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Battle of Warsaw 1920 - next please. ua-cam.com/video/aN73N9EjoM4/v-deo.html - here is nice explaionation, made of cuts of the movie "1920 Bitwa Warszawska", long enough for 2 episodes ;)
Stalingrad is an industrial city, there was a tank factory in it that worked even at the height of the fighting, but in terms of population it is not very large. Many civilians died, but not as many as in Leningrad because the city is smaller
14:27 As for the "how the Soviets treated their prisoners" 15% of German prisoners died in captivity. More that 50% of Soviet prisoners died in captivity in German camps in comparison. The Germans were used as labour to restore the country they destroyed and were paid money as all other prisoners in USSR. The Nazi treatment of the "subhuman" Soviet prisoners is also one of the reasons the Soviet military losses are a few million higher than the German ones.
The germans extermined on purpose most of 1941 russian prisioners by hunger and by letting them freeze in the open camps without buildings. The eastern front was conceived by the germans as a genocide to provide lebensraum that would be used by a new 'aryan' population. To allow that most of slavs west of the Ural mountains should be... killed... It is about that project that the german soldier talks in his diary...
@@brianjohnson4440 the carpet bombing of the city of Dresden by the British and Americans with phosphorus bombs is, according to you, the "highest standard of civility," isn't it? Why am I surprised, though!? It's common practice for Anglo-Saxons to attribute their rotten soul traits to their opponents. Don't judge others by yourself.
Unfortunately the Germans had no logistical supplies available to them, no doubt a Berthier or Von Moltke would have helped either way. Hitler himself proclaimed that if Russia wasn’t conquered within the first 3 months of Barbarossa they were most likely going to lose the war, as they would be completely out of their oil reserves. Germany had 0 chance of ever generating enough oil to conquer Russia after 1941.
While many german POWs didn't make it back home, you shouldn't forget how devastated the Soviet Union was at this point. They were starving themselves basically, so why would they feed the people who destroyed their home very good?
@@goran77ish one could even say Germans treated their POW even worse, basically actively murdering them in their killing camps, though of course they didnt know about them till the end of the war
The Germans themselves were starving and half dead when they actually did surrender, and were forced to march to the camp and many were death before arrival. You can see a direct correlation as many of the higher ranks survived being captured.
@@ThePuma1707 maybe the Japanese were worse in treatment of their POWs. They didn't kill most of their prisoners, but just starved them to death. But we're not going to talk about them, cuz this video is on Stalingrad.
The city has grown enormously since the war, the town today named Volgograd is a million city, in those days some 300,000. My wife was born in the city, I've been walking around in the city and seen many of the battle sites - the downtown, the railway station, Pavlov's house, the mill and the grain silo nowadays torn down and a museum celebrating the battle has been built on the site of the silo. The silo was defended for a month and a half, when it fell the Nazis found out that it had been defended by just seven - 7 - soldiers! Pavlov's house just across the street was defended for three months and never captured. Skirmishes wasn't for towns and hills but for rooms and corridors...
The Soviets definitely mistreat their prisoners, but mostly they didn't plan to exterminate them in the same way like what the Nazis did with Soviet prisoners. The low number of survivors was more due to many of the Germans were already in very poor condition due to starvation and sickness when they went into Soviet custody after the surrender plus negligence and unpreparedness on the part of the Soviets in caring for so many prisoners in an area of frozen wasteland.
This happened because Soviet intelligence horrendously underestimated how many German soldiers were in the Stalingrad pocket and so there was a massive deficit in food. Soviet civilians and Soldiers took higher priority than the German soldiers. But still, in my opinion, the ultimate responsibility for the high prisoner death toll falls on Adolf Hitler, the OKH (Army High Command) and 6th Army Command.
@@darthbrandon3856 Yeah, in a German Stalingrad documentary that I've watched, a German officer put a huge blame on the commanding officers of the 6th Army for chasing out Soviet envoys sent to negotiate a surrender despite knowing damn well they're only delaying the inevitable.
It's definitely isn't a frozen wasteland. Otherwise why there people growing apricots, peaches and melons? About negligence I think it's common thing in the West also
Nearer to the end of the battle (some time after they were surrounded), the situation was so desperate for the Germans that when wounded and essential personnel tried to fly out, the planes were swarmed by hordes of German soldiers who were ravenous and desperately wanted to leave, assuming the planes would make it past the skies which were by then dominated by the soviets. If the soldiers couldn't make it into the planes, which were filled to the rafters, they would climb onto the landing gear, the wings or pretty much anywhere. Sometimes the planes were too heavy so the pilots had no choice but to roll their aircraft to shake them off. If there were any left, they would freeze due to the sheer windchill and fall off. In the winter of 1942-43, hell had a name and it was Stalingrad.
The German "Blitzkrieg" method of warfare was only effective up to 500m, due to its necessary supply by road/truck. Once armies moved farther, supply became a serious handicap.
@@darthbrandon3856 Ok, the "planes were swarmed by hordes of German soldiers who were ravenous", the fact that these hordes of starving men were capable of climbing onto the wings of a Ju 52 is laughable when you consider the strict security that was enforced in Stalingrad by the Military Police. In fact it was so well organised that among the last to leave were remaining female hospital staff. "Sometimes the planes were too heavy so the pilots had no choice but to roll their aircraft to shake them off", if a plane is to heavy it won't take off, so rolling the plane is impossible. Plus it would be packet with incredibly badly wounded soldiers, so rolling is a really bad idea, especially in freezing conditions, where ice could and did cause crashes. That's probably why Wolfram von Richthofen and Paulus had such tight security at all the original 7 supply airfields.
This video was an older video from armchair historian(that also shows why the animation is rather worse than his animation nowadays which is way better than before) , it was very good but I recommend you also watch the kings and generals videos on battles of Stalingrad and kursk
And yes, a lot of German prisoners died, but a huge number of them were frostbitten and due to malnutrition were in a terrible state. Plus, the way they behaved on the territory of the Soviet Union, burning villages along with the inhabitants, purposefully killing women and children, I think no one was sad about their death.
Stalingrad map is really simplified (I think it's due to animator's style): the city was much bigger... Every little block in the video were probably 10 blocks of buildings in reality
It is worth noting that much of stalingrad is long rather than thick. In reality, in many areas you could walk from the outskirts of the city to the volga in an hour at most. Take that into account when you think of how many casualties and how much time it took to advance across those areas during the battle.
Everything the USA, Britain and the allies did pale into insignificance when you talk about Stalingrad. Truly awful and without a doubt THE turning point of WW2.
Much of the fuel used by the German war machine, especially high quality petrol for aeroplanes was made from coal, a very time consuming and expensive process. Capturing the Caucasus , as a source of food production as well as oil was key to the German war plans. The defeat they suffered at Stalingrad can not be over estimated ! You might also like to have a look at Leningrad.
Approximately 40% of Germans taken prisoner by the Soviets during WWII died in captivity, which is lower than the percentage of Soviets taken prisoner by the Germans. The 95% death rate among Stalingrad survivors is mainly due to them being utterly malnourished over an extended period. Many were on just 3-400 calories an day towards the end, and their bodies were unable to absorb nutrients.
@@lif3andthings763 It's around 15% that are confirmed but could be more, but nowhere near 40%. Soviet PoWs on the other hand had a death rate of around 60% under german captivity, so I have no idea where that guy got his numbers and why he got so many likes lol
I think it was the Italians, taken prisoner on the northern flank, that had massive percentages of there POW's lost. Out of the 65K taken prisoner, something like 80 percent died in captivity.
@@DieGoetterdaemmerung I was going from memory and I was slightly out. The Soviets claimed a death rate among German POWs of 13%. The West German government in 1974 claimed a death rate of 35.7% (1,094,250 deaths among 3,060,000 prisoners, split roughly 50:50 between those who died during the war and those who died in captivity between the end of the war and 1950. Since the West Germans were paying the war pensions I'm more inclined to believe them. Since about 5% of British POWs held by the Germans died in captivity, and they were held under Geneva Convention rules, I very much doubt the Soviet figure of 13% as they didn't follow those rules.
@@deanstuart8012 Soviets claimed 2,4 million prisoners, out of which 350k died in captivity - that's the ~15%. As for the Western German claims, who had no reason to mess with the statistics - first Google search. "According to German historian Rüdiger Overmans ca. 3,000,000 POW were taken by the USSR; he put the "maximum" number of German POW deaths in Soviet hands at 1.0 million. Based on his research, Overmans believes that the deaths of 363,000 POWs in Soviet captivity can be confirmed by the files of Deutsche Dienststelle (WASt), and additionally maintains that "It seems entirely plausible, while not provable, that 700,000 German military personnel listed as missing actually died in Soviet custody." Yeah, that's some reliable statistics right there. Kinda like the Nazis did their statistics, like counting all of the Soviet male civilian population as war prisoners and not counting a loss if the person is missing in action.
Romania had 250.000 officers and non-commissioned officers in that battle because she wanted those two provinces (Basarabia and Bucovina) stolen by Russia. Study(when you have time) over Romania in World War 2 and you'll see a complicated history. I am from Romania. Romania it was and IS a strategic point on the map of Europe.
Yup! The Roman Empire gave up Romania formally in 275AD after losing it in the 260s. Aurelian was the Emperor at the time. Aurelian is known as the last good emperor. One can wonder if Rome was able to keep Romania/Dacia would there have been more good emperors.
@@essioniko7425 LOL just went to check if what you wrote about Romania being a strategic area, worked in the context of the Roman Empire losing it. Aurelian being the last good emperor. Seems to fit your argument that it is.
The 6th army had a size of just over 600.000 when they entered the city limits of Stalingrad. 110.000 were left to be taken prisoner, and the 110.000 had been on starvation rations for 2 months, so many of them were almost dead already. The Soviets made the POW march all the way to prison camp and many of them collapsed or got ill and died, the rougly 5000 that survived were all higher ranking soldiers as they had gotten a larger ration. The Soviets treated German POW pretty midly in general, with over 80% surviving compared to less than 30% in German POW camps. The civilians in Stalingrad was forced to help defend the city, and before most could escape across the river the Luftwaffe bombed the city to a hellscape. More than 20% of all the civilians of the city died.
It should be remembered that most of this battle took place in daytime temperatures of -10℃ or below, the Russians were used to and equipped for this, the German forces weren't. It often came down to hand to hand fighting as nothing made of steel worked, including German artillery, even rifles, as made to very tight tolerances, thin lubricants turned to thick grease or just froze, the German engineering expertise and quality worked against them.
Army Group B was about 600,000, not the 6th Army. Between the 6th Army and the 4th Panzer Army Group including replacements and wounded taken out it was 400,000.
There is a fairly popular film I believe either German-made or Russian-made film of Stalingrad, simply titled Stalingrad, (1993) - It is a gritty, individual take on it, from the German side and perspective, from the view of a soldier, and the human breaking through the confusions of war, though also finding a good film from the Russian/Soviet perspective as you know, you can't learn history truly if you don't encompass all sides, for history is told by the victors.
@@konstantinkelekhsaev302 During and after World War II freed POWs went to special "filtration camps" run by the NKVD. Of these, by 1944, more than 90% were cleared, and about 8% were arrested or condemned to serve in penal battalions. In 1944, they were sent directly to reserve military formations to be cleared by the NKVD. Further, in 1945, about 100 filtration camps were set for repatriated Ostarbeiter, POWs, and other displaced persons, which processed more than 4,000,000 people. By 1946, 80% civilians and 20% of POWs were freed, 5% of civilians, and 43% of POWs were re-drafted, 10% of civilians and 22% of POWs were sent to labor battalions, and 2% of civilians and 15% of the POWs (226,127 out of 1,539,475 total) were transferred to the NKVD, i.e. the Gulag. Russian historian G.F. Krivosheev gives slightly different numbers based on documents provided by the KGB: 233,400 were found guilty of collaborating with the enemy and sent to Gulag camps out of 1,836,562 Soviet soldiers who returned from captivity. Latter data do not include millions of civilians who have been repatriated (often involuntarily) to the Soviet Union, and a significant number of whom were also sent to the Gulag or executed (e.g. Betrayal of the Cossacks). The survivors were released during the general amnesty for all POWs and accused collaborators in 1955 on the wave of De-Stalinization following Stalin's death in 1953. While many scholars agree that de-classified Soviet archive data is a reliable source, Rolf-Dieter Müller and Gerd R. Ueberschär claimed "Soviet historians engaged for the most part in a disinformation campaign about the extent of the prisoner-of-war problem." and claimed that almost all returning POWs were convicted of collaboration and treason hence sentenced to the various forms of forced labour, while admitting that it would be unlikely to study the full extent of the history of the Soviet prisoners of war. Thousands of Soviet POWs indeed survived through collaboration, many of them joining German forces, including the SS formations.]
While the soviets weren't exactly known for treating German POW's well. The survival rate for prisoners from Stalingrad is much lower than normal because the germans that were captured were already starving and Ill. Many past the point of no return and wouldn't have survived even if they were suddenly given the best treatment possible. Another factor that was very different in terms of how the soviets handled POW's is that they considered the invasion of the soviet union to be a criminal act, so most of the POW's were charged and given sentences, usually 10 years hard labor. Where most POW's in the west were simply held and released as soon as the war was over.
Oil was an absolutely critical resource in WW2. It's was also a primary reason for Imperial Japans conquests in South East Asia; they needed territory that had oil and other resources, because Japan itself has very little.
The art style for the video is definitely making Stalingrad look smaller than it actually was. It's a pretty good video nonetheless, but you'll probably get a better scale of the city when you'll see a documentary with actual WW2 footage.
The shape of the city is right. Residential and Commerical areas hugging the length of the Volga river. With Industrial area further out to the West in the field. On the other side of the Volga river, the terrain is actually very swampy and pretty useless for much of anything. This is one of the big reasons why it was important to ANVIL the German army to the river. Cause if you go beyond it, that front is lost.
I can now see you sitting round the dinner table, using salt and pepper pots to illustrate things as you correct everyone on their preconceptions about ww2, ww1 and Napoleonic battles.
Fun fact, there were already a lot of Germans settling in the area since 1770 when russian empress Katharina (which was geman btw.) invited thousands of german settler to the area. My mother was born there as fourth generation and had to flee with the retreating army to Germany. Stalingrad, Odessa, all these cities were modern looking european cities comparable to Munich or Vienna. There were street cars and modern industry. Many Germans think that Stalingrad was an ugly bunch of ruins, but that was after the german army bombed it to ruins. The whole area could have been a flourishing industrial powerhouse if only Stalin had not killed half of the people during the revolution (half of my mothers family starved to death) and germans destroyed it during the war. There were german, russian, ukrainian and jewish cities existing in peace side by side.
The vid doesn't mention two things: One, Paulus was promoted to Field Marshall - the highest rank in the German Army - the day before he surrendered (Hitler thought this would mean he would shoot himself rather than be captured, but he didn't). Two, the Germans actually took Stalingrad - what they hadn't reckoned on were the 40 Soviet divisions which had finally been freed up from the East after Stalin had learned that the Japanese did not intend to enter the war against Russia. These 40 divisions were thrown into the battle so Stalingrad was then surrounded by Soviet troops (attempts were made by the German army to break through to relieve Stalingrad, but they failed).
I thought the soviet divisions freed from the east (the japan thing) was at the battle of moscow a year earlier. I could be wrong though, but I'm pretty sure.
Germany and UK were both hugely dependent on oil imports. Surprisingly, Germany didn't stockpile much oil before starting the war. They had to manufacture oil substitutes to supply armies and industry.
It was not surprising if you read Mein Kampf. Hitler was very adamant in his very wrong economic beliefs, so they almost immediatly went towards autarky. It was the same thing that made Hitler call for Lebensraum, which is a bit paradoxical in hindsight.
Hitler's need for War was driven by Germany's problem of feeding itself. He didn't take account of the practicalities of feeding an Army + Population + Foreign Workers ...while running a nation devited to armaments production.
Gradually, grain stocks were depleted until, in 1942, even the German civilian population suffered cuts in their rations. (The army's ration had already been cut. Foreigners were only to be fed if they were working for the Reich: Jews not at all.)
@@philipeoverton Hitlers understanding of economics were logical, and still are, just not in the context he put it in. It is basically that resources are limited, so all trade is a 0-sum game, and as Germany needs to export goods to buy food and the countries producing food becoming industrialized then Germany is losing. There had not been the huge technological improvements in agriculture, as they developed slower than machine tools. The logical part is that you extend Hitler's logic to the entire planet and that we will run out of resources to sustain everyones needs.
First he refused to commit suicide althoug that probably was the reason why he was promoted to Field Marshal just before his surrender (no German field marshal had ever surrendered before). And he became quite active against Hitler and Nazism even during the rest of the war. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Paulus
The Soviets hated the Germans at this time. It is surprising that even 5000 men returned. Having said this many of the German soldiers taken prisoner were moribund by this time and probably died of frostbite, malnutrition and disease. They were probably treated better than the poor souls in Hitler’s death camps 😕
My greatgrandfather died aftern burns he recieved in this nightmare. My family never managed to know where he was buried. Stalingrad is an ominous legacy for all russian people till now. Never again the war like this should take it place in the world. We should prevent this to happen anywhere on our beautiful planet.
Fun fact: All interesting spy novels set in WWII take place BEFORE the battle of Stalingrad. That's because before the battle, many people thought Hitler actually had a chance of winning the war. After Stalingrad, his defeat was inevitable so the spy stories have no tension.
If you are really interested in the battle of Stalingrad I recommend watching TIK's Battlestorm Stalingrad series. Nothing even comes close (at least in English). But it's a very time-consuming effort. Each of his videos is 40-60 minutes long, and there are already ~30 of them at this point, and he is only half done.
Thank you yet again for sharing this with us. As the animation described Operation Uranus, to encircle the German 6th Army, began on the 19th Nov 1942. It would be worth your while looking more closely at the actual operation which brilliantly exploited the German forces weak flanks, with two soviet armies moving quickly over a distance in excess of 150 miles from two opposite directions meeting at the area of Kalach, to surround the 6tth Army in Stalingrad. Hitler had earlier appointed a very experienced German General to review the Stalingrad situation. The General in question, who is mentioned in the World at War Series, spotted the German enormous risks the 6th Army was exposed to in their flanks and rear, but these observations were typically dismissed by Hitler.
This is incredibly simplistic and inaccurate and he seems to have only read the highly inaccurate and propagandised books from the Cold War period in history. To understand what led to & how the German disaster at Stalingrad happened, you need to understand what happened the year before and what happened after Operation Barbarossa. The be trail by Chief of Staff of the Army High Command (OKH), General Franz Halder. The fact that Order 227 was only enforced against officers, but there were plenty of orders to take a backwards step. Like the myth that Stalin killed 90% of his high ranked officers in the mid 1930's, odd how most of those dead officers turned up fighting in and around Moscow, and later Stalingrad and Berlin. Stalin did allow the civilians to leave the City. Also it wasn't the Soviet air force that stopped supplies, it was pure incompetence on the German side Luftwaffe had the fuel and air superiority, but the supplies and men were sent to the wrong army groups thanks to Halder again. Halder after the war tried very hard to hide War Crimes committed by the Wehrmacht, sadly aided by American General William J. Donovan, who later was a founder the CIA. There were three main targets of Operation Barbarossa. Army Group North was to link up with the Finish Army and occupy a huge amount of Soviet forces. Army Group Centre was to attack and devour as many Soviet forces as possible utilising the German speed and encirclement tactics perfected in Poland and France, Moscow was never a strategic target. Army Group South was to advance through Ukraine onto the Don & Volga. Upon reaching north of Stalingrad turn south with the aim to capture the Oil Fields of the Caucasus's at Maikop and Grozny. Even Hitler knew Baku would be almost impossible, but taking Maikop and Grozny would knock the Soviet Union out of the war, so if necessary Baku would be bombed so the Soviets couldn't use it for oil. Army Group South 1941 had the German 6th, 11th, 17th Army's, the 1st Panzer Group & the Luftwaffe's Air Fleet 4. Then came the non-German forces Slovak Expeditionary Force, Royal Hungarian Army Mobile Corps, Italian Expeditionary Corps in Russia, Romanian 3rd & 4th Army's. Army Group South should also have had the German 2nd Panzer Group, but Halder moved them to Army Group Centre because he believed the key to beating the Soviet Union was taking the Capital. After all it had worked in Poland and France. By the time Hitler discovered that the 2nd Panzer Group wasn't in the south it was to late and the winter had set in. This action by Halder just led to add the distrust Hitler would have in his Generals. For Case Blue Army Group South was spit into 2 smaller Army Groups. Army Group A had the German 1st & 4th Panzer Army's, 11th & 17th Army's, with the 3rd Romanian Army, & headed strait to Maikop and Grozny, even after Halder had moved the 11th Army out of the line. Army Group B had the German 2nd & 6th Army's & the Hungarian 2nd Army, the Italian 8th Army who arrived between the 11th &15th August just in time & advanced along the Don River, to form a hard defence line between the Don & Volga north of Stalingrad (Stalingrad was not an objective for capture in the original plans). Then Army Group B would follow the Volga to the Fort & Port City of Astrakahn. But owing to the very hard resistance the Soviet Army's put up they were delayed. the main advance of the 6th Army so much and caused a large amount of casualties that the German 4th Panzer Army & Romanian 3rd Army's were sent to Stalingrad to assist General Paulus's much weakened 6th Army, the Hungarian 2nd Army & Italian 8th Army also a new Romanian 4th Army was sent to replace some of the 6th Army's Divisions guarding the Don. Which meant that between the German 2nd & 6th Army's were 3 much weaker Axis Allied Army's, the & newly reformed Romanian 4th Army. Germany's Axis Allies were much weaker and had much poorer equipment than their German counterparts, which is why the Soviets attacked them in the North and South during Operation Uranus instead of the German 2nd Army, and there was a huge gap in the South. A quick side note to help the time frame, the North African Campaign was started inadvertently by Mussolini, an actual Fascist Dictator (Hitler was a National Socialist Dictator and Stalin was a Communist Dictator who had killed over 40 million people before the invasion of the Soviet Union), who tried to take advantage of the devastation that the British Army had suffered after the fall of France. And two months later he launched the Italian Tenth Army, 240,000 men, against a British Commonwealth Western Desert Force, totalling 36,000 men (from Britain, India, Australia, New Zealand & South Africa). Mussolini needed to take Egypt from the British Commonwealth and Empire forces so he could seize the oil fields of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Trans-Jordan. Just one of many problems was he had no way of transporting the oil to Europe, but it would have hurt Britain more than the U-Boats could have in the Atlantic. Italy lost in their attempt and 130,000 Italians became POWs, Mussolini asked Hitler for help. And Hitler sent his new favourite General Erwin Rommel and 15th Panzer Division what started as the 5th Light Division but changed into the 21st Panzer Division, this made up the famous Deutsches Afrikakorps (DAK). The North Africa Campaign lasted 27 months and drew desperately needed recourses and supply's away from Operation Barbarossa and Operation Fall Blau (Case Blue). And contrary to the narrative that was and in some cases is still tought about North Africa Campaign, the fight was won at the first Battle of El Alamein under the command of General Claude Auchinleck the then commander of the British 8th Army. Churchill replaced Auchinleck with his 3rd option Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery who used Auchinleck's plans for the 2nd Battle of El Alamein (but claimed they were his plans). The 2nd Battle destroyed 2 Axis Army's eventually cost Italy 22,341 killed, 250,000-350,000 captured, Germany, about 18,594 killed, 3,400 missing,180,000 captured, Vichy France 1,346 killed & 1,997 wounded. Material losses, 2,550 tanks, 70,000 trucks, 6,200 guns, 8,000 aircraft & 2,400,000 gross tons of shipping. 2 February 1943 Stalingrad, which lasted 6 months and 5 days ended, & the 1st Battle of El Alamein ended on the 27 July 1942 a campaign that lasted 1 year, 10 months and 18 days. These two Battles were the turning point's in the European Theatre. To put this into context, the Allied Torch landings happened 4 months later, where the 1st American was killed by Vichy French Forces.
For the Soviet experience of Stalingrad rather than a strict military narrative, check out the relevant episodes from "The Unknown War" a series similar to World at War. The entire series is available on UA-cam. Episodes 5 and 6 cover it. (Don't be put off by the Russian language intro to each episode. The documentary is entirely in English). ua-cam.com/play/PLhs30iGhgICncex8qB-_Fmej-0HSwy4fH.html
I've watched The Unknown War several times and it portrays the war as the Soviet Union wanted it to be seen. In other words it was mostly Soviet propaganda. It fails to mention that Stalin's pact with Hitler basically gave Adolf the green light to rampage all over Western Europe while Stalin gobbled up some of its neighbors. It doesn't mention the brutal treatment of Russian soldiers by the Communist government. Loyalty and bravery of soldiers was often forced by the commissars. After the first year more and more Russians fought to protect the Motherland. If Hitler had ordered his soldiers to treat the Russian people well, many if not most Russians would have aided the Germans. It was German brutality that turned the Russian people, especially Ukrainians, against them. The Unknown War is equivalent to our old westerns that portrayed the Indians as savage brutes while the white settlers and cavalry were the heroes. I do not recommend The Unknown War which is a shame since I grew up watching Burt Lancaster in many of my favorite movies.
@@mikealvarez2322 "It fails to mention that Stalin's pact with Hitler basically gave Adolf the green light" The pact (which was sent to the Soviets by the Germans) was only made after the British and French denied the Soviets' offers of creating an Anti-Fascist Coalition. It was France and Britain that made Hitler's rampage possible. The Soviets even offered to send a million troops to help Czechoslovakia. "It doesn't mention the brutal treatment of Russian soldiers by the Communist government" What brutal treatment of Russian soldiers? I'd also like to say that equating the entire Red Army to "Russian soldiers" is incredible misinformative. There were like 5 million Ukrainians in the Red Army, and millions of other ethnicities such as Baltics, Poles, Georgians, Kazakhs and Uzbeks etc. Please explain how the Communist government treated the Red Army with brutality, and do include some primary sources for this claim as well. "Loyalty and bravery of soldiers was often forced by the commissars." This idea of the commissars being some kind of brutal men who forced the soldiers to do stuff has since long been debunked. You do realize that the Red Army were fighting for their lives right? The Nazis weren't going to spare them, they saw the Slavs and the various asian minorities as subhuman. The whole thing about the 3rd Reich was that they needed "living space" for ethnic Germans and that the "races" who currently occupied these territories had to be enslaved or exterminated. The Jews weren't the only target of Nazism, the Slavic people were just as big a target. The Soviets and their army were already aware of this from the beginning. It is why they call it the Great Patriotic War, because it was a patriotic war. This was a matter of protecting their lands and families and friends from an invading force that wanted to completely annihilate them. "If Hitler had ordered his soldiers to treat the Russian people well" Well the whole problem here is that he would never have done that, he despised the Slavic peoples. "many if not most Russians would have aided the Germans" This is just complete historical revisionism. Nothing points to this. The Soviet people were not oppressed by their government. They were more free than they had ever been during the time of the Russian Empire. Equal rights and equal opportunity for men and women of all ethnicities, religions and cultures. The right and access to education, work, healthcare and cultural expression. Jews were finally protected by law, as antisemitism was punishable by DEATH.
@@DonHaka You fail to mention the number of people that died or were sent to labor camps by Stalin during the forced collectivism. During the war, anyone who surrendered was deemed a traitor and their families were subject to imprisonment. Even Stalin's son and daughter-in-law paid the price of this policy. Commanders dared not order a withdrawal, even in hopeless situations, without first getting approval, which often was too late or denied. This led to millions of Red Army soldiers either being killed or captured unnecessarily. In the first half of the war, the Red Army had already lost 6 million men and it did not bother Stalin one bit, even though it was his purges that had so weakened the military. Furthermore, officers were hesitant to act on their own for in doing so would cost them their lives. As for providing sources, you are not my professor and I am not one of your students and by the way, you didn't provide your sources. I do know one thing, as an American of Cuban descent, the socialist-communist system only values the state. The individual is meaningless. Reference: Personal experience.
@@mikealvarez2322 "You fail to mention the number of people that died or were sent to labor camps by Stalin during the forced collectivism." Oh yes Stalin definitely sent all those people to the gulag by himself. Please show me the proof of this. Stalin barely made any such orders. "Forced collectivism" isn't a thing that happened. Collectivization was greeted with incredible popularity by the peasantry as it gave them massive qualitative improvements compared to their earlier living conditions. The only people who actively resisted collectivization were the rich landowners (kulaks) who would go on to murder kolkhoz leaders and burn the grain. The eventual "dekulakization" was certainly "ordered" by the Soviet government (not Stalin alone, the USSR practiced collective leadership) but the actual execution of this plan was done by local party officials and kolkhoz workers, many of whom were young and zealous. "During the war, anyone who surrendered was deemed a traitor and their families were subject to imprisonment" Do you think any other country that was invaded did anything different? No. It was a war of total annihilation. The amount of people whose families were subject to imprisonment were not high. "Commanders dared not order a withdrawal, even in hopeless situations, without first getting approval, which often was too late or denied." This is complete bogus. If the situation was hopeless they retreated almost every time. This idea that the Red Army was rarely allowed to retreat is anti-communist garbage. "As for providing sources, you are not my professor and I am not one of your students and by the way, you didn't provide your sources." You're the one who made all of these initial claims. All im doing is denying your claims based on what i know is the lack of evidence and support for these claims. "I do know one thing, as an American of Cuban descent, the socialist-communist system only values the state. The individual is meaningless. Reference: Personal experience." More anti-communist garbage. You're an American of Cuban descent? That implies that you weren't born there. Have you actually been to Cuba? Talked to actual Cubans instead of your GUSANO family? Okay, so if the "socialist-communist system" only values the state, why does the Cuban government guarantee free healthcare? That isn't in the interrest of the state. That's in the interrest of the people. How come the Cuban government subsidizes food and housing if it only cares about the state? Again, that is in the interrest of the people. Homelessness and unemployment are not issues in Cuba as everyone is guaranteed a job and home ownership is at 90%. The rest of the people who pay rent, have extremely low rent costs. Cuba is governed by the people, for the people. Cuba is democratic, unlike USA where the wealthy elite own everything. This is reflected in how the Cuban political system works and in the fact that Cuba last year passed the by far most progressive family law in Latin America. The Cuban people are more than anything suffering at the hand of US imperialism and their genocidal embargo that almost every country in the world has denounced. It really goes to show how bad it is if all the other countries in UN are voting to remove this embargo.
@@DonHaka My father and mother left Cuba in 1941 - 1943. Father in 41 to join the US Army after Pearl Harbor (he and his older brother were born in Tampa while rest of the siblings born in Havana). Mom followed Dad in 43 as she was born in Havana. So you know nothing about me or my family. Extended family stayed in Cuba as they supported the Revolution up until 1968. I traveled to Cuba as a child every summer until 1960. We stayed at my Grandma's house. We got the extended family out by 1970 except for my cousin, who was a doctor. Castro wouldn't let doctors out. My aunt did get Doc's father, mother, wife, and daughter out in the Mariel Boat lift in 81. Doc. Cousin had to stay the next 11 years as Castro government still wouldn't let doctors out. We got my Doc cousin out in 1991 by payIng $15,000 to government official. From 1978 - 1996 I and my family made numerous trips to Cuba to smuggle every day items like soap and toothpaste
Hi from (a German in) Germany! The reason why only 5000 came back was NOT because the Russians were so cruel and treated the captured Germans so bad. The main reason is that Paulus surrendered much too late! Thousands of Germans died of hunger before Paulus surrendered. So, these 110,000 men were in an awful condition when the became POWs. And keep in mind that about 3 Million Russian POWs died in German camps - because of hunger, overwork, were shot or used for medical experiments (the US Army and Air Force profited from after the war). These were cruel experiments with cold water, thin air (for pilots), basics for jet ejection seat systems +++.
In my lectures, I usually say that Stalingrad was the turning point for the European part of the war since before Stalingrad, the Germans were still advancing on every front, including in North Africa. After Stalingrad, the German army would experience one single victory (Kharkov-Belgorod) before they surrendered in Berlin. After Stalingrad, it became apparent that the Red Army had grown so much stronger than the German army that everything had to be spent on it, and every other front became possible to penetrate with some determination. Stalingrad also marked the point where Stalin gave up suppression of the "Deep battle" doctrine and allowed Zhukov and Vasilevsky to resurrect it: the Germans never found a way to counter it. In the sense that the Germans marched almost steadily all the way to Stalingrad, and then they marched about as steadily back to Berlin, Stalingrad was a turning point.
the truth is, between the Sowjet Union and Nazi Germany the were no POWs, there was free labour until they dropped dead. When 5000 germans made it back from originally 110.000 POWs, it weren't even 500 Sovjets that made it home from Nazi "Arbeitslager" at the same time. No country wasted food on the enemy, POW or not.
To better understanding how exactly oil was important fun fact: All diesel of germany was consumped by Kreigsmarine and thats why all German tanks has gasoline engines, what makes them easier to fireup. Everyones know that, but still continue make tanks on gasoline engines. P.S. Check Pavlov's House in wiki - there was house who holds 60 days against 2 wermacht divisions with tanks. Just imagine! 1 little group of buildings with 30 men insde holds LONGER then whole Poland or France.
Just a note about the prisoners of war on the Eastern Front. When the Germans took hundreds of thousands of prisoners in 1941, they didn't know what to do with such a large crowd. There was too much ammunition to shoot dead, and the soldiers of the Wermacht were not yet strong enough for this. So they were arranged in long columns and sent on foot to the distant towards the camps, without food, water and shelter. The heat in the summer and the frost in the winter decimate them, and they die by the hundreds of thousands. In addition to this comes the action against the civilian population. It is natural that the other side also hits back. revenge for the crimes committed by the Red Army in the West. Almost every soldier had a fallen relative, many had their towns and villages destroyed, and the Russian officers increased their fighting spirit with vodka. surrendered, the Germans killed her in a brutal way, if not, then the Red Army condemned her for cowardice. In Budapest, the number of raped women is estimated at about 1 million. This is worse in German territory, because they wanted to punish them as well. In and around Berlin, the number 2-3 million.. 14 43
@@generaldreedle2801 Depends what you are looking for. Glantz will have more info if you want as much as possible but beevor is an easier read. I'd suggest glantz's 4 book trilogy on the battle, he has even more outside of that about stalingrad but they are excellent for info. While flogging books on stalingrad i'd probs put in a word for death of the leaping horseman by jason mark.
@@andrewshaw1571 Exactly that. You can get bogged down with Glantz. I’m not a big reader but got through Beevor in a couple of days which surprised me at the time.
What is never spoken about regarding Stalingrad is that Bletchley Park codebreakers were feeding the Russians information about German movements. Most ULTRA documents were destroyed after the war, however those for the Russian Campaign survived, particularly for Stalingrad.
Random Russian General : Ahhh screw it, let the Germans take Moscow, won't help them all that much it didn't Napoleon. STALIN: No they'll burn more oil trying to stay warm outside the city, and dealing with a massive counter-attack, than with shelter within it.
Just waiting for winter is impossible to win. You yourself must understand this if not an idiot. If everything were like this, the Germans in six months would not have reached Moscow, but the Sea of Japan
The greatest joker card for russia always has been "size". edit: Space to retreat, size of the population. And in WW2 the stunning ability to relocate factories in short time from endangered areas to areas behind the ural.
I think Germany lost at Stalingrad because; a) their army was trained for mobile warfare and not attritional urban warfare. b) they were short on essential resources like fuel. c) their supply lines were overstretched, and since they were short on supplies in the first place, this meant even less supples actually made it to the front in time, not to mention partisans constantly attacking supply lines d) their army wasn’t motorised as much as people thought, only 20% of the German army was actually motorised at its peak. The rest of the German army relied on horses and trains to transport men, equipment and supplies, or marched on foot.
After the battle there were 90.000 taken prisoner its estimated that only 5 thousand made it back to Germany after the war . Countless thousands on both sides had already died .
The soviets*. As Ukrainian, I kindly ask not to use soviets and russians interchangeably, it's both objectively wrong, and hurtful for us, people from different nation-states of USSR, that also had 189 ethnicities, not just russians.
The discussion of oil in World War 2 is something that really only has been much talked about in the last couple of years. I don't think I've ever heard it mention until 4 years ago or so. It's something that historians in the Cold War didn't seem to think much about, or at the very least, something that documentaries considered unimportant. The great strategies were always talked about in terms of ideological goals, and the leaders treated as simply evil madmen. But the logistical necessities are something that turns out to be really important to make sense of the decisions that were made.
The problem is that early historiography of WW2 in the Eastern front was highly biased. In the West its written pretty much by surviving German generals themselves (too much for "history is written by the winners", eh? :) ). And in the East it was written by the Communist party with the narrative of it saving the world. Also both parties didn't have a full access to enemies paperwork so should have made a lot of assumptions. Only after the fall of USSR that made East German and Soviet archives available for scholars that allowed to see and cross-check the documents the wide spread revision begun.
Милая девушка, если вы не располагаете фактами и совершенно не интересуетесь историей, то не надо намекать о жестокости русских по отношению к пленным немцам. Это выглядит по меньшей мере глупо... Порой в ответ на упреки по поводу миллионов советских военнопленных, замученных в нацистских лагерях, предъявляется «симметричный козырь»: беспрецедентная смертность воинов гитлеровской коалиции, попавших в плен под Сталинградом. Почему же из почти 100 тысяч сдавшихся вернулись на родину только 5 тысяч? Состояние попавших в плен Дистрофия - 70%. Авитаминоз - 100%. Обморожение - 60%. Психическое истощение - 100%. При смерти - 10%. Плен Под Сталинградом в поселке Бекетовка экстренно был организован лагерь №108. Госпитализировано 35 тысяч пленных, 28 тысяч отправлено на лечение в другие лагеря. 20 тысяч трудоспособных оставили для восстановления Сталинграда. Остальных направили в другие районы. Пешие переходы пленников по морозу к пункту назначения или транспортировки приводили к дальнейшему истощению и гибели в пути. Однако как раз среди отправленных за пределы Сталинграда оказалось больше всего выживших. К июню погибло 27 тысяч пленных - от ран, сыпного и брюшного тифа, дизентерии, дистрофии. Советская сторона была не подготовлена к такому количеству узников. С начала войны до ноября 1942 года в лагерях содержалось всего около 20 тысяч военнопленных, выполнявших две задачи: служить рабочей силой и пропагандистской афишей. Прокормить мизерное количество пленных согласно объемам продовольствия, примерно соответствующим нормам для местных заключенных (около 700 г. хлеба ежедневно), было реально. Обеспечить же питание почти сотне тысяч военнопленных в условиях ограниченных запасов еды - проблематично. Поначалу немцы голодали - как в окружении. Дневной паек (не всегда выдаваемый) составлял 120 г. хлеба. Позже питание нормализовалось. Смертность после пика первых трех месяцев снизилась. С июля 1943 до января 1949 потери в плененных после Сталинградской битвы составили 1777 человек. В 1949 году военнопленные, за исключением военных преступников, были отправлены домой. Причины гибели Специального геноцида побежденным противникам не устраивали. Наоборот. Медкомиссия ежемесячно осматривала контингент. Врачи лечили раненых и больных. Ослабленным выдавались увеличенные на 25% пайки, включая 750 г. хлеба ежедневно. Основная причина смерти большей части военнопленных - отказ Паулюса сложить оружие плюс голод, холод и болезни, подорвавшие здоровье бойцов вермахта в окружении.
стесняюсь спросить, как вы можете реагировать на битву сталинграда если вам её диктует непонятны переводчик с непонятного текста, мне это странным кажется
Conflict between humans is always fomented by a desire to control and exploit limited resources. No doubt, the first murder was likely committed over who had access to the local berry patch. My first acquaintance with violence occurred on the playground over who got to use the swing set, a battle I lost.
I don't think the video really tells you how bad the food shortage was for the German Army. While the Wehrmacht was surrounded only a limited amount of food and ammunition could make it to the Army, the supply drops weren't nearly enough for the soldiers. After going through this for a long time, most of the soldiers starved to death during and after the battle of Stalingrad, which explains why so many German soldiers didn't make it back.
It would be better to react to someone who knows what they are talking about. TIK does not in any way adhere to facts or the truth. He has his own agenda with some very suspect views on politics in WWII and before. On his video on the Spanish Civil War he could not even get who fought on which side correct. When it was pointed out to him he said he was correct. That is EVERY history book, written by BOTH sides were wrong, and he, alone, was correct. He is a total moron.
if your watching anything about the eastern front it's important to understand just how many died, at the beginning you touched on it but I would highly recommend "the fallen of world war 2" by neil Halloran. it puts the insane numbers of deaths over the whole war into perspective and kind of ties up the whole thing together in some amazing animations. would recommend watching soon as it ties in well with all of the WW2 videos atm. anyways great video as always.
The reason the latter half of the twentieth century was pretty much all about oil (all the biggest companies, growing nations, the wars and uprisings) is because ww2 was an oil war. The Axis didn't have oil and knew they needed oil to get what they want. The allies had the oil and didn't want the Axis to get oil to do what they want. Germany and Japan both essentially went to war to get the resources they needed to fight the war, which seems stupid until you realise just how screwed they would have been later when war was even more about oil.
I should point out that by the time the Germans in Stalingrad surrendered most of them were in incredibly bad shape, starving and diseased. So many would have died anyway. Further Russian treatment of them was inconsistent. For example after the surrender Soviet soldiers were forced to give up some of their rations to feed the prisoners. However there was a lot of bad and negligent treatment resulting in at least 50 thousand of the German soldiers dying in the 4 months after the capitulation mainly of typhus. And has I said many were doomed anyway. Also at this time the Soviet Union was suffering from acute food issues in terms of feeding it's own population and soldiers. All of this helped to create a attitude of brutal negligence. There was also one additional factor very well known to the average Soviet Soldier. Before the invasion of Russia it had been decided by Hitler will the more or less full support of his Generals to wage a war of annihilation against the Soviet Union. In which many tens of millions would be slaughtered, starved to death and driven into Siberia and the ethnically cleansed areas Germanized. (Right up to the Urals.) Part of this was brutal treatment of all Soviet POWs, who were to be shot and starved to death. Between June 1941 and the end of February 1942 2-2.5 million Soviet POWs out of c. 3 million captured were shot or deliberately starved to death by plan not malign neglect. Not surprisingly Soviet Soldiers and officers weren't exactly inclined to be kind to German prisoners. During the war something like c. 65% of Soviet POWs died in German hands whereas c. 25% of German prisoners died at Soviet hands. Of the c. 4.5 million Soviets captured something like c. 1.5 million survived.
@@unwokeneuropean3590 True. The SS vision of Germany's exploitation of 'The East' included the genocide of the whole population -not just Jews. Only ethnic German mouths were to be fed.
1. Most of the oil for WW2 came from the US. 2. How would the Germans have got the oil back to Germany? 3. If the Germans had got to Baku before the the Russians destroyed the oil fields the British planned to destroy them with aerial bombardment.
From the perspective of a German, Stalingrad is still a taboo subject to this day. It is the great turning point on the Eastern Front. The battle with the most casualties in WW2. On the one hand I see it that it was good that we lost the battle and with it the war because I don't want to live in a dictatorship today. On the other hand, there are these large numbers of losses. Most of these soldiers were not Nazis. They were simple men who followed orders and dreamed of coming home to their families. My grandfather was one of the 6,000 survivors of that battle. He was a Russian prisoner of war. He talked little about it but when he did I would sit there and cry. What these people went through, whether on the German or Russian side, we cannot imagine today in our comfortable society. The sad thing is that people can only perceive the great losses as numbers, not as individual human lives. We are currently living in a time when the last people who have seen this die and we lose contact with these events. Most of the time it is exactly this time when new wars begin because the horror of the war has evaporated and the people who warn are no longer there. I hope that humanity has developed at least a little bit further (honestly I don't believe in it) and learned from the past. I think we all know what the next war would mean.
It's very sad that we didn't learn anything after that. P.S. If you're interested, read about Brest, it's somewhat similar to Stalingrad in terms of defense to the end, but for us it's not a military catastrophe, but an act of heroism and self-sacrifice (I hope they will understand me correctly and won't throw mud) Из России с любовью. Странно тут не увидеть комментариев на русском
Stalingrad was the turning point of the war. The best and most numerous of the German forces were committed to the eastern front, and until that point they had had almost no setbacks. Stalingrad changed that. The nazi war machine was stopped and then defeated. It was a costly victory for the soviets but much costier for the nazis. And yes, war on the eastern front was total war with no quarter asked or given. Hitler wanted to destroy the Ussr and planned to enslave the Slavic population (he considered them “subhuman”) and that meant Russians had no other options but to fight to the bitter end. Some Russians fought for ideology, all of them fought for survival. As for the treatment of prisoners, the number of casualties on the eastern front eclipses the casualties on the western one. The war there was at its most brutal, and hate for the invading forces was such that it’s a wonder 5.000 german soldiers were allowed to get back in the war’s aftermath.
Stalingrad was a city of over half a million, including refugees. It was a major industrial centre. Consider, the Luftwaffe killed 40k civilians in one day, so it must have been of reasonable size.
* Of the 110,000 German soldiers taken prisoner at Stalingrad only about 5,000 made it back home after the war ** Of the 97,000,000 civilians living in USSR in 1946 only 96,000,000 made it to 1948 due to hunger, deseases and lack of proper housing. Do those German POWs still look like being treated unkindly to you?
The famous man on flame was on top of a wall holding two "Molotov cocktails" and was going to throw them on the approaching tanks. When a bullet hit and ignited one of his bottles, he jumped (or fell?) from the wall and hit the first tank.
The USSR treated prisoners much better than the Germans. After the war, about 60% of German prisoners of war returned home (this does not include those who decided to stay in Russia). Less than 40% of prisoners returned from captivity in Nazi Germany.
Stalingrad was an industrial city. The idea that the German drive on Moscow was stopped by the weather is an old myth long since exploded by modern historians - for example the American military historian Robert Forczyk. Napoleon's army invaded Russia on June 24 and walked to Moscow by September 14th fighting one huge battle along the way. The Germans left from the same area as the French on June 22 and never got there. They were defeated by the Red Army and their own mistakes.
@@thkempe People decades after the events have the power of hindsight and access to documents and researches. People who actually were involved in it had their limited perspective, biases and agendas.
@@090giver090 Researchers can only judge what has been documented. While a simple soldier doesn't need documentation to notice, whether his truck or tank is stuck in the mud or not.
@@thkempe simple soldier sees only his and neighbors cars stuck. He doesn't know whether next unit fares any better and have absolutely no idea how the same situation affects the enemy. But despite not knowing he ASSUMES, and takes those assumptions for granted when share his experience. You should read some books on methodology of history to understand what caveats different types of historical evidence have and how you should cross-check them not to fall into false assumption.
@@090giver090 The common soldier has a fairly precise idea of how the enemy is affected: namely, when he is attacked and shot at, without being able to react. Or when he notices that their planes' engines cannot be started due to low temperature, but the enemy is able to fly every day. Toliver/Constable (1970) describe such a situation in their biography of fighter pilot E. Hartmann.
The drawing of Stalingrad is very misleading. It looks like a small village, when it was an industrial city with half a million population and large areas set aside for factory complexes. The central height in the city, over 100 m high, is depicted as a gentle slope down to the river.
The depiction of the encirclement is ridiculous. If the Soviets had attacked right up to the city limits, the 6.Armee could have beaten them. Instead, Zhukov and Vasilevsky directed a double envelopment that enclosed the land between the Volga and Don rivers, closing at Kalach, where the supply trains from Rostov were being reloaded to cross the Don river. This left two larger and one smaller airfield within the encircled area, but the Germans could only deliver a small part of the supply needs of Paulus' group (6.Armee, half of 4.Panzerarmee, some Romanian army corps). Over the next couple of months, the Soviets would slowly reduce the encircled area until only some parts of the city itself was held by the Germans. Also, the 6.Armee couldn't breakout, since they had a lot of heavy equipment, such as artillery, that they needed to bring with them (not to mention the many wounded), and most of their horses had been evacuated to the Chir river earlier and were now outside the encirclement.
More people died in battle of stalingrad than in entire western front during the entire period after 1941 soviet invasion. Stalingrad was absolutely brutal. Also moscow offensive was not weather issue it was halted by extreme resistance and heavy counter attacks. Often neglected fact.
13:47 Great sources this guy has. The title image says it all about how serious the work is. The soviets had apparently never known sweets or Christmas trees 🤦. And if you are living in poorer conditions, you don't care to return to your home and loved ones that much? What is that supposed to mean even? It was easier for the Soviets to fight and die, cause Germans destroyed their country??
Yeah the scale represented in the video isn’t accurate. Stalingrad (now Volgograd) is 331 square mi in area. New York City is 300 square mi in area. That’s a good perspective right there
Stalingrad showed that the Wehrmacht could be defeated, but the turning point was the battle of Kursk and the destruction of Army Group Centre after which the Germans never advanced again.
Stop saying D-Day was the turning point in the West, that is patently wrong. It was an incredibly important widening of the Front Lines by opening up battle lines in Western France but a turning point is where the direction of the war is changed such as fortunes of war turning 180 degrees in direction. The Western Front turning point would be more accurately described as the Battle of El-Alamein which was incidentally around the same time as Stalingrad. That was the point when German forces went from attack to nearly always retreating. In the Pacific it would probably the Battle of Guadalcanal where the Marines desperately held off the Japanese onslaught and despite the odds succeeded. Also the battle of New Guinea where the Australian militia stopped the Japanese on the Kokoda track. This is what a turning point means and D-Day does not qualify
"Day D" was very important opereration with no doubts. But Battle of Stalingrad, long before "Day D", was a turn-point in WWII, cause it was first example of strategic operation, that showed all other countries: Wermacht is not invincible. It was the greatest defeat in the history of the German Army. German morale failed. Victory in this Battle helped Soviet Army to capture strategic initiative till the end of the war. And there was a probability, that there would be no "Day D" without Soviet victory in Battle of Stalingrad. "After Russia's defeat how were we to handle the German land and air forces liberated? England would be again bombarded, threat of invasion revived... And now! We start 1943 under conditions I would never have dared to hope. Russia has held, Egypt for the present is safe. There is a hope of clearing North Africa of Germans in the near future... Russia is scoring wonderful successes in Southern Russia" - British General Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff,
You are right, Stalingrad was (at the time) a very modern and heavily urbanized city, had several factories and the gigantic grain store, whose outline dominated the horizon.
Actually turning point of that war was in Battle for Kursk, then everyone see that Wermacht warmaschine with all its migthy was broken. Thats the time when allies decide to open second front and starts to set it up, cuz they understood that Germany is loosing and will loose anyway, thats all just the matter of time. And they need to hurry up, to be in list of those who will devide Germany and its wealth. And D-Day real reason it not to allow USSR win alone and took France for change.
![Vet Reacts *The City Stands Defiant* Stalingrad - World War Two- Sabaton History 030 [Official]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Iu64djbOd2M/mqdefault.jpg)
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My pleasure.
Battle of Warsaw 1920 - next please.
ua-cam.com/video/aN73N9EjoM4/v-deo.html - here is nice explaionation, made of cuts of the movie "1920 Bitwa Warszawska", long enough for 2 episodes ;)
Stalingrad is an industrial city, there was a tank factory in it that worked even at the height of the fighting, but in terms of population it is not very large. Many civilians died, but not as many as in Leningrad because the city is smaller
The Germans killed 3 million soviet pows. The Nazis really were the bad guys.
The world at war has one programme which covers Stalingrad. A brutal conflict after which Germany was on the back foot
14:27 As for the "how the Soviets treated their prisoners" 15% of German prisoners died in captivity. More that 50% of Soviet prisoners died in captivity in German camps in comparison. The Germans were used as labour to restore the country they destroyed and were paid money as all other prisoners in USSR. The Nazi treatment of the "subhuman" Soviet prisoners is also one of the reasons the Soviet military losses are a few million higher than the German ones.
The germans extermined on purpose most of 1941 russian prisioners by hunger and by letting them freeze in the open camps without buildings. The eastern front was conceived by the germans as a genocide to provide lebensraum that would be used by a new 'aryan' population. To allow that most of slavs west of the Ural mountains should be... killed... It is about that project that the german soldier talks in his diary...
Soviets were just as barbaric as the Nazis.
@@brianjohnson4440 agitated barbarism
Нацисты-это ты и твоя родина, мразь...
@@brianjohnson4440 the carpet bombing of the city of Dresden by the British and Americans with phosphorus bombs is, according to you, the "highest standard of civility," isn't it? Why am I surprised, though!? It's common practice for Anglo-Saxons to attribute their rotten soul traits to their opponents. Don't judge others by yourself.
Old military adage is "Amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics."
Which is why Berthier made Napoleon so good.
Nice phrase, but if there was a logistic genius in the OKH that was Paulus, and still he was the one who was sourrounded at Stalingrad. (with tactics)
I think all the great generals of history would agree
Unfortunately the Germans had no logistical supplies available to them, no doubt a Berthier or Von Moltke would have helped either way. Hitler himself proclaimed that if Russia wasn’t conquered within the first 3 months of Barbarossa they were most likely going to lose the war, as they would be completely out of their oil reserves. Germany had 0 chance of ever generating enough oil to conquer Russia after 1941.
While many german POWs didn't make it back home, you shouldn't forget how devastated the Soviet Union was at this point. They were starving themselves basically, so why would they feed the people who destroyed their home very good?
Also, Germans have not been treating Soviet prossoners any better. Majority died.
@@goran77ish one could even say Germans treated their POW even worse, basically actively murdering them in their killing camps, though of course they didnt know about them till the end of the war
The Germans themselves were starving and half dead when they actually did surrender, and were forced to march to the camp and many were death before arrival.
You can see a direct correlation as many of the higher ranks survived being captured.
@@ThePuma1707 maybe the Japanese were worse in treatment of their POWs. They didn't kill most of their prisoners, but just starved them to death. But we're not going to talk about them, cuz this video is on Stalingrad.
@@anshdeulkar2004 the Jaoanese atrocities wowed even nazi Germany. So yah
The city has grown enormously since the war, the town today named Volgograd is a million city, in those days some 300,000. My wife was born in the city, I've been walking around in the city and seen many of the battle sites - the downtown, the railway station, Pavlov's house, the mill and the grain silo nowadays torn down and a museum celebrating the battle has been built on the site of the silo. The silo was defended for a month and a half, when it fell the Nazis found out that it had been defended by just seven - 7 - soldiers! Pavlov's house just across the street was defended for three months and never captured. Skirmishes wasn't for towns and hills but for rooms and corridors...
The grain silos haven't been torn down. They're intact.
The Soviets definitely mistreat their prisoners, but mostly they didn't plan to exterminate them in the same way like what the Nazis did with Soviet prisoners.
The low number of survivors was more due to many of the Germans were already in very poor condition due to starvation and sickness when they went into Soviet custody after the surrender plus negligence and unpreparedness on the part of the Soviets in caring for so many prisoners in an area of frozen wasteland.
This happened because Soviet intelligence horrendously underestimated how many German soldiers were in the Stalingrad pocket and so there was a massive deficit in food. Soviet civilians and Soldiers took higher priority than the German soldiers. But still, in my opinion, the ultimate responsibility for the high prisoner death toll falls on Adolf Hitler, the OKH (Army High Command) and 6th Army Command.
@@darthbrandon3856 Yeah, in a German Stalingrad documentary that I've watched, a German officer put a huge blame on the commanding officers of the 6th Army for chasing out Soviet envoys sent to negotiate a surrender despite knowing damn well they're only delaying the inevitable.
It's definitely isn't a frozen wasteland. Otherwise why there people growing apricots, peaches and melons? About negligence I think it's common thing in the West also
Nearer to the end of the battle (some time after they were surrounded), the situation was so desperate for the Germans that when wounded and essential personnel tried to fly out, the planes were swarmed by hordes of German soldiers who were ravenous and desperately wanted to leave, assuming the planes would make it past the skies which were by then dominated by the soviets. If the soldiers couldn't make it into the planes, which were filled to the rafters, they would climb onto the landing gear, the wings or pretty much anywhere. Sometimes the planes were too heavy so the pilots had no choice but to roll their aircraft to shake them off. If there were any left, they would freeze due to the sheer windchill and fall off. In the winter of 1942-43, hell had a name and it was Stalingrad.
I remember I read about it before
Since last week i know how it looks
The German "Blitzkrieg" method of warfare was only effective up to 500m, due to its necessary supply by road/truck. Once armies moved farther, supply became a serious handicap.
Sadly that's a nice piece of revisionist history.
@@mrk8050 What are you referring to?
@@darthbrandon3856 Ok, the "planes were swarmed by hordes of German soldiers who were ravenous", the fact that these hordes of starving men were capable of climbing onto the wings of a Ju 52 is laughable when you consider the strict security that was enforced in Stalingrad by the Military Police. In fact it was so well organised that among the last to leave were remaining female hospital staff. "Sometimes the planes were too heavy so the pilots had no choice but to roll their aircraft to shake them off", if a plane is to heavy it won't take off, so rolling the plane is impossible. Plus it would be packet with incredibly badly wounded soldiers, so rolling is a really bad idea, especially in freezing conditions, where ice could and did cause crashes. That's probably why Wolfram von Richthofen and Paulus had such tight security at all the original 7 supply airfields.
This video was an older video from armchair historian(that also shows why the animation is rather worse than his animation nowadays which is way better than before) , it was very good but I recommend you also watch the kings and generals videos on battles of Stalingrad and kursk
Just for perspective, Stalingrad stretched over 25 miles along the West bank of the Volga.
And yes, a lot of German prisoners died, but a huge number of them were frostbitten and due to malnutrition were in a terrible state. Plus, the way they behaved on the territory of the Soviet Union, burning villages along with the inhabitants, purposefully killing women and children, I think no one was sad about their death.
Stalingrad map is really simplified (I think it's due to animator's style): the city was much bigger... Every little block in the video were probably 10 blocks of buildings in reality
It is worth noting that much of stalingrad is long rather than thick. In reality, in many areas you could walk from the outskirts of the city to the volga in an hour at most. Take that into account when you think of how many casualties and how much time it took to advance across those areas during the battle.
Everything the USA, Britain and the allies did pale into insignificance when you talk about Stalingrad. Truly awful and without a doubt THE turning point of WW2.
Stalingrad, battle of Kursk, siege of Leningrad anf the battle for Moscow
Much of the fuel used by the German war machine, especially high quality petrol for aeroplanes was made from coal, a very time consuming and expensive process. Capturing the Caucasus , as a source of food production as well as oil was key to the German war plans. The defeat they suffered at Stalingrad can not be over estimated !
You might also like to have a look at Leningrad.
Approximately 40% of Germans taken prisoner by the Soviets during WWII died in captivity, which is lower than the percentage of Soviets taken prisoner by the Germans. The 95% death rate among Stalingrad survivors is mainly due to them being utterly malnourished over an extended period. Many were on just 3-400 calories an day towards the end, and their bodies were unable to absorb nutrients.
I thought it was 13%
@@lif3andthings763 It's around 15% that are confirmed but could be more, but nowhere near 40%. Soviet PoWs on the other hand had a death rate of around 60% under german captivity, so I have no idea where that guy got his numbers and why he got so many likes lol
I think it was the Italians, taken prisoner on the northern flank, that had massive percentages of there POW's lost. Out of the 65K taken prisoner, something like 80 percent died in captivity.
@@DieGoetterdaemmerung I was going from memory and I was slightly out. The Soviets claimed a death rate among German POWs of 13%. The West German government in 1974 claimed a death rate of 35.7% (1,094,250 deaths among 3,060,000 prisoners, split roughly 50:50 between those who died during the war and those who died in captivity between the end of the war and 1950. Since the West Germans were paying the war pensions I'm more inclined to believe them.
Since about 5% of British POWs held by the Germans died in captivity, and they were held under Geneva Convention rules, I very much doubt the Soviet figure of 13% as they didn't follow those rules.
@@deanstuart8012
Soviets claimed 2,4 million prisoners, out of which 350k died in captivity - that's the ~15%.
As for the Western German claims, who had no reason to mess with the statistics - first Google search.
"According to German historian Rüdiger Overmans ca. 3,000,000 POW were taken by the USSR; he put the "maximum" number of German POW deaths in Soviet hands at 1.0 million. Based on his research, Overmans believes that the deaths of 363,000 POWs in Soviet captivity can be confirmed by the files of Deutsche Dienststelle (WASt), and additionally maintains that "It seems entirely plausible, while not provable, that 700,000 German military personnel listed as missing actually died in Soviet custody."
Yeah, that's some reliable statistics right there. Kinda like the Nazis did their statistics, like counting all of the Soviet male civilian population as war prisoners and not counting a loss if the person is missing in action.
Romania had 250.000 officers and non-commissioned officers in that battle because she wanted those two provinces (Basarabia and Bucovina) stolen by Russia. Study(when you have time) over Romania in World War 2 and you'll see a complicated history. I am from Romania. Romania it was and IS a strategic point on the map of Europe.
Yup! The Roman Empire gave up Romania formally in 275AD after losing it in the 260s. Aurelian was the Emperor at the time. Aurelian is known as the last good emperor. One can wonder if Rome was able to keep Romania/Dacia would there have been more good emperors.
@@MarkVrem you smoked something??
@@essioniko7425 LOL just went to check if what you wrote about Romania being a strategic area, worked in the context of the Roman Empire losing it. Aurelian being the last good emperor. Seems to fit your argument that it is.
@@MarkVrem clearly you smoked something! :)))
The 6th army had a size of just over 600.000 when they entered the city limits of Stalingrad. 110.000 were left to be taken prisoner, and the 110.000 had been on starvation rations for 2 months, so many of them were almost dead already.
The Soviets made the POW march all the way to prison camp and many of them collapsed or got ill and died, the rougly 5000 that survived were all higher ranking soldiers as they had gotten a larger ration.
The Soviets treated German POW pretty midly in general, with over 80% surviving compared to less than 30% in German POW camps.
The civilians in Stalingrad was forced to help defend the city, and before most could escape across the river the Luftwaffe bombed the city to a hellscape. More than 20% of all the civilians of the city died.
It should be remembered that most of this battle took place in daytime temperatures of -10℃ or below, the Russians were used to and equipped for this, the German forces weren't. It often came down to hand to hand fighting as nothing made of steel worked, including German artillery, even rifles, as made to very tight tolerances, thin lubricants turned to thick grease or just froze, the German engineering expertise and quality worked against them.
Yeah the Germans killed something like 3 million soviet pows.
@@lif3andthings763 Way over 3 million Russian POW, most of them by starvation and illness.
While less than 500.000 Germans died the same way.
Army Group B was about 600,000, not the 6th Army. Between the 6th Army and the 4th Panzer Army Group including replacements and wounded taken out it was 400,000.
@@tonys1636 It was worse than that. Temperatures fell during the night to - 40 degrees centigrade.
There is a fairly popular film I believe either German-made or Russian-made film of Stalingrad, simply titled Stalingrad, (1993) - It is a gritty, individual take on it, from the German side and perspective, from the view of a soldier, and the human breaking through the confusions of war, though also finding a good film from the Russian/Soviet perspective as you know, you can't learn history truly if you don't encompass all sides, for history is told by the victors.
Agree 💯 with these comments, one for movie night perhaps.
it´s a german Movie from Joseph Vilsmaier 1993 with Subtitles
very great Movie
@@arnodobler1096 Agreed, it's been some time since I've last seen it, so thank you for the reminder
@@CristinaMarshal thx
After Das Boot the best German (war) film
@@arnodobler1096 I am yet to see this one
Out of 3 million soviets soldiers that germans captured in 1941 only about 50 000 return home in 1945
Stalin did execute most Soviet prisoners returning to Russia, for the treason of surrendering.
@@FLORATOSOTHON thats actually connected to 1942 and order 227 (not one step back), and even for that period its exaggerated stories mostly
@@FLORATOSOTHON No He Didn't
@@FLORATOSOTHON no only around 13,000 soldiers died from that order. They were mainly ranking officers.
@@konstantinkelekhsaev302 During and after World War II freed POWs went to special "filtration camps" run by the NKVD. Of these, by 1944, more than 90% were cleared, and about 8% were arrested or condemned to serve in penal battalions. In 1944, they were sent directly to reserve military formations to be cleared by the NKVD. Further, in 1945, about 100 filtration camps were set for repatriated Ostarbeiter, POWs, and other displaced persons, which processed more than 4,000,000 people. By 1946, 80% civilians and 20% of POWs were freed, 5% of civilians, and 43% of POWs were re-drafted, 10% of civilians and 22% of POWs were sent to labor battalions, and 2% of civilians and 15% of the POWs (226,127 out of 1,539,475 total) were transferred to the NKVD, i.e. the Gulag.
Russian historian G.F. Krivosheev gives slightly different numbers based on documents provided by the KGB: 233,400 were found guilty of collaborating with the enemy and sent to Gulag camps out of 1,836,562 Soviet soldiers who returned from captivity. Latter data do not include millions of civilians who have been repatriated (often involuntarily) to the Soviet Union, and a significant number of whom were also sent to the Gulag or executed (e.g. Betrayal of the Cossacks). The survivors were released during the general amnesty for all POWs and accused collaborators in 1955 on the wave of De-Stalinization following Stalin's death in 1953.
While many scholars agree that de-classified Soviet archive data is a reliable source, Rolf-Dieter Müller and Gerd R. Ueberschär claimed "Soviet historians engaged for the most part in a disinformation campaign about the extent of the prisoner-of-war problem." and claimed that almost all returning POWs were convicted of collaboration and treason hence sentenced to the various forms of forced labour, while admitting that it would be unlikely to study the full extent of the history of the Soviet prisoners of war. Thousands of Soviet POWs indeed survived through collaboration, many of them joining German forces, including the SS formations.]
While the soviets weren't exactly known for treating German POW's well. The survival rate for prisoners from Stalingrad is much lower than normal because the germans that were captured were already starving and Ill. Many past the point of no return and wouldn't have survived even if they were suddenly given the best treatment possible. Another factor that was very different in terms of how the soviets handled POW's is that they considered the invasion of the soviet union to be a criminal act, so most of the POW's were charged and given sentences, usually 10 years hard labor. Where most POW's in the west were simply held and released as soon as the war was over.
Oil was an absolutely critical resource in WW2. It's was also a primary reason for Imperial Japans conquests in South East Asia; they needed territory that had oil and other resources, because Japan itself has very little.
The art style for the video is definitely making Stalingrad look smaller than it actually was.
It's a pretty good video nonetheless, but you'll probably get a better scale of the city when you'll see a documentary with actual WW2 footage.
The shape of the city is right. Residential and Commerical areas hugging the length of the Volga river. With Industrial area further out to the West in the field. On the other side of the Volga river, the terrain is actually very swampy and pretty useless for much of anything. This is one of the big reasons why it was important to ANVIL the German army to the river. Cause if you go beyond it, that front is lost.
@@MarkVrem Yeah, the shape is OK. It's just the scale that doesn't translate well.
I can now see you sitting round the dinner table, using salt and pepper pots to illustrate things as you correct everyone on their preconceptions about ww2, ww1 and Napoleonic battles.
Fun fact, there were already a lot of Germans settling in the area since 1770 when russian empress Katharina (which was geman btw.) invited thousands of german settler to the area. My mother was born there as fourth generation and had to flee with the retreating army to Germany. Stalingrad, Odessa, all these cities were modern looking european cities comparable to Munich or Vienna. There were street cars and modern industry. Many Germans think that Stalingrad was an ugly bunch of ruins, but that was after the german army bombed it to ruins. The whole area could have been a flourishing industrial powerhouse if only Stalin had not killed half of the people during the revolution (half of my mothers family starved to death) and germans destroyed it during the war. There were german, russian, ukrainian and jewish cities existing in peace side by side.
The vid doesn't mention two things: One, Paulus was promoted to Field Marshall - the highest rank in the German Army - the day before he surrendered (Hitler thought this would mean he would shoot himself rather than be captured, but he didn't). Two, the Germans actually took Stalingrad - what they hadn't reckoned on were the 40 Soviet divisions which had finally been freed up from the East after Stalin had learned that the Japanese did not intend to enter the war against Russia. These 40 divisions were thrown into the battle so Stalingrad was then surrounded by Soviet troops (attempts were made by the German army to break through to relieve Stalingrad, but they failed).
I thought the soviet divisions freed from the east (the japan thing) was at the battle of moscow a year earlier. I could be wrong though, but I'm pretty sure.
@@patrickexiler9255 Yes. "The Sorge affair" is 1941.
Kings and generals also has a video about the battle of Stalingrad
Germany and UK were both hugely dependent on oil imports. Surprisingly, Germany didn't stockpile much oil before starting the war. They had to manufacture oil substitutes to supply armies and industry.
It was not surprising if you read Mein Kampf. Hitler was very adamant in his very wrong economic beliefs, so they almost immediatly went towards autarky. It was the same thing that made Hitler call for Lebensraum, which is a bit paradoxical in hindsight.
Hitler's need for War was driven by Germany's problem of feeding itself. He didn't take account of the practicalities of feeding an Army + Population + Foreign Workers ...while running a nation devited to armaments production.
Gradually, grain stocks were depleted until, in 1942, even the German civilian population suffered cuts in their rations. (The army's ration had already been cut. Foreigners were only to be fed if they were working for the Reich: Jews not at all.)
@@philipeoverton Hitlers understanding of economics were logical, and still are, just not in the context he put it in.
It is basically that resources are limited, so all trade is a 0-sum game, and as Germany needs to export goods to buy food and the countries producing food becoming industrialized then Germany is losing.
There had not been the huge technological improvements in agriculture, as they developed slower than machine tools.
The logical part is that you extend Hitler's logic to the entire planet and that we will run out of resources to sustain everyones needs.
German General Paulus was surrounded and forced to surrender. He became vocal against Hitler after the war.
First he refused to commit suicide althoug that probably was the reason why he was promoted to Field Marshal just before his surrender (no German field marshal had ever surrendered before). And he became quite active against Hitler and Nazism even during the rest of the war. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Paulus
@@peterkragelund4794 Yes. He really was 'dicing with death'!
The Soviets hated the Germans at this time. It is surprising that even 5000 men returned. Having said this many of the German soldiers taken prisoner were moribund by this time and probably died of frostbite, malnutrition and disease. They were probably treated better than the poor souls in Hitler’s death camps 😕
Prisoner survivor rates in the east were about 3% for Soviets, 5%+ for Germans. British/ Americans were 95%. It was a different war.
It's just animation style. Stalingrad is a big city. The wide of Volga river in Stalingrad is 3.5 km (2.2 miles).
And the city extended for 15 miles along the western side of the river. That should give you an idea of how large the city was.
My greatgrandfather died aftern burns he recieved in this nightmare. My family never managed to know where he was buried. Stalingrad is an ominous legacy for all russian people till now. Never again the war like this should take it place in the world. We should prevent this to happen anywhere on our beautiful planet.
Fun fact: All interesting spy novels set in WWII take place BEFORE the battle of Stalingrad. That's because before the battle, many people thought Hitler actually had a chance of winning the war. After Stalingrad, his defeat was inevitable so the spy stories have no tension.
If you are really interested in the battle of Stalingrad I recommend watching TIK's Battlestorm Stalingrad series. Nothing even comes close (at least in English). But it's a very time-consuming effort. Each of his videos is 40-60 minutes long, and there are already ~30 of them at this point, and he is only half done.
Thank you yet again for sharing this with us. As the animation described Operation Uranus, to encircle the German 6th Army, began on the 19th Nov 1942. It would be worth your while looking more closely at the actual operation which brilliantly exploited the German forces weak flanks, with two soviet armies moving quickly over a distance in excess of 150 miles from two opposite directions meeting at the area of Kalach, to surround the 6tth Army in Stalingrad. Hitler had earlier appointed a very experienced German General to review the Stalingrad situation. The General in question, who is mentioned in the World at War Series, spotted the German enormous risks the 6th Army was exposed to in their flanks and rear, but these observations were typically dismissed by Hitler.
If you want a thoroughly channel about Stalingrad I recommend you TIK channel with his Battlestorm it's 50 min+ each episode.
This is incredibly simplistic and inaccurate and he seems to have only read the highly inaccurate and propagandised books from the Cold War period in history. To understand what led to & how the German disaster at Stalingrad happened, you need to understand what happened the year before and what happened after Operation Barbarossa. The be trail by Chief of Staff of the Army High Command (OKH), General Franz Halder. The fact that Order 227 was only enforced against officers, but there were plenty of orders to take a backwards step. Like the myth that Stalin killed 90% of his high ranked officers in the mid 1930's, odd how most of those dead officers turned up fighting in and around Moscow, and later Stalingrad and Berlin. Stalin did allow the civilians to leave the City. Also it wasn't the Soviet air force that stopped supplies, it was pure incompetence on the German side Luftwaffe had the fuel and air superiority, but the supplies and men were sent to the wrong army groups thanks to Halder again. Halder after the war tried very hard to hide War Crimes committed by the Wehrmacht, sadly aided by American General William J. Donovan, who later was a founder the CIA.
There were three main targets of Operation Barbarossa. Army Group North was to link up with the Finish Army and occupy a huge amount of Soviet forces. Army Group Centre was to attack and devour as many Soviet forces as possible utilising the German speed and encirclement tactics perfected in Poland and France, Moscow was never a strategic target. Army Group South was to advance through Ukraine onto the Don & Volga. Upon reaching north of Stalingrad turn south with the aim to capture the Oil Fields of the Caucasus's at Maikop and Grozny. Even Hitler knew Baku would be almost impossible, but taking Maikop and Grozny would knock the Soviet Union out of the war, so if necessary Baku would be bombed so the Soviets couldn't use it for oil.
Army Group South 1941 had the German 6th, 11th, 17th Army's, the 1st Panzer Group & the Luftwaffe's Air Fleet 4. Then came the non-German forces Slovak Expeditionary Force, Royal Hungarian Army Mobile Corps, Italian Expeditionary Corps in Russia, Romanian 3rd & 4th Army's. Army Group South should also have had the German 2nd Panzer Group, but Halder moved them to Army Group Centre because he believed the key to beating the Soviet Union was taking the Capital. After all it had worked in Poland and France. By the time Hitler discovered that the 2nd Panzer Group wasn't in the south it was to late and the winter had set in. This action by Halder just led to add the distrust Hitler would have in his Generals.
For Case Blue Army Group South was spit into 2 smaller Army Groups. Army Group A had the German 1st & 4th Panzer Army's, 11th & 17th Army's, with the 3rd Romanian Army, & headed strait to Maikop and Grozny, even after Halder had moved the 11th Army out of the line. Army Group B had the German 2nd & 6th Army's & the Hungarian 2nd Army, the Italian 8th Army who arrived between the 11th &15th August just in time & advanced along the Don River, to form a hard defence line between the Don & Volga north of Stalingrad (Stalingrad was not an objective for capture in the original plans). Then Army Group B would follow the Volga to the Fort & Port City of Astrakahn. But owing to the very hard resistance the Soviet Army's put up they were delayed. the main advance of the 6th Army so much and caused a large amount of casualties that the German 4th Panzer Army & Romanian 3rd Army's were sent to Stalingrad to assist General Paulus's much weakened 6th Army, the Hungarian 2nd Army & Italian 8th Army also a new Romanian 4th Army was sent to replace some of the 6th Army's Divisions guarding the Don. Which meant that between the German 2nd & 6th Army's were 3 much weaker Axis Allied Army's, the & newly reformed Romanian 4th Army. Germany's Axis Allies were much weaker and had much poorer equipment than their German counterparts, which is why the Soviets attacked them in the North and South during Operation Uranus instead of the German 2nd Army, and there was a huge gap in the South.
A quick side note to help the time frame, the North African Campaign was started inadvertently by Mussolini, an actual Fascist Dictator (Hitler was a National Socialist Dictator and Stalin was a Communist Dictator who had killed over 40 million people before the invasion of the Soviet Union), who tried to take advantage of the devastation that the British Army had suffered after the fall of France. And two months later he launched the Italian Tenth Army, 240,000 men, against a British Commonwealth Western Desert Force, totalling 36,000 men (from Britain, India, Australia, New Zealand & South Africa). Mussolini needed to take Egypt from the British Commonwealth and Empire forces so he could seize the oil fields of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Trans-Jordan. Just one of many problems was he had no way of transporting the oil to Europe, but it would have hurt Britain more than the U-Boats could have in the Atlantic. Italy lost in their attempt and 130,000 Italians became POWs, Mussolini asked Hitler for help. And Hitler sent his new favourite General Erwin Rommel and 15th Panzer Division what started as the 5th Light Division but changed into the 21st Panzer Division, this made up the famous Deutsches Afrikakorps (DAK). The North Africa Campaign lasted 27 months and drew desperately needed recourses and supply's away from Operation Barbarossa and Operation Fall Blau (Case Blue). And contrary to the narrative that was and in some cases is still tought about North Africa Campaign, the fight was won at the first Battle of El Alamein under the command of General Claude Auchinleck the then commander of the British 8th Army. Churchill replaced Auchinleck with his 3rd option Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery who used Auchinleck's plans for the 2nd Battle of El Alamein (but claimed they were his plans). The 2nd Battle destroyed 2 Axis Army's eventually cost Italy 22,341 killed, 250,000-350,000 captured, Germany, about 18,594 killed, 3,400 missing,180,000 captured, Vichy France 1,346 killed & 1,997 wounded. Material losses, 2,550 tanks, 70,000 trucks, 6,200 guns, 8,000 aircraft & 2,400,000 gross tons of shipping.
2 February 1943 Stalingrad, which lasted 6 months and 5 days ended, & the 1st Battle of El Alamein ended on the 27 July 1942 a campaign that lasted 1 year, 10 months and 18 days. These two Battles were the turning point's in the European Theatre. To put this into context, the Allied Torch landings happened 4 months later, where the 1st American was killed by Vichy French Forces.
For the Soviet experience of Stalingrad rather than a strict military narrative, check out the relevant episodes from "The Unknown War" a series similar to World at War. The entire series is available on UA-cam. Episodes 5 and 6 cover it. (Don't be put off by the Russian language intro to each episode. The documentary is entirely in English).
ua-cam.com/play/PLhs30iGhgICncex8qB-_Fmej-0HSwy4fH.html
I've watched The Unknown War several times and it portrays the war as the Soviet Union wanted it to be seen. In other words it was mostly Soviet propaganda. It fails to mention that Stalin's pact with Hitler basically gave Adolf the green light to rampage all over Western Europe while Stalin gobbled up some of its neighbors. It doesn't mention the brutal treatment of Russian soldiers by the Communist government. Loyalty and bravery of soldiers was often forced by the commissars. After the first year more and more Russians fought to protect the Motherland. If Hitler had ordered his soldiers to treat the Russian people well, many if not most Russians would have aided the Germans. It was German brutality that turned the Russian people, especially Ukrainians, against them. The Unknown War is equivalent to our old westerns that portrayed the Indians as savage brutes while the white settlers and cavalry were the heroes. I do not recommend The Unknown War which is a shame since I grew up watching Burt Lancaster in many of my favorite movies.
@@mikealvarez2322 "It fails to mention that Stalin's pact with Hitler basically gave Adolf the green light"
The pact (which was sent to the Soviets by the Germans) was only made after the British and French denied the Soviets' offers of creating an Anti-Fascist Coalition. It was France and Britain that made Hitler's rampage possible. The Soviets even offered to send a million troops to help Czechoslovakia.
"It doesn't mention the brutal treatment of Russian soldiers by the Communist government"
What brutal treatment of Russian soldiers? I'd also like to say that equating the entire Red Army to "Russian soldiers" is incredible misinformative. There were like 5 million Ukrainians in the Red Army, and millions of other ethnicities such as Baltics, Poles, Georgians, Kazakhs and Uzbeks etc.
Please explain how the Communist government treated the Red Army with brutality, and do include some primary sources for this claim as well.
"Loyalty and bravery of soldiers was often forced by the commissars."
This idea of the commissars being some kind of brutal men who forced the soldiers to do stuff has since long been debunked. You do realize that the Red Army were fighting for their lives right? The Nazis weren't going to spare them, they saw the Slavs and the various asian minorities as subhuman. The whole thing about the 3rd Reich was that they needed "living space" for ethnic Germans and that the "races" who currently occupied these territories had to be enslaved or exterminated. The Jews weren't the only target of Nazism, the Slavic people were just as big a target. The Soviets and their army were already aware of this from the beginning. It is why they call it the Great Patriotic War, because it was a patriotic war. This was a matter of protecting their lands and families and friends from an invading force that wanted to completely annihilate them.
"If Hitler had ordered his soldiers to treat the Russian people well"
Well the whole problem here is that he would never have done that, he despised the Slavic peoples.
"many if not most Russians would have aided the Germans"
This is just complete historical revisionism. Nothing points to this. The Soviet people were not oppressed by their government. They were more free than they had ever been during the time of the Russian Empire. Equal rights and equal opportunity for men and women of all ethnicities, religions and cultures. The right and access to education, work, healthcare and cultural expression. Jews were finally protected by law, as antisemitism was punishable by DEATH.
@@DonHaka You fail to mention the number of people that died or were sent to labor camps by Stalin during the forced collectivism. During the war, anyone who surrendered was deemed a traitor and their families were subject to imprisonment. Even Stalin's son and daughter-in-law paid the price of this policy. Commanders dared not order a withdrawal, even in hopeless situations, without first getting approval, which often was too late or denied. This led to millions of Red Army soldiers either being killed or captured unnecessarily. In the first half of the war, the Red Army had already lost 6 million men and it did not bother Stalin one bit, even though it was his purges that had so weakened the military. Furthermore, officers were hesitant to act on their own for in doing so would cost them their lives. As for providing sources, you are not my professor and I am not one of your students and by the way, you didn't provide your sources. I do know one thing, as an American of Cuban descent, the socialist-communist system only values the state. The individual is meaningless. Reference: Personal experience.
@@mikealvarez2322 "You fail to mention the number of people that died or were sent to labor camps by Stalin during the forced collectivism." Oh yes Stalin definitely sent all those people to the gulag by himself. Please show me the proof of this. Stalin barely made any such orders. "Forced collectivism" isn't a thing that happened. Collectivization was greeted with incredible popularity by the peasantry as it gave them massive qualitative improvements compared to their earlier living conditions. The only people who actively resisted collectivization were the rich landowners (kulaks) who would go on to murder kolkhoz leaders and burn the grain. The eventual "dekulakization" was certainly "ordered" by the Soviet government (not Stalin alone, the USSR practiced collective leadership) but the actual execution of this plan was done by local party officials and kolkhoz workers, many of whom were young and zealous.
"During the war, anyone who surrendered was deemed a traitor and their families were subject to imprisonment"
Do you think any other country that was invaded did anything different? No. It was a war of total annihilation. The amount of people whose families were subject to imprisonment were not high.
"Commanders dared not order a withdrawal, even in hopeless situations, without first getting approval, which often was too late or denied."
This is complete bogus. If the situation was hopeless they retreated almost every time. This idea that the Red Army was rarely allowed to retreat is anti-communist garbage.
"As for providing sources, you are not my professor and I am not one of your students and by the way, you didn't provide your sources."
You're the one who made all of these initial claims. All im doing is denying your claims based on what i know is the lack of evidence and support for these claims.
"I do know one thing, as an American of Cuban descent, the socialist-communist system only values the state. The individual is meaningless. Reference: Personal experience."
More anti-communist garbage. You're an American of Cuban descent? That implies that you weren't born there. Have you actually been to Cuba? Talked to actual Cubans instead of your GUSANO family?
Okay, so if the "socialist-communist system" only values the state, why does the Cuban government guarantee free healthcare? That isn't in the interrest of the state. That's in the interrest of the people. How come the Cuban government subsidizes food and housing if it only cares about the state? Again, that is in the interrest of the people. Homelessness and unemployment are not issues in Cuba as everyone is guaranteed a job and home ownership is at 90%. The rest of the people who pay rent, have extremely low rent costs.
Cuba is governed by the people, for the people. Cuba is democratic, unlike USA where the wealthy elite own everything. This is reflected in how the Cuban political system works and in the fact that Cuba last year passed the by far most progressive family law in Latin America.
The Cuban people are more than anything suffering at the hand of US imperialism and their genocidal embargo that almost every country in the world has denounced. It really goes to show how bad it is if all the other countries in UN are voting to remove this embargo.
@@DonHaka My father and mother left Cuba in 1941 - 1943. Father in 41 to join the US Army after Pearl Harbor (he and his older brother were born in Tampa while rest of the siblings born in Havana). Mom followed Dad in 43 as she was born in Havana. So you know nothing about me or my family. Extended family stayed in Cuba as they supported the Revolution up until 1968. I traveled to Cuba as a child every summer until 1960. We stayed at my Grandma's house. We got the extended family out by 1970 except for my cousin, who was a doctor. Castro wouldn't let doctors out. My aunt did get Doc's father, mother, wife, and daughter out in the Mariel Boat lift in 81. Doc. Cousin had to stay the next 11 years as Castro government still wouldn't let doctors out. We got my Doc cousin out in 1991 by payIng $15,000 to government official. From 1978 - 1996 I and my family made numerous trips to Cuba to smuggle every day items like soap and toothpaste
Hi from (a German in) Germany! The reason why only 5000 came back was NOT because the Russians were so cruel and treated the captured Germans so bad. The main reason is that Paulus surrendered much too late! Thousands of Germans died of hunger before Paulus surrendered. So, these 110,000 men were in an awful condition when the became POWs.
And keep in mind that about 3 Million Russian POWs died in German camps - because of hunger, overwork, were shot or used for medical experiments (the US Army and Air Force profited from after the war). These were cruel experiments with cold water, thin air (for pilots), basics for jet ejection seat systems +++.
In my lectures, I usually say that Stalingrad was the turning point for the European part of the war since before Stalingrad, the Germans were still advancing on every front, including in North Africa. After Stalingrad, the German army would experience one single victory (Kharkov-Belgorod) before they surrendered in Berlin. After Stalingrad, it became apparent that the Red Army had grown so much stronger than the German army that everything had to be spent on it, and every other front became possible to penetrate with some determination. Stalingrad also marked the point where Stalin gave up suppression of the "Deep battle" doctrine and allowed Zhukov and Vasilevsky to resurrect it: the Germans never found a way to counter it.
In the sense that the Germans marched almost steadily all the way to Stalingrad, and then they marched about as steadily back to Berlin, Stalingrad was a turning point.
the truth is, between the Sowjet Union and Nazi Germany the were no POWs, there was free labour until they dropped dead. When 5000 germans made it back from originally 110.000 POWs, it weren't even 500 Sovjets that made it home from Nazi "Arbeitslager" at the same time. No country wasted food on the enemy, POW or not.
His videos on the American Civil War are also really good
Watch Enemy at the Gates, it's a good depiction of the city, or the film "Stalingrad."
To better understanding how exactly oil was important fun fact:
All diesel of germany was consumped by Kreigsmarine and thats why all German tanks has gasoline engines, what makes them easier to fireup. Everyones know that, but still continue make tanks on gasoline engines.
P.S. Check Pavlov's House in wiki - there was house who holds 60 days against 2 wermacht divisions with tanks. Just imagine! 1 little group of buildings with 30 men insde holds LONGER then whole Poland or France.
Just a note about the prisoners of war on the Eastern Front. When the Germans took hundreds of thousands of prisoners in 1941, they didn't know what to do with such a large crowd. There was too much ammunition to shoot dead, and the soldiers of the Wermacht were not yet strong enough for this. So they were arranged in long columns and sent on foot to the distant towards the camps, without food, water and shelter. The heat in the summer and the frost in the winter decimate them, and they die by the hundreds of thousands. In addition to this comes the action against the civilian population. It is natural that the other side also hits back. revenge for the crimes committed by the Red Army in the West. Almost every soldier had a fallen relative, many had their towns and villages destroyed, and the Russian officers increased their fighting spirit with vodka. surrendered, the Germans killed her in a brutal way, if not, then the Red Army condemned her for cowardice. In Budapest, the number of raped women is estimated at about 1 million. This is worse in German territory, because they wanted to punish them as well. In and around Berlin, the number 2-3 million.. 14 43
If the US was invaded by the german army they wouldn't stand a chance... Glory to the heroes of Stalingrad
The Antony Beevor book on Stalingrad can’t be beat.
It can be.
@@dahlizz99
By what?.
@@generaldreedle2801 idk. Anything can always be beaten
@@generaldreedle2801 Depends what you are looking for. Glantz will have more info if you want as much as possible but beevor is an easier read. I'd suggest glantz's 4 book trilogy on the battle, he has even more outside of that about stalingrad but they are excellent for info.
While flogging books on stalingrad i'd probs put in a word for death of the leaping horseman by jason mark.
@@andrewshaw1571
Exactly that. You can get bogged down with Glantz. I’m not a big reader but got through Beevor in a couple of days which surprised me at the time.
What is never spoken about regarding Stalingrad is that Bletchley Park codebreakers were feeding the Russians information about German movements. Most ULTRA documents were destroyed after the war, however those for the Russian Campaign survived, particularly for Stalingrad.
Russians always have that great joker card with simple sentence: "The winter is coming."
Random Russian General : Ahhh screw it, let the Germans take Moscow, won't help them all that much it didn't Napoleon.
STALIN: No they'll burn more oil trying to stay warm outside the city, and dealing with a massive counter-attack, than with shelter within it.
The Finns enter the room: " Hello there...nice army "
Just waiting for winter is impossible to win. You yourself must understand this if not an idiot. If everything were like this, the Germans in six months would not have reached Moscow, but the Sea of Japan
The greatest joker card for russia always has been "size".
edit: Space to retreat, size of the population.
And in WW2 the stunning ability to relocate factories in short time from endangered areas to areas behind the ural.
Funny, where was this card during WWI? Wars are won by economies, not season changes.
A great movie for the battle of Stalingrad is "Enemy At The Gates". I highly recommend it.
Two of the best videos on WW2 are: Battlefield and The World at War.
The city isn't small the river is wide, way wider than any west european or US river. It's more like the Yangtze or ganga
5:49 It was Stalin not Hitler who wanted to protect the Caucasus
I believe that narrator meant to say "secure", but had a slip of the tongue.
I think Germany lost at Stalingrad because;
a) their army was trained for mobile warfare and not attritional urban warfare.
b) they were short on essential resources like fuel.
c) their supply lines were overstretched, and since they were short on supplies in the first place, this meant even less supples actually made it to the front in time, not to mention partisans constantly attacking supply lines
d) their army wasn’t motorised as much as people thought, only 20% of the German army was actually motorised at its peak. The rest of the German army relied on horses and trains to transport men, equipment and supplies, or marched on foot.
After the battle there were 90.000 taken prisoner its estimated that only 5 thousand made it back to Germany after the war . Countless thousands on both sides had already died .
The soviets*. As Ukrainian, I kindly ask not to use soviets and russians interchangeably, it's both objectively wrong, and hurtful for us, people from different nation-states of USSR, that also had 189 ethnicities, not just russians.
This is one of my favourite military history channels; I hope you do more of their videos
The discussion of oil in World War 2 is something that really only has been much talked about in the last couple of years. I don't think I've ever heard it mention until 4 years ago or so. It's something that historians in the Cold War didn't seem to think much about, or at the very least, something that documentaries considered unimportant.
The great strategies were always talked about in terms of ideological goals, and the leaders treated as simply evil madmen. But the logistical necessities are something that turns out to be really important to make sense of the decisions that were made.
The problem is that early historiography of WW2 in the Eastern front was highly biased. In the West its written pretty much by surviving German generals themselves (too much for "history is written by the winners", eh? :) ). And in the East it was written by the Communist party with the narrative of it saving the world. Also both parties didn't have a full access to enemies paperwork so should have made a lot of assumptions. Only after the fall of USSR that made East German and Soviet archives available for scholars that allowed to see and cross-check the documents the wide spread revision begun.
Милая девушка, если вы не располагаете фактами и совершенно не интересуетесь историей, то не надо намекать о жестокости русских по отношению к пленным немцам. Это выглядит по меньшей мере глупо...
Порой в ответ на упреки по поводу миллионов советских военнопленных, замученных в нацистских лагерях, предъявляется «симметричный козырь»: беспрецедентная смертность воинов гитлеровской коалиции, попавших в плен под Сталинградом. Почему же из почти 100 тысяч сдавшихся вернулись на родину только 5 тысяч?
Состояние попавших в плен
Дистрофия - 70%.
Авитаминоз - 100%.
Обморожение - 60%.
Психическое истощение - 100%.
При смерти - 10%.
Плен
Под Сталинградом в поселке Бекетовка экстренно был организован лагерь №108. Госпитализировано 35 тысяч пленных, 28 тысяч отправлено на лечение в другие лагеря. 20 тысяч трудоспособных оставили для восстановления Сталинграда. Остальных направили в другие районы. Пешие переходы пленников по морозу к пункту назначения или транспортировки приводили к дальнейшему истощению и гибели в пути. Однако как раз среди отправленных за пределы Сталинграда оказалось больше всего выживших. К июню погибло 27 тысяч пленных - от ран, сыпного и брюшного тифа, дизентерии, дистрофии.
Советская сторона была не подготовлена к такому количеству узников. С начала войны до ноября 1942 года в лагерях содержалось всего около 20 тысяч военнопленных, выполнявших две задачи: служить рабочей силой и пропагандистской афишей. Прокормить мизерное количество пленных согласно объемам продовольствия, примерно соответствующим нормам для местных заключенных (около 700 г. хлеба ежедневно), было реально. Обеспечить же питание почти сотне тысяч военнопленных в условиях ограниченных запасов еды - проблематично. Поначалу немцы голодали - как в окружении. Дневной паек (не всегда выдаваемый) составлял 120 г. хлеба. Позже питание нормализовалось.
Смертность после пика первых трех месяцев снизилась. С июля 1943 до января 1949 потери в плененных после Сталинградской битвы составили 1777 человек. В 1949 году военнопленные, за исключением военных преступников, были отправлены домой.
Причины гибели
Специального геноцида побежденным противникам не устраивали. Наоборот. Медкомиссия ежемесячно осматривала контингент. Врачи лечили раненых и больных. Ослабленным выдавались увеличенные на 25% пайки, включая 750 г. хлеба ежедневно. Основная причина смерти большей части военнопленных - отказ Паулюса сложить оружие плюс голод, холод и болезни, подорвавшие здоровье бойцов вермахта в окружении.
стесняюсь спросить, как вы можете реагировать на битву сталинграда если вам её диктует непонятны переводчик с непонятного текста, мне это странным кажется
Conflict between humans is always fomented by a desire to control and exploit limited resources. No doubt, the first murder was likely committed over who had access to the local berry patch. My first acquaintance with violence occurred on the playground over who got to use the swing set, a battle I lost.
I don't think the video really tells you how bad the food shortage was for the German Army. While the Wehrmacht was surrounded only a limited amount of food and ammunition could make it to the Army, the supply drops weren't nearly enough for the soldiers. After going through this for a long time, most of the soldiers starved to death during and after the battle of Stalingrad, which explains why so many German soldiers didn't make it back.
Melkor! Morgoth Bauglir! Don't let him take you back to Angband. He makes Sauron look like Eddie Haskel.
I'd say react to TIKS incredible Stalingrad series but it's over 12 hours long!
yes she should definitly react to it
@@Chipmunkhopper Its 12 hours long, with another 24 hours to go lol if not more lol.. 12 hours in, he is barely past the Fall Blau part lol.
@@MarkVremWell then we better start as soon as possible XD
It would be better to react to someone who knows what they are talking about. TIK does not in any way adhere to facts or the truth. He has his own agenda with some very suspect views on politics in WWII and before. On his video on the Spanish Civil War he could not even get who fought on which side correct. When it was pointed out to him he said he was correct. That is EVERY history book, written by BOTH sides were wrong, and he, alone, was correct. He is a total moron.
@@Davey-Boyd What did he say that was incorrent?
if your watching anything about the eastern front it's important to understand just how many died, at the beginning you touched on it but I would highly recommend "the fallen of world war 2" by neil Halloran. it puts the insane numbers of deaths over the whole war into perspective and kind of ties up the whole thing together in some amazing animations. would recommend watching soon as it ties in well with all of the WW2 videos atm. anyways great video as always.
The reason the latter half of the twentieth century was pretty much all about oil (all the biggest companies, growing nations, the wars and uprisings) is because ww2 was an oil war. The Axis didn't have oil and knew they needed oil to get what they want. The allies had the oil and didn't want the Axis to get oil to do what they want. Germany and Japan both essentially went to war to get the resources they needed to fight the war, which seems stupid until you realise just how screwed they would have been later when war was even more about oil.
Average lifespan of 24 hours for Soviet soldiers. One reason there is no Band of Brothers on the Eastern front, it would last one episode.
In fact, there was an evacuation of the civilian population, but it went too slowly, in total, about 100,000 people were evacuated.
I should point out that by the time the Germans in Stalingrad surrendered most of them were in incredibly bad shape, starving and diseased. So many would have died anyway. Further Russian treatment of them was inconsistent. For example after the surrender Soviet soldiers were forced to give up some of their rations to feed the prisoners. However there was a lot of bad and negligent treatment resulting in at least 50 thousand of the German soldiers dying in the 4 months after the capitulation mainly of typhus. And has I said many were doomed anyway. Also at this time the Soviet Union was suffering from acute food issues in terms of feeding it's own population and soldiers. All of this helped to create a attitude of brutal negligence. There was also one additional factor very well known to the average Soviet Soldier.
Before the invasion of Russia it had been decided by Hitler will the more or less full support of his Generals to wage a war of annihilation against the Soviet Union. In which many tens of millions would be slaughtered, starved to death and driven into Siberia and the ethnically cleansed areas Germanized. (Right up to the Urals.) Part of this was brutal treatment of all Soviet POWs, who were to be shot and starved to death. Between June 1941 and the end of February 1942 2-2.5 million Soviet POWs out of c. 3 million captured were shot or deliberately starved to death by plan not malign neglect. Not surprisingly Soviet Soldiers and officers weren't exactly inclined to be kind to German prisoners.
During the war something like c. 65% of Soviet POWs died in German hands whereas c. 25% of German prisoners died at Soviet hands. Of the c. 4.5 million Soviets captured something like c. 1.5 million survived.
Germany treated its Russian prisoners as slaves. Most of them died. (Polish POWs were reclassified as civilian -and employed ss slave labour.)
Germans treated Slavs as slaves... if you want to be more punctual.
@@unwokeneuropean3590
True. The SS vision of Germany's exploitation of 'The East' included the genocide of the whole population -not just Jews. Only ethnic German mouths were to be fed.
Of the approx 3.5 million Russian prisoners taken after 1941, 2 million were dead within a year. This was a policy of genocide.
Stalingrad was a city! Yeah the picture is simplified :)
There were about 500.000 ppl living there before the Germans came
If the Germans had taken Baku, then it would've been game over. Half of the world's oil comes from there.
1. Most of the oil for WW2 came from the US.
2. How would the Germans have got the oil back to Germany?
3. If the Germans had got to Baku before the the Russians destroyed the oil fields the British planned to destroy them with aerial bombardment.
From the perspective of a German, Stalingrad is still a taboo subject to this day.
It is the great turning point on the Eastern Front. The battle with the most casualties in WW2.
On the one hand I see it that it was good that we lost the battle and with it the war because I don't want to live in a dictatorship today.
On the other hand, there are these large numbers of losses. Most of these soldiers were not Nazis. They were simple men who followed orders and dreamed of coming home to their families. My grandfather was one of the 6,000 survivors of that battle. He was a Russian prisoner of war. He talked little about it but when he did I would sit there and cry.
What these people went through, whether on the German or Russian side, we cannot imagine today in our comfortable society.
The sad thing is that people can only perceive the great losses as numbers, not as individual human lives.
We are currently living in a time when the last people who have seen this die and we lose contact with these events.
Most of the time it is exactly this time when new wars begin because the horror of the war has evaporated and the people who warn are no longer there.
I hope that humanity has developed at least a little bit further (honestly I don't believe in it) and learned from the past.
I think we all know what the next war would mean.
It's very sad that we didn't learn anything after that. P.S. If you're interested, read about Brest, it's somewhat similar to Stalingrad in terms of defense to the end, but for us it's not a military catastrophe, but an act of heroism and self-sacrifice (I hope they will understand me correctly and won't throw mud) Из России с любовью. Странно тут не увидеть комментариев на русском
As a brit you must pay reparations...
Stalingrad was the turning point of the war. The best and most numerous of the German forces were committed to the eastern front, and until that point they had had almost no setbacks. Stalingrad changed that. The nazi war machine was stopped and then defeated. It was a costly victory for the soviets but much costier for the nazis. And yes, war on the eastern front was total war with no quarter asked or given. Hitler wanted to destroy the Ussr and planned to enslave the Slavic population (he considered them “subhuman”) and that meant Russians had no other options but to fight to the bitter end. Some Russians fought for ideology, all of them fought for survival.
As for the treatment of prisoners, the number of casualties on the eastern front eclipses the casualties on the western one. The war there was at its most brutal, and hate for the invading forces was such that it’s a wonder 5.000 german soldiers were allowed to get back in the war’s aftermath.
Stalingrad was a city of over half a million, including refugees. It was a major industrial centre. Consider, the Luftwaffe killed 40k civilians in one day, so it must have been of reasonable size.
* Of the 110,000 German soldiers taken prisoner at Stalingrad only about 5,000 made it back home after the war
** Of the 97,000,000 civilians living in USSR in 1946 only 96,000,000 made it to 1948 due to hunger, deseases and lack of proper housing.
Do those German POWs still look like being treated unkindly to you?
Good video. Now I would like you to react to "winter war. war that became a meme". And while you're reacting, you can enjoy some sweet finnish fudge.
Your quote about trapping civilians inside the city to make soldiers fight harder was about Leningrad, not Stalingrad. :)
The famous man on flame was on top of a wall holding two "Molotov cocktails" and was going to throw them on the approaching tanks. When a bullet hit and ignited one of his bottles, he jumped (or fell?) from the wall and hit the first tank.
The USSR treated prisoners much better than the Germans. After the war, about 60% of German prisoners of war returned home (this does not include those who decided to stay in Russia). Less than 40% of prisoners returned from captivity in Nazi Germany.
Stalingrad was an industrial city. The idea that the German drive on Moscow was stopped by the weather is an old myth long since exploded by modern historians - for example the American military historian Robert Forczyk. Napoleon's army invaded Russia on June 24 and walked to Moscow by September 14th fighting one huge battle along the way. The Germans left from the same area as the French on June 22 and never got there. They were defeated by the Red Army and their own mistakes.
I really love how so called experts know things better - decades after the events - than the people who actually were involved in it.
@@thkempe People decades after the events have the power of hindsight and access to documents and researches. People who actually were involved in it had their limited perspective, biases and agendas.
@@090giver090 Researchers can only judge what has been documented.
While a simple soldier doesn't need documentation to notice, whether his truck or tank is stuck in the mud or not.
@@thkempe simple soldier sees only his and neighbors cars stuck. He doesn't know whether next unit fares any better and have absolutely no idea how the same situation affects the enemy. But despite not knowing he ASSUMES, and takes those assumptions for granted when share his experience.
You should read some books on methodology of history to understand what caveats different types of historical evidence have and how you should cross-check them not to fall into false assumption.
@@090giver090 The common soldier has a fairly precise idea of how the enemy is affected: namely, when he is attacked and shot at, without being able to react.
Or when he notices that their planes' engines cannot be started due to low temperature, but the enemy is able to fly every day. Toliver/Constable (1970) describe such a situation in their biography of fighter pilot E. Hartmann.
The drawing of Stalingrad is very misleading. It looks like a small village, when it was an industrial city with half a million population and large areas set aside for factory complexes. The central height in the city, over 100 m high, is depicted as a gentle slope down to the river.
The depiction of the encirclement is ridiculous. If the Soviets had attacked right up to the city limits, the 6.Armee could have beaten them. Instead, Zhukov and Vasilevsky directed a double envelopment that enclosed the land between the Volga and Don rivers, closing at Kalach, where the supply trains from Rostov were being reloaded to cross the Don river. This left two larger and one smaller airfield within the encircled area, but the Germans could only deliver a small part of the supply needs of Paulus' group (6.Armee, half of 4.Panzerarmee, some Romanian army corps). Over the next couple of months, the Soviets would slowly reduce the encircled area until only some parts of the city itself was held by the Germans.
Also, the 6.Armee couldn't breakout, since they had a lot of heavy equipment, such as artillery, that they needed to bring with them (not to mention the many wounded), and most of their horses had been evacuated to the Chir river earlier and were now outside the encirclement.
More people died in battle of stalingrad than in entire western front during the entire period after 1941 soviet invasion. Stalingrad was absolutely brutal. Also moscow offensive was not weather issue it was halted by extreme resistance and heavy counter attacks. Often neglected fact.
13:47 Great sources this guy has. The title image says it all about how serious the work is. The soviets had apparently never known sweets or Christmas trees 🤦. And if you are living in poorer conditions, you don't care to return to your home and loved ones that much? What is that supposed to mean even? It was easier for the Soviets to fight and die, cause Germans destroyed their country??
Stalingrad was referred to as the graveyard of the Wermacht. Your original theory probably relates to the siege of Leningrad
Yeah the scale represented in the video isn’t accurate.
Stalingrad (now Volgograd) is 331 square mi in area.
New York City is 300 square mi in area. That’s a good perspective right there
The bloodiest battle in the eastern front. Extremely brutal. Both Nazi and Soviet tear the living crap out of each other.
A good introduction video to Stalingrad. Just scratching the surface but still good.
Full in-depth review of Stalingrad is a college-course grade material )
Stalingrad, El Alamein and Guadalcanal all turned in the Allies' favour in November 1942, so together they were certainly a turning point.
I always thought that Midway was the turning point in the Pacific.
@@peterkragelund4794 certainly for the Americans. But for the whole Allies, I'd say the November date is more relevant.
@@lawrencegough And quite symbolic that they all happened in the same month.
Stalingrad showed that the Wehrmacht could be defeated, but the turning point was the battle of Kursk and the destruction of Army Group Centre after which the Germans never advanced again.
More people died in Stalingrad than entire western front
Let that sink in
more than half of german prisoners died within weeks of capture due to typhus and the effects of starvation while in the encirclement.
Stop saying D-Day was the turning point in the West, that is patently wrong. It was an incredibly important widening of the Front Lines by opening up battle lines in Western France but a turning point is where the direction of the war is changed such as fortunes of war turning 180 degrees in direction. The Western Front turning point would be more accurately described as the Battle of El-Alamein which was incidentally around the same time as Stalingrad. That was the point when German forces went from attack to nearly always retreating. In the Pacific it would probably the Battle of Guadalcanal where the Marines desperately held off the Japanese onslaught and despite the odds succeeded. Also the battle of New Guinea where the Australian militia stopped the Japanese on the Kokoda track. This is what a turning point means and D-Day does not qualify
War economy depends on resources.and a war strategy depends on supply lines.
"Day D" was very important opereration with no doubts. But Battle of Stalingrad, long before "Day D", was a turn-point in WWII, cause it was first example of strategic operation, that showed all other countries: Wermacht is not invincible. It was the greatest defeat in the history of the German Army. German morale failed. Victory in this Battle helped Soviet Army to capture strategic initiative till the end of the war. And there was a probability, that there would be no "Day D" without Soviet victory in Battle of Stalingrad.
"After Russia's defeat how were we to handle the German land and air forces liberated? England would be again bombarded, threat of invasion revived... And now! We start 1943 under conditions I would never have dared to hope. Russia has held, Egypt for the present is safe. There is a hope of clearing North Africa of Germans in the near future... Russia is scoring wonderful successes in Southern Russia" - British General Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff,
You are right, Stalingrad was (at the time) a very modern and heavily urbanized city, had several factories and the gigantic grain store, whose outline dominated the horizon.
Clemenceau the French prime minister at the end of WW said "oil is blood "
Actually turning point of that war was in Battle for Kursk, then everyone see that Wermacht warmaschine with all its migthy was broken. Thats the time when allies decide to open second front and starts to set it up, cuz they understood that Germany is loosing and will loose anyway, thats all just the matter of time. And they need to hurry up, to be in list of those who will devide Germany and its wealth. And D-Day real reason it not to allow USSR win alone and took France for change.
Stalingrad was renamed to Volgograd. I think the population is around 1 million.
I highly recommend watching Soviet Storm documentary telling of this battle.