Original subtitles

(dramatic percussive music)

(dramatic percussive music continues)

(dramatic percussive music continues)

(dramatic percussive music continues)

- [Narrator] "The roads became nothing

but canals of bottomless mud,

along which our vehicles could advance

only at a snail's pace,

and with great wear to the engines.

Wheeled vehicles could advance

with the help of tracked vehicles.

These, performing tasks for which they were not intended,

rapidly wore out."

By the 14th of October, 1941,

the forces of Operation Typhoon had struggled through a week

of torrential rains and tenacious Russian resistance,

to reach the historical battleground of Borodino.

They were now just 100 kilometers from their ultimate goal,

the capture of Moscow.

Advancing painfully through the quagmire

of the Russian autumn,

the tired Germans began to face a quality of Soviet unit

they had not previously encountered.

(guns firing)

The crack division of 32nd Rifles had been transferred

to the defense of Moscow,

from the Eastern outreaches of Siberia.

Containing two tank brigades

armed with the revolutionary T-34 tank,

and fully supported by anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons,

the Siberians initially provided an effective windbreak,

to the diminishing fury of Operation Typhoon.

But five days later,

the sheer weight of the German advance had overwhelmed them.

In the nerve center of the Soviet Union,

the proximity of the German armies

threw the inhabitants into total disarray.

Mass evacuations were organized,

while some citizens simply fled of their own accord.

Even Stalin and his government

prepared to abandon their capital.

In one of the most dramatic incidents of the war,

Stalin left his waiting train,

and after pacing manically up and down the station platform,

decided that the government would remain.

(engines roaring) (wheels squeaking)

A state of siege was declared,

and a decree of the 19th of October stated that;

"all provocateurs, all spies and other agents of the enemy,

are to be shot on the spot."

The remaining citizens of Moscow were scoured

for recruits to a civil reserve force,

which was hastily mobilized to the front.

Stalin now learned from his spies in Japan,

that the Japanese government did not intend

to attack in the east.

Freed of the nightmare of war on a second front,

he ordered the transport of 22 fresh divisions

of well-equipped Siberian forces to Moscow.

(boots thudding)

But time was running out.

By the first week of November,

the Germans had advanced another 20 kilometers.

Tanks and vehicles were still being sucked into roadways

no better than swamp tracks.

The Germans prayed for the frosts to come to harden them.

When the freeze finally arrived,

they wished their prayers had been ignored.

(engines roaring)

The November frosts came late, but sharp.

General Guderian had earlier requested winter supplies,

but had been rebuked for negative thinking.

The Germans began to find a concrete use

for the propaganda leaflets they had been issued with,

stuffing them into their uniforms to keep the cold at bay.

(engines rasping)

In Moscow,

Stalin struggled to kindle the flame of citizen morale

by staging the traditional Revolution Day parade,

despite the dangers of aerial bombardment.

In his speech at Lenin's tomb,

he again appealed to the ancient Russian tradition

of heroism in the face of adversity.

"The war you are waging is a war of liberation.

A just war. (stirring symphonic music)

May you be inspired in this war

by the heroic figures of our great ancestors."

While the remaining inhabitants

greeted this speech with muted enthusiasm,

the Germans crept closer.

(stirring symphonic music continues)

Hitler had insisted that his armies should divide,

and approach Moscow from the north and south simultaneously.

By the end of November,

they were only 30 kilometers from their target.

The spires of the Kremlin

were tantalizingly within their gaze,

but Hitler's arrogance in failing to provide winter supplies

was now disastrously limiting their progress.

(stirring symphonic music) (wind howling)

Without antifreeze,

motor vehicles would not start,

and planes could not fly.

(stirring symphonic music continues)

(wind howling)

Without winter clothing,

frostbite claimed the limbs

of tens of thousands of the advancing army.

Guns refused to fire.

Food refused to thaw.

When it did, soup froze on the spoon.

Guderian later wrote of;

"The endless expanse of Russian snow

during this winter of our misery,

the icy wind that blew across it,

the shelters too thin,

badly clothed, half-starved men."

The campaign medal later awarded

to the veterans of the Russian winter

came to be known as the Order of the Frozen Flesh.

(wind howling)

On the 5th of December,

the harrying of the still advancing German forces

by night raids and daytime sorties,

became a concerted counter attack.

For those consistently retreating before the German armies,

it was difficult to orientate themselves

towards this sudden offensive.

"We had thought first we will halt the enemy,

marshal our reserves, prepare for attack,

and finally throw ourselves upon them.

(explosions booming)

The reality turned out harsher and more exacting.

We simply had to turn our left shoulder around,

and attack the enemy under whose pressure

we had been retreating until yesterday."

(explosions booming)

In a final assault which had begun on the 1st of December,

the Germans came as close as 15 kilometers to Moscow.

(wind howling) (explosions booming)

Zhukov's Western Front then began to drive back

the Northern arm of their encirclement.

(missiles roaring)

And Southern Front halted Guderian's forces

around Tula to the south.

Mobile groups of Russians

destroyed fuel dumps and artillery,

deep behind the German lines.

(explosions booming) (siren wailing)

The troops of the Third Reich

now faced fully-equipped Russian infantry,

snugly clad in their felt boots and greatcoats.

Harried by ski battalions,

they watched their enemies' T-34 tanks

crash through snow and woodland,

while their own Panzers sluggishly negotiated the roadways.

German morale wilted.

The hard-pressed soldiers,

most of them still clad in their summer uniforms

and tight leather boots,

fell back rapidly,

often abandoning huge caches of equipment in their haste.

(wind howling)

Encouraged by their breakthrough,

the Russian High Command attempted

to turn the German tactics on themselves,

and encircle their entire Army Group Centre.

(explosions booming) (sirens wailing)

Despite Hitler's orders to stand firm,

by the end of the year,

the Germans had withdrawn up to 150 kilometers from Moscow.

(explosions booming) (sirens wailing)

Generals Guderian and Hoepner

had been dismissed for retreating without permission.

Von Blumentritt, Commander of the 4th Army,

described how the German situation

might have been even worse.

"I and my staff spent Christmas Day in a small hut,

with Tommy guns on the table,

and the sound of shooting all around us.

Just as it seemed that nothing could save us

from being cut off,

we found that the Russians were moving on westwards,

instead of turning up north, astride our rear."

(wind howling)

The Russian counter attack was further strengthened

by the reinstatement of officers

condemned to the prison camps during Stalin's great purges.

They were ferocious warriors.

(wind howling) (explosions booming)

As the wounded commander of the 222nd Rifles

told his German interrogators,

"If a man has a penal camp behind him,

death holds no terror for him."

Less distinguished prisoners

were released into penal battalions

which performed the most dangerous tasks,

such as clearing minefields and storming strong points.

(engines roaring) (sirens wailing)

The casualty rate in these battalions

was the highest in the Red Army,

but prisoners still volunteered for military service.

The death rate in the camps

had increased sevenfold since 1940.

(guns firing) (wind howling)

In the south, German progress was also being stymied.

Timoshenko massed 22 divisions of the Red Army

against the 1st Panzer group which had captured Rostov,

the communication center of the Dnipro Basin.

(explosions booming) (engines roaring)

Cut off from the potential reinforcement

of the 17th Army to the north,

the 1st Panzer group were forced to fall back

more than 70 kilometers.

(guns firing)

Hitler sacked von Rundstedt,

commander of Army Group South,

and ordered an immediate halt to the retreat.

(guns firing) (explosions booming)

Only when he had reviewed the position at first hand,

did Hitler accept that withdrawal

had been the only possible option.

(engines roaring) (explosions booming)

(stirring symphonic music)

At Leningrad,

food supplies to the besieged city

had been worsening throughout the autumn.

By late November,

they were at their lowest ebb of the whole siege.

(stirring symphonic music continues)

Manual workers were receiving

only 250 grams of bread per day,

1/3 of their normal requirement.

Without water for sanitation and basic medical supplies,

disease became rampant.

(stirring symphonic music continues)

As temperatures fell to the minus 20s,

thousands began to die each day.

Total starvation threatened constantly.

To the Germans, collapse seemed imminent.

Back in Berlin,

a reception with Adolf Hitler as guest of honor,

was organized to celebrate the fall of the stricken city.

The invitations were printed, but never posted.

(stirring symphonic music continues)

The Russians marked a road

across the frozen southwest corner of Lake Ladoga,

and by the 22nd of November,

convoys of lorries were barely staving off

famine in the city.

(stirring symphonic music continues)

It was a hazardous passage

through the biting northeastern gales

which swept across the lake.

Alexander Mezhirov, the poet,

vividly remembered the journey across the frozen wasteland.

"What a road,

a nightmare horror that road,

of all my roads, the worst,

what a road,

running into the thick of the blockade,

with only the sky above."

Yet for all its horror,

the Russians knew that defending this lifeline to the city

was the only possibility of keeping the inhabitants alive.

"I'll never need to be urged to attack,

whether the fire falls heavy or no.

Ladoga's ice in my eyes looms black,

with Leningrad children dead in the snow."

But the food coming across the ice

was too little too late for some.

Victims of starvation,

suffering from falling blood pressure

and the wasting of the heart and internal organs,

would never regain their health.

(wind howling)

Many would die months after food

and medical supplies finally arrived.

The children who survived

would emerge totally traumatized by the siege.

"It was reflected in the way many of the children

played all by themselves,

in the way that even in their collective games,

they played in silence with grave faces.

I saw faces of children

which reflected such thoughtfulness and sorrow,

that those eyes and faces told one more

than could be gathered from all the stories

of the horrors of famine."

It wasn't until the Red Army retook Tikhvin

on December the 9th,

opening a rail link with the city,

that the situation in Leningrad eased.

(wind howling)

(siren wailing)

In the far north,

Hitler's attentions had been fixed on closing

the all-weather port of Murmansk,

through which Russia could be supplied

by Naval convoys from Britain.

(engines roaring)

Winter conditions around Moscow were balmy compared to those

of the primordial terrain surrounding Murmansk.

(explosions booming)

General Dietl, commander of Mountain Corps Norway,

informed Hitler that;

"The landscape up there in the tundra outside Murmansk

is just as it was after the creation.

(wind howling)

There's not a tree, not a shrub,

no human settlement,

no roads, and no paths.

(explosions booming)

In the summer, it's a swamp.

In the winter, there's ice, snow,

and it's 40 to 50 degrees below.

Icy gales rage throughout the eight months

of the Arctic night."

(wind howling)

By the end of 1941,

the Germans had made virtually no progress.

The port of Murmansk was still open,

and communications with central Russia still intact.

(wind howling)

As the new year approached,

there was every reason for Stalin to feel optimistic

about the outcome of the war.

The German blitzkrieg had slowed to a crawl, halted,

and was now grinding into reverse.

It also seemed that the great exodus of industry to the east

had been successfully accomplished.

While the next three months would prove critical,

the economic war had been put on a sound footing.

The Eastern industrial enclaves

rapidly became the cornerstone of the Russian war effort.

The instant expansion of the Ural, Siberian,

and Kazakhstan centers of production

in the first year of the war,

was nothing short of miraculous.

(machinery creaking)

360 large enterprises, mainly war enterprises,

were evacuated to the Eastern regions of the USSR.

(machinery creaking)

On land,

the T-34 tank was now becoming standard,

to the dismay of the German Panzer groups.

When the first of these medium tanks

was met by the 17th Panzers,

they found that their shells

simply bounced off its heavy, sloped armor,

while its high velocity 76 millimeter turret gun

proved devastating.

It plowed through the advancing Germans for nine miles,

before being halted by a field artillery howitzer

at short range.

The T-34 was the most successful tank design

of the entire war.

Its powerful diesel engine enabled it to sail over terrain

that the Panzers balked at.

(machinery whirring)

The T-34 seemed capable

of constant modification and improvement.

The barrel of its 76 millimeter gun was lengthened,

to strengthen its armor-piercing capability.

Later, its firepower was further increased,

by arming a larger turret with an 85 millimeter gun

adapted from anti-aircraft usage.

The T-34's armor was also upgraded to 110 millimeters

on the front,

and 90 millimeters around the turret.

Over 40,000 T-34s would be produced

before the war was over.

(engine rumbling)

But despite Soviet optimism,

the war was far from nearing its end.

The Russian defenders had paid a terrible price

for their resistance,

and the toll in human terms would continue

for the next three years.

(dramatic percussive music)

The Soviet casualties

in the first six months of the invasion

had been staggering.

It was only 50 years later,

that it would be admitted that one and a half million troops

had perished in the defense of Moscow alone.

(dramatic percussive music continues)

Many of those who were taken prisoner by the Germans

fared worse than the dead.

The German High Command alleged that the Russians

had refused to abide by the Geneva Convention

on the treatment of prisoners of war,

and encouraged German troops to seek revenge

on such barbarous subhumans.

(dramatic percussive music continues)

The Soviet Union had in fact

undertaken to observe the Geneva protocols,

and through neutral Sweden

had requested that Germany do the same.

(dramatic percussive music continues)

Germany's response was to shoot Russian prisoners

out of hand,

to gas them, starve them,

and deprive them of the medical supplies

necessary for their survival.

Many were crammed into rail carts,

and left in sidings to perish.

Others were force-marched until they died from exhaustion.

More were simply exposed to the deadly cruelties

of the Russian winter.

Hundreds of thousands of Soviet prisoners

had been been murdered by 1942,

and this was to set an horrendous trend,

which would continue throughout the course of the war.

(dramatic percussive music continues)

Even some of the German soldiers, like Guy Sajer,

were sickened by the treatment of Russian prisoners.

"In the autumn of 1942,

a locomotive appeared in the distance.

It was entirely blacked out.

What I saw next froze me with horror.

The first of the flat cars to pass my uncomprehending eyes

seemed to be carrying a confused heap of objects,

which only gradually became recognizable as human bodies.

Directly behind this heap,

other people were clinging together,

crouching or standing.

Hals looked at me.

Except for the burning red spots made by the cold,

his face was as white as a sheet.

'Did you see that?' he whispered.

'They've piled up their dead

to shield themselves from the wind.'

Every car was carrying a shield of human bodies.

I stood as if petrified by the horror of the sight

rolling slowly by,

faces entirely drained of blood,

and bare feet stiffened by the cold."

(dramatic percussive music continues)

The total number of Russian prisoners to be captured

would eventually be reckoned at five and a half million.

Of these,

only two million would survive the inhuman treatment

of their captors.

(dramatic percussive music continues)

Of the rest,

many would be murdered during the first few weeks

of their captivity,

while two million would perish

in the notorious concentration camps of the Reich.

(boots thudding)

Hermann Goering told Ciano, Mussolini's envoy,

that "Russian prisoners,

having been forced to eat the soles of their boots,

had then resorted to cannibalism, and which is more serious,

had also eaten a German sentry.

Some nations must be decimated.

There is nothing to be done about it."

(boots thudding)

The paltry figure of three and a half million

slaughtered Russian POWs was a drop in the ocean

for Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler.

(boots thudding)

Himmler's plans for the new order in Europe

envisaged the reduction of its Slav population

by at least 30 million.

(boots thudding)

It was Himmler and his deputy Heydrich

who were the real masters of occupied Russia.

Field Marshal Keitel,

when asked why the supposedly civilized

commanders of the German army

allowed the barbarities of the Russian invasion to occur,

protested that even the commander in chief of the army

did not have the executive power or authority

to issue and enforce laws in the occupied east.

This prerogative belonged strictly to Heydrich and Himmler,

who had de facto discretionary powers over the life

and death of population and prisoners,

including prisoners of war.

Yet there is abundant evidence of German field commanders

only too willing to aid and abet

the murderous pogroms of the SS.

(boots thudding)

Himmler's sinister men in black, the Schutzstaffel, or SS,

became the supreme rulers of Western Russia.

Even before Barbarossa,

the SS had discussed with the army officers

how they could be facilitated in the campaign of terror

they were to unleash in the wake of the invasion.

(boots thudding)

In May, 1941, four Einsatzgruppen were formed,

with the primary aim of eliminating

the ideological opponents of the Reich.

Soviet officials, commissars,

and Jews were to be rounded up and shot to death.

In the event,

those who were dispatched swiftly by a bullet

were the fortunate.

(engines whirring)

Local Jewish leaders in Russia were forced

to assemble their people in designated areas.

From these collection points,

they were transported to killing fields,

where they were stripped of their clothing,

and riddled with machine gun fire.

The sheer numbers involved often meant that the wounded

were also tipped into the burial pits,

and covered up to suffocate.

At Kiev,

in September, 1941,

over 33,000 Jews were murdered in a single operation,

which lasted two days.

(children yelling)

In Pinsk,

the carnage was accomplished with the use of grenades, dogs,

axes, and the cavalry of the SS.

(dramatic percussive music)

It was difficult, demanding work,

and soldiers were rewarded with treble pay,

and long holidays.

(dramatic percussive music continues)

Erich Ohlendorf, one of the Einsatzgruppen commanders,

boasted that he had personally disposed of 90,000 victims,

mainly Jews,

in the first year of the war.

(dramatic percussive music continues)

But it was not only Jews who suffered.

Anyone could be accused of being an official or a commissar,

and summarily executed.

German troops were actively encouraged to commit outrage

on an occupied population

which was to be subjugated by terror.

People were brutalized for real or imagined offenses.

Despite regulations,

women were raped in the streets

in full view of horrified onlookers.

(dramatic percussive music continues)

As well as carrying out this policy of repression

and ethnic sanitation,

officials in Russia were also obliged

to provide forced labor for the German war economy.

This allowed male civilians in the Reich

to be freed for military service.

The German officials in Russia went about the task

with an eerie mixture of barbarity and incompetence.

Potential recruits were gathered without any discrimination

as to their suitability.

They were often left unfed for long periods,

and conditions on the westbound freight trains

which carried them

were insanitary and inhuman.

(foreign language choral music)

Babies born on the journey

were ripped out of their mothers' arms,

and flung onto passing embankments to perish.

Not surprisingly, by the end of 1941,

100,000 of those transported from the Ukraine

were sent back as unfit to work.

Many did not survive the return journey.

Those waiting to travel westwards

were forced to watch dead comrades

being unloaded from the trains

they themselves would have to occupy.

This treatment of occupied peoples,

some of which had welcomed the Nazis

as saviors from the tyranny of Stalin,

eventually gave rise to resistance movements,

determined to exact revenge

for the brutalities which had been inflicted on them.

The atrocities were etched deep

into the psyches of those who witnessed them,

and inspired an implacable hatred for the perpetrators.

"You will not hear the mother calling

from 7,003 kilometers away,

through the menacing howl of the polar wind,

in the crush of disasters that surround you.

You, my dear, are becoming a wild beast there,

you, the last and the first, you are ours.

Dispassionate spring wanders over my Leningrad grave.

You will hoist me onto a bloody hook like a slain beast,

so that foreigners giggling with disbelief

should wander around and write in learned journals

that my incomparable gift had died,

that I was a poet of poets,

but that 13 o'clock struck for me."

On the 5th of January, 1942,

Stalin ordered a general offensive,

utilizing nine of the Soviet Union's 10 front groups.

(engine rumbling) (wheels squeaking)

Zhukov's forces were to continue the counter attack

in the center.

The Crimea was to be retaken,

Leningrad was to be freed

from the clutches of Army Group North,

and the Donets Basin

was to be recovered from Army Group South.

(engines rumbling) (wheels squeaking)

Hitler had now taken over active command

of the German armies on the Eastern front.

His priorities gave little confidence

to his harassed generals.

"Anyone can do the little job

of directing operations in war.

The task of the commander in chief is to educate the army

to be National Socialist.

I do not know any general who can do this as I want it done.

I have therefore decided

to take over the command of the army myself."

(engine rumbling)

In addition,

Hitler was losing faith in the commanders who had failed

to bring Barbarossa to a successful conclusion.

(explosions booming)

He had already dismissed both the cautious von Rundstedt,

and the audacious Guderian.

(stirring symphonic music)

The friction between Hitler and his generals became vocal

and more rancorous as the winter wore on.

Despite this,

as the January initiative became bogged down

in the spring thaw,

Stalin had little to show for an offensive

which was so ruthlessly driven,

that it produced more Russian than German casualties.

(dramatic music) (explosions booming)

The Volkhov Front managed to penetrate

von Leeb's Army Group North,

but its 2nd Shock Army were isolated

at the spearhead of the penetration,

and the attack was repulsed.

(explosions booming)

Further south,

North-West Front encircled 90,000 men of von Leeb's army

in an 800-mile area near Demyansk.

However, in a heroic operation,

which won the personal praise of the Fuhrer,

the Luftwaffe managed to stave off a withdrawal,

by providing the Demyansk Pocket

with 270 tons of supplies each day,

until eventually a corridor was pushed through

to relieve the defenders.

(dramatic symphonic music)

(explosions booming)

The 29th Army of the Kalinin Front,

which had almost completed an encirclement

of a large portion of Army Group Centre,

was itself surrounded and destroyed.

Army Group South managed to contain

the bulge that was developing

under attack from the Russian South and South-West fronts.

In the Crimea,

Russian gains were restricted to the Kerch Peninsula.

(wind howling)

It had been the most brutal winter in living memory,

and both sides emerged exhausted.

Army General Meretskov wrote;

"I will never forget the endless forests, the bogs,

the waterlogged peat fields, the potholed roads,

the punishing battle with the forces of the enemy,

that went on side-by-side with the equally punishing battle

with the forces of nature."

(explosions booming) (wind howling)

(explosions booming) (wind howling)

The German armies emerged from the winter fighting

in a state described by General Franz Halder,

Hitler's chief of staff, as disastrous.

(engines rumbling)

Of the 162 divisions facing the Red Army,

only 11 were fully capable of offensive operations.

For the 16 Panzer divisions in the east,

only 140 serviceable tanks were available,

and most divisions were only 20% mobile.

(engines rumbling)

Nevertheless,

Hitler was determined that a full-scale attack

should be resumed.

It was a question of advance or retreat.

(engines rumbling)

Halder even considered recommending a withdrawal

to the pre-war border in Poland.

Quite wisely, he never mentioned this to Hitler.

If the German armies stepped back,

then Russia could regroup her forces,

recover her raw materials,

and rebuild her Western industries.

(engine rumbling)

Hitler had been informed by the economic lobby in Germany

that without fresh oil reserves,

it could not sustain the war effort.

The oil fields of the Caucasus beckoned temptingly.

All thoughts of withdrawal were pushed aside.

The losses of manpower, vehicles, and tanks,

which had been suffered since the outbreak of hostilities,

could not be fully made good for the new offensive.

(dramatic symphonic music)

Infantry divisions were now to total seven battalions

instead of nine.

The battle strength of companies

was reduced from 180 troops to 80.

Between November, 1941,

and March, 1942,

only 7,500 vehicles were supplied

to replace the 75,000 which had been lost,

and fuel oil was in short supply.

Mobility had been seriously affected.

The Panzer divisions,

which would take part in the summer offensive in the south,

contained barely 135 tanks each.

(dramatic symphonic music continues)

Even this had only been achieved

by seriously weakening northern and central divisions.

The one weapon that Hitler did have on his side

was surprise.

Stalin had assumed that Hitler

would resume his attack on Moscow,

and heavily reinforced its defensive reserves.

But when the Germans struck on the 8th of May,

it was the Crimean Front which was torn apart

by von Manstein's 11th Army.

(engines roaring)

The German strategy was to clear its flanks

for a concerted drive towards the oil fields

of the Caucasus.

(engines roaring)

While von Manstein subdued the Crimea,

Timoshenko's South-West Front,

which lay on the northern flank of the drive,

was to be destroyed by the 9th and 57th armies.

(engines roaring)

Ironically, as the Germans prepared to attack Timoshenko,

he was busily gathering reinforcements

for an offensive which would retake Kharkov.

(engines rumbling) (wheels squeaking)

(engines rumbling) (wheels squeaking)

On the 12th of May, with 600,000 men,

he launched this operation westwards.

(engines rumbling) (wheels squeaking)

Penetration against the German 16th Army was deep and swift,

but as the Russian lines of communication lengthened,

their flanks became increasingly vulnerable.

(explosions booming)

On the 17th of May,

a German attack pierced the armies of the Southern Front,

which was protecting the left flank

of the Russian offensive.

As Timoshenko turned to respond to this threat,

the 16th Army counterattacked his wheeling force

on its right flank.

(explosions booming)

When the German encirclement was completed,

almost the total reserve of T-34 and KV-1 tanks

built up over the winter months,

was in German hands,

along with over 2000 guns,

and almost 250,000 prisoners.

(explosions booming)

(guns firing)

In the south,

von Manstein had by now entered the final phase

of his Crimean campaign,

and only the fortress of Sevastopol,

besieged since the previous year,

was under Soviet control.

(explosions booming)

After 250 days of dogged resistance,

Sevastopol finally capitulated on the 4th of July.

(guns firing)

(guns firing)

The victorious von Manstein and his troops

were ordered north to Leningrad,

despite pleas to cross the Kerch Strait,

and bolster the main offensive.

(engines rumbling) (wheels squeaking)

The German forces were now organized into two groups.

Army Group B struck eastwards from Kursk to the north,

and Kharkov to the south,

but failed to encircle the retreating Soviet forces.

Hitler,

convinced that the main body of the Red Army had retreated

to the area north of Rostov,

ordered a huge encirclement of the city.

In doing so he pulled the 4th Panzer Army

away from its advance down the Donets corridor,

towards Stalingrad.

It was a fatal mistake.

Von Kleist was to write later,

"The 4th Panzer Army was advancing on my left.

It could have taken Stalingrad without a fight

at the end of July,

but was diverted south to help me in crossing the Don.

I did not need its aid.

It merely congested the roads I was using.

When it turned north again, a fortnight later,

the Russians had gathered

just sufficient forces at Stalingrad to check it."

After taking Rostov,

Army Group A continued along the Black Sea

towards the foothills of the Caucasus.

Hitler had planned to take Stalingrad,

and then proceed southwards.

He was now committed to achieving

both objectives simultaneously.

By late August,

Army Group A was running into stiff resistance

from the newly-formed Trans-Caucasus Front,

defending the span of the huge mountain chain

from the Black Sea to the Caspian.

(guns firing)

(stirring symphonic music)

A Russian South-East Front was also established

to protect the plains to the northeast of the mountains.

The Caucasus Front contained Georgians, Armenians,

and Azerians,

who were well aware of what a German invasion would mean

for themselves and their families.

Their resistance was desperate and determined.

Approximately half the adult males of Georgia

would eventually sacrifice themselves

in the bitter struggle for their homeland.

(stirring symphonic music continues)

Not only was resistance hardening in front of Army Group A,

but their strength was constantly being eroded

to bolster the battle for Stalingrad to the north.

The Caucasian oil wells had been the primary target

of the German summer offensive.

The taking of Stalingrad

was at first simply an obvious target

to protect the left flank of Army Group A.

Had Stalingrad not been named

in honor of the Russian leader,

it might have remained a subsidiary target.

(stirring symphonic music continues)

Hitler began to find the symbolism of its name

increasingly difficult to resist.

On the 23rd of July,

its capture was placed on a par with the sudden advance.

By September,

defeat at the city named after his arch rival

was unthinkable.

Stalin too was aware of the symbolic significance involved.

As early as the 1st of July,

with the German 6th Army

approaching the big bend of the Don,

and threatening the road to the city,

Stalin told Timoshenko,

"I order the formation of an Army Group Stalingrad.

The city itself will be defended by the 62nd Army

to the last man."

(stirring symphonic music continues)

At the time of Stalin's order,

the 62nd Army were desperately preparing

a defensive position at the Kalach bridgehead,

west of the Don,

supported to the south by the 64th Army and 1st Tank Army.

On the 30th of July,

the German 6th Army struck north and south

of this formation,

and by the 8th of August, it was encircled.

The remnants of the 62nd and 64th army

pulled back to form a defensive perimeter around Stalingrad,

leaving the approach road virtually undefended.

On the 23rd of August,

the 6th Army, under General Friedrich Paulus,

and the 4th Panzer Army,

crossed the Don and sped toward the city.

(engines rumbling) (wheels squeaking)

Despite the resolute defense

of the outnumbered Soviet forces,

the Germans crashed through the suburbs.

Only a rapid withdrawal to the inner city

on the 30th of August

prevented a complete encirclement of the forward defenses.

(guns firing)

The depleted Russian ranks were bolstered

by the addition of 125,000 adult citizens,

and 7,000 male youths between the ages of 13 and 17.

Workers in the munitions factories

handed over weapons and equipment to their soldiers

as soon as they came off the production lines.

As the battle grew in intensity,

they were forced to use them themselves.

(guns firing)

In their eagerness for a rapid victory,

the Germans made a severe tactical error.

While the firebombing of the Luftwaffe,

which was ordered as a prelude to the final assault,

created major structural damage,

it also constricted the mobility of the attackers.

(engines roaring) (explosions booming)

It turned the struggle for occupation into a Rattenkrieg,

a rat's war through the rubble-choked thoroughfares

of the city.

(guns firing)

German tank superiority and aerial dominance

counted for very little.

The German army's whole tactical training had been concerned

with how to avoid such a war of vicious attrition.

The defenders, on the other hand,

proved adept at this hide and seek struggle

through the labyrinth of ruined buildings

and blocked alleyways to which Stalingrad was reduced.

(guns firing)

The battle zones contracted to minuscule proportions.

In the larger buildings,

floors and even stairways were transformed

into centers of conflict.

(guns firing)

Any overview became almost impossible,

as individual buildings changed hands

several times in a single day.

Back in Germany,

the slow progress of its army gave rise to jokes

parodying the official reports from the front.

"Today, our troops captured a two room flat with kitchen,

toilet, and bathroom.

They managed to retain 2/3 of it,

despite hard-fought counter attacks from the enemy."

Nevertheless,

the sheer weight of the German attack began to tell.

By mid-September,

the defense of the city seemed on the point

of being overwhelmed.

(guns firing)

The result of the war in the east

hung once again in the balance.

Hitler was disregarding the tactics of Vernichtungsgedanke,

the idea of annihilation by swift blows

to the flanks and rear,

which had been the basis of all German successes to date.

(guns firing)

He was disregarding the needs

of the campaign in the Caucasus,

by diverting crucial amounts of manpower to Stalingrad.

And totally out of character,

he was ignoring the weakness of the German flanks

along the 60-mile salient,

which the attack on Stalingrad had created.

Hitler was risking everything

in his growing obsession with this one city.

(stirring symphonic music)

The Red Army,

pressed back against the Volga

with the smoking ruins of Stalingrad in front of them,

were once again on the rack.

The optimism of the early spring had turned sour,

in a soul-destroying series of defeats,

which saw further huge tracks of their homeland

fall into enemy hands.

Should Stalingrad now capitulate,

the blow to their morale would be immense.

More ominously,

the fall of Stalingrad would seal the fate of the Caucasus,

and pave the way for the final breach of the only barrier

to stand between Nazi Germany,

and absolute control of the European continent.

(stirring symphonic music continues)

For all the excesses and brutalities of Stalin's Russia,

Stalingrad's collapse would unleash an era

of cold-blooded slaughter and mayhem,

such as the world had never before witnessed.

In the words of Joseph Goebbels,

"A time of brutality approaches,

of which we ourselves have absolutely no conception.

In fact, we are in the middle of it.

We shall only reach our goal

if we have enough courage to destroy,

laughingly to shatter what we once held holy,

such as tradition, upbringing, friendship, and human love.

(stirring symphonic music fades)

(dramatic percussive music)

(dramatic percussive music continues)

(dramatic percussive music continues)

(dramatic percussive music continues)