War of the Century (1999–…): Season 1, Episode 3 - Learning to Win - full transcript

WAR OF THE CENTURY

In the spring of 1942, with the German
army still deep inside Soviet territory,

Stalin ordered a huge offensive over
these fields near Kharkov in the Ukraine.

Stalin had overruled his high command,
who had advised against the attack.

The Soviet dictator
had demanded action.

But the result was disaster. Even
though they outnumbered the Germans,

the Red Army was encircled yet again,
and destroyed.

There seemed little
prospect of the Soviet Union

ever being able to mount a successful
major offensive against the Germans.

Yet here, at the battle of Stalingrad,

less than ten months later, the
Soviets were to inflict on the Germans



one of the greatest military
defeats in their history.

How did the Red Army
finally learn how to win?

LEARNING TO WIN

In June 1942, Adolf Hitler
traveled to the east of the Ukraine

to congratulate his army
on a devastating victory.

Hitler believed that during 1942

the Germans could finally
win the war in the East.

He ordered his own hugely ambitious
offensive, codenamed Operation Blue.

By July 1942 the final plan called
for one thrust, Army Group A,

to attack south towards the
mountains of the Caucasus

and secure a major source of
the Soviet oil supply at Baku.

The second spearhead, Army Group B,

was to push on to the city
of Stalingrad on the Volga,

the mighty river which carried vital
Soviet supplies from the south.



That summer more than 700 German tanks
advanced across the Soviet steppes.

Es geht alles vorüber,
es geht alles vorbei.

Doch zwei, die sich lieben,
die bleiben sich treu.

Doch endlich kommt auch mal die Zeit.
Auf die sich der Landser schon freut.

Denn beim Spieß, da liegt schon sein
unterschriebner urlaubsschein.

The Germans advanced
just as successfully

as they had in the early stages
of the invasion the previous year.

But this time there
was one difference.

In 1941 the Red Army had been
bewildered by German tactics.

Now it looked like they were beginning
to work out the Wehrmacht's routine.

The new Soviet tactic of
a fighting retreat meant

that relatively few Red Army
prisoners were captured.

In 1941 Red Army units had stayed
where they were and become encircled.

But now Stalin allowed his military
commanders to pull their men back.

All through the summer of 1942, German
Army Group A advanced further south,

reaching the mountains of the Caucasus,
and even taking time out to climb

the high peaks and claim
them for their Fuhrer.

Despite this success,
Hitler was still unhappy.

At his field headquarters here in the
Ukraine he fretted in the summer heat.

He had hoped for even greater progress,
and was furious that the German army

had not managed to complete the
same giant encirclements as in 1941.

In particular,
he felt that Army Group A, to the south,

ought to have pushed on even further.

Angry with Field Marshal List,
Commander of Army Group A,

he sacked him and as an
immediate replacement

he chose the only German he felt
was up to the task ahead - himself.

This created a bizarre chain of command,
where Hitler,

now in direct command of an Army
Group one thousand miles away

was answerable to himself as
Commander-in-Chief of the army,

then himself again as Supreme Commander
of all the German armed forces

and then finally to himself
once more as Head of State

and Fuhrer of the German people.

Hitler's desire to intervene at this detailed
level in the army's decision making process

resulted in growing disillusionment
amongst his senior commanders.

Meanwhile, German Army Group B,
including the German Sixth Army,

had pressed on,
and on August 23rd 1942,

finally came to the river Volga.

The original German invasion plan had said
that the Volga here would be the boundary

between the Soviets and
the new German empire.

But before that dream
could be realised,

there remained one last
task for the Germans.

In order to consolidate their defences
along the West Bank of the Volga,

the Germans needed to conquer a city
that hugged the river for some 40 miles.

The Germans subjected
Stalingrad to the biggest aerial

and land bombardment yet
seen on the Eastern Front.

During the final days of August 1942,

they dropped more than a thousand
tons of bombs on the city.

As the German army advanced on
into the outskirts of the city,

Stalin decided that while it had
been acceptable for the Red Army

to stage a fighting retreat
across the steppes,

they must not lose this vital foothold
on the west bank of the Volga.

Valentina Krutova,
her brother and younger sister,

lost contact with their parents and became
three of the several thousand children

now trapped in the city
behind German lines.

During September 1942, the Germans
managed to push the Red Army

defenders of Stalingrad
back almost into the Volga.

Soviet reinforcements had to make the
harzardous journey across the river

to join their comrades
clinging on in the city.

Even if Soviet soldiers managed to get
to the Stalingrad bank of the Volga,

there remained horrific dangers
for them, as these bones testify.

Almost daily around the city
farmers still uncover human remains

from their shallow makeshift graves.
Before the fall of Communism,

it was forbidden to calculate
the true Soviet death toll here,

for fear the sacrifice would
be shown to be too high.

Only recently have historians
been able to estimate

that on the Stalingrad front at least
a million Soviet soldiers died,

and that the average life expectancy for
a Soviet private soldier in Stalingrad

was 24 hours.

At this desperate moment
Vasily Chuikov was the man

chosen to command the Soviet 62nd
army in the centre of Stalingrad.

He knew his task was to defend
the city or die in the attempt.

Chuikov was merciless
with the lives of his men.

Several hundred of them were executed
during the battle for alleged cowardice.

lmmediately after their victory,
the Soviets made newsreels

which demonstrated Chuikov's ruthless
tactics for fighting in the city itself.

Chief amongst them was the use of
special assault groups to enter buildings

and seize the most vital part,
the stairwells.

The casualty rate amongst
these groups was enormous.

Suren Mirzoyan was one of those who
took part in these primitive encounters.

There wasn't just danger for the
Germans inside the ruined buildings,

out on the streets they faced
further unexpected risks.

On the Stalingrad Front,
the captured German prisoners

were often taken across the
Volga to interrogation centres

on the eastern bank of the river,
where they were questioned

by specially trained Ministry
of lnterior officers.

One of those who helped examine captured
German prisoners during the war

was Zinaida Pytkina,
who subsequently became a member of SMERSH,

one of the most infamous of all
Stalin's secret organisations.

Only now does she feel
able to talk openly

about how these
interrogations were conducted.

After their interrogation
many of the captured Germans

were simply taken outside and shot -

a task Zinaida Pytkina was
once asked to perform herself.

While the Red Army tried to
resist the Germans in Stalingrad,

Soviet industry was out-producing
the Germans in military equipment.

Thousands of factories had
been dismantled in the face

of the German advance and
reconstructed further east.

But though the Soviets were
showing they could make tanks,

they hadn't yet shown they were able to use
them to win decisively against the Germans.

That autumn,
here at his dacha just outside Moscow,

Stalin discussed with his Generals the
plans for an offensive against the Germans.

And how Stalin acted during these
discussions was to be a crucial reason

why the Red Army managed to
turn their fortunes around.

For while Hitler was brow-beating
and overriding his generals,

Stalin began to pursue a
very different approach.

The offensive, code name Operation
Uranus, began on the 19th November 1942.

Soviet commanders had been
studying German armoured tactics,

and now combined this knowledge
with their own military theory.

The idea was to attack the German line
100 miles north-west of Stalingrad,

at the point where the Germans'
allies, the Romanians,

made up much of the
defensive formation.

Then another thrust was
to attack from the south

and catch the Germans
in a giant encirclement.

As out on the steppes the Red
Army advanced against the Germans

and their allies, in Stalingrad
Chuikov and his men still held on,

dug into the banks of the Volga.

Red Army soldiers even
took to living in sewers.

As the Germans tried to eliminate
the last resistance in Stalingrad,

a fearsome human weapon was being used by
the Red Army as part of Operation Uranus.

That summer Stalin had issued an order
calling for the formation of penal units.

Given dangerous,
almost suicidal tasks,

his orders said that these soldiers
would have a chance to atone

with their blood for the
sins they had committed.

Vladimir Kantovski, sentenced
to ten years in a labour camp

for protesting at the
arrest of his teacher,

was one of those who
served in a penal company.

Kantovski and his comrades were
ordered to advance towards strongly

held German positions
directly ahead of them,

in what was termed
"reconnaissance through combat".

The idea was that as the Germans
shot the penal company down,

the watching Soviet commanders
could assess the strength

and position of the
enemy's fire power.

Kantovski knew that if he
returned to the Soviet line

with only a minor
wound he would be shot for cowardice.

Thanks to the sacrifice of
men like Vladimir Kantovski,

together with the power and
surprise of the Red Army offensive,

on 23rd November 1942 units of the
Red Army met near the town of Kalach

and encircled 250.000
Germans and their allies.

Pushed back by the Red Army, German
soldiers inside the encirclement

withdrew towards Stalingrad.

Hitler called on Field Marshall
Manstein to prepare an armoured column

to push through the Soviet
line and rescue the 6th Army,

while the Luftwaffe attempted to keep the
Germans in Stalingrad supplied from the air.

It was well known at the
Fuhrer's headquarters

that Hitler had previously overruled
the Chief of the General Staff

when he had said the German
army couldn't take Stalingrad

and advance to the Caucasus simultaneously
without being vulnerable to attack.

The looming crisis at Stalingrad
was of Hitler's own making.

Operation Winter Storm, Manstein's
relief effort, began on 12th December.

It was the opposite of blitzkrieg,
as the armoured column

crawled towards the Red Army's defences.

The furthest German
spearhead became bogged down

still 40 miles
away from Stalingrad.

The Red Army had placed 60 divisions inside
their defensive ring around Stalingrad,

and Manstein's task was hopeless.

On Christmas Eve 1942,
Manstein's own force was threatened

with encirclement and
began to withdraw.

With Manstein defeated, together with
the failure of the German Air Force

to deliver sufficient food from the air,
the 6th Army knew they were doomed.

As 1943 began, German soldiers
waited for the final Soviet assault.

And the commander of the 6th Army,
Friedrich Paulus,

considered personally
what he should do.

A clue to his state of mind
is given by a conversation

he had with one of his other Generals,
Richard Stempel,

a conversation witnessed by General
Stempel's own son, Joachim,

then a young German infantry officer.

A few days later Joachim Stempel had
one last conversation with his father.

The prisoners the Red Army took were
unrecognisable from the proud soldiers

of the 6th Army that had entered
Stalingrad five months before.

For weeks many of the German soldiers had
been surviving on one side of bread a day.

As Soviet forces moved on into the city,
they also came upon civilians

who had been trapped since the arrival
of the Germans the previous autumn.

For Valentina Krutova,
her brother and small sister,

the Red Army came only just in time.

Red Army soldiers pressed on
towards the centre of the city,

and by the 30th January 1943 were
little more than a hundred metres away

from Paulus' own headquarters,
in a department store

on the Square
of the Fallen Fighters.

That same day,
Hitler sent Paulus a message

received at 6th Army headquarters
by Gerhardt Hindenlang.

Hindenlang hurried through the headquarter
with the message for Paulus.

Everyone knew what the message really meant.

No German Field Marshal had
ever been taken prisoner before.

It was obvious that Hitler
wanted Paulus to commit suicide.

On 31st January, Paulus was
captured alive by the Red Army.

Only days before,
several of Paulus' senior officers,

including General Stempel,
had killed themselves.

When Hitler heard of Paulus' capture,
he too felt betrayed.

"What hurts me so much
is that the heroism

of so many soldiers is cancelled out
by one single characterless weakling."

"What is life?
The individual must die anyway."

"He could have got out of this
vale of tears and into eternity

and been immortalised by the nation
and he'd rather go to Moscow."

"How can he even think of that
as an alternative? It's crazy."

"That's the last Field Marshal
I promote in this war."

At Stalingrad the Red Army learnt
that the Germans were not invincible.

A hundred and ten thousand German
soldiers were taken prisoner,

and 95 percent of them were
to die in Soviet captivity.

Now, as Soviet forces
prepared to advance,

they were ready to make the
rest of the Germans pay

for the suffering
inflicted on their motherland.