Original subtitles

Adolf Hitler had never disguised his belief

that the Soviet Union would be his regime's

ultimate enemy.

He hated communism,

and saw the vast open spaces and abundant natural resources

of Soviet Russia as the prize

which would finally enable the German people

to become the master race.

Throughout the early months of 1941,

as he stayed at the Berghof,

his country retreat in the Bavarian Alps,

Hitler planned his greatest gamble,

Operation Barbarossa, the assault on the Soviet Union.

Steadily, his armies were redeployed to the east

and re-equipped for what would be their greatest challenge.

In theory, Stalin's Soviet Union was still Hitler's ally

and Stalin was keen to keep it that way,

for his country was woefully unprepared for war.

The mighty Red Army, once the largest

and most technologically advanced in the world,

had been devastated by Stalin's purges in the late 1930s.

Some three-quarters of its senior officers

had been shot or imprisoned.

Despite appearances there had been a catastrophic collapse

in morale and efficiency.

As German soldiers now flooded into neighboring Poland,

Stalin, desperate to maintain the peace,

gave orders that nothing should be done to offend Hitler.

But Hitler had one other task to perform

before he could push on to Russia.

He needed to secure his southern flank.

Rumania, Bulgaria and Hungary were Germany's firm allies.

But in March 1941, a Yugoslav government

sympathetic to Germany, was overthrown by pro-British forces.

It's next door neighbor Greece was also pro-British.

So, on April 6th, 1941, the German army invaded the Balkans.

33 German divisions moved into Yugoslavia.

They swiftly tore its defenses apart.

The capital, Belgrade, surrendered on April 12th.

Greece fell almost as quickly.

Despite British help,

Athens was captured in less than three weeks.

The way was now clear for Operation Barbarossa.

Over 4 million men were to be deployed.

They were supported by more than 3,000 aircraft.

The plan called for three simultaneous thrusts.

Army Group North would overrun the Baltic states

and seize Leningrad.

Army Group Center was to advance to Moscow.

And Army Group South would occupy the Ukraine.

Hitler's Generals went silent when he showed them the plan.

They were worried it was too ambitious

and would spread their forces too thinly.

But none dared voice their doubts.

The Red Army was much bigger.

It had nearly two million men within striking distance

of the western front and millions more in reserve.

The Russians also had more than 20,000 tanks,

far outnumbering Germany's 6,000.

They were older and less powerful,

but they were still a formidable fighting force.

The issue for Germany was,

could its superior technology and speed

overwhelm the Russians before the Red Army's

vast numbers ground them down?

Operation Barbarossa began at 3:15am on June 22nd, 1941.

The Luftwaffe joined in at dawn,

targeting Soviet airfields.

Simultaneously, the ground attack began.

The Germans swiftly crossed the River Bug

on the border between Poland and the Soviet Union.

Hitler's Panzers were soon thrusting deep

into Soviet territory.

Within two days the Panzers had penetrated more than 50 miles.

Ill co-ordinated Red Army counterattacks

were swiftly brushed aside.

Tens of thousands of Soviet prisoners were rounded up.

Meanwhile, the Luftwaffe had total domination of the air.

The Red Army's leadership seemed paralyzed by the German onrush.

On June 29th, seven days after the start of the assault,

two Panzer thrusts met up near Minsk,

surrounding huge pockets of Soviet troops.

As the follow-up infantry arrived

more than 300,000 prisoners were taken.

Often the Germans found themselves welcomed as liberators,

particularly in the Ukraine,

where anti-Russian feeling was widespread.

In Moscow, Stalin appeared to have suffered

a near-breakdown at the news of his betrayal by Hitler.

He remained silent for more than a week.

Not until July 3rd, did he appeal to his people's patriotism

to save the Motherland.

In Britain, the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill,

received the news of Operation Barbarossa

with very different feelings.

It meant the country no longer stood alone.

He announced that any enemy of Nazi Germany

was a friend of Britain's,

no matter what the political differences in the past.

He then sent a mission to Moscow

to sign a treaty of mutual assistance

with Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov.

But apart from sending aid by sea,

there was little Britain could do immediately

to help the Soviet Union.

As June turned to July,

the German Blitzkrieg slashed deeper into Soviet territory.

It was beginning to look as if nothing could stop Hitler.

But he was about to make his first major strategic blunder.

In early July 1941,

over 300,000 Red Army troops were surrounded west of Minsk.

Hitler's Panzer commanders,

in particular General Heinz Guderian,

begged to be allowed to race on.

Operation Barbarossa was working like clockwork.

Within a week the Panzers were at Smolensk,

deep inside Russia

and only a couple of hundred miles from Moscow.

On July 22nd, a Panzer pincer movement

met to the east of Smolensk,

trapping another 310,000 Soviet troops.

Here there was a brief pause

while the rest of the army caught up.

Though the tanks could move at spectacular speed,

most of the army still had to walk

or rely on horse-drawn transport.

But it still only took them five days

before they arrived and began mopping up.

The operation was completed in just nine more days.

Vast columns of Soviet prisoners

began trudging west to captivity.

Over two and a half million never returned.

Moscow was now only 200 miles away and the road lay open.

It seemed certain it would fall by the end of the summer, as planned.

But elsewhere, the German advance

was finding the going more difficult.

The Red Army was counterattacking

more effectively, and by mid-July Army Group South

was still more than 50 miles from Kiev.

Hitler decided Guderian's Panzers

should delay their advance on Moscow

and swing south to Kiev to provide help.

Guderian objected strongly, but Hitler was adamant.

There should be no further advance on Moscow

until Kiev had fallen.

It would turn out to be a fateful decision.

There were already worrying signs the Red Army

was not going to be the pushover Hitler had been expecting.

Soviet manpower seemed endless.

More than 16 million troops were now mobilized.

And the Red Army now had some formidable new weapons.

In particular, a new tank, the 37-ton T-34.

It had a 76mm gun and was faster

and better cross-country than the Panzer Mark IV.

Yet as the Blitzkrieg continued, it was easy to miss

the warning signs.

Guderian's Panzer group began its thrust south on August 23rd, 1941.

The Panzers of Army Group South struck north three weeks later.

The pincers met east of Kiev on September 16th.

Two more Soviet armies were utterly destroyed.

Half-a-million men were killed or captured.

On the same day,

more than a thousand miles to the north,

Army Group North surrounded the city of Leningrad,

today's St Petersburg.

It was immediately cut off from the rest of the Soviet Union.

The city was besieged.

Hitler decided not to storm it

and the German troops settled down to starve it into surrender.

Conditions in the city became dire.

The only link to the rest of the Soviet Union

was across Lake Ladoga to the east,

but only a small amount of food could come in by water.

Starvation set in.

Over 11,000 people died in November.

Not until December could an ice road be opened

across the lake and there was a slight increase in rations.

But 3,700 people died of starvation

on one day in December alone.

Meanwhile, Army Group Center

now prepared for the final assault on Moscow.

Guderian's Panzers had rejoined it to lead the Blitzkrieg.

The Germans had a two to one superiority in tanks

and men at the front, and three to one in aircraft.

The assault started on September 20th, 1941.

Once again Guderian's Panzers

slashed deep through the Red Army.

By October 7th, yet more Soviet troops were surrounded.

But Stalin was determined to defend Moscow to the last.

He appointed Marshal Georgi Zhukov

to organize the defense of the city.

The people of Moscow were mobilized

to dig a series of defensive lines.

But the real obstacle to German advance would be the weather.

On October 8th, heavy rains set in.

German vehicles soon became bogged down in a sea of mud.

By late October, appalling weather

and an increasingly stubborn Soviet resistance

meant Army Group Center was still some 50 miles short of Moscow.

Hitler was finally paying the price for his decision

earlier in the year to delay his advance on Moscow.

At around the same time, Army Group South

reached the Black Sea,

trapping yet more Soviet soldiers.

Another 100,000 prisoners were taken.

But they too were hampered by the weather.

Even so the city of Kharkov was captured on October 24th, 1941.

But the weather was now starting to freeze.

The German forces, confident the campaign would be over by the summer,

were caught unprepared.

With no winter clothing they now suffered terribly.

On the Moscow front, Army Group Center was now

beginning its final push to capture the Soviet capital.

By December 4th, its leading units

were just 19 miles from Red Square.

Some reconnaissance patrols claimed they could see

the golden domes of the Kremlin glinting in the distance.

But that night the temperature plunged again.

Tank engines would not start, weapons froze.

Many soldiers were severely frostbitten.

On December 5th, the Germans halted the attack.

Winter had come to the rescue of the Red Army.

But the Germans were confident

that come the spring they could finish the job.

For much of autumn 1941,

Stalin's armies reeled under the German onslaught.

But all the while he had another worry,

that the Japanese would attack his forces in Siberia.

But in November, the Soviet dictator received a message

from his top spy in Japan

assuring him the Japanese had no such intention.

Immediately, more than 30 divisions began moving west

along the Trans-Siberian railway to Moscow.

They were well-equipped and well-trained in winter fighting.

By early December, more than half a million extra men

were in position near the capital.

On December 5th, just as the Germans were abandoning

their attempt to capture Moscow,

they were hit by a savage Russian attack.

First came a massive Soviet artillery barrage.

Then swarms of Soviet T-34s

crashed through the German defenses.

Stunned by the savagery of the attack by an enemy

they had assumed was on the ropes, the Germans fell back.

For the next seven days,

the Soviet troops tore into the German forces.

For Hitler, who had only reluctantly agreed

to halt the attack on Moscow, it was a terrible blow.

On December 19th, he sacked

his overall commander-in-chief, Field-Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch,

and assumed command himself.

Heinz Guderian was also sacked,

along with 35 other senior officers.

Hitler now ordered that there would be no more retreats.

The German troops should fight

and, if necessary, die where they stood.

It worked.

The German line gradually steadied.

But Stalin, elated by the Red Army's success,

now demanded a massive advance across the whole front.

Marshal Zhukov, one of Stalin's most trusted commanders,

tried to dissuade him, but Stalin was determined.

For the next four months fighting swirled inconclusively

around the German defensive positions.

For Hitler this was a very uncomfortable situation.

He was used to, and expected, quick results.

Now he was dangerously bogged down in the Soviet Union

and facing an enemy that never seemed to give up.

Nor was Russia his only headache.

On December 7th, 1941, Germany's ally Japan

attacked the United States without warning.

Hitler, with almost no thought, also declared war on the US.

With no advanced planning he had taken on a massive new enemy.

As 1941 became 1942,

Hitler remained determined to go on the offensive again in Russia.

But he needed a new strategy.

The original plan of fighting across the whole front

was no longer tenable.

Moreover, as his economic advisers told him,

Germany's oil supplies were running low.

So he decided to halt the attacks in the north

and instead head for Russia's oilfields in the south.

The initial plan for Operation Blue, as it was called,

envisaged an assault south of Kharkov

with Army Group A swinging down to seize the oilfields,

while Army Group B covered its flank along the River Don.

Straight away there was a brutal encounter

with Soviet forces trying to re-take Kharkov.

Another 200,000 Soviet troops were captured.

70,000 were killed.

As part of the same operation the German's tightened

their siege of the Port of Sebastopol in the Crimea.

For eight months the defenders had been under

constant bombardment from German artillery,

including a massive 400mm railway gun.

In late June 1942, Sebastopol finally fell to the Germans.

It was now safe to head for the oilfields.

On June 28th, the offensive began.

Army Group B forced its way through to the River Don

and advanced along its western bank.

Army Group A faced stronger resistance.

But by July 9th, it was close to Rostov.

Hitler now made a series of what would turn out

to be serious strategic blunders.

As Army Group B made its way along the Don,

the Fuhrer ordered it to capture Stalingrad,

even though the city had no immediate strategic significance.

The army had suddenly been given a massive new task.

Two weeks later, Hitler compounded his misjudgment.

Frustrated by the slow progress of the campaign in the Caucasus,

he diverted the bulk of his Panzers

down to the mountains.

The march on Stalingrad slowed noticeably.

The reinforced Army Group A now raced across the Caucasus

to within 70 miles of the Caspian,

threatening to cut off all the Soviet Armies in the area.

But then Hitler changed his mind again.

Enraged by Army Group B's slow progress to Stalingrad,

he now ordered the Panzers back up north.

On August 9th, Army Group A

seized the first of the southern oilfields at Maikop.

It found them comprehensively trashed.

But without reinforcements it could get no further

and the huge oilfields in the central Caucasus

and those near the Caspian Sea remained beyond its grasp.

But by now Hitler's attention had shifted again.

In late August, German forces were

within striking distance of Stalingrad.

The assault on the city which bore the name

of Hitler's archenemy had begun.

It would be one of the most crucial battles of World War Two.

On August 17th, 1942,

General Friedrich Paulus's Sixth Army crossed the Don

and began a final push on Stalingrad.

Six days later, one Panzer thrust

had reached the Volga River just north of the city,

and German forces were fighting in the outer suburbs.

Hitler seemed poised for a famous victory.

Stalingrad was an important industrial center.

It straggled for more than 12 miles

along the west bank of the river.

Its factories produced over a quarter of the Soviet Union's

tractors and trucks, as well as tanks and guns.

The Russian people had turned it into a formidable fortress.

They had been helped by Hitler's decision

to send Army Group B's Panzers to the south.

This had given them another two weeks to prepare.

The German plan was to make a direct assault on the city.

Now began one of the most prolonged

and intense battles of World War Two.

Slowly the Germans edged forward street by street

with Stuka dive-bombers blitzing just ahead of them.

The fighting was savage - house-to-house, room by room.

The Soviet defenders used the sewers for shelter

and communications, and the ruins above for sniping.

Russian reinforcements had to be brought across the river.

Often they were under assault from the air.

But even so, thousands got through.

By late September, the Germans had pushed their way

through most of the city, almost to the Volga.

For Hitler the capture of Stalingrad was now an obsession.

On October 4th, 1942, General Paulus launched

what was meant to be the final assault on Stalingrad.

Tanks led the way, grinding over the rubble

and firing point blank into courtyards.

One German officer said,

"The advance is measured in corpses not meters."

German victory seemed certain.

But in fact, the Germans were dangerously over-extended.

By mid-November the Soviet army was bringing in reinforcements.

More than a million troops, 13,500 guns,

900 tanks and over 1,000 aircraft

were secretly moved to the battle zone.

On November 19th, they attacked the German's northern flank.

After a massive artillery barrage,

the T-34s and assault infantry

burst through the German positions.

Now it was the Germans who surrendered in their thousands.

The next day, a Soviet assault in the south

was equally successful.

And on November 23rd, these pincer movements

met west of Stalingrad cutting off the German Sixth Army.

General Paulus, in charge of the German forces,

could have broken out.

But Hitler ordered him to stand and fight.

The Fuhrer had been assured by the Luftwaffe

that sufficient supplies could be airlifted into Stalingrad.

This was enough for him to announce

that the German positions must hold out until relieved.

To help Paulus, Field-Marshal Erich von Manstein,

the overall German commander in the region,

launched Operation Winter Storm on December 12th.

It was an attempt by the German Panzers

to break the Soviet encirclement of the city.

For two days it went well.

But then Red Army resistance increased.

By December 23rd, the German rescue attempt

had ground to a halt about 30 miles from the city.

Manstein advised the beleaguered Paulus

to attempt to break out of Stalingrad.

But Paulus wanted Hitler's permission.

This was refused.

It was probably too late anyway.

Marshal Zhukov now unleashed

the next stage of his masterplan.

It was a massive assault on the Panzer relief operation.

The Panzers were pushed back, away from the city,

and by the end of December, all hope of relieving

the German forces in Stalingrad had gone.

Worse still, plans to airlift aid into the city were a fiasco.

The German troops needed 700 tons of supplies a day to survive.

They never received more than 80.

The weather was too bad and the Red Air Force

now commanded the skies.

Steadily, the Soviet troops squeezed in

on the encircled Germans.

200,000 men were trapped.

On January 8th, the Soviet's called on the Germans to surrender.

They refused.

On January 31st, 1943, Paulus was forced to surrender.

Over a 100,000 men stumbled off into captivity.

Only 5,000 would ever return to Germany.

Stalingrad had been a bloody battle.

The Germans had been savaged.

They had lost some 300,000 of their men

and at least as many of their allies.

The Russians had lost about the same number,

including thousands of civilians.

It was Germany's greatest catastrophe in the war so far.

The Red Army was now inflicting massive defeats

on Hitler's forces across the whole Eastern Front.

Stalingrad had been a great triumph for the Soviet army.

Now, its operational commander, Marshal Zhukov,

set his sights on the German Army Group A,

still camped in the Caucasus.

Soviet troops thrust their way west of Stalingrad

and by early December 1942 were within 120 miles of Rostov.

There was a real possibility

all the German forces in the south would be cut off.

With little choice Hitler reluctantly

gave Army Group A permission to fall back.

Over the next month, the Germans fought

a skillful rearguard action.

Hundreds of thousands of troops withdrew.

Then on January 12th, 1943,

Zhukov launched an all-out assault.

The Soviets attacked along a 500 mile front.

Outnumbered seven to one, Von Manstein,

the overall commander of German forces in the region,

fought a brilliant mobile retreat.

But by the end of February, the Red Army had recaptured

both Kursk and the nearby city of Kharkov.

This Russian winter offensive

had struck a crippling blow to German power.

Over a matter of months, it had lost a million men

and vast numbers of tanks and guns.

The Red Army still had enormous reserves of manpower.

It was also benefiting from a huge increase in weapons production

and aid from the United States and Britain.

The Germans also no longer had the technological upper hand.

The T-34 tank was more than a match for the Panzer Mark IV.

And they also had the terrifying Katyusha

multiple rocket system which shattered German troops.

Yet Hitler refused to give up hope.

He still dreamed of a pre-emptive summer assault

that would throw the Soviet Union off balance

and regain the initiative.

The city of Kursk seemed the obvious place to start.

Here the Soviet assault had pushed a bulge

deep into the German lines.

It looked temptingly exposed.

Hitler decided it should be cut off and annihilated.

He also had an ace up his sleeve.

The German counter-attack would be led

by a new generation of German tanks

specially designed to combat the formidable Russian T-34.

The massive but slow 55-ton Tiger had a lethal 88mm gun

and its frontal armor made it almost impervious to Soviet tank guns.

And then there was the faster 43-ton Panther

with a new 75mm gun,

also capable of knocking out the T-34.

These tanks were so new,

Hitler was forced to delay the attack

whilst sufficient numbers were manufactured

and delivered to the front.

But even as the German forces began to assemble,

the Soviet commander, Marshal Zhukov,

guessed what was about to happen.

Soon afterwards he received information

from a Soviet spy-ring inside the German High Command

confirming the site of the attack.

Zhukov ordered the construction of a series of defensive lines

with anti-tank ditches, minefields

and deep belts of barbed wire.

He also massively built up Soviet forces in the area,

pulling in troops and tanks

from less vulnerable parts of the front.

By the eve of the assault on Kursk,

the Germans were hugely outnumbered by Soviet defenders,

who also knew exactly when the Germans would attack.

On July 5th, 1943,

just as the German troops prepared to assault,

they were hit by a huge Soviet artillery bombardment.

Even so, the next morning, the Panzers still rolled forward.

But this time they were up against a well-entrenched enemy.

There was no realistic chance of a lightning Blitzkrieg breakthrough.

The results were disastrous.

In the north, the German army gained a mere six miles

for the loss of 25,000 men and more than 200 tanks.

In the south, the Germans fared a little better.

A wedge 25 miles deep was driven into the Soviet defenses.

But it also came at a high price.

10,000 men were killed and 350 tanks destroyed.

But for a brief moment,

it looked as if a German breakthrough might be possible.

Then Zhukov threw in his reserves.

On July 12th, 1943, 900 tanks charged into the German flank.

Almost 2,000 tanks now engaged

in what was the largest armored battle of World War Two.

The Soviet T-34s drove into the German lines

and opened fire at point-blank range.

After a single day of brutal combat,

the Germans had lost a further 350 tanks and were retreating.

Meanwhile, overhead there was an epic air battle.

Eventually the Soviet air force established

supremacy over the Luftwaffe.

Now the Russians could unleash their formidable

Ilyushin IL-2 Stormovik tank killers.

By July 23rd, the Germans had lost any ground

they had gained and with it the cream of their army.

Hitler's adventure at Kursk

had cost him at least 50,000 troops and more than 700 tanks.

Never again would the Germans launch a major offensive

on the Eastern Front.

The Russians had turned the tide of the war.