I'm Indy Neidell and I'm Joakim from Sabaton. And this is another exciting thrill facts episode of Sabaton History! And this week, it's the Defence of Moscow. [Music] [Music] Defence of Moscow in 1941. The Axis invasion of the USSR in World War Two was codenamed Operation Barbarossa, and the drive on Moscow Operation Typhoon. Before I talk about this, I will say that it is an enormous subject, and over on my World War Two Weekly channel I covered the events of Barbarossa- the largest invasion in history- week by week, each and every week in detail with a whole bunch of special episodes about things like logistics, and planning and all. Please check that out for a better understanding, there is a link below. Anyhow, on June 22, 1941, Germany and her Allies began what was supposed to be Adolf Hitler's magnum opus, the conquest of the Soviet Union. Communism would be destroyed and Germany would have unlimited space for living, unlimited resources to live off, and the Slavic peoples as a servant class for the master Aryans. Despite the massive build up of millions of soldiers across the border, the attack took the Soviet Union completely by surprise. Josef Stalin had been warned repeatedly over the year of planning that went into the offensive that it was going to happen, but he didn't believe it, even thinking by the summer of 1941 that the rumours were a British plot to get him to turn on Germany. See, up until June 22, Germany and the USSR were operating under the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which had divided Eastern Europe into zones of conquest between the two powers. Germany was also importing huge amounts of oil every month from the USSR. Still, anyone who read Mein Kampf could see that one day Hitler was going to make an all-out attack on the USSR : it was his ultimate military goal. And June 22, 1941 was that day. That had not been the original date, though. It had been set for May 15th. I am aware that there are many people who believe the invasions of Greece, or Yugoslavia, or Crete in the spring of 1941 are what altered the timetable, but that is not the case. Before you comment, I should point out that history is what actually happened, not what we would like to have happened. The invasion of Greece was planned simultaneously with Barbarossa already back in late 1940. All the units were allocated already then and had their timetables when they had to head north for Barbarossa, and that invasion went more quickly than planned. The lightning conquest of Yugoslavia allowed that to happen, and the decision to attack Crete was not even made until after the Barbarossa date had been changed.
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The reason for the date changing was the lateness of the spring floods in 1941. You cannot bring 3.5 million men, 600,000 horses,and hundreds of thousands of tanks, trucks, cars, and motorcycles over the marshy, muddy ground created when the rivers of Eastern Europe break their banks in the flooding. It is physically impossible! And the ground was not hard enough for the invasion to possibly take place until the second week of June at the earliest. Anyhow, the enormous offensive was hugely successful straight off the bat and over the summer prisoners were taken by the hundreds of thousands as panzer thrusts surrounded "cauldrons" of entire Soviet armies. But even during its greatest successes, the operational flaws of Barbarossa could be seen. The Soviet Union has two great advantages in warfare- endless men and endless space -and the colossal distances involved for the attackers to cross and supply wreaked havoc with German logistics already by early July. There were few roads, and German trains were a different gauge from Soviet ones, so whole new track systems had to be built because the Soviets destroyed their rolling stock, installations, and well, everything as they fell back or were pushed back. Also, whereas in the Battle of France the panzers could fill their tanks at roadside gas stations, the Soviets use a different octane gasoline.Basically everything that was needed to supply the millions of men and their animals and vehicles had to be brought in from further and further away as the summer turned to autumn and the Soviet resistance grew stiffer and stiffer. But this episode is not about Operation Barbarossa, it is about Operation Typhoon, the German drive on Moscow. The orders for the operation are issued September 6, and call for the destruction of the forces blocking the Moscow Road in the limited time which remains available before the onset of the winter weather. Operation Typhoon begins October 2.Hitler announces : "Today begins the last great decisive battle of the year... At last we have created the prerequisites for the final, tremendous blow... which, before the onset of winter, will lead to the destruction of the enemy." Actually, the night before, he issues a proclamation to be read to the troops that : "In barely three months... you have taken over 2,000,000 prisoners, you have destroyed or captured 17,500 tanks and over 21,000 guns, you have downed or destroyed on the ground 14,200 planes. The world has never seen anything like this!"Which may well be true, but, you know, they still haven't won. Dr. Heinrich Haape, who's been with the spearheads of Barbarossa since June 22, writes that in spite of such staggering losses, "East of the Mezha, the Russians prepared a strong system of trenches, bunkers, tank-traps, and barbed wire entanglements... brought up supplies and gathered their strength to stand against us once more." And just a side note - there is no guarantee that even taking Moscow will mean the fall of the Soviet Union. Yet the offensive immediately breaks through the Soviet positions. Panzer Group 4 advances 15 km that day, Panzer group 3 twenty! On the 3rd in Berlin, Adolf Hitler gives his first national address since Barbarossa began. "On the morning of June 22, the greatest struggle in the history of the world began... Today I can state that everything has gone to plan... I may say today that this opponent has already broken down and will never rise again!"By that evening, the panzers have advanced a full 50 km. Panzer Army Commander Heinz Guderian reports snow on October 6. But, as John Keegan points out, it's hard to know which would be better for the attackers, a long autumn or an early winter. A long autumn will mean trying to advance through roads turned into swamps by the rains, which might not be possible. But an early winter- an early Russian winter- will freeze the roads solid enough, but will bring blizzards and frostbite. As planned, while the Germans advance, Russian peasants set fire to the already harvested crops, blow up village buildings, and drive the animals away. They will leave behind literally nothing but blackened earth for the Germans. And the Red Army is really starting to fight back. And yet, the armoured rings of Army Group Centre three panzer groups are slowly closing. But already after the first few days, Guderian's and Herman Hoth's panzers cannot advance temporarily for lack of fuel, the Luftwaffe doesn't have any sort of aerial supremacy, and the Red Air Force is making life difficult for the Germans on the ground. However, Soviet Army Chief of Staff Boris Shaposhnikov gets
a report that a German column 20km long is advancing unopposed on Yukhnov,around a third of the way to Moscow. The plain fact is that German units are operating behind Soviet lines, with nothing between them and Moscow. Josef Stalin says to mobilise everything and hold the Germans for a week till they can bring in reserves. A new defence line should be built west of Moscow, anchored on Mozhaisk. The Western, Bryansk, and Reserve Fronts are now authorised to withdraw, but it seems to be too late. By the 7th, disaster is unfolding. Georgy Zhukov has arrived from Leningrad to take over Moscow's defence, but he sees the scale of the disaster: both the Western and Reserve Fronts are in a huge pocket centered on Vyazma and the road to Moscow is, in fact, open. Exciting, isn't it? The weather changes at the end of the first week,colder, and with rain and snow- the rasputitsa, the autumn mud, is beginning. Vassily Grossman writes: "There's rain, snow, hailstones, a liquid bottomless swamp, black pastry mixed by thousands and thousands of boots, wheels, caterpillars. And everybody is happy once again. The Germans must get stuck in our hellish Autumn." But Army Group Centre's war diary that day proclaims : "All corps have the order: forwards! Forwards! Forwards!" By mid month there is panic in Moscow and people
evacuate east, but Zhukov has mobilated 250,000 Muscovites, most of them women, to build the city's defences. After three weeks of Typhoon, stubborn defence and ever more mud, snow, and ice have prevented the Germans from reaching the city. But all the while the German papers have proclaimed impending victory. American journalist Howard Smith in Berlin says that now really comes the breaking point for many German people in terms of trusting their government's accurate reporting of the war. Josef Goebbels's diary says : "our victory news is no longer accepted with the required attention and necessary importance..." And even as Vyazma falls, it drives home the question to the average German soldier, "Just how big is the Red Army?" Because they're still not beaten! Vyazma is just the first hurdle. And when Stalin gets the intelligence that the Japanese will definitely NOT attack the Soviets in the east until at least the Spring of 1942, he orders half of the divisional strength of the Far East to head west to hold Moscow. That's more than 8 divisions, with 1,000 tanks and 1,000 planes. Half a million people are now working on the city's defences, but the Germans are just 100 km away. However, "The blitz tactics, which had so utterly shattered the Soviet front in early October when conditions were dry and the panzer forces more tightly concentrated, were now impossible..."On October 30, Operation Typhoon comes to a halt until the winter weather can freeze the ground enough for some mobility to return for the Germans. On November 7, Josef Stalin gives his famous speech of defiance in Red Square on the October Revolution Parade, promising the destruction of the German invaders. Their drive is renewed November 15 in -20 degree weather. Lubricating oil freezes, rifle bolts break, sentries freeze to death, but the German advance continues. Advance units cross the Volga-Moscow Canal. General Konstantin Rokossovsky gets the order, "Kryukovo is the final point of withdrawal. There can be no further falling back. There is nowhere to fall back to." The canal is now the last big obstacle before Moscow is surrounded from the north. On the morning of November 28, German panzers are not more than 35 km from the Kremlin. Erich Hoepner's 4th Panzers take Krasnaya Polyana November 30 and are now in artillery range of Moscow. In the morning of December 1st, G nther von Kluge's 4th Army launches a furious attempt to take the shortest route to Moscow, the Minsk-Moscow highway. By noon the Soviets have been pushed back several kilometers and the Germans are 7km from the highway. Should they reach the highway and split the Soviet 5th and 33rd armies... Well, Zhukov cannot allow that to happen so he throws everything he has left into the breach. On December 2, a German combat engineer patrol reaches Khimki, 18 km from the city centre, on a scouting mission. This is the closest the Germans get to Moscow. In a deep and terrible freeze, with German soldiers screaming in the snow that they could not go on, the last German bid for Moscow had failed. On December 4, it is -37 degrees, blizzards have begun, and the Wehrmacht has been stretched to its breaking point and has failed. And at 3 a.m. December 5, the great Red Army counteroffensive begins! But that, my friends, is a story for another day. [Music] But what is the tale for today? I'll ask you a question in a second but I first ... It's the first episode with you that we've done in this new set? Yes! So what do you think? So far, so good. It's the first shot, there's a bit of sand on the floor so it's really super beautiful! Even the historical part that we saw was the first part of ... Yeah, this is all new and that's ... So this is what's gonna be the set for the next 11, 12 episodes, whenever they get to come out. Now, I'm holding a grenade. Why? Well, I can't let go of it. 'Cos then, we'll have to build another set. OK, but enough about me! The tale for today, all right, the tale for today, the defence of Moscow. Yes! Ok, well tell me a little bit about this. This is a bit of an unusual song actually because it's a cover - we've done covers before - but this is a cover of a Russian guy called Radio Tapok, and in the past he's done Sabaton covers. Well I would say, some of the most famous ones would be "The Attack of the Dead Men", "Night Witches", but check him out, seriously he's done a lot more stuff. And he made the song "The Defence of Moscow" in the style of Sabaton. So it is this song that he did in the style of Sabaton. And we thought : "Well, he's done a bunch of covers on us, why don't we make a cover on his stuff", you know. [Music] But you know, in terms of cover, everyone, every band, at some point does a cover of something, even if it's just messing around at the rehearsals and stuff. What about you guys? Oh, well, lately we did some... Well, I think one of the most famous ones, or popular ones, was "In the Army Now", which is, I think most people would think it's a Status Quo song but it's actually a Bolland & Bolland song. So we made a cover of the cover, I guess. Now, when you guys first got together, your first rehearsals and stuff, were you already writing songs then or was it mostly just covers until, you know, you beefed up your own repertoire? A bit of everything actually. When we started out and it all sort of, you know, had people come and go and it became Sabaton, and it was basically the same bunch of friends listening to Judas Priest, and Helloween, and Iron Maiden, and you know, drinking beer. There was a bunch of covers from all kinds of bands, but we really early, we started making our own music as well. And you planned to be like 100% like "our show is a 100% Sabaton music?" It was the idea? I mean, at that point, we didn't have a career plan or anything. We were just a bunch of guys drinking beer and having fun, you know. What about other people's covers that might be unexpected, or things that you think are a cover of something and they are not, they are a cover of something different? Ah, well, for me I mean, I hadn't known when I heard Johnny Cash play "Hurt", when that was released - I think it was Rick Rubin who did the arrangement for him - and I didn't know that was a cover until a year later that it was a Nine Inch Nails song. Oh, I remember Nine Inch Nails, I liked the Nine Inch Nails back in the day. Yeah! Back in the day! You see, it's not just Gina G and "Bailando" for me. I have a fairly broad palette! Here, you wanna hear a good story about... Oh, "Bailando", you should ask Tommy about that song. Could we get a picture of Tommy? Could we get a picture of the "Bailando" girls too? Could we swap faces? Right now... OK! So what is the story with Tommy and "Bailando"? No, you have to ask him you know, it's... OK, dammit! He swore me the secret. OK! No but here is a thing about a cover of a cover. You know The Kingsmen did a famous version of "Louie Louie" that everybody knows, you know, "Louie, Louie, han, han" and eveybody knows that stuff. And a lot of people know that that song is a cover. But the original version was by a guy named Richard Berry in 1955. And the original version if you find it - which we don't have the rights to - but it's super cool, it's my favourite version. It's really smooth, like 50s RnB, right. But The Kingsmen had not heard that version, they didn't cover that version. There was a guy in the Pacific North-West, in like Washington State and Oregon - where The Kingsmen are from - called Rockin' Robin Roberts, who in the late 50s did a cover of that and it has...'Cos the original version doesn't go "Louie Louie Aye-yi-yi-yi", that's not how the original version goes. Rockin' Robin Roberts sort of does some of that but his cover sounds a bit like the original. But The Kingsmen's cover sounds nothing like the original 'cos they never heard the original. So they did a cover of the cover thinking that they were doing a cover! Man, I love artist's names back in the 50s! Rockin' Robin Roberts? It's amazing! And Richard Berry was apparently no relation to Chuck Berry. But he was a California based RnB dude in the mid-fifties. The things you learn here on Sabaton History! Yeah, it's amazing!! I think that is actually it for today's exciting tale of glory and covers. I'm still holding this you know! I think they want to see the end! OK, that is it for Joakim and myself for today's exciting episode of the Sabaton History channel! Thank you very much! OK, and insert cool explosions effects and stuff NOW! [Music] All right everyone! That's it for this week. So remember to click that bell! It's really important! CLICK IT NOW! And then, hope to see you again in the near future. Bye-bye!
