How Did Soldiers Survive the Extreme Conditions of the Eastern Front?

every battle is both a victory and a defeat it depends which flag you fly in every theater of the second World War battles won and lost determined possession of territory of resources and of the strength to go on fighting for some of the battles it was the victory that most influenced the future course of the war for others it was the defeat this is the story of the battles won and lost but decided the outcome of the greatest conflict in history through history armies marched to face each other on favored ground and clashed to decide a campaign a war an Empire with the 20th century that changed the battles won and lost of the second world war happened everywhere and anywhere freezing temperatures arid deserts and mercilessly humid jungles these were battles in which more than the enemy soldier had to be overcome the day after the fall of Singapore John Curtin the Australian prime minister said that the battle for Australia has begun that every human being in this country is now whether he or she likes it at the founders of the government to work in the defense of Australia thank you and it did seem probable that Japan would continue to Drive South they had so far been Unstoppable on land in July 1942 you're looking at probably the most critical time of the Pacific War you're coming on from months and months of just constant Japanese victories they've swept everything that stood before them in the southeast Asia and then swept down through touch East Indies taking a whole raft of Pacific Islands the extraordinary speed with which Japan had swept over the lands they now labeled the greater East Asia co-prosperity sphere owed much to surprise to planning to determination so that when they were checked on one of the most hellish battlefields it is possible to imagine it was as though a myth had been exposed this was the action to cross the Owen Stanley range and fall on the New Guinea capital of Port Moresby the Japanese won it so that they can cement their Southern defensive Arc and also use that position to then harass the northern Australian cities and try and sever the link between Australia and the US they're also really concerned that Australia may be used as a launching pad for a counter-offensive so that's why their designs are there on Port Moresby in July 1942 a small Force comprising an Australian and a New Guinea Battalion was sent from Moresby to track Overland to Buna there was a small Airfield at Buna and general Douglas MacArthur commanding the Western Pacific Theater decided that he would need it for future operations in the Pacific the Allies face a very tough enemy in the [ __ ] these Australians fighting in Papua know just how tough and they know how big a job it's going to be to us the jet from his recently conquered Empire of islands the force that set off was named maroubra Force in mutual ignorance another force would be trekking towards them initially the Japanese wanted to take Portmore by sea in a in an impressive amphibious Landing however the Japanese defeat at Coral Sea and then later on at Midway meant the Japanese weren't able to do this by sea and instead they decided to land a small force on sort of Northeast tip of Papua on the Northern beaches around Buna Ghana and santananda with a view of attempting to move Inland across the impressive Island Stanley range towards Port Moresby along a foot track which we now know as the kokoda trail or the kickstarter track a force of 2000 under Colonel yosuke yokoyama had landed at goner on July 21st six days after maroubra Force had reached kokoda two days later first Contact was made between the Japanese and the heavily outnumbered Australians [Applause] the war diary for the Australian 39th Battalion says this for July 27th [Music] Lieutenant Colonel Owen after the destruction of all possible stores material and buildings at kokoda withdrew with all troops it was the beginning of a fighting withdrawal down the track towards Moresby which stopped a mere 50 kilometers from the capital whose lights the Japanese could see fighting withdrawals distinct from a retreat in a retreat you basically trying to break contact with the Enemy get as far away from them as you can so you can take stock and then really try and counter attack fighting withdrawal you're deliberately maintaining contact with the Enemy because you want to slow down their Advance as long as you can and Australians did that really successfully in the early part of September the Oz is rightly claimed to be some of the toughest troops in the world that fighting a New Guinea would sap the strength of the toughest it's not hard to understand the temporary exhaustion of these men having just been relieved they've come out of the Jungle front line for a rest in the first phase the small force that had Advanced fell back on isurava where it linked with regular Australian troops still heavily outnumbered the Australians after several days fell back again to stand on efogi [Music] part of the Australian force was cut off here by a Japanese flanking move and was isolated for two weeks by September 10th the withdrawal had reached yorubaiwa where it was strengthened by further Australian troops advancing out of Moresby this Force held the Japanese for a week then withdrew to a strong defensive position on emitter Ridge 50 kilometers from Moresby [Music] this place the Australians at the end of a manageable supply line and extended the Japanese lines of communication in a place where distance was not the issue Porters and mules brought up supplies the Japanese with their typical shortage of support elements were soon suffering terribly lacking food in feebled and racked by disease I've heard New Guinea described as the foulest terrain that was encountered by troops in the Second World War essentially you have 10 days worth of travel over the series of mountains at sens and descends 5 000 meters which when you look at it is more than that you would actually climb on the Everest Base Camp to the Everest summit and then you consider that they're doing that in hate while they're being afflicted by leeches mosquitoes they're Raven with dysentery that's a lot to contend with let alone thinking about the fact that you're also fighting a war and being shot at for every man wounded on the kokoda track seven were incapacitated by sickness bearers bringing supplies to the front line a trek of eight days necessarily consumed half the supplies on the journey Australians bring up their artillery and please remember that the temperature is around about 90 in the shade a wet steamy heat to death each remember these guys during their late teens Billy Timmy twenties they've been in the military for months they're probably at the peak of their Fitness and soldiers themselves talk about how exhausting this terrain was we know that soldiers particularly during the second part of the campaign as they move forward they start to jettison their equipment basically they strip down to all they really had was a shirt in their shorts everything was done to to strip down to minimize your weight because you just want to say what energy you have to go forward as the Australians began their move back along the track the Japanese facing them could not expect relief the attempted landing at Milne Bay had been repulsed and the commitment to Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands denied the force in the owen Stanley's any hope of reinforcement towards the end of September now coming under pressure from relatively fresh Australian troops the Japanese began their own fighting withdrawal rear guards were skillfully deployed along the track and it took bitter fighting firing sometimes at shadows in the jungle locking sometimes in hand-to-hand combat at templeton's Crossing and then iora Creek before kokoda was retaken it's very hard to appreciate how claustrophobic jungle warfare is when you can't see the enemy all you can hear is noises and you think was that a Japanese soldier was it a wild pig is one of her mates who's got lost I can't see him can he see me so terrain is key that sense of atmosphere and place [Music] the toll was horrific more than 150 000 Japanese troops served in New Guinea [Music] barely six percent of them survived [Music] what was left of the Japanese force made a Last Stand at oevi East of kokoda before retiring to the coast the fighting moved towards the sea and on January 2nd 1943 almost six months after maroubra Force had first set off to cross the kokoda track its objective Buna fell to the Allies [Music] the success at kokoda as any success will boosted morale and hardened the troops for the battles ahead every victory has been the result of tremendous effort great endurance and supreme individual courage a real beginning has been made in driving the Japs back from The Fringe of their Pacific conquests a solid foundation for the shape of things to come [Music] Woods and Water in the land of the midnight sun and the thousand lakes but at the end of a year very little Sun temperatures to minus 40 and more than a meter of snow this was the landscape into which the Red Army thrust not as part of the world war but as a cynical land breath taking the opportunity of the universal preoccupation with the main Battlefield to redefine its border with Finland Finland had been part of the Russian Empire and Stalin Soviet Union thought that it had dibs and in the winter of 1939-40 invaded Finland hoping to snatch some easy territory didn't turn out that way though Soviet forces invaded Finland on November 30th 1939 the assault by the 13th Army over the corellian Isthmus faltered against the Manheim line that the Reds were opposed they're said to have left over 8 000 dead on the Frozen Battlefield near summer in the south in the course of an eight-day attempt to break the Mannheim line further north five divisions of the Soviet ninth Army were met by small units that ultimately formed into a single Finnish division the ninth at a place called suomasami these troops were not strong enough to prevent Russian occupation of suamosami Village though the withdrawing fins had burned it as they had destroyed Bridges to slow the Russian advance all huts and farm buildings are destroyed by fire so the under the unfortunate Soviet troops can find no Shelter From the terrible Arctic weather and death by freezing has caused quite a big proportion of their losses [Music] with sewer musalmi in Russian hands the first stage of the battle ended [Music] Finnish troops were assembled on the Southern Bank of the kianta lake and were brought Under Fire on December 9th by an assault supported by artillery and grenade launchers the Russian tanks could not support the attack the ice was thick enough for men but it was too early in the winter for the tanks to safely cross [Music] this was the first evidence that the Red Army had not properly anticipated the conditions on the battlefield the weather was Arctic there was a meter of snow across the ground the Russians Who You'd think would be used to the those conditions in fact weren't they were colossally underprepared the 27th infantry regiment attacked from the East its Target the southern part of the village finish units pressed forward until after two weeks of fighting Soviet forces left suomosami and withdrew across the ice of Lake chianta with suo Masami back in Finnish hands Colonel hialmar Silas commanding put everything he had into dislodging the Russians from the vital rata Road area his plan was to cut the Supply route that reached over the border and kept the Red Army in the field ordered a road cleared across the frozen lakes parallel to the router Road in early January he Unleashed his assembled Force the fins were equipped white suited in the snow units of them ski troops all of them winter proofed the fins continue to defend their country against the Russian aggressor with the greatest Valor and tenacity the Russian dead cannot yet be counted but scenes like this are to be found over many miles of the front the Red Army command had made the mistake that the Germans would make in Russia thinking that a quick Victory would come before the bitter cold took its toll [Music] the fighting quality of the Red Army was also compromised by the brutality of Stalin's paranoid purges which had stripped the military of 36 000 of its best offices and that cast a Paul it grossly undermined the the morale of Russian commanders and that that malaise penetrated through their units the 163rd division was destroyed and the rata road was cut meaning resupply and reinforcement was not possible the climax would be the battle to evict the Soviet force from rata forcing them back towards and over the Border facing the fins was the elite motorized 44th division the Russian forces were immensely superior to the Finnish forces which were very lightly equipped the Russians advanced in in Long mechanized columns through the Finish forests covered in snow ice-covered lakes and that was their weakness because the Finns who were very likely equipped and moved on skis descended on the Russian columns cut them off and cut them to Pieces a tactic that the fins called moti which means piling up wood in the forests which is what they did to the Russians between the 5th and 7th of January the 44th was destroyed and the Battle of suomosami was over when in March a peace treaty ended the Russo Finnish War the situation in suamosami was unchanged with the Finns continuing to occupy the village and the road their Victory a victory for morale motivation tactics and terrain had cost the Soviet Union 27 and a half thousand killed or frozen to death 50 tanks destroyed and vast quantities of equipment lost and broken although it was a tactical Victory didn't help the outcome of the war because when Germany invaded the Soviet Union it brought Finland in as its Ally fins were eager to regain their territory and to exact revenge on the Soviets but it got caught up in this terrible Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union foreign on November 8 1942 an American Force sailing from the USA started to disembark troops in Morocco the many beaches selected for the landings ranged from the Western corner of Morocco to places hundreds of miles east Beyond The Straits of Gibraltar Beyond Algiers it was part of the complex operation to land on the western edge of North Africa and move East to affect a link up with the eighth Army moving West after its success at El Alamein many Landings were actually or almost entirely unopposed the campaign was known as Operation Torch and early in its unfolding American and German troops met in battle for the first time when two axis Army groups one under General Fon Arnhem the other Irvin Rommel moved forward to meet them on February 14th Von Arnhem launched operation spring wind attacking and taking city buzid after a day-long fight during the action American operations were hampered by weak Command Decisions and poor use of armor on the 15th Rommel launched his offensive operation morning wind destroying 40 American tanks during the first day of operations he pushed on to Spiegler [Music] General fredendell a controversial commander who never visited the front pulled his Force back to the kazarene pass [Music] linking with 10th Panzer Division from fonan's command Rommel assaulted the new position on the 19th smashing into the Allied lines and compelling U.S troops to withdraw [Music] Rommel personally led the 10th Panzer Division into the Catherine and ordered 21st Panzer Division to press through this Bieber Gap this move was effectively blocked by an Allied Force centered on the British sixth armored U.S first and 34th infantry divisions fighting around kazarene revealed serious deficiencies in Allied armor superiority of German panzers quickly defeating us M3 Lee and M3 Stewart tanks exiting the pass Rommel divided 10th Panzer to press north towards thala and West towards tibessa which he never reached by the night of February 21st Rommel stood outside thala and believed that the Allied Supply base of tibessa on the railway line was Within Reach but the Allied lines at thala had been reinforced by British infantry backed by U.S artillery and the position occupied on the 22nd was the limit of the German advance the enemy's resistance the Resolute was eventually broken here and there was plenty of evidence by the wayside as our Advance continued Rommel unable to break through elected to end the battle in order to reinforce the marath line the position that could prevent Montgomery advancing West from breaking through and linking up with the forces that had landed as part of Operation Torch finally the withdrawal of the enemy tank force just one isolated incident in the combined Allied effort to drive Rommel and Co into the sea Allied Forces reoccupied kaserin pass on February 25th the first major clash between American and German forces the battle showed an enemy's superiority not just in some material but predictably inexperience it also exposed flaws in the American command structure and Doctrine the American response to what was more a debacle than a battle lost was to initiate several changes including the immediate removal of the incompetent fredendor command of second Corps famously passed to Lieutenant General George S Patton Patton was controversial disciplinary methods got him into trouble and his pistol-packing ways had their critics but he was a fighting General and with the Allies on the attack an aggressive fighting disposition was required drove his troops from Africa into Sicily and out of the Normandy beachhead rallied them at the Battle of the Bulge and earned and loved the nickname old blood and guts in terrain as difficult as any fought over and conditions as harsh as any that soldiers had to endure the Burma campaign went on month after long month of thrust and counter thrust the first half of 1944 is dominated by the Japanese attempt to invade India they halted just over the Border and there the Japanese suffered the biggest defeats in their military history they leave fifty thousand dead on the battlefield that's their high water mark then they pull back at last towards the end of 1944 with Allied troops beginning to be strengthened with the tide turned in Europe and with Japanese resources threadbare the operation to expel Japanese troops from Burma gained momentum who operations were designed to expel the Japanese from Burma capital in which Slim's 14th Army would advance from Assam across the chinwin to re-establish contact with the Nationalist Chinese and Dracula a combined airborne land and amphibious assault on rangoon the 14th Army in the Burma theater were at the bottom British priorities the Mediterranean Europe and the home front took priority so it had very few resources it fought on scales of transport and other administrative elements that would have been unacceptable in other theaters the next thing that slim did and which is critical in this campaign is raise the morale and confidence in 14th Army to fever pitch General slim commander of the 14th Army has some heartening news of the war against Japan nothing can stop us winning but a great deal can be done to speed up and render less costly the final victory the 14th Army called itself the Forgotten Army slim seized on that and made the Forgotten Army something to be proud of in early November the Chinese sixth Army began to move operation Capital was launched on December 3rd with the 11th East African and 19th and 20th Indian divisions crossing the chinwin [Music] a few days later the Chinese first Army was coming south towards the British line of advance and took barmo [Music] General Kimura commanding Japan's Burma area Army was in a desperate situation he had little Prospect of resupply and was obliged to Marshal what he had with great care so he fell back before the initial Advance offering token resistance the lack of Defense encouraged slim to change the plan operation extended Capital was more ambitious his General ship was superb he convinced the Japanese that he was going to throw everything at Mandalay naturally they deployed the bulk of their forces to protect Mandalay it being a very important Communications hub for them but then through an elaborate deception plan slim deployed an entire core about a hundred kilometers South where they crossed the irawadi and then headed another 80 kilometers to take my tiller through which all the Japanese Communications to Mandalay and further north passed the Japanese were repositioning their defenses for the battle for Mandalay so West African and Indian advances in the arakan and 15th Corps hook along the coast to ramri were largely unopposed a water Patrol activity 37 the Japanese 15th Army withdrew across the irawadi by mid-January the 19th Indian division had established a Bridgehead across the irawadi the end of the month the Burma and Lido roads were joined at mongyu with the Chinese first Army striking South along the Burma Road and the sixth striking Southeast from barmo these Chinese units have been attacking Japanese positions guarding the Burma Road and they've been making progress [Music] fourth Corps pressed South initiating the battle for megtila which fell to the 17th Indian division their Supply Route was then cut by a Japanese counter-attack and the Veteran's 17th continuously in the field for longer than any other unit in the British army had to rely on airdrop supplies while repelling repeated attempts by the Japanese 33rd Army to take maktila's airfields [Music] the 33rd Commander General Masky hinder was forced to order a withdrawal on March 28th 19th Indian division had reached the outskirts of Mandalay on the 9th with most of the city cleared by the 11th a second British division Advanced from the West the focus now turned to Rangoon which would be assaulted by a combined operation codenamed Dracula 17th Indian was advancing South along the line of the sitang reaching pegu on April 29th by then the first promise of the monsoon the so-called mango Reigns were falling the monsoon made campaigning in Burma impossible for six months of the year and life was miserable at that time the Japanese with their long lines of communication primitive transport not having control of the air couldn't keep their troops supplied at least slim could many of the Japanese in Burma simply starved despite the weather it was decided to go ahead with the combined Allied assault on the capital on May 1st a Gurkha parachute Battalion dropped on elephant point at the mouth of the erawadi and the next day the 26th Indian division carried the amphibious assault they linked with the 17th advancing from pegu on the sixth [Music] but the Japanese had withdrawn towards the Thai border by the beginning of August the last Japanese had left Burma but they were not pursued the victory in Burma did restore some measure of British respect but it was too late because the earlier defeats in Burma and especially in Malaya and Singapore had been a stimulus to nascent nationalist movements they bore fruit in the independence granted to both India and Burma after the war the greatest defense against the U-Boat has been the unfailing courage of the men who bring supplies across the sea in the face of every risk of war and weather [Music] through the summer months the Arctic ports of mamansk and Archangel in the White Sea were vital entry points for Allied supplies being sent to the Soviet Union under the Lend Lease arrangement when the Soviet Union entered the war the Western allies immediately agreed to send as much support as they could to the Soviet Union and that meant going either the southern way through Persia which is the long way around or the cold way through the Arctic sea around the top of Norway and now this sounds like a really disastrous way to go about supplying the Soviet Union but in fact it worked uh 103 ships went through 1941-42 and only one of those ships was was sunk so Arctic convoys actually worked but in July 1942 the Arctic convoy system fell to pieces 39 convoys traveled to the north Russian ports and of 533 escorted Merchant vessels only 69 were lost to enemy action and most of those losses were taken by PQ 17 the designation of the Convoy that suffered more than any other anywhere in the war 17. the initials were merely those of the man who chartered the original Convoy route sailed from Val Fiora in Iceland on June 27th escorted by many warships and of course every man about really well head attacked by U-Boat by bomber and torpedo bomber was the first anglo-american Convoy to sail under British command it comprised 35 Merchant men carrying 297 aircraft 594 tanks 4 246 trucks and gun carriers and a further 156 000 tons of cargo sufficient to equip an army of 50 000 men in the values of the day the cargo was worth an estimated 700 million dollars the escort comprised four Cruisers three destroyers and two submarines as well as a pair of tankers to refuel the vessels as required shortly after sailing one ship run aground and had to return to Iceland on June 29th the Convoy encountered heavy ice damaging four ships one of which was given permission to turn back 33 ships sailed on on July 1st they were located by German forces the British admiralty was also monitoring PQ 17 and on learning that German ships including the battleship terpits were moving to intercept ordered the escort to break off to hunt the German Raiders and in view of the removal of the covering Force the Convoy was ordered to scatter in an admiralty order sent by Admiral Dudley pound at 2123 on July 4th followed at 2136 by a simple unambiguous order Convoy is to scatter turning point for PQ 17 comes on the evening of the 4th of July when the British from the admiralty this isn't a local decision it's an admiralty decision for the Convoy to scatter literally deserting those Merchant ships and making them find their own way to solve your courts they're only halfway through the voyage at this point and it leaves them at the mercy of the Germans the order came the Convoy had covered a little over half of its Journey spread across the ocean it would be far more difficult for a battleship to Target but the terpits played no part no surface Raider did but U-boats and the luftwaffe fell on the scattered and undefended vessels through the long daylight hours of the northern summer the messages from the isolated ships have been preserved and being bombed on fire six U-boats approaching on the surface abandoning ship on July 15th six merchantment was sent to the Bottom by the luftwaffe and six more by U-boats two more on the sixth five the next day and two more the final two on the 10th Churchill called it a Melancholy Naval episode it was rather more than that of the 33 ships that had sailed on without escort 23 had been sunk and more than 150 lives lost 180 000 tons of War material had been loaded in Iceland 64 000 tons were delivered Supply via the Arctic route was temporarily suspended not resuming until September when much stronger escort Arrangements were in place the convoy system was actually a work of Genius I mean the British tried in in the Napoleonic Wars and realized 100 years before that that it was a success if you went in a convoy you could get through in the first world war they proved it again as in the last war so in this the convoy system has proved its efficiency so convoys should be a way of getting supplies to where you need them in a safe way and indeed that's exactly what they proved in just about every other theater of the war we attack with depth chart in the submarine crippled by depth charges as forced to surface PQ 17 is different PQ 17 because of this this panic I mean you can only describe it as a mark of of panic on the part of Dudley pound where he abandons the Convoy it proves that convoys work because PQ 17 doesn't but why does he abandon them and it's a mark of just how how fearsome the German pocket battleships were you know these communist Raiders which they'd sunk most of during the war but the terpits remained and but Dudley pound didn't want was for American Cruisers to be sunk by the terpits and that's the reason I think why pq-17 was abandoned to its fate the offensive launched against Russia in June 1941 Operation Barbarossa was without parallel in the history of War along a massive front an armed mass of more than a million men machines tanks aircraft of 650 000 horses swept into and through the Soviet Heartland but Barbarossa did not drive for the capital [Music] after Smolensk fell in August German troops turned North and South there's a strategic dispute between Hitler and the generals in July and August 1941 in which the generals are unambiguously geared toward seizing Moscow Hitler does not want to do this he opted for the Battle of Kiev but two weeks into the Battle of Kiev so early September Hitler issues a war directive stating that after he has taken the Eastern parts of the Ukraine there will be a major new offensive directed toward Moscow when it came it was designated operation typhoon the Germans planned a giant pincer movement closing north and south to grip the capital third and fourth Panzer armies would move against the kalinen front and cut the Moscow Leningrad Railway second Panzer Army would move in the south and fourth Army would move from the West directly on Moscow it was like the same pattern as Barbarossa so we're making this enormous encirclement and cutting them into two or three salients and then destroying them separately and then the pathway to Moscow must be open the numbers finally involved were staggering towards 2 million axis with over a thousand tanks and 500 aircraft in the end more than 2 million Soviet troops three thousand tanks and more than a thousand aircraft but before the Soviet command could bring up reserves and reach those figures the Germans enjoyed superiority and at the start of operation typhoon success in their Drive fourth Panzer and second Panzer quickly isolated pockets at the asthma and briansk respectively that trapped Red Army formations [Music] when the briants pocket surrendered on October 14th 50 000 prisoners were taken many Soviet troops managed to escape five days later the vasma pocket was eliminated and here 670 000 prisoners marched into cruel captivity that would cost many their lives in many ways one of the fascinating things about the Eastern Front is just the enormous training enormity of the losses on both sides but especially on the Soviet side in 1941 so these catastrophic losses are sustained at that point Germany this is a real reflection of its hubris is pronouncing the war is one but the soldiers are reading the newspapers on the front line and they're shocked because that's not what they see yes the Red Army they've lost a lot of people but they're still sending in new troops they are still sending in people so they have more resources and it's so obvious that the Germans cannot hold on yes they can push on but at what cost in early October the first rains fell before long liquid mud was slowing the advance but by the 13th of October German troops reached the fortifications grown up to protect moscow's Western approaches the mojiz slime zhukov had by now been placed in command of the defense and he pulled troops back and concentrated them at Key strong points this weekend the mojizk line which fell on October 18th no line existed to hold up the advance in the South but bad weather and bad roads did Tula was not reached until October 26th the German invasion was moving it was moving slowly but it was moving inexorably it was winning and would soon be at the gates of Moscow but by late October two-thirds of the German motor pool was out of action fuel supply problems were chronic and casualties were mounting to rectify the deficiencies from the end of October until November 15th the high command ordered a pause the city of Tula about 100 miles due south of the capital was almost surrounding but this important factor it on held out and the workers of Tula carried on with their munition making to the very last minute possible what's interesting and what is also reflective of National Socialist military thinking is the Germans themselves know that this two-week pause benefits the enemy more than it benefits themselves so even though they know they need this time to bring up more supplies more offensive capacity they're also aware the Soviets are benefiting even more and that doesn't stop them from attempting typhoon 2 in the middle of November when the weather is even colder is going to be a frontal Advance really sending their men into the teeth of Soviet defenses if this strikes you as a bad idea you're right it is a bad idea on November 15th German tank armies moved restoring the pincer squeezing in on Moscow Clin fell on November 24th by the 28th panzers had a Bridgehead over the Moscow Volga canal but the first shock Army drove them back with a counter-attack German units now stood less than 30 kilometers from their objective and German officers surveyed the onion turrets of Moscow through their field glasses and then the most ferocious Russian of all entered the field it's already proving a powerful Ally and the Red Army makes full use of the alliance on November 30th General von Bock reported to Berlin that the temperature was minus 45 degrees Celsius and the tanks would not start lubricants were frozen soldiers in summer uniforms were dying and Frostbite was being seen oh on December 2nd a vermouth reconnaissance Battalion reached kimchi less than 20 kilometers from the Kremlin that was as far as typhoon got German forces are overextended they are exhausted they are at the end of very tenuous supply lines and they have absolutely no idea of what's coming the offensive from the Soviets will begin on the evening of the fifth and the Germans will then begin a massive withdrawal both in the north of Moscow and towards the South around Tula this Retreat will be catastrophic for the Germans it's only a few weeks ago that the German Advance on the Eastern Front had reached the very outskirts of Moscow itself only a few weeks ago Hitler's intuition told him Moscow would fall certainly things did look pretty black for Russia and for us [Music] the battle for Moscow was over and for the Germans the battle to hold ground and survive had begun there is no path to German success economically they are falling behind militarily they haven't got their operational Edge and they can't get it back so while the German Army still exists in being while it still occupies the Eastern front and while it still has got men and artillery and tanks and sometimes impressive numbers it's not able to ever end the war and unless Hitler's looking for a political solution which is not possible for him he sees this War ending only in Victory or utter total defeat and that's what's going to happen thanks for watching this video on the history Hit YouTube channel you can subscribe right here to make sure you don't miss any of our great films that are coming out or if you are a true history fan check out our special dedicated History Channel historyhit.tv you're gonna love it

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Keywords: history hit, history hit youtube, world war two eastern front, world war two russia winter, operation barbarossa, operation barbarossa ww2, operation barbarossa footage, eastern front ww2, pacific front ww2, australia ww2 documentary, australia ww2 footage, australia ww2 pacific, kokoda trail ww2, kokoda ww2, russia winter 1942, german soldiers ww2 footage, pacific theatre ww2, pacific ww2 documentary, wwii pacific theater, wwii pacific battles, wwii pacific documentary

Id: XpEeD343H_A

Length: 49min 28sec (2968 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 11 2023