All language subtitles for Stalingrad June 1942 to February 1943.Engilsk

Russia. The summer of 1942.

The Germans are on the move... again.

The Sixth Army, Hitler's largest,
victorious in France,

almost victorious in the first year
of the Russian campaign.

Now it has a new task -

to fight further east than the Wehrmacht
has ever fought before,

to cut Russia in two, on the Volga.

The German army's plan to destroy Russia
by a blitzkrieg in 1941 had failed.

And, in the attempt,
they'd lost a million men.

In 1942, they were not strong enough -
even with the help of their allies -

to attack along the whole front.

Hitler turned south, to the Caucasus.

Three-quarters of Russia's oil
was there.

He divided his forces into two groups -

the Sixth Army and
the Fourth Panzer Army would move first.

His plan was to encircle and destroy
Soviet armies in the Don bend,

drive east towards Stalingrad,

and cut off the Caucasus
from the rest of the country.

Then in the main campaign,

the other army group
would capture Rostov

and strike south to the oil fields.

The offensive started late.

It was high summer
before the Sixth Army,

under Friedrich von Paulus,
began to move.

The armour in front, as usual,

the motorised supply columns
close behind.

The foot soldiers
slogged along in the rear.

At first, the Russians
seemed to melt away.

No matter how far the Germans advanced,

the Red Army always eluded them.

The Germans didn't take many prisoners.

They captured territory and towns.

The army wanted to keep pressing ahead
to encircle the Russians, but couldn't.

Time and again, its spearheads had to
pause and wait for supplies to catch up.

One soldier, Wilhelm Hoffman,
was keeping a diary.

He thought the war might soon be over.

"Perhaps we'll be home by Christmas",
he wrote.

The Russians had lost a quarter
of a million troops in the spring.

Now they could not afford
pitched battles,

so they kept retreating.

To the Russian commanders,
it was a skilful planned withdrawal.

To the Russian troops,
it was a demoralising rout.

To Hitler, it was a crushing victory.

He thought the Russian armies
had been wiped out.

So, with the offensive
barely two weeks old,

he started to shift his armies south.

At the end of July
his troops entered Rostov,

the key to the Caucasus.

Hitler now gave absolute priority
to the thrust towards the oil fields.

He unleashed his fresh, southern armies.

He diverted
the Fourth Panzer Army south.

He stripped the Sixth Army of its fuel
and most of its armour,

and sent them south, too.

But he still expected the Sixth Army
to carry on as before.

By mid-August, the Sixth Army
had been on the march for six weeks.

Late in the afternoon of the 23rd,

a panzer column reached the Volga
just north of Stalingrad.

It cut off river traffic and brought
the opposite bank under fire.

The infantry dug in along the railway
and waited for reinforcements.

Though the Sixth Army's original mission
was now accomplished,

Hitler now expected them
to take the city.

Stalingrad was built on bluffs
overlooking the Volga,

and stretched 15 miles
along its western bank.

The old town - log huts
and wooden buildings - in the south,

a modern centre, steel and concrete.

To the north, three large factories,
with workers' housing nearby.

The whole city lay on hilly ground,
scored by deep ravines.

A Soviet showpiece,
Stalin had named it for himself.

Stalin had determined
to defend the city.

He decided not to evacuate
most of the civilians.

The troops would fight better, he said,
for a live city than for a dead one.

Air defences were improvised.

Half the anti-aircraft guns in the town
had women crews.

A workers' militia was recruited.

Stalin had coined the slogan,
"Not one step back."

Troops and security police
patrolled the streets.

It wasn't all coercion.

There was fear of the Germans,
and patriotism, and communist zeal.

"Comrades and citizens of Stalingrad,

each of us must apply ourselves

to the task of defending
our beloved town,

our homes, and our families."

"Let us barricade every street,
transform every district,

every block, every house,
into an impregnable fortress."

The Sixth Army had not reached the Volga
in enough strength

to take Stalingrad on its own.

Its reserves were still far behind.

The Luftwaffe was called in
to help the ground forces.

For three days, from August 23,

every aircraft available
on the Russian Front attacked the city.

Almost the only defence
came from the gun boats on the Volga

and from the batteries
on the opposite shore.

The city did not fall to air attack,

and the shattered buildings
were transformed into fortresses.

The beginning of September.

Russian artillery
could harass the Germans

from the east bank of the Volga.

But the Russian reserves were useless

unless they could cross the river
and get into the city.

There were no bridges

and by day river ferries
were under constant Luftwaffe attack.

As long as the Russians
held any of the western bank,

they could send troops into the city.

Once across, they could use tunnels
dug into the high bluffs

and force the Germans
to battle for every foot.

The German armies held the initiative,

but they were at the very end
of a precarious supply line.

All their troops were committed
to the offensive.

They had no reserves left
if anything went wrong.

The Germans launched their first attacks
early in September.

September 11, Wilhelm Hoffman:

"Our battalion is fighting
in the suburbs of Stalingrad."

"Firing is going on all the time."

"Wherever you look is fire and flames."

"Russian cannons and machine guns
are firing out of the burning city."

"Fanatics!"

Hoffman, September 16:

"Our battalion plus tanks
is attacking the grain elevator."

"The battalion
is suffering heavy losses."

"The elevator is occupied not by men

but by devils that no bullets
or flames can destroy."

September 18:

"Fighting is going on
inside the elevator."

"if all the buildings of Stalingrad
are defended like this,

then none of our soldiers
will get back to Germany."

September 20:

"The battle for the elevator
is still going on."

September 22:

"Russian resistance in the elevator
has been broken."

"Our troops are advancing
towards the Volga."

"We found only about 40 Russians
dead in the elevator."

The German army high command,
1,000 miles away,

was beginning to have second thoughts.

General Halder, chief of staff,

had not seriously opposed
Hitler's directives earlier in the year.

Now, with the original
strategic objectives accomplished,

he urged caution - but in vain.

A member of Halder's staff observed

that the Führer used to move his hands
in big sweeps over the map:

"Push here, push there."

It was all vague and took no account
of practical difficulties.

Halder refused to take responsibility
for continuing the advance

with winter approaching.

Hitler said:
"We now need National Socialist ardour,

rather than professional ability,
to settle matters in the east."

"Obviously I cannot expect this of you."

He sacked Halder
and replaced him by General Zeitzler,

who was thought to be
a genius at logistics -

a man who would know how to move
armies where Hitler wanted them to go.

In Stalingrad,
the Sixth Army's commander

was having second thoughts too.

Von Paulus's troops

were not used to fighting
hand to hand in bombed-out cities.

Here, their tanks
moved at a snail's pace,

yet Hitler insisted, demanded,
that they take the city.

A Russian soldier, Anton Gošnik:

"We moved back,
occupying one building after another,

turning them into strongholds."

"A soldier would crawl out
of an occupied position

only when the ground was on fire beneath
him and his clothes were smouldering."

September 26, Hoffman complained
about the way the Soviets fought:

"We don't see them at all."

"They've established themselves
in houses, in cellars,

and they're firing from all sides,
including from our rear."

"Barbarians! They use gangster methods!"

Zeitzler, Hitler's new chief of staff,

took a long look at the situation
and told him:

"The most dangerous positions
on the whole Eastern Front

are the north front at Stalingrad

and the eastern flank
of the Fourth Panzer Army."

"if steps are not taken in good time
to rectify the situation,

there will be a disaster."

Hitler replied,
"You're too pessimistic, Zeitzler."

"We've been through worse periods
than this and we've survived."

"We'll get over
our present difficulties, too."

The German position was dangerous.

20,000 men a week
were being lost in Stalingrad.

They could only be replaced by stripping
the army's flanks of German troops.

Romanians were moving in here.

This area was now held by the Italians.

Next to them were Hungarians.

The most precarious position of all
was here,

where the Russians
held both banks of the river Don.

They faced the Romanian Third Army,

which had no heavy anti-tank guns
and no tanks either.

Hitler wasn't worried. He thought -

and the high command's
intelligence confirmed this -

that the Russians
had no strategic reserves left.

In October, the Germans attacked again,
towards the Volga.

Unless they captured
the entire river bank,

the Russians would bring in
troops and supplies at night.

Wilhelm Hoffman, October 4:

"A lot of Russian Tommy-gunners
have appeared."

"Where are they bringing them from?"

Another German wondered:

"Were we going to have to fight through
another dreadful Russian winter?"

Hoffman, on October 14:

"It's been fantastic since morning."

"Our aeroplanes and artillery

have been bombing
the Russian positions for hours."

A panzer Leutnant, Weiner, wrote:

"Stalingrad is no longer a town."

"By day it is an enormous cloud
of burning, blinding smoke."

"It is a vast furnace,
lit by the reflection of the flames."

"And when night arrives - one of those
very hot, noisy, bloody nights -

the dogs plunge into the Volga

and swim desperately
to gain the other bank."

"The nights of Stalingrad
are a terror for them."

"Animals flee from this hell."

"The hardest stones
cannot bear it for long."

"Only men endure."

Hoffman's diary, October 22:

"Who would have thought three months
ago that instead of the joy of victory

we would have to endure
such sacrifices and torture,

the end of which is nowhere in sight?"

"The soldiers are calling Stalingrad
'the mass grave' of the Wehrmacht."

From far behind Stalingrad,

long columns of Russian tanks and men
came that autumn.

But only a trickle went to Stalingrad -
just enough to keep it from collapsing.

The rest went to assembly areas
north and south of the city.

Newsreels told Russians
what their leaders wanted them to know -

that small arms factories were working
round the clock from Moscow to Georgia.

Sweethearts were writing letters
about production quotas,

or wrapping parcels for the front,

and delivering them
by special messenger.

Youth groups could
adopt their own tanks

and even pose with their crews.

Groups of workers
could buy their own Stormovik

and send it off
to shoot down Hitlerite invaders.

But the underlying message was clear -
the terrible days of shortage were over.

Now, at last, the Red Army
was getting all it needed.

When it seemed likely

that Stalingrad would hold out,
its generals were filmed.

General Yeremenko,
commander of the Stalingrad front,

found time to distribute medals.

Stalin's speeches
were much read to the troops.

There was even a Stalingrad oath:

"Its burnt-out houses,
its ruins, its very stones, are sacred."

The war went on.

The Russians ferried their troops
across the Volga and the Don

and crammed them into the bridgeheads
they had held since the summer.

The Russians dug in and waited.

The Germans now held
nine-tenths of the city.

On November 8, Hitler made
an after-dinner speech in Munich.

Ich wollte zur Wolga kommen.

"I wanted to get
to the Volga at a point

where stands a certain town...
bears the name of Stalin himself."

"I wanted to take the place
and we've done it."

"We've got it really, except for a few
enemy positions still holding out."

"People say, 'Why don't they
finish the job more quickly?"'

"Well, I prefer to do the job
with quite small assault groups."

"Time is of no consequence at all."

But time was creeping up
on the Germans.

Even before Hitler's speech,

the Russian winter had begun.

The Germans knew what was coming.

Soon it would be 30, 40, 50 degrees
below freezing.

Equipment and men would freeze.

But the Russians would keep going.

The Russians tried to keep
their build-up a secret,

but they could neither
move all their men by night,

nor hide completely
three-quarters of a million new troops.

On November 10, Von Paulus asked Hitler
to let him withdraw from Stalingrad.

Hitler told him to keep attacking.

The Russian build-up went on.

On November 19, the Russians struck.

They attacked the Romanians
from the north

and, two days later, from the south.

Within hours,
the Russian tanks were through.

The Russian plans were ambitious.

Their two pincers would cut through
the Romanians and link at Kalach.

That would trap the German Sixth Army.

They would reduce the Stalingrad pocket,

and could then strike south-east
towards Rostov.

That would trap
all the Germans in the Caucasus.

Just four days
after the offensive began,

the two Russian armies did link up.

It had all gone so quickly
there was no time to film it,

so it was re-enacted for the cameras.

The Russians thought
they had trapped 75,000 Germans.

In fact, 250,000 men were cut off.

All the Sixth Army,
some of the Fourth Panzer Army,

Romanians, Croatians,
and even Russian volunteers.

The commander on the spot, Von Paulus,
asked to be allowed to break out.

Hitler told him to stay put.
He would send troops to break in.

And he sent him a cheery message:

"I know the brave Sixth Army
and its commander-in-chief,

and I also know
that it will do its duty."

But the army still had to eat.

Göring, the Luftwaffe's
commander-in-chief.

Earlier that year, his planes

had supplied a whole army
cut off for 60 days

with fuel, ammunition and food.

Now he thought they could do it again.

Providing the weather was good
and the distances not too great,

they could fly in 500 tons a day.

Hitler thought that would do,

though he knew the army said
it needed at least 800 tons.

The Russians were waiting.

Bombers were used as transports.

The weather was vile.

The airlift brought in
only a tenth of what was needed,

though it did once deliver
a planeload of ground pepper

and 12 cases of contraceptives.

The Russians did not attack

the 250,000 troops
in the pocket directly -

they were not yet strong enough.

Instead, their armies drove westwards,
and the further they drove,

the wider grew the gap between
the Germans besieged in Stalingrad

and their would-be rescuers.

German troops inside the pocket
were cold and hungry, but confident.

They settled down, ready to move
when their rescuers got close enough.

But they never came.

The Germans fighting their way
to relieve Stalingrad

turned back to meet a new threat
to the entire southern front.

The Germans in the pocket
were on their own.

The Russians had the upper hand.

Even the quality
of their medical care showed it.

German wounded,
except the few airlifted home,

died in their dugouts.

The Russians at Stalingrad

had the best recovery record
of any Russian armies.

The Russians now had mastery of the air.

Their bombers were virtually unopposed.

Hitler was obsessed by Stalingrad.

The Russians too.

They could have left the men there
to freeze and starve.

Instead, they massed seven armies
round the pocket.

In Stalingrad itself,
fighting went on in the same bloody way.

On Christmas Eve in Germany

the radio broadcast this live message
from the troops in Stalingrad:

Achtung.
Ich rufe noch einmal Stalingrad.

Hier ist Stalingrad.
Hier ist die Front an der Wolga.

But it was a fake.

Broadcasts from Stalingrad
had stopped a week before.

On Christmas Day, Radio Moscow
broadcast to the Germans in Stalingrad:

"Every seven seconds,
a German soldier dies in Russia."

"Stalingrad is a mass grave."

The ticking and the message
went on all day.

The Germans were now eating
raw horse flesh.

On January 8,
the Russians offered surrender terms -

warmth, medical care, food.

Officers could even keep
their ceremonial daggers.

Hitler refused.

"Every day the Sixth Army holds out",
he said,

"helps our situation
everywhere else on the front."

January 10.
The final Russian assault.

They thought it would take
about four days.

But two weeks later,
they were still fighting.

On the 24th,
Von Paulus signalled Hitler:

"Troops without munitions or food."

"Effective command no longer possible."

"Collapse inevitable."

"Army requests permission to surrender

in order to save lives
of remaining troops."

Hitler still forbade surrender.

"The Sixth Army will do its historic
duty at Stalingrad until the last man."

But German soldiers and German officers

were already giving themselves up.

On January 31,
Hitler made Von Paulus a field marshal,

knowing no German field marshal
had ever been taken alive.

The same day he was promoted,
Von Paulus surrendered.

His captors had never seen
such a senior German officer before.

General Shumilov,
who took the surrender,

didn't quite know what to do,

so he asked Paulus
for proof of his identity.

Then for proof that he was
commander of the Sixth Army.

Then whether he really was
a field marshal.

They talked a while.
Von Paulus cheered up.

He even proposed a toast
to the Red Army.

Hitler had expected him...
to shoot himself.

It was not an ordinary defeat.
It was a catastrophe.

Two German armies -

24 generals, 2,000 officers,
90,000 soldiers -

prisoners.

And 150,000 dead.

The Romanian, Italian,
and Hungarian armies destroyed.

Enough material lost to equip
a quarter of the whole German army.

This was the same Sixth Army
which, two years before,

could not imagine defeat.

Prisoners were marched off to camps.

50,000 died within weeks
of cold, malnutrition and typhus.

Of all but 100,000,
only 6,000 ever returned home.

The people of Stalingrad

came back to look for
what was left of their homes.

When it was all over,
a Russian soldier said:

"Germans are funny fellows,

coming to conquer Stalingrad
in shiny leather boots."

"They thought it would be a joyride."

When it was all over, Hitler said:

"What is life? Life is the nation."

"The individual must die anyway."

"Beyond the life of the individual
is the nation."

On February 3, 1943,

the German radio announced
that Stalingrad had fallen.

The Sixth Army had fought courageously,

but had succumbed
to vastly superior enemy forces,

and to unfavourable circumstances.