[Music] well thank you all for braving the weather and very inhospitable preciate you all being here there are events in human history that change the course of humankind Gutenberg developing the printing press the Wright brothers flight Columbus discovering America fundamentally change what's happening we talk about battles I love talking about Donnell's some are more important than others it would not be a misstatement to say this is possibly the most important battle of all time because this fundamentally changed history that's why we're going to talk about it one of the things when you talk about the Russian front to start off to kind of put things into perspective and we'll hit this a little bit more the Russians lost 28 million people killed in the Second World War we lost 400,000 they would lose 400,000 in a single battle many single battles they would lose in excess of that when the Germans surrounded Russian armies early in the war they would lose 1/2 million so they would lose more than we'd lost in the entire war both in Europe and the Pacific in a single engagement another way to look at this and we lost a lot of people in World War 2 I remember watching victory at sea with my mom and it was the end when everybody came home and she started to cry I like mom why are you crying because I'm thinking about my my brother and I'm thinking about my my friends and the people who I went to school with you know and that's we sustained a lot of loss but if you took one of our casualties one of our dead from World War two and you wanted to equate that to the Soviet Union you would have to line up 70 people for every one person we lost they lost 70 the bulk of the Nazi military might was destroyed on the Russian front and again we study the Western battles we study North Africa d-day Market Garden all important but when we hit the beaches at Normandy the Soviets had already chewed up the German military and that's a big part about what we're going to talk about this evening couldn't help but put this up looks like it Soviet origin in fact I'm going to show you actual photographs of these two statues that are in Volgograd today Stalingrad is today known as Volga Grodd June 9 1941 got to start off here real quick Operation Barbarossa what's the objective well we're going to destroy Russia's power to exist because Germany needs Levens realm living room and Germany wants Russia's resources farmland space oil so this unbelievable army 150 divisions of German soldiers the the US Army in World War two was a hundred divisions so Germany invaded Russia with a hundred and fifty augmented by Italians Romanians Span Spaniards and Hungarians at that point in time German combat effectiveness is at its Apogee and many would consider the German army that invaded Russia the finest army of the 20th century initially unprecedented success prior to the war Stalin had killed off about 70% of his military leaders and everybody in the West England in particular was telling Stalin you've got millions of German troops on your border they're coming and Stalin didn't want to believe it he had a non-aggression pact with Germany and he's thinking no this is working out well this isn't gonna happen plus in the back of his mind he knows Germany invades it's going to be a disaster so as was said Leningrad is surrounded surrounded for 900 days and like you said a million people die of starvation German army gets within 30 miles of Moscow they can see the towers of the Kremlin but along the way the Germans are victory themselves to death in other words we're winning we're capturing hundreds of thousands of prisoners but the Russians are also learning you do not want to be taken prisoner by the Germans so previously if they would have a pocket of the half a million men they'd lay down their arms and they'd go into prison camps well more and more that's like they're gonna fight it out because they know being a German POWs not a is not a good thing Luftwaffe armor advanced across across the the Russian planes this is classic blitzkrieg Battle of Moscow like I said German armies overextended doesn't have winter clothing heavy rains reduce the roads to mud and then the frost makes them even more impassable Russians counter-attacked drive the Russians back now they don't annihilate the German army the German army is still intact but the Germans drive them back marshal Zhukov emerges that a great as a great Russian military leader and the Russians are learning losing to the Nazis means the annihilation of the Soviet Union so they are going to do everything in their power to the man to the last drop of blood to prevent that from happening one of the great enemies of the Germans is of course general winter in 1942 Hitler decides well we've got Leningrad surrounded we're having trouble taking Moscow but you know what we really want is in the Caucasus oil that is paramount to the German war machine so the Caucasus and oil is the primary objective now unfortunately fortunate and unfortunate at the same time the Russians are losing so badly as the Germans advanced into the Caucasus that Hitler thinks they're beaten we just got to mop them up we've won so instead of focusing on capturing the Russian oil fields he says hey we've got this great industrial city on the Volga named after Stalin let's go go let's go get that - so he mixes up his priorities and he divides his forces so the 4th Panzer army under Hoth and the 6th army under Paulus let's see Stalingrad in the Volga but even as they're told to do that Huff's Panthers are detached to help in the Caucasus so Hitler is asking his army to do more than they're capable of doing now why do we have such extraordinary loss of life in in Russia because of this guy and because of this guy Stalin is considered the greatest mass murderer of all time even before World War two he kills millions of his own people including most of his military leadership and of course Stalingrad is the city of Stalin Hitler considers his life and his ambition more important than Germany and the German people so any thought on his part of conserving the lives of his soldiers are secondary to him achieving his goals so when you got Stalin ultimate dictator versus Hitler ultimate dictator you don't want to be in either army because that means you're expendable German tanks advance into the Caucasus July 1942 the Luftwaffe bomb Stalingrad okay we're gonna take the city let's bomb it 40,000 Russians are killed the buildings factories roads are turned into rubble but it's a lot harder to advance into a city that's been turned into rubble the Germans have inadvertently made the city easier to defend the Russians are now better capable of defending the city they're Stukas on the attack and this is what Stalingrad looks like after it's been bombed Paulus's drive to Stalingrad slows again the Germans think the Soviet forces are collapsing so they think they can achieve all objectives at the same time now and this isn't just a problem for Stalingrad this happens again and again in Russia the satellite armies of the Hungarians the Italians and the Romanians good soldiers but they're not Germans and they're not motivated to the extent that the Germans are they don't have the equipment that the Germans have they're guarding the flanks of the German army so keep that in mind because the Germans have been slowed down the Russians have had time to build up their defenses including one hundred eighty thousand civilians are out there digging trenches fire points and tank traps it's not like you can say no they hand you shovel and you're out there digging the Russians have determined they are going to do everything in their power to defend this city and one of their expressions is there is no land for us beyond the Volga we lose Stalingrad ball games over do or die every man a fortress and fight or die this is what the Germans are going to be up against the Communist secret police the NKVD execute over 13,000 of their own soldiers to maintain discipline the Russian soldiers entering the fight no victory or death no other options now the fact that Stalingrad is on the Volga River is vitally important because Germans capture various points on the western bank but they don't cross over to the eastern bank so throughout this entire campaign Russian artillery on the eastern bank can shell the city and the Russians are able to continue we ferry men and supplies across the river so as the Germans are annihilating the Russian armies within Stalingrad the Russians keep feeding more troops more troops and more troops Chewie cough that's the gentleman in the center he's the general in charge of Stalingrad order to hold the city at all costs his soldiers fight room-by-room in the rubble to keep the German army pinned down in the city losses are extreme but again reinforcements are continuously supplied across the Volga River now what Chewie cough doesn't know is there's a much bigger plan that's being formulated and he doesn't have to win the Battle of Stalingrad he has to keep the Germans in the city fighting to take the last block after the last block after the last block that's his job no one thinks he's going to drive the Germans out but keep fighting so the Germans haven't yet taken the entire city now talked about blitzkrieg massive sweeping movements across the plains armored artillery air power not fighting block by block house by house encircling entire armies this is why the Germans won in Poland Belgium France and then in the initial campaign in Russia key to the German blitzkrieg is superiority in supporting arms and rapid movement to encircle armies so this is what's gotten them so successful every step of the way but that's not what's going on in Stalingrad in Stalingrad we have rotten creek rats war the Russian soldiers have closed the distance with the Germans so how do you call in artillery when the Russians are 20 feet away you'd be calling it on yourself how do you call in air power you can't how did the tanks get through the city the city's nothing but rubble there's no more roads so this is you know this is the rats war these vast sweeping movements have gone away and instead the order that a is hand-to-hand combat let me read you an account by a German officer I couldn't put it better than he did so I thought let me just read what he says we have fought during 15 days for a single house with mortars grenades machine guns and bayonets already by the third day 54 German corpses were strewn in the cellars on the landings and the staircases the front is a corridor between burnt-out rooms it is the thin ceiling between two floors help comes from neighboring houses by fire escapes and chimneys there is a ceaseless struggle from noon noon tonight from story to story faces black with sweat we bombard each other with grenades in the middle of explosions clouds of dust and smoke heaps of mortar floods of blood fragments of furniture and human beings ask any soldier what half an hour of hand-to-hand struggle means in such a fight and at Stalingrad it has been 80 days and 80 nights of hand-to-hand struggle the street is no longer measured by meters but by corpses Stalingrad is no longer a town by day it is an enormous cloud of burning blinding smoke it is a vast furnace lit by the reflection of the flames and when night arrives one of those scorching howling bleeding nights the dogs plunge into the Volga and swim desperately to gain the other Bank the Knights of Stalingrad are a terror for them animals flee this hell the hardest stones cannot bear it for long only man and doors so this is what the Germans have gotten themselves into so the Sixth Army is being bled to death by this struggle that just goes on day after day after day when you read about the campaigns in Stalingrad it's the campaign to capture the department store the campaign to capture a factory whereas previously the Germans are doing these vast sweeping movements picture of what the what the house a house fighting looks like a painting showing the Germans fighting inside one of the factories georgy zhukov and Friedrich Paulus now zu kaufen is overall in command Paulus not so much but I still wanted to compare the two men because they're both vitally important to this campaign Jew coughs a combat general savior of Moscow the only Russian general who will stand up to Stalin Paulus oldschool been around since World War one he's been told if you're successful you'll be promoted and the last thing Paulus is going to do is stand up to Hitler you've heard if anyone's seen the movie enemy at the gates the main character was Vasily Zaytsev this gentleman here he was a 26 year old Siberian an excellent shot credited with 225 kills the Germans wanted to get him so badly that the head of the German sniper school Thorvald was sent to Stalingrad just to kill Zaitsev I could not find a picture of Thorvald Zaitsev kills Thorvald he's credited with killing not just 225 German soldiers but 11 of them were enemy snipers nothing harder for a sniper than to kill another sniper it was a whole school of sniping and it really helped their propaganda efforts snipers and sound Grogg credited with failing over 3,000 officers and soldiers causing a heavy psychological impact I mean imagine fighting day by day by day and if you raise your head you're gonna get a bullet in it tough stuff this is what the Soviets and Jew cough have been preparing for as the 6th army and the 4th Panzer army are fighting in Stalingrad they have brought their forces from the East Siberian troops they finally realize they are not going to war with Japan Japan is so involved with the United States and Great Britain that Russia can literally take all of their troops and move them to the front with the Germans Zhukov has gathered over a million soldiers 13,500 heavy guns 900 tanks 11,000 aircraft they are north of Stalingrad and south of Stalingrad so on 19 november 1942 he attacks the Romanian army a hundred miles north of Stalingrad the next day south of Stalingrad they also attack it only takes four days for the Russians to slice their way through the satellite armies and they're going hundreds of miles and linking up well behind solid rod so the entire German 6th army portions of the 4th Panzer are encircled in Stalingrad over 300,000 Germans are trapped in the pocket part of the Russians launched the offensive well one of the ways is the cut yuusha rockets the solid organs they call them I to get video I wasn't able to pull that off if you ever see video of this it's the ultimate nightmare the sound and the horror that these things make Russians have developed would many consider the finest tank of World War two the t-34 one t-34 against one tiger the Tigers probably gonna win but this was mass-produced and was a very good tank and and the Russians built it in overwhelming numbers the Russian yield to storm of X I just found this out recently this was the most produced aircraft of world war ii and its purpose was ground assault take out german german troops on the ground especially german tanks on the ground more these were built in World War 2 than any other plane and they were expendable they lost over 70% of them but they were essential to the Russian campaigns happy day when the Russians army when the Russian armies linked up so 23 November the German army is trapped 4th Panzer 6th army this is the Volga down this way is the Caucasus and the Germans have entire armies that have head into the caucuses to carry the oil fields so the fact that these Russian armies they're not just going here they're going hundreds of miles beyond so not only are the German forces pushed back but if the Russians continue going this way whole German armies are going to be trapped in the Caucasus so it becomes not just essential to try to rescue the 6th army but to have the 6th army continue to pin down as much of the Russian forces as they can if the 6th army surrendered on 23 November that would free sorry that would free up entire Russian armies to continue preventing the German armies in the Caucasus from from getting back six the army surrounded Paulus signals Hitler army heading for disaster it is essential to withdraw all the forces from Stalingrad Hitler says no way somebody else may have said you know something this is really bad and my primary responsibilities to my men we're getting the heck out of Dodge Paulus would not do that like I said the size and scope of the Russian offensive there's hundreds of miles now between the German forces and the the trapped contingent with in Stalingrad now Germans are going to attempt to supply the 6th army by air 303 and 30,000 German soldiers require a minimum minimum a thousand tons of supply every day rush marshal Hermann Goering the head of the Luftwaffe he's fallen out of favor with Hitler so he's just back from Paris he goes and sees Hitler he's heard about Stalingrad he says my Fuhrer will supply them by air trouble is Goering has no clue he doesn't know about the conditions he doesn't know about the available aircraft he doesn't know about crews airfields he says doing this in order to curry favor with Adolf Hitler Hitler wants to believe that can happen because he doesn't want to leave the Volga he doesn't want to give up Stalingrad they used to call him dick ahem on Fat Hermann Ju 52s attempting to supply Stalingrad when things start getting really bad they have to have soldiers at the airfield to prevent people from storming the plane to get out of there they were evacuating the wounded as much as they could and if you had influence they were trying to get some people out but even even generals even relatives of some of the higher folks couldn't get out and were abandoned topless they don't have enough transport planes as this is happening Rommels in North Africa they're trying to keep him supplied Goering promises five hundred tons per day he doesn't even promise what they need he promises half of what they need some days they get 50 tons German soldiers run out of fuel ammunition and food horses dogs and rats are eaten to try to stay alive conditions inside Stalingrad are increasingly hopeless for the German army Russian offensive continues to roll like I said the Russians are threatening the Caucasus so now one part of the overall Russian campaign is annihilating the German army in Stalingrad but if they can cut off German forces in the caucuses that would be an even bigger prize conditions inside Stalingrad like I said running out of ammo starving to death 50,000 German wounded within Stalingrad they can't all be evacuated the doctors knowing they can't treat them purposely put them outside to freeze to death thinking that's more humane than how they might die otherwise German soldiers realize they're all doomed Russian loudspeakers broadcast every second every sect seven seconds a German soldier dies Stalingrad mass grave so this is what the German soldiers get to listen to him now Field Marshal Erich von Manstein 12 December leads a massive offensive to try to relieve the city operation winter storm gets to within 30 miles of Stalingrad this is the best last chance for the German 6th army to try to break out instead of just doing it Paulus ass Hitler for permission and again Hitler is no way so more than ever at this moment time the German army is doomed 8th January 1943 the Russians emissaries white flags go into the German lines offer Paulus surrender Paula says they're giving us an opportunity to give up Hitler States surrenders forbidden 6th army will maintain his position to the last breath of the last man Russians are told if you try to enter our lines again we're going to shoot it shoot at you for three days after that 8,000 Russian artillery pieces pound the trapped German positions German propaganda efforts Joseph Goebbels the minister of propaganda describes the defenders of Stalingrad as sacrificing themselves to stabilize the front compares them to the Spartans at Thermopylae goes back into history to try to justify what's happening German letters written from song rod often reflected somewhat different sentiments and I brought some excerpts from letters these are letters from German soldiers that were sent out with one of the last flights they never made it to their homes because the Germans confiscated the letters to try to gauge the state of morale within the city so I'm going to read you some excerpts I might have been killed three times by now but it was oh it would always have been suddenly without my being prepared now things are different since this morning I know how things stand and since I feel freer this way I want you also to be free from apprehension and uncertainty I was shocked when I saw the map we are entirely alone without help from outside Hitler has left us in lurch if the airfield is still in our possession this letter may still get out our position is to the north of the city the men of my battery have some inkling of the two but they don't know it as clearly as I do so this is what the end looks like Honus and I will not surrender yesterday after our infantry had we taken a position I saw four men who had been taken prisoner by the Russians no we shall not go into captivity when Stalingrad has fallen you'll hear and read it and then you all know I shall not come back the Fuhrer made a firm promise to bail us out of here they read it to us and we believed it firmly even now I still believe it because I have to believe in something if it is not true what else could I believe in I would no longer need spring summer or anything that gives pleasure so leave me my faith dear Greta all my life at least eight years of it I believed in the Fuhrer and his word it is terrible how they doubt hear and shameful to listen to what they say without being able to reply because they have the facts on their side in January you will be 28 that is still very young for such a good-looking woman and I'm glad that I could pay you this compliment again and again you will miss me very much but even so don't withdraw from other people let a few months pass but no more Gertrude and Klaus need a father don't forget that you must live for the children and don't make too much fuss about their father children forget quickly especially at that age take a good look at the man of your choice take note of his eyes and the pressure of his handshake as was the case with us and you won't go wrong but above all raised the children to be upright human beings who can carry their heads high and look everyone straight in the eye I'm writing these lines with a heavy heart you wouldn't believe me if I said that it was easy don't be worried I am not afraid of what is coming keep telling yourself and the children also when they have grown older that their father never was a coward and that they must never be cowards either today I talked to Herman he's south of the front a few hundred yards for me not much is left of his regiment but the son of a baker is still with him Herman still had the letter in which you told us of fathers and mothers death I talked to him once more fry him the elder brother and I tried to console him though I - and at the end of my rope it is good that father and mother will not know that Herman and I will never come home again it is terribly hard that you will have to carry the burden of for dead people through your future life I wanted to be a theologian father wanted to have a house and Herman wanted to build fountains nothing worked out that way you know yourself what the outlook is at home what the outlook is and we know only too well what it is here know those things we plan certainly did not turned out the way we imagined our parents are buried underneath the ruins of their house and we though it may sound harsh are buried with a few hundred or so men in a ravine in the southern part of the pocket soon these ravines will be full of snow final stages 27 January the Russians take out the last German airfield no more supplies coming in no one getting out 30 January 1943 Hitler promotes Paulus - Field Marshal no German Field Marshal has ever surrendered Paul estates I'm not going to shoot myself for that Austrian corporal I'll show you I'm not gonna cut myself Paul the surrenders on the 1st of February the Russians cannot believe he's a field marshal and ask if he has proof that he's a field marshal they can't believe they've actually captured the field marshal the rest of the Germans surrender on 2 February 1943 of the 330 thousand who were trapped in Stalingrad in November only a hundred eight thousand are left alive to be taken prisoner and as you can see from the letters probably quite a few Germans elected to not be taken prisoner serving German POWs marched off to Russian gulags in a similar fashion to the Bataan Death March many of them never never get to the prisoner camps they die along the way the 330,000 who were trapped in the initial encirclement less than five thousand will ever return to Germany it's called annihilation what were the overall results the drive to the Caucasus was shattered this battle ended the myth of German invincibility the Germans had been beaten back before Moscow but to have an entire army annihilated never happened before gave the Russians an enormous boost of confidence showed that they could compete with the Germans tactically and strategically German belief in their ultimate triumph was destroyed now Germans know they can lose the entire war road to Berlin begins in Stalingrad and I want to mention I talked about this a little bit the Holocaust of the rustle German war Russian losses 28 million German losses these are just on the Russian front over five million dead Russians lose 96,500 tanks and assault guns Germans forty two thousand seven hundred Soviets lose a hundred and two thousand six hundred airplanes Germans seventy five thousand seven hundred are against the Germans the Russians finally go to war with the Japanese at the end of the war but it's it's not the Holocaust that this was over two thirds of German losses in World War two we're on the Russian front this is Volgograd today this is what was Stalingrad this it's on a famous hill that was a key portion of the battle now I don't know if you can see this these are people to give you some perspective on how big this statue is I want to go there some day I just I want to see that that's a close-up of the statute it's called motherland calls Mamayev Kurgan that's a the hilltop in Sahlin grande was fought over many times a lot of people killed statue weighs 8,000 tons 16 million pounds stands 279 feet tall the Statue of Liberty itself not the base is 151 so almost twice the height of the Statue of Liberty 2009 was discovered the statue is leaning and could topple unless it's repaired so hopefully they'll hopefully they'll do that this is another statue this is you can see the motherland call statue from this but again just that the the concept of the magnitude of the loss in the city this was a picture taken this was a famous statue the barmal a fountain this is taken during the Battle of Stalingrad the children dancing in a circle you can see the city burning behind them this is the statue today and this is another one you can see the big statue in the in the background another massive Russian statue showing the struggle in Stalingrad that's it any questions sir absolutely absolutely the russians build these amazing tanks but we provided the trucks and the jeeps and everything else that they needed to have these massive offensives to surround the german army they could not have done that without the the vehicles that we had supplied them so absolutely essential stalin always wanted to downplay the role of america and helping the soviet union but it was it was crucial you can't take away what the russians did but our help was was essential in aiding them and their drive to success oh no that's that civilians also because it was the Germans would destroy entire entire villages and there was a partisan campaign that was strong and again the German retaliation it was it was brutal absolutely brutal sir that's a great question I want to say 700,000 was the initial population I don't think they can even guess I mean the loss in life of civilians had to be hundreds and hundreds of thousands somebody one of the books that I use they talk about after the battle the devastation to a city is more extreme that anyone has ever seen as far as destruction corpses unexploded bombs and talking about it's it's to rebuild the city first you have to take away the annihilated city that sits where it is the devastation was unbelievable and and they did evacuate children across the Volga to the best of their ability but also the Germans saw fleet of ships going across the Volga they'd attack it with with aircraft so it was it was horrifying sir our leaders said we love align ourselves with the devil mm-hmm good state second thing is did Russia ever pay back no and if you study the Second World War the Russians called it the Great Patriotic War if you study the Second World War from the Russian perspective they were betrayed by the West the Russians teach that as long as Germans and Russians were killing each other we didn't invade Western Europe until we were afraid the Russians were gonna roll over Western Europe and when you look at the fact that we don't invade Western Europe until June of 1944 and by that point the Russians were rolling over the Germans it's a it's a pretty logical point of view so even if they never paid back our lend-lease losing 28 million people to shatter the German war machine I think it was a pretty good trade on our part but if you study the Second World War from the Russian perspective why would the Russians ever trust the West because they felt betrayed by the West in world war ii and and i think it's a legitimate complaint on their part even if we invaded in france in late 42 early 43 and were beaten back but that caused the germans to pull some of their forces out of russia it would have been worth it because the most important thing was keeping russia in the warp think what happens if russia collapses and germany can take 75 percent of their military and moved them into france would have been a whole whole other war for us so i I know the Russians are so to threat to us now but if you study the Second World War and you look at it from their perspective I think they have a legitimate grievance and I like Jews do you think that motivation absolutely absolutely part of the reason why the Germans lost world war two was they would take trains that should have been bringing reinforcements to the front that we're taking Jews to concentration camps so part of the reason they lost was it's like are we gonna win the what's more important winning the war or having a Holocaust and to the Germans the the Holocaust was important enough that it negatively impacted their military campaigns so absolutely and the other thing that happened - you have to remember Stalin's the greatest mass murderer in history when the Germans invade Russia especially when they're in some of the the satellite republics like the Ukraine they're welcomed as liberators and if the Germans had treated those people well and said we're gonna liberate you from Stalin but in return we need your oil and we need some farmland works for me but the Russian people and the Ukrainians and all the other the Georgians the Abela Russians they found out very quickly as best it was under Stalin under the Nazis we're most of us gonna die so again the Germans shot themselves in the foot with the way they treated the Russian people they had an opportunity to get the support of the Russian people against Stalin uh hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers fought against Stalin they were captured it was like okay you can stay in a prisoner-of-war camp or we'll give you a rifle and help us beat Stalin I'll take the rifle let's go so there was a very strong sentiment there but the Germans the the insanity of Germany in World War two was these racial theories an ideology that totally interrupted their ability to wage successful military campaigns sir he was treated well and the Germans though I'm sorry the Russians used him for propaganda he stayed in East Germany after the war and I want to say he died in 1957 if I'm correct but he lived and he was he was angry at Hitler for not letting them surrender sooner for having his army annihilated and the way that it was so yeah when he when he surrendered I'm not gonna shoot myself for that Austrian corporal I mean that was his attitude so he he survived and spent the rest of his life under the Soviet sphere but I think he was probably fairly well treated because they used him in their propaganda efforts to if they were going to do it what the strategy is going to be that's a great question you have to remember World War one where you've had millions and millions of soldiers from Germany England and France dying in trench warfare so when Hitler rearmed and went to war the German people in the German military were like oh my gosh what are we doing and then they won so quickly in Poland and then they've won so quickly in France with relatively few casualties compared to World War one and I think what happened at that point was the German people wanted to believe that blitzkrieg had not only answered the riddle of the trenches but would allow them to achieve these tactical and strategic goals without a huge loss of life you've got to imagine can you imagine being a German citizen thinking everything's going ok and then hearing about this or having your brother there and all of a sudden it's like oh my gosh we're following a madman and he's leading us to ruin so I think there was opposition but hard to oppose a dictator and once Hitler achieved that initial success they wanted to believe and then after Stalingrad because the Germans had brutalized the Russians to the extent that they did it was downhill from there Russians are not acknowledging any other no what can you see on this Moscow there's lots of this place you don't see any reference to any other country itself Russia sure t-34 tank and the katusha waters or just played on the outside oh sure I'm not surprised because other than a lecture like this how many mainstream movies are about letting ride or Stalingrad or Moscow or course so again I think that's legitimate because the Russians destroyed 70% of the German war machine so to them everything else was a sideshow I can understand that completely boss can you tell us how that affected Roosevelt and the conflict between Roosevelt and Churchill and how sure Roosevelt before his death wanted to trust Stalin and Churchill didn't they differed on that and I think when Truman took over after after Roosevelt I think he saw pretty quickly early on that the Russians had basically occupied Eastern Europe I think during the war they were so focused on defeating the Germans and then defeating the Japanese that again like like Colonel cleaver had said we're willing to make this deal with the devil to defeat the ultimate evil of the Nazis and once that's over then we'll we'll deal with that but I think during the war there was this sense of get it done crush the Germans and we'll worry about what happens after that when you look at pictures that are taken at the big three conferences Roosevelt's always in the middle that's right because Churchill Churchill trusted style in that little we would not even say Oh exactly exactly the Russians we're also looking at a dr civilian population like for our Second Amendment as Jefferson said if we turn all of our heads in restraints mmm absolutely absolutely I mean our founding fathers had the Second Amendment not so we could protect ourselves from criminals or go hunting the purpose of the amendment is to allow us to prevent an overreaching government from assuming dictatorial powers over us so that was their biggest fear sir that last last question the early models were developed they actually build them in Stalingrad and before the Germans actually got into the factories there are accounts of the workers finishing a tank and becoming the tank crew and going directly into battle so I mean imagine if some of the great factory lines in the United States that was turning out Sherman's and b-24s and b-17s that if the workers jumped into the tank and went into battle but that's true that's not that's not propaganda that's that's how if that's how bad it was thank you all so much for coming please get your coming out on this
