All language subtitles for Barbarossa June to December 1941.Engilsk

Russia: mid-June 1941.

A bewildered, uncertain country.

Rumours 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.

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...

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

The 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.

Sieg Heil!

In Mein Kampf,
Adolf Hitler had written:

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

"Destiny itself points the way there."

Russia would provide
living space for the German Volk -

Lebensraum.

Heil! Heil! Heil!

Heil! Heil! Heil!

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.

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 neutralised.

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.

Doubts about the Red Army's
strength had been raised inside Russia.

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.

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, to Hitler,
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.

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.

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,

"ls 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.

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 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 equalled the rest
of the world's armies put together.

Despite its shortcomings,
the Red Army was better equipped

than previous Wehrmacht victims,

and its reorganisation 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 made Hitler
even more headstrong

as his armies swept on
to further easy victories.

Stalin's 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 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.

The interesting thing was
that both Roosevelt and Churchill

informed Stalin
that Hitler was going to attack Russia.

Stalin thought that was a trick

on our part

to get him to mobilise and to divert,

to provoke Hitler into attack.

Stalin was very conscious that

in World War I,

it was the Tsar's mobilisation

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.

May Day in Moscow, 1941.

A particularly impressive
military parade,

as if to reassure the Russian people

in the face of all the rumours
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 defences

so as not to offend Berlin.

Yet even as Stalin's defence 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 programme,

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.

After the success
of the other campaigns,

we had confidence
that Barbarossa would be successful too.

The first period
of the advance was very quick.

We made more than 100km per day.

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

Hitler's plan
was for three armies

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

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.

As well as surprise,

the Germans had overwhelming superiority
in men and fire power

at those points
chosen for their armoured thrusts.

Three Russian infantry divisions
were annihilated that first day,

and another five cut to pieces.

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.

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

♪ 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

♪ 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

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.

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

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

Like the French
the summer before,

he 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.

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 hundred 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."

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.

"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.

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 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 churches being open

that had been shut for a long time.

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.

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.

Rumours 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.

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.

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.

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 defence

with enormous energy
since mid-September.

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

The first snows soon melted,

turning roads into quagmires.

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.

We had, as infantry,
to march along the sides of the roads

to let pass cars and the tanks.

The wheels of my guns
were broken.

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.

We had no warm mantles
and nothing,

only the things we had
also in summertime.

And we were actually angry

that we didn't have better equipment.

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 organise Moscow's defences.

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.

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 kilometres 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.

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.

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.

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."

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

On November 26, 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.

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.

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 fighting.

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.

As it became colder,

towards the end of November
and early December,

most of our artillery
had become completely unusable.

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.

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.

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.

We always were alone,

dreaming what time
we will be back in Berlin.

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

The newsreels
made it all seem great fun.

The reality was different.

At that time,
we had advanced almost 2,000 kilometres.

Hitler, at first,
did not want to conceive

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

but the army knew 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.

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.

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.

When I wanted to go back,
I met Russians everywhere,

and so this was the first impression

that there was no victory any more.

As the Russians
regained territory,

they began to uncover
the horror of the Nazi occupation.

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

In the first month
of the counteroffensive,

more than 300,000 Germans
were killed or captured.

The worst memory of this retreat

was the fear,

every day and every night,

to come in captivity.

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

prisoners were hardly taken.

It was the first time
that our soldiers remarked

the dark shadows of the coming times.

When we must retreat
from Moscow,

the Russian population
and the Russian soldiers must think:

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

Two days
after the Russian offensive began,

the Japanese struck at Pearl Harbour.

The war was taking
a very different turn.