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the method of oil extraction is different over time. today russia is more a gas exporter, while they have big oil areas in the caucasus. after the failed blitz in nov-dez 1941 the german military tried to contain the process of 1941 for the spring 1942 (and the failed to understand, that spring means rain in russia, so mud) so imagine dug-in well-defended german troops and a russian command, who hoped for a weaken front and chances to cut off some german areas....yea the russian command made attacks on the germans and the german divisions were still able to fire back and counter all attacks. to counter a sucesfull tactic is extremly difficult, look at the US loosing to ONE sucessfull tactic of the vietcong for years. in most cases these tactics were countered by time, simply lack of ressources to do the same actions in the same effective way. there is a convincing argument for the napoleonic narrative of an undefeatable napoleon, that napoleon lost wars in the end of his power, because of the simply lack of horses over the decades of constant attrition of horses in his campaigns. its similar in the sovjetish case. the germans were veterans, elits in militarian actions and the russian troops were not able to act similar effective, so they had to rebuild the army, retrain basicly a new red army, because they lost the whole army in 1941 allready, rebuild their war industry, because big complexes were controlled by the enemy and at the same time, they had to organize one of the biggest armies o this planet, while they were on the front and had to defend the line. this is difficult. the US army in africa in 1-2 years will have similar problems. the US camapaign in africa was bad. at the start of the confict the US fought against french militia from the vichy regime and was not able to crush them......militia.....foreign militia.....than actual axis troops showed up....the american army at this point had years of preperation for their tactics and equipment compared to all other war-parties, had the possibilities to build 1940th tanks, while the axis had an industry of 1938 with bombings by allied planes. the US army was able to make this difference in quality obliviously in france and germany, but in africa, USA was less effective than the french resistence groups....while being the best supplied allied army on the battlefield.....films about the western front start with the D-day, because the performance of the US army took time to get to a good level and the underperformance of the US-beachheads on D-day was a typical performance of the US army. even today, rivers are problematic landmarks in conquest, even in recent years in syria or irak we saw countless operations in syria against ISIS or relebs or Assadforces, that had to accept the geographic situation of euphrat and Tigris. the actual crossing with men is easy with speedboats, but the heavy equipment NEEDS a bridge and it must be defended from bombing, artilery, gurillia on a river, so someone could walk 2-3 miles up the river and swim down the river to your bridge and stick an explosive device on the bridge....just an example....boom...cut off troops on the enemy side of the river. to understand the battle of stalindrad i recomend the german film Stalingrad (1993), but keep in mind, that films about this subject are to some extend propaganda and mythos-creation. its like "the patriot", of course we see an american flag....in this case a german film will highlight the crimes of the german soldiers on the eastern front and the psychological damage to the common soldier on the front, while the homefront will speak about the "death of heros" by these soldiers. so the end is quite nihilistic pessimistic and crule realisitc to some extend about the reality of this battle. russian movies tend to sell the propaganda of this battle, even today. today these areas would be georgia, but the part of georgia, that is conquered and occupied by russia for 10-20 years allready. most of the oil is in the east in today azerbaijan, who has a war with armenia......georgia is more like caucasus-greece, armenia is pro-russian and azerbaijan is pro-turkey.......even today these states are extremly problematical. mainreason is the oil and gas....most of these ressources are today in the seas or directly near the mountains. this area is a constant problem over pipelines and the EU could possible make these nations join their union, so russia tries to prevent these actions with wars, like ucrain....technicaly azerbaijan, armenia and georgia could become EU-member states....but there is no pending request to join the union, like ucrain. the performance of the italian and romanian troops were .....well...... shadowed by racial prejudges......and the germans didnt wanted to give their supplies to these soldiers.... oh and when stalingrad was traped....it was december.....so the russians could have simply waited.....but the germans remained to be active, so the russians had to "attack" to counter the german reactions to break the siege.
there are some maps about the eastern front in blue and red paint...tactical warmaps and these maps give detailed informations about the division numbers and army structure....its highly complex, but you can animate the front by coping these maps...it would explain some movments and appearing of divisions, because in a game we would see the creation of these divisions and their move to the front, but on a map divisions tend to appear on the front by relevance, because these divisions were not showed on prior maps behind the front. in some cases we see a sole division defending huge areas, because the division was stretched over the whole territority to hold the whole area against suprise attacks of the enemy...on a map, you will simply see this one division and some symboles to show their integrity or area of service (spread out for recon for example) the endresult looks like this i2.wp.com/www.dupuyinstitute.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Ostfront-6-December-1941.png or the new version miro.medium.com/max/1919/1*0vPYtds6rmklTWT0al7Otw.png there are books just with these maps for the ww2. some militarian historians are nerds....hard core nerds....for these maps...
The Red, yellow and blue were Romanian Army's and from top to bottom red, white, and green were Hungarian Army's and from left to right red, white, and, green were Italian Army's
the battle of Stalingrad was the most intense battle in human history. 23 August 1942 - 2 February 1943) with a death toll of up to 2 million people. There is a day in October when Stalingrad Station was captured between Germany and the Soviets 14 times. Approaching this place, [Stalingrad], soldiers often said: "We are entering hell." And after spending a day or two here, they say: "No, this is not hell, it is ten times worse than hell." General Chuikov
So I was right about Stalingrad. I can't imagine what it was like to be there. I'm sure we'll get more in-depth with this particular battle in the future.
@@SoGal_YT There is a great German movie called 'Stalingrad' (1993), a bit biased of course and slightly inaccurate historical wise but it kind of gives you an idea of what the situation there was like
It's interesting to me how little Americans know about the battle of Stalingrad even though it's arguably the most important battle of the war and certainly the most brutal in human history. Every child in Germany and Russia (but also in other European countries) knows about Stalingrad, it's infamous. More people died in that one battle than during the entire invasion of Normandy.
There were not only Germans who took part into Nazi invasion into USSR but also primarily Finns (at the northern sector), Romanians, Hungarians and Italians (at the southern sector).
@Da Mighty Shabba Romanian army had the second largest force on the Eastern front right after the Germans. None of these countries had been invaded by Germany. Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria all joined the Axis in 1940 and were pretty much the agressors against for example Yugoslavia which was invaded from all sides and Bulgarians even helped invading Greece. So they were certainly not slave soldiers, just as you know for easier management and chain of command these divisions from other countries fell under overall German command.
@Da Mighty Shabba well it depends who do you mean subjugated them. Finns were attacked in December 1939 by the Soviets and despite being massively outnumbered they fought hard and gave Soviets a lot of headache. They were eventually overwhelmed and forced to sign white peace and cede land to the Soviets. Noone really helped the Finns in this fight apart from empty promises from the Western powers and some volunteers from Sweden. In 1941 the Finns were not officially a part of the Axis, but decided to take the opportunity and invade alongside the Germans to take back the land they lost a few years back. But they were certainly not forced by the Germans to do so. The Finns basically pushed forward, took the land they lost and halted their advance to take fortified positions between the lakes like shown in the video. Apart from that not much had happened until the end of the war when they signed armistice and effectively lost the land again (nowadays Finland borders are still like that). Finns and Germans never linked in Leningrad because the Finns didn’t want to go further and lose manpower they desperately needed to preserve. The Germans on the other hand had only limited number of divisions in Finland istelf and didn’t intervene much in Finnish military actions.
Stalingrad, as Leningrad was named after Soviet leader- that's one reason why it was importnant. More strategicaly, it hold big industrial complex and even bigger logistical hub, important for Germans to import oil from the Caucasus and reinforce their soldiers there
@@SoGal_YT Сибирскую нефть и тем более северную тогда ещё не разведали и технологий добычи не было, поэтому на тот момент доступ к кавказкой нефти был критически важен. Сталинград(Волгоград сегодня) означает город Сталина, с политической точки зрения потерять его трагедия. Ленинград-город Ленина те же политические причины, а экономически крупнейший военно-промышленный центр и выход в Северный-ледовитый океан.
Stalingrad wasn't as important strategically as some might think. Sure it was a big city situated on the Volga river, but there was no real need to take it at any cost. Hitler just wanted to take it because it was called Stalingrad (also something about not retreating because that would be bad even if your troops would gain a more favorable position).
@@Jakeonkuningas Not quite so. Surely, the name "Stalingrad" was ideologically important but it has always been overrated as the main reason. For example the city of Donetsk (which at that time was also named after Stalin - "Stalino") was taken by the Germans pretty easy and there wasn't that many attention to the name neither from us or from the Germans and no "Not a step back" calls). In my opinion three pragmatic and strategic reasons here prevailed. First, Stalingrad was the industrial giant of the region and in its factories tanks were not only produced but also could be quickly repaired and sent back to the front what gave us (the Soviets) big advantage - the Germans could not repair their tanks and vehicles that quick. Also the dominating heights (like Malakhov kurgan) of the area were in the city, and their possession gave the full control of the Volga supplying lines. If the Germans cut it, the Caucasus oil couldn't be transported to the central regions that easy and there were no more oil sources which could cover that loss, not in the USSR itself not by the lend-lease help. Finally Stalingrad was filled with the Soviet troops which have been retreated from their positions on Don, so, nevertheless these soldiers were by August already exhausted by almost two months of unstopping fight and their losses, the city was a very serious position which thanks to the connections with the other side of Volga we could reinforce with fresh divisions and thus to threat the whole German troops to the south with a great encirclement, (which we in fact had in mind - it was called the operation "Saturn"). So without capturing the city and deploying the defense lines at the natural obstacle (Volga) the Germans could not be sure about the success of the whole campaign.
Axis casualties during the Battle of Stalingrad are estimated to have been around 800,000, including those missing or captured. Soviet forces are estimated to have suffered 1,100,000 casualties, and approximately 40,000 civilians died. And only in this one city. One of my ancestors died in Stalingrad.
In Stalingrad axis lost: 250,000 dead, 90,000 POWs and that's only German losses. Romanian lost 140k, Italian 100k, Hungarian 100k. Also Army Group A which was fighting in the south lost around 300k men
Actually the casualties for the Soviets would be about double that of the axis It's like 800k for the entire axis and around 2 million for the Soviets For the both, "casualties" include dead, wounded, MIAs or POWs
In January 1942, my first grandfather (my mother's father) died defending the approaches to Leningrad in Karelia. My second grandfather (my father's father) fought the nazis at Stalingrad this year.
@@NetoKruzerThank you for your kind words. It is a pity that both my grandfathers did not live to Win. My second grandfather (my father's father) defended Stalingrad, but died in the early spring of 1943 in a raid in the Donbass (Eastern Ukraine). And I don't know where he's buried. And now it is almost impossible to find out, since there is fighting again in this territory...
@@SoGal_YT Every Russian family has ancestors who fought in this war. My family was more fortunate, both of my great-grandfathers went through the 41/45 war.
(EDIT: Mocsk made some extremely interesting and well-sourced corrections to this post in the comments below, putting in an impressive effort to do so. Ironically, my impression of how things went was influenced by the same anti-Russian scholastic bias I mentioned at the end of the post. To anyone who takes the time to read this, I'd really recommend reading Mocsk's followups as well.) The stereotype of the Soviets having worse training than the Germans was true to a certain extent, at least during this stage of the war, but it was mainly a matter of preparation rather than a systemic deficiency. After seizing power, Stalin was intensely paranoid that Leninist loyalists in the army were plotting to overthrow him, so he conducted a massive purge of the officer corps right before Germany invaded. He thought that this wouldn't be a problem; he had secured a non-aggression pact with Germany following their joint invasion of Poland, and was fully convinced that Hitler would honor it. Obviously he was wrong, and his purge left the Red Army without steady leadership and essential specialist skills in the first year of the invasion. The situation was exacerbated by Stalin's refusal to believe early reports of the German attacks, as he forbade the Red Army from redeploying or making defensive preparations in the vital first days of the war. The disaster at the Battle of Brody was, in my opinion, the most serious consequence of the purge. As Eastory explained in the last video, the Soviets gathered a massive concentration of tanks to launch a counterattack against the German spearhead in the south. On paper it really should have worked, since the force was overwhelming and the Soviet tanks were actually superior to the opposing German ones in several important ways. In practice, the tanks had been distributed to troops that had not been drilled in mechanized warfare, and often didn't even know how to drive their vehicles. The result was an uncoordinated mess, and the Soviets ultimately lost a huge portion of their tanks. This is one of the major reasons why the German army was able to make such swift progress for the rest of the year. Tanks are the key element of the spearheads used to conduct encirclements in mobile warfare, and since the Soviets lost so many, the Germans could afford to move recklessly, with little cause to fear another serious counterattack. The thing that a lot of Western historians tend to understate is that the Red Army managed to reorganize by the end of 1942, and from then on could contend with the Germans on equal terms. There's a mistaken impression that the Soviets won through sheer numbers alone, and while their superior manpower and resources were definitely essential to avoiding an early defeat, they absolutely did out-fight the Germans in the later years of the war. They updated and revitalized mobile warfare doctrine into a form that was more effective and sustainable than what the Germans were using, while the German generals largely failed to adapt to the changing circumstances. In some cases, this failure was conscious and racially motivated; Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, despite being considered an excellent strategist, flatly refused to account for Soviet counterintelligence tactics because he didn't believe that Slavs were capable of such subtlety. In fact, one of the reasons why the "Soviet horde" trope is so persistent is that much of our scholarship on the war came from West Germany, particularly commanders like Manstein who wished to secure their reputations after the war. The Russians didn't really get to tell their side of the story to the Western world until the Cold War ended.
The russians on divisional levels were NOT equal to germans troops until maybe 1945 and in 1942 were so poor in command at that level that tanks were put into brigades to enable their commanders to control them .. However at the strategic level they greatly improved under Zhukov and Koniev and thats where their success lay .. they individual german soldier was trained 1 level up in command terms but the soviet use of maskirovka (spelling?) fooled the germans and less cerebral and party loyal commanders like Schorner and Rendulic meant that the soviets had less to compete with on the strategic battlefiels
@@steveswitzer4353 "Until maybe 1945"? In 1944 the German army was in shambles already, with older men, young teenagers as well as people with physical disabilities previously unfit for service, conscripted in to fill the gaps. Although true that there were *some* veteran Wehrmacht and SS units, they were few and far between.
No the germans unlike other armies trained everyman for a rank about his own and officers spent time as effectively a ranker plus initiative was encouraged the germans were the best army in ww2 for this they were systemically better
@@steveswitzer4353 That was true in the first half of the war, yes. Although in 1944, and even the end of 1943, that standard quickly deteriorated, as Germans were being quickly bled out of manpower.
Germans put huge effort to buffed up their army after WW1. They realised their mistakes and found out, they cannot win long war of attriction. So, they needed to act fast to gain all they want. Couple brilliant strategists like von Seeckt and Guderian prepared a ground for Blitzkrieg (Lightning war) tactis. Rest was set by industry which produced a ton of tanks and planes, dedicated to this kind of war (that's why first german tanks were not slow and havy, but small, fast and light armored btw). The tactics evolve and became more defensive with time, when Germans were loosing more and more men, territory and weapons and they cannot reinforce their loses unlike the rest of world they were fighting with.
7:40 Basically the european part of Russia is the part of Russia that matters.The rest has poor infrastrucutre and small cities.Thats also why the bolsheviks won The civil war
Most of the strategic resources have always been in Siberia but back then these resources were not explored, the infrastructure, mines and such was not in place. But today's Siberia is very important as it provides a lot of stuff...
The Battle of Stalingrad was the bloodiest battle in human history; more than 2 million soldiers died in the city and its surroundings. The city had some strategic importance to the Germans in the sense that it was a large industrial center that manufactured military equipment, but its symbolic importance as the city bearing Stalin's name was even higher. Neither side could afford losing it. My great-grandfather fought in Stalingrad, and went all the way to Berlin without as much as receiving a single scratch, despite serving as infantry; his brothers were not so lucky. He got to see Truman and Eisenhower in Potsdam.
@@stefanito_m4354 Not really, if you're implying that Moscow would have been a better decision. The Caucasus region's oil makes sense as an objective, given Germany's enormous supply problems. If they were to command this region effectively they would need to take Stalingrad to 1) ensure that the Soviets didn't have a hub to direct assaults/offensives from, and 2) cut off the Volga, roads, other supply lines and then commandeer them so that they could utilize the network to make use of the resources. Moscow on the other hand really only plays a part as a railway network and would have been a huge blow the Russians but would not have meant the end (even then there's no way to say that it wouldn't have been just as much of a bloodbath as Stalingrad, in fact it may have been even worse since they had so much time to prepare).
@@Zakatak-mf4iq no i was implying that the germans should have retreated from stalin grad and pushed again a bit later but they where forbidden from doing that hitler dint follow instructions from his generals and they where surrounded. from that point on germany started losing really hard, they lost about 300-500k soldiers in stalingrad just from that one mistake
1) Siberian oil field started to be developed only since 1950s. Prior to WWII, main centres of the Soviet oil industry were in its European areas - mostly in Azerbaijan (behind Caucasian Mountains), also in Tatarstan and Bashkortostan. 2) Currently Causian Mountains separates Russia (from north) with Georgia and Azerbaijan (from south).
The deep, penetrating encirclement was what came to be known as the Blitzkrieg. Interestingly, the Soviets had come to similar conclusions and had developed a theory of "Deep Battle", which similarly involved offensive manoeuvres by mechanised forces deep into the enemy rear, and defence in depth against such incursions.
Before Stalingrad, the Wehrmacht developed an offensive using the advantage in tactics, speed and organization. The Red Army in 1941-42 could not compete in tactics with the Wehrmacht-it was just learning to fight, and the Wehrmacht was the strongest army in the world in the entire history of mankind up to this day. But in Stalingrad, tactics, detours, and strategy meant nothing. The Nazis had to take Stalingrad to cut off the USSR from oil from Baku and Grozny. It was necessary to do what they had avoided all the war-to storm the city with strong buildings and stone walls. There was no more advance of tens of kilometers a day, no more roundabout maneuvers and flanking attacks - there was no place for them in the cramped, burning city that had been pulverized by Luftwaffe bombers. It was simply necessary to pass through the wreckage of the city for several kilometers and with a steel fist knock down, throw into the river the remnants of the Soviet units, battered and tired after the hardest retreat through the hot desert, under constant blows of the Luftwaffe, in blood and losses. This was more than the army could do in 2 weeks, destroying Poland, breaking through to Moscow and Stalingrad, hundreds of kilometers from the border. But it turned out that for the first time in the entire war, the war did not go according to the scenario to which the Germans were accustomed. Soviet soldiers, unable to keep up with the maneuvers of the Wehrmacht, who were surrounded, suddenly, for the first time in the war, found themselves in a situation where they could not be bypassed, surrounded and deceived - and the enemy is not running around the dusty steppe, looking for a place to strike, but here it is, in front of you, coming straight at you, a Nazi soldier, a swastika on the munir and the inscription "Gott mit uns" on the belt buckle. The one who burned your city with bombs, who starved a million people in Leningrad, who burned Belarusian villages together with people, killed, burned, raped and robbed - here he is, he wants to go through you to the Volga. Well, let him try to pass. Face to face, come on, come on, come on. Here it is, the Volga - OUR Volga. Pass through. After all, there is not much left, in some places to the Volga-a hundred, two hundred meters. AND YOU WON'T PASS THEM. The fight broke up into many separate fights. In three weeks, the Wehrmacht defeated France - in Stalingrad, three weeks of battle could go for one big house. The huge 6th army of the Wehrmacht, the most powerful unit, hundreds of tanks, hundreds of thousands of Wehrmacht soldiers broke into the city-to throw the Red Army into the Volga, to destroy the remnants of the resistance. And they were met face to face by the remnants of the 62nd Soviet army (the Soviet army is about the size of a German division) and the 8th division of the NKVD-essentially a military police, poorly armed, without tanks and guns. But in Stalingrad there were no complicated maneuvers and detours - there was a fight to the death, with rifles, bayonets, grenades, knives, axes, shovels, stones - the enemy is near, behind the wall, you hear him breathing in the next room, gathering strength, and again you come together with him in a fight, killing and dying, shooting, chopping with a knife, an axe and a sapper's shovel, biting his teeth into the throat over the "Iron Cross" - HERE YOU WILL NOT PASS. We will die, but you will not take another step. Beyond the Volga, there is no land for you, there is only room for you here - a pit a meter wide and two meters long, covered with mud and broken bricks. And in Stalingrad, the Wehrmacht broke down. Psychologically, I couldn't stand it. The Germans are excellent soldiers, no one else could have survived such a terrible massacre, month after month, in blood and mud for six months-but after six months, the Germans also broke down. Stalingrad drew in all the forces, all the reserves of the Wehrmacht, to the right and left of Stalingrad, the Reich's allies - the Romanians and Italians-were already holding the front line, all the reserves of the German army in the southern sector were involved in a terrible massacre in the destroyed, burning stone city. While the Wehrmacht was spending its last strength, Stalin and the general staff of the Red Army were accumulating reserves. For months, saving every tank and every soldier, preparing them for battle in the steppe far to the east beyond the Volga, and supporting the city itself with minimal reinforcements, where the defenders fought in the minority, managed to accumulate reserves - and in the winter, when the bloodied, exhausted, psychologically broken Wehrmacht completely exhausted-the Red Army struck. Across the snow - covered steppe, to the weakest point-from the north and south of Stalingrad, where the front was held not by the Germans, but by the Romanians and Italians, unable to resist the armored fists of the terrible T - 34s rushing through the snow at them - and ran, either to the Soviet troops, with their hands raised, or from them, to the rear-where the snow-covered steppe stretched for hundreds of kilometers and there was no escape from overtaking, cutting, cutting into pieces and grinding into the mess with the tracks of Red Army tanks - who spent two hard years, bleeding profusely, learning from the Germans how to advance, encircling, cutting off and destroying the enemy. The German units tried to stop the attack by throwing more than 100 tanks into the offensive - and these tanks came under the ramming attack of two Soviet tank armies, were swept away, torn apart, defeated and destroyed. On the 4th day after the start of the offensive, Soviet tanks advancing from the south and north met near the farm Sovetsky-300 kilometers west of the 6th army of the Wehrmacht. The trap was closed.
The German army was probably the best trained in the world, particularly in defensive warfare. They did rely a lot on horses though, they were not as mechanised as most people think.
Leningrad (St Peterburg) is the second largest city in Russia and USSR, former capital, home to millions of people, huge industrial, cultural, logistical center. The story of the Seige of the Leningrad is horrific, several million people died , mostly civilians, mostly of hunger, frost and german bombardments. Check its history, it is really important for understanding Russian vision of the war and the rest of the world (Europe, for instance. Btw Putin is from StPeterburg too and his ancestors also died during the Blockade).
The encirclement maneuver was anything but new at the time. One famous battle in Antiquity that was won by that trick was Cannae, where Hannibal the Carthaginian obliterated almost all the Roman army. Another one was Zama, where Scipio Africanus took his example and destroyed the army of Carthago.
Let me know what other videos I should watch! Also, like and subscribe if you enjoyed this video 👍🏻Check out part 1 of this series if you haven't yet: 🇩🇪🇨🇳ruclips.net/video/8Uce7O6KvuU/видео.html
Battle of Stalingrad is worth a review all by itself. Also the campaign in the far east is also worth a look at the Japanese invasion of British, Dutch and French overseas territories.
The Soviet troops were weakened after the purge in 1937 (almost all the military leadership was repressed, many were shot). There were few experienced commanders.
19:03 most of the numbers of troups are tricky: the thing is that these numbers also include people who are working in supplies, technical support, militia and etc. That is why the real numbers differ often on the front line. Btw the same thing is with casualties: Soviets counted all: wounded and dead as casultes, germans : only dead.
Enemy At The Gates is a good war movie about Stalingrad, starring Jude Law as a Russian sniper....it's a pretty realistic portrayal of Stalingrad....for a Hollywood movie. You get the horrific flavour of it all.
Basically the romanians and Italians during the invasion were not exactly useless, however almost all the progress done was done by the Germans, they both had the most numbers and were the most effective.
As for the tactics of the blitzkrieg, it really goes back to 1916: the Russian general Brusilov made a breakthrough on the German front and broke into the operational space. However, he did not know what to do next, there was nothing to build on the success, so the troops had to be returned to their original positions. But this case showed that such a maneuver is possible and gives a lot of advantages. It only remained to provide the army with the means to a) break through the front line, b) the rapid development of the offensive in depth. The first task is solved by tanks, the second by trucks and armored personnel carriers. The environment, of course, knew the art of war before. But before the strategic encirclement was impossible - the nature of the war was different, and the soldiers were few. The siege of the city is the maximum that could be encircled.
17:52 to answer your question about joint operations and training within axis forces, no, there was really little cooperation, and our armies(I'm italian by the way), were nowhere as organized, gerared and effective as the german army, which in fact would retain the title of single best fighting formation up untill late in the war. In fact, the germans had to bail us out multiple times, both in the eastern front, as well as in Africa and other places. The reason for these lackluster performances(by the Italian army at least), lies in the fact that we came in severely unprepared, due to the assumption that Hitler would have quickly rolled both Churchill and Stalin, and that thus, in the words of Mussolini himself: "I only need a few thousand deads to sit at the peace table as a winner". Turns out he was dramatically wrong, thankfully.
Encirclement has always been a part of warfare. A brilliant example is the battle of Hannibal Barcas Cannea against the Roman Empire. As for BLITZKRIEG tactics, it is mainly a German design, which could be implemented from the end of the 30s to the beginning of the 50s. anti-tank defenses have improved a lot, so the destructive power of tanks has decreased. Nowadays, the advantage is the defense, you can see this in the pictures of the Russo-Ukrainian war, where neither side is capable of a depth attack, due to the advanced defensive weapons.
Nice, go on! p.s. if u interested in more detailed and complex describing what happened at eastern front i suggest check Soviet Storm. WW2 that is incredible documentary work mapping, battle details, tactics, strategies, quotes from generals, EVERYTHING to understand what happened then. but this required a lot of time, 18 episodes x ~50min
LOL, that is a lot, but I'll write it down anyway. Could be I can do it at some point....or at least watch on my own time. Part 3 for 1943 should be out this weekend. Thanks for watching!
I even don't hope that u record "react\watch" on it, its too much. But anyway you should try watch it treasure of knowledge by yourself. thanks you too!
Encirclement manoeuvres were common with cavalry. Historically, people with great cavalry like the Mongols, the Magyars, the Persians and the Poles for examples were masters at this.
In Russia, there are very large spaces, and there are few people, therefore a large city is not just a settlement, it is a transport hub, without which it is impossible to move on. The oil fields of the USSR were in the Batumi region (northern Caspian), from which oil was transported to the north along the Volga. Stalingrad stood on the Volga and, controlling the city, it was possible to completely block traffic along the Volga. Holding Stalingrad, it was quite easy to capture the southern part of the USSR - the one where Batumi and oil are. As for the oil of Siberia, it was only under Stalin that they began to seek and develop it. I'm not sure, but it seems that by 1941 there was nothing there, and if there was, it was little and far away. So for both sides, Stalingrad meant oil. In addition, Stalingrad was a major industrial base. The Stalingrad Tractor Plant made tanks (all Soviet tractor plants make tanks, and tractors are more of a by-product). During the battles for the city, tanks went into battle directly from the workshop. Well, the fact that the city bore the name of the head of state, political and ideological leader of the country, also had its own meaning. At least for the Germans. But the city was not taken. In some places, the Germans had literally 15 meters to the river, but they did not pass these meters. The peculiarity of the Stalingrad battle was that it turned into a meat grinder, in which the Germans ground their best parts. The very part that marched through Paris in 1940 was ground to dust in Stalingrad - so that Paris now has a metro named after Stalingrad. The result of this battle was an unprecedented event: the group of German armies South was completely destroyed. It should be noted that in 1941 the German army was the best in the world. In 1.5 years, the Germans defeated 20 countries (20 armies) in Europe, including the two superpowers of those years - France and England. The British fled from the continent abandoning equipment - Hitler even held back his troops to give the British time to board the ships. And this army was ground to dust in Stalingrad. Second, an unprecedented phenomenon - the German field marshal was taken prisoner. This has never happened before. Then a parade was held in Moscow, which Hitler and his soldiers dreamed of: German troops marched through the streets of the Russian capital. True, they walked without weapons, without music, in complete silence.
About Oil. Nowadays Russia has many oils in Siberia, but it was developed at 60-es or 70-es (after WWII). In 40-es main oil supplies was from Caucasian region. About German army. In the begin of war German army had technical advance in aviation and have well composed tank groups with good tanks. And very important factor - German army already had experience in modern big war (they conquer all Europe just in few month with low looses). Moreover, Soviet army was in rearmament process. Many fortification lines and fly fields was unready. Many good new types of tanks and aviation was developed in shot time before war started, but most of them was not mastered by crews well enough. And Soviet army had some deficit of supply trucks and modern radio stations. At last, Germans (and they allies - Italians, Hungarians, Slovaks and others) concentrated more then 5 millions near the soviet border. Soviet Union had near the 5,5 army, but 2 million was not at the east border - they were at the Siberia (there was a probability of Japanese invasion) and at the Caucasian region. But troops on east border was not concentrate. Many troops were dislocated at 100-300 km (60-200 miles) to border. So Germans and their allies had the strategic initiative - they could choose any good points and mad local numerical superiority in that points, punched the holes in defense with tanks and cut the supply lines, made pockets, etc. But defenders couldn't know where was new attack. At the begin of war it was new tactic, and German army trained it vary well in western Europe.
These are the different axis powers that helped the Germans. Finland Hungary Romania Italy and a small division from Spain was sent to be a German division to invade USSR but Franko never joined the war. During Stalingrad germnay had 400,000 men in the 6th army and 600,000 from other countries but the other countries weren’t as well trained or well equipped so the Soviets could easily broken through the line
The importance of the cities was that Soviet industry was heavily concentrated in its westernmost regions, closest to Europe. So although the Soviets did have a lot of space to retreat into, there were limits to this strategy. They picked up and moved whole factories eastwards, and famously converted tractor factories to make tanks, but things were tight enough that during the siege of Leningrad, tanks were fighting from inside the very factories in which they had just been built, firing through holes in the walls made by German shells, while the factories continued to operate.
The significance of Stalingrad was it defeated the German army and destroyed it, it's the first turning of the tide for the war. The oil field objective was Baku in Azerbaijan SSR.
We are talking about 1942, not the current situation. The Siberian oil fields began to be extracted much later. Just as many raw materials are not extracted in the world today, because with the current technology it is difficult and expensive, but maybe in a few years it will be worth it. At that time, the oil fields of the Caucasus were the Soviet Union its main sources. 07 39
The idea of flanking and encirclement is as old as time. However, Germany because of it limited Inter-War army was limited, and focused their tactics and operations on winning battles with less troupes. The also had pretty good officers and communications to lead these attacks. They would break threw the lines with a combination of tanks and motorized infantry (infantry in trucks) and mobile artillery and close air support, and then aggressively drive deep into enemy territory, the horse and foot infantry (most troupes had not trucks) would follow along and encircle, then the tank armies would rush on. This is not unique to Germany, but their doctrine was called 'War of Movement' (Bewegungskrieg) and they had the most advanced such system early in the war. However eventually others would come up and have troupes and army to do the same.
I know you said you aren’t a gamer, but you might like to check out Gary Grigsby’s War in the East, not necessarily to play, but as a passing interest. It’s a very in depth strategy game of the Soviet/German war. There are several gamers who post videos here on RUclips covering tutorials, play by email and ai challenges. Never played myself as I haven’t the time to play games very often, but as a history buff, I’ve found them interesting.
Flanking manoeuvres have been part of battles for millennia. Casar used them. The difference was the German developed Blitzkrieg (lightning war). Conventionally, the different types of force Artillery, infantry, and latterly tanks were completely separate. The Germans mixed then together, in a single command group. The might have the same number of commanders but each would have all three type of fighters. They used radio to coordinate ground forces as well as air support. This meant tanks which were at the spearhead of an advance had artillery and infantry support to the hold the ground that the tanks had gained.
Those kind of envelopment maneuvers are old, like, in 216 BC, Hannibal put his best troops on his flanks at the Battle of Cannae and surrounded and killed 50,000 Romans. Of course the scale of WW2 is totally unique, and the Germans had tanks and air support which obviously help with the push.
the Mongols used a similar tactics to the German encirclement because there entire army was on horse, they would deliberately retreat from an enemy into favourable ground where there army was in positioned then hit them on the centre and both flanks, they even sometimes made army's march away from there defensive positions forts and city's, then they would go around that army and take the city behind them before they could get back to reinforce it
Don't know if you will see this sense it's been 5 months sense you did this video but if you do see this TIK is doing a step by step battle for Stalingrad i would suggest watching it if you wanted to know more about the day by day struggle that both sides suffered in that battle
The soviet army expanded from from about 900,000 in 1939 to 5,000,000 in 1941. This came after the great purge of 1937 which thinned their officer corps a lot. Between these two events, the soviet army at the start of the war simply didnt have enough experienced officers to properly handle the army, it also wasnt properly supplied, there were some mobile infantry units created that had less trucks than regular infantry units. Worth noting that not all 5,000,000 were on the eastern front at the start of the war, many were on their southern and asian fronts as they didnt expect an attack by the germans. This is why it looks like there are so much more soviets than germans on the map, the boxes are soviet divisions, the circles are germans corps. The soviets did away with the corps level of organisation for much of the war due to simply not having enough officres to organise it. Lack of officers been poor coordination and coordination of different arms was key during ww2. In the 41 video, the soviet defeat at dubno was a prime example of this, they brought far more tanks than the germans had, including a sizable number that were impenetrable to german anti tank guns from the front and lost, badly due to charging tanks in unsupported, lacking coordination with the infantry and with drivers who hadnt even driven their tanks for very long before having to fight the germans.
His Romania also with great dignity in the fight against the former Soviet union that unjustly annexed Romanian territories so it was part of the power of the axis and followed the road to Stalingrad.
Так отдайте как вы считаете несправедливо отобранные земли Румынии и Польше тоже отдайте. Земли Российской Империи тоже верните России.Даёшь десоветизацию Украины!!!
1:48 The idea of focusing fire on a weak point to be able to break through is probably not entirely a German invention, but they certainly excelled at it. The idea of a double encirclement is really old though. The Carthaginian general Hannibal famously used it against the Romans at Cannae in 216 BCE, to devastating effect.
In most countries that isn't Russia, the sort of encirclement the Germans were brilliant at was a war-winner. One or two of those and the enemy would run out of land to fight on and soldiers to fight with. It happened in Poland, it happened in France. Russia isn't most countries, though. There is always more land to fight on, and you can usually find more men to do the fighting. The Soviet Union were able to absorb those losses, brutal though they were, and still remain in the fight, and in the end the Germans simply didn't know what to do about it. Also, it looks like the Soviet unit that was surrounded but managed to escape around the 10:30 mark would be Pavel Belov's 1st Guard Cavalry Corps - actual horsemen on actual horses, which may explain why they managed to get away while their comrades in the 329th Rifle Division did not. Pavel Belov's wiki page describes the encirclement as a five-month cavalry raid, which sounds pretty rad, not gonna lie.
Leningrad and Stalingrad were not attacked because of their names. Leningrad was the homebase for the Baltic fleet, it was a huge industrial city as well. Stalingrad was not originally part of the Nazi plans. They wanted to take Astrakan to block the Volga and then launch the main force into the oil fields of the Caucases, Stalingrad was the first stop to that objective. It had a lot of soviet soldiers and a huge industrial capacity, and the Soviets were pouring troops into it. They only entered it because they believed it would fall in a week. It didn't, so they were stuck there and decided to try and block the Soviets there.
Blitzkrieg was the german tactic used in response to the wasteful tactics and failures employed in WW1. Whereby you employ your strongest forces at a limited number of points in the front line in order to force a breakthrough and allow your forces to enter the enemies rear and encircle the enemy causing chaos, which is what they did so successfully in the battle of France to the British and French in 1940. The Russians, Brits and Americans all learnt from this tactic as the war progressed.
One thing to bear in mind was that both armies were controlled by dictators. Stalin had executed most of his top generals in the late 1930s and by 1941 many generals in the field were too scared of being shot if they ordered their soldiers to withdraw. It wasn't until 1942 that Soviet generals had greater autonomy.
The mountain ranges you were mentioning are Caucasus mountains, half of it is in the Russian SFSR, the rest is in Georgian SSR down to the Azerbaijan SSR.
1:51 German commander Heinz Guderian invented this strategy. Which doesn't include only armored forces but also aircraft, mechanised infrantry and so on
@@SoGal_YT No the germans always used manouevre warfare called Bewegungskrieg ... they only added tanks and aircraft to the mix their position in the centre of europe invited attack so they became good at attaking themselves .....Blitzkrieg term was made up by a journalist .....and most of the german army was horse drawn and unmotorised with a small steel tip of panzer divisions Read books by micheal Citino or watch this it will help ruclips.net/video/UNDhswF1GKk/видео.html
Well that's what Guderian's autobiography claims. His ability for self promotion is right up there alongside P. T. Barnum's. The combined warefare strategy was a strategy derived from Von Clausewitz's writings. Von Seeckt probably deserves as much credit as anyone.
SoGal a must watch is made by Russian tv called Soviet Storm war in the East explains in detail the whole war starting from the initial attack , the reorganising of effort and the ultimate fight through to the eventual defeat in combination with the Western forces of the German axis forces. I think you would enjoy it.
It wasn't just about training. It was about weapons and supplies and strategic leadership and finally The Soviet Winter was a huge deciding factor. The soviets built better weapons during the war, especially tanks and they were designed to withstand the cold Soviet Winter as were the Soviet Uniforms unlike the German ones.
All major cities have great importance for the Soviet Union. That’s why they’re called major cities. Also, there wasn’t really any ‘waiting out’ in Stalingrad, the Russians were trying to take back the city as soon as possible, and the other was fighting for their lives.
The Soviets had the numbers and as you say not the training, but what really done the Germans was the winter ,there vehicles were precision machines , tanks mainly, the Russian T45 tanks were not as precision made, when it started to freeze German machines froze up were as the T45 carried on. also the Germans were not equipped with cold weather uniforms .
The encirclement of the enemy was used by the Zulu's they called it "the horns of the buffalo", a frontal attack by the experienced warriors "the chest of the buffalo" causing the enemy to strengthen its front, while the left and right flank "the horns" swept around encircling the enemy.......
Just wanted to add after hearing so many of your comments on this episode and the first video regarding why didn't Soviet troops figure out Axis tactics and retreat to avoid encirclement. You need to take into account that the fighting was in Soviet Union territory. While this video shows military movements in a great way, it kinda makes one forget that this is not just a map. There are cities and villages with civilians there. Retreat meant leaving women, children and enemy in the enemy hands, so it wasn't an easy choice. Army is also hard to move, also from actual soldiers and weaponry, you have supplies, communications, field hospitals... There are multiple stories from that time when what in the morning was a safe distance where hospital was organised to test the wounded from the fight line would buy the evening become a fight line itself.
Actually Napoleon used extensively this flanking tactic, that was known since ancient times. Today all armies operate like this, since a frontal assault would be suicidal. The idea is to concentrate your forces at the enemy's weak point, break through with your armored forces, encircle the enemy, isolate him from his reserve and supply forces and then destroy the trapped forces by attacking them from the sides or the rear. The Germans invented the combined arms operations, involving tanks, infantry, artillery and air support working together as a team in fast moving assaults. This was called Lightning War - Blitzkrieg. Battle of Stalingrad : (1) WW2 Documentary - The Battle of Stalingrad - RUclips
Not sure if someone answered your oil questions yet, but you are partly right Russia has oil reserves in Northern Siberia and other parts of the country. However, I believe a lot of this oil wasn't discovered at the time of WW2 and the Russians had certainly not developed the pipeline infrastructure to move the oil yet. The Caucasus Oil fields were at the time the most important strategically.
Cannae in the Second Punic War, before 200 BCE, was a battle of encirclement, so it was not a German invention. The Wehrmacht troops were both better trained, and experienced. The technology did not exist to drill in the Far North and Siberia. The battles of encirclement were conducted by German troops. The key was the oilfields;Germany needed those badly, and that made it much more difficult to conduct offensive operations. Stalin expected the Axis to attack toward Moscow, because an atack in the South would overextend their lines. Hitler knew that Germany had to have the oil.
It's relatively easy. The Germans figured out first how to use tank units most effectively. France and England understood almost nothing of modern warfare at the start of the war. Russia was also surprised. However, the Russians were able to gain the most experience and in the end were able to successfully use the "Blitzkriegtatkik" themselves. The right combination of tanks, planes and motirized infantry is required in order to do such encirclements. France lost because of this tactic. They still thought that it's enough to just wait but mobility was the key.^^
Stalingrad, had really no major importance. It was industrial but mainly produced tractors and not war equipment. Hitler, for some reason, became obsessed with capturing it probably because it bared the name of his enemy even though there was a river to the west of Stalingrad that had just as good of a strategic position without taking the city.
This absolutely not true, not only was stalingrad a major industrial hub, it had a very important strategic location along the river volga, the germans intended to use the city to establish a defence line and cut off the soviets from reinforcing the Caucasus which was the primary goal of the germans, stalingrad would allow the germans to secure the much needed oil allowing them to continue to wage war
Hey, SoGal. While awaiting your video on Napoleon’s Retreat From Moscow, I decided to watch this one. It’s fascinating how history tends to repeat itself; Napoleon and Hitler both launched invasions of Russia, made fatal errors and decisions in their respective campaigns, and afterward were all but guaranteed to be beaten with everything else they did being to only delay the inevitable. Stalingrad in my opinion is where Germany lost the war. The 6th Army under the command of General Paulus - one of if not THE best of all of Germany’s armies, and undefeated at that point - was surrounded and crushed in the city. Manstein - arguably Germany’s finest military commander in WW2 - tried but failed to rescue the 6th Army in no small part to Hitler’s bad decision-making. And that was it. It’s important to keep in mind that many battles in WW2 were decided by air superiority. Thanks to the 5-month defense if Stalingrad, the Soviets were able to build up and train air and armoured units and eventually dominated the skies over the Eastern Front.
Well flanking was from Romans and Napoleon used it the most Until tricked by Wellington. The Germans spotted potential in both and used it to their advantage to start with against Russia who were actually holding out for winter and that stopped aircraft bombing also Tanks and vehicles from moving also freezing the German forces to death.
My understanding of the Caucasus region is the Caucasus Mountains run from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea. North of the mountains is Russia. South of the mountains is Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan and yet more oil. The mountains are quite a formidable natural barrier and is home to the highest peak in Europe, Mount Elbrus. Stalingrad was of major strategic importance, it was a major river port and commerce centre. You controlled Stalingrad, you control the flow of oil and supplies. Stalingrad was renamed Volgograd in 1961. Similarly Leningrad was renamed St.Petersburg in 1991. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but thats my understanding of the area.
the USSR was also supplied via Murmansk in the north of the soviet union from Canada and the USA, vast convoys carrying supply to aid the war effort my father was on one of the escort ships on this run
The russians have made a very long documentary of the eastern front fighting. "Soviet storm" its like 14 parts of 45 minutes per episode. It exists with English narration. It goes into depth of each operation, with stories from russian diaries.
Soviet Storm is definitely one of the best documentaries on WW2 Eastern front ever! Highly recommended, although slightly biased but it gives a lot of information, has nice animations and is quite accurate with a lot of facts, it explains things that other documentaries like this one for example don't explain such as 'Why year 1941 was such a resounding success for Germans ?' what was it like to fight Russians/German troops? And such..
In 1942, some German units had been fighting for 5 years, so they were experienced. (Spanish Civil War) But the soldiers sent to replace the losses were not much better than the newly enlisted Soviets, but because the proportion of veteran fighters was still high, the German army performed better. we are moving towards the end of the war, the recruits will get stronger and the combat value will decrease, until eventually the legendary Waffen SS will also be diluted and will have only a fraction of its original combat value. Who believes that, say, the 1st LAH ss armored division will achieve the same performance it launches in 42, as in 45, it makes a big mistake. Although it maintains its elite character throughout and is better than any similar unit, it does not reach its strength between 42 and 43. As for the Soviet forces, due to the huge losses, there are few veterans left who are it would improve the combat value of recruits. A good example of this is the situation of tank units. During the war, about 55,000 t34s were produced. This requires 55,000 tank personnel. But of these, 52,000 vehicles are destroyed during the battles, mostly with their entire personnel. So new personnel go to the finger tank, who are not yet routine. When they find themselves facing an armored ace like Michael Wittman, of course they will burn in the tanks without a chance. and this is true for all types of weapons .But the German veterans are also falling, and the newcomers are just as inexperienced.
At this point the Axis were starting to get low on fuel and had to cut down operations. Also the supply lines got very long vs those of the Soviets, which shortened.
I think that one of the colour codes in these videos is that grey = German infantry units and black = German tank units. XX = division, XXX = corps which is a group of several divisions, XXXX = army which is a group of corps, etc. Western European units of any given category were generally larger than their Soviet counterparts, so a German division would generally be larger than a Soviet division, etc. U.S. units were larger still. You were wondering about the quality of Soviet units. Soviet units were of mixed quality. Some, e.g. the ones hastily assembled in the fall of 1941, were very poorly trained and equipped. Others, such as the units transferred from the Far East just in time to fight in the defense of Moscow in December 1941, had been together for years, and some of them had victorious combat experience against the Japanese, against whom they had conducted an encircling maneuver in the Battle of Khalkin Gol in 1939. Soviet troops would generally improve in quality over the course of the rest of the War, while German units were pretty much at their quality peak in 1941. Leningrad, also known as St. Petersburg, had been the capital of the Czars' Russia for a couple of hundred years, and was the Soviet Union's second largest city with a population of a couple of million civilians, and so a major industrial center in its own right. In better times it has been a major port, but there was no merchant shipping travelling to the Soviet Union through the Baltic Sea while the Soviet Union was at war with both Finland and Germany. About strategic encirclement. AFAIK, strategic, as opposed to tactical, encirclement of field armies only became a thing with the development of railroads. Tactical encirclement has been going on since forever, e.g. the Battle of Cannae, but tactical encirclement was something that happened in an hour or an afternoon or at most over a few days and wasn't generally associated with supply lines. You also had lots of sieges before the development of railroads, but those were generally prepared defensive positions with supplies kept against the possibility of siege, not armies in the field being encircled as in the WWII Eastern Front. After railroads became developed, food, ammunition, and other supplies would be constantly being carried forward to the troops on the front lines by trains, and so in principle if you could occupy stretches of the railroads carrying food and ammunition to the enemy's forces on the front lines, those troops' ability to continue fighting would not last long. Before that, armies lived off supplies carried by animals travelling with the army, supplies stored at supply depots in forts and towns, the resources of the land, and, all too often, the possessions of the local peasants. You couldn't cut off the food supply of an enemy army by getting your troops "behind" them if they were already eating food robbed from the local peasants anyway. Arguably, the first strategic "pockets" (that I'm aware of) occurred in a war in the 1860's. The first was created when Grant took the Confederate fortress at Vicksburg. This made Texas into a "pocket". The resources of Texas could no longer be shared with the eastern Confederate states and vice-versa. (On the other hand, the relatively simple military munitions of the 1860's could still be supplied by an economic region the size of a single state.) Then Sherman took Atlanta, followed up with Savannah. Atlanta was and is a rail hub, so after Atlanta was taken it was very hard for the Confederacy to move troops and supplies between forces and manufacturies in e.g. Alabama and those in Virginia, whereas while the Confederacy held Atlanta they could just run trains from Mississippi to Virginia. After Sherman's Atlanta campaign and the "March to the Sea" the Confederacy was cut into three pockets, and pretty soon after that the war ended. However, quickly moving behind enemy lines with enough military force to be not just a raid but hold territory became much more practical in World War II with the development of mechanized forces and, in particular, tanks. The wide spaces of the Soviet Union provided enough room for this to happen often, but an earlier examples of it had happened in France. The British had to make a naval evacuation from Dunkerque because the Germans had turned it into a "pocket", cut off by land from most of France, the Belgian troops in the pocket surrendered with the surrender of Belgium, and many French troops in the pocket were taken prisoner.
I'm sure by this point Soviet field commanders and central command were well aware of what the German tactics were, but knowing what your enemy is going to do and being able to do anything about it are two totally different things. In a similar manner to the US' part of WWII, Soviet industry needed time to build up the right equipment and weapons; the Soviet military had been very stagnant and full of large number of obsolete equipment, plus Stalin's purges had decimated morale and competence within the Red Army, while the German Wehrmacht at the time was a well equipped, well trained and, crucially, battle-tested force. The German army was joined by Italian, Bulgarian and Romanian armies, much in the way Polish, Canadian, Australian and other Commonwealth forces forces fought with the allies in their own organisations and subordinate commands.
Concerning Russia: One russian poet, which I quite don´t remember, said once: Though St. Petersburg (Leningrad) may be the brain of Russia, Moscow it´s heart, the Volga is it´s vein.
@@maximilianbeyer5642 Anyone would have failed to protect those flanks, there were too overstretched and there weren't many anti-tank wepons. Before the soviet attack , the german high command was alerted about this and did nothing. The romanians resisted as much as they could in those conditions but were eventually overwhelmed by the large number of soviet tanks. About the switching side thing, there was a coup and Antonescu(who gave Hitler his word about the war) was overthrown by King Michael who tried to get Romania out of the war, not to swich sides. He even told the germans that romania wants out of the war and gave them time to leave before the soviets arrived, but no, instead of leaving they bombed Bucharest.
I would like to mention that the red yellow and blue flag belongs to Romania and fought to the end against the Soviet Union as an unjustly annexed Romanian territory.
I know quite a bit about the eastern front, so I'm gonna answer her questions in order Yes, the German army was better trained than the Red Army. Although it should be noted that for a successful offensive, you typically need a significant numerical advantage, as least locally. Questions about oil in Russia: While its true today that most Russia oil is in the Eastern half, at the time, most Soviet oil came from the southeast and Caucuses. Particularly the regions of Chechnya and Azerbaijan. Only later would oil production shift eastward. Avoiding Encirclements?: Yes, Soviet commanders were aware that this was a danger. But encirclements are difficult to avoid. If you redirect your forces towards the flanks, you leave your center open for attack. It's a very sensitive situation. Non-German Forces?: In addition to the Germans and the Finns, significant Italian, Romanian, and Hungarian troops fought on the eastern front. Additionally, there were units from Spain, Slovakia, Vichy France, and more that fought for the Axis in the East. Stalingrad?: Stalingrad was a major transport hub and industrial city, cutting it off would make the connection between Soviet troops in the Caucasus area and the main body much more difficult. Oil fields and mountain range: During the campaign of 1942, fighting took place in the Caucasian range. Despite German advances, they never reached any Caucasian Republics (Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia). The German captured some small and moderate sized oil fields, but never the largest ones. Military Cooperation?: The smaller axis powers were much weaker than Germany. While there was limited joint training, German commanders often could command these Hungarian, Romanian, Italian troops and had them in less axtive positions that required less skill. Stalingrad Encirclement: Yes. By the time the 6th Army in Stalingrad was encircled, they had taken 90% of the city.
the German army did not consist of over people and they were trained like ordinary soldiers. the fact is that at the beginning of the war, German aviation destroyed Soviet aircraft (which, due to an unexpected attack, did not even take off) and airfields. as a result, the great successes of the German army are associated with aviation support. When the Soviet Union rebuilds aviation, then Germany will begin to retreat
Stalingrad battle is in Guinness record book as the bloodiest battle of all times - 2 million dead from both sides. It is 4 times more than Allies lost for the whole war combined. It is turning point of the whole WWII and the most important battle. Turkey, for instance, decided not to join the war against USSR after it. So sad, that American education deliberately ignores that major event. It is not your fault. But, unfortunately, it creates that impression that US forces defeated Hitler. I heard it even from a Arni - the former governor of California. When in reality 8 out of 10 German soldiers died in the Eastern front. The second American-British front was opened in the summer of 1944 (less than a year to the end of war with Germany) after all major battles were won by USSR (Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad, Kursk) and the German army was in a constant retreat. PS Not denying lend-lease of course, which was a huge help for USSR. Thank fir the video. You are smart and give a good commentary so its not boring to watch :)
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the method of oil extraction is different over time. today russia is more a gas exporter, while they have big oil areas in the caucasus.
after the failed blitz in nov-dez 1941 the german military tried to contain the process of 1941 for the spring 1942 (and the failed to understand, that spring means rain in russia, so mud) so imagine dug-in well-defended german troops and a russian command, who hoped for a weaken front and chances to cut off some german areas....yea the russian command made attacks on the germans and the german divisions were still able to fire back and counter all attacks.
to counter a sucesfull tactic is extremly difficult, look at the US loosing to ONE sucessfull tactic of the vietcong for years. in most cases these tactics were countered by time, simply lack of ressources to do the same actions in the same effective way. there is a convincing argument for the napoleonic narrative of an undefeatable napoleon, that napoleon lost wars in the end of his power, because of the simply lack of horses over the decades of constant attrition of horses in his campaigns. its similar in the sovjetish case. the germans were veterans, elits in militarian actions and the russian troops were not able to act similar effective, so they had to rebuild the army, retrain basicly a new red army, because they lost the whole army in 1941 allready, rebuild their war industry, because big complexes were controlled by the enemy and at the same time, they had to organize one of the biggest armies o this planet, while they were on the front and had to defend the line. this is difficult.
the US army in africa in 1-2 years will have similar problems. the US camapaign in africa was bad. at the start of the confict the US fought against french militia from the vichy regime and was not able to crush them......militia.....foreign militia.....than actual axis troops showed up....the american army at this point had years of preperation for their tactics and equipment compared to all other war-parties, had the possibilities to build 1940th tanks, while the axis had an industry of 1938 with bombings by allied planes. the US army was able to make this difference in quality obliviously in france and germany, but in africa, USA was less effective than the french resistence groups....while being the best supplied allied army on the battlefield.....films about the western front start with the D-day, because the performance of the US army took time to get to a good level and the underperformance of the US-beachheads on D-day was a typical performance of the US army.
even today, rivers are problematic landmarks in conquest, even in recent years in syria or irak we saw countless operations in syria against ISIS or relebs or Assadforces, that had to accept the geographic situation of euphrat and Tigris. the actual crossing with men is easy with speedboats, but the heavy equipment NEEDS a bridge and it must be defended from bombing, artilery, gurillia on a river, so someone could walk 2-3 miles up the river and swim down the river to your bridge and stick an explosive device on the bridge....just an example....boom...cut off troops on the enemy side of the river.
to understand the battle of stalindrad i recomend the german film Stalingrad (1993), but keep in mind, that films about this subject are to some extend propaganda and mythos-creation. its like "the patriot", of course we see an american flag....in this case a german film will highlight the crimes of the german soldiers on the eastern front and the psychological damage to the common soldier on the front, while the homefront will speak about the "death of heros" by these soldiers. so the end is quite nihilistic pessimistic and crule realisitc to some extend about the reality of this battle.
russian movies tend to sell the propaganda of this battle, even today.
today these areas would be georgia, but the part of georgia, that is conquered and occupied by russia for 10-20 years allready. most of the oil is in the east in today azerbaijan, who has a war with armenia......georgia is more like caucasus-greece, armenia is pro-russian and azerbaijan is pro-turkey.......even today these states are extremly problematical. mainreason is the oil and gas....most of these ressources are today in the seas or directly near the mountains. this area is a constant problem over pipelines and the EU could possible make these nations join their union, so russia tries to prevent these actions with wars, like ucrain....technicaly azerbaijan, armenia and georgia could become EU-member states....but there is no pending request to join the union, like ucrain.
the performance of the italian and romanian troops were .....well...... shadowed by racial prejudges......and the germans didnt wanted to give their supplies to these soldiers....
oh and when stalingrad was traped....it was december.....so the russians could have simply waited.....but the germans remained to be active, so the russians had to "attack" to counter the german reactions to break the siege.
there are some maps about the eastern front in blue and red paint...tactical warmaps and these maps give detailed informations about the division numbers and army structure....its highly complex, but you can animate the front by coping these maps...it would explain some movments and appearing of divisions, because in a game we would see the creation of these divisions and their move to the front, but on a map divisions tend to appear on the front by relevance, because these divisions were not showed on prior maps behind the front.
in some cases we see a sole division defending huge areas, because the division was stretched over the whole territority to hold the whole area against suprise attacks of the enemy...on a map, you will simply see this one division and some symboles to show their integrity or area of service (spread out for recon for example)
the endresult looks like this i2.wp.com/www.dupuyinstitute.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Ostfront-6-December-1941.png
or the new version miro.medium.com/max/1919/1*0vPYtds6rmklTWT0al7Otw.png
there are books just with these maps for the ww2.
some militarian historians are nerds....hard core nerds....for these maps...
Thank you, would love to chat but I will need to setup insta. Best wishes
The Red, yellow and blue were Romanian Army's and from top to bottom red, white, and green were Hungarian Army's and from left to right red, white, and, green were Italian Army's
There is oil there, alot of it but its harder to get to and was not developed at the time... cause frozen shithole of hoth
the battle of Stalingrad was the most intense battle in human history. 23 August 1942 - 2 February 1943) with a death toll of up to 2 million people. There is a day in October when Stalingrad Station was captured between Germany and the Soviets 14 times.
Approaching this place, [Stalingrad], soldiers often said: "We are entering hell." And after spending a day or two here, they say: "No, this is not hell, it is ten times worse than hell."
General Chuikov
So I was right about Stalingrad. I can't imagine what it was like to be there. I'm sure we'll get more in-depth with this particular battle in the future.
@@SoGal_YT Советую прочитать мемуары Чуйкова "От Сталинграда до Берлина"
@@SoGal_YT There is a great German movie called 'Stalingrad' (1993), a bit biased of course and slightly inaccurate historical wise but it kind of gives you an idea of what the situation there was like
It's interesting to me how little Americans know about the battle of Stalingrad even though it's arguably the most important battle of the war and certainly the most brutal in human history. Every child in Germany and Russia (but also in other European countries) knows about Stalingrad, it's infamous. More people died in that one battle than during the entire invasion of Normandy.
@@relaxed-rider The 2013 film Stalingrad was not that bad either, also ,again, starring Thomas Kretschmann...
Yes, there is more oil in Siberia, but it wasn`t yet known during WW2.
Thanks for letting me know!
LOL if USA knows this. He probably says WHERE?!
There were not only Germans who took part into Nazi invasion into USSR but also primarily Finns (at the northern sector), Romanians, Hungarians and Italians (at the southern sector).
Thanks!
@Da Mighty Shabba Romanian army had the second largest force on the Eastern front right after the Germans. None of these countries had been invaded by Germany. Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria all joined the Axis in 1940 and were pretty much the agressors against for example Yugoslavia which was invaded from all sides and Bulgarians even helped invading Greece. So they were certainly not slave soldiers, just as you know for easier management and chain of command these divisions from other countries fell under overall German command.
@Da Mighty Shabba well it depends who do you mean subjugated them. Finns were attacked in December 1939 by the Soviets and despite being massively outnumbered they fought hard and gave Soviets a lot of headache. They were eventually overwhelmed and forced to sign white peace and cede land to the Soviets. Noone really helped the Finns in this fight apart from empty promises from the Western powers and some volunteers from Sweden. In 1941 the Finns were not officially a part of the Axis, but decided to take the opportunity and invade alongside the Germans to take back the land they lost a few years back. But they were certainly not forced by the Germans to do so. The Finns basically pushed forward, took the land they lost and halted their advance to take fortified positions between the lakes like shown in the video. Apart from that not much had happened until the end of the war when they signed armistice and effectively lost the land again (nowadays Finland borders are still like that). Finns and Germans never linked in Leningrad because the Finns didn’t want to go further and lose manpower they desperately needed to preserve. The Germans on the other hand had only limited number of divisions in Finland istelf and didn’t intervene much in Finnish military actions.
Ukrainian
There were also Croatian volunteers in the German 6th army at Stalingrad but they would be killed in soviet prison camps
Stalingrad, as Leningrad was named after Soviet leader- that's one reason why it was importnant. More strategicaly, it hold big industrial complex and even bigger logistical hub, important for Germans to import oil from the Caucasus and reinforce their soldiers there
Thanks!
I think you’ll find the main thrust was for the oil but sov counterattacks and a battle of wills elevated the battle in the city
@@SoGal_YT Сибирскую нефть и тем более северную тогда ещё не разведали и технологий добычи не было, поэтому на тот момент доступ к кавказкой нефти был критически важен. Сталинград(Волгоград сегодня) означает город Сталина, с политической точки зрения потерять его трагедия. Ленинград-город Ленина те же политические причины, а экономически крупнейший военно-промышленный центр и выход в Северный-ледовитый океан.
Stalingrad wasn't as important strategically as some might think. Sure it was a big city situated on the Volga river, but there was no real need to take it at any cost. Hitler just wanted to take it because it was called Stalingrad (also something about not retreating because that would be bad even if your troops would gain a more favorable position).
@@Jakeonkuningas Not quite so. Surely, the name "Stalingrad" was ideologically important but it has always been overrated as the main reason. For example the city of Donetsk (which at that time was also named after Stalin - "Stalino") was taken by the Germans pretty easy and there wasn't that many attention to the name neither from us or from the Germans and no "Not a step back" calls). In my opinion three pragmatic and strategic reasons here prevailed. First, Stalingrad was the industrial giant of the region and in its factories tanks were not only produced but also could be quickly repaired and sent back to the front what gave us (the Soviets) big advantage - the Germans could not repair their tanks and vehicles that quick. Also the dominating heights (like Malakhov kurgan) of the area were in the city, and their possession gave the full control of the Volga supplying lines. If the Germans cut it, the Caucasus oil couldn't be transported to the central regions that easy and there were no more oil sources which could cover that loss, not in the USSR itself not by the lend-lease help. Finally Stalingrad was filled with the Soviet troops which have been retreated from their positions on Don, so, nevertheless these soldiers were by August already exhausted by almost two months of unstopping fight and their losses, the city was a very serious position which thanks to the connections with the other side of Volga we could reinforce with fresh divisions and thus to threat the whole German troops to the south with a great encirclement, (which we in fact had in mind - it was called the operation "Saturn"). So without capturing the city and deploying the defense lines at the natural obstacle (Volga) the Germans could not be sure about the success of the whole campaign.
Axis casualties during the Battle of Stalingrad are estimated to have been around 800,000, including those missing or captured. Soviet forces are estimated to have suffered 1,100,000 casualties, and approximately 40,000 civilians died. And only in this one city. One of my ancestors died in Stalingrad.
Father of my old man was lucky and escaped from Stalingrad by air, when it was possible
In Stalingrad axis lost: 250,000 dead, 90,000 POWs and that's only German losses. Romanian lost 140k, Italian 100k, Hungarian 100k. Also Army Group A which was fighting in the south lost around 300k men
5 of my Grandmas uncles died there. While their Dad as a radiooperator had a front row seat to the encirclement.
Actually the casualties for the Soviets would be about double that of the axis
It's like 800k for the entire axis and around 2 million for the Soviets
For the both, "casualties" include dead, wounded, MIAs or POWs
In January 1942, my first grandfather (my mother's father) died defending the approaches to Leningrad in Karelia. My second grandfather (my father's father) fought the nazis at Stalingrad this year.
Wow! What a family story.
@@falzsikplay6147 Да.
Respect for those brave men
@@NetoKruzerThank you for your kind words. It is a pity that both my grandfathers did not live to Win. My second grandfather (my father's father) defended Stalingrad, but died in the early spring of 1943 in a raid in the Donbass (Eastern Ukraine). And I don't know where he's buried. And now it is almost impossible to find out, since there is fighting again in this territory...
@@SoGal_YT
Every Russian family has ancestors who fought in this war. My family was more fortunate, both of my great-grandfathers went through the 41/45 war.
(EDIT: Mocsk made some extremely interesting and well-sourced corrections to this post in the comments below, putting in an impressive effort to do so. Ironically, my impression of how things went was influenced by the same anti-Russian scholastic bias I mentioned at the end of the post. To anyone who takes the time to read this, I'd really recommend reading Mocsk's followups as well.)
The stereotype of the Soviets having worse training than the Germans was true to a certain extent, at least during this stage of the war, but it was mainly a matter of preparation rather than a systemic deficiency. After seizing power, Stalin was intensely paranoid that Leninist loyalists in the army were plotting to overthrow him, so he conducted a massive purge of the officer corps right before Germany invaded. He thought that this wouldn't be a problem; he had secured a non-aggression pact with Germany following their joint invasion of Poland, and was fully convinced that Hitler would honor it. Obviously he was wrong, and his purge left the Red Army without steady leadership and essential specialist skills in the first year of the invasion. The situation was exacerbated by Stalin's refusal to believe early reports of the German attacks, as he forbade the Red Army from redeploying or making defensive preparations in the vital first days of the war.
The disaster at the Battle of Brody was, in my opinion, the most serious consequence of the purge. As Eastory explained in the last video, the Soviets gathered a massive concentration of tanks to launch a counterattack against the German spearhead in the south. On paper it really should have worked, since the force was overwhelming and the Soviet tanks were actually superior to the opposing German ones in several important ways. In practice, the tanks had been distributed to troops that had not been drilled in mechanized warfare, and often didn't even know how to drive their vehicles. The result was an uncoordinated mess, and the Soviets ultimately lost a huge portion of their tanks. This is one of the major reasons why the German army was able to make such swift progress for the rest of the year. Tanks are the key element of the spearheads used to conduct encirclements in mobile warfare, and since the Soviets lost so many, the Germans could afford to move recklessly, with little cause to fear another serious counterattack.
The thing that a lot of Western historians tend to understate is that the Red Army managed to reorganize by the end of 1942, and from then on could contend with the Germans on equal terms. There's a mistaken impression that the Soviets won through sheer numbers alone, and while their superior manpower and resources were definitely essential to avoiding an early defeat, they absolutely did out-fight the Germans in the later years of the war. They updated and revitalized mobile warfare doctrine into a form that was more effective and sustainable than what the Germans were using, while the German generals largely failed to adapt to the changing circumstances. In some cases, this failure was conscious and racially motivated; Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, despite being considered an excellent strategist, flatly refused to account for Soviet counterintelligence tactics because he didn't believe that Slavs were capable of such subtlety. In fact, one of the reasons why the "Soviet horde" trope is so persistent is that much of our scholarship on the war came from West Germany, particularly commanders like Manstein who wished to secure their reputations after the war. The Russians didn't really get to tell their side of the story to the Western world until the Cold War ended.
Wow - such a great, detailed response. Thanks so much for all the info.
The russians on divisional levels were NOT equal to germans troops until maybe 1945 and in 1942 were so poor in command at that level that tanks were put into brigades to enable their commanders to control them .. However at the strategic level they greatly improved under Zhukov and Koniev and thats where their success lay .. they individual german soldier was trained 1 level up in command terms but the soviet use of maskirovka (spelling?) fooled the germans and less cerebral and party loyal commanders like Schorner and Rendulic meant that the soviets had less to compete with on the strategic battlefiels
@@steveswitzer4353 "Until maybe 1945"? In 1944 the German army was in shambles already, with older men, young teenagers as well as people with physical disabilities previously unfit for service, conscripted in to fill the gaps. Although true that there were *some* veteran Wehrmacht and SS units, they were few and far between.
No the germans unlike other armies trained everyman for a rank about his own and officers spent time as effectively a ranker plus initiative was encouraged the germans were the best army in ww2 for this they were systemically better
@@steveswitzer4353 That was true in the first half of the war, yes. Although in 1944, and even the end of 1943, that standard quickly deteriorated, as Germans were being quickly bled out of manpower.
Germans put huge effort to buffed up their army after WW1. They realised their mistakes and found out, they cannot win long war of attriction. So, they needed to act fast to gain all they want. Couple brilliant strategists like von Seeckt and Guderian prepared a ground for Blitzkrieg (Lightning war) tactis. Rest was set by industry which produced a ton of tanks and planes, dedicated to this kind of war (that's why first german tanks were not slow and havy, but small, fast and light armored btw).
The tactics evolve and became more defensive with time, when Germans were loosing more and more men, territory and weapons and they cannot reinforce their loses unlike the rest of world they were fighting with.
Thanks! I kind of remember now that the Germans built up between the world wars and adapted things to fix their mistakes in WWI.
7:40 Basically the european part of Russia is the part of Russia that matters.The rest has poor infrastrucutre and small cities.Thats also why the bolsheviks won The civil war
I'm gonna have to do something on the geography of Russia.
Most of the strategic resources have always been in Siberia but back then these resources were not explored, the infrastructure, mines and such was not in place. But today's Siberia is very important as it provides a lot of stuff...
Encirclement as a strategy is the most classic strategy in the book, dating at least as far back as Hannibal's Battle of Cannae against the Romans.
What a classic
The Battle of Stalingrad was the bloodiest battle in human history; more than 2 million soldiers died in the city and its surroundings. The city had some strategic importance to the Germans in the sense that it was a large industrial center that manufactured military equipment, but its symbolic importance as the city bearing Stalin's name was even higher. Neither side could afford losing it. My great-grandfather fought in Stalingrad, and went all the way to Berlin without as much as receiving a single scratch, despite serving as infantry; his brothers were not so lucky. He got to see Truman and Eisenhower in Potsdam.
the germans could have won pretty easy actually but hitler really wanted stalingrad to humiliate stalin
@@stefanito_m4354 Not really, if you're implying that Moscow would have been a better decision. The Caucasus region's oil makes sense as an objective, given Germany's enormous supply problems. If they were to command this region effectively they would need to take Stalingrad to 1) ensure that the Soviets didn't have a hub to direct assaults/offensives from, and 2) cut off the Volga, roads, other supply lines and then commandeer them so that they could utilize the network to make use of the resources. Moscow on the other hand really only plays a part as a railway network and would have been a huge blow the Russians but would not have meant the end (even then there's no way to say that it wouldn't have been just as much of a bloodbath as Stalingrad, in fact it may have been even worse since they had so much time to prepare).
@@Zakatak-mf4iq no i was implying that the germans should have retreated from stalin grad and pushed again a bit later but they where forbidden from doing that hitler dint follow instructions from his generals and they where surrounded. from that point on germany started losing really hard, they lost about 300-500k soldiers in stalingrad just from that one mistake
@@Zakatak-mf4iq and you have to realise stalingrad meant alot more to stalin than moskow because it was HIS CITY. kind off a pride thing in a sence
Wow, what a story! Also those numbers are insane.
1) Siberian oil field started to be developed only since 1950s. Prior to WWII, main centres of the Soviet oil industry were in its European areas - mostly in Azerbaijan (behind Caucasian Mountains), also in Tatarstan and Bashkortostan.
2) Currently Causian Mountains separates Russia (from north) with Georgia and Azerbaijan (from south).
Thanks for laying out the geography and answering that question :)
I suggest you also to watch the "Soviet Storm" series. It will show you in deep the whole Eastern front battles. And you did awesome video :))
I'ts so rare to find a female war historian anywhere lol I'm a bit shocked, hope you're enjoying the rabbit whole haha
Guess I'm a rare breed, lol. I really do enjoy this stuff, and always have for some reason.
"Historian" is a bit strong, no?
@@exundfluriba will take some time maybe
@@exundfluriba what defines a historian
*rabbit hole, you would probably only enjoy the 'rabbit whole' if you were cooking and eating it and not wanting to share it with anyone else.
Loving the animation. It really helps to visualise what is happening. I'd love to see one for the D-day assaults.
The deep, penetrating encirclement was what came to be known as the Blitzkrieg. Interestingly, the Soviets had come to similar conclusions and had developed a theory of "Deep Battle", which similarly involved offensive manoeuvres by mechanised forces deep into the enemy rear, and defence in depth against such incursions.
The famous quote by Stalin was “Quantity has a quality of its own” and that’s what your beginning to see at the end of ‘42.
Before Stalingrad, the Wehrmacht developed an offensive using the advantage in tactics, speed and organization. The Red Army in 1941-42 could not compete in tactics with the Wehrmacht-it was just learning to fight, and the Wehrmacht was the strongest army in the world in the entire history of mankind up to this day.
But in Stalingrad, tactics, detours, and strategy meant nothing. The Nazis had to take Stalingrad to cut off the USSR from oil from Baku and Grozny. It was necessary to do what they had avoided all the war-to storm the city with strong buildings and stone walls. There was no more advance of tens of kilometers a day, no more roundabout maneuvers and flanking attacks - there was no place for them in the cramped, burning city that had been pulverized by Luftwaffe bombers. It was simply necessary to pass through the wreckage of the city for several kilometers and with a steel fist knock down, throw into the river the remnants of the Soviet units, battered and tired after the hardest retreat through the hot desert, under constant blows of the Luftwaffe, in blood and losses. This was more than the army could do in 2 weeks, destroying Poland, breaking through to Moscow and Stalingrad, hundreds of kilometers from the border.
But it turned out that for the first time in the entire war, the war did not go according to the scenario to which the Germans were accustomed. Soviet soldiers, unable to keep up with the maneuvers of the Wehrmacht, who were surrounded, suddenly, for the first time in the war, found themselves in a situation where they could not be bypassed, surrounded and deceived - and the enemy is not running around the dusty steppe, looking for a place to strike, but here it is, in front of you, coming straight at you, a Nazi soldier, a swastika on the munir and the inscription "Gott mit uns" on the belt buckle.
The one who burned your city with bombs, who starved a million people in Leningrad, who burned Belarusian villages together with people, killed, burned, raped and robbed - here he is, he wants to go through you to the Volga. Well, let him try to pass. Face to face, come on, come on, come on. Here it is, the Volga - OUR Volga. Pass through. After all, there is not much left, in some places to the Volga-a hundred, two hundred meters. AND YOU WON'T PASS THEM.
The fight broke up into many separate fights. In three weeks, the Wehrmacht defeated France - in Stalingrad, three weeks of battle could go for one big house. The huge 6th army of the Wehrmacht, the most powerful unit, hundreds of tanks, hundreds of thousands of Wehrmacht soldiers broke into the city-to throw the Red Army into the Volga, to destroy the remnants of the resistance. And they were met face to face by the remnants of the 62nd Soviet army (the Soviet army is about the size of a German division) and the 8th division of the NKVD-essentially a military police, poorly armed, without tanks and guns. But in Stalingrad there were no complicated maneuvers and detours - there was a fight to the death, with rifles, bayonets, grenades, knives, axes, shovels, stones - the enemy is near, behind the wall, you hear him breathing in the next room, gathering strength, and again you come together with him in a fight, killing and dying, shooting, chopping with a knife, an axe and a sapper's shovel, biting his teeth into the throat over the "Iron Cross" - HERE YOU WILL NOT PASS. We will die, but you will not take another step. Beyond the Volga, there is no land for you, there is only room for you here - a pit a meter wide and two meters long, covered with mud and broken bricks.
And in Stalingrad, the Wehrmacht broke down. Psychologically, I couldn't stand it. The Germans are excellent soldiers, no one else could have survived such a terrible massacre, month after month, in blood and mud for six months-but after six months, the Germans also broke down. Stalingrad drew in all the forces, all the reserves of the Wehrmacht, to the right and left of Stalingrad, the Reich's allies - the Romanians and Italians-were already holding the front line, all the reserves of the German army in the southern sector were involved in a terrible massacre in the destroyed, burning stone city.
While the Wehrmacht was spending its last strength, Stalin and the general staff of the Red Army were accumulating reserves. For months, saving every tank and every soldier, preparing them for battle in the steppe far to the east beyond the Volga, and supporting the city itself with minimal reinforcements, where the defenders fought in the minority, managed to accumulate reserves - and in the winter, when the bloodied, exhausted, psychologically broken Wehrmacht completely exhausted-the Red Army struck. Across the snow - covered steppe, to the weakest point-from the north and south of Stalingrad, where the front was held not by the Germans, but by the Romanians and Italians, unable to resist the armored fists of the terrible T - 34s rushing through the snow at them - and ran, either to the Soviet troops, with their hands raised, or from them, to the rear-where the snow-covered steppe stretched for hundreds of kilometers and there was no escape from overtaking, cutting, cutting into pieces and grinding into the mess with the tracks of Red Army tanks - who spent two hard years, bleeding profusely, learning from the Germans how to advance, encircling, cutting off and destroying the enemy. The German units tried to stop the attack by throwing more than 100 tanks into the offensive - and these tanks came under the ramming attack of two Soviet tank armies, were swept away, torn apart, defeated and destroyed. On the 4th day after the start of the offensive, Soviet tanks advancing from the south and north met near the farm Sovetsky-300 kilometers west of the 6th army of the Wehrmacht. The trap was closed.
The German army was probably the best trained in the world, particularly in defensive warfare. They did rely a lot on horses though, they were not as mechanised as most people think.
Leningrad (St Peterburg) is the second largest city in Russia and USSR, former capital, home to millions of people, huge industrial, cultural, logistical center. The story of the Seige of the Leningrad is horrific, several million people died , mostly civilians, mostly of hunger, frost and german bombardments. Check its history, it is really important for understanding Russian vision of the war and the rest of the world (Europe, for instance. Btw Putin is from StPeterburg too and his ancestors also died during the Blockade).
The encirclement maneuver was anything but new at the time. One famous battle in Antiquity that was won by that trick was Cannae, where Hannibal the Carthaginian obliterated almost all the Roman army. Another one was Zama, where Scipio Africanus took his example and destroyed the army of Carthago.
Let me know what other videos I should watch! Also, like and subscribe if you enjoyed this video 👍🏻Check out part 1 of this series if you haven't yet: 🇩🇪🇨🇳ruclips.net/video/8Uce7O6KvuU/видео.html
ruclips.net/video/3D0Uw-y9mrk/видео.html
You could react to this:)
The title is :" German Soldier Remembers WW2 | Memoirs Of WWII #15
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@@fridericusrex1153 Someone else also mentioned those videos, so I've got them on my list. Thanks :)
If you are looking for something more recent ruclips.net/video/4mxJjstwqMk/видео.html
Please react to Ashoka the great rise of Mauryan Empire. 🙏
Flags
Red yellow blue is Romania
Red white green vertical is Italy
Same horizontal is Italy.
These armies were not as effective as German units.
I don't think that was a war game, I think it was all completely animated which is awesome
Battle of Stalingrad is worth a review all by itself.
Also the campaign in the far east is also worth a look at the Japanese invasion of British, Dutch and French overseas territories.
Eastern Front was a true living hell. Mass respect for those had to experience this nightmare back in the 1940.
The Soviet troops were weakened after the purge in 1937 (almost all the military leadership was repressed, many were shot). There were few experienced commanders.
Austria troops were also around Stalingrad, my mother-in-law had a orphan cousin who died in the snow (weather)
19:03 most of the numbers of troups are tricky: the thing is that these numbers also include people who are working in supplies, technical support, militia and etc. That is why the real numbers differ often on the front line.
Btw the same thing is with casualties: Soviets counted all: wounded and dead as casultes, germans : only dead.
Regarding the Germans encircling tactic, look up the Battle of Cannae, when the Carthaginians defeated the Romans.
Enemy At The Gates is a good war movie about Stalingrad, starring Jude Law as a Russian sniper....it's a pretty realistic portrayal of Stalingrad....for a Hollywood movie. You get the horrific flavour of it all.
At Stalingrad street-to-street brutal fight was there and one of this was Pavlov house which was held by Soviets longer than the whole France .
Also, there is a good movie called Enemy at the Gates starring Jude Law that is about the Battle of Stalingrad.
Basically the romanians and Italians during the invasion were not exactly useless, however almost all the progress done was done by the Germans, they both had the most numbers and were the most effective.
Thanks!
As for the tactics of the blitzkrieg, it really goes back to 1916: the Russian general Brusilov made a breakthrough on the German front and broke into the operational space. However, he did not know what to do next, there was nothing to build on the success, so the troops had to be returned to their original positions. But this case showed that such a maneuver is possible and gives a lot of advantages. It only remained to provide the army with the means to a) break through the front line, b) the rapid development of the offensive in depth. The first task is solved by tanks, the second by trucks and armored personnel carriers.
The environment, of course, knew the art of war before. But before the strategic encirclement was impossible - the nature of the war was different, and the soldiers were few. The siege of the city is the maximum that could be encircled.
17:52 to answer your question about joint operations and training within axis forces, no, there was really little cooperation, and our armies(I'm italian by the way), were nowhere as organized, gerared and effective as the german army, which in fact would retain the title of single best fighting formation up untill late in the war. In fact, the germans had to bail us out multiple times, both in the eastern front, as well as in Africa and other places. The reason for these lackluster performances(by the Italian army at least), lies in the fact that we came in severely unprepared, due to the assumption that Hitler would have quickly rolled both Churchill and Stalin, and that thus, in the words of Mussolini himself: "I only need a few thousand deads to sit at the peace table as a winner". Turns out he was dramatically wrong, thankfully.
I think you would enjoy Extra History's series on the Siege of Vienna. It gets very detailed on specific tactics that they do during the siege.
16:36 - by the way, it's autumn 1942 and there was already a winter in 1941-1942 during which Germans still had an upper hand
Encirclement has always been a part of warfare. A brilliant example is the battle of Hannibal Barcas Cannea against the Roman Empire. As for BLITZKRIEG tactics, it is mainly a German design, which could be implemented from the end of the 30s to the beginning of the 50s. anti-tank defenses have improved a lot, so the destructive power of tanks has decreased. Nowadays, the advantage is the defense, you can see this in the pictures of the Russo-Ukrainian war, where neither side is capable of a depth attack, due to the advanced defensive weapons.
Nice, go on!
p.s. if u interested in more detailed and complex describing what happened at eastern front
i suggest check Soviet Storm. WW2
that is incredible documentary work
mapping, battle details, tactics, strategies, quotes from generals, EVERYTHING to understand what happened then.
but this required a lot of time, 18 episodes x ~50min
LOL, that is a lot, but I'll write it down anyway. Could be I can do it at some point....or at least watch on my own time. Part 3 for 1943 should be out this weekend. Thanks for watching!
I even don't hope that u record "react\watch" on it, its too much. But anyway you should try watch it treasure of knowledge by yourself.
thanks you too!
Encirclement manoeuvres were common with cavalry. Historically, people with great cavalry like the Mongols, the Magyars, the Persians and the Poles for examples were masters at this.
Your video's are magnificent and I love watching them
In Russia, there are very large spaces, and there are few people, therefore a large city is not just a settlement, it is a transport hub, without which it is impossible to move on.
The oil fields of the USSR were in the Batumi region (northern Caspian), from which oil was transported to the north along the Volga. Stalingrad stood on the Volga and, controlling the city, it was possible to completely block traffic along the Volga. Holding Stalingrad, it was quite easy to capture the southern part of the USSR - the one where Batumi and oil are.
As for the oil of Siberia, it was only under Stalin that they began to seek and develop it. I'm not sure, but it seems that by 1941 there was nothing there, and if there was, it was little and far away. So for both sides, Stalingrad meant oil.
In addition, Stalingrad was a major industrial base. The Stalingrad Tractor Plant made tanks (all Soviet tractor plants make tanks, and tractors are more of a by-product). During the battles for the city, tanks went into battle directly from the workshop.
Well, the fact that the city bore the name of the head of state, political and ideological leader of the country, also had its own meaning. At least for the Germans.
But the city was not taken. In some places, the Germans had literally 15 meters to the river, but they did not pass these meters.
The peculiarity of the Stalingrad battle was that it turned into a meat grinder, in which the Germans ground their best parts. The very part that marched through Paris in 1940 was ground to dust in Stalingrad - so that Paris now has a metro named after Stalingrad.
The result of this battle was an unprecedented event: the group of German armies South was completely destroyed.
It should be noted that in 1941 the German army was the best in the world. In 1.5 years, the Germans defeated 20 countries (20 armies) in Europe, including the two superpowers of those years - France and England. The British fled from the continent abandoning equipment - Hitler even held back his troops to give the British time to board the ships. And this army was ground to dust in Stalingrad.
Second, an unprecedented phenomenon - the German field marshal was taken prisoner. This has never happened before.
Then a parade was held in Moscow, which Hitler and his soldiers dreamed of: German troops marched through the streets of the Russian capital. True, they walked without weapons, without music, in complete silence.
About Oil. Nowadays Russia has many oils in Siberia, but it was developed at 60-es or 70-es (after WWII). In 40-es main oil supplies was from Caucasian region.
About German army. In the begin of war German army had technical advance in aviation and have well composed tank groups with good tanks.
And very important factor - German army already had experience in modern big war (they conquer all Europe just in few month with low looses).
Moreover, Soviet army was in rearmament process. Many fortification lines and fly fields was unready. Many good new types of tanks and aviation was developed in shot time before war started, but most of them was not mastered by crews well enough. And Soviet army had some deficit of supply trucks and modern radio stations.
At last, Germans (and they allies - Italians, Hungarians, Slovaks and others) concentrated more then 5 millions near the soviet border.
Soviet Union had near the 5,5 army, but 2 million was not at the east border - they were at the Siberia (there was a probability of Japanese invasion) and at the Caucasian region. But troops on east border was not concentrate. Many troops were dislocated at 100-300 km (60-200 miles) to border.
So Germans and their allies had the strategic initiative - they could choose any good points and mad local numerical superiority in that points, punched the holes in defense with tanks and cut the supply lines, made pockets, etc. But defenders couldn't know where was new attack. At the begin of war it was new tactic, and German army trained it vary well in western Europe.
These are the different axis powers that helped the Germans. Finland Hungary Romania Italy and a small division from Spain was sent to be a German division to invade USSR but Franko never joined the war. During Stalingrad germnay had 400,000 men in the 6th army and 600,000 from other countries but the other countries weren’t as well trained or well equipped so the Soviets could easily broken through the line
The importance of the cities was that Soviet industry was heavily concentrated in its westernmost regions, closest to Europe. So although the Soviets did have a lot of space to retreat into, there were limits to this strategy. They picked up and moved whole factories eastwards, and famously converted tractor factories to make tanks, but things were tight enough that during the siege of Leningrad, tanks were fighting from inside the very factories in which they had just been built, firing through holes in the walls made by German shells, while the factories continued to operate.
The significance of Stalingrad was it defeated the German army and destroyed it, it's the first turning of the tide for the war. The oil field objective was Baku in Azerbaijan SSR.
We are talking about 1942, not the current situation. The Siberian oil fields began to be extracted much later. Just as many raw materials are not extracted in the world today, because with the current technology it is difficult and expensive, but maybe in a few years it will be worth it. At that time, the oil fields of the Caucasus were the Soviet Union its main sources. 07 39
The idea of flanking and encirclement is as old as time. However, Germany because of it limited Inter-War army was limited, and focused their tactics and operations on winning battles with less troupes. The also had pretty good officers and communications to lead these attacks. They would break threw the lines with a combination of tanks and motorized infantry (infantry in trucks) and mobile artillery and close air support, and then aggressively drive deep into enemy territory, the horse and foot infantry (most troupes had not trucks) would follow along and encircle, then the tank armies would rush on.
This is not unique to Germany, but their doctrine was called 'War of Movement' (Bewegungskrieg) and they had the most advanced such system early in the war. However eventually others would come up and have troupes and army to do the same.
I know you said you aren’t a gamer, but you might like to check out Gary Grigsby’s War in the East, not necessarily to play, but as a passing interest. It’s a very in depth strategy game of the Soviet/German war. There are several gamers who post videos here on RUclips covering tutorials, play by email and ai challenges. Never played myself as I haven’t the time to play games very often, but as a history buff, I’ve found them interesting.
Flanking manoeuvres have been part of battles for millennia. Casar used them. The difference was the German developed Blitzkrieg (lightning war). Conventionally, the different types of force Artillery, infantry, and latterly tanks were completely separate. The Germans mixed then together, in a single command group. The might have the same number of commanders but each would have all three type of fighters. They used radio to coordinate ground forces as well as air support. This meant tanks which were at the spearhead of an advance had artillery and infantry support to the hold the ground that the tanks had gained.
Those kind of envelopment maneuvers are old, like, in 216 BC, Hannibal put his best troops on his flanks at the Battle of Cannae and surrounded and killed 50,000 Romans. Of course the scale of WW2 is totally unique, and the Germans had tanks and air support which obviously help with the push.
the Mongols used a similar tactics to the German encirclement because there entire army was on horse, they would deliberately retreat from an enemy into favourable ground where there army was in positioned then hit them on the centre and both flanks, they even sometimes made army's march away from there defensive positions forts and city's, then they would go around that army and take the city behind them before they could get back to reinforce it
Don't know if you will see this sense it's been 5 months sense you did this video but if you do see this TIK is doing a step by step battle for Stalingrad i would suggest watching it if you wanted to know more about the day by day struggle that both sides suffered in that battle
The soviet army expanded from from about 900,000 in 1939 to 5,000,000 in 1941. This came after the great purge of 1937 which thinned their officer corps a lot. Between these two events, the soviet army at the start of the war simply didnt have enough experienced officers to properly handle the army, it also wasnt properly supplied, there were some mobile infantry units created that had less trucks than regular infantry units.
Worth noting that not all 5,000,000 were on the eastern front at the start of the war, many were on their southern and asian fronts as they didnt expect an attack by the germans.
This is why it looks like there are so much more soviets than germans on the map, the boxes are soviet divisions, the circles are germans corps. The soviets did away with the corps level of organisation for much of the war due to simply not having enough officres to organise it. Lack of officers been poor coordination and coordination of different arms was key during ww2.
In the 41 video, the soviet defeat at dubno was a prime example of this, they brought far more tanks than the germans had, including a sizable number that were impenetrable to german anti tank guns from the front and lost, badly due to charging tanks in unsupported, lacking coordination with the infantry and with drivers who hadnt even driven their tanks for very long before having to fight the germans.
Try “Soviet Storm” documentary most of the battles are shown. Very good documentary
His Romania also with great dignity in the fight against the former Soviet union that unjustly annexed Romanian territories so it was part of the power of the axis and followed the road to Stalingrad.
Так отдайте как вы считаете несправедливо отобранные земли Румынии и Польше тоже отдайте. Земли Российской Империи тоже верните России.Даёшь десоветизацию Украины!!!
TIK is amazingly detailed in his videos once you're ready for such info
IF she gets ready for TIK. I thought I know a lot about WW2, but that man taught me otherwise
1:48 The idea of focusing fire on a weak point to be able to break through is probably not entirely a German invention, but they certainly excelled at it. The idea of a double encirclement is really old though. The Carthaginian general Hannibal famously used it against the Romans at Cannae in 216 BCE, to devastating effect.
In most countries that isn't Russia, the sort of encirclement the Germans were brilliant at was a war-winner. One or two of those and the enemy would run out of land to fight on and soldiers to fight with. It happened in Poland, it happened in France.
Russia isn't most countries, though. There is always more land to fight on, and you can usually find more men to do the fighting. The Soviet Union were able to absorb those losses, brutal though they were, and still remain in the fight, and in the end the Germans simply didn't know what to do about it.
Also, it looks like the Soviet unit that was surrounded but managed to escape around the 10:30 mark would be Pavel Belov's 1st Guard Cavalry Corps - actual horsemen on actual horses, which may explain why they managed to get away while their comrades in the 329th Rifle Division did not. Pavel Belov's wiki page describes the encirclement as a five-month cavalry raid, which sounds pretty rad, not gonna lie.
Leningrad and Stalingrad were not attacked because of their names. Leningrad was the homebase for the Baltic fleet, it was a huge industrial city as well. Stalingrad was not originally part of the Nazi plans. They wanted to take Astrakan to block the Volga and then launch the main force into the oil fields of the Caucases, Stalingrad was the first stop to that objective. It had a lot of soviet soldiers and a huge industrial capacity, and the Soviets were pouring troops into it. They only entered it because they believed it would fall in a week. It didn't, so they were stuck there and decided to try and block the Soviets there.
More than two third of the Soviet troops in Stalingrad were reservists with just a rifle and winter clothes.
Blitzkrieg was the german tactic used in response to the wasteful tactics and failures employed in WW1. Whereby you employ your strongest forces at a limited number of points in the front line in order to force a breakthrough and allow your forces to enter the enemies rear and encircle the enemy causing chaos, which is what they did so successfully in the battle of France to the British and French in 1940. The Russians, Brits and Americans all learnt from this tactic as the war progressed.
One thing to bear in mind was that both armies were controlled by dictators. Stalin had executed most of his top generals in the late 1930s and by 1941 many generals in the field were too scared of being shot if they ordered their soldiers to withdraw. It wasn't until 1942 that Soviet generals had greater autonomy.
The mountain ranges you were mentioning are Caucasus mountains, half of it is in the Russian SFSR, the rest is in Georgian SSR down to the Azerbaijan SSR.
1:51 German commander Heinz Guderian invented this strategy. Which doesn't include only armored forces but also aircraft, mechanised infrantry and so on
Thanks! I'll have to look into him.
@@SoGal_YT No the germans always used manouevre warfare called Bewegungskrieg ... they only added tanks and aircraft to the mix their position in the centre of europe invited attack so they became good at attaking themselves .....Blitzkrieg term was made up by a journalist .....and most of the german army was horse drawn and unmotorised with a small steel tip of panzer divisions Read books by micheal Citino or watch this it will help ruclips.net/video/UNDhswF1GKk/видео.html
Well that's what Guderian's autobiography claims. His ability for self promotion is right up there alongside P. T. Barnum's. The combined warefare strategy was a strategy derived from Von Clausewitz's writings. Von Seeckt probably deserves as much credit as anyone.
This is an inaccurate statement. Guderian certainty was one important person, but there were many others. Read: The German Way of War details
Cannae
SoGal a must watch is made by Russian tv called Soviet Storm war in the East explains in detail the whole war starting from the initial attack , the reorganising of effort and the ultimate fight through to the eventual defeat in combination with the Western forces of the German axis forces. I think you would enjoy it.
It wasn't just about training. It was about weapons and supplies and strategic leadership and finally The Soviet Winter was a huge deciding factor. The soviets built better weapons during the war, especially tanks and they were designed to withstand the cold Soviet Winter as were the Soviet Uniforms unlike the German ones.
All major cities have great importance for the Soviet Union. That’s why they’re called major cities.
Also, there wasn’t really any ‘waiting out’ in Stalingrad, the Russians were trying to take back the city as soon as possible, and the other was fighting for their lives.
The Soviets had the numbers and as you say not the training, but what really done the Germans was the winter ,there vehicles were precision machines , tanks mainly, the Russian T45 tanks were not as precision made, when it started to freeze German machines froze up were as the T45 carried on. also the Germans were not equipped with cold weather uniforms .
The encirclement of the enemy was used by the Zulu's they called it "the horns of the buffalo", a frontal attack by the experienced warriors "the chest of the buffalo" causing the enemy to strengthen its front, while the left and right flank "the horns" swept around encircling the enemy.......
Just wanted to add after hearing so many of your comments on this episode and the first video regarding why didn't Soviet troops figure out Axis tactics and retreat to avoid encirclement. You need to take into account that the fighting was in Soviet Union territory. While this video shows military movements in a great way, it kinda makes one forget that this is not just a map. There are cities and villages with civilians there. Retreat meant leaving women, children and enemy in the enemy hands, so it wasn't an easy choice. Army is also hard to move, also from actual soldiers and weaponry, you have supplies, communications, field hospitals... There are multiple stories from that time when what in the morning was a safe distance where hospital was organised to test the wounded from the fight line would buy the evening become a fight line itself.
Actually Napoleon used extensively this flanking tactic, that was known since ancient times. Today all armies operate like this, since a frontal assault would be suicidal. The idea is to concentrate your forces at the enemy's weak point, break through with your armored forces, encircle the enemy, isolate him from his reserve and supply forces and then destroy the trapped forces by attacking them from the sides or the rear. The Germans invented the combined arms operations, involving tanks, infantry, artillery and air support working together as a team in fast moving assaults. This was called Lightning War - Blitzkrieg.
Battle of Stalingrad :
(1) WW2 Documentary - The Battle of Stalingrad - RUclips
Not sure if someone answered your oil questions yet, but you are partly right Russia has oil reserves in Northern Siberia and other parts of the country. However, I believe a lot of this oil wasn't discovered at the time of WW2 and the Russians had certainly not developed the pipeline infrastructure to move the oil yet. The Caucasus Oil fields were at the time the most important strategically.
Cannae in the Second Punic War, before 200 BCE, was a battle of encirclement, so it was not a German invention. The Wehrmacht troops were both better trained, and experienced. The technology did not exist to drill in the Far North and Siberia. The battles of encirclement were conducted by German troops. The key was the oilfields;Germany needed those badly, and that made it much more difficult to conduct offensive operations. Stalin expected the Axis to attack toward Moscow, because an atack in the South would overextend their lines. Hitler knew that Germany had to have the oil.
It's relatively easy. The Germans figured out first how to use tank units most effectively. France and England understood almost nothing of modern warfare at the start of the war. Russia was also surprised. However, the Russians were able to gain the most experience and in the end were able to successfully use the "Blitzkriegtatkik" themselves. The right combination of tanks, planes and motirized infantry is required in order to do such encirclements. France lost because of this tactic. They still thought that it's enough to just wait but mobility was the key.^^
An ordinary soldier must not think for himself, but you must obey orders. Even if you lose, or win.
A good book in English about the Battle of Stalingrad is by Anthony Beevor. He has written a number of books about WW2 battles, all worth reading.
Stalingrad, had really no major importance. It was industrial but mainly produced tractors and not war equipment. Hitler, for some reason, became obsessed with capturing it probably because it bared the name of his enemy even though there was a river to the west of Stalingrad that had just as good of a strategic position without taking the city.
This absolutely not true, not only was stalingrad a major industrial hub, it had a very important strategic location along the river volga, the germans intended to use the city to establish a defence line and cut off the soviets from reinforcing the Caucasus which was the primary goal of the germans, stalingrad would allow the germans to secure the much needed oil allowing them to continue to wage war
Hey, SoGal. While awaiting your video on Napoleon’s Retreat From Moscow, I decided to watch this one.
It’s fascinating how history tends to repeat itself; Napoleon and Hitler both launched invasions of Russia, made fatal errors and decisions in their respective campaigns, and afterward were all but guaranteed to be beaten with everything else they did being to only delay the inevitable.
Stalingrad in my opinion is where Germany lost the war. The 6th Army under the command of General Paulus - one of if not THE best of all of Germany’s armies, and undefeated at that point - was surrounded and crushed in the city. Manstein - arguably Germany’s finest military commander in WW2 - tried but failed to rescue the 6th Army in no small part to Hitler’s bad decision-making.
And that was it. It’s important to keep in mind that many battles in WW2 were decided by air superiority. Thanks to the 5-month defense if Stalingrad, the Soviets were able to build up and train air and armoured units and eventually dominated the skies over the Eastern Front.
Well flanking was from Romans and Napoleon used it the most Until tricked by Wellington. The Germans spotted potential in both and used it to their advantage to start with against Russia who were actually holding out for winter and that stopped aircraft bombing also Tanks and vehicles from moving also freezing the German forces to death.
My understanding of the Caucasus region is the Caucasus Mountains run from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea. North of the mountains is Russia. South of the mountains is Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan and yet more oil. The mountains are quite a formidable natural barrier and is home to the highest peak in Europe, Mount Elbrus.
Stalingrad was of major strategic importance, it was a major river port and commerce centre. You controlled Stalingrad, you control the flow of oil and supplies.
Stalingrad was renamed Volgograd in 1961. Similarly Leningrad was renamed St.Petersburg in 1991.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but thats my understanding of the area.
the USSR was also supplied via Murmansk in the north of the soviet union from Canada and the USA, vast convoys carrying supply to aid the war effort my father was on one of the escort ships on this run
Спасибо, за Ваш интерес к нашей истории
The main decider was the winter weather and the German supplies not arriving
In Europe,the weather is very important when there is a war.Winter was very cold at the time.
The russians have made a very long documentary of the eastern front fighting.
"Soviet storm" its like 14 parts of 45 minutes per episode. It exists with English narration.
It goes into depth of each operation, with stories from russian diaries.
Soviet Storm is definitely one of the best documentaries on WW2 Eastern front ever! Highly recommended, although slightly biased but it gives a lot of information, has nice animations and is quite accurate with a lot of facts, it explains things that other documentaries like this one for example don't explain such as 'Why year 1941 was such a resounding success for Germans ?' what was it like to fight Russians/German troops? And such..
@@relaxed-rider Everything is biased a shit, like the Hollywood movies and American documentaries.
@@TrashskillsRS no it really isn’t. It is literally like a touch of bias.
I watched soviet storm and it has no bias. Its told literaly as it is, with all the faults of red army and problems.
there are games such as hearts of iron 4 that simulate the war but this is all painstakingly hand-animated
In 1942, some German units had been fighting for 5 years, so they were experienced. (Spanish Civil War) But the soldiers sent to replace the losses were not much better than the newly enlisted Soviets, but because the proportion of veteran fighters was still high, the German army performed better. we are moving towards the end of the war, the recruits will get stronger and the combat value will decrease, until eventually the legendary Waffen SS will also be diluted and will have only a fraction of its original combat value. Who believes that, say, the 1st LAH ss armored division will achieve the same performance it launches in 42, as in 45, it makes a big mistake. Although it maintains its elite character throughout and is better than any similar unit, it does not reach its strength between 42 and 43. As for the Soviet forces, due to the huge losses, there are few veterans left who are it would improve the combat value of recruits. A good example of this is the situation of tank units. During the war, about 55,000 t34s were produced. This requires 55,000 tank personnel. But of these, 52,000 vehicles are destroyed during the battles, mostly with their entire personnel. So new personnel go to the finger tank, who are not yet routine. When they find themselves facing an armored ace like Michael Wittman, of course they will burn in the tanks without a chance. and this is true for all types of weapons .But the German veterans are also falling, and the newcomers are just as inexperienced.
At this point the Axis were starting to get low on fuel and had to cut down operations.
Also the supply lines got very long vs those of the Soviets, which shortened.
I think that one of the colour codes in these videos is that grey = German infantry units and black = German tank units.
XX = division, XXX = corps which is a group of several divisions, XXXX = army which is a group of corps, etc. Western European units of any given category were generally larger than their Soviet counterparts, so a German division would generally be larger than a Soviet division, etc. U.S. units were larger still.
You were wondering about the quality of Soviet units. Soviet units were of mixed quality. Some, e.g. the ones hastily assembled in the fall of 1941, were very poorly trained and equipped. Others, such as the units transferred from the Far East just in time to fight in the defense of Moscow in December 1941, had been together for years, and some of them had victorious combat experience against the Japanese, against whom they had conducted an encircling maneuver in the Battle of Khalkin Gol in 1939. Soviet troops would generally improve in quality over the course of the rest of the War, while German units were pretty much at their quality peak in 1941.
Leningrad, also known as St. Petersburg, had been the capital of the Czars' Russia for a couple of hundred years, and was the Soviet Union's second largest city with a population of a couple of million civilians, and so a major industrial center in its own right. In better times it has been a major port, but there was no merchant shipping travelling to the Soviet Union through the Baltic Sea while the Soviet Union was at war with both Finland and Germany.
About strategic encirclement. AFAIK, strategic, as opposed to tactical, encirclement of field armies only became a thing with the development of railroads. Tactical encirclement has been going on since forever, e.g. the Battle of Cannae, but tactical encirclement was something that happened in an hour or an afternoon or at most over a few days and wasn't generally associated with supply lines. You also had lots of sieges before the development of railroads, but those were generally prepared defensive positions with supplies kept against the possibility of siege, not armies in the field being encircled as in the WWII Eastern Front.
After railroads became developed, food, ammunition, and other supplies would be constantly being carried forward to the troops on the front lines by trains, and so in principle if you could occupy stretches of the railroads carrying food and ammunition to the enemy's forces on the front lines, those troops' ability to continue fighting would not last long. Before that, armies lived off supplies carried by animals travelling with the army, supplies stored at supply depots in forts and towns, the resources of the land, and, all too often, the possessions of the local peasants. You couldn't cut off the food supply of an enemy army by getting your troops "behind" them if they were already eating food robbed from the local peasants anyway.
Arguably, the first strategic "pockets" (that I'm aware of) occurred in a war in the 1860's. The first was created when Grant took the Confederate fortress at Vicksburg. This made Texas into a "pocket". The resources of Texas could no longer be shared with the eastern Confederate states and vice-versa. (On the other hand, the relatively simple military munitions of the 1860's could still be supplied by an economic region the size of a single state.) Then Sherman took Atlanta, followed up with Savannah. Atlanta was and is a rail hub, so after Atlanta was taken it was very hard for the Confederacy to move troops and supplies between forces and manufacturies in e.g. Alabama and those in Virginia, whereas while the Confederacy held Atlanta they could just run trains from Mississippi to Virginia. After Sherman's Atlanta campaign and the "March to the Sea" the Confederacy was cut into three pockets, and pretty soon after that the war ended.
However, quickly moving behind enemy lines with enough military force to be not just a raid but hold territory became much more practical in World War II with the development of mechanized forces and, in particular, tanks. The wide spaces of the Soviet Union provided enough room for this to happen often, but an earlier examples of it had happened in France. The British had to make a naval evacuation from Dunkerque because the Germans had turned it into a "pocket", cut off by land from most of France, the Belgian troops in the pocket surrendered with the surrender of Belgium, and many French troops in the pocket were taken prisoner.
I'm sure by this point Soviet field commanders and central command were well aware of what the German tactics were, but knowing what your enemy is going to do and being able to do anything about it are two totally different things.
In a similar manner to the US' part of WWII, Soviet industry needed time to build up the right equipment and weapons; the Soviet military had been very stagnant and full of large number of obsolete equipment, plus Stalin's purges had decimated morale and competence within the Red Army, while the German Wehrmacht at the time was a well equipped, well trained and, crucially, battle-tested force.
The German army was joined by Italian, Bulgarian and Romanian armies, much in the way Polish, Canadian, Australian and other Commonwealth forces forces fought with the allies in their own organisations and subordinate commands.
Concerning Russia: One russian poet, which I quite don´t remember, said once: Though St. Petersburg (Leningrad) may be the brain of Russia, Moscow it´s heart, the Volga is it´s vein.
That is my cuntry flag Romania witch help germany with aproximative 700 thousand men in the war
“Helped” only initially. They were the ones failing to protect the flanks of Stalingrad, and they did switch sides in 44
@@maximilianbeyer5642 Anyone would have failed to protect those flanks, there were too overstretched and there weren't many anti-tank wepons. Before the soviet attack , the german high command was alerted about this and did nothing. The romanians resisted as much as they could in those conditions but were eventually overwhelmed by the large number of soviet tanks. About the switching side thing, there was a coup and Antonescu(who gave Hitler his word about the war) was overthrown by King Michael who tried to get Romania out of the war, not to swich sides. He even told the germans that romania wants out of the war and gave them time to leave before the soviets arrived, but no, instead of leaving they bombed Bucharest.
I would like to mention that the red yellow and blue flag belongs to Romania and fought to the end against the Soviet Union as an unjustly annexed Romanian territory.
I know quite a bit about the eastern front, so I'm gonna answer her questions in order
Yes, the German army was better trained than the Red Army. Although it should be noted that for a successful offensive, you typically need a significant numerical advantage, as least locally.
Questions about oil in Russia: While its true today that most Russia oil is in the Eastern half, at the time, most Soviet oil came from the southeast and Caucuses. Particularly the regions of Chechnya and Azerbaijan. Only later would oil production shift eastward.
Avoiding Encirclements?: Yes, Soviet commanders were aware that this was a danger. But encirclements are difficult to avoid. If you redirect your forces towards the flanks, you leave your center open for attack. It's a very sensitive situation.
Non-German Forces?: In addition to the Germans and the Finns, significant Italian, Romanian, and Hungarian troops fought on the eastern front. Additionally, there were units from Spain, Slovakia, Vichy France, and more that fought for the Axis in the East.
Stalingrad?: Stalingrad was a major transport hub and industrial city, cutting it off would make the connection between Soviet troops in the Caucasus area and the main body much more difficult.
Oil fields and mountain range: During the campaign of 1942, fighting took place in the Caucasian range. Despite German advances, they never reached any Caucasian Republics (Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia). The German captured some small and moderate sized oil fields, but never the largest ones.
Military Cooperation?: The smaller axis powers were much weaker than Germany. While there was limited joint training, German commanders often could command these Hungarian, Romanian, Italian troops and had them in less axtive positions that required less skill.
Stalingrad Encirclement: Yes. By the time the 6th Army in Stalingrad was encircled, they had taken 90% of the city.
the German army did not consist of over people and they were trained like ordinary soldiers. the fact is that at the beginning of the war, German aviation destroyed Soviet aircraft (which, due to an unexpected attack, did not even take off) and airfields. as a result, the great successes of the German army are associated with aviation support. When the Soviet Union rebuilds aviation, then Germany will begin to retreat
Thanks! Guess that stuff is coming up.
Those "countries with other flags" were one of the main reasons the Germans lost (Italy was a meme basically)
Stalingrad battle is in Guinness record book as the bloodiest battle of all times - 2 million dead from both sides. It is 4 times more than Allies lost for the whole war combined. It is turning point of the whole WWII and the most important battle. Turkey, for instance, decided not to join the war against USSR after it. So sad, that American education deliberately ignores that major event. It is not your fault. But, unfortunately, it creates that impression that US forces defeated Hitler. I heard it even from a Arni - the former governor of California. When in reality 8 out of 10 German soldiers died in the Eastern front. The second American-British front was opened in the summer of 1944 (less than a year to the end of war with Germany) after all major battles were won by USSR (Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad, Kursk) and the German army was in a constant retreat.
PS Not denying lend-lease of course, which was a huge help for USSR. Thank fir the video. You are smart and give a good commentary so its not boring to watch :)