Latest / Generals of WWII: The Art of Command / Battle of Stalingrad: the turning point of WWII (with Grant Harward) | Ep 16

Transcript

Battle of Stalingrad: the turning point of WWII (with Grant Harward) | Ep 16 · Generals of WWII: The Art of Command

0:08
Welcome to generals of World War 2, the art of command.
0:11
I am your host, John Viscardo. And with me, once again is the
0:15
great doctor Grant Harward. Those of you unfamiliar with
0:18
Grant, please check our recent episode on von Monstein and
0:22
Dumatrescu. And I invited Grant back today.
0:24
So we're going to talk about one of the bloodiest battles of War
0:28
Two. What battle is that Grant?
0:31
The Battle of Stalingrad. Yeah, before we get into that,
0:34
Grant has a fantastic book out. It's called Romania's Holy War,
0:38
which you can find on Amazon. And briefly, what is that book
0:41
about Grant? So basically it's looking at the
0:44
motivation of Romanian soldiers both in combat and committing
0:48
atrocity. And you know, kind of Simply
0:50
put, it's this idea. There's this idea out there.
0:52
The remaining soldiers just weren't that motivated because
0:55
they weren't that interested. They didn't know what they were
0:56
fighting for. A bunch of simple peasants, you
1:00
know, kind of forced into this whole thing.
1:02
And my research basically takes a opposite argument, that in
1:06
fact they were fighting for a lot of things and not just
1:09
regaining some territory that had been lost.
1:12
Well, we're going to come back to the Romanians here in a
1:14
little bit. Who?
1:15
I do need to say also, I work for the US Army Center of
1:17
Military History, so I have to put a little disclaimer that
1:20
what we're talking about today are my own views.
1:21
They're not the official position of the United States
1:23
Army or Department of Defense or federal government about the
1:28
Battle of Stalingrad. OK, the Battle of Stalingrad is
1:32
usually mentioned as the turning point in the European theater of
1:36
World War 2. Can you tell us kind of how we
1:39
got to this point in the war? Like I I know it's hard to sum
1:42
up but everything leading to this point.
1:44
Well, I mean, it gets to the point that this is the biggest
1:46
front of the war, is kind of the argument for that.
1:49
And this becomes the biggest front of the war because the
1:52
Germans win in the West, defeat France, expel the British.
1:55
But then they have a problem with having Britain surrender
1:59
and kind of finishing off the war.
2:01
And it kind of Hitler's weird kind of logic.
2:04
But the best option was then to attack in the East, knockout the
2:07
Soviet Union, which had been cooperating with Nazi Germany.
2:12
And because he was thinking that if I destroy this last major big
2:16
continental threat, that will then finally force the British
2:20
to make peace and recognize German hegemony over Europe.
2:24
And so then you have Operation Barbarossa.
2:26
It's launched in June of 1941 in this attempt to have a, you
2:32
know, a campaign that lasts a couple months that would destroy
2:36
Soviet power, kick in the door. The whole rotten edifice as
2:39
Hitler thought of it, as said, you know, would just collapse.
2:43
And, you know, you would have this huge giant kind of global
2:48
defining victory that would then cow the British into kind of
2:52
deposing Churchill in putting someone in power who would make
2:57
peace with Hitler. And that doesn't go that way.
2:59
Yeah, it's strange logic right there.
3:03
Instead, you have a huge campaign that has to be
3:05
relaunched, right, Operation Typhoon in October of 41.
3:10
But then, you know, try to just, you know, to grab that Moscow
3:14
finish off the Soviets, but you have a huge winter counter
3:17
offensive that, you know, pushes back the German army.
3:21
And so you have this, the Germans in this campaign lose
3:24
kind of over 300,000 killed, not counting also wounded and sick
3:30
and all that. And you know this is kind of
3:31
twice all previous campaigns up to that point.
3:35
Do you have an arm and invasion force of 3 million in 1941 that
3:39
has now been reduced about three 2.5 million and out of 162
3:45
divisions only about 8 are rated fully capable as they begin the
3:48
new campaigning season. Yeah, the Battle of Song Grad
3:53
lasted from July 17th, 1942 to February 2nd, 1943, making it
4:01
one of the longest and bloodiest battles in history.
4:04
Why was it particularly brutal? In a campaign that was already
4:08
brutal, why did it stand out? I think, you know, I mean, part
4:12
of this is just the scale of the Eastern Front, right?
4:17
It's just a gigantic campaign. And, you know, you have the two
4:21
regimes that are locked in a kind of total conflict.
4:25
I mean, these both of these totalitarian regimes very
4:27
ideological. You know, the Nazis are
4:29
fighting. They've taken off the gloves.
4:31
They put out what we call the criminal orders.
4:34
So it's it's incredibly bloody. I mean, the Battle of
4:37
Stalingrad. But in some ways it's kind of
4:39
mythologized. I mean, the entire Eastern
4:41
Front. I mean, the Battle of Kiev was
4:43
extremely bloody, you know, 41 or Battle of Moscow.
4:46
I mean, in some ways, but I think the big part of this with
4:50
the losses suffered by both sides, where the Germans in 41
4:55
were able to mostly give out and then kind of take it on the chin
4:59
a little bit in the winter. You know, in this period, you
5:02
have the Germans, you know, giving it out, but then also
5:05
losing an entire field army. And this is going to be what
5:08
makes it. And also these Allied armies
5:11
that they've had to call on and to order to make this whole
5:15
project even kind of thinkable. I mean, you know, because of
5:22
those that loss in combat power, they had to turn back to allies,
5:26
especially Romania, Hungary, Italy, to be able to launch
5:31
this. And you have these armies just
5:32
get destroyed. And that's going to be this, you
5:35
know, adding to this myth of, you know, Stalingrad is the
5:38
bloodiest difficult battle of the war.
5:42
Yeah, yeah. I mean, Leningrad was awful.
5:44
Siege of Leningrad and Moscow was terrible.
5:46
So yeah, the German offensive was part of, as you mentioned,
5:51
the Stalingrad German offensive is kind of a follow up to the
5:55
Operation Barbarossa campaign, and it's aimed at seizing the
5:58
oil fields of the Caucus and cutting Soviet transport along
6:01
the Volga River. So what was Hitler's plan and
6:05
what was Stalin's plan? Yeah.
6:07
So I mean, this goes to what are the options?
6:10
You know that you have kind of three big army groups.
6:13
You can go north with Army group north, you know, try to take
6:16
Leningrad all the way. That which is being starved.
6:19
Well, the Fins aren't going to help.
6:21
They weren't kind of proving that in 41.
6:23
So that means we're right. We can go in the center and go
6:26
straight from Moscow again. You know, they're very close
6:29
still, but at the same time is what the the Soviets are
6:32
expecting, which means you kind of look, the Germans look to the
6:36
South. They're saying and you know, the
6:37
Soviets aren't prepared here. They aren't expecting us to go
6:40
there. The Soviets also don't realize
6:42
how degraded, you know, Stalin's as he's making this.
6:45
They think that they can attack probably on two of these three
6:47
fronts where the Germans can't. But you know, the Soviets aren't
6:51
don't know that. But so the Germans decide that
6:53
we're going to go in the South. And part of that I think also is
6:56
the Allies, which I mentioned Romania is in the South and as
7:01
well as Hungary, which, you know, they provide their troops
7:05
along that southern axis. Italy is based, it's facing its
7:08
forces for this attack in Romania.
7:12
It's Romania is kind of like it's rear echelon base for the
7:18
Italian army in Russia. And so, and, you know, and Italy
7:23
had been kind of pushing to give more than given a core in 1941
7:27
and had been offering to do more.
7:29
And so the, the Hitler knows that he can get more forces.
7:33
Romania had provided a lot of troops in 41 and they knew,
7:36
they, they, they asked and knew that the Romanians would do that
7:39
again in 42. And the Hungarians being in
7:42
competition with the Romanians could kind of be cajoled and
7:45
providing a lot of more, you know, more forces in 42.
7:48
So you have this idea of like, we're going to go in the South.
7:50
We got these, you know, we got these allies that will provide
7:52
troops. I also think you have the Black
7:55
Sea down there, which is an important logistical hub, you
7:58
know, highway where you know, you have Romanian and Bulgarian
8:02
ports, you have the Danube and you can kind of set up these
8:05
convoys and move a lot of stuff very quickly.
8:08
And so you and that they're about to take over so that
8:11
Stolpol, so you have Crimea to act as you know, a base of
8:15
operations to jump in. And so you then you can go.
8:17
And this is the other idea is back in the South, there's these
8:21
big economic resources. On the other side, Stalin is
8:25
kind of trading space for time, right, to bring up
8:27
reinforcements and to move his factories farther east and all
8:30
that kind of stuff. Yeah.
8:32
And but if you think like up north, like what if you tack in
8:35
the north, that is like a resource like import area, like
8:38
it's like negligible, right? I mean you have to bring in food
8:41
to feed those places even in Moscow.
8:44
But down in the South, I mean, that's, you know, why you grab
8:46
Ukraine. Why if you want to get Ukraine
8:48
in the beginning and then you know, is because that's what the
8:51
bread basket of the Soviet Union.
8:53
And so you can grab even more of that bread basket.
8:55
Plus you've got the oil fields in the South, whereas up north,
8:58
if you grab that territory, you just kind of grab, you know,
9:00
frozen or, you know, taiga like up in around like Leningrad and
9:05
Moscow is more of a more of a target.
9:07
So Hitler, if he's looking at like this longer war, he's
9:11
looking now the fact that he declared war in the United
9:13
States. So you're facing a kind of this
9:16
big global war. So Hitler's idea is like, I have
9:18
my allies in the South. We will kind of flat catch the
9:22
Soviets flat footed in the South.
9:25
There's an expectation that you can destroy a lot of Soviet
9:29
armies in in in encirclement battles again.
9:33
And then you can grab these invaluable resources down the
9:36
caucuses, especially oil, and deprive it of from from the
9:41
Soviets and also cut the Volga, which is important logistical, a
9:45
highway. And that the kind of combination
9:47
of these things, you kind of will exhaust what they think are
9:50
the final Soviet reserves, do a damage to their economy.
9:55
And that will kind of finally be the final body blow that will
10:01
kind of cause a collapse in the Red Army.
10:03
That's kind of like Hitler's view of, you know, kind of kind
10:06
of pie in the sky, that if we just make one more big effort,
10:09
that the Soviets really don't have that much left.
10:11
And we can and we can grab these, these really important
10:15
economic resources that even if we don't knock them out, that
10:18
that will allow us to fight this big global war, which is now
10:22
against the Soviets and the British and the Americans.
10:25
Right. Yeah, the city of Stalingrad was
10:28
strategically important because it controlled the Volga River
10:30
major supplier route for the Soviet industry and oil.
10:34
But looking back on it now, I always wonder if if the city had
10:37
been named Nothing Grad or didn't have Stalin's name on it,
10:40
like would Hitler have gone after it?
10:42
Should they have just avoided this trap of the city?
10:45
Well, The thing is like, it wasn't a trap at first.
10:48
I mean, no one ever talks about this, but like Stalino, now we
10:51
know it as Donensk. It was named after Stalin, but
10:54
it fell and there wasn't, there isn't some big like, Oh, well,
10:57
you know, this becomes the place where the where they're going to
11:00
fight. And in part it's because of that
11:03
initial part of the plan, like is we want they really do.
11:07
The German army is still, you know, even though Hitler's
11:10
talking about grabbing these oil resources.
11:12
The real idea is we want to destroy the Red Army's reserves.
11:15
We want to destroy big amounts of Soviet fighting power.
11:19
That's really how that's Klausvitzian.
11:21
That's the way you destroy the enemies by destroying its field
11:23
army, right. And so the problem is when you
11:26
launch Case Blue, as they call it in July into southern Russia,
11:31
they create these smaller that are supposed to be more
11:34
manageable kind of cauldrons, you know, encirclements.
11:38
And they do take a fair amount of of Soviet prisoners.
11:41
But at this point, the Red Army is not going to sit there and
11:44
fight it out. They know that if they get in
11:45
circled, they'll be destroyed. And there is a lot of retreating
11:50
by a lot of soldiers who are just like, we're going to get
11:51
out of here. And there are other cities that
11:53
they want that the Germans go and take on rivers like just
11:56
like Stalingrad. But the Soviets decide not to
11:59
fight there. They pull it out, You know, and
12:01
part of this is, is by planning. Part of this is because Soviet
12:05
soldiers are taken off. I mean, commanders are not
12:08
willing to stay there. And so the Germans get really
12:11
frustrated. They're looking to destroy the
12:12
enemy and the enemy won't fight. And so then they have to like,
12:17
all right, we didn't destroy the enemy, but we're still going to
12:19
launch an attack into the South to try to grab these oil fields,
12:23
but we still have to go towards Stalingrad.
12:25
Stalingrad's not even a main target.
12:27
The wording of the our orders are like, attack and reach the
12:30
Volga around the area of Stalingrad, right?
12:33
It is not even a major part. The main, the main target's
12:36
supposed to be down South. You're just supposed to get to
12:38
the Volga to provide flank coverage for those forces going
12:42
South. The thing is, what happens is
12:44
the the Soviets finally pulled back far enough where they feel
12:49
like they can make a stand and the Germans say, hey, they're
12:51
fighting here. And so you kind of have to stop,
12:53
turn and fight. And to a certain extent, the
12:55
Germans want this, right? You, you, the enemy is finally
12:58
not running away where, you know, this is where the enemy
13:01
is. We're going to fight him here.
13:03
And they have all the advantages still.
13:05
I mean, you know, with even in we're going to talk about the
13:07
city fighting. I mean, they still have the
13:09
advantages, you know, with combined arms and training and
13:13
and like and ability. And so you're going to try to
13:17
fight it out at this at this point.
13:19
And it's not just that's the other thing is like we always
13:21
focus on the city fighting, but this there's fighting outside
13:25
the city, you know, along the banks of the river along the
13:29
step and stuff. So it's it's not just in the
13:31
city. There's fighting going on.
13:32
The Soviets are going to be trying to breakthrough into the
13:34
city from the steppe, are from the hills north and the steps
13:38
South. So there's fighting going on all
13:40
all over the place. But that's part of it is it
13:43
doesn't look like a trap at first.
13:44
It looks like an opportunity to finally pin down the Soviets.
13:48
You know, you're going to realize your mission of
13:51
providing flank support. Plus, you know, you can finally
13:53
like smash. You know you've destroyed some a
13:55
little bit earlier that when they crossed the Don River at
13:58
Kalak. But this is another opportunity
14:00
to bash on the Red Army. You're supposed to take this
14:03
position and then kind of the mythos and the name kind of then
14:08
comes afterwards or kind of as they're fighting, it gets spun
14:12
up into this. Oh, it's about the fact that
14:14
it's Stalingrad, but it's more about the fact that that the Red
14:17
Army finally had freed far enough that it couldn't retreat
14:20
any further and had reserves and was willing to finally.
14:23
Fight. OK, Yeah.
14:25
The German attacking force, the German 6th Army, was commanded
14:28
by General Friedrich Paulus. Can you tell us about the number
14:32
of troops and equipment on each side that was brought to battle?
14:37
Well, this is always, you know, kind of difficult to parse
14:40
because, you know, armies are always kind of changing size
14:44
over different times, especially when they're moving around like
14:47
this. I mean, German 6th Army is
14:48
fairly large. It's supposed to be kind of over
14:51
250, possibly 280,000 soldiers. Eventually.
14:56
You also have the German 4th Panzer Army.
14:58
It's smaller, like something like 40,000 troops, but it also
15:02
gets a Romanian corps, the Romanian 6 corps, with another
15:06
about 40,000 men that had been fighting from the start of Case
15:10
Blue back in July. It's been been kind of assigned
15:13
to different armies helping provide flank support.
15:16
You have Romanian troops coming in to help cover the southern
15:20
flank. You have this Romanian corps
15:22
covering this line of lakes South of the city on the Kalmuk
15:26
Steppe. Later on we're going to get, you
15:29
know, another Romanian army of the 170,000 men.
15:31
And the Italian army is already on the front with right now with
15:36
250 two, 135,000. The Hungarian army further up
15:40
the river on the dawn with 209,000, which is including
15:44
50,000 unarmed Jewish laborers. But in the overall, something
15:48
like a million men, a million like Axis forces by November of
15:51
1942 spread out from the Kalmuk step up to the city and then
15:56
cutting over from the Volga to the Dawn.
15:59
In comparison, you have the Stalin, you have 3 fronts.
16:02
You know, these are kind of the Soviet army group equivalent.
16:04
Overall. Every Soviet unit is kind of
16:06
smaller, smaller divisions, smaller armies, smaller, you
16:10
know, fronts, army groups than what the Germans have or what
16:14
the Americans later have. So there's three fronts,
16:17
Stalingrad Front, Dawn Front and Southwestern Front that are
16:21
facing the Germans and they will eventually get something like
16:25
1.11.2 million men. So you're going to see like it's
16:28
relatively comparable, you know, in manpower.
16:31
But the big difference is going to be in concentration of tanks,
16:34
artillery and aircraft, especially by late November of
16:37
1942. Yeah, the Soviet defenses were
16:41
directed by Generals Zhukov Chukov, among others, whose
16:46
troops fight brutal urban combat inside the city.
16:51
Was it a then? But don't break strategy because
16:54
you always hear that famous. Like at one point the Germans
16:57
controlled 90% of the city, but they still couldn't clinch the
17:00
battle. Yeah.
17:02
I mean, so this is in part it's just the Soviet desire to stand
17:09
and fight. I mean, something we we should
17:11
mention is Stalin's infamous order earlier on in July.
17:15
I think it's order 227, not one step back, right?
17:22
So there's just this desire, which we're going to see that
17:24
Hitler has later on of just never running territory.
17:28
And there's that same impulse on the Soviet side, especially
17:31
from, from Stalin. And the interesting thing about
17:34
that order is, you know, saying like is that, you know, not one
17:37
step back is that, you know, my, my advisor, Rodger Reese, you
17:40
know, he's written a book on, on this.
17:43
And you know, it's really, there's orders just like that,
17:46
like back in 41, there's been several orders like that.
17:50
And you know, you know, threatening execution and even
17:52
actual execution. There's a general executed for
17:55
losing a battle in 1941. And what's actually interesting
17:59
about the no step and not one step back order is that it
18:03
actually gives an out. It actually also sets up the
18:05
idea of punishment or penal battalions, which means in so
18:10
there's actually an option not to shoot people.
18:11
And even then, like you point out, like the amount of soldiers
18:14
actually shot by the quote UN quote blocking detachments is
18:17
actually very little. Blocking detachments usually
18:19
only have like pistols and rifles.
18:22
They were mostly there basically act as like military police to
18:25
like police up people who'd kind of gotten lost or ran away and
18:29
send them back their units. If you didn't resist these guys,
18:32
you weren't going to get shot by them.
18:34
And you know, then if maybe you got caught, caught and you're
18:36
like, oh, determined to have been running away or cowardly,
18:39
you get put into one of these penal battalions instead of
18:42
being shot and you serve for a little bit of time.
18:45
Then you get out. Yes, you have like a higher risk
18:48
of being killed while you're in it.
18:49
So there's actually like this, the change there is actually
18:51
that you're not going to waste manpower by just shooting
18:54
people. You're creating these penal
18:56
battalions, which then you can still get used out of.
18:58
And then once you serve your time, you go back to units.
19:01
But like, the kind of the point is that there is this idea of
19:03
like stand and fight. And so it's more of the fact
19:06
that like, you've retreated so far and this time they're going
19:09
to fight in this city. In other places.
19:11
They lot either lost control of their men or the Soviet
19:13
commanders have decided we can't make a stand here.
19:17
But at this point, this Germans are getting much more
19:20
overstretched. You know, this is an important
19:23
city, This is an important target.
19:25
And, you know, they decide we're going to fight.
19:27
And you have a commander Chuikov Chuikov who's willing to fight
19:31
and use it. And again, on the flanks outside
19:34
the city, like there's fighting going on at this point, it's not
19:38
covered. I'm not even talking yet about
19:40
these allies. But like, once the Germans cut
19:43
off the city to the north, there are constant Soviet counter
19:46
attacks trying to breakthrough down in the city.
19:48
So it's not just, oh, dead men don't break in the city.
19:52
It's on the you're you have these relief counter attacks to
19:56
the north and often sometimes to the South.
19:59
You mean they almost breakthrough the road that
20:00
Romanian core and the Germans have to stabilize that.
20:03
They're just kind of pushed back and forth of the Germans having
20:06
to reinforce the flanks, pull off the the Soviets, which means
20:09
slows down attacks into the city.
20:12
And then you pull guys away from the flanks, push into the city
20:15
more, you know, and then the city, you know.
20:18
So then eventually you can start focusing on that.
20:20
And then the Soviets kind of realize we're going to hold off
20:23
on the flanks, start building up power and let the Germans chew
20:26
up their forces in the city until we're ready to have been
20:30
to have another big offensive on the flanks.
20:32
And by this point, they're also thinking we're going to not just
20:35
attack where the Germans are on the flanks, we're going to
20:37
tackle a little bit farther, which is both two things.
20:40
You get to attack Romanians on the flanks.
20:43
We're a lot less weak, a lot weaker.
20:44
And you're going for a bigger encirclement.
20:47
Like instead, if you're attacking right north of the
20:49
city, you make breakthrough. You're not really going to
20:52
encircle any German troops. You go far farther.
20:55
You're going to take bigger risk of this not working.
20:59
But but you if you do this right, you're going to have a
21:01
big double encirclement that's going to grab a lot of German
21:04
forces. And you have to add a benefit
21:07
of, hey, we're going against weak Romanians on the flanks
21:10
rather than, you know, you know, German troops, right?
21:14
Yeah, let's get into the micro level for a second.
21:17
The battle becomes infamous for house to house fighting with
21:20
soldiers battling in factories, apartments and even sewers.
21:24
Can you tell us about some of the famous fights and fighters
21:27
like the sniper Bazilli Zeitsev, Sergeant Pavlov and his defiant
21:32
stand at the house? And even I I read that the worst
21:36
mistake the Germans did was like bomb the city because it gave
21:40
all these snipers places to hide.
21:42
So it was like a just a brutal slogging fest on the ground
21:46
level. Yeah.
21:47
I mean, fighting in cities is not what really anyone trains
21:51
for, especially at that point. But you train to kind of go, you
21:54
know, fight out in this kind of abstract, kind of almost
21:57
Napoleonic like out in the field.
21:59
And I think there was a lot less focus on city fighting in
22:02
general for these armies. So yeah, I mean, there is a lot
22:06
of mistakes there about like, OK, like, you know, bombing the
22:09
city and creating rubble, but you also have to bomb the city
22:13
if you wanted to. I mean, if you want to have, you
22:14
have, you want to take it, you have to bomb the enemy.
22:16
So it's kind of yeah. It's like, I don't know how you
22:19
don't bomb the city. So it's just.
22:23
And you have to, you know, there.
22:24
I think there's still been arguments that the Germans are
22:26
still better prepared, better trained for this.
22:28
It's not like the, the, the Soviets just have like, you
22:31
know, better training. But I, I think it's also the
22:33
idea of like attacking versus defense, right?
22:37
I mean, this is one of the areas where the defense, you know, is
22:40
going to have the advantage. You can dig in, you can set up
22:42
ambushes, you're going to know the territory.
22:46
But the Germans really, I mean, they have a lot of, you know,
22:49
powerful advantages, but they're going to be negated just because
22:52
of what the city is. And I think it's important, like
22:54
the city, it's long and narrow along the river, which makes it
22:58
you have to spread out your forces, right?
23:00
And, you know, but it also means that you can maybe kind of cut
23:03
through the city more easily in certain areas, which the Germans
23:06
can do. But that means that you have to
23:08
capture some of these key points, which is why you have so
23:11
many things like the grain elevator, which I think this is
23:14
a big, large, tall, resilient, you know, it's structured, made
23:17
out like reinforced concrete, right?
23:19
That overlooks everything. So the Germans can kind of start
23:21
coming in. But then every time it's like,
23:23
like I said, you have to eventually have to concentrate.
23:26
And if you have some observers of this big grain elevator,
23:28
Soviets can see that and they can bring down fire and they,
23:31
you know, they have the advantage that they can put a
23:32
lot of their artillery on the opposite side of the river where
23:35
it's fairly, you know, protected.
23:37
So you have these crazy battles over the grain elevator.
23:40
And this is 1, I think this is, you know, that kind of in the
23:42
South of the city, we talked about Pavlov's house.
23:45
This is like a smaller place. It's up in kind of, I think the
23:47
middle of the city. Once you get into all the, you
23:50
know, you know, from like the suburbs, you know, you know,
23:53
this is 1 building that was more or more or less intact and more
23:58
resilient and bigger. And once again, gave good
24:01
observation, right? There's kind of an argument now
24:03
whether of Pat and Sergeant Pavlov had to fight for the
24:06
house or if it was actually it was empty, he took it.
24:09
And whether or not that was true when he initially retook it, you
24:12
know, from from the German lines, it definitely became
24:15
fought over very intensively. Ian McGregor has written a book
24:20
about this. If you if someone really wants
24:22
to, you know, get into called the White House of Stalingrad.
24:27
Steitsev is really interesting. I, you know, everyone knows kind
24:30
of the movie enemy at the gates now.
24:32
I think I think it would be interesting to kind of do a bit
24:35
more of a realistic versions. I'd say if he starts as a clerk
24:38
in the Soviet Navy in the Far East at the start of the war,
24:41
which kind of something is kind of fun like that.
24:43
He's just kind of a paper pusher out in Vladivostok and
24:48
volunteers to go fight in the front.
24:50
He's a very famous for inventing new tactics and stuff.
24:53
But they had female snipers as well, like everyone was pitching
24:56
in. Yeah, yeah, I think it's really
24:58
interesting the the female snipers that they develop over
25:01
time. And at first, like when some of
25:02
the women are volunteering, they're kind of doing for all
25:05
different things with the Soviets set up these female
25:07
sniper teams. I think in part because of that
25:09
keeps them from they're able to fight on the front and support a
25:13
unit, but without how how they would see it disrupting small
25:16
unit cohesion because then because sniper teams operate
25:20
kind of, you know, seeing you on their own basically.
25:23
So if you attach a couple women as snipers to an infantry
25:25
company, the infantry company can basically fight normally and
25:29
then you don't have these issues of like, you know, men getting
25:32
weirded out by having women, you know, fighting with them.
25:35
So but yeah, so I'd say if he gets this, he does this thing
25:39
called sixes. You cover an area with three,
25:42
two man teams. So there's no real like sniper
25:45
duel as you see in the movie. He was just at Stalingrad and
25:49
there was lots of sniping there in general.
25:51
Yeah, it is impressive, all the. It was a big win for the
25:54
Soviets, so I understand the propaganda that comes out of.
25:57
It but one more. So there's also like the bar
25:59
carity factory, the Martin Martin Mesky shop.
26:02
These are like as you get in closer to the city, there's
26:04
these big industrial areas that they're reinforced and they're
26:08
difficult to take and they become these centers of
26:11
resistance. And I will mention the Army
26:12
University Press. It created a they have a
26:15
documentary series and they have on YouTube.
26:17
Do you really want to get in detail?
26:19
They will go like kind of out like half hour long expirations
26:23
of each of the battles for these different factories and shops in
26:26
the grain elevator which I which I recommend.
26:30
Yeah, yeah. If you want to drill down, check
26:31
that out. But yeah, if we zoom back out to
26:34
the flanks of Stalingrad, tell me about the operation, what it
26:40
was called, and how the trap was closed where Paulus was now
26:44
stuck in Stalingrad. After August, getting into
26:48
September, as it's clear that the Germans aren't just going to
26:51
seize the city, that you have a commander in place who Chuikov,
26:56
who's got a big set of balls, who has men who aren't going to
27:00
run as as in some other places. And that the Soviets realize
27:05
that they're able to reinforce them.
27:08
They see this opportunity like, hey, maybe that we can build up
27:12
some reserves here if like Chuikov and the Stalingrad front
27:16
can you know, these these guys can really keep them, you know,
27:21
distracted. We can build up these, you know,
27:24
a counter offensive. Like I said, this big, you know,
27:27
double envelopment. It becomes it becomes called
27:31
operation Uranus and this they're also planning another
27:34
one operation Mars farther up in and they also have another one
27:39
called Saturn. There's this idea of these kind
27:41
of big, you know, these are the gods of war, you know, Mars, you
27:45
know, Uranus, Saturn, you're gonna have these massive, you
27:50
know, winter counter offensive starting off against this
27:54
exposed German flank here at Stalingrad.
27:57
And there's an argument now that they're also even like
28:01
specifically waiting for bad weather to negate the German
28:05
advantage in air power. So that, you know, there's some
28:08
argument there whether or not that's true.
28:10
When they do launch, this finally is going to be terrible
28:12
weather. So you're German combined arms
28:15
is getting one of that triad is going to be gone.
28:17
Plus, like I said, you're going to be focusing on the Romanian
28:22
3rd Army and then this Romanian 6th core, which actually gets
28:27
reinforced with another core that's showing up.
28:30
So this is supposedly could be good S you're getting another
28:33
core. They're actually going to be
28:34
setting up the remaining 4th army headquarters, but they have
28:37
these bridge heads over the river that they can fill up with
28:40
troops and they've been they've also been treating the Romanians
28:44
over this time, especially on the dawn.
28:46
The Romanian 3rd Army has been having to expend munitions and
28:50
manpower and basically keep almost all of its divisions
28:53
online. It only has a couple like one or
28:56
two divisions in reserve. Very.
28:58
So that means you have a very thin long front that's going to
29:02
be easy to crack. And it's these units don't have
29:05
as much firepower as many anti tank guns.
29:08
I even found reports in the Romanian records of later the
29:12
captured the Soviet soldier saying that they've been shown
29:15
captured Romanian guns during some of these earlier battles in
29:19
September, October. And the the Soviets had used
29:23
these Romanian captured guns and fired them at Soviet or tanks
29:27
and showing the soldiers how the rounds were just ricocheting off
29:31
and saying, look, this is all that the Romanians have.
29:34
You know, you guys can just drive forward and not have to
29:36
worry, right? So there's this kind of whole
29:39
psychological element too, of like we're attacking the
29:42
Romanians if you're Soviet and you maybe have this kind of, if
29:45
you're already complex against the Germans, doesn't really
29:48
exist with the Romanians, right? Yeah, no, that's a great point.
29:51
Like or, or even the Italians, like they're just not as well
29:54
equipped as the Germans are. So we can beat these guys.
29:57
Right. And it's just so then there's
29:59
there's they're just less in your head as well, right?
30:01
So it's kind of all those things where it's that they're putting
30:03
together. And so they finally launched
30:05
this 19 November. And first they launch it in the
30:10
in the northern sector on the Dawn.
30:14
And the Romanians actually put up more of a fight than they
30:16
expect. They expect the Iranian line
30:18
just to like collapse, but they only managed to punch two holes
30:22
and it you know, actually has a the group in the in the middle.
30:26
It's just like about 3 divisions worth plus the remnants of a
30:30
couple other divisions keep fighting for another like almost
30:33
four or five days called the last car group.
30:35
But the Soviets at this point say you screw it, just throw in
30:38
the reserves and keep punching through.
30:41
And the Germans, they don't have anything to respond.
30:44
They have one Panzer core in reserve, which is actually half
30:48
Romanian. They don't coordinate well.
30:50
They're basically immediately, you know, they, they basically
30:53
are having to fight off Sylvia patrols.
30:56
They can't go fill in one of these two holes actually like
30:59
try to go for one of the holes, one of the breakthrough points
31:02
and then they redirect themselves to the other one.
31:04
So they waste time going one way and then they go the other way
31:07
and then they just like have to start and try to save themselves
31:11
from being overwhelmed. And so then the next day you
31:14
have the southern flank and then that case of the remaining line
31:18
does just basically like disintegrate.
31:20
But that's because it's a much weaker line.
31:23
And you basically have an entire like Soviet army against like 1
31:25
Romanian corps. I mean there's these Germans who
31:28
are watching. It's just like, what are these
31:30
guys going to do? You know, So they just get
31:32
steamrolled. It kind of just explodes.
31:34
But even there, there's the remaining Calvary troops further
31:37
South that newly arrived. They come up from Crimea.
31:40
They, they had pretty good morale.
31:42
They, you know, kind of are trying to fight and hold the
31:45
line. And they are going to be really
31:47
important to holding a line, both the remnants of both of
31:50
these remaining 3rd and 4th armies to give the Germans a
31:53
chance to actually try to relieve Stalingrad.
31:56
But at this point, you know these two big pinchers that are
31:59
going to encircle the German 6th Army and 4th Panzer Army in this
32:05
in this pocket. Yeah, yeah, Operation Uranus in
32:09
circles, over 250,000 Axis troops, essentially trapping the
32:14
German 6th Army inside Stalingrad.
32:16
So what are General Paulus's options now?
32:19
Yeah, it's even actually possibly like up to 300,000
32:22
troops. And when you throw in the
32:24
Romanian, there's a couple remnants of remaining cavalry
32:27
corps and infantry division that gets sucked up in there.
32:31
There's also Croatian regiment. So Paulus's options, right?
32:34
I mean, like there's this big thing like, oh, he should have
32:36
immediately, you know, ordered a breakout.
32:40
Well, that's against orders. An interesting thing.
32:42
I think this lost card group that I brought up is an
32:45
interesting example of what's facing a case study of maybe
32:49
what could have would have happened.
32:51
So both these, all these forces, the Romanian 3rd Army, the
32:54
German 6th Army, they have sent home a lot of their horses are
32:57
sent to wintering quarters. A lot of their horses, they've
33:00
been having a supply crisis before the Soviet attack.
33:03
So they actually are low on horses.
33:05
They're also low on gasoline because of the supply.
33:07
So the mobility of any of these forces is pretty low, right?
33:12
And if you want to try to break out immediately, number one,
33:16
you'd have to leave some guys to keep fighting, right?
33:18
Like you're not going to be able to take them all.
33:20
You're going to sacrifice some, you know, a quarter or half of
33:24
your men. You have to have a rear guard,
33:26
yeah. And then you're going to have so
33:28
if you try to break out and you don't have much fuel in, in
33:31
reality, like we think about going fighting like cross
33:35
country, but there that that's not your option.
33:38
You have to go along roads. But the problem is the Soviets
33:41
control those roads. That's where they're going to
33:43
have most of their troops. So then you do have to go cross
33:45
country. But what happens if you go cross
33:46
country, your your horses slip, your guns get stuck in mud or
33:54
water, your tank throws a track. And if you look at what happens
33:58
to the Alaska group, it's told you're going to stay and fight
34:01
and you're going to fight until we come and leave you.
34:03
After a couple days, it's pretty, it's pretty clear that
34:06
the German and Romanian armored forces aren't coming to the
34:10
rescue. So they actually take the
34:12
initiative against orders from both German high command and
34:16
Romanian high command, who said, look, you're supposed to stay
34:18
and fight. They decide to have try to have
34:20
a breakout attempt. One division kind of gets it
34:22
going. The other ones are still,
34:24
they're being engaged. And they actually eventually get
34:26
overrun and you lose a couple commanders.
34:27
But so you have this one division plus remnants of other
34:30
ones try to break out. And it's.
34:32
Yeah, at first, you know, in the middle of the night.
34:33
You have these long nights right now, right?
34:35
It's bad weather, but they have to avoid these roads.
34:38
They start going cross country and eventually the Soviets
34:42
figure out what's happening. You have this long line of men
34:44
who are strung out and they start attacking it, right,
34:47
cutting it up. And then they, you know, that
34:49
the Romanians who are keeping on going, they then come to like a
34:53
River Valley and they they can't get their heavy weapons, you
34:58
know, through we're not, you know, they're they're having to
35:00
leave behind guns. They're having to leave behind
35:02
broken down cars or like wagons. And they eventually something
35:06
like a couple thousand soldiers they make, they make it through
35:09
the breakthrough and that's it out of like a division's worth.
35:13
And then even fewer of them survive because they link up
35:15
with one of the the they link up with the German Panzer division
35:19
within the German Panzer division gets attacked.
35:22
And so then they have they have to retreat again, you only have
35:24
a few hundred of these guys like make it out.
35:25
So if you'd imagine that's on the scale of like the small
35:29
division size, you know, multi division breakout, you take that
35:32
to an army and think of like the ramifications.
35:35
So that's really a kind of a terrible option.
35:39
Yeah. And if you listen to Yvonne
35:41
Menstein episode, you know, he gets, I think, within 30 miles
35:44
of Stalingrad as a relief column, but he just can't
35:46
breakthrough. So I think this next part's
35:48
really interesting. They can still communicate,
35:51
obviously, with Berlin. So Paulus says, hey, can you
35:54
resupply me somehow? And here's what they need to
35:59
actually fight normally. And when I say tons of supplies,
36:03
I mean bullets, replacement parts, winter clothing, food,
36:07
fuel, all that stuff. They normally need 750 tons a
36:10
day. Hermann Goering, the Luftwaffe
36:14
commander, says they can deliver 500 tons a day. 300 tons is the
36:19
absolute minimum just to keep the army alive, and when Ashley
36:23
ends up getting delivered is only 100 tons a day.
36:29
Why did Hitler? Was he just grasping at straws?
36:31
Why did he think Goering could pull this off?
36:34
I that's really probably what it was.
36:36
You know, like I said, if you try to dissing, if you try to
36:38
break out immediately, you're disobeying orders and you're
36:42
likely everything's probably going to you're going to lose
36:44
most of your force. You have to leave band
36:46
rearguard. You're going to be exposed out
36:49
there. If you sit tight and wait a wait
36:52
relief, that's kind of the best option.
36:55
And especially if and then if like someone says, hey, we can
36:57
drop supplies. This has been done.
36:59
I mean, there's other there's there's been, I can't remember
37:02
what the battle is, but there was a small, like a smaller
37:05
army, you know, German force was encircled.
37:08
They were all the drops of supplies and eventually it was
37:11
able to break out, right. They've done this on a smaller
37:14
scale before, like a proof of concept, right?
37:18
And so, and I mean, it's like the Germans have kind of, you
37:20
know, even, it's interesting like even that armored, that
37:23
German armored Panzer Division I was talking about that's roaming
37:26
around behind the dawn. It's having supplies dropped to
37:30
it. Like they're doing this like to
37:32
keep it going. And like the, the Romanian
37:34
armored division is actually screaming like we need it too.
37:36
The Germans won't give them any because they're running out of
37:38
fuel. So like, they're doing this on a
37:40
smaller scale. And like in the past, they've
37:42
had enough combat power to like kind of come back.
37:44
Like this is a big force, right? Like we still like, so sitting
37:48
tight and await relief, especially when you have this
37:50
promise of air support, is not that crazy.
37:53
And then, you know, you could surrender, right?
37:55
That's the other thing is you just surrender it immediately.
37:57
And that'd be a terrible like idea, right?
37:59
And eventually as Manstein gets building up, like the focus
38:02
becomes on like you can't surrender because first I got to
38:06
try to launch this relief attack.
38:08
And once that fails because there's a bigger Soviet storm,
38:12
another big offensive, a little Saturn, which we'll talk about
38:15
in a minute coming, Then it's like, hey, you must keep
38:18
fighting because if you don't keep fighting, you're not tying
38:21
down all these Soviet forces. Instead, they'll be turning and
38:25
attacking the German forces elsewhere.
38:27
So, you know, the the idea that like Paulus is weak, he should
38:31
have disobeyed Hitler. I mean, if you're looking at
38:34
what their experience is and what the realities is, reality
38:38
is sitting tight and waiting and waiting.
38:40
Relief is kind of the best option.
38:42
And then once you've done that long enough, then it's you've
38:45
got to fight it to the very bitter end, to hold down the
38:48
enemy, to save our heinies elsewhere.
38:51
Right. And it must be said, you know,
38:54
this is the dead of winter, This is December, January, February.
38:58
So German soldiers start suffering from starvation,
39:01
frostbite, ammunition shortages. How terrible was the suffering
39:05
on both sides? You know, it's pretty bad.
39:08
I mean, even for the the Soviets going into this, I mean, their
39:12
logistics are on a shoestring. The propaganda wheels will show
39:16
Soviet soldiers with well kitted out to fall with their little
39:19
hats and fur hat, fake fur hats. Actually, they call them like
39:22
fish fur because they'd never seen an animal that actually had
39:26
that type of fur. But like, they were also like
39:29
cold and low on, on, on food and everything.
39:34
But the, the German side was much, much worse.
39:36
Once you, once you get encircled, you're in, you're
39:40
like you pointed out 100 tons rather than the 700.
39:43
I mean, it starts getting bad really quickly.
39:46
You have horses you can slaughter and there's, you know,
39:49
in the Romanian first Calvary division a bit, a lot of it had
39:52
ridden up into the encirclement. And those horses are very soon
39:58
in the. Cooking pots of the the
40:02
encircled forces, it's really bad.
40:04
And you have to also like I said, there was already a supply
40:07
shortage. A lot of these guys are already
40:08
very lean going into this kind of undernourished.
40:14
They might not have been realizing it.
40:16
And so they're actually there's soldiers just dropping dead
40:19
because of kind of their hearts are giving out.
40:22
And then once you know, this is like even before the
40:24
encirclement, you're having these problems.
40:27
And then once you have the encirclement, it just becomes an
40:29
insane kind of almost laboratory of what you can put the human
40:33
body through and how people can die from starvation.
40:36
And they'll, you know, without, they often won't call it
40:38
starvation. They'll be like, you know, a
40:40
cardiac event, but it'd be because they're so thin and, you
40:43
know, lacking fat and under so much stress.
40:46
You know, you know, these soldiers are, you know, and it's
40:49
I read this Romanian account. He's like, you know, they will
40:53
you once you get that cold, you stop moving as as you just try
40:57
to conserve energy and you just like try to not move.
40:59
They're burning tires, they're worn out tires that they have.
41:03
You know that. And so you're like, in these
41:05
rooms, you're setting this stuff and it's like that nasty.
41:08
Kind of. Oily, you know, petroleum smoke,
41:12
and you would just try to move as little as possible.
41:15
And, you know, then you'd have to go out and fight periodically
41:17
or for the Romanians, you know, they actually would beat up the
41:19
guys if they wouldn't go fight. You know, they were, you know,
41:22
they were going to be that kind of aggressive to the troops.
41:26
Well, Paulus and the remaining German forces eventually
41:29
surrender on February 2nd, 1943. Why did Hitler promote Paulus to
41:35
fear Marshall right before this? And did any of these
41:38
surrendering troops return home after the war?
41:42
So there was this belief that no German Field Marshall had ever
41:47
surrendered, gone into captivity.
41:50
So basically there was this hope that palace would commit
41:53
suicide. There's kind of a general, I
41:55
mean, even the Romanians, there's actually talk about the
41:57
the same guy, that same account I was reading, he talked about
42:00
the Glonstone Wade, the honor bullet.
42:04
So they're the kind of kind of discussing like, do we kill
42:06
ourselves rather than like, be captured?
42:09
Who's to say Palace's next in command wouldn't then surrender?
42:13
Even if Palace did do this? It doesn't make sense.
42:15
Yeah, it's, it's it's strange, but dictators, they kind of like
42:21
to be jerks. You know, Powers is also
42:22
Catholic. People point this out like he's
42:24
not somebody who really, you know, that's like, so you that's
42:27
a sin, right? To kill yourself, you know, so
42:29
there's this idea to try to, you know, have him die that way.
42:32
I mean, this is the kind of Nazi worldview, right?
42:34
That if you, you know, either you go out, you have to go out
42:38
fighting or you, it's great. And even that remaining, he like
42:42
nobody actually really does it, you know, no one actually
42:45
follows through. And in the end, you want to go
42:46
into captivity. Yeah.
42:49
Which Hitler does on his own few years later.
42:52
I mean, yeah, Hitler at least. At least Hitler kills himself, I
42:54
guess. Of those who can, very few these
42:56
guys return and and for you, I mean, they are in terrible shape
43:00
by the time they're captured. I mean, even if they were given
43:04
the best treatment in the world, a lot of them would have died.
43:08
But the Soviets don't have ability to there are very short.
43:11
I mean, this is a bad time in the war for them.
43:14
I mean, they've cut back everything on the home front
43:17
that they possibly can. And so they're not going to be
43:21
prioritizing feeding prisoners of war.
43:23
And you prioritize feeding prisoners of war who can work.
43:26
And that's going to be really bad, you know, and the Soviets
43:29
really haven't, they don't tend to like, take preventive
43:32
measures. They haven't already built, you
43:34
know, nice prisoner of war camps.
43:36
I mean, the Americans, when we captured a bunch of prisoners of
43:39
war, we'd usually build a camp first to where the Soviets were
43:42
kind of like that. They would these Persian war
43:43
would show up and there was a camp for them to build.
43:47
And so a very few of these guys make it through that first
43:50
winter just because of the bad shape they're in, the shortages
43:53
in the Soviet Union. It's not really a like a
43:56
purposeful policy to kill them. You know, even the Romanians are
44:00
suffering like they won't die. It is quite as heavy number and
44:03
like the Romanians who weren't in circle, they have a better
44:08
chance, but they also die in kind of higher percentages
44:12
because, you know, they surrender.
44:13
There's a big chunk of like 20,000 that surrender in the
44:16
Lascar group early on just days in the battle and they still but
44:20
it's just because the the conditions are so bad.
44:22
You have this Operation Little Saturn that that's the reason
44:27
why you can't have this relief work, right, that a month later,
44:31
the Soviets not only launched Operation Uranus, they're able
44:34
to launch. You have to scale it down.
44:37
That's why it's called Little Saturn instead of Saturn.
44:39
It was supposed to be really big.
44:40
They launched another big offensive and it smashes the
44:44
Italian 8th Army that was to the left of the remaining 3rd Army.
44:48
And then a month later, they smashed the Hungarian Second
44:51
Army. They don't encircle them.
44:52
They break. They break them and those armies
44:55
start running, which then the Germans have to then call off
44:58
the relief. Mannstein then has to turn into
45:00
like super crisis mode and let's get everyone out.
45:04
Let's get these guys out of the caucuses.
45:05
Well, the Italian Hungarians have a bit of a different
45:09
experience. Like the Romanians had helped.
45:12
Some of them had got caught in Stalingrad.
45:14
You know, some of them had surrendered early on.
45:16
The remnants helped try this relief offensive.
45:20
Then the eventually the Romanians kind of get pulled off
45:22
in January, February, that's when the Italians and Hungarians
45:26
get hit and they basically they have to do these kind of long
45:31
marches like the guys who survived the initial battle.
45:34
They do these kind of big turn of these big roving pockets and
45:37
it's kind of these terrible long marches through the coal through
45:42
the winter as they're steadily throwing away, you know,
45:46
equipment to try to keep going and they're getting harassed by
45:49
the enemy. They're getting bombed.
45:50
And but it's just kind of like long March in the cold.
45:54
So there's these different experiences where you're like
45:56
you, you know, you know, whether you're talking about the
45:58
encircled in Stalingrad or the Romanians outside in the flanks
46:01
who get bashed up for these long marches of the Hungarians and
46:05
Italians. Like it's just all kinds of
46:08
different ugliness and terrible ways of dying.
46:12
OK, the Battle of Stalingrad was a major turning point in World
46:16
War 2, marking the beginning of the long Soviet offensive that
46:20
would eventually end in the Battle of Berlin in 1945.
46:24
Or the casualty estimates on both sides.
46:27
Well, once again, this is difficult, you know, depends on
46:29
like periodization, right? We're talking about just
46:32
Stalingrad. Are we talking about just
46:33
Operation Uranus? Are we talking about Uranus and
46:37
little Saturn? Are we talking about, since it's
46:40
you know, are we talking about the whole campaign from July and
46:45
kind of like looking at like the big like the whole campaign, the
46:47
Germans lose something like 200,000 troops killed, captured,
46:53
missing, sick, everything right. Then after once when we're
46:59
counting from like November once like you know, the big Soviet
47:03
counter offensive start, then the Germans lose their like
47:06
300,000, the Romanians lose like 109, 1000, the town's 114,000,
47:13
the Hungarians 105,000 from like November to February.
47:17
So and then you have to throw the ally Axis allies, you have
47:19
to add in like another like thousands more that they lost in
47:23
that August to November period, especially the Romanians.
47:27
Then the Soviets, they've lose something like 1.2 million
47:30
between August and November. So before they even start
47:32
winning, they've taken a lot of casualties.
47:37
And then even during the victory, they lose something
47:39
like 425,000 troops. I mean, so that's like when
47:44
you're winning, you're, you're still taking hundreds of
47:47
thousands of of of casualties. You know, those guys got killed,
47:50
wounded, missing, sick in really importantly is also to emphasize
47:55
the huge material losses to the Axis, right?
47:58
Something like enough equipment for and weapons for 45 German
48:02
divisions are lost from the start of case blue to the fall
48:05
of Stalin grass. And that stuff is just.
48:08
You can't just replace that with the snap of the fingers.
48:11
Right. So my final question is, what is
48:14
the legacy of Stalingrad? I guess it depends on your
48:17
nationality. If you're Russian or Soviet,
48:20
it's probably a huge legacy. You know, we, we finally stopped
48:22
these guys. But overall, what do you think
48:24
the legacy is? So immediate ones, I think like
48:28
it shattered kind of the last hopes of the access.
48:31
You know, this idea of maybe it's not the actual turning
48:33
point. There's always arguments about
48:34
what the turning point of the war or the Eastern front
48:37
specifically, but I think it's very clear this was an important
48:42
battle and especially spun as a turning point in the propaganda.
48:46
And that is important. Not at the time, right?
48:49
To be able to say, hey, we one, right?
48:52
So like that really has immediate legacy right there
48:55
during the war, right? The propaganda coming out of it.
48:59
There's a act, the material effect.
49:01
I think if we're kind of looking longer like it becomes
49:04
Stalingrad becomes like a central to the legitimizing myth
49:07
of the Great Patriotic War, which underpins Soviet regime up
49:11
until it's collapsed. There's a great book by Jonathan
49:13
Brunstad that talks about this like fighting this war and like
49:16
Stalingrad's got the center of it.
49:18
This like legitimizes the Soviet power for the next like 40
49:22
years. I wonder if you ask each country
49:26
like I'm sure Britain would say no it was El Alaman, or the US
49:29
would say it was Midway, or the Russians would say it was
49:32
Stalingrad. I think it just depends on your
49:33
perspective. Yeah, but I'll, but I think
49:35
Stalingrad has, I think even like the most patriotic Brit
49:40
would have said also Stalingrad, if you look at like the
49:43
propaganda and you have like there was a lot of support for
49:47
the Red Army and like I think people understood how big it
49:50
was. I think maybe today they would
49:52
do that. But I think the we all know
49:53
Stalingrad, right? But I think it's it's kind of a
49:56
global event there in that sense, because I think it's like
50:00
a global spanning thing. And then you have all these
50:03
countries involved, like, you know, kind of just mentioned, it
50:06
becomes in Romanian Hungary, they, the battle becomes used by
50:09
the new communist regimes to discredit the previous regime,
50:13
you know, you know, capitalist fascist regimes.
50:17
And then in Italy, you know, be there's, it's, it's definite.
50:20
And there's tons of movies in Italy about the Eastern front in
50:23
general. And, and all those countries are
50:25
participated. It's really important, you know,
50:27
it really shapes their memories of the war.
50:30
But the battle itself, I think, is still a global one, like
50:35
anybody can kind of know about. I mean, somebody from, you know,
50:38
outside of Europe, you know, they will have heard of
50:41
Stalingrad, where they would have not heard of a lot of other
50:44
battles. Yeah, it's interesting how you
50:46
mentioned almost like Napoleon's Napoleonic Battle of Leipzig,
50:51
which was the Battle of Nations. In your mind, you're thinking,
50:54
all right, well, Stalingrad was just Germans versus Soviets, but
50:57
it wasn't. It was, you know, like you said,
50:59
it's Bulgarians and Croats and Romanians and Italians.
51:02
Like there was a lot of different nationalities battling
51:05
there. Soviet side, I mean, part of
51:06
that Pavlov's house myth was that they focused on that
51:09
allegedly there was a representative of all the Soviet
51:13
nations, so that you had, you know, Central Asians.
51:17
And so even on the Soviet side for a long time, it's not just a
51:20
battle between Russians, you know, great Russians.
51:23
So, you know, versus Germans, it was the entirety of the Soviet
51:28
nationalities, you know, Uzbeks to Caucasians, to Ingush, to
51:35
Belarusians. It's so like, yeah, there's
51:37
there. And so even today, if you go to
51:39
the Central Asian republics right for now, like independent,
51:44
you know, they will have their memories of the battle of
51:47
Stalingrad. And right now, it's the battle.
51:49
Stalingrad is being used by both sides, right in Ukraine.
51:52
The Ukrainians are using it and the Russians are using it.
51:55
There's a global stretch, this battle that's I think has a huge
51:59
legacy. Yeah, even the name, it's almost
52:02
become like linguistic or like I didn't episode on General Slim
52:06
and he defeated the Japanese at Kohima and it became kind of the
52:09
Stalingrad of the East because the British finally defeated the
52:13
Japanese. But the name Stalingrad is now
52:16
used in that vernacular. Right, the same thing Tunis
52:18
grad, right? They, they, they dubbed the fall
52:20
of Tunis, but it's Tunis grad, right?
52:23
Which is, I was basically saying it's the Stalingrad of North
52:26
Africa. So this idea of Stalin, I mean,
52:28
and so if you know, I mentioned the, the Army University Press's
52:33
documentary teams Stalingrad series of videos.
52:37
That's also part of a Stalingrad virtual staff rod that was put
52:41
together by the Army University Press.
52:43
And I know from talking some people there that basically that
52:46
was chosen by one of the generals.
52:47
Like we need to focus on different things, including like
52:50
city combat. So Stalingrad, right?
52:52
It was like today, like you, like we're let's pick this big
52:55
virtual, let's invest all this money, create this virtual staff
52:58
ride to talk about city fighting about Stalingrad.
53:01
Even though you could look at we just got out of Iraq.
53:04
There's a lot of city fighting in Iraq that we could have
53:06
learned from. But the first thing we talked
53:08
about is Stalingrad. So there's this, there's this
53:11
resonance to it and this idea of like street fighting.
53:13
Oh, that's Stalingrad, right. And if you, you know, then if
53:16
we've kind of, I've tried to expand it to like remember the
53:19
stuff going on in the flanks, but you know, but that battle
53:22
is, is, is just so memorable. And there's a great book by Ian
53:26
Gardner called Stalingrad lives or star.
53:28
I think it's Stalingrad lives, but I, I read it sometimes as
53:31
Stalingrad lives. It kind of works that way where
53:34
it's there's a lot of different stories, but it's a very good
53:36
book if you want to look at like how the mythos was like kind of
53:40
created as they were, as it was written by the Soviet reporters
53:43
at the time. And as the battle was going,
53:45
they were kind of setting it up to become this pivotal mythic
53:49
turning point, whether it's an actual turning point.
53:52
It really was an important battle, which now is seen as
53:56
that by so many people for so many years.
53:58
I think will be continue to be seen that way and attract tons
54:01
of attention and fascination and horror, you know, for decades to
54:06
come. Well, thank you for that Grant.
54:08
That was fantastic. Again, Grant book is called
54:11
Romania's Holy War, which you can find on Amazon and also
54:15
recommend if you like our podcast, please give us a follow
54:17
over on X Twitter and on Facebook and of course, rate and
54:22
review our podcast on Apple podcast, Spotify or wherever you
54:26
listen to podcast. Grant, we thank you for your
54:28
time, Sir. Well, thank you for having me
54:30
on.