All language subtitles for World.War.II.With.Tom.Hanks.S01E10.Stalingrad.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-RAWR_track3_[eng]

July 1942.

It's been over a year
since Adolf Hitler launched

Operation Barbarossa
against the Soviet Union.

After initial success,
the German campaign bogs down

across all fronts...

so Hitler prepares
to launch another offensive.

One of his objectives
is capturing Stalingrad,

a city of great strategic
and symbolic value,

particularly to the Soviet leader
Josef Stalin.

One of the titanic battles
of World War II is about to erupt.

All wars change the world,

but none of them change the world
like the Second World War did.

Japan's on the march.
Germany's on the march.

No-one can imagine the nightmare
they're about to unleash...

...the most destructive war
in human history.

Suddenly,
the world is turned upside down.

And all hell is let loose.

The West is stunned
by the speed of the advance.

You get the Allies,
led by the big three:

Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin.

Men who are dealing with immensely
complicated questions.

It's the biggest military
operation of human history.

The Allies
have to come together,

not just militarily but industrial
scale: it's a global perspective.

They have to fight
in every climate,

from the Arctic,
to the jungles of the Pacific,

to the deserts of Africa
and the depths of the ocean.

But there was
no certainty of victory.

It was going to be
a horrific bloodbath.

We see humans
at their absolute worst:

how they treat other human beings.

And we see them
at their absolute best,

willing to give their lives
that others might live.

World War II was a struggle

in which there could
be one victor...

...and one vanquished.

June 1942.

Adolf Hitler travels to Finland

to meet with Finnish military leader
Carl Gustav Mannerheim.

The Germans are about to launch
another major offensive

against the Soviet Union.

But to do so, the Wehrmacht
needs access to more oil.

Hitler's main supply of oil
is from his ally Romania.

But he confesses to Mannerheim
how dependent Germany is

on that one source of fuel.

Hitler's also concerned
the Romanian oilfields

are vulnerable
to Allied air attacks.

Oil is always
a problem for Hitler.

Unlike the United States or Russia,
Germany doesn't have

an internal source of oil
or petroleum it can tap into.

It must go get it
from somewhere else.

The Caucasus,

a mountainous region
of the Soviet Union's southwest,

contains some of
the richest oilfields in the world.

If the Germans can seize them,

the Wehrmacht will have
all the oil it needs,

as well as
depriving the Soviets access.

The Caucasus
is a vast mountain range

that spans Europe and Asia:
750 miles.

This is going to be a serious
obstacle for any army

that tries to traverse it.

Hitler and his generals
prepare a plan

to conquer the Caucasus:
Operation Blue.

The Southern Army Group
first head towards the Volga River

to secure this vital supply route

and prevent the Soviets
from moving in reinforcements.

capture the fields.

Can they get there?
If they could...

could they go ahead
and pull all that oil out of there?

Do they have the logistical means
necessary to get it back to Germany?

This is Hitler's idea.
It has to be successful.

Until now, Hitler's campaign
against the Soviet Union

has proven to be
far more difficult than he

and the German high command
anticipated.

In June of 1941, the Germans
launched Operation Barbarossa,

the invasion of the Soviet Union.

The biggest military operation
of all time.

Hitler is banking on a quick win.

The Germans take tens of thousands
of square miles

and capture millions
of Soviet soldiers.

But they don't take Moscow,
they don't get the quick win.

The war goes on into 1942.

Barbarossa did not meet
its objectives set by Adolf Hitler,

which was to capture vast amounts
of land, to get raw materials.

Also, to wreck Bolshevism,

which needed the collapse of
the Soviet Union to happen rapidly.

None of which happened.

Hitler is concerned
he's gotten himself in trouble

in the Soviet Union
but he's convinced

the situation can be righted.

He can continue this war forever...

as long as he has
a sufficient supply of oil.

And that's what the 1942 strike
is going to take care of,

a strike for the oil fields
of the Soviet Union.

This is the world's
first war for oil.

German forces
begin their push south

towards the Volga as planned.

Hitler is impatient
and desperate to get...

the oilfields as soon as he can.

But then he splits
the Southern Army Group in two.

For Hitler, Operation Blue
is an exercise in frustration.

The armies
aren't moving fast enough.

They're not meeting the objectives.

And for that reason, he decides
to split them into two big groups.

It's a measure
of his arrogance that he thought

he was just simply going to be able
to divide this force.

And it's some of the most difficult
fighting terrain of Europe.

Hitler orders most
of the Southern Army Group

to push directly for the oilfields.

The job of seizing the Volga

will now be left
to a single combat force,

one of the biggest
and most experienced...

...the 6th Army.

The German 6th Army
is the largest army

in the German order of battle.

At the beginning of the campaign,

the 6th Army
had over 300,000 men in it.

By the middle of August,

they're closing in on the Volga
and the city that guards it:

Stalingrad.

Stalingrad is named after
Adolf Hitler's personal rival

and the personification
of Bolshevism, Joseph Stalin.

It's Stalin's city.

It was named to commemorate
a great victory

he won over the Whites
in the Russian Civil War.

He doesn't want to surrender
a city named after himself.

Stalingrad itself
is also a major industrial centre,

which produces something like
20% of Soviet tanks,

including the famous T-34,

Along with a lot of other products
critical to the war economy,

Stalingrad is a prize
in its own right.

Once again,
the Red Army is forced to retreat

by the Wehrmacht.

The German forces
with their shirts off,

it's summer, and they're
just racing across the steppes.

And the Red Army is just collapsing.

Stalin understands that
if Hitler controls the Volga River,

that he will control
the supply lines,

and therefore, there's a chance
he can defeat the Soviet Red Army.

Stalin goes
into a freefall panic.

Stalin is determined

that this is where Hitler
must finally be stopped.

In late July 1942,

as the German 6th Army
advances on Stalingrad,

he issues a directive from Moscow.

Order 227.

As the Germans are advancing

and getting ever closer
to Stalingrad in July 1942,

Stalin issues Order 227...

this is the so-called
'Not a step backward',

'Ni shagu nazad' order.

No more retreat will be tolerated.

He's reading
a lot of Roman history

about how the Roman army
punished units for surrendering.

Stalin says,
'We've lost too many provinces.

We've lost all of European Russia.
The retreat must stop now.

Not one more step back.

Anyone who retreats,
in any shape or form,

will be instantly executed.'

There are going to be
blocking units,

made up of the secret police, NKVD,

commissars, people like that,

whose job it is to kill soldiers
that are coming back towards them.

The reason Stalin
gives this order is revealing.

The Soviets were presumed,
at the beginning of the war,

to have these vast
and almost endless stores...

of manpower, of grain, of wheat.

A big country, after all, a much
bigger country than Nazi Germany.

But as many as 70 million
former Soviet subjects

are now behind German lines.

And we shouldn't forget, of course,
that Nazi Germany is now drawing on

the resources
of occupied Europe as well.

In Stalin's calculations,

Stalin no longer thinks the Soviets
have a manpower advantage.

So, the essence of this order,
not a step back,

is that if they withdraw
any further,

they will forfeit any possible
material or manpower advantage

over the German armies.

Both Hitler and Stalin
understand

the symbolic power of Stalingrad.

Hitler gets fixated
on Stalingrad.

It bears Stalin's name.

'Why don't I take Stalingrad?

This will be an unspeakable
humiliation to Stalin.

It will be a sign
of German supremacy.'

Stalin, he's under no illusions
that if Stalingrad is reached

by the German forces,

this is gonna be an existential
battle of annihilation.

The German 6th Army
surrounds Stalingrad.

Stalingrad,
a city of 800,000,

is spread along 30 miles
of the Volga River.

It has modern apartment blocks.

Parks.

And heavy industrial factories.

On August 23rd,

the Luftwaffe bombardment begins.

In the first 24 hours...

thousands are killed.

Still, Stalin orders
all survivors...

to remain in the ravaged city.

Stalin deliberately
makes no organised attempt

to evacuate
the civilian inhabitants.

Have the Germans attack,
shell, bomb.

He wants to showcase
German barbarism.

But he also figures
that this will...

stiffen the resistance
of Stalingrad.

His thinking at this point is that
if I leave a Russian population

in a city centre, that...

Soviet soldiers will fight all that
more heroically in their defence.

Stalingrad
has been destroyed.

There is devastation everywhere.

But the German 6th Army,
a quarter of a million men,

500 tanks, is ready to push
in the city and conquer it.

Germany's 6th Army
is led by General Friedrich Paulus.

Paulus as a character
is quite weak.

He doesn't have the self-confidence
of a Manstein, or a Rommel,

or anybody like that.

Friedrich Paulus is one of
Hitler's less able generals.

He doesn't have
a lot of experience in battle.

He's a technocrat,
who is gonna get the job done.

And Hitler doesn't think the job
is gonna be particularly difficult.

After two weeks
of constant bombardment,

General Paulus orders the 6th Army
to enter Stalingrad.

There, the German troops
are confronted with a unique,

battered landscape...

that provides cover
for thousands of Soviet soldiers.

Imagine an urban warfare campaign
in New York...

...or London.

It's a partially destroyed,
nightmarish ruin.

There's actually civilians
still running around

and living, like, in little caves
that they've dug out of the rubble.

The environment is surreal.

The Germans describe
this savage, close quarter combat...

as Rattenkrieg: war of the rats.

The German notion
of Rattenkrieg,

rats scurrying between rubble,

soldiers manoeuvring
in and out of sewers.

Open a door. There's an enemy.

Now, all of a sudden,
you're fighting with fists,

not with artillery
and not with tanks.

It is a very face-to-face, personal,

and infantry-energy-intensive
battle.

The Germans push through
the mangled industrial debris

of factories and oil depots.

Hiding within the ruins,

Soviet snipers pick off
individual soldiers...

...sowing a sense of random terror.

The most skilled marksmen
become legends.

Men like Vasily Zaytsev,

who becomes a hero
throughout the Soviet Union.

Everyone, young and old,
is expected to fight...

...including women.

Women are very much part
of the Red Army effort anyway,

but in Stalingrad,
they're trapped in the city.

And so they would just get in there

and start to fight
equally with the men.

They dig tank traps. They learn
how to shoot. They become snipers.

But despite the Red Army's
gallant defence of Stalingrad,

street by street, yard by yard,

the Germans are gaining ground.

By the second week of fighting,

the Soviets are in danger
of losing the city.

At the same time,
German forces are closing in

on the oilfields in the Caucasus.

The Battle of Stalingrad
is going badly.

The entire Soviet Union seems to be
staring down the barrel.

Stalin decides he has to do
something dramatic to save the city.

Stalin summons his
First Deputy Commander in Chief...

Georgy Zhukov,

who successfully defended
Leningrad and Moscow.

At a meeting in the Kremlin,

Stalin confers with Zhukov
on military strategy.

Stalin had always wanted to be
a military commander.

Long before World War II,

he dressed as a military commander,

but he's not a commander.

He's not a brilliantly
talented strategist,

and he's still constantly
overruling his generals,

ordering offensives that are
unnecessary, that are unprepared.

But now, Stalin begins to learn
to listen to people he trusts.

He's starting
to find talented people:

Field Marshal Georgy Zhukov,
who helped defend Moscow.

He's now going, 'Hey, that guy,
I think he knows how to win.'

Zhukov
is broad-shouldered.

He's short. He's muscular.

He's an incredibly tough person.

He literally clears minefields by
sending troops running across them.

The quintessential
Stalinist general.

Zhukov presents Stalin
with a new plan.

Lure the 6th Army
deeper into Stalingrad...

then surround them

and counterattack
from the rear of the city.

At the end
of the meeting, Stalin shakes hands,

for the first time, with Zhukov.

Something that
he's never done before,

because he realises that
if this works,

the tide of the war will change.

In September 1942,

Soviet General Zhukov designed
a new strategy to defend Stalingrad.

Relying largely on deception...

...he opens up
misleading radio channels...

...orders fake defences,

and starts construction
on 17 false bridges.

The Soviets are starting
to learn the art of war.

This is not the Soviet Army of 1941.

Zhukov, a chess player,

is known for meticulous planning.

Zhukov's plans
for the operation are elaborate,

and they take weeks to prepare.

The Army inside Stalingrad

is completely unaware
of what its real role is.

Its role is to be
the bait in the trap.

Their Commander
knows that the only way he can do it

is by sacrificing more and more men.

By October,
both armies combined

lose nearly 6,000 troops a day.

And both sides are equally ruthless
in their tactics.

German soldiers
would bribe these poor orphans

to go and fill their water bottles
in the Volga with a crust of bread.

Soviet snipers were ordered
to shoot down

the Russian children
who were starving.

This was the pitilessness
of the battle.

At his headquarters,
Adolf Hitler is informed...

that his army won't be able to take
the oilfields in the Caucasus.

His earlier decision
to split his forces...

has doomed the operation.

Hitler is told
that, actually,

we haven't got enough troops
to seize the oil fields.

He explodes in rage.

He says he's been lied to.
He blames his generals.

So, it completely changes the
atmosphere at Fuhrer headquarters.

Hitler shifts his focus
to one goal...

...capturing Stalingrad.

By mid-November, it appears
the 6th Army might just do it.

They make their final push to
encircle Soviet troops on the Volga.

The Germans are feeling confident
about the Battle of Stalingrad.

They already hold 90% of the city.

Hitler is getting reports
from his commanders on the site

that the city is about to fall.

They're starting to fly
swastika flags.

Hitler is boasting to his buddies,
'Stalingrad is about to be mine.'

Hitler seems confident
that the Wehrmacht

is on the verge of victory.

As fighting continues
around Stalingrad,

the Red Army
unleashes a deafening fusillade

from over 3,000
Soviet heavy artillery...

and Katyusha rockets.

Katyusha rockets
are one of the great...

weapons invented by the Red Army.

They could fire these
terrifying salvos.

The scream is completely unearthly.

The 6th Army's flanks
are defended

by badly-equipped Romanian troops.

This is where Zhukov
focuses his attack.

They were whipped
by their own officers.

They received
virtually no pay at all.

Their morale was rock bottom.

Why should they die for Germany?

The Romanians
are quickly overrun.

Hundreds of thousands
of Red Army soldiers

encircle the 6th Army
in a pincer movement.

On November 22nd,

Soviet forces link up in the town
of Kalach, on the Don river.

The 6th Army is now surrounded

and cut off from its supply lines.

General Paulus
is in a desperate position.

One of the most shocking documents

in the German command
of the Second World War

is the memo that General Paulus
writes back to Fuhrer headquarters.

It opens with two words:

Armee eingeschlossen.

'The army is surrounded.'

Words that no German commander

ever believed
they would ever have to write.

Hitler, when he hears about this,

is absolutely speechless with rage.

As far as Hitler was concerned,

the capture of Stalingrad
had been proclaimed as a victory.

Only a few days before
the great Soviet encirclement.

He could not admit
that they had lost it.

This crucial battle
has altered

Stalin's approach to leadership.

Stalin had been
the headstrong, clumsy...

and obstinate commander,

who constantly makes
colossal mistakes

with catastrophic effects.

Stalin by now has learnt...

to listen to generals,

to recognise
the limits of his expertise,

and to let them plan the detour
while he sets the larger strategy.

You start to see this transition

of Joseph Stalin
into political leader,

and letting his military
professionals fight the battles.

Joseph Stalin is indeed maturing
as a war leader.

Stalin's forces
have Paulus's 6th Army surrounded.

The Russian winter is closing in.

Winter descends
over the Eastern Front.

What remains of
the German 6th Army

is trapped
in the city of Stalingrad.

250,000 men...

are completely surrounded
by Soviet troops.

General Paulus asks permission
to attempt a breakout.

Hitler refuses.

Hitler is linked
with the Stand Fast order:

'Where the German soldier sets foot,
there he stays.'

Not taking Stalingrad
is not an option.

It has to do with public opinion.

But Hitler knows the degree
of the predicament he's in.

The Wehrmacht
is now gonna face not only a...

Soviet Army growing in capability,
capacity and credibility,

they're also gonna
have to face the Russian winter.

Soldiers don't have the right gear,
supplies become harder,

vehicles are harder to start,
maintenance is harder to do.

Everything that should be easy
becomes more difficult

because people are cold.

How long
till the ammunition runs out?

How long till
the medical supplies run out?

The Germans are hit by the
full force of the Russian winter.

You're talking about
bitterly cold weather.

People suffering from frostbite.

People are literally
dying of cold where they stand.

The bodies are frozen solid.

You could break off their arm,
they're so frozen.

Soldiers are dying of dysentery,

typhoid and tuberculosis.

By the end of December,

their daily food intake
is less than a handful of bread,

with weak, watery soup.

The troops are starving.

There are dead men
lying everywhere.

There are rats everywhere. There's
no fuel. There's nothing to burn.

There's absolutely no thought
of fighting any more.

Even hanging on to life
has become almost impossible.

You see German soldiers
and officers

asking the doctors for pills
so that they can commit suicide.

They are frozen.
They are desperate.

It's a scene of Hell on Earth.

Back in Germany,

the public is largely unaware of how
serious the situation has become.

But now some are getting letters
from their loved ones,

detailing the horrors unfolding
in the ruins of Stalingrad.

Try to put yourself
in the place of these German troops.

You're very far away
from home, right?

It's Christmas season,
and you're listening to the radio,

and they're playing Silent Night.

At a certain point, you realise that
they're basically writing you off.

Again and again, Paulus
asks for permission to break out.

Each time, Hitler's answer is...

'No.'

General Paulus's men are
dying in the thousands every day.

Any sense of military utility
had long departed.

And yet Paulus chose
loyalty to Hitler

over loyalty to the men
under his command.

Hitler has created
a command culture

in which his commanders
can't use their professionalism

and their expertise on the ground
to do what's best for their forces.

And so this is also a failure of...

Hitler's management
of his commanders.

By the end of January,

Paulus informs Hitler
that they cannot fight on.

Hitler responds
with a radio message,

promoting Paulus to Field Marshal,

and congratulating him
on his new position.

Hitler does this not out of any
great love or admiration for Paulus.

He does it because no field marshal

has ever surrendered
in the field in German history.

He feels that this
is one way of, basically,

making Paulus commit suicide.

The next day,

Paulus goes to Red Army headquarters
outside Stalingrad.

150,000 of his men are dead.

Paulus is trapped.
He faces an impossible choice.

Paulus surrenders
what is left of the 6th Army.

The remaining 90,000 German troops

are led away as prisoners of war.

Only a small number of them
will ever see Germany again.

It really was
a shock the Nazi elite,

but also to the people of Germany.

Psychologically,
it really was the turning point.

All of a sudden,
the unthinkable.

The idea you might lose this war
is right there in your face

and everyone back at home
would have known about it.

The morale is going to suffer.

That's a turn-the-tables moment.

There's very few families in Germany
that didn't have

some tie to the 6th Army:

a son, a father, a neighbour's son.

The 6th Army was the largest army
in the German order of battle.

And now it's been
completely destroyed

When Hitler receives
the news of Paulus's surrender,

he's silent for several hours.

Then he explodes.

He actually says, 'Why didn't
Paulus put a bullet in his brain?'

It only takes a second, and he would
have been immortal from then on.

But instead, he chose what Hitler
said was the coward's way out.

But Hitler knows
the gravity of this defeat.

To lose 250,000 men,

in a moment, essentially,
In other words,

to have that military force
wiped off your ledger,

that hadn't happened
to the Germans in the war.

It changes the political
calculation entirely,

and this myth of invincibility
is going to be shattered.

In a single campaign,

Hitler has lost an army...

...and began to lose the faith
of the German people.

Following the defeat
of Stalingrad,

Adolf Hitler withdraws
to his mountain retreat in Bavaria.

On April 20th 1943,

his inner circle throws a party
to mark his 54th birthday.

After Stalingrad,

all the indicators
are running against Germany.

The campaign in North Africa
has clearly gone bad.

Increasingly,
Hitler is losing control of himself.

The entire 1942 campaign
had been marked

by gigantic tantrums
against his officers.

He is no longer up to the stress
of running a global war,

but Hitler knows
that he has to launch...

an offensive in 1943.

Or he risks losing control
of the war completely.

The Germans have enough armour,

and enough energy
and enough manpower,

to mount one final offensive
on the Eastern Front.

The Soviets have advanced
into an area to the south,

creating a salient
around a region called Kursk.

Hitler sees an opportunity
to seize the initiative.

The salient around Kursk in 1943
was such an obvious target

that basically both sides knew
some type of offensive was coming.

Hitler is basically putting
all of his chips on the table.

But his resources
are already stretched across Europe.

Everything is getting harder
by 1943:

the Soviet artillery is better,
their tanks are better,

their leadership is better.

So it will take a lot of resources,
it will take a lot of armour,

and it will cost
in order to do this.

Considering the resources
of Nazi Germany at this point,

its economic reserves, its soldiers,

this is a ridiculous thing
to attempt.

Hitler is particularly excited
about his giant tanks,

the Tigers and Panthers, which
he thinks, 'Oh, game changers.'

In Moscow, the Soviet high
command is receiving intelligence

about the Germans'
upcoming offensive.

Unlike early in the war,

Stalin is now utilising
the intelligence he receives.

Stalin's instincts
are always just, 'Attack now.

Attack on all fronts.
Attack at any cost.'

By the time of Kursk,
he's learnt that, actually,

this is not the way to win a war.

Now he's taking
the intelligence on board.

He's trusting it. The German attack
is gonna be massive.

Zhukov persuades Stalin,
'We're gonna dig in.

We're gonna prepare, and
we're gonna draw the Germans in.'

As Zhukov prepares
for the coming offensive,

Soviet factories
increase their production.

By this stage
of the war,

the Soviet economy is vastly
outproducing the German economy.

Stalin was now producing
massive amounts of weaponry.

The United States has
also been sending military supplies

to the Soviets through
its Lend-Lease plan,

which was designed to get
American materials to Great Britain

and the Soviet Union.

By 1943, tons of military hardware

are rolling off Allied ships
each month.

The Soviets were especially
impressed with the Willys Jeeps,

American Sherman tanks,

along with more than
12,000 warplanes.

The Soviets are also
receiving hundreds of thousands

of tons of food.

The Soviet Army
is actually being fed

by the American economy in 1943,

everything from the famous tushonka
pork Americans refer to as Spam

to millions of packets
of dehydrated borscht.

One of the ways that Hitler
wants to defeat these people,

and whittle down their numbers,
is through starvation.

But if they're being fed from
outside sources, you can't do that.

The supplies
help the Soviets build

one of the largest defensive forces
ever seen:

1.3 million troops.

At Zhukov's command,

civilians dig several thousand miles
of trenches

and tank traps outside Kursk.

Nearly one million mines are laid.

It's the most
densely defended area

of the whole Earth in the course
of the Second World War.

The Soviets are prepared...

for the full weight...

of the German Wehrmacht.

July 1943.

The Germans launch their colossal
offensive against the Red Army

in the Kursk salient.

Quickly, the German advance
runs into Zhukov's fortifications.

It's the countermove
to the idea of blitzkrieg.

If you break through the front line,
there's another line behind there

with anti-tank efforts
and trenches and men.

If you break through that one,
there's another one.

Your forces,
as the German Wehrmacht,

are getting smaller
and weaker and damaged.

And eventually you just sort of
whittle away the spear point here.

For eight days, the Germans
grind against Soviet defences.

Two vast tank armies collide.

Astonishing intensity.

Tanks, helm to helm, hull to hull.

The German tanks are better built,
have bigger guns, better armour.

But if you've only got
a few of them,

and you've got a mass of T-34s
coming at you,

you have a big problem.

Hitler's miracle weapons,
the Tigers and Panthers,

which are these giant,
diabolical metal machines,

actually don't work too well.

Hitler's tanks are destroyed

by the more manoeuvrable
Soviet tanks.

After two days,
the Wehrmacht is forced to withdraw.

Hitler has failed.

He's rolled the dice three times
inside the Soviet Union.

Operation Barbarossa in '41,
Operation Blue in '42...

...and now the great offensive
at Kursk, and he's failed each time.

Hitler's final gamble on
the Eastern Front has been crushed.

They get nothing
out of the Battle of Kursk.

It's a huge defeat for the Germans.

They're always gonna be
going backwards from this point on.

Kursk destroys enough
of the German combat power

that they can never take the
offensive for the rest of the war.

Therefore, the Soviets maintain
the initiative to pick the time

and place of the choosing, where
they're gonna take their next act.

This is
a decisive moment

in Stalin's development
as a supreme commander.

Hitler is undergoing precisely
the opposite transformation.

At this point in the war,

Hitler is really
losing his grip on reality.

And...

people who thought he made
some madcap moves in 1940,

but they paid off.

As the war lengthens, his decisions
become more and more suspect.

The two great warlords of
World War II are passing each other

as one develops
and one deteriorates.

In November 1943,

Joseph Stalin meets with
Prime Minister Winston Churchill

and President Franklin D Roosevelt.

It's the first meeting of the group

that will become known as...
the Big Three.

The big three
sat down in Tehran,

round the table with their teams.

Each of them said something,
and Stalin really put it best.

He said, 'History has spoilt us.

Never have three men had...

the vast and massive powers
that we have today.

Let's get to work.'

Stalingrad creates a tradition
that eventually spreads

to the rest of the Red Army.

Soviet soldiers passing each other
in the street say 'blind swap'

and exchange the items
in their pockets without looking.

Soldiers swap a single cigarette
for a watch,

or money for a scrap of paper.

In Stalingrad, life is so uncertain,

soldiers could be dead
in an instant,

that nothing has any value at all.

The Battle for Stalingrad
is the turning point

of the war on the Eastern Front.

Never again would the Wehrmacht
take the offensive in the east.

And in the west,

the Allies prepare
to cross the Mediterranean:

the next step in their attack
against the Third Reich.

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