Line of Fire (32/41) : Stalingrad "1942"
For educational purposes
The bitter, bloody and inhuman struggle for Stalingrad was the turning point of the war on the Eastern Front and a pivotal moment of World War Two.
Germany's defeat there signalled to the Allies at large that Hitler and the Reich could be beaten.
The bitter, bloody and inhuman struggle for Stalingrad was the turning point of the war on the Eastern Front and a pivotal moment of World War Two.
Germany's defeat there signalled to the Allies at large that Hitler and the Reich could be beaten.
Transcript
00:30In the autumn of 1942, only the grim resistance of the Red Army stood between Hitler and the
00:52conquest of the city which he sought above all others, Stalingrad.
01:03The terrible ferocity of the fighting in the ruined city has become a byword for savagery
01:08and human suffering.
01:10The dramatic events which were played out on the Russian front during the titanic struggle
01:15between Hitler and Stalin reached a peak of intensity and decisiveness here at Stalingrad.
01:32For the sheer depth of savagery and the appalling nature of the fighting at Stalingrad, it's
01:39almost impossible to find a parallel because this fighting was so intense, so protracted
01:46and also it took place under the worst imaginable conditions.
01:50It took place in the depths of a Russian winter.
01:52They did not fear dishonour, they did not fear death because they'd already been to
01:59hell.
02:00It was the first major unmistakable defeat of German forces in the Second World War.
02:23A whole army was destroyed, a quarter of a million men.
02:27It is inescapably a major reverse.
02:31The first year of the titanic struggle between Hitler and Stalin had been a successful year
02:36for the German army by any standards.
02:40Although they had not captured Moscow or Leningrad, German armies stood at the gates of both of
02:45those cities.
02:47They still held the strategic initiative and could choose to strike at either of Russia's
02:51great cities.
02:53The world waited with bated breath.
02:56Hitler certainly held all the aces in early 1942.
03:00I think the world and probably Stalin expected him to try and deliver a knockout blow against
03:05Moscow.
03:06Alternatively, you could be forgiven for expecting him to try and end the protracted siege of
03:13Leningrad.
03:14But what he actually did was to very cleverly shift the whole strategic focus of the campaign
03:20onto the war in the south.
03:23The German commanders tended to look towards the southern area of the Soviet Union with
03:27its oil reserves, its economic resources and its agricultural riches.
03:33Germany didn't quite have enough oil, it only really had the Romanian oil fields to draw
03:37on.
03:38That would help the German war effort and above all it would deprive the Russians of
03:43their valuable source of oil.
03:45So it was a very well thought out strategy and it certainly wrong-footed Stalin.
03:51What it did, however, was to stretch the German forces well beyond the limits of their capabilities.
03:59For the summer campaign of 1942, codenamed Operation Blue, Army Group South, now under
04:06the command of Fedor von Bock, was strongly reinforced so that almost half of the entire
04:11German armed forces in Russia were concentrated in the southern sector.
04:17The vast army group which was now assembled was so huge that command was split into two
04:22separate subgroups, named Army Group A and Army Group B.
04:29Army Group A, under Field Marshal List, was to attack into the Caucasus Mountains and
04:34to capture the precious oil fields which Germany desperately required in order to sustain her
04:40war effort.
04:42Army Group B, now under the command of Field Marshal von Weichs, was to drive from Kharkov
04:48in the direction of Stalingrad, a name that was to be burned into the pages of history.
04:56The task of capturing the city which bore Stalin's name fell to two principal German
05:01formations, the Sixth Army and the Fourth Panzer Army.
05:06They were supported by a mixture of Romanian, Hungarian and even Italian allies.
05:12Although many of the Allied formations would fight with courage and tenacity, they suffered
05:17from a lack of training and heavy equipment.
05:19There's been a historical tendency to blame the Romanian formations for all the ills that
05:26the German army suffered on the southern area of the front.
05:31The Romanian armies were of inferior quality to their German counterparts.
05:36By comparison, the German Sixth Army, which provided the main thrust on Stalingrad, was
05:42a highly efficient military machine.
05:45But it was a name which was to be remembered for all the wrong reasons, along with the
05:49name of its new and inexperienced commander, General Friedrich Paulus.
05:54Paulus was a very good staff officer with excellent social skills.
05:59He was not a commander of large formations.
06:04He had never commanded a division.
06:06He had never commanded a corps.
06:09And he would not, in the ordinary course of events, have seemed a likely candidate to
06:16command Sixth Army, which was a huge organisation.
06:19It was only the unfortunate heart attack suffered by his predecessor, Reichenau, that suddenly
06:26catapulted Paulus into this new and exalted position.
06:31So now Paulus, the man who was supposed to be an excellent office manager for the military
06:36genius Reichenau, is the man in charge.
06:41It is no exaggeration to say that the outcome of World War II was decided here, in the smoking
06:47ruins of the streets of the shattered city.
06:51The name of Paulus is irrevocably tied to the tragedy of Stalingrad.
06:56Tantalisingly, the Germans had almost succeeded in capturing the city without the need to
07:01resort to street fighting.
07:05Paulus hesitated for two vital days.
07:08The German Sixth Army could conceivably have won at Stalingrad, but only under one condition.
07:14That is, before or by September the 13th, 1942, they had managed to encircle outside
07:20the city of Stalingrad the two Soviet armies which subsequently defended the city, namely
07:25the 62nd Soviet Army and the 64th Soviet Army.
07:30People were making mistakes on the ground and the prime mistake among those is Paulus.
07:36What he does towards the end of August is to rest and regroup and gather his strength
07:42before he drives south to join with the 4th Panzer Army.
07:47His headquarters at Army Group B were urging him to move south and for two vital days he
07:52delays his movement to the south and that allows the Russian armies to escape the German
07:59pincers and get back into Stalingrad.
08:01But Paulus's army is not a rock and roll armoured formation, he's not got fast logistics, he's
08:09not got personnel carriers.
08:12His army advances on foot, it's logistics advance in horse and cart.
08:18He's only got one low capacity railway line to support his advance.
08:24The stage was now set for one of history's most cataclysmic battles.
08:38Before the ground fighting could intensify, the Luftwaffe took a hand in the proceedings.
08:43It was to prove a disastrous intervention.
08:47In order to blast the will of the defenders to resist and save German lives in the coming
08:53battle, more than 600 aircraft of the 8th Air Corps launched a series of devastating
08:58raids against the city.
09:01Unfortunately, the bombs of the Luftwaffe did little to break the will of the defenders.
09:05Wolfram von Richthofen, who was the commander of the 4th Air Fleet, had a very poor view
09:13of the fighting on the ground.
09:15He felt that the soldiers of the 6th Army weren't doing enough to prosecute the capture
09:20of the city.
09:22And his answer was to demonstrate what effective and skilled leadership could produce in terms
09:29of the application of force.
09:31So he orders the 4th Air Fleet to pound Stalingrad into rubble.
09:37In the past, Hitler had had tremendous success launching huge terror bombing raids against
09:45enemy cities, and generally, when you do that, they give up.
09:52In Stalingrad, what that does is it creates this wilderness of rubble and gives the defenders
09:59of Stalingrad the chance to turn it into what essentially became a fortress.
10:04Throughout the autumn of 1942, the German 6th Army slowly ground its way towards the
10:10capture of Stalingrad.
10:13The ruins of the city soon gained the nickname of the Minzer, from the appalling casualties
10:18which resulted from the terrible fighting which took place from house to house and even
10:23raged in the sewers of the devastated city.
10:32The names of the principal factories and city landmarks now enjoy an eerie resonance in
10:37military history.
10:39The Tractor Factory.
10:43The Barricades Arms Plant.
10:48The Red October Steelworks.
10:52The Lazur Chemical Plant.
10:57The Strategic Hill at Mumayev Kurgan.
11:03And the two railway stations are all synonymous with the unspeakable horrors which unfolded
11:08during this most bitter of battles.
11:13When the Germans made the decision to go into the town centre in Stalingrad, to actually
11:19go into town, they were accepting that they were going to get involved in street-to-street
11:27fighting.
11:29This is something they always avoided.
11:31The Germans did not want to get involved in street-to-street fighting because it did not
11:38allow them to use their natural advantages.
11:41This was an army that was trained and motivated to take part in a mobile war and suddenly
11:46they're pitched into this human Minzer that Stalingrad has become.
11:52Men were fighting from room to room in multi-storey buildings. They were fighting at the top and
11:57the bottom of granary silos. They were fighting across and along the great big tractor factories
12:06in Stalingrad.
12:09But it became invested with enormous psychological significance. Both sides really in this ghastly
12:17chest-to-chest struggle from which they couldn't be unlocked.
12:21It was barbaric, it was implacable. It was fought in the sewers beneath the city. People
12:29were fighting in human excrement with flamethrowers and hand-to-hand. They were desperate to control
12:36a single room of an apartment block.
12:39Despite heroic Russian resistance, by early October the Germans occupied 70% of the city
12:45of Stalingrad. By the end of the month, the Russian 62nd Army, under its newly appointed
12:51commander, General V.I. Chuikov, was penned back against the Volga River.
12:59However, battered ferries from the Russian-held East Bank, running a gauntlet of bombs and
13:05artillery fire, kept the encircled defenders' lifeline in place.
13:10The heroic men of the Red Army were supplied with just enough food and munitions to maintain
13:15their fighting ability.
13:19Nonetheless, in the third week of October, it seemed as if the Russians would finally
13:25be overrun. With German troops only yards from the bank of the Volga, only the inspirational
13:32leadership of Chuikov, who rallied his forces in person from the thick of the action, saved
13:37the situation.
13:39Once again, the Red Army's incredible capacity to rally and regain the strong points they
13:44had lost prevented the fall of the city.
13:47I think many commanders would have taken the logical decision to control the battle from
13:52the East Bank of the Volga, where they could have a clearer idea of the fighting and be
13:58able to direct the battle effectively.
14:01Paulus, for example, was 15 miles away with his base at the airfield. That's not a question
14:08of cowardice, that's his job. He's keeping an eye on the entire extent of the battlefield
14:13and he's in a position where he can direct operations. But Chuikov understands just how
14:20essential it is in this particular circumstance that he's actually seen to be there with these
14:26men.
14:27He is committing himself to Stalin's order, not a step back, ni shagun azad. And he is
14:34personifying the Soviet will to stand and fight at Stalingrad. So he's providing an
14:41excellent example to the Soviet soldiers.
14:44For two months, the Sixth Army had been grinding its way towards capturing the city. Now, they
14:50had almost succeeded. By early November, the relentless and bloody fighting had led to
14:55the capture of 90% of the now-ruined city.
14:59The final stages of the German attack in November had driven Marshal Chuikov right down to the
15:04water's edge. He had his headquarters actually on the water's edge.
15:08On November the 24th, the last week, yes, of November, running into the first few days
15:15of December, it appeared to be touch and go.
15:18The conditions in Stalingrad were now unbelievably ghastly. This was a complete orgy of horror.
15:26The city, already reduced to rubble by the bombing, was now torn apart by new fighting
15:32by day and by night. Stalingrad was the scene of constant, uninterrupted shelling from heavy
15:38artillery of both sides, mortars, grenades, small arms fire, and the terrifying sound
15:45of hand-to-hand fighting.
15:48It was no longer a question of controlling an apartment block, but sections of the house,
15:53with every inch of open ground covered by snipers who fought their own deadly duels
15:59in the smoking ruins.
16:01The famous sniper duels which were fought out in the ruins of Stalingrad are almost
16:08a novel in their own rights. There was even a famous woman sniper, Tanya Chernova, who
16:13claimed a great number of victims. But the most famous of all is Vasily Zaitsev, who
16:20is credited with having shot 500 individual German soldiers. So that's a big contribution
16:29for one man to make to a battlefield.
16:31The Germans pride themselves on their tactical excellence, and the idea of some Soviet snipers
16:38unseen killing the Germans, and the Germans not being able to respond in kind, gets the
16:44Germans really bent out of shape. So the Germans send the brigadier who commanded the German
16:52sniper school at Sossen, a fellow named Standartenfuhrer SS Torvald, out to Stalingrad to try to
17:02redress the balance. The greatest heroic sniper in the German armed forces is going to go
17:07out there and he is going to see the whole thing straight. And Torvald gets out there
17:12and he does a lot of damage, he's an excellent sniper, and a group of Soviet snipers hunt
17:18Torvald down and kill him like a dog. The sniping was constantly to the Soviet advantage
17:27because the Soviets were the defenders.
17:31The fighting at Stalingrad is generally regarded as one of the most notorious battles for its
17:36ferocity, its inhumanity, and for the conditions which grew more nightmarish as autumn gave
17:43way to winter. To add to the inhuman demands of the fighting, nature now added her own
17:50burden. The Russian winter descended.
17:53The German army was never as well prepared for winter as the Soviet army. Russian winters
18:00suit Russian soldiers because they know how to deal with it. It's their home territory.
18:06They have got thick wool overcoats, they've got hats with ear flaps, they've got thick
18:13felt boots that enable them to not freeze solid to the ground when they walk. The Germans
18:20had none of this. The Germans were wearing leather-soled boots that transmit the cold
18:26up through the ground and suck all your heat right down through your shoes. They had machinery
18:31that was manufactured to sensitive tolerances that was not capable of dealing with the cold.
18:38They had to build fires under their vehicles to keep them from freezing up. They were not
18:43at all prepared from an equipment point of view to deal with a Russian winter.
18:51After months of bloody house-to-house fighting of unimaginable horror, a new German attack
18:56was planned for November the 18th, but it was already too late. Behind the Russian lines,
19:04preparations were already underway for a counter-offensive to be launched on the 19th of November, which
19:10would doom the 6th Army's effort and spell the collapse of the whole German campaign
19:14in the south. North of Stalingrad, the situation was even more alarming. The Great Bend of
19:21the River Don was held by a mixture of Romanian, Italian and Hungarian forces.
19:28The Hungarians and the Romanians are traditional enemies, so it's not a very auspicious start
19:35from the first place to have two ethnic groups who can't stand the sight of each other. So
19:40the only thing the Germans could think of to do was to insert the Italian 8th Army into
19:45the line. So you had Hungarians, then Italians, then Romanians. So effectively what you've
19:50got is an army in the form of the Italians, who don't really want to be there, who are
19:55poor quality and very under-motivated, in among two sets of troops who can fight quite
20:00well but who hate each other. It's not a very good situation and it was perfectly obvious
20:07to many in the German high command that there was a potential disaster looming there. Not
20:13only did Hitler ignore the warnings of his generals, which grew more raucous as the campaign
20:18developed, but he continuously weakened the flanks of the two groups by siphoning off
20:24forces to feed his ongoing obsession with capturing the city named after his deadly
20:29rival. What that meant, in a broader sense, was that the Germans spent tremendous time,
20:38effort, thousands of lives, wedging themselves into this little hole on the bank of the River
20:45Volga. They bury themselves in Stalingrad. So yes, the Germans control most of the town,
20:52but what they've achieved thereby is trapping the single largest concentration of German
20:59combat power on the Eastern Front in one little town. So they've managed to do the Soviets'
21:07work for them. It is very heroic in the sense of individuals and the German army functioned
21:15very well as they clawed their way in there. But in the big picture, they have rendered
21:21themselves useless.
21:24Although the Red Army was holding on by its fingertips in the city itself, Soviet intelligence
21:30was well aware that the German army was being pushed to the very limits of its strength.
21:37Behind the Russian lines, the industrial capacity of the mighty Soviet Union was at last producing
21:43tanks and guns in the quantities needed. Vast reserves of manpower could still be tapped,
21:49and a massive counter-stroke was at last a possibility.
21:54Germans depended, for victory, on quality rather than quantity. They hoped always to
22:01use superior initiative, superior techniques, superior equipment, superior motivation, and
22:08pit that against the mass quantities of their enemies. There's an old communist saying,
22:16though, quantity has a quality all its own. And the Russians have got so many people,
22:25so many resources, they are able to produce four or five tanks for every one the Germans
22:33destroy. And as a result, you can't beat the Russians, not by just using quality.
22:42Worst of all, the Germans are fighting this battle at the end of a supply line which is
22:491,200 miles in length. Every single bullet, every single gun, every single piece of food
22:55has to be brought 1,200 miles from Berlin to Stalingrad, and that's the reason for
23:01the impending disaster.
23:10The Soviet high command saw with a keen eye that both sides of the thinly stretched line
23:15to the north and south of Stalingrad were held by low-quality Romanian, Hungarian and
23:22Italian troops. It was upon these divisions that the great Russian counter-attack would
23:28break. Many of the German high command were aware of the dangers, and Zeitzler, the chief
23:37of staff, actually flew to Hitler's headquarters in order to plead for permission for a withdrawal
23:43before the coming Soviet offensive had even begun. But Hitler was emphatic. He refused
23:49to move his troops from the Volga, and the rest is history.
23:54The Soviet counter-offensive, which opened on the 19th of November 1942, came as a huge
23:59and catastrophic surprise to the Germans. There had been hints. They suspected that
24:03something was going on, but they didn't realize the scale of what was going to happen.
24:07The first thing that happened was that as to the north of the Don, to the north of Stalingrad,
24:13several Soviet armies, including a tank army, fell on the German flank. But it wasn't
24:17a German flank. It was a flank manned by the Romanian army, and at sight of this Russian
24:23advance, the Romanians broke and fled. Down to the south of Stalingrad, a second pincer
24:29movement then began, in equal strength and in equal force. So the Germans discovered
24:33actually that they were really fighting virtually on two fronts, to the north and the south.
24:38They had very rapidly to try and organize a defense, which was extremely difficult under
24:41the conditions. They had to try and, if you like, stabilize the area of the front which
24:47the Romanians were supposed to hold but which weren't holding. They then discovered that
24:50they themselves were in the middle of a huge and a gigantic trap. It wasn't just a few
24:54kilometers. It was extending several scores of miles. This came as a very great surprise
25:00to the German command, and it was really the weight, the speed and the ferocity of the
25:05Soviet counteroffensive which really took them by surprise. This was no little local
25:09counterattack. It was a counteroffensive on a major scale.
25:13On November the 22nd, the two Russian armies met, and Stalingrad was encircled. The hunters
25:20had now become the hunted, and an urgent race against time began. Even the inexperienced
25:26General Paulus requested that he be allowed to reform his troops and withdraw.
25:32Herr Sennenberg had good reason to thank his guardian angel that day. He was actually on
25:38board a troop train headed for Stalingrad, which was halted on the journey which would
25:42have carried him to his death.
25:45In mid-November 1942, we drove further and further east by train, and on November 22nd,
26:00we arrived in Kalach. Kalach is a town on the Don. It's only a few kilometers to the
26:06Volga Knie, or to Stalingrad. That was the last train station before Stalingrad. Now
26:13we were supposed to be unloaded in Kalach. But when we were unloaded, the Russians were
26:19already firing at the train station in Kalach. That seemed impossible to us. And then we
26:26went out, looking for cover again and again, because there were grenade impacts. And for
26:31a few hours, the Russians had sealed the boiler around Stalingrad, and Italian and Romanian
26:39troops were marching by in masses. And in their sections, the Russians had broken through
26:46and had sealed the boiler around Stalingrad.
26:51During those first days of the encirclement, 300,000 men of the 6th Army, holding out in
26:57a pocket 20 by 30 miles, had barely six days' rations of food and ammunition for only two
27:04days of serious fighting.
27:08Ominously, it was noted that many of its artillery batteries were already completely out of shells.
27:15Hope of salvation for the German 6th Army rested on a rapid and speedy breakout before
27:22the Russian siege lines could take shape. There are many convincing arguments to suggest
27:28that had they seized the initiative, they would have escaped from the thinly held Soviet
27:32line of encirclement.
27:35On 25th November, again, Paulus urgently requested permission to begin the breakout. Many of
27:42the more pragmatic officers began to prepare their men for the obvious course of action
27:47– a breakout to the southwest, to link up with the nearest German forces.
27:53When the reply was received from Hitler's headquarters, it was greeted with disbelief.
27:59The Führer's orders were to move back into Stalingrad, where the army was to form
28:04itself into a fortress garrison and await relief.
28:08Merely given Stalingrad the title of Fortress Stalingrad, didn't transform it into one.
28:14What you had at best was a thinly held line of infantry in foxholes, and it was never
28:19going to be enough to hold the pocket against the superior Russian forces outside.
28:25With the benefit of hindsight, it is obvious that once the chance to escape was missed,
28:30the Sixth Army was inescapably doomed.
28:34At the time, however, many of the officers and men still held an unshakable belief in
28:39the powers of Adolf Hitler.
28:42On 26th November, Hitler delivered a personal message to the beleaguered troops of Stalingrad,
28:49ordering them to stand fast and promising to do all in his power to support them.
28:55The problem of supplies was turned over to the Luftwaffe, which had so efficiently supplied
29:00the pocket of Demyansk the previous spring.
29:03At Demyansk, a German corps, which had been cut off by the Soviets, was successfully supplied
29:11from the air by the Luftwaffe.
29:14And Hermann Goering, the commander of the Luftwaffe, thought this was so good that when
29:20the Sixth Army was cut off in Stalingrad, Goering went to Hitler and said,
29:26I can supply it.
29:28There's no need to back off from Stalingrad.
29:31I will use the air force to supply Stalingrad.
29:34But what happens at Stalingrad is we've got 300,000 men who are much further away from
29:41the German lines and who are facing a much better equipped, better organised and more
29:49experienced opponent.
29:51So although there are some parallels between Demyansk and Stalingrad, the sheer number
29:56of troops involved, 300,000, made it impossible to supply those men with the food and the
30:02ammunition that they required, with the consequence that this army was always going to starve.
30:09Hermann Goering immediately agreed to fly in 550 tons of supplies per day.
30:15Despite the scepticism of the army's chiefs of staff, the airlift began on the 25th of November.
30:22The results of the first days of the operation were ominous for the troops still fighting
30:27the rat's war among the cellars and ruins of the city.
30:31Only 140 tons were delivered on day one.
30:35The same quantities arrived on day two.
30:38And on the third day, no supplies whatsoever reached the desperate German forces.
30:44Only two landing strips were available in the pocket at Stalingrad.
30:48Both were about 15 miles from the city.
30:51The exposed nature of the two fields at Gumrak and Pytomnik meant that the Luftwaffe had
30:57no safe landing grounds in the vicinity of the 6th Army.
31:01As the German perimeter of control around the city shrank under Russian pressure, this
31:07situation consistently deteriorated.
31:10Thick fogs made flying hazardous, if not impossible.
31:14Freezing temperatures meant that aircraft servicing became a tortuous task for the German mechanics.
31:20Added to this, the Red Air Force was increasing its sorties and the tactics of its pilots
31:26were sharpening as the conflict wore on.
31:29Nearly 500 of the lumbering German transport aircraft were shot down in the doomed attempt
31:35to keep the garrison supplied.
31:38The airlift proved a fiasco and the German troops soon began to starve.
31:45However, the airlift was only part of Hitler's strategy to relieve the situation in Stalingrad.
31:52Von Manstein was ordered to form a new army group, Army Group Don.
31:58This scratch formation included the 6th Army and the elements of the 4th Panzer Army,
32:05which were also trapped at Stalingrad.
32:08Outside of the Russian siege lines, the relief force was made up of those parts of the 4th Panzer Army
32:15not trapped inside the ring at Stalingrad, supported by the remnants of the badly mauled Romanian forces.
32:23Despite the fact that this force was obviously too weak for the task, something had to be attempted.
32:30The orders issued to General Hoth in charge of the 4th Panzer Army were to
32:35bring the enemy attacks to a standstill and recapture the positions previously occupied.
32:42The other element of Von Manstein's strategy involved an attack by the mobile elements of the beleaguered 6th Army,
32:49who were ordered to break out westwards to meet the advancing 4th Panzer Army.
32:55When both assault forces met, they would provide a corridor
32:59through which the remnants of the 6th Army, still engaged in Stalingrad, could be withdrawn.
33:06Von Manstein's problems began even before his forces could attack the Russians.
33:11The reinforcements, which would give Army Group Don its only hope against vastly superior Russian numbers,
33:18failed to arrive.
33:20Worse, the Russian strength in the area was increasing.
33:24The 4th Panzer Army was forced to launch the offensive alone.
33:31Against all odds, by 17th December, Hoth's panzers had reached a position only 35 miles short of Stalingrad.
33:39Their presence had already forced sections of the Red Army surrounding the city
33:43to break away from the siege to block the advance.
33:48By 19th December, the relief force had gained another 5 miles,
33:53and was just 30 miles from making contact with 6th Army.
33:58Inside the pocket, encouraging rumours spread among the trapped army that help was at hand.
34:04Men, weakened by hunger and weeks of constant fighting, gained a new will to resist.
34:11They held on, doggedly straining their senses for the first signs of Hoth's relieving panzers.
34:18By mid-December, the river Volga had frozen, frozen solid,
34:24so that the Russians could build a road across it.
34:27So by mid-December, the Russians are able to supply their forces in Stalingrad
34:31with food, with fuel to keep warm, with ammunition to keep fighting.
34:37By mid-December, the Germans are cut off from most of their supplies,
34:44and as a result, each soldier is living on a couple of ounces of bread
34:51and half an ounce of sugar a day, and that is not enough to stay healthy.
34:57At that level of consumption, the human body becomes very vulnerable to disease,
35:03and under those conditions of extreme cold, frostbite is another serious threat.
35:12The Germans are dying mysteriously of some ailment that the German doctors don't understand.
35:20Well, they don't understand because it's starvation, that people are eating so little
35:26that they have no resistance to disease, so they've got typhus, they've got diphtheria,
35:33they are covered in lice.
35:37The surgeons have to use a spatula to scrape lice off of German soldiers before they can operate.
35:45Von Manstein urgently requested Hitler to allow the 6th Army to retreat towards him
35:51and bring the Russians under fire from the east and west.
35:55Once the German forces met, then the 3,000 tons of supplies
36:00assembled behind the 4th Panzer Army could be pushed through to those retreating from the city.
36:06It would be a desperate gamble for the 6th Army.
36:09Only a hundred of its tanks remained operational,
36:12and these held sufficient fuel for a journey of 20 miles or less.
36:17The physical ability of the half-starved troops under Paulus
36:21to mount any sort of mobile campaign was also questionable.
36:26Faced with these risks, and in possession of previous orders from Hitler to stand firm,
36:32Paulus did not attempt to break out.
36:35He doomed the majority of the quarter of a million soldiers under his command
36:40to slow and painful death.
36:43Manstein, in his own memories, went to great lengths to suggest
36:48that Paulus had the option to break out from the pocket and hadn't taken it.
36:53In reality, Manstein had ordered Operation Winter Storm,
36:58which was intended to be a relief operation.
37:01It was intended to get to the pocket and resupply the pocket.
37:05The actual breakout from the pocket would have been codenamed Operation Thunderclap,
37:10and Paulus was briefed to break out on receipt of the codename Thunderclap.
37:16Now, Manstein never actually issued that codename,
37:19so I think it's very unfair to suggest, as is frequently done,
37:24that Paulus had freedom of movement.
37:27Hitler had absolutely given him a categorical assurance
37:30that he didn't have freedom of movement, that he had to stay on the Volga,
37:34and for Manstein to try and suggest that somehow it was Paulus' fault isn't very fair.
37:40He certainly didn't have a direct order from his superiors to do that,
37:44and those kind of men, in that tradition,
37:47were very much men who did things by the book.
37:50That was what kept the German army functioning,
37:52that is what had got them all of the gains so far.
37:55By the new year, Army Group Don, having abandoned the 6th Army to its fate,
38:00had withdrawn as far as Rostov.
38:03One of the great arguments about, indeed one of the arguments at the time
38:07for the so-called sacrifice of Paulus' 6th Army in Stalingrad,
38:12that in fact it was doing something very noble and very important.
38:15In other words, it was actually holding back Soviet forces
38:19so they would not be able to advance further
38:22and cut off the other German army group which was operating in the Caucasus.
38:26In other words, it allowed the German armies which were in the Caucasus
38:30time to withdraw, time to fall back, time to escape an even bigger Soviet trap.
38:35That has a certain amount of force to it.
38:37That is perfectly true in the first part of the encirclement operation.
38:40But as time went on, and certainly by, let us say, mid-December,
38:44this argument had less and less force.
38:46First of all, because the Russians realized, from their point of view,
38:50they needed less troops to contain Stalingrad,
38:52and therefore troops were actually being released.
38:54And the second thing, the Russians were also developing plans themselves
38:58for a gigantic, a much huger encirclement operation.
39:03As the thermometer plunged, frostbite became as big a killer as the Russians.
39:09On Christmas Day alone, 1,500 Germans died from frostbite and exposure.
39:16Despite the fact that Army Group A had successfully completed its withdrawal by early January,
39:22for the miserable defenders of Stalingrad, the nightmare went on and on.
39:27One thing the bombing raid does is it ensures that nothing is left in Stalingrad that is flammable.
39:36Because so many of the German bombs were incendiary bombs,
39:40because the city of Stalingrad catches fire, and every wooden dwelling in Stalingrad burns.
39:48A few months later, when the Germans are sitting in Stalingrad,
39:51and they've got no fuel, and it's winter, and they want to keep warm,
39:55there is nothing left for them to burn.
39:58I think it's one of the enduring legends of military history,
40:02how these men were able to keep going, to keep fighting under these appalling conditions
40:07of starvation, of the worst imaginable Russian winter, with superior forces all around them.
40:16And essentially, their hope gone as well, because by this stage the world had gone round the army,
40:22that there was no real prospect of Hoth coming to their rescue.
40:26So it's superhuman courage, it's the will to live, it's the will to keep going in the face of despair when hope's gone.
40:36It's something that fortunately in our own comfortable lives we've never had to experience,
40:40but there was a phenomenon that somehow kept these men on their feet and going,
40:45and I think it's probably the sheer will to survive.
40:53By the end of January, the Germans are finally beginning to desert.
40:59They are no longer afraid of desertion, because death is preferable to living in Stalingrad.
41:07So even if they're shot while surrendering by the Soviets, it's not at all a scary thought anymore.
41:15They did not fear dishonour, they did not fear death, because they'd already been to hell.
41:23The ordinary German soldiers only gradually became aware of the magnitude of the disaster which was upon them.
41:29As the perimeter shrank, the airstrips were lost to the advancing Russian forces.
41:35Once again, Herr Sennedberg had cause to thank the gods of war for a second personal deliverance.
41:53We were sent on a march to a so-called Stuka port,
41:57and from there the transport planes were supposed to take us to Stalingrad.
42:02But in Stalingrad itself there were still two airports where the German planes could land.
42:09I believe they were called Pitomnik and Gumrak.
42:12And one of these two airports was taken over by the Russians.
42:17There was only one possibility to land there, and because of that we could no longer be flown in.
42:48So miserable were the German soldiers that suicide started to appear to be a welcome alternative to living in Stalingrad.
43:01And General Paulus had to specifically issue an order prohibiting suicide,
43:08because he was concerned that his army would kill itself en masse and save the Soviets the job of doing it for him.
43:16Paulus's order did not stop suicide.
43:19The German guns were now reduced to a ration of one shell per day to be fired only in emergencies.
43:27Even after the withdrawal of Army Group A, Hitler still refused to allow the suffering men to surrender.
43:34Crazed with hunger, they stubbornly continued to resist.
43:40With both airstrips now lost, the Luftwaffe was attempting to supply the men by parachute drops,
43:47which led to starving men being unable to reach the canisters which drifted into no man's land,
43:53or worse still, into the arms of their enemies.
43:57As the valiant men of the Sixth Army were gradually pushed back into the ruins of Stalingrad itself,
44:04the German pocket was split by the Russians into two smaller pockets.
44:09The end was now plainly in sight.
44:12But Hitler could not accept that the superhuman efforts of the defenders were reaching a conclusion.
44:19On January 30th, Hitler made Paulus a field marshal.
44:24No German field marshal since the unification of Germany had laid down his arms in the field,
44:31and the clear suggestion was that Paulus should either commit suicide or fight to the last.
44:37In fact, he did neither.
44:40The following day, January 31st, 1943, Paulus surrendered.
44:46With him were 90,000 emaciated, disease-ridden men who shuffled like zombies into Russian captivity.
44:54Only 5,000 would survive to see Germany again.
44:58I think this is one of the most heartbreaking episodes of the whole battle.
45:05Once the Germans have laid down their arms and become prisoners,
45:09these half-starved scarecrows are then subjected to inhuman and barbarous treatment.
45:1790,000 people are taken into captivity, and only 5,000 ever emerge to see Germany again,
45:27some of them as many as 13 or 14 years later.
45:31Now, they were fighting for a regime which was vile and inhuman itself,
45:37but their captors were equally part of an implacable, a hostile and a vicious regime in the form of Stalin's Red Army.
45:47And for the ordinary men and women who were caught in the middle of these appalling forces,
45:53you can only see cruelty and inhumanity.
45:56And I think that final chapter, for me, is the final irony.
46:00Even after the surrender, when they've been promised fair treatment,
46:03the Russians are going to break their promise,
46:06and everything is going to descend even further into more inhumanity for the next 13 years.
46:14It really is a terrible end to a terrible battle.
46:18With superhuman effort, the remnants of the garrison pocket around the tractor works
46:23continued to resist until February 2nd, but eventually, even they had to lay down their arms.
46:31One survivor who would certainly see Germany again was to be Friedrich Paulus.
46:36He defected to the Soviet cause in captivity and began to work on behalf of the Free Germany Group,
46:43a Russian-sponsored attempt to undermine the fighting spirit of the German army.
46:48Even today, their attempts are remembered with scorn by those who were also held prisoner by the Russians.
47:19Then it was suddenly said, you all, as he always says in a few words of German,
47:23you all German pigs.
47:26Also these people who wanted to force us or advise us,
47:34they followed the same path that we followed,
47:39and endured the four, five or six years in Siberia.
47:44Well, I don't want to say maybe a little punishment for that.
47:47I don't think much of such people,
47:52because betraying comrades is, I think, the worst thing you can do here in the world.
47:59Despite the best efforts of the Nazi propaganda machine to lionize the defenders of Stalingrad,
48:05with cartoon images of heroism like these from the pages of the Wehrmacht's own magazine,
48:11the magnitude of the disaster was plain for all to see.
48:15300,000 sons, husbands and brothers had been lost,
48:20and every town and village in Germany felt their loss.
48:25Quite literally, putting a brave face on announcing the disaster at Stalingrad
48:30to the surviving German forces in the east,
48:33the High Command ordered that the officers in the field read out the last message received by shortwave radio
48:40from the ruins of the tractor factory during the last days of the fighting.
48:45It read,
48:47We are the last survivors in this place.
48:50Four of us are wounded.
48:52We have been entrenched in the wreckage of the tractor factory for four days.
48:57We have not had food for four days.
49:01I have just opened the last magazine for my automatic.
49:06In ten minutes, the Bolsheviks will overrun us.
49:11Tell my father that I have done my duty, and that I shall know how to die.
49:17Long live Germany.
49:20Heil Hitler.
49:23I think the paradox about the Battle of Stalingrad is this,
49:26that neither side expected to fight it.
49:28The Germans didn't, and the Russians didn't.
49:31On the part of Hitler and Stalin, the Battle of Stalingrad became a test of will,
49:35it became a test of commitment,
49:37it became a test of capability, it became a political signal.
49:42And in the attempt to reduce Stalingrad, the city itself,
49:46then of course Sixth Army got drawn closer and closer into the city itself.
50:05The Battle of Stalingrad
50:35The End