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The Battle of Stalingrad
is said to have been the bloodiest

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of the whole of the second World War.

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It's a struggle
between the German fatherland

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and the Russian motherland.

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The Soviet troops
moving into that city

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know that it's essentially
a death sentence.

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Stalingrad falls,
that's it for the Soviet Union.

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Hitler had no understanding
of the enormous will of the Soviet people.

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The battle of Stalingrad
is one of the most brutal engagements

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of World War II.

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Now, rare footage from around the world,

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expertly restored in full color…

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tells the story
as you've never seen it before.

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In August 1939…

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Hitler and Stalin
sign a non-aggression pact.

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The world is taken by surprise.

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Hitler is expanding
the borders of Nazi Germany eastwards…

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annexing Austria
and occupying Czechoslovakia.

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And from the earliest days
of his career,

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Hitler made no secret
of his hatred for communism…

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nor his desire for Soviet territory.

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For Hitler,
the Soviet Union was the home

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of this new ideology, which he detested.

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Communism stood in the way
of Aryan supremacy.

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And that was his fundamental concern.

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The ten year pact
flies in the face of everything

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the two great dictators stand for.

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The Russian public,
and the military in particular,

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could not understand
that these have been the enemy

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and how could they now
have any kind of a deal?

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Stalin himself
had actually read Mein Kampf.

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He was not naïve about Hitler's aims.

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This was a deal with the devil
for both sides.

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But while
western diplomats struggle

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to understand this baffling alliance,

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Hitler and Stalin reveal their hands.

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At the beginning of September 1939,

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Germany invades Poland
from the west.

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Shortly after,
the Soviet Union invades from the east.

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Within a few short weeks,
Hitler and Stalin's armies

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complete their conquest.
Poland surrenders.

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As they carve up the spoils
and redraw Poland's borders…

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the true meaning
of the Nazi-Soviet pact becomes clear.

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It was a marriage
of convenience,

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as Poland was consumed by fascist
and communist expansionism.

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But while Stalin consolidates
his land-grab,

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Hitler is far from finished.

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Over the next two years,

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Stalin watches on
as the Nazi war machine

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blitzes its way across Europe,

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Smashing through democracies
like Norway…

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…Belgium…

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…the Netherlands…

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…and France.

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At first,
the overthrow of major democracies

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plays into Stalin's hands.

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But as the dust settles,
it becomes increasingly obvious

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that Hitler has no intention
of merely expanding to the west.

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Hitler is in control
of all of western and central Europe.

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Russia really is
the last frontier for him.

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With Hitler's troops
busy holding his gains across Europe,

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and the Nazi-Soviet pact in place,

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nobody expects The Fuhrer
to open a second front of the war.

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Although so many national leaders

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have learned that Hitler's promises
mean nothing…

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when the betrayal comes,

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it is still unexpected.

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On the very early morning
of 22nd of June 1941,

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everything changed.

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Operation Barbarossa started…

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and Hitler attacked the Soviet Union.

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And from this very moment onwards

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the two countries
were again arch-enemies.

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Hitler's hunger
for Soviet territory is all-consuming.

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Communism had to be defeated,
the Soviet had to be defeated,

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and Stalin had to be defeated.

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And Hitler
wants him defeated quickly.

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The initial idea of the Germans was…

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to crush the Red Army
within six, eight weeks.

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They used the now
textbook Nazi tactic of "blitzkrieg,"

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an overwhelming attack,
first by planes…

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followed rapidly by tanks…

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artillery…

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…and infantry.

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Hitler, at this point,
believed that

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the Red Army would collapse
like a house of cards.

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All they had to do was kick in the door

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and the whole rotten structure
would collapse.

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By December 1941,

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the German army has stormed
through Soviet territory,

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holding a line that stretches
from Leningrad to Rostov.

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The Red Army
suffers astonishing casualties,

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losing three million soldiers.

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But the Nazi onslaught
is finally halted at Moscow.

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By the following spring,

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it is clear that Russia isn't going
to fall as easily as France,

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and Hitler's war machine needs feeding.

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Germany is going to continue
fighting the war.

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It needs oil, it needs vital resources,

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and that means heading down
to The Caucasus

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at the southern part
of the Soviet Union.

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So in the summer of 1942,

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as the Wehrmacht continues
its assault on Russia,

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Hitler and his generals
plan to send German army groups south

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to take the rich oil fields.

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But as Hitler plots
the route to the Caucasus,

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he spots the opportunity to strike
a humiliating blow to his adversary.

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The German high command,
when they're going over the plan

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for that summer,
they notice that there's this city

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named Stalingrad there.

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It's just a juicy morsel
that caught their eye.

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There are strategic reasons
for taking Stalingrad.

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The large industrial city
supplies the Red Army

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with tanks and armaments.

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And sits right on the bank
of the mighty river Volga.

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The capture of Stalingrad would cut off
this major Soviet supply route.

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But the main reason
Hitler wants Stalingrad…

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is because of its name.

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Wouldn't this be a coup
to really embarrass Stalin,

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by taking a city that has his name?

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Hitler changes his plan
and splits his forces into two.

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One group continues towards
the oil fields,

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while the other heads
for Stalingrad.

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The seeds are sown
for a major battle of wills.

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Just as important as it was
for Hitler to take the city,

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for reasons of prestige, it was exactly
the same for Stalin to keep it.

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Stalingrad not only bears
Stalin's name,

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but also holds
a deep personal significance.

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This was the city
where he had fought and won

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in the Russian civil war.

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There is an emotion to defend that city

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during this new great patriotic war.

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Stalin, already furious

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that so many Soviet towns
had fallen so easily,

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is determined that Stalingrad
will be different.

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On the 28th of July,
he issues order 227,

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urging, "Not one step back."

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Stalin heaped shame
on the Red Army,

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but the Red Army could redeem itself
by fighting heroically

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and by not ceding one step
of holy Soviet soil.

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If the defenders
of Stalingrad are to stand firm

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against the Nazi assault,

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Stalin has to inspire them
like never before.

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He puts the internationalist
communist ideal to one side

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and appeals
to pre-revolution sentiments,

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patriotism,
love of the motherland.

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Fighting for the motherland,
the homeland,

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resonated intensely with virtually
any Soviet citizen.

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The overriding motivator
was love for the motherland

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and deep hatred toward the invader.

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And the people of Stalingrad
have more than patriotism

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to motivate them.

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By the summer of '42,

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most Russian people had a very good idea
of what the Germans had been doing,

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particularly to civilians and to Jews,
in the occupied areas.

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Murdering thousands of people…

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cutting a swath
of death and destruction.

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There was scarcely
an atrocity that didn't go unnoticed,

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and they were broadcast widely
through the population

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and through the military.

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When you have got an enemy
who is saying,

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"I will kill you, I will kill your wife,
your children,

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and I'll be the master here,"

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what sort of reaction do you expect
from the local population?

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For the people of Stalingrad,

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patriotism and fear
are powerful motivators.

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They rally to create local defenses,
digging anti-tank ditches

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to slow the Wehrmacht.

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They call everyone out
to contribute,

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men, women and children.

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Ahead of the German advance,

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the Soviets destroy their own property,

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laying waste to anything that might
be useful to the German army.

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They are really creating
kind of a scorched earth landscape

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for the Germans
to finally come up against.

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Leading the German
charge toward Stalingrad

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is General Paulus.

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Friedrich Paulus, some said
was quite an imposing figure,

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tall, slim, but was regarded
by his fellow soldiers

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as a bit of a backroom star
rather than a front line soldier.

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Paulus is a classic
standoffish German commander

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who prefers to win
by using longer range weaponry

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and by intimidating the opponents
if he possibly can.

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The Soviets brace themselves
for Paulus's ground attack.

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But when the barrage comes,

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it doesn't come from his artillery.

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The bombing, no one expected.

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Theaters were running,
children were going to school.

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This hit them out of the blue.

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On the 23rd of August 1942,

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the skies over Stalingrad turned black
with swarms of Nazi bombers.

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And we're talking some 600 aircraft.

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A thousand tons of bombs
are dropped on the city.

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The Soviet air force
is too poorly equipped

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to defend against the onslaught.

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Planes were just able
to come over again and again and again

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dropping their bombs.

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As the city was mainly built from wood,

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it went up light a funeral pyre.

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It lit fires
that did not go out for months.

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By day, pillars of smoke.

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By night, the flames of these fires
that were never extinguished.

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By the end of it,
the landscape was apocalyptic.

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German bombers
had smashed everything in sight;

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buildings, factories, parks,

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anything in the city
was essentially rubbled.

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Turned neat city blocks

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into nothing more than
piles of steel and stone.

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The German aerial attack
on Stalingrad

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is the most intense of the entire war
on the eastern front.

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It claims the lives
of over 40,000 Soviets.

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And the tanks and artillery
under General Paulus

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haven't even arrived.

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And if the survivors have any plans
to flee the burning city,

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they are soon quashed.

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Stalin mandated that everyone
in Stalingrad stays put.

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No one is leaving the city.

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The only escape route
is across the Volga.

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And the Soviet Navy
has other priorities.

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The naval body on the river itself

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was devoted almost entirely
to moving food, ammunition and troops,

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either to Stalingrad
or wounded back from Stalingrad.

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Among the defenders
with no option but to stay and fight

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are soldiers the Nazis
would never dream of deploying.

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There were about
one million Soviet women

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who served in the Red Army.

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As the country was invaded,

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women volunteered
on just about the same proportion as men.

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What's so significant
about that is not just the number,

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but also about half of them served
in active combat roles.

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They were in tank crews,
they were snipers, they were gunners.

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Even as nurses and medics,

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they were expected to go
onto the battlefield to recover wounded,

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and many nurses actually died
on the battlefield.

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Even in those so-called support roles,

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these were women who were armed,
who were trained to use their weapons,

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and who fought.

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When the advancing German army
first encounter women with guns…

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they are stunned.

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They were used to women in Germany
being exalted by the Nazis,

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they were mothers, they were homemakers,
but they were not combat soldiers.

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Germans thought
that women serving with weapon in hand

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were proof of the denatured essence
that is Soviet communism.

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And it must have told the Germans,
actually, if the Russian women

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are prepared to throw in
their lot alongside their men…

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we've got to defeat a whole people.
It's not just the army.

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The relentless advance continues.

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00:17:00,600 --> 00:17:04,560
By the end of August,
German tanks hit the suburbs of Rynok,

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within sight of the city
and the river Volga.

250
00:17:08,320 --> 00:17:10,440
Confidence is running high.

251
00:17:11,160 --> 00:17:14,360
They had reached a prize
that they knew was important

252
00:17:14,440 --> 00:17:19,360
to The Fuhrer back in Germany,
and they were going to take it,

253
00:17:19,440 --> 00:17:21,120
probably they felt, within a week or two.

254
00:17:23,360 --> 00:17:24,720
Stalin was furious.

255
00:17:25,560 --> 00:17:29,240
"What are you doing there, my generals?"
That was his question.

256
00:17:30,360 --> 00:17:34,080
Stalin reissues
his order to defend the city at all costs.

257
00:17:34,680 --> 00:17:36,560
There will be no more retreat.

258
00:17:38,960 --> 00:17:41,960
The river Volga
is the last defendable position

259
00:17:42,040 --> 00:17:43,560
before the Ural Mountains.

260
00:17:44,120 --> 00:17:48,400
Stalin makes sure
that every Soviet knows what is at stake.

261
00:17:52,560 --> 00:17:55,720
The slogan that goes through
the Soviet defense is,

262
00:17:55,800 --> 00:17:57,840
"There is no land beyond the Volga."

263
00:17:57,920 --> 00:18:02,000
As if this is the last ditch,
literally, that if Stalingrad falls,

264
00:18:02,080 --> 00:18:03,800
that's it for the Soviet Union.

265
00:18:06,760 --> 00:18:09,920
Suddenly,
the German advance grinds to a halt.

266
00:18:12,680 --> 00:18:15,120
Stopped not by the Soviet ditches,

267
00:18:15,400 --> 00:18:16,880
but by the Luftwaffe.

268
00:18:19,240 --> 00:18:21,480
The city had been so thoroughly wrecked,

269
00:18:21,560 --> 00:18:25,640
it was almost impossible
to move their tanks through the rubble.

270
00:18:27,000 --> 00:18:28,880
Paulus had to change tactics.

271
00:18:29,160 --> 00:18:32,480
He switches
to more maneuverable artillery units,

272
00:18:32,560 --> 00:18:37,320
to soften up Soviet resistance
before German infantry can storm the city.

273
00:18:40,120 --> 00:18:43,760
Very quickly,
Hitler's troops make strategic gains,

274
00:18:43,840 --> 00:18:48,520
taking the main railway station,
and the important high ground

275
00:18:48,600 --> 00:18:50,440
of Mamaev Kurgan.

276
00:18:53,480 --> 00:18:55,280
From Mamaev Kurgan,

277
00:18:55,360 --> 00:18:58,400
they are able to see
the whole of the rest of the city,

278
00:18:58,480 --> 00:19:00,600
and artillery observers on that height

279
00:19:00,680 --> 00:19:02,880
would be able to completely dominate
the fighting.

280
00:19:04,120 --> 00:19:05,960
By the middle of September,
it must have seemed

281
00:19:06,040 --> 00:19:08,440
to most of the German attackers
that they were almost there.

282
00:19:10,120 --> 00:19:12,720
Surely, within a very short
space of time,

283
00:19:12,800 --> 00:19:16,120
the Russian defenders are gonna melt away,
and they will have the whole of the city.

284
00:19:17,480 --> 00:19:20,600
But the Soviets show
no sign of submitting.

285
00:19:21,880 --> 00:19:23,520
To halt Nazi gains,

286
00:19:24,200 --> 00:19:26,920
Stalin sends in one of his best generals.

287
00:19:28,400 --> 00:19:32,240
General Chuikov was very much
in the new breed of Russian general.

288
00:19:33,280 --> 00:19:37,560
He was tough, he was stoical,
he was arguably quite ruthless,

289
00:19:37,640 --> 00:19:39,120
and he was the right man for the job.

290
00:19:40,280 --> 00:19:43,640
And Chuikov couldn't be less
like his German counterpart,

291
00:19:43,720 --> 00:19:45,000
General Paulus.

292
00:19:46,240 --> 00:19:48,520
He was a real soldier's soldier.

293
00:19:49,760 --> 00:19:54,280
He was approachable,
genuinely concerned about his troops.

294
00:19:54,360 --> 00:19:57,240
He was someone who went
to the front lines.

295
00:19:57,320 --> 00:19:59,640
He kept his headquarters
very near the front lines.

296
00:20:02,000 --> 00:20:05,920
People said everything changed
after Chuikov took command.

297
00:20:06,000 --> 00:20:08,840
And the biggest effect
he had was on morale,

298
00:20:08,920 --> 00:20:12,000
just totally turned around morale
for his troops.

299
00:20:13,200 --> 00:20:17,080
And General Chuikov
knows a thing about Paulus's tactics.

300
00:20:17,600 --> 00:20:22,880
As commander of the Soviet 64th Army
on its retreat towards Stalingrad,

301
00:20:22,960 --> 00:20:25,800
he knows Germans like to fight
at a distance.

302
00:20:26,960 --> 00:20:30,440
In the open, with tanks,
air power and artillery.

303
00:20:33,040 --> 00:20:35,560
He's lost a lot of men
under his command

304
00:20:35,640 --> 00:20:37,800
when he's been trying to fight that.

305
00:20:37,920 --> 00:20:40,800
Then in the city of Stalingrad
he comes into his own.

306
00:20:41,800 --> 00:20:45,320
He can see that they need mobility,
and they need speed, and they need space.

307
00:20:45,400 --> 00:20:48,280
And what he's going to do
in Stalingrad is deny them space.

308
00:20:51,560 --> 00:20:55,200
Now commanding
the 62nd army defending the city,

309
00:20:55,640 --> 00:20:59,040
Chuikov reorganizes it into small units,

310
00:20:59,160 --> 00:21:02,640
or Stormtroops, to downsize the battle.

311
00:21:03,280 --> 00:21:07,080
The Stormtroop tactic
came to be called "hug the enemy"

312
00:21:07,160 --> 00:21:09,040
because he would say,
"You need to get close.

313
00:21:10,120 --> 00:21:12,440
You should be no more than
a grenade-throw apart."

314
00:21:15,240 --> 00:21:17,480
What he means
is get so close to them

315
00:21:17,560 --> 00:21:20,040
that they dare not use
their artillery and air power,

316
00:21:20,120 --> 00:21:22,520
because their own troops
will be too much at risk.

317
00:21:23,360 --> 00:21:27,880
The strategy neutralizes
Paulus's greatest advantage.

318
00:21:29,360 --> 00:21:34,520
With it, Chuikov heralds in
a new era of urban warfare.

319
00:21:35,360 --> 00:21:40,080
Brutal, bloody,
extreme close-quarters combat.

320
00:21:41,920 --> 00:21:46,200
You essentially have
Soviet and German troops meters apart,

321
00:21:46,280 --> 00:21:48,520
in adjacent rooms in buildings.

322
00:21:51,840 --> 00:21:55,360
Urban warfare
is something that every army hates.

323
00:21:55,440 --> 00:21:58,280
Nobody wants to fight in a city,
and especially a city

324
00:21:58,360 --> 00:22:02,080
that's been destroyed into a rubble heap.

325
00:22:02,880 --> 00:22:06,000
They fought even in the cellars,
in the tunnels.

326
00:22:06,520 --> 00:22:08,800
It was really a dirty war.

327
00:22:09,240 --> 00:22:12,440
The Germans called it the Rattenkrieg,
the Rat's War.

328
00:22:15,680 --> 00:22:18,160
As the bitter, bloody fight unfolded,

329
00:22:18,240 --> 00:22:22,800
the question was, why the Germans
had chosen Stalingrad

330
00:22:22,880 --> 00:22:25,760
as the place to cut
the Soviet Volga supply route.

331
00:22:27,280 --> 00:22:29,360
They could do that anywhere
along the Volga River,

332
00:22:29,440 --> 00:22:31,680
they didn't have to go
through the city to do it.

333
00:22:31,760 --> 00:22:35,000
In some senses
it was a really poor military decision.

334
00:22:37,720 --> 00:22:42,720
In the confined conditions,
troops use every weapon they have to hand.

335
00:22:42,800 --> 00:22:45,800
Pistols, grenades, machine guns,

336
00:22:45,880 --> 00:22:49,840
flame-throwers, even sharpened spades.

337
00:22:52,120 --> 00:22:55,680
But there's one key weapon
that the ruins of Stalingrad

338
00:22:55,760 --> 00:22:58,360
offer the perfect conditions for.

339
00:22:59,080 --> 00:23:01,560
Snipers were sighted
all over the city.

340
00:23:01,640 --> 00:23:03,320
Chuikov realized how important they were.

341
00:23:06,320 --> 00:23:10,760
The rubble of Stalingrad
offers concealment and cover.

342
00:23:11,520 --> 00:23:16,080
All the time, troops
are hiding behind these scraps of rubble.

343
00:23:16,240 --> 00:23:19,640
But of course, they need to stick
their heads out occasionally,

344
00:23:21,040 --> 00:23:23,160
and then they would be vulnerable
to the snipers,

345
00:23:23,240 --> 00:23:26,000
who become the plague of Stalingrad.

346
00:23:27,320 --> 00:23:31,120
And Soviet women
are at the forefront of the fight.

347
00:23:32,720 --> 00:23:36,960
There were women that were there
in the Red Army as snipers.

348
00:23:37,040 --> 00:23:39,800
Many women were good shots,
because what it takes to be a good sniper

349
00:23:39,880 --> 00:23:45,000
is precision and patience,
and women tended to be very good at that.

350
00:23:47,560 --> 00:23:50,840
Nevertheless,
the Germans kill Soviet defenders

351
00:23:50,920 --> 00:23:52,480
at an alarming rate.

352
00:23:53,200 --> 00:23:55,200
It's a meat grinder,
is what it amounts to,

353
00:23:55,280 --> 00:23:58,120
and you're constantly feeding new meat
into the grinder.

354
00:23:59,520 --> 00:24:01,400
There was endless counterattacking,

355
00:24:01,480 --> 00:24:05,240
and the Germans were machine gunning them
down again and again and again.

356
00:24:06,680 --> 00:24:10,320
Troops sent into the city
on average will last for 24 hours

357
00:24:10,400 --> 00:24:11,760
before they're killed or wounded.

358
00:24:12,320 --> 00:24:14,480
But frustratingly for Paulus,

359
00:24:14,600 --> 00:24:17,600
Chuikov always seems to have
just enough soldiers

360
00:24:17,680 --> 00:24:19,520
to keep the Nazis at bay.

361
00:24:20,960 --> 00:24:24,320
And the pressure to cling on
is unrelenting.

362
00:24:25,720 --> 00:24:29,080
The orders given by Stalin
to his fronts, and his armies,

363
00:24:29,160 --> 00:24:33,200
and his divisions, were to stand fast
and fight for every inch of terrain.

364
00:24:34,880 --> 00:24:37,800
It was the fortress Stalingrad
that was to be defended at all costs.

365
00:24:39,760 --> 00:24:42,080
Lives were not important.

366
00:24:42,200 --> 00:24:44,880
For Stalin, it was "we defend."

367
00:24:48,200 --> 00:24:52,080
The general motto
of the Red Army was,

368
00:24:52,200 --> 00:24:53,320
"We'll never surrender."

369
00:24:53,720 --> 00:24:55,000
No setback.

370
00:24:55,520 --> 00:24:56,880
We'll die here…

371
00:24:57,960 --> 00:24:59,920
but the Germans will not capture it.

372
00:25:01,360 --> 00:25:03,480
The sacrifice
made by the men and women

373
00:25:03,560 --> 00:25:07,040
of the Red Army
unsettles the German attackers.

374
00:25:08,680 --> 00:25:13,440
The Soviet soldier was imagined
as this brutish, beastly mass.

375
00:25:13,520 --> 00:25:16,560
Subhuman, but dogged and determined,

376
00:25:16,680 --> 00:25:20,960
and completely disregarding
their own survival instinct.

377
00:25:22,720 --> 00:25:26,760
But by October, it is clear
that heroism won't be enough

378
00:25:26,840 --> 00:25:28,120
to stop the inevitable.

379
00:25:28,960 --> 00:25:32,960
Chuikov is desperately holding
onto landmarks,

380
00:25:34,080 --> 00:25:37,440
but the Germans are taking
more and more of the city.

381
00:25:38,600 --> 00:25:41,160
Before long they've actually forced
the defenders back

382
00:25:41,280 --> 00:25:44,360
to just this really narrow strip
ahead of the river.

383
00:25:45,200 --> 00:25:49,920
It seems only a matter of time
before Stalin's cherished city

384
00:25:50,000 --> 00:25:52,520
will be in the hands of his hated enemy.

385
00:25:53,160 --> 00:25:55,480
To Hitler,
it looks as though the battle is won,

386
00:25:55,560 --> 00:26:00,720
because on a map almost all of Stalingrad
is now in German hands,

387
00:26:01,680 --> 00:26:06,160
and he can take the rest at his leisure
with small assault groups.

388
00:26:06,760 --> 00:26:08,840
The attitude of
the German high command

389
00:26:08,920 --> 00:26:11,680
is "we're superior,"
and we're gonna remain superior,

390
00:26:11,760 --> 00:26:13,480
and no Soviet attack will succeed.

391
00:26:16,080 --> 00:26:17,640
By the start of November,

392
00:26:17,720 --> 00:26:20,920
with 90 percent of Stalingrad
in German hands,

393
00:26:21,000 --> 00:26:23,000
the battle was virtually won…

394
00:26:25,080 --> 00:26:28,360
when the pace of the fight
slowed dramatically.

395
00:26:29,520 --> 00:26:32,520
The Soviet winter had arrived.

396
00:26:32,960 --> 00:26:36,560
The Germans are still not fully equipped

397
00:26:36,680 --> 00:26:40,360
for the tremendously low temperatures,
around -30 degrees.

398
00:26:40,960 --> 00:26:46,040
They have some winter clothing,
but they're still resorting to newspaper

399
00:26:46,120 --> 00:26:47,960
and captured boots and so on,

400
00:26:48,040 --> 00:26:50,720
in order to try to protect themselves
against the cold.

401
00:26:52,080 --> 00:26:55,560
And the German army
are running short of supplies.

402
00:26:58,320 --> 00:27:01,400
One big problem
that the Germans are facing

403
00:27:01,480 --> 00:27:03,480
is the length of their supply lines.

404
00:27:04,960 --> 00:27:09,760
It's impossible to advance
for many, many months and weeks.

405
00:27:10,320 --> 00:27:14,600
You have to stop somewhere,
you have to reach your target,

406
00:27:14,720 --> 00:27:17,680
you have to wait
for more resources coming.

407
00:27:18,680 --> 00:27:21,080
Surrounded by a wasteland,

408
00:27:21,160 --> 00:27:24,040
everything of potential value
had been destroyed

409
00:27:24,120 --> 00:27:27,080
or removed by the Soviet defenders.

410
00:27:27,480 --> 00:27:30,640
The Wehrmacht were counting
on a rapid collapse of the enemy

411
00:27:30,720 --> 00:27:34,040
and getting a lot of access to resources
on enemy territory,

412
00:27:34,120 --> 00:27:38,080
which they don't get in Russia
because of scorched-earth policies.

413
00:27:38,680 --> 00:27:43,880
Stalingrad reveals the absolute limits
of German logistics.

414
00:27:45,320 --> 00:27:48,720
Paulus and his troops regroup
for a final push.

415
00:27:50,600 --> 00:27:53,320
If they can claim
the last scraps of the city,

416
00:27:53,400 --> 00:27:57,640
they can cross the Volga
and extend Hitler's empire to the Urals.

417
00:27:58,640 --> 00:28:01,040
But still the Soviets refuse to give way,

418
00:28:01,720 --> 00:28:05,120
clinging to tiny enclaves
along Stalingrad's riverbank.

419
00:28:06,080 --> 00:28:10,320
The Soviet resistance holds out
until November the 19th,

420
00:28:11,200 --> 00:28:13,480
the day the war changes.

421
00:28:28,320 --> 00:28:32,720
The Soviet counter-offensive
took them by total surprise.

422
00:28:39,720 --> 00:28:42,360
The Germans find themselves
facing an offensive

423
00:28:42,440 --> 00:28:46,120
by over a million men and women
stretched across the front.

424
00:28:46,480 --> 00:28:51,200
An enormous drive, tanks, artillery
in huge numbers

425
00:28:51,280 --> 00:28:53,040
concentrated at points of breakthrough.

426
00:28:56,960 --> 00:28:58,800
And everybody on the German side

427
00:28:58,880 --> 00:29:01,360
is completely mesmerized, paralyzed.

428
00:29:01,440 --> 00:29:05,440
"What? This has never happened before.
We've never had this happen before."

429
00:29:07,320 --> 00:29:09,760
The Nazis have been duped
on a grand scale.

430
00:29:12,560 --> 00:29:15,840
Stalin's deputy
commander-in-chief, General Zhukov,

431
00:29:15,960 --> 00:29:18,520
had been plotting
the massive counterattack

432
00:29:18,600 --> 00:29:20,080
since mid-September.

433
00:29:21,720 --> 00:29:24,320
The orders that he gives
to Chuikov in Stalingrad

434
00:29:24,400 --> 00:29:27,640
are fight, fight, fight,
hang on at all cost.

435
00:29:28,880 --> 00:29:32,640
Reinforce the city
with just enough forces

436
00:29:32,720 --> 00:29:34,240
to keep the Germans occupied

437
00:29:34,720 --> 00:29:37,240
and to hold on to
as much of the city as he can.

438
00:29:38,480 --> 00:29:41,880
For two months, while Chuikov
is hanging on by his fingernails,

439
00:29:42,400 --> 00:29:45,960
Zhukov comes up with this concept,
Operation Oran.

440
00:29:47,040 --> 00:29:50,000
Zhukov had amassed
One Million soldiers

441
00:29:50,080 --> 00:29:52,440
without Paulus suspecting a thing.

442
00:29:54,160 --> 00:29:56,080
And the Soviets played him for a sucker.

443
00:29:56,880 --> 00:29:59,200
They transport all these troops
in secret.

444
00:29:59,760 --> 00:30:01,560
The deception operation,

445
00:30:01,640 --> 00:30:04,800
the maskirovka operation
that they pull off is amazing.

446
00:30:05,160 --> 00:30:08,360
The German intelligence service
never really realized that

447
00:30:08,440 --> 00:30:11,960
the Soviets were capable
of such an operation.

448
00:30:13,560 --> 00:30:16,720
Sixth army intelligence officers
did notice

449
00:30:16,800 --> 00:30:19,200
suspicious troop movement
on the flanks,

450
00:30:19,720 --> 00:30:22,240
and they did report them
to the army command,

451
00:30:22,320 --> 00:30:24,360
but they were not believed.

452
00:30:25,080 --> 00:30:26,760
Everything had to be done at night,

453
00:30:27,400 --> 00:30:29,360
troops had to be hidden during the day,

454
00:30:29,440 --> 00:30:31,256
and they don't just need to
do this in one place,

455
00:30:31,280 --> 00:30:32,760
they need to do it in two.

456
00:30:36,000 --> 00:30:39,240
Zhukov realizes
that the cream of the Nazi force

457
00:30:39,320 --> 00:30:42,280
are concentrated up front
fighting in the city,

458
00:30:42,400 --> 00:30:46,040
leaving their flanks
and rear guard poorly defended.

459
00:30:47,720 --> 00:30:50,120
Most of the people
doing the guarding in those areas,

460
00:30:50,200 --> 00:30:52,800
those vulnerable areas,
were not Germans,

461
00:30:52,920 --> 00:30:55,080
they were affiliated armies
like the Italians,

462
00:30:55,160 --> 00:30:56,800
the Romanians,
and the Hungarians.

463
00:30:57,960 --> 00:31:00,760
The Romanians
had only joined Hitler's forces

464
00:31:01,160 --> 00:31:03,880
to reclaim the areas
that the Soviet Union

465
00:31:03,960 --> 00:31:05,920
had already taken from them.

466
00:31:06,000 --> 00:31:08,960
They now find themselves
hundreds of miles

467
00:31:09,040 --> 00:31:11,360
further into Soviet territory.

468
00:31:11,440 --> 00:31:14,280
They have no particular interest
in being that far,

469
00:31:14,360 --> 00:31:17,440
and they certainly don't want to be there
in the depths of the Russian winter.

470
00:31:18,280 --> 00:31:22,040
Zhukov's calculation proves
devastatingly accurate,

471
00:31:22,120 --> 00:31:24,560
as the axis allies collapse.

472
00:31:24,960 --> 00:31:29,240
The Romanians just can't cope
with this onslaught of Soviet troops.

473
00:31:32,000 --> 00:31:35,000
The flanks
of the seemingly invincible Sixth Army

474
00:31:35,080 --> 00:31:40,840
find themselves overwhelmed
by this surprise twin-pronged attack.

475
00:31:50,280 --> 00:31:54,120
This pincer movement is remarkable
on account of its scale

476
00:31:54,200 --> 00:31:55,440
and its ambition,

477
00:31:55,560 --> 00:31:58,120
but it's also remarkable
on account of the fact

478
00:31:58,200 --> 00:32:01,440
that it essentially copied
German blitzkrieg tactics.

479
00:32:03,600 --> 00:32:07,120
The Soviets are able to break through
the demoralized,

480
00:32:07,200 --> 00:32:11,040
overstretched Romanian forces
in the open step,

481
00:32:11,200 --> 00:32:14,880
and amazingly rapidly
they link up the pincers.

482
00:32:15,480 --> 00:32:18,000
After just four days
of progress,

483
00:32:18,080 --> 00:32:22,800
the Soviet pincers close
west of Stalingrad, near Kalach.

484
00:32:24,320 --> 00:32:28,880
The red army has ensnared 300,000 Nazis

485
00:32:28,960 --> 00:32:30,760
and their axis allies.

486
00:32:31,480 --> 00:32:35,560
They had encircled all the German troops
in Stalingrad inside

487
00:32:35,640 --> 00:32:38,080
and enclosed this noose around them,

488
00:32:38,160 --> 00:32:40,360
and they were ecstatic.

489
00:32:40,720 --> 00:32:45,480
During the entire operation,
every soldier and every officer

490
00:32:45,560 --> 00:32:48,440
knew what he was doing,

491
00:32:48,520 --> 00:32:50,920
and when they achieved
those tremendous results,

492
00:32:51,000 --> 00:32:52,720
I mean, everybody was elated.

493
00:32:54,000 --> 00:32:56,256
It must've been a hell of a shock
to the Germans to realize

494
00:32:56,280 --> 00:32:59,360
that this Slavic people
that they'd always looked down on,

495
00:32:59,480 --> 00:33:01,880
these Untermensch,
were actually capable of launching

496
00:33:01,960 --> 00:33:04,000
an operation of this type
of sophistication.

497
00:33:04,960 --> 00:33:07,520
Ahead of the secret counteroffensive,

498
00:33:07,600 --> 00:33:11,400
the Red Army had undergone
a huge rearmament program.

499
00:33:12,280 --> 00:33:13,960
They can bring in
some new airplanes,

500
00:33:14,040 --> 00:33:19,520
they can bring in the first full tank army
into combat in this counteroffensive,

501
00:33:19,600 --> 00:33:22,720
and they out-blitzkrieg the Germans.

502
00:33:25,520 --> 00:33:27,640
Not just the ground forces,
but the air forces,

503
00:33:27,720 --> 00:33:31,880
which in the meantime had been undergoing
a complete reorganization.

504
00:33:32,880 --> 00:33:35,280
It's an amazing rebirth.

505
00:33:35,840 --> 00:33:38,720
Again women play a pivotal role.

506
00:33:38,800 --> 00:33:41,800
They had women fighter pilots
who were sent to Stalingrad.

507
00:33:42,560 --> 00:33:44,560
These were women flying Yak fighters,

508
00:33:45,400 --> 00:33:48,280
which was one of the most
modern Soviet fighters of the day.

509
00:33:49,400 --> 00:33:52,760
And of those women, one, Lilia Litvyak,

510
00:33:53,200 --> 00:33:55,920
got two kills on her second day in combat

511
00:33:56,520 --> 00:34:00,000
and went on to become the highest scoring
female ace in the war.

512
00:34:01,680 --> 00:34:04,680
The skies over Stalingrad
are no longer dominated

513
00:34:04,760 --> 00:34:06,600
by Goring's Luftwaffe.

514
00:34:09,240 --> 00:34:13,720
General Paulus struggles
to come to terms with the new reality.

515
00:34:15,680 --> 00:34:18,000
General Paulus,
with his Sixth Army,

516
00:34:18,080 --> 00:34:22,240
now find themselves encircled
by enemy infantry and armor.

517
00:34:22,320 --> 00:34:26,440
They are within what the Germans called
"a kessel" and they are vulnerable

518
00:34:26,520 --> 00:34:29,440
and having to resist
the tremendous pressure

519
00:34:29,520 --> 00:34:33,160
of lack of supplies
and encroaching Soviet forces.

520
00:34:33,680 --> 00:34:38,120
General Paulus
has to decide on his next move quickly.

521
00:34:38,200 --> 00:34:40,560
Three-hundred thousand men in this kessel.

522
00:34:41,800 --> 00:34:45,720
If you leave troops in exposed positions,
you're gonna eventually lose all of them.

523
00:34:46,800 --> 00:34:49,760
They've got two options now.
They either fight their way out

524
00:34:49,840 --> 00:34:52,160
or another relieving army
has got to fight their way in.

525
00:34:53,000 --> 00:34:55,840
Paulus
and most of his subordinate commanders

526
00:34:55,920 --> 00:34:57,936
correctly concluded
that we'd better get out of here

527
00:34:57,960 --> 00:34:59,160
and get out of here now.

528
00:35:00,320 --> 00:35:05,040
But Paulus's urgent appeals
to Berlin are rebuffed by The Fuhrer.

529
00:35:06,280 --> 00:35:08,880
Hitler would not contemplate retreat.

530
00:35:08,960 --> 00:35:11,280
You don't retreat before Slavs,

531
00:35:11,360 --> 00:35:14,520
you don't retreat
before the inferior Untermenschen,

532
00:35:14,600 --> 00:35:16,120
you stay and you win.

533
00:35:16,200 --> 00:35:18,320
If you can't win, you stay and die.

534
00:35:20,160 --> 00:35:22,800
Hitler gave the order,
"You stay in Stalingrad.

535
00:35:23,080 --> 00:35:24,920
We will not give up Stalingrad."

536
00:35:25,800 --> 00:35:28,520
And Paulus decided,
"I will follow that order."

537
00:35:29,960 --> 00:35:31,520
Facing annihilation,

538
00:35:31,600 --> 00:35:35,840
the doggedly loyal Paulus
refuses to disobey Hitler.

539
00:35:37,160 --> 00:35:39,960
One suggests
a brighter person might have said,

540
00:35:40,040 --> 00:35:41,800
"Mein Fuhrer, this is the position."

541
00:35:42,400 --> 00:35:45,480
But all Paulus ever seemed to do
was to obey the instruction

542
00:35:45,560 --> 00:35:46,880
that came from above.

543
00:35:46,960 --> 00:35:52,080
He was perhaps too sensitive
to be a leading soldier.

544
00:35:54,440 --> 00:35:58,920
Paulus was a good staff officer,
a good theorist on war,

545
00:35:59,840 --> 00:36:03,960
but he was possibly not the right person,
the right character

546
00:36:04,040 --> 00:36:06,080
in this very difficult situation.

547
00:36:07,320 --> 00:36:11,440
You need a strong character,
you need people with their own will,

548
00:36:11,960 --> 00:36:15,440
and Paulus was,
in this regard, a bit weak.

549
00:36:17,320 --> 00:36:20,840
By the end of November,
it is clear that, without help,

550
00:36:20,920 --> 00:36:23,120
the trapped Nazis are doomed.

551
00:36:24,480 --> 00:36:28,000
Paulus watches
as his divisions in Stalingrad

552
00:36:28,080 --> 00:36:32,000
bleed themselves white,
get weaker and weaker and weaker.

553
00:36:32,480 --> 00:36:35,080
They're running out of everything,
they've got to get help

554
00:36:35,200 --> 00:36:37,040
from the outside
or they aren't gonna survive.

555
00:36:38,040 --> 00:36:42,200
Goring feeds Hitler's delusion
by telling him that his Luftwaffe

556
00:36:42,280 --> 00:36:45,200
can supply the army
with food and ammunition.

557
00:36:46,320 --> 00:36:48,000
This was a strong argument for Hitler.

558
00:36:48,240 --> 00:36:51,680
So if Goring is promising that,
we are going to do that,

559
00:36:51,760 --> 00:36:57,080
and the Sixth Army should stay where it is
and we will organize an airlift.

560
00:36:57,920 --> 00:37:00,320
Not for the first time
in this war,

561
00:37:00,400 --> 00:37:03,640
Goring is inflating the capabilities
of his air force.

562
00:37:04,840 --> 00:37:08,880
Just to support
the entire German army,

563
00:37:09,840 --> 00:37:15,400
they needed 800 tons of food every day.

564
00:37:15,840 --> 00:37:17,120
Could you imagine?

565
00:37:19,160 --> 00:37:21,720
Hitler has this delusion
that the Luftwaffe

566
00:37:21,800 --> 00:37:23,280
has the resources to do that.

567
00:37:24,040 --> 00:37:25,480
Using everything,

568
00:37:26,400 --> 00:37:30,600
they fly about ten or 15 tons a day.

569
00:37:31,640 --> 00:37:33,720
The fact is that they can't do it.

570
00:37:33,800 --> 00:37:37,080
There's no way they can resupply
an entire army by air.

571
00:37:38,760 --> 00:37:42,600
The new Soviet air force
is more than a match for the Luftwaffe.

572
00:37:43,320 --> 00:37:45,640
The Russian air force
conduct an air blockade,

573
00:37:45,760 --> 00:37:47,680
which is just a brilliant operation

574
00:37:47,760 --> 00:37:52,080
of shutting down the Luftwaffe attempts
to transport food in

575
00:37:52,160 --> 00:37:53,520
to the Sixth Army.

576
00:37:54,600 --> 00:37:56,640
The airlift
is an abject failure,

577
00:37:56,720 --> 00:38:01,520
and by early December, it is obvious
that the Sixth Army's only hope

578
00:38:01,600 --> 00:38:03,560
is a ground based rescue.

579
00:38:05,280 --> 00:38:09,160
Field Marshal von Manstein,
who was Commander-in-Chief of that region,

580
00:38:09,640 --> 00:38:13,760
tried to assemble some forces
to relieve the Sixth Army

581
00:38:13,840 --> 00:38:15,040
and to push the Soviets back.

582
00:38:15,640 --> 00:38:18,840
Manstein optimistically
calls his offensive operation,

583
00:38:18,920 --> 00:38:20,240
"Winter Storm."

584
00:38:20,720 --> 00:38:23,320
He launches it from the south,
towards the kessel.

585
00:38:23,840 --> 00:38:27,120
But Manstein's plan has one major flaw.

586
00:38:27,800 --> 00:38:29,960
The great combat power
that the Germans had

587
00:38:30,040 --> 00:38:32,120
is within the pocket, not outside.

588
00:38:32,400 --> 00:38:34,920
So Manstein
has a tremendous shortage of forces,

589
00:38:35,920 --> 00:38:41,360
and gets about halfway to the kessel.
But he is forced to break off.

590
00:38:42,640 --> 00:38:46,000
Resolute Soviet forces
stopped Manstein's troops

591
00:38:46,080 --> 00:38:48,760
forty-eight kilometers short
of Stalingrad.

592
00:38:49,400 --> 00:38:53,880
Inside the pocket, a senior officer
urges Paulus to ignore Hitler

593
00:38:53,960 --> 00:38:57,040
and punch through
to Manstein's relief force.

594
00:38:57,840 --> 00:39:01,040
Paulus had one commanding officer
of one of his corps,

595
00:39:01,760 --> 00:39:04,920
Walther von Seydlitz,
and Walther von Seydlitz

596
00:39:05,040 --> 00:39:07,920
always tried to persuade Paulus,
"break out."

597
00:39:09,400 --> 00:39:13,760
"Break out. It's on you,
don't follow the orders from Hitler.

598
00:39:13,840 --> 00:39:15,480
It's on you, just do what you want."

599
00:39:17,560 --> 00:39:21,480
If Paulus stays put,
his men are bound to suffer further.

600
00:39:23,840 --> 00:39:29,320
The situation within the kessel
for the Germans is unbelievably bad.

601
00:39:29,760 --> 00:39:31,520
They are freezing to death.

602
00:39:32,200 --> 00:39:35,680
They are being bombarded
by artillery and air power.

603
00:39:36,920 --> 00:39:39,320
And it's cold,
so there's nothing to eat.

604
00:39:40,120 --> 00:39:44,560
They go from regular meat, horse meat,
no meat, and it's just a progression.

605
00:39:45,320 --> 00:39:47,000
And if you don't eat, you can't fight.

606
00:39:47,800 --> 00:39:50,680
And if you don't have fuel,
you can't move your tanks or your trucks.

607
00:39:50,760 --> 00:39:52,576
And if you can't move
your tanks and your trucks,

608
00:39:52,600 --> 00:39:53,680
you can't move your troops.

609
00:39:54,320 --> 00:39:57,840
This is the problem for the soldiers
in Stalingrad area.

610
00:39:57,920 --> 00:40:01,880
Still The Fuhrer demands
that Paulus stays and fights.

611
00:40:02,000 --> 00:40:05,000
Hitler is still pursuing
his delusional ideas

612
00:40:05,080 --> 00:40:07,120
that the Sixth Army can hold fast

613
00:40:07,200 --> 00:40:10,920
and create a fortress,
and somehow live on thin air.

614
00:40:12,200 --> 00:40:16,360
Nazi propaganda did its best
to present events in a rose light,

615
00:40:16,440 --> 00:40:20,240
that everything is all right,
and yes, difficult,

616
00:40:20,320 --> 00:40:22,600
but we'll do our best.

617
00:40:23,560 --> 00:40:26,760
But Paulus knows
sending his exhausted troops out

618
00:40:26,840 --> 00:40:30,880
to confront a revitalized Soviet army
will carry a terrible cost.

619
00:40:32,160 --> 00:40:33,840
He did care for his men.

620
00:40:33,920 --> 00:40:36,760
He didn't like losing them in the numbers
they were losing.

621
00:40:37,640 --> 00:40:40,600
And contemplating a breakout,

622
00:40:41,280 --> 00:40:44,080
he calculated,
was perhaps just too big a risk.

623
00:40:45,200 --> 00:40:48,680
Once again Paulus
chooses to follow Hitler's orders

624
00:40:48,760 --> 00:40:50,160
and sit tight.

625
00:40:50,240 --> 00:40:54,560
By Christmas, 1942
there was no relief, there was no hope.

626
00:40:55,880 --> 00:40:57,800
As the new year dawns,

627
00:40:57,880 --> 00:41:01,160
the Red Army offers
the stubborn Nazis a way out.

628
00:41:02,480 --> 00:41:05,680
They've already got the Sixth Army trapped
and starving to death,

629
00:41:05,760 --> 00:41:07,560
and why don't they surrender?

630
00:41:07,640 --> 00:41:10,800
They should surrender.
Can't they see they can't possibly win?

631
00:41:12,200 --> 00:41:15,600
The Soviets offer surrender,
the Germans reject it,

632
00:41:15,680 --> 00:41:18,960
therefore the Soviets
have to take more active measures.

633
00:41:20,120 --> 00:41:23,800
When Soviet generals
initiate Operation Ring,

634
00:41:23,880 --> 00:41:26,200
a move to squeeze down the kessel,

635
00:41:26,280 --> 00:41:29,000
they discover the Germans
are a spent force.

636
00:41:29,720 --> 00:41:34,720
The capability of the Germans to resist
is virtually gone, and they are a mob.

637
00:41:35,680 --> 00:41:36,880
Not much more than a mob.

638
00:41:37,760 --> 00:41:40,240
They are daily being shelled
and shot at,

639
00:41:40,320 --> 00:41:43,840
casualties are mounting,
enormous numbers of wounded.

640
00:41:44,680 --> 00:41:48,520
People are cold.
They're clinging to survival.

641
00:41:48,920 --> 00:41:52,720
Realizing that
they are expected to die in Stalingrad,

642
00:41:52,800 --> 00:41:54,880
Paulus pleads with Hitler.

643
00:41:55,840 --> 00:41:58,280
General Paulus,
again and again, asks Hitler,

644
00:41:58,360 --> 00:42:03,040
"Are we allowed to surrender
Does it make any sense if we fight on?"

645
00:42:04,280 --> 00:42:07,600
And Hitler again and again said, "Yes,
you have to fight to the last bullet."

646
00:42:08,000 --> 00:42:10,520
It was really a nightmare for them,

647
00:42:10,600 --> 00:42:14,880
because they realized the only way
we conduce… is dying

648
00:42:14,960 --> 00:42:19,040
in this desert of snow, blood and tears.

649
00:42:20,280 --> 00:42:24,320
The Red Army
squeezes the remaining German defenders

650
00:42:24,400 --> 00:42:28,720
into two small pockets
that lose contact with each other.

651
00:42:29,760 --> 00:42:32,280
Through January,
Paulus is in a bad way.

652
00:42:32,360 --> 00:42:33,960
We know he was suffering from dysentery.

653
00:42:34,040 --> 00:42:36,520
There's a kind of sense
that Paulus's spirit is broken.

654
00:42:37,360 --> 00:42:39,360
He's become obviously desperate,

655
00:42:39,440 --> 00:42:42,360
and he didn't always say to Hitler
what he really wanted,

656
00:42:42,800 --> 00:42:44,520
and that's tragic in a general.

657
00:42:46,000 --> 00:42:48,520
On the night of January the 30th,

658
00:42:48,600 --> 00:42:50,520
Hitler promotes Paulus,

659
00:42:51,480 --> 00:42:54,800
but the honor carries
an ominous coded message.

660
00:42:55,560 --> 00:42:59,320
Hitler's last throw of the dice
is to make Paulus a field marshal.

661
00:42:59,400 --> 00:43:01,840
He's calculating that, you know,
this great honor

662
00:43:01,920 --> 00:43:04,800
that is only given
to a few German soldiers

663
00:43:04,880 --> 00:43:08,200
is actually gonna keep Paulus fighting
for as long as possible.

664
00:43:08,560 --> 00:43:10,080
A field marshal has never surrendered.

665
00:43:10,160 --> 00:43:12,560
It's never happened in the history
of Germany armed forces.

666
00:43:13,280 --> 00:43:16,080
Hitler thinks that
Paulus will either shoot himself

667
00:43:16,160 --> 00:43:18,480
or somehow find a magical way out.

668
00:43:19,880 --> 00:43:22,280
An officer comes to Paulus
in the basement

669
00:43:22,360 --> 00:43:24,320
of the Stalingrad department store

670
00:43:24,400 --> 00:43:26,360
and says,
"Here is this wire from Hitler."

671
00:43:26,960 --> 00:43:30,400
Paulus looks at it and says,
"I'm not going to kill myself,

672
00:43:31,000 --> 00:43:32,200
I'm a Christian."

673
00:43:33,520 --> 00:43:34,920
The next day,

674
00:43:35,000 --> 00:43:39,520
field marshal Paulus,
the ever-faithful yes-man,

675
00:43:39,600 --> 00:43:42,160
finally disobeys his fuhrer.

676
00:43:43,400 --> 00:43:46,040
Paulus decides that
further resistance is useless,

677
00:43:46,120 --> 00:43:47,240
and that he will surrender,

678
00:43:47,880 --> 00:43:51,240
ironically, in the square
of the fallen soldiers in Stalingrad.

679
00:43:53,760 --> 00:43:59,440
Well, actually, the 31st of January
was the birthday of Chuikov.

680
00:44:00,560 --> 00:44:01,880
What a coincidence.

681
00:44:02,520 --> 00:44:05,520
He captures Paulus on his birthday.

682
00:44:08,520 --> 00:44:11,280
It's not quite the end, of course,
because the northern pocket

683
00:44:11,360 --> 00:44:13,280
is no longer in communication
with the south.

684
00:44:13,360 --> 00:44:16,400
It doesn't know about the surrender order,
and it carries on fighting

685
00:44:16,480 --> 00:44:19,800
for another couple of days
until it, too, finally surrenders.

686
00:44:20,840 --> 00:44:24,120
Over two-thirds of the trapped
German army had lost their lives.

687
00:44:25,000 --> 00:44:27,120
Those who survived the Soviet onslaught

688
00:44:27,720 --> 00:44:31,280
succumbed to the cold, or starvation.

689
00:44:32,200 --> 00:44:34,640
What was unique was the starving.

690
00:44:34,720 --> 00:44:38,000
There was no other place
on the eastern front

691
00:44:38,080 --> 00:44:42,160
where German soldiers, in the thousands,
in the tens of thousands,

692
00:44:42,240 --> 00:44:43,240
starved to death.

693
00:44:43,960 --> 00:44:49,600
91,000 German troops surrender
to the Soviets in Stalingrad.

694
00:44:52,680 --> 00:44:55,800
Back home, Goebbels spins the story

695
00:44:55,880 --> 00:44:59,960
of a heroic Sixth Army fighting
to the last drop of blood.

696
00:45:02,000 --> 00:45:05,400
Very few would return to tell the truth.

697
00:45:07,040 --> 00:45:10,920
Of that 91,000
who were still breathing,

698
00:45:11,320 --> 00:45:14,960
only 5,000 ever return to Germany,

699
00:45:15,040 --> 00:45:17,120
after long years of captivity in Russia.

700
00:45:18,360 --> 00:45:21,120
It had been five months
since the first bombs

701
00:45:21,200 --> 00:45:22,760
dropped on Stalingrad,

702
00:45:23,040 --> 00:45:26,560
and the slaughter had continued
right through to the surrender.

703
00:45:27,360 --> 00:45:29,880
The battle of Stalingrad
is said to have been the bloodiest

704
00:45:29,960 --> 00:45:31,376
of the whole of the second World War.

705
00:45:31,400 --> 00:45:33,280
Average estimates,

706
00:45:33,360 --> 00:45:36,680
Russian military losses
exceeded one million people.

707
00:45:36,760 --> 00:45:40,640
The total number of Axis forces lost,
about 800,000.

708
00:45:42,160 --> 00:45:44,240
Hitler's vanity campaign

709
00:45:44,320 --> 00:45:47,480
cost him far more
than lives and equipment.

710
00:45:47,560 --> 00:45:51,160
It sends a signal
to everyone fighting his tyranny.

711
00:45:52,760 --> 00:45:57,920
Stalingrad was a clear symbol
of victory for the Soviets,

712
00:45:58,000 --> 00:46:00,880
and a clear symbol of defeat
for the Germans.

713
00:46:01,760 --> 00:46:05,560
Here you have a town, a symbol, a pocket,

714
00:46:06,160 --> 00:46:09,160
a formal surrender, a proper battle,

715
00:46:09,240 --> 00:46:11,480
which was lost by the Germans.

716
00:46:12,280 --> 00:46:15,480
It's the very first time
that anywhere in the world,

717
00:46:15,560 --> 00:46:19,160
the Germans were defeated colossally.

718
00:46:20,440 --> 00:46:22,360
The Germans are not invincible.

719
00:46:22,760 --> 00:46:26,440
That's the take from it.
And that is extraordinary.

720
00:46:27,520 --> 00:46:31,000
It was not just defeat
of the German army,

721
00:46:31,080 --> 00:46:33,560
it was humiliation of the German army.

722
00:46:34,640 --> 00:46:37,800
The Germans try to blame
their defeat on the elements.

723
00:46:38,600 --> 00:46:42,320
Most of the battle of Stalingrad
happens before winter ever hits.

724
00:46:42,760 --> 00:46:47,360
The winter factor's been
greatly exaggerated as a way of

725
00:46:47,440 --> 00:46:50,400
not admitting that the Russians
were better than they were at something.

726
00:46:51,160 --> 00:46:53,680
They claim
that the superior Nazi forces

727
00:46:53,760 --> 00:46:55,960
were let down by their allies.

728
00:46:56,600 --> 00:46:59,200
The Germans explain their defeat

729
00:46:59,280 --> 00:47:01,840
in part by blaming
the Italians and Romanians

730
00:47:01,920 --> 00:47:05,200
for not doing their part,
which I consider to be a travesty.

731
00:47:05,720 --> 00:47:07,840
The Germans said
they're a bunch of cowards.

732
00:47:08,320 --> 00:47:12,000
That's the way German generals
perceive their allies,

733
00:47:12,080 --> 00:47:14,800
as weak sisters
who didn't have a stomach for a fight.

734
00:47:15,520 --> 00:47:18,880
In truth, the Romanians
and other axis allies

735
00:47:18,960 --> 00:47:22,600
guarding the Sixth Army's flanks
were not as well armed

736
00:47:22,680 --> 00:47:24,440
as their German counterparts.

737
00:47:24,520 --> 00:47:26,960
They had been warning
the German high command

738
00:47:27,040 --> 00:47:29,360
that they were vulnerable,
that they needed reinforcements,

739
00:47:29,440 --> 00:47:31,720
and all of those warnings were ignored.

740
00:47:32,960 --> 00:47:36,360
Hitler believed that
his generals could roll through Russia

741
00:47:36,440 --> 00:47:40,760
as they had through Europe,
that the Slavs, the Untermensch,

742
00:47:40,840 --> 00:47:42,720
would offer little resistance.

743
00:47:44,000 --> 00:47:49,680
Hitler had hoped that what he saw
as the rotten Bolshevik Soviet regime

744
00:47:49,760 --> 00:47:54,320
would crack as soon as he kicked
in the door in Operation Barbarossa.

745
00:47:55,880 --> 00:47:58,080
His perception of the Soviet Union

746
00:47:58,160 --> 00:48:01,800
was that this giant of the Soviet Union
is already nearly on its knees.

747
00:48:02,880 --> 00:48:06,280
Stalingrad was a battle
that need never have been fought,

748
00:48:06,560 --> 00:48:09,120
an exercise in hubris.

749
00:48:10,440 --> 00:48:14,840
It was arrogance that prompted the Germans

750
00:48:14,920 --> 00:48:16,480
to do what they did in '42.

751
00:48:17,280 --> 00:48:20,120
They set the objectives,
then added Stalingrad to it,

752
00:48:20,200 --> 00:48:23,960
almost cavalierly,
in the middle of the operation.

753
00:48:24,560 --> 00:48:26,200
That was clearly a bridge too far.

754
00:48:27,640 --> 00:48:31,160
The German defeat
does more than expose Hitler's vanity

755
00:48:31,240 --> 00:48:35,400
to the world,
it reveals a fiercely patriotic people

756
00:48:35,480 --> 00:48:38,440
and a well-armed Soviet war machine.

757
00:48:39,280 --> 00:48:43,080
Hitler had no understanding
of the enormous resources

758
00:48:43,160 --> 00:48:47,760
of the Soviet Union,
of the enormous will of the Soviet people,

759
00:48:47,840 --> 00:48:51,400
men and women,
to defend the motherland.

760
00:48:54,000 --> 00:48:56,840
Huge numbers of Soviet men
and women gave their lives

761
00:48:57,680 --> 00:49:00,200
in order to stall the German war machine.

762
00:49:01,640 --> 00:49:04,360
And in large part
this was the Germans' own fault.

763
00:49:04,440 --> 00:49:07,840
The Germans were such barbaric occupiers,

764
00:49:08,040 --> 00:49:11,600
that the Soviets felt
they had nothing to lose.

765
00:49:13,080 --> 00:49:16,720
The unprecedented
Soviet victory at Stalingrad

766
00:49:16,800 --> 00:49:19,520
forces the Germans onto the defensive

767
00:49:19,600 --> 00:49:21,760
for the first time in the war.

768
00:49:23,000 --> 00:49:26,120
It certainly changes the map of the war.

769
00:49:26,200 --> 00:49:28,600
This is the farthest east
the Wehrmacht ever gets.

770
00:49:29,200 --> 00:49:31,960
From this point it's all gonna be retreat.

771
00:49:33,920 --> 00:49:35,560
Not only is it the bloodiest battle,

772
00:49:35,640 --> 00:49:38,176
it's probably the most significant battle
of the second World War,

773
00:49:38,200 --> 00:49:40,360
because this is the great turning point.

774
00:49:41,261 --> 00:49:45,761
Re-sync and redact: BLU DUAINE
blu.duaine@protonmail.com