The Attack of the Dead Men – Gas Warfare on the Eastern Front – Sabaton History 051 [Official]

i'm indy neidell and i'm part from Sabaton and this is Sabaton history there are a lot of legendary tales that came out of the great war yeah and that the song attack of the dead men talks about one of the most legendary and strangest and the most legendary yeah but the strangest and maybe most legendary Oh Soviets fortress was built in the late 19th century on a strategic hot spot near the river be a what is now Poland but back then was the Russian Empire it was just about 50 kilometers away from East Prussia though along the important railway line from Bialystok to Koenigsberg which conveniently ran straight through the fortress so it's kind of obvious why this was quite a headache for German High Command in the Great War this close to the German border and effectively controlling one of the few railway lines through all the bogs and marshes in the area the fortress had to either be taken or destroyed otherwise it would prevent any advance into northern Poland in fact the Germans had tried to take the fortress back in September in 1914 and again in February 1915 where the second attack had severely damaged much of the fortress defenses through heavy bombing but the main defensive ring had nonetheless held long enough for the Russian counter-attacks to force the attackers to break off by the summer of 1915 though the kaisers army was determined to try again now August von mackensen's gorlitz a tonne of offensive that summer had thrown much of the Russian forces on the Eastern Front off-balance and German and austro-hungarian forces advanced on a wide front eastwards seeing their chance German High Command wanted to also take Poland in a frontal attack an order Generalfeldmarschall paul von hindenburg on the offensive also Viets fortress was an important prize to take from the weakened Russian army so 12 German infantry battalions accompanied by up to 30 heavy artillery pieces set their sights on a Soviets the core of the Russian defenders under general lieutenant burakov Suki's command was made up of around 500 men from the 226 Infantry Regiment Zemlinsky supported by several hundred militia they dug in in several lines of Defense's and redoubts trying to give the German artillery as small a target as possible but once the assault began much of the fortress walls barracks and towers began to crack under the heavy German siege artillery but artillery alone won't take the fortress they would still need the infantry for that job and the Russians had enough machine guns and defensive works to make that very difficult and very costly [Music] Germans though brought in a fairly new and extremely dangerous weapon gasps now now gas warfare was fairly new in 1914 the French had used tear gas and in early 1915 the Germans had first used poison gas at Bali mph though that failed since then however it had had a devastating effect on the totally unprepared and ill-equipped Russian soldiers who died gruesome and horrible death in the deadly clouds of gas without gas masks to protect themselves the defenders of Oh Soviets were expected to suffer the same fate in the early morning of August 6th as the winds were finally favourable the German gas batteries opened up a dark green smog descended upon the battered defensive works the wave of gas crept over the Russian lines creating a Death Zone the gas used was made out of a mixture of chlorine and bromine while the bromine acted as a respiratory irritant the chlorine attacked the lungs chemically burning them right the chlorine attached itself to moisture in the air turning it to hydrochloric acid which then bit into the membranes and flesh of the lungs aggressively dissolving the soft tissue the Russian soldiers were literally choking on their own blood as every breath they took destroyed their lungs unable to breathe they died in agony coughing out bloody lumps of their own lungs but it was not only the lungs that suffered as the acid attacked the soft tissues of the eyes and noses burning them chemically as well the soldiers burned from the inside out many died within the first few minutes those further away from the initial attack tried binding wet rags and urine soaked shirts around their faces in a desperate attempt to protect themselves but that often helped little everything the wave of gas came in contact with began to die leaves and grass turned yellow and black it killed the insects and the animals in the woods there was no escaping as the gas crept into every ditch and into every hole even attaching itself to the Brass of guns and shells the defenders suffered heavy losses and whole companies in the foremost trenches were were simply wiped out only around a hundred men and the defensive lines further back survived still terribly burned as the gas dissipated German infantry battalions formed up while other units went to secure the railway line it was up to the seven thousand men of the German 76th llanfair division to storm the main defensive lines in front of the fortress confident that most of the defenders had been wiped out and that if you left would be overcome with ease the German infantry moved onwards the first lines were indeed littered with only the dead grotesquely deformed in their final moments of inevitable death the end or was it as the German troops moved onward over the shelled out ground they suddenly came under heavy fire the fortress artillery opened up on them and machine-gun fire tore holes in their ranks further out on the flanks the last Russian reserve companies coming up from the rear formed to counter-attack the German infantry seeing those friendly reinforcements rush in with their bayonets attached the 100 odd survivors in the trenches also emerged bayonets fixed they stumbled like zombies out of their dugouts crawling and limping their way into the open [Music] [Music] complete shock stop the German attackers dead in their tracks like dead men returning to life the Russian survivors came on heavily breathing gasping for air through destroyed lungs their faces scarred by chemical burns half-hidden with bloody rags they marched on thirsting for revenge for the terrible fate thrust upon them their tears were bloody their eyes burned red they spat blood and parts of their lungs as they advanced croaking and coughing like the Living Dead this horrible sight as well as the unexpected counter-attack halted the Germans and a deep panic set in they they hastily withdrew soon running away in terror as the panic spread through their ranks pushing their comrades aside trampling over each other stumbling over barbed wire as Russian artillery shells fell in between them the attack of the dead men came on accompanied by a bayonet charges the reserves and recaptured the lost trenches by 11 a.m. a few hours after the deadly gas attack the defensive lines were back in Russian control the Germans had withdrawn back to their own starting positions okay much of the battle remains shrouded in in legends and mystery and that is likely to remain so the casualty numbers on either side are unknown as are the German records of this battle though it was certainly a well-deserved tactical victory of a small Russian force over a much larger German force strategically it did little to preserve the Russian hold on Poland and also of its fortress had to be given up weeks later as it was too damaged and the whole front had to pull back anyhow and since after the Russian revolutions of 1917 this war was viewed by the Soviet Union as a capitalist war and a source of shame it was largely edited or written out in their history books nowadays post Soviet Union however the legend of the attack of the dead men is gaining more attention as Russia's interest in the great war increases and the certainly tail worth telling that is beyond dispute [Music] [Music] the whole song attack of the dead man it was one of those like super like okay we're gonna do an album about World War one and when I was presenting the idea to - record label nuclear blast they were like okay so you're gonna have a song about gas and I was like yeah sure for there will be a sort of such song we didn't know exactly how we're gonna cover it like in which area but the the story of the dead man was one of the absolutely like most legendary ones that we definitely felt that we needed to get in and then that's the fortress that's where we get in there have you been yet I know I never been there but we've received a lot of fan mails saying like this is something you really shouldn't write a song about so in the end we did and we had a little bit of a special way of revealing the song to the fans because in in Russia there's this guy who was famous radio topic is he's got a very popular YouTube channel he said touring heavy metal musician who does cover songs of bands like Sabbath on but he translates them into Russian okay so I asked him would you be willing to do a song which nobody has ever heard and do it you translated into Russia yeah and you release it before us and he was like that's a weird thing yes so he before anybody has heard the song yeah he heard it he recorded it he translated the interaction and he made a music video for it and put it out I I think that was a interesting way a lot of people said I'm crazy when I come with such a marketing I mean you could have sued him for millions of dollars yeah that's didn't there could have been a case like you saw a song why would I tell you but we actually gave him the song it was very popular and he did a good job and maybe we can listen to a little bit of Russia version of it [Music] now since people were asking you to write lots of stuff about the First World War and you've got you know about the Red Baron Lawrence of Arabia which one which one was the topic that most people asked you to write a song about I both well we'll walk yeah and the most requests are for the Christmas truce funny enough but we didn't have a song that's fitted to it so we couldn't get it in but second most wanted salt boss attack of the deadness you know it's interesting because it's only I didn't know that story before I started writing the Great War and but I'm a historian and you think but it's really the last few years that's become so much more people know so much more about it and guess where I found out about it mainly oh yeah from you so it's my job well we have the fans as well but where we were looking for information about it was mainly from you I can change the world one person at a time or one band at a time now I mentioned before in the in the history bit that there's not a lot of specific history about this specific battle like there's so many things we don't know because of so many of the records were destroyed or mislaid or intentionally destroyed during the Soviet Union because World War one was not a patriotic war it was a the imperialist war it's a problem that we often face you know people say oh here is a story and then you can't find the proper information about it these days it's so much easier but you I mean going back to the beginning when we started to write about it was not easy for us to find yeah sure I mean people who are into history people who are historians they know where to search where to find they have the network's to find it we we stand in the beginning absolutely alone we didn't even have the fans yeah so I'm thankful for where we stand now where we have good contacts like you for example very good reference one historians like Marcus and Vika and stuff guys there are awesome team who can help us with coming up with the information but in the beginning it was really difficult well you know you mentioned the Christmas truce and people asked a lot there the Great War and they still ask like well did they try anything like that on the East River because the Christmas truce was on the Western Front and they're like yeah how come there was nothing like that on the Eastern Front you know there's a very simple reason why there wasn't on the Eastern Front or the books that's that's the truth the the some Russian soldiers did try an Easter truce in 1916 they came out of their trenches on Easter you know to start the same sort of thing and they were all shot at and taken prisoner by the Germans and the Austrians because they used a different calendar and it was not it was 13 days different so it was not Easter to the Germans and Austrians they just saw a bunch of Russians walking out of their trenches for hanging out going hey come on here's some drinks and shot at them I wouldn't a shot at them drinks or drinks yeah never look a free drink in the moat that doesn't make sense I'll shut up nothing you can edit that out what are you doing oh yeah I'm having ah drinks drinks all right well since it's drinking time I guess it's time for us to say goodbye there yeah it is and thank you for everybody for watching this episode of Sabbath on his listen to me everybody we love the Sabbath on History Channel if you do it please share it with us support it on patreon YouTube and any way you want thank you for your support let's do this forever [Music]

Channel: Sabaton History

Views: 466,665

Keywords: Sabaton, Sabaton History, TimeGhost, Indy Neidell, Documentary, Historian, History, Powermetal, Band, Pär Sundstrom, Joakim Broden, Osowiec, Osowiec Fortress, Russian Empire, German Empire

Id: ZCCSMhQsey8

Length: 15min 36sec (936 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 23 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Massive-Gas]

Yay! One of the best songs from the album :)

[u/[deleted]]

In America, Gas kills Russians In Mother Russia, Russians kills Gas