.
44:05What is it?
44:06It's just need to be a person to imagine,
44:11what a shame, what a shame that the Soviet people are experiencing.
44:34But the train didn't leave. Stalin decided to stay and defend the capital.
44:41On October the 19th, he ordered his secret police to quash the panic in Moscow,
44:46by whatever means necessary.
44:49You are absolutely right.
44:51You are clearly saying, stop, I will shoot.
44:55You will not have a deal,
44:56you will say, stop, I will shoot.
45:00You will shoot.
45:00You will shoot.
45:00Or you will shoot.
45:01No.
45:02Everything is on the ground.
45:04It was a hard command.
45:08Vladimir Ogrysko and his unit of secret police prevented Muscovites from fleeing.
45:14They stopped cars and overturned them,
45:17sometimes with the drivers still inside.
45:20The car was turned all over.
45:22But if they turned it and hit it,
45:25everything is good.
45:26We have no responsibility.
45:29It was a right thing.
45:32It was a right thing.
45:33It was a right thing.
45:33It was a right thing.
45:34a man who didn't understand their own duty.
45:37It was a very serious time.
45:39which happened to the Republic.
45:41It was a good idea.
45:51It was a good idea.
46:18CHOIR SINGS
46:22As winter came, German soldiers were at the gates of Moscow.
46:27They had covered more ground more quickly
46:30and captured more prisoners than any army ever had before.
46:36But according to their original plan,
46:39by now they should already have won the war.
47:26CHOIR SINGS