All language subtitles for The World at War - S01E05 - Barbarossa (June - December 1941).eng

NARRATOR: Russia: mid-June 1941.

A bewildered, uncertain country.

Rumors abounded of
invasion by Hitler's Germany.

Here in the Kremlin, Russia's leaders
seemed oblivious of the Nazi threat,

or if not oblivious,
then complacent,

as if, by ignoring it,
it might disappear.

Yet already, millions of German
troops were poised along Russia's border

to launch the bloodiest
land battle in history -

the battle that was eventually
to decide the Second World War.

CROWD: Ein Volk,
ein Reich, ein Führer!

♪ Wenn die Soldaten
durch die Stadt marschieren

♪ Öffnen die Mädchen

♪ Die Fenster und die Türen

♪ Ei warum? Ei darum

♪ Ei warum? Ei darum

♪ Ei bloß wegen dem
Schingderassa, Bumderassasa

♪ Ei bloß wegen dem
Schingderassa, Bumderassasa...

NARRATOR: Hitler in July 1940,
returning from France in triumph,

stood at the
pinnacle of his power.

♪ ..Die Mädchen ach so gerne

♪ Ei warum? Ei darum

♪ Ei warum? Ei darum

♪ Ei bloß wegen dem
Schingderassa, Bumderassasa

♪ Ei bloß wegen dem
Schingderassa, Bumderassasa

NARRATOR: The speed sureness of
his victories astonished even his generals.

Their doubts had been answered,
their opposition could be discounted.

It was now that Hitler confided to
them it would be the Russians' turn next.

CROWD: Sieg Heil!

NARRATOR: In Mein
Kampf, Adolf Hitler had written:

"When we speak of new
territory, we must think of Russia."

"Destiny itself
points the way there."

[♪ GERMAN NATIONAL ANTHEM]

NARRATOR: Russia would provide
living space for the German Volk-

Lebensraum.

CROWD: Heil! Heil! Heil!

Heil! Heil! Heil!

NARRATOR: The ordinary German,

like the ordinary Russian
or ordinary person anywhere,

had been surprised by Hitler's
pact with Stalin in August 1939.

To him, as to them, it had
seemed the least likely about-face

by the world's bitterest rivals.

The Nazi-Soviet Pact had
served its purpose for Hitler.

He had not been hindered while
he dealt with Poland and France.

Stalin, for his part,
gained a breathing space

while he put his army in order after
the blood-letting purges of the '30s.

He had gambled, too, on a lengthy
struggle between Germany and the Allies.

But the German victories in the west
had been swifter than he had expected.

MAN: Hitler wanted to attack
Russia already in the fall of 1940,

and let himself, for
once, be persuaded

that it would be impossible
to go to war at that late time

on account of the
weather in Russia,

and for the reason
that it would be

urgent and necessary

to enforce the German army,

as well as the German air force,

before entering into
this new campaign.

In August '39, when Hitler
had signed the pact with Russia,

in the evening,
there was a movie,

and this movie showed the parade of
the Russian troops before the Kremlin.

He was very much impressed and
was relieved that now, with the pact,

this army is neutralized.

But afterwards, when the German
troops met the Russian ones

in occupying Poland,

officers reported to Hitler

that the equipment of those
Russian units were very poor.

He first didn't
believe it so much,

but then when the
Russians attacked the Finns

and they didn't
have any progress,

he was convinced that
this was really the truth

and he was now
considering the Russian army

no more as strong as before.

NARRATOR: Doubts about the Red Army's
strength had been raised inside Russia itself

for the purges of the '30s
had decimated its leadership.

90% of its generals, 80% of its colonels
and well over half its corps commanders

had been put to
death at Stalin's whim.

Every single commander of a
military district was eliminated.

Every single commander of an
army division has been eliminated.

Every single commander of a
regiment, with some exceptions here,

also eliminated.

Now, you see, this is a little
more than political weakness.

The army was
beheaded, so to speak.

NARRATOR: After the Red Army's
poor performance against the Finns,

steps were taken to reform it.

When news reached Moscow of the
Wehrmacht's crushing of the French,

these reforms were accelerated.

They were still incomplete
by the summer of 1940.

All the same, Stalin
seized his chance

while Hitler was preoccupied
with the battle for Britain

to grab first the Baltic States
of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania,

and then, within the same month,

those parts of Romania known as
Bessarabia and northern Bukovina -

a move that, in Hitler's
eyes, brought Russian troops

uncomfortably close to the
Romanian oil wells at Ploesti,

Germany's only oil supply,

vital for its tanks
and planes and ships.

But with the bulk of his
forces still in the west,

Hitler did not intervene.

Instead, he stepped
up diplomatic pressure

to woo the Balkans
into the German fold.

First, King Boris of
Bulgaria was invited

to visit Hitler that
autumn at Berchtesgaden,

and he was followed by
Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

and by young King
Michael of Romania.

Michael was already
under the sway

of his pro-German prime
minister, Antonescu.

When news broke that Romania
and Hungary had joined the Axis,

the Russians reacted sharply.

They accused Berlin of violating
the spirit of the August 1939 pact.

The frail Soviet-German
friendship was beginning to fall apart.

Hitler, that same month,
further strengthened the Axis.

He signed a new military
alliance with Italy and with Japan -

the Tripartite Pact.

It was aimed, allegedly, at only
the United States and Britain.

The Russians thought
otherwise. They protested angrily.

Hitler invited Stalin's
closest adviser, Molotov,

to Berlin that November 1940,

to help, as he put it,
"clarify the situation".

It was a disastrous visit
for Soviet-German relations.

SPEER: When
Molotov visited Berlin,

he was obviously afraid of
being poisoned by bacteria

and he asked that all the
plates, all the glasses he used

are boiled before
they came in use.

MAN: He was blunt in his remarks

and he didn't
spare Hitler at all.

Very uncompromising,

hardly smiling at all, reminding
me of my mathematics teacher,

with the spectacles
- hostile spectacles -

looking at his pupil,
Hitler, and saying,

"Is our agreement -

last year's agreement
- still valid?"

Hitler thought it
was a mistranslation.

He said, "Of course. Why not?"

And Molotov said, "Yes,

I ask this question
because of the Finns."

"You're on very friendly
relations with the Finns."

"You invite people from Finland to
Germany and send the missions there."

"The Finns are very dangerous
people. They undermine our security."

"We'll have to do
something about that,

and we are going to do
something about that."

Whereupon Hitler exploded and
said, "I understand you very well."

"You want to wage
war against Finland,

and that is quite out of the question,
do you hear me? impossible!"

"Because my supplies
of iron and of nickel

and of other important
raw materials would be cut."

It was a very tough,

almost a heavyweight
championship in political discussion.

NARRATOR: Even while
Molotov was still in Berlin,

Hitler ordered his generals to plan
an attack on Russia for May 15, 1941.

They responded with a detailed scheme
which he now named "Operation Barbarossa"

after the red-bearded Prussian
emperor who, centuries earlier,

had crusaded against the Slavs.

Hitler's generals had
taken some convincing.

To attack Russia with Britain
resisting was to fight a war on two fronts,

something that even
Mein Kampf maintained

To be the gravest
of military mistakes.

But Hitler argued, and with
some truth that winter of 1940,

that Britain, although not
beaten, was not a threat,

so an eastern campaign would be the
only front, provided it was over quickly.

Years earlier, Hitler had written,
"Armies do not exist for peace."

"They exist solely for
triumphant exertion in war."

The Wehrmacht's
morale was at its height.

Where was it to march next? It
couldn't move against Britain on land

and amphibious warfare
was not to Hitler's liking.

Magnetism alone, it seemed,

must draw it against its sole
remaining antagonist within Europe,

draw it in the same way as
Napoleon's armies had been drawn

when they, too, had been left
champing at the bit along the Channel -

eastwards, ever eastwards,

to the boundless
motherland of Russia.

The Red Army in 1941
was the largest in the world.

In tanks, it outnumbered,

in airplanes, it equaled the rest
of the world's armies put together.

Despite its shortcomings, the
Red Army was better equipped

than previous Wehrmacht victims,

and its reorganization since the fiasco
of the Finnish war was well under way.

But what of its morale? Hitler
felt sure he knew the answer:

"You have only
to kick in the door

and the whole rotten structure
will come crashing down."

Russia's leaders still
thought they could buy time

while their army made
ready for the struggle.

By March 1941, Russian troops were
already being faced by German troops

along the borders of Hungary
and Romania, and even Bulgaria.

Yugoslavia, too, looked like
becoming a German satellite until,

encouraged by
British intelligence,

a popular uprising in Belgrade
pushed out the Nazi puppets.

Incredibly, Moscow concluded
a pact with the rebels.

The very next day, Hitler
attacked Yugoslavia.

Incensed by the revolt, he
named the operation "Retribution".

Operation Retribution meant
postponing Operation Barbarossa

by five crucial weeks.

But now Russia stood by while the
Wehrmacht overran her newest ally.

Hitler marched into Greece, again
without Moscow so much as protesting.

This inaction cannot meet Hitler
even made him more headstrong

as his armies swept on
to further easy victories.

Stalin's own spies had
been sending back reports

of German troop
concentrations along his borders,

reports which he
chose to ignore.

When Western diplomats warned
him too, he again shrugged them off.

He argued to his cronies

that however inevitable a
Nazi-Soviet conflict might be,

these present reports
were simply a British ruse.

MAN: The interesting thing was that both
Roosevelt and Churchill each on their own

informed Stalin that Hitler
was going to attack Russia.

Stalin thought that was a trick

on our part

to get him to
mobilize and to divert,

to provoke Hitler into attack.

Stalin was very conscious that

in World War I,

it was the Tsar's mobilization

that caused the German -

the Kaiser - to attack Russia,

and he wasn't going
to have any part of it.

There is a traditional
pathological mistrust.

When the British say something,

Stalin's philosophy used to tell
us, "You must think the opposite".

If the British warn us,

that must mean that they try
to put us against the Germans.

For that reason - the main reason
- he neglected all the warnings.

NARRATOR: May
Day in Moscow, 1941.

[♪ ROUSING, PATRIOTIC SONG]

A particularly impressive
military parade,

as if to reassure
the Russian people

in the face of all the rumors
of impending invasion.

Russian diplomacy was
aimed at appeasing Hitler,

hoping to delay any attack until the
Red Army's reforms would be complete.

And so, while the
generals lectured,

the diplomats rushed grain and
much-needed raw materials to Germany,

turned a blind eye to the incursions
of German reconnaissance planes

over Soviet territory

and even slowed down their
building of frontier defenses

so as not to offend Berlin.

Yet even as Stalin's
defense commissar

shook hands with Hitler's
military attaché in Moscow,

three million German troops
were moving up to the border.

The biggest land battle in
history was about to begin.

The shock was all the
greater when it came.

I remember that
night, I'd been out

and came home rather
late and turned on the radio,

and I got onto, I
think it was Kharkov

or Kiev or somewhere like that,

and there were accounts going on

of bombing and
attacks and things,

which I thought was a sort
of Orson Welles program,

like when he bombed
New York, remember?

Then we checked around
and found it was real.

We were told that the Red Army
will never fight on its own territory,

that the very first shot will
be made on enemy's territory.

Then, suddenly, on the 22nd,

we were told that Sevastopol is
being bombed, Kiev is being bombed,

Smolensk, bombed. The enemy
smashed, wiped out our forces.

MAN: After the success
of the other campaigns,

we had confidence that
Barbarossa would be successful too.

MAN 2: The first period of
the advance was very quick.

We made more than 100km per day.

MAN 3: We hadn't lost a battle,
so we were used to being victorious.

NARRATOR: Hitler's
plan was for three armies

to seek out and destroy the
Russian forces within four months.

MAN 4: I never
was in a war before.

We had no fear

because we thought we will
win the war against Russia,

because the wars
against Poland and France,

we had ended with
victories for Germany.

NARRATOR: As well as surprise,

the Germans had overwhelming
superiority in men and fire power

at those points chosen
for their armored thrusts.

Three Russian infantry divisions
were annihilated that first day,

and another five cut to pieces.

MAN 2: During the
River Bug crossing,

we were attacked by several
obsolete Russian aircraft

that were shot down immediately

and we were very impressed

by the superiority of our
air force at the beginning.

NARRATOR: During
the first two days,

2,000 Russian planes were
destroyed, mostly on the ground.

The world's largest air force
had been well-nigh eradicated.

Their air cover gone, the Russian
frontier armies wilted and disappeared.

In a week, the Wehrmacht
was already halfway to Moscow.

In a month, the Germans had won an
area double the size of their own country.

[♪ "WENN DIE SOLDATEN
DURCH DIE STADT MARSCHIEREN"]

♪ Wenn die Soldaten

♪ Durch die Stadt marschieren

♪ Öffnen die Mädchen

♪ Die Fenster und die Türen

♪ Ei warum? Ei darum

♪ Ei warum? Ei darum

♪ Ei bloß wegen dem
Schingderassa, Bumderassasa

♪ El bloß wegen dem
Schingderassa, Bumderassasa

♪ Zweifarben Tücher

♪ Schnauzbart und Sterne

♪ Herzen und küssen

♪ Die Mädchen ach so gerne

♪ Ei warum? Ei darum

♪ Ei warum? Ei darum

♪ Ei bloß wegen dem
Schingderassa, Bumderassasa

♪ Ei bloß wegen dem
Schingderassa, Bumderassasa

NARRATOR: Russian cities
fell like ninepins to the panzers.

One was captured with
its trams still running.

Its citizens, heading to work, cheered
German tanks, thinking them their own.

MAN 2: We were, in parts, very
friendly received by the population.

We had the impression that we
could win the population in Russia.

NARRATOR: Like the
French the summer before,

the Russians used their
tanks in penny packets

instead of the mass formations
of the German panzers.

Easy meat for the
German antitank gunners,

their blazing hulks
littered the battlefield.

6,000 Russian tanks were lost

in just two engagements at
Minsk and Smolensk in July.

[♪ LIVELY GERMAN SONG]

NARRATOR: Half a million Russians
were killed in the first fortnight,

and nearly a million
taken prisoner.

As the weeks went by, the Russian
losses mounted, bewildering the Germans,

who refused to believe such profligacy
in human life could possibly continue.

As in France the year before,

Hitler was concerned more to
destroy enemy forces in the field

than to capture cities
or to conquer territory.

His generals didn't
always see it that way.

Tempted, perhaps,
by golden spires,

they vied with each other to be
the captor of this or that great city,

especially Moscow.

To capture the Russian capital
without delay, the generals argued,

would be decisive.

Hitler preferred to destroy the
Russian forces in the south first,

hoping for a
decisive battle there.

Moscow was not
his first priority.

In August, he ordered
his panzers to swing south.

Kiev,

the capital of the Ukraine,
was taken in mid-September.

In one of the most spectacular
encircling movements

in military history,

the German panzers
took prisoner at Kiev

nearly three quarters
of a million Russians.

German newsreel cameramen

made great play of these long
columns of luckless Russians

for whom frontline
fighting was now over.

But ahead lay another hell -

imprisonment at the
hands of the Nazis.

Of every 100 Russian
prisoners seen here,

only three would
ever return alive.

By the end of September '41,

after just three months of war,

the Russians had lost
nearly three million men.

But Russian resilience before
such fatal-seeming blows

was to astonish the world.

The German was told to regard
his Russian foe as subhuman,

but it was not long before the
German frontline soldier, at least,

came to think of him as more
superhuman than subhuman.

The Russians seldom
cried out when wounded

and there always seemed to
be more of them on the horizon.

One Wehrmacht colonel wrote:

"In fighting Russia,

the German army is like an
elephant attacking a host of ants."

"The elephant will kill
thousands, maybe millions,

but in the end, their
numbers will overcome him

and he will be
eaten to the bone."

MAN: Orientation in Russia

is as difficult as
it is in the desert,

only you don't see the horizon.

You are lost.

The immense space
here was so immense

that we had many soldiers

who became melancholy.

The valley -

flat valleys, flat hills,
flat valleys, flat hills -

endless. There was no limit.

We could not see an end

and it was so disconsolate.

We saw the big fields -

the cornfields -

from the horizon to the horizon.

We never saw it before.

It's very large.

Unimaginable
vastness of this country,

and we advanced from
one river to the other,

from one position to the other,
and there was no end to it.

NARRATOR: "Trade space for time"
was the traditional Russian strategy.

Time was not on Hitler's side

if he was to achieve his
decisive victory before winter.

RUSSELL: I remember
flying back from Kuibyshev

and there was this great tank trap they
were digging all round, outside Moscow,

and one saw what looked
like ants moving around it,

and it was practically the entire
civil population of Moscow -

man, woman and child - digging.

I think they did tap every emotional
resource that was available to them.

I remember, for instance, a lot
of the churches being open again

that had been
shut for a long time.

TOKATY: In that very situation,

something else
appeared among us -

the tradition of Borodino.

Borodino is the place where
Napoleon was defeated.

And suddenly, religious feeling
just appeared from nowhere

and that helped to unite people.

NARRATOR: With the Ukraine
subdued and Leningrad surrounded,

Hitler now turned his attention
to the biggest prize of all,

Moscow,

something his generals had
been beseeching him to do

since the start of the campaign.

Moscow in October '41
was already a frontline city.

German troops had been only
200 miles away since August,

when Hitler had diverted
his panzers southwards.

Rumors had been rife
of early capitulation.

The city had long been
placed under military rule.

Hardly a day went by without
a visit from the Luftwaffe.

The battle for Moscow began
in earnest in early October.

Straight away, things went
wrong for its defenders.

[SQUEALING]

In two vast pincer movements,

the Germans captured
another 700,000 Russian troops.

Goebbels summoned American
war correspondents to Berlin

to announce Moscow's
impending fall.

MAN 3: We had had a
very beautiful summer.

No problems - climatic
problems - or anything of this sort.

As I remember it, it started snowing
and becoming cold around October 10,

and then we knew immediately that we
were totally unprepared and unequipped

for what was lying ahead of us.

NARRATOR: When one
panzer commander asked

when he could
expect winter clothing,

he was told not to make further
unnecessary requests of this type.

On the day the first
snows fell before Moscow,

its defenders received
a new commander,

Zhukov, something German intelligence
didn't consider worth telling Hitler,

although Zhukov had
led Leningrad's defense

with enormous energy
since mid-September.

But Moscow's defense was to be a
bigger test of Zhukov's generalship.

The first snows soon melted,

turning roads into quagmires.

[MAN 5]Only a few roads
in Russia were paved.

Therefore, in autumn, the terrible
period of mud was beginning

and the roads became
deeply softened,

and therefore
useless for motorcars,

except tanks.

[MAN 1]We had, as infantry, to
march along the sides of the roads

to let pass cars and the tanks.

MAN 6: The wheels of
my guns were broken.

MAN 2: And within a
period of two or three days,

we had to improvise mobility

by requisitioning pannier
horses and wagons.

We all were quite happy about the
success of the German armies in Russia,

but the first inkling
that something is wrong

was when Goebbels made
a big action in all Germany

to collect furs and winter
clothes for the German troops.

Then we knew something was
ahead which was not foreseen.

MAN 7: We had no
warm mantles and nothing,

only the things we had
also in summertime.

MAN 8: And we
were actually angry

that we didn't have
better equipment.

NARRATOR: The weather worsened.

Many German commanders
favoured halting for the winter.

Hitler would have none of it.

Convinced victory would
be his before winter proper,

he ordered his generals on, on,

as soon as the ground had
hardened enough to bear his panzers.

The welcome delay allowed Zhukov
to organize Moscow's defenses.

The Russians had less than
400 tanks left to defend Moscow.

Space was running
out fast for Zhukov,

but time was still on his side

as the cold winds of winter
swept in from the north.

But, on October 14,

a panzer group broke
through and took Kalinin,

less than 100 miles
away to the north.

A few days later, another unit
took Mozhaysk, 60 miles west,

while an infantry division
reached Gorki, just 40 miles away.

Panic gripped Moscow's citizens.

Those who could, left - two million,
including most government departments.

Even Lenin's coffin was evacuated,
along with other Kremlin treasures.

RUSSELL: It was a bit of a shock
when, in those two or three days -

I suppose they were just the
advance spear tip probably -

a few chaps on motorbikes
or something got to within

40 or 50 kilometers of Moscow.

Then there was, I must say,
considerable shock in Moscow.

People were trying to get out.

They thought the German
army was going to roll in.

TOKATY: In fact,
I should imagine,

from October 16

to about October 20,

an average citizen of
Moscow probably expected

that Moscow will fall
within the next few days,

and that was what the
panic was about, really.

People used just to stop
top-ranking secret service officers

and shout insults at
them without any fear.

In normal times, you
couldn't do anything like that.

These were the only times when,
probably, a very weak force of Germans,

if they would manage to drop a unit
of some kind of parachutists inside,

we would have real trouble.

NARRATOR: But while Hitler
plotted his final attack on Moscow,

Zhukov, too, planned an attack.

But with what?

He had already withdrawn as many
troops as he dared from other sectors

to defend Moscow.

But there was one reserve the
Russians had not yet touched,

nor ever thought
they would be able to.

The 40 divisions
of the Siberian front,

among the best troops in Russia,
trained to fight in winter conditions.

Since June, they had been
expecting a Japanese attack.

Midway through October,
Stalin's master spy in Tokyo

reported Japan's
eyes were elsewhere.

This time, Stalin
believed his spies.

He moved the Siberian
divisions to Moscow.

Even at this moment of crisis,

Moscow took time off to celebrate
the anniversary of the revolution,

and Stalin showed
himself to his people.

TOKATY: We could say, in
spite of all his shortcomings,

that Stalin rendered a very great
service to the USSR by that presence

because it showed two things:

one, the supreme
commander did not run away,

secondly, Stalin
retained his nerve.

That sense of nerve spread at
once into all the armed forces.

All the commanders began
saying, "Stalin himself, he is here."

[PEOPLE CHEER]

NARRATOR: The ground had hardened.
The panzers were able to roll again.

On November the
26th, they entered Istra,

just 30 miles west of Moscow,

and four days later had taken
Krasnaya Polyana, just 25 miles north.

As yet, Zhukov had
not used his Siberians

and German intelligence had
not stumbled on the presence

of such numbers of fresh troops.

But the Germans were
having troubles of their own.

[MAN 1]And one
morning, it was finished.

All was frozen,

and the cars were
sitting in the mud, frozen,

and the tanks could not roll

and, in this moment,
my heart broke down.

And there was, in the
distance, a large town,

and I think that was the first time
and the last time I have seen Moscow.

NARRATOR: Temperatures were
down to minus 40 degrees centigrade.

Oil solidified in the
sumps of lorries and tanks.

The intense cold
affected the soldiers, too.

There were more casualties
from frostbite and stomach troubles

than from actual fighting.

MAN 3: We had no winter shoes.

We had no equipment
whatsoever to fight or stand the cold.

And I think this became a
very, very big problem right away.

We lost a considerable
part of our equipment -

guns, heavy and light
equipment in general.

We, of course, due to the cold,

lost a lot of people
who got frostbitten,

and we had not even the
necessary amount of ointments

or the most simple and
primitive things to fight it.

Of 900 men in my battalion,

200 fell out because of freezing

in the first 14 days.

MAN 3: As it became colder,

towards the end of
November and early December,

most of our artillery had
become completely unusable.

MAN 6: We had not the lubrication
oil suitable for this winter war.

Nevertheless,
the Russians had it

and suddenly our
soldiers realised

that from one
moment to the next,

the weapon didn't
shoot any more.

[MAN 8]Well, the worst memory was
if the vehicles got frozen in the ground

and the motor oil was
thick so we couldn't move.

And we needed and we wanted
to move. I think that was the worst.

[MAN 1]In Russia, there were
no signposts to mark the ways.

To find our roads,

we had set the
frozen bodies of horses

along the snow walls

to find the way
during the snowdrifts.

And the scenery
was so disconsolate -

always snow and snow.

MAN 4: We always were alone,

dreaming what time
we will be back in Berlin.

NARRATOR: But the powers that be
in Berlin refused to believe the worst.

The newsreels made
it all seem great fun.

The reality was different.

MAN 2: At that time, we had
advanced almost 2,000 kilometers.

Hitler, at first, did
not want to conceive

that this crisis was the end
of all his strategical planning,

but the army knew it better,

and the Russians did

the most important part

in convincing Hitler, too,

that the Russian
campaign of this first year

had failed and had
come to an end.

NARRATOR: December 6.

With the Wehrmacht's
morale at its lowest,

although some German troops
were just 15 miles from the Kremlin,

Zhukov unleashed his Siberians.

MAN 4: It was
astonishing this time -

the first time - I saw
the Russian tanks,

34,

running through the fields
and through the snow.

Our own tanks couldn't
drive, couldn't shoot,

because it was too cold.

[MAN 6]When I wanted to go
back, I met Russians everywhere,

and so this was
the first impression

that there was no
victory any more.

NARRATOR: As the Russians
regained some of their territory,

they began to uncover the
horror of the Nazi occupation.

"Comrade, kill your German"
became the catch phrase.

Within the first month of
the Russian counteroffensive,

more than 300,000 Germans
were killed or captured.

MAN 4: The worst
memory of this retreat

was the fear,

every day and every night,

to come in captivity.

MAN 3: We had seen enough of the
enemy to know that in cases like that,

prisoners were hardly taken.

[MAN 1]It was the first time
that our soldiers remarked

the dark shadows
of the coming times.

[MAN 4]When we must
retreat from Moscow,

the Russian population and
the Russian soldiers must think:

"It's possible to defeat
the German army."

NARRATOR: Two days after
the Russian offensive began,

the Japanese struck
at Pearl Harbor.

The war was taking
a very different turn.