THE EASTERN FRONT Documentary PART 1 – BARBAROSSA THE INVASION

[Music] these tanks are of course much more sophisticated than those things the german army and the soviet army had 40 years ago and today all our forces in central europe are fully mechanized forces but in those days we had only about 10 percent panzer tank or mechanized forces on both sides and still these 10 percent bore the brunt of the better their tactics were decisive for the outcome of many operations especially the defensive operations and therefore i think even 40 years later it is quite appropriate to study not only the theoretical doctrinal principles of those tactics but also the skills the practical skills of commanders and troops of those commanders and troops who stem for more than four years the tide of this numerically vastly superior enemy [Music] the german army which inflicted lightning defeats on poland in september 1939 and western europe in june 1940 was spearheaded by panzer forces which had been in existence for only four years the versailles treaty of 1919 had prohibited the development of modern offensive weapons by germany after world war one and so the first three panzer divisions formed in 1935 were disguised as motor demonstration commands and the first tank as a light agricultural tractor [Music] this did not prevent far-sighted officers such as colonel heinz guderian from studying the writings of leading british exponents of armoured warfare fuller and little heart he used armored cars motorcycles anti-tank guns and dummy tanks in exercises which may have looked primitive but were vital in developing command and control techniques particularly radio the first three models of german tanks were all lightly armed and nightly armored however the panzer iv weighed 18 tons and had a top speed of 35 kilometers per hour its gun was the somewhat inaccurate short barrel 75 millimeter despite its shortcomings it became the standard tank of the german army and remained in production until the end of the second world war while the germans were experimenting with dummy tanks the soviets had already begun creating powerful armored forces by 1932 soviet industry was turning out three thousand armored fighting vocals per month by 1935 the red army already possessed four mechanized cores each with one rifle and two tank divisions however soviet armor made a poor showing in the spanish civil war and it was decided to disband the unwieldy tank cause the winter war against finland was another disaster and gave the germans an exaggerated view of the red army's incompetence before the tank cause could be completely disbanded they were given a reprieve in june 1940 german panzer formations cut a swathe across western europe and even the powerful french army and british expeditionary force could not halt them in july 1940 in response to the german victories the red army ordered the formation of 29 tank cores each with a thousand or more tanks however not a single one of these new tank cores had completed its formation by the time the germans struck for example the 14th tank core of the western military district formed in march 1941 with an establishment of 1023 tanks including the new heavy kv and medium t34 could only field 508 tanks most of which were worn out t26s in june 1941 the soviet union had about five million men under arms three million of these were to be found in the 170 formations and supporting units deployed in the west of the country the air force which was not a separate arm had 1 500 modern planes and thousands of obsolete ones soviet russia's western borders ran four and a half thousand kilometers from the barren sea in the north to the black sea in the south the 3375 kilometers of land frontier was defended by 56 divisions to a depth of about 50 kilometers the second echelon containing most of the tank formations was to be found anywhere from 50 to 100 kilometers behind the frontier the reserves which also included a number of mechanized calls were deployed from 150 to 400 kilometers from the frontier at the outbreak of world war ii in september 1939 the german army had 70 active divisions of which 13 were classified as motorized and five as panzer divisions a typical panzer division had a panzer brigade with two panzer regiments each with two pounds of battalions each with four companies of light tanks and a motorized infantry brigade with one rifle regiment with a motorcycle battalion and three infantry battalions in 1940 the number of panzer divisions was doubled but the tank strength of each was halved by reducing the number of light and medium tanks and replacing them by fewer heavier models with increased firepower the infantry component was increased and this made a more balanced formation before dawn on the 22nd of june 1941 152 german divisions including 19 panzer and 14 motorized divisions and 29 satellite divisions totaling some five and a half million men invaded the soviet union this huge force was divided into three army groups spearheaded by the panzer divisions army group north from leb was to advance northeastwards to leningrad while his northern flank was to trap soviet forces with their backs to the baltic sea army group center von bok was to take the most direct route from brest litovsk to smolensk over the river at nipper and either north to leningrad or straight on to moscow a distance as the crow flies of 1 000 kilometers army group south von runstadt was to advance with its 600 tanks on kiev and the nipper valley and destroy all soviet forces between the pre-patch marshes and the black sea [Music] skin fire the artillery bombardment started at zero 400 hours and at about zero six hundred or zero seven hundred hours we crossed the bridge which had been taken by the infantry there were a few lights of your tanks amphibious steps but they presented no problem to us we pressed on fairly quickly in the direction of berdychev which was the objective of our attack and we had hardly any sleep since we drove right through both day and night with luftwaffe support until we encountered the first t-34s in front of berdychev my thoughts on crossing the russian frontier were as follows we were a very old experienced panzer division which had fought in poland and france and we felt superior to any opponent the russians were no real match for us this impression changed quickly on the very first day we crossed the frontier at tauragee and there we encountered russian frontier troops who fought so hard that by noon on the first day we had expanded all the ammunition in the panzer fall in the first days of war german forces were advancing very swiftly and this put the entire staff of the red army in a state of shock as it were this state of shock stayed with us for quite long time as far as i know the soviets weren't organized to fight until july or even the beginning of august this was in the region of stararusa to the west of novgorod but before that let's say in july the soviet army was retreating in such case that reconnaissance of the northwestern front had to send special detachment to find out not where the enemy was positioned but where the soviet units their own army was air superiority was another decisive factor by midday on the 22nd of june 1941 the luftwaffe had attacked 66 airfields and destroyed some 800 aircraft on the ground thereafter the germans enjoyed almost complete air superiority [Music] as the armored spearheads penetrated deeper into soviet territory they began to experience not only increasingly bitter resistance but the other problems of waging war in russia vast distances heat dust exhaustion and wear and tear on vehicles and equipment in many ways the soviet union was an ideal country for armored warfare but the enormous distances lowered the morale of the infantrymen who had to march most of the way so that the foot soldier often went into battle already exhausted russia had many roads but only one metaled highway from brest-litovsk to moscow the other roads were little more than tracks the wooden bridges which crossed the many streams and rivers were often too weak to take the weight of heavy military traffic [Music] the soviet railway system left much to be desired since the tracks were a wider gauge every kilometer of line had to be narrowed the few rail heads assumed considerable strategic and tactical importance once supplies had been offloaded they might then have to be transported as much as 500 kilometers by road to the front by the autumn of 1941 the red army had suffered a series of shattering defeats and encirclements and its losses in material and men were astronomical the morale of the troops was so low that at the beginning of the war some soviet divisions and even some armies encircled by the germans didn't even try to fight back but gave themselves up never before in the whole history of russia had anyone seen full-blooded fully armed divisions or cause surrender without a shot being fired at this critical phase of the operation when the germans had reached the line leningrad smolensk kiev there was a conflict of opinion hitler became increasingly concerned with the economic and political objectives such as the far-off caucasian oil fields and the ukrainian cornfields the field commanders insisted that the first priority must be the destruction of the red army the generals particularly guderian wanted to press on to moscow but three vital weeks passed before hitler finally decided on the ukraine the panzer forces were redeployed in the ukraine an army group south reinforced by guderian's tanks advanced into the crimea [Music] the offensive against moscow was finally resumed on the 30th of september 1941. the sudden switch took the soviets by surprise and soon huge red army forces found themselves encircled at briansk and viasma when on the 16th of october these pockets surrendered army group center had taken one and a half million prisoners since the beginning of the campaign the way to moscow appeared to be wide open but when the first ominous fall of snow suddenly melted the roads dissolved into a quagmire and the german advance was reduced to an average of 12 kilometers a day there was so much and such deep mud that only large tractors could move tanks could move practice could move but no lorries with petrol or ammunition could move forward and we had to wait until the ground throws up again and when the frost came we were off again to moscow we pressed on fairly smartly and we came to a road junction north of moscow about 25 kilometers from moscow and then an icy cold set in and also very stiff russian resistance the coal was so severe that our tanks were practically immobilized it was quite the coldest russian winter with temperatures more than 40 degrees below freezing and if one considers that at the time we had no winter clothing things were particularly severe as far as the vehicles were concerned we had difficulties in getting them to start in the mornings and sometimes we had to make fire under the motor as even with the jump starter the vehicles couldn't be started otherwise with everything stuck in the frozen oil the germans had fought their way over 900 kilometers and moscow was just 30 kilometers away when on the 6th of december 1941 with temperatures below minus 30 degrees centigrade the offensive was called off the soviet supreme command sensed that the germans had shot their boat and with reinforcements arriving from the far east the red army went on to the offensive sad and also astonishing for us was that the russians with their t34s paid no attention to the cold the siberian divisions that came here to europe just shook themselves and said oh how warm and fought us as a and the retreat naturally depressed us even more for the first time we felt that we were beaten in appalling weather and despite hitler's categoric order not to give up a single meter of soviet territory the germans were pushed back until they were able to establish a line east of smolensk south to the muse river there they remained until operations could be resumed again in the spring despite the optimism which continued to prevail in the furore's headquarters not one of hitler's primary objectives had been attained leningrad and moscow had not fallen while in the south much of the ukraine lay beyond germany's reach in many ways the soviets had contributed to their own defeats during the first months of the campaign by attempting a linear defense of every kilometer of their vast frontier they had spread out their forces so that the germans were always able to achieve overwhelming superiority in the areas of their main effort by placing their reserves so far back rudimentary communications bad roads lack of motor transport and inexperienced commanders meant that they were easily out fought by more flexible and mobile german forces the whole command system of soviet regiments and divisions is based on the principle of very strict subordination from top to bottom that extremely strict subordination existed before the war so the whole of the officer corps was trained to execute very precisely the orders received from above but just before the war many senior officers had been liquidated in stalin's purges and the newly promoted senior officers were quite unprepared to show initiative anyhow they were not expected to show initiative on the contrary it was forbidden by military regulations which specified that each officer and each man was only to execute the orders of his immediate superior initiative was considered risky those commanders that survived were mostly stalin's old favorites like the russian civil war heroes budjani boroshilov and timoshenko who were completely out of their depth when it came to marshalling vast armies in the era of the tank the german had to come to terms with the fact that in the t-34 the soviets possessed an armoured fighting vehicle which was far superior to anything they had at that time i was a lance corporal in a panzer 2 which anyway couldn't harm enemy tanks and the woman pocket we saw the t-34 for the first time and understandably we were astonished to see what kind of tank it was particularly the quality of its armor and its construction consequently this tank could in practice only be knocked out frontally by our 88 millimeter guns and from the side by our five centimeter or 7.5 centimeter anti-tank guns thus for example the 3.7 anti-tank gun was more or less useless we had to adjust ourselves to the idea that with the anti-tank weapons available to us the 3.7 and 5 centimeter tank guns we could not in practice knock out the t-34 our heavy companies with 7.5 centimeter guns discovered mainly by chance that high explosive shells with a quarter second delayed action fuse when fired at the rear of the t-34 tank either set on fire the diesel oil canisters or caused a fire in the engine compartment as a result of fire penetrating the air conduction gratings during the early months of 1942 the germans formed another four panzer divisions giving them an actual strength of 3 300 tanks on the eastern front in may 1942 armoured personnel carriers were still in short supply however and only one grenadier battalion in each panzer division was equipped with them despite their new designation of panzer grenadiers the other battalions continue to travel in lorries the point of maximum effort of the 1942 german summer offensive was in the course region army group b with three armies and fourth panzer army was to head for the dawn then swing south along its banks encircling as many soviet divisions as it could in the river's great bend between rostov and varanesh the soviets expecting the offensive to be resumed against moscow were taken by surprise when on the 28th of june 1942 800 tanks and assault guns at 4th panzer army broke through their lines in the ukraine and struck across the rolling plains to the river dawn [Music] as always the luftwaffe played a key role it had been ordered to support only the armored spearheads and an officer in luftwaffe uniform is often to be found up amongst the leading tanks one must make a distinction between the so-called flivo and the two kali as an officer or stukalite officer the task of the flavor at core level lay mainly in keeping the army corps command informed about everything that the air force was doing or at least everything that could be of use to the core command in assessing the situation whereas the stuka liaison officer was always at the front mostly with the armored spearheads [Music] the stuka is an officer usually stationed himself in the morning at daybreak at the focal point of the operations with his stack behind the tank an arrow-shaped trench was dug about one and a half meters deep and an orange colored cloth laid in it so that the dive bombers flying in would recognize both our main fighting line and likewise the enemy target i remember a very unpleasant situation in which we ran up against a russian anti-tank barrier consisting of t-34s and anti-tank aa guns and in just the type of terrain where we couldn't get ourselves undercover all that quickly the earliest officer who was in fact in the same dangerous situation as we were immediately called out the stukas and before the battalion could even fully react the stukas bombed the edge of the wood where the russian anti-tank front was located and thereby eliminated the danger we were facing the panzer army also had direct control over its reconnaissance flights and used them to seek out soviet troop movements in plenty of time to plan the most effective countermeasures momentum was maintained despite soviet attempts to strike at 4th panzer army's exposed flank as it sped towards stalingrad on the river vulgar with very little resistance when hitler made a fatal decision he ordered the fourth to swing south and assist first panzer army in its crossing of the river dawn [Music] on the 23rd of july the germans took rostov gateway to the caucasus when two weeks later fourth panzer army resumed its advance on stalingrad the soviets had just scraped together sufficient forces to hold the germans and their allies on the outskirts of the city the name alone stalin city was enough to ensure its special significance in hitler's eyes although the town itself had no strategic importance by committing the sixth army to the storming of stalingrad hitler deprived his soldiers of their one advantage mobility while pitching them against the inadequately trained but dogged adversary the red army infantryman

Channel: British Army Documentaries

Views: 425,390

Keywords: war, ww2, german, russian, invasion

Id: GkdhrzN1LTI

Length: 26min 52sec (1612 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 06 2019