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I was killed near Rzhev In a nameless bog, In fifth company, On the Left flank, In a cruel air raid I didn’t hear explosions And did not see the flash Down to an abyss from a cliff No start, no end And in this whole world To the end of its days - Neither patches, nor badges From my tunic you’ll find
I was killed near Rzhev In a nameless bog, In fifth company, On the Left flank, In a cruel air raid I didn’t hear explosions And did not see the flash Down to an abyss from a cliff No start, no end And in this whole world To the end of its days - Neither patches, nor badges From my tunic you’ll find I was killed near Rzhev by Alexander Tvardovsky. May those who perished in this brutal and horrific battle rest in peace in the open plains and lands of Russia. 🇷🇺🇩🇪
A personal account of Petr Mikhin from his book: There were no more than 50 of us left from 200-strong rifle battalion to attack the trench near Polunino. All field was covered with corpses of the previous attack groups. Kombát (Batallion commander) Glyba was running along with his men in attack urging them forward. Me, the commander of the artillery reconnaissance team, was running alongside him to provide direct artillery support for his men. My subordinates were: a telephone lineman hurrying behind me with a wire roll on his back and the other four were resting somewhere among the dead since the last week's countless attempts to take this damned trench. My ammunition was strictly limited, so I kept shells for possible counterattacks. it's 200 meters before the trench and the mortars add to the machine guns. A thick mortar barrage engulfed us. We hit the dirt. I squashed myself between two corpses. They shielded me from splinters and bullets somewhat. But then mine launched the right corpse in the air and it landed right down on me. Worms rained behind my collar on my back. Dead man's swollen abdomen, punctured and torn by splinters rushed me with a disgusting stench. Though we learned how to live with mantles of this constant nauseating sweetish smell of death, this hit of concentrated rot almost made me unconscious. Lucky me! I pulled myself together and didn't black out and just in time to see the leftovers of my comrades crawling back to the starting point - the reason they wouldn't pull me back should I lose consciousness and therefore I could've wound up in enemy hands. I followed them and our kombát who vainly tried to stop the retreating. Hugging the earth under the flood of mortar and machinegun fire, weaving in the ocean of corpses I peeked from time to time back to see: what if Fritz would mount a counterattack? There! Under mortar cover, they run in a thick line to catch us kissing soil in a whirlwind of exploding shells. Cathing up, shooting us, taking our miserable makeshift foxholes, then blasting to pieces our pathetic battlefront and drive remains of our battalion from Rzhev. I have to do something! I am the only one who can do anything! ~~Call for fire - trench. For effect minus four. Fire! Lineman sput my orders in his telephone (pure luck - the wire isn't broken) and there they go! Our shells! They landed right in the thick of them. Survivors retreated hastily. German counterattack shredded. Loosing 14 dead and wounded, the battalion dove into our shallow trenches. Wet, filthy, utterly exhausted from running across corpse fields and trampled with fear krasnoarmeytsi (red army men) hugged their ditches. Appropriately, the phone call for the only surviving officer of the battalion - junior lieutenant (eq. to sec. lt.) Glyba from the regiment's commander. - Got that trench? - asks major Soloviev - We didn't. Overwhelming fire. Found cover and retreated to start. - answers Glyba - Retreated?! You damn crazy! Proceed your attack! Expect seeing you in the German trench with all battalion today! Clearly understood?! - Yes, sir! Glyba won't lead these miserable scraps of batallion in the attack, of course. No reason to do so. And no way. Hour later. - Hey, what's the progress?! - Asks Soloviev (Divisional commander chokes Soloviev apparently) - Gained 100 meters. - Proceed! Expect to have this trench by this evening! Next time Glyba (at this point assured with futility of our feeble blows toward Germans), heard strict voice of Soloviev and, God blessed to be his lies, lied that we covered another 50 meters, Major demanded communication with me: - Give phone to that artilleryman! Asks me: - What's up with infantry? They advance? - Covered another 40 meters Says I to cover poor lieutenants behind. He isn't happy now with his promotion from vzvodny (platoon leader) to kombát in a week. ---------------------------------------------------------- Well, I stop my translation of this excerpt from his book "Artillerymen, Stalin gave us an order!" - the name of the book is title of a famous and catchy Soviet artillerymen song. Petr Mikhin once gave an interview where he pictured oceans of dead people on these fields. Feel free and I encourage you to evaluate, criticize and advise me on style, grammar, and everything.
36 men is basically a platoon. Fitting, I guess, considering the "battalion" was being led by a lieutenant. US Army doctrine states that a unit becomes "combat ineffective" when casualties exceed 50%. I'm guessing that number was 100% for the Red Army in WWII. Maybe even that number is too low.
A reminder to people looking at the map and seeing the USSR has like 8 armies (the boxes with 4 X's in them) for every one German army on the map, a Soviet army was actually much more like every other nations corp sized units (the boxes with 3 X's in them). Often times they are barley even a corp when you consider many of the USSR "armies" are just 3-5 divisions (what is normally a corp sized unit for most nations) and are all badly depleted in man power as well. The Germans only ever have their "Panzer armies" made up by that small a number of divisions (3-5). The German panzer armies are also much more like corps in terms of division size but when you consider their fighting power calling them a army makes more sense.
What do you mean? Pop culture told me that the Soviets had 10 gazillion men for every German, they didn't even use guns they just shoved humans into the Katyusha Rockets
@@firingallcylinders2949 Throughout most of this period of the war the Soviets only had slightly more than a 2:1 manpower advantage across the entire front, though of course local advantages could exceed that depending on how either side had allocated it's forces across the front. In December of 1941 it had been 1:1, and earlier in Barbarossa the Germans had actually had a manpower advantage. As you say, pop culture imagines far many more Soviet soldiers than there actually were when the issue was still in some doubt. The Soviets will manage significant advantages later in the war, but by that point Germany's defeat had become a question of when, rather than if.
Lycaon Pictus I think a bigger factor than manpower is each country’s production. If you don’t produce weapons manpower is meaningless. German production was awful compared to soviets in 1942. In 1941, German’s produced 3780 tanks in compared to the 5870 tanks the soviets produced. In 1942 Germans produced 4960 tanks compared to the soviets 24,320 tanks produced. These tanks gave the Soviets the edge needed to conduct those deep-battle counter offensives in 1942/1943 (operation Mars, Uranus, etc), which essentially won them the war
Yes the reason why soviets called corps armies was largely because of Stalin's purges. They killed so many generals that they decided to just skip the corps-level.
That battle haunted my grandfather, he said there where streams of blood. His company where on a hill flanked by a stream and another hill to his left, causing the Russians to funnel, right into all those MG34s, he said they literally cooked barrels because no chance to cool them down.
Pavel Belov, the general mentioned at roughly 3:25, was quite an interesting character and probably one of the more underrated Soviet generals of the war. The Germans apparently held his abilities in quite high esteem and referred to him as "the Fox." Halder said of him in his operations diary, "Cav Corps Belov has again broken out and is moving in the direction of Kirov. Nothing we could brag about. Cav Corps Belov is now floating around the area west of Kirov. Quite a man, that we have to send no less than seven divisions after him."
He stopped the 2nd Tank Army in December, became the greatest single threat to the Wehrmacht when close to cutting the Smolensk-Vyazma railway, and after that ended remained a thorn in the German's side for months. And tthis was only the start of their careers. Belov took command of the 65th army and participated in Operation Uranus, the reduction of the Stalingrad pocket, and various other battles until the end of the war. The 1st Guards Cavalry Corps would also fight all the way to the final battle.
Indy: We don't do specials about individual battles Also Indy: Here is the 3rd special about an individual battle in 8 days Not that I mind, just a bit curious
You could weasel your way out of it by saying they're more like campaigns than single battles. Well, the last 2. The first one is just golden comedy material.
My grandma's family survived in Vyazma that time. The battle was horrific but it was even worse for civilians. There was no food and no chance to grow and gather crops in 1941-42. People survived on eating what they could find or hunt in the forests. Cannibalism was very common.
People in the west can not even comprehend the sheer brutality and magnitude of the eastern front. To put it in perspective Soviets lost more men in these battles for Rzhev than did Americans in the entire war and on all fronts combined... Few even know about these battles.
Part of the reason Rhzev is poorly known in general is because Soviet history didn't exactly try to write much about the disaster at Rhzev. Modern scholarship on the battle is entirely superior to anything done before the collapse of the Soviet Union because we now have some of the archives.
The Soviets covered it up, it is part of the general tactical ineptitude of the Red Army through the early war period. Had this occurred in 1944, than you would have heard about it, because the Red's would not have had these problems. Red Army tactics (1941-early 43) are terrible but their strategy was good, which is what allowed this to become a footnote in the war, at least until now.
@@travisjohnson6703 Normandy was an opposed landing and still achieved its main goal. Rhzev also had far worse casualties in an absolute sense and as a percent of total forces. Higher casualty estimates at Rhzev put it out of the stratosphere that Normandy inhabits and the absolute lowest casualty estimates for Rhzev are still significantly higher than losses at Normandy as a percent or obviously as an absolute value. Rhzev also took place over a much longer time so it doesn't really make sense to compare losses between these two operations in the first place.
I never knew about Rzhev specifically until I started following you. Growing up my teachers focused heavily on the Pacific, Normandy and Italy. The Eastern Front was basically treated as a continent wide street brawl with rifles and tanks.
Find the 'World at Arms: Readers Digest Illustrated History of WW2, 1986'. It is a really good summary of all of the war, if a little outdated. It spends enough time on the East Front to give it its due. The book still has the pretense that the Germans could have won the war, all the way up to mid 43. We now know better, because that book was written before the Soviet Union collapsed. The book does briefly bring up Operation Mars (Rzhev), but it was printed 1986 when the USSR was pre Glasnost so not a lot of data other than both Mars and Uranus in planning.
This channel has the same issue as anyone teaching about the war - there's only so much time to cover a whole lot of material. And the stuff that's less important in terms of affecting the course and outcome of the war tends to get pushed to the background while the big decisive campaigns get the most attention. You see the same thing every Saturday in the comments of the regular episodes, people asking about Rzhev or China or Leningrad and wondering why it's not being covered. I think Indy did a pretty good job of explaining why they don't spend more time on it there - lots of fighting, lots of dead soldiers, but none of it changed the outcome of the war.
The teachers will talk about only the western involvement in the war. They didn't want to accept the fact that the Soviets did more to beat Nazi Germany than the allies
Guys, only thing our teacher said about the war was „Look at this map. It shows German advance from 1939-1945, Soviet advance from 1939-1945 and Allied advance 1939-1945. No japan, no china, no North Africa, no southeast asia, no sea war, no air group. We literally looked at one map that showed how the war went.
This summer I went to Rzhev with a search group which is looking for soldier which went missing during that battle! It was an unforgettable experience! Fields of Rzhev still have a feeling of grief and sorrow. Thanks for covering this battle in your video.
"We don't usually cover battles specifically" *Looks at the Réunion, Kokoda, and Rzhev videos within eight days of each other...* Nah kidding, great work! Wouldn't mind seeing more like this!
@@WorldWarTwo But we are expecting the real lowdown on the Dieppe Raid now when August rolls around in 2022--exactly 80 years later! 👌😉😎 Hint, hint: get David O'Keefe's "One Day in August" because he actually ferreted out the true story from the British Archives at Kew and it is a James Bond style narrative featuring Ian Fleming himself!
Please add more journal entries or letters,personal accounts etc. if possible. it was something that your WWI coverage had a lot of and really helped the coverage seem more real time or more impactful having so many personal accounts from soldiers. This episode was was much more interesting to me due to having Gobachevsky's (spelling?) entry. Very good episode!!
Thank you for this episode. Question of the “Human price” on eastern front sounds like a very delicate and difficult subject. It is true that often Soviet generals were learning realities of modern warfare on the go, mistakes were paid for in thousands of lives.
@@benkamelmayssem5780 and what they did to all those etnic groups that so happaned to no be russian doesn't count as enslaving people? For me, the soviet union was the onyl slave society that managed to industrialise
I think the main issue here is in late 1944-1945 It became very evident Zhukov and others, as great generals as they were, began just throwing men at problems. The race to Berlin is a great example of this
KNOCK OFF THE COMMUNIST/CAPITALIST BULL CRAP. NO MODERN POLITICS, REMEMBER? Nikita, it is a touchy subject, especially maybe here in the west, but as far as the actual soldier on soldier fighting goes I give the Soviets a pass. Knowing what the Nazis had planned, the Russians were fighting for their right to exist. The Eastern Front WAS a meat grinder. If you're not willing to throw every last soldier at them, you're not willing to win.
@@colinmerritt7645 it still doesn't justify endlessly renacting the somme And i i agregó that the soviets were fighting for their right to exist, but knowing tham it's really impossible to sympatyse with them
Still remember watching a ww2 documentary on RUclips during Highschool breaks and empty hours. It showed the Eastern Front from the Soviet side, focusing on the big battles. Rzhev was mentioned there and I remember not having heard about it ever. Good to see a video about it!
Rzhev was no success for the soviets, so it was largely "neglected" in their official post war narrative. Lots of propaganda / misinformation on both sides in the cold war period didn't improve things. Sources have become much more reliable after archives were opened following the collapse of the USSR. Plus, the German narrative was finally viewed with an appropriate level of scepticism. Glad that Indy & team did a special about this!
Well I thought I was getting terrific value from my Patreon subscription with just the regular episodes, but these specials along with Spies and Ties, War on the Homefront and the War Against Humanity just take the value to another level all together. Can't thank the Time Ghost team enough. Cheers!
I gave the like immediately upon clicking on the video, and would like to give another ten likes after watching it to the end... What a splendid, completely unbiased, and still WOH-level touching narrative about both strategic happenings and the extent of human suffering in this tragical battle... every history buff interested in the Eastern front that speaks just a bit of Russian (as well as every Russian schoolchild, I guess) knows well the monumental and yet tragically beautiful poem "Ya ubit podo Rzhevom (I was killed before Rzhev)"... The poem's lyrics were going through my head while watching this episode, and tears started to well in my eyes... Thank you Timegohost for this emotional experience. Cheers from Slovenia!
I want to thank you and all the Time Ghost crew for creating these specials. It is great to see episodes covering campaigns like the Kokoda Track and Rzhev in detail like this. They really help. I hope you will be able to do more of these when time permits to cover some of the less well-known battles of World War 2. Keep up the fantastic work, but please don't suffer a nervous breakdown doing it!
The animations and explanations are simply superb! When viewing many different battlefields every week, it is easy to become ignorant of the sheer scale of individual engagements.
Belov was quite a man! It took no less than seven German divisions to fail to capture him. Halder writes: "The episode cause many humorous remarks at the time and the motorized troops which had taken part in the operations became the butt of those jokes. I admire General Belov as a soldier and I was secretly glad he escaped. It was said he was received with all honors in Moscow and rightly so."
As stupid as it might sound, I developed a respect for the horrific experience of the Rzhev Meatgrinder from the Men at War video game series. It's an RTS where you (usually) play as the Red Army fighting off Barbarossa, and they had several missions based on Rzhev as well as the entire eastern front in general. I remember that they were extremely bloody, chaotic, destructive missions, and I feel like in that sense they represented Rzhev very well.
Такой классный канал. Русскоязычные ребята, кто смотрит этот канал, если кто хорошо владеет английским, сделайте русские субтитры. Такой контент нужно распространять максимально широко.
I love that you are doing recaps! Those of us who are watching you week by week can sometimes lose the bigger picture of what's happening on particular fronts
Thank you so much for these recaps indie, I’m still playing catch up while you are trudging through the last couple months of the war and the beginnings of Korea, this makes it so much easier to catch up on missed content since it’s all in one spot!
My grandfather's older brother fell sometime in the late summer of 1942 at Rzhev. Thus my father never got to know this uncle. Neither did he know another one who survived the war, but was killed in a senseless fight after it...
Another good episode Indy. You nail these battles and speak wonderfully, always keeping us engaged. I’d recommend, eventually, having a special episode on the partisans and their operations between ‘41 and ‘42. The movie Defiance brought a lot of western attention to this somewhat forgotten front but it was critical in the war.
Thank you for this brilliantly done summary covering something you couldn't do in the main weekly episodes and that while people mentioned it in the comments was really unknown to me. Thank you again. Keep up the good work crew.
I do understand the policy of not covering individual battles, especially when it comes to getting bogged down in some of the more "famous" ones. However I do like these specials that help contextualize important historical battles as part of a broader topic. Thanks for making the exceptions when they're needed, I think it's a positive step even when it gets messy.
This isnt a battle, its an entire campaign made up of several operations with dozens of battles. Calling this a battle is like saying the WW1 western front was just the Battle of Verdun or Operation Blue just the "Battle of Stalingrad". Remember this is 1/3 of the entire eastern front with thousands of km of front line. Its just called Rzevh meat grinder because that city was a key asset (and because the soviets tried to cover this slaughter up post war)
@@noobster4779 The soviets did not cover this battle. There are many small memorials built by the soviets after the war, search teams have always worked there, at school we studied a lot of literary works about this battle. Rzhev was unlucky that the Battle for Stalingrad took place at the same time with him, which was more successful, so all attention went to Stalingrad.
As always, thank you so very much for your video. In addition, in talking with FB friends and family yesterday (December 7th, a day...) a friend shared your Pearl Harbor "Minute by Minute" video (ty), which I'll soon be watching (I want to wait till I can binge it), and we talked about how excited we are about the "minute by minute" you'll be doing for D-Day.
It's less of a plain stalemate and more of an intense game of salient chess, with attacks and counterattacks and attacks repurposed into counterattacks... that ultimately ends in a stalemate.
@@gargravarr2 Calling it chess is perhaps too kind. I have always pictured it more like a comedy sketch of both sides trying to plug all holes in their sinking boat while they try to poke holes in the others boat.
Well I have to start by saying that I love your show and every week you do an awesome and humongous job to bring us some of the best historical content here on youtube but I have to ask (SPOILER ALERT) are you going to cover the retreat of the 8th Italian army, along with german, romanian and hurgarian forces, and their hellish march back to friendly lines? I know that it might seems an underrated topic and for sure the literature on it is largely in Italian but my great grandfather was there in the Alpini armycorps and was captured during this episode and unfortunately perished during captivity. Here in Italy it is an event that is well known and truly changed the perspective that Italians had in the war with consequences even after the war but I would like to that this event to be better known also by a bigger audience. Thank you again in any case and keep up the awesome work. Ps: sorry for any mistakes
I was killed near Rzhev In a nameless bog, In fifth company, On the Left flank, In a cruel air raid I didn’t hear explosions And did not see the flash Down to an abyss from a cliff No start, no end And in this whole world To the end of its days - Neither patches, nor badges From my tunic you’ll find
That is one of the most frightening descriptions of modern warfare I've ever heard. Just horrific. advancing into that ! Pretty glad I wasn't there . 💛👊
I would love to hear about the action in and around the Volkhov swamps. That seemed like one of the worst places to have to fight a battle in. In fact I would love to see a special on all the different brutal places/ weather to fight a battle.
The question of the price is a tricky one, because we must not only consider the direct price of the offensive, but also the alternatives. Going full defensive might've saved a huge amount of lives, or it might've led to Derfflinger or Whirlwind actually happening, in which case instead of 5-to-1 casualties and a deadlocked frontline we could be looking at 10-to-1 casualties and huge exploitable holes in the Soviet defences. Giving away strategic initiative can be incredibly disastrous.
Not a battle, a frontline. This includes dozens of battles and is only called a "battle" do to the lack of better terms. Calling it a battle is the same a reducing the entire southern front of Fall Blau to only Stalingrad or saying the north africa campaign was just the Battle of El Alamein.
These are quite nice overviews, even as I do follow the posts on the Instagram. Maybe it's the animations, but it puts these battles more into perspective
i love this indy´s popular opening phrase: "as you know, we don´t do special episodes about individual battles, however..." ...and i love these episodes about individual battles even more.
Nearly pooped my pants when you said the Kalinin front was to cross the volga at 6:55. I was like, that's a hell of a redeployment to the south! Never realised the volga was so long
It's insane to me to think that something as brutal and vital to the war as the Rzhev Salient battles largely faded into semi-obscurity before being covered in a lot greater detail following the opening of the Soviet archives in 2015. I'm glad to see that Rzhev is getting coverage here (especially as I deleted all my social media when it was contributing towards a worsened mental state of mine), even if Stalingrad still takes up the majority of the focus at this point in the war (as has been the case in the pop history depiction of WWII for decades). Keep up the good work. I hope that you'll do something similar on the military situation in the CBI theatre, as it has been far too long since any coverage of that area (and how Joseph Stilwell keeps laying the groundwork for sabotaged US relations with the Chinese Nationalists and communists) since it seems to have been largely overshadowed by the US efforts in the South Pacific. Perhaps you have a Vera Lynn up your sleeves for the future to show that the men of the CBI theatre aren't the forgotten front? c: Once again, keep up the great work and thanks for doing these extra recap episodes!
Love your content and learning about history, but not interested in signing up for multiple new social media platforms. I appreciate these recap videos even if they're after the fact
I wonder if the rzhev situation resembled great war style trench warfare. the ratio of casualties per ground covered certainly resembles the ones in the western front
It somewhat did, but in general, the distances to cover were longer, and cover was far more scarce. The Soviets often had to attack over entire kilometres of open ground, with the Germans being able to see them (and hit them) from hundreds of metres away. For them, it was basically a turkey shoot. To make the situation even worse, the Red Army in this period attacked in echelons. This meant that while the front echelon was attacking, the other echelons were some distance behind the front, assembling for the attack. The Germans often abused this fact by shelling the second or third echelon, so many Soviet soldiers died long before they even made it to combat. The Germans suffered in their own ways however. The Soviets assembled an impressive arsenal of artillery in the area, including Katyushas, as well as the dreaded B-4 203 mm super-heavy artillery guns. So while German losses were lower, the numbers of shell-shocked soldiers were staggering.
@@jirkazalabak1514 I think echelons tactics were ok. If you look at how breakthrough tactics evolved during the war they were shifting from "line" tactics where the majority of battalions were put in a single line to more echeloned tactics ere first line of assault could consist of less than a half battalions. The problem was that infantry lacked assault group tactics, and german artillery was not suppressed. Later in the war when the soviets properly employed assault groups tactics and their artillery was strong enough to suppress german artillery, they achieved many decisive victories using the same echelon tactic.
@@glebovskimalcovich207 From what I understand, the problem was that the echelons were not spaced out enough. Therefore, when the Germans opened fire on the first echelon, the far end of the target zone was already hitting the next one. Also, the attacks were often ordered without any major recoinassance, and the coordination between the different formations was rather poor, mostly due to inexperienced officers. This lead to units often attacking without support, or attacking over open ground even when it wasn´t necessary. Later in the war, the Germans were firmly on the defensive, with most of their divisions being outright unable to conduct any operations besides static defense. In the battles around Rzhev, the Germans were saved several times only by the timely deployment of reserves by Walter Model, who was considered a genius of defensive warfare. Later on, this wasn´t possible anymore, as there simply weren´t enough reserves available to intercept every Soviet breakthrough. The better training and more experience did play a role, but even then, the losses were still pretty bad compared to other armies.
I know why? you guys have had to step up your game! It's getting to complicated and too long so you need to do updates and to individual battles! I applaud you for your interest to show these because you leave unanswered questions! I'm going to love 43 and 44 and the finally is going to be at least 45 minutes to an hour! Good luck with the new studio!
I thank you should release all that here, too. you can do a live news narrative voice and make the slideshows and clips look like live tv broadcast back then
It’s a shame we have never had a series or move production that details these insanely massive battles in the eastern front, like a saving private Ryan for Stalingrad or Rzhev.
Loved this one! I think the biggest impact of the summer Rhez battles was the decision to send most reinforcements to Army group center instead of south (specially army group B) during the critical months of August and September. This may have prevented Paulus to conque Stalingrad at a time Stavka was not 100% positive Fall Blau was the only German offensive.
I, for one, have no problem with slight side-tracks to specific battles. With a war this huge and dispersed around the globe, especially at this time frame, special episodes about battles are a necessity.
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We also post the day by day coverage to the RUclips Community page! To all who asked in our last recap video: we do not only post day by day to Instagram and Facebook. Check it wherever you like it most. It is not just an added bonus, but an integral part of this documentary series' coverage of the Second World War. Remember, these recaps are going over these day by day posts, and that will continue to be the main place you get this coverage.
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@@SpoonfedPig If you go to the channels youtube page and click on community it will also have the daily posts there.
Hon kon
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Sounds like a campaign Haig would've been proud of.
There is a good poem about Rzhev's meat grinder by Alexander Tvardovsky called "i was killed near Rzhev" that i recomend ppl to read
Will surely do that Thx
It's actually cited in the comment section by Daniel Navarro (after you posted your comment ;-)
Reminds me of that civil war story where the diary at Cold Harbor had the entry "I was killed."
Coh2?
I was killed near Rzhev
In a nameless bog,
In fifth company,
On the Left flank,
In a cruel air raid
I didn’t hear explosions
And did not see the flash
Down to an abyss from a cliff
No start, no end
And in this whole world
To the end of its days -
Neither patches, nor badges
From my tunic you’ll find
I was killed near Rzhev
In a nameless bog,
In fifth company,
On the Left flank,
In a cruel air raid
I didn’t hear explosions
And did not see the flash
Down to an abyss from a cliff
No start, no end
And in this whole world
To the end of its days -
Neither patches, nor badges
From my tunic you’ll find
I was killed near Rzhev by Alexander Tvardovsky. May those who perished in this brutal and horrific battle rest in peace in the open plains and lands of Russia. 🇷🇺🇩🇪
ruclips.net/video/Xuq1h7mppnw/видео.html
yo same
Powerful.
Glory to the Fallen.
Remember them when you next raise a glass to the living.
@@davidbrennan660 ruclips.net/video/BjrelwnQtM0/видео.html there is really touching version of this poem
@@davidbrennan660 There is nothing glorious about dying horribly in a pointless war.
A personal account of Petr Mikhin from his book:
There were no more than 50 of us left from 200-strong rifle battalion to attack the trench near Polunino. All field was covered with corpses of the previous attack groups. Kombát (Batallion commander) Glyba was running along with his men in attack urging them forward. Me, the commander of the artillery reconnaissance team, was running alongside him to provide direct artillery support for his men. My subordinates were: a telephone lineman hurrying behind me with a wire roll on his back and the other four were resting somewhere among the dead since the last week's countless attempts to take this damned trench. My ammunition was strictly limited, so I kept shells for possible counterattacks.
it's 200 meters before the trench and the mortars add to the machine guns. A thick mortar barrage engulfed us. We hit the dirt. I squashed myself between two corpses. They shielded me from splinters and bullets somewhat. But then mine launched the right corpse in the air and it landed right down on me. Worms rained behind my collar on my back. Dead man's swollen abdomen, punctured and torn by splinters rushed me with a disgusting stench. Though we learned how to live with mantles of this constant nauseating sweetish smell of death, this hit of concentrated rot almost made me unconscious.
Lucky me! I pulled myself together and didn't black out and just in time to see the leftovers of my comrades crawling back to the starting point - the reason they wouldn't pull me back should I lose consciousness and therefore I could've wound up in enemy hands. I followed them and our kombát who vainly tried to stop the retreating.
Hugging the earth under the flood of mortar and machinegun fire, weaving in the ocean of corpses I peeked from time to time back to see: what if Fritz would mount a counterattack? There! Under mortar cover, they run in a thick line to catch us kissing soil in a whirlwind of exploding shells. Cathing up, shooting us, taking our miserable makeshift foxholes, then blasting to pieces our pathetic battlefront and drive remains of our battalion from Rzhev. I have to do something! I am the only one who can do anything!
~~Call for fire - trench. For effect minus four. Fire!
Lineman sput my orders in his telephone (pure luck - the wire isn't broken) and there they go! Our shells! They landed right in the thick of them. Survivors retreated hastily. German counterattack shredded.
Loosing 14 dead and wounded, the battalion dove into our shallow trenches. Wet, filthy, utterly exhausted from running across corpse fields and trampled with fear krasnoarmeytsi (red army men) hugged their ditches.
Appropriately, the phone call for the only surviving officer of the battalion - junior lieutenant (eq. to sec. lt.) Glyba from the regiment's commander.
- Got that trench? - asks major Soloviev
- We didn't. Overwhelming fire. Found cover and retreated to start. - answers Glyba
- Retreated?! You damn crazy! Proceed your attack! Expect seeing you in the German trench with all battalion today! Clearly understood?!
- Yes, sir!
Glyba won't lead these miserable scraps of batallion in the attack, of course. No reason to do so. And no way.
Hour later.
- Hey, what's the progress?! - Asks Soloviev (Divisional commander chokes Soloviev apparently)
- Gained 100 meters.
- Proceed! Expect to have this trench by this evening!
Next time Glyba (at this point assured with futility of our feeble blows toward Germans), heard strict voice of Soloviev and, God blessed to be his lies, lied that we covered another 50 meters, Major demanded communication with me:
- Give phone to that artilleryman!
Asks me:
- What's up with infantry? They advance?
- Covered another 40 meters
Says I to cover poor lieutenants behind. He isn't happy now with his promotion from vzvodny (platoon leader) to kombát in a week.
----------------------------------------------------------
Well, I stop my translation of this excerpt from his book "Artillerymen, Stalin gave us an order!" - the name of the book is title of a famous and catchy Soviet artillerymen song.
Petr Mikhin once gave an interview where he pictured oceans of dead people on these fields.
Feel free and I encourage you to evaluate, criticize and advise me on style, grammar, and everything.
thank you for that
GREAT JOB CYRIL. THAT WAS FANTASTIC
36 men is basically a platoon. Fitting, I guess, considering the "battalion" was being led by a lieutenant. US Army doctrine states that a unit becomes "combat ineffective" when casualties exceed 50%. I'm guessing that number was 100% for the Red Army in WWII. Maybe even that number is too low.
Thanks. I beg you for criticism on my phrasing, style and grammar to learn.
Thank you for sharing this
A reminder to people looking at the map and seeing the USSR has like 8 armies (the boxes with 4 X's in them) for every one German army on the map, a Soviet army was actually much more like every other nations corp sized units (the boxes with 3 X's in them). Often times they are barley even a corp when you consider many of the USSR "armies" are just 3-5 divisions (what is normally a corp sized unit for most nations) and are all badly depleted in man power as well. The Germans only ever have their "Panzer armies" made up by that small a number of divisions (3-5). The German panzer armies are also much more like corps in terms of division size but when you consider their fighting power calling them a army makes more sense.
What do you mean? Pop culture told me that the Soviets had 10 gazillion men for every German, they didn't even use guns they just shoved humans into the Katyusha Rockets
@@firingallcylinders2949 Throughout most of this period of the war the Soviets only had slightly more than a 2:1 manpower advantage across the entire front, though of course local advantages could exceed that depending on how either side had allocated it's forces across the front. In December of 1941 it had been 1:1, and earlier in Barbarossa the Germans had actually had a manpower advantage.
As you say, pop culture imagines far many more Soviet soldiers than there actually were when the issue was still in some doubt. The Soviets will manage significant advantages later in the war, but by that point Germany's defeat had become a question of when, rather than if.
Lycaon Pictus I think a bigger factor than manpower is each country’s production. If you don’t produce weapons manpower is meaningless. German production was awful compared to soviets in 1942. In 1941, German’s produced 3780 tanks in compared to the 5870 tanks the soviets produced. In 1942 Germans produced 4960 tanks compared to the soviets 24,320 tanks produced. These tanks gave the Soviets the edge needed to conduct those deep-battle counter offensives in 1942/1943 (operation Mars, Uranus, etc), which essentially won them the war
Yes the reason why soviets called corps armies was largely because of Stalin's purges. They killed so many generals that they decided to just skip the corps-level.
@@Elm0xz didn't help the allies razed the shit out of all the German factories
That battle haunted my grandfather, he said there where streams of blood. His company where on a hill flanked by a stream and another hill to his left, causing the Russians to funnel, right into all those MG34s, he said they literally cooked barrels because no chance to cool them down.
Thanks for sharing that memory with us!
Pavel Belov, the general mentioned at roughly 3:25, was quite an interesting character and probably one of the more underrated Soviet generals of the war. The Germans apparently held his abilities in quite high esteem and referred to him as "the Fox." Halder said of him in his operations diary, "Cav Corps Belov has again broken out and is moving in the direction of Kirov. Nothing we could brag about. Cav Corps Belov is now floating around the area west of Kirov. Quite a man, that we have to send no less than seven divisions after him."
He stopped the 2nd Tank Army in December, became the greatest single threat to the Wehrmacht when close to cutting the Smolensk-Vyazma railway, and after that ended remained a thorn in the German's side for months.
And tthis was only the start of their careers. Belov took command of the 65th army and participated in Operation Uranus, the reduction of the Stalingrad pocket, and various other battles until the end of the war. The 1st Guards Cavalry Corps would also fight all the way to the final battle.
Indy: We don't do specials about individual battles
Also Indy: Here is the 3rd special about an individual battle in 8 days
Not that I mind, just a bit curious
Lol I was thinking the same thing. I think it is becoming an inside joke. Also no reason for there to not be specials on battles I don't think.
I ain't complaining
'the hectic year of 1942'... I'm not sure it gets any less hectic in 1943, '44, or '45!
Didn't he tell us that it's his show, so his rules?
You could weasel your way out of it by saying they're more like campaigns than single battles. Well, the last 2. The first one is just golden comedy material.
My grandma's family survived in Vyazma that time. The battle was horrific but it was even worse for civilians. There was no food and no chance to grow and gather crops in 1941-42. People survived on eating what they could find or hunt in the forests. Cannibalism was very common.
People in the west can not even comprehend the sheer brutality and magnitude of the eastern front. To put it in perspective Soviets lost more men in these battles for Rzhev than did Americans in the entire war and on all fronts combined... Few even know about these battles.
Part of the reason Rhzev is poorly known in general is because Soviet history didn't exactly try to write much about the disaster at Rhzev. Modern scholarship on the battle is entirely superior to anything done before the collapse of the Soviet Union because we now have some of the archives.
The Soviets covered it up, it is part of the general tactical ineptitude of the Red Army through the early war period. Had this occurred in 1944, than you would have heard about it, because the Red's would not have had these problems. Red Army tactics (1941-early 43) are terrible but their strategy was good, which is what allowed this to become a footnote in the war, at least until now.
@@404Dannyboy yes they covered it up, along with a lot of other operations
Normandy had similar casualty ratios and rates, the battle just came to an end afterwards because the Germans no longer had reserves to call on.
@@travisjohnson6703 Normandy was an opposed landing and still achieved its main goal. Rhzev also had far worse casualties in an absolute sense and as a percent of total forces. Higher casualty estimates at Rhzev put it out of the stratosphere that Normandy inhabits and the absolute lowest casualty estimates for Rhzev are still significantly higher than losses at Normandy as a percent or obviously as an absolute value. Rhzev also took place over a much longer time so it doesn't really make sense to compare losses between these two operations in the first place.
I never knew about Rzhev specifically until I started following you. Growing up my teachers focused heavily on the Pacific, Normandy and Italy. The Eastern Front was basically treated as a continent wide street brawl with rifles and tanks.
Military History Visualized has some good coverage of this topic, in crossover episodes with the historian Dr. Roman Toppel
Find the 'World at Arms: Readers Digest Illustrated History of WW2, 1986'. It is a really good summary of all of the war, if a little outdated. It spends enough time on the East Front to give it its due. The book still has the pretense that the Germans could have won the war, all the way up to mid 43. We now know better, because that book was written before the Soviet Union collapsed. The book does briefly bring up Operation Mars (Rzhev), but it was printed 1986 when the USSR was pre Glasnost so not a lot of data other than both Mars and Uranus in planning.
This channel has the same issue as anyone teaching about the war - there's only so much time to cover a whole lot of material. And the stuff that's less important in terms of affecting the course and outcome of the war tends to get pushed to the background while the big decisive campaigns get the most attention.
You see the same thing every Saturday in the comments of the regular episodes, people asking about Rzhev or China or Leningrad and wondering why it's not being covered. I think Indy did a pretty good job of explaining why they don't spend more time on it there - lots of fighting, lots of dead soldiers, but none of it changed the outcome of the war.
The teachers will talk about only the western involvement in the war. They didn't want to accept the fact that the Soviets did more to beat Nazi Germany than the allies
Guys, only thing our teacher said about the war was „Look at this map. It shows German advance from 1939-1945, Soviet advance from 1939-1945 and Allied advance 1939-1945. No japan, no china, no North Africa, no southeast asia, no sea war, no air group. We literally looked at one map that showed how the war went.
I'm loving these day by day videos 💯💯
This summer I went to Rzhev with a search group which is looking for soldier which went missing during that battle! It was an unforgettable experience! Fields of Rzhev still have a feeling of grief and sorrow. Thanks for covering this battle in your video.
"We don't usually cover battles specifically"
*Looks at the Réunion, Kokoda, and Rzhev videos within eight days of each other...*
Nah kidding, great work! Wouldn't mind seeing more like this!
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it
@@WorldWarTwo But we are expecting the real lowdown on the Dieppe Raid now when August rolls around in 2022--exactly 80 years later! 👌😉😎
Hint, hint: get David O'Keefe's "One Day in August" because he actually ferreted out the true story from the British Archives at Kew and it is a James Bond style narrative featuring Ian Fleming himself!
Please add more journal entries or letters,personal accounts etc. if possible. it was something that your WWI coverage had a lot of and really helped the coverage seem more real time or more impactful having so many personal accounts from soldiers. This episode was was much more interesting to me due to having Gobachevsky's (spelling?) entry.
Very good episode!!
Thank you for this episode. Question of the “Human price” on eastern front sounds like a very delicate and difficult subject. It is true that often Soviet generals were learning realities of modern warfare on the go, mistakes were paid for in thousands of lives.
Mistakes? Communists don't make "mistakes" they genuinely DO NOT CARE for human life
@@benkamelmayssem5780 and what they did to all those etnic groups that so happaned to no be russian doesn't count as enslaving people?
For me, the soviet union was the onyl slave society that managed to industrialise
I think the main issue here is in late 1944-1945
It became very evident Zhukov and others, as great generals as they were, began just throwing men at problems. The race to Berlin is a great example of this
KNOCK OFF THE COMMUNIST/CAPITALIST BULL CRAP. NO MODERN POLITICS, REMEMBER? Nikita, it is a touchy subject, especially maybe here in the west, but as far as the actual soldier on soldier fighting goes I give the Soviets a pass. Knowing what the Nazis had planned, the Russians were fighting for their right to exist. The Eastern Front WAS a meat grinder. If you're not willing to throw every last soldier at them, you're not willing to win.
@@colinmerritt7645 it still doesn't justify endlessly renacting the somme
And i i agregó that the soviets were fighting for their right to exist, but knowing tham it's really impossible to sympatyse with them
The landing of the paratrooper at 2:14 looks so painful, but I guess it is a good representation of how Belov’s group felt at the time.
Still remember watching a ww2 documentary on RUclips during Highschool breaks and empty hours. It showed the Eastern Front from the Soviet side, focusing on the big battles. Rzhev was mentioned there and I remember not having heard about it ever. Good to see a video about it!
Rzhev was no success for the soviets, so it was largely "neglected" in their official post war narrative. Lots of propaganda / misinformation on both sides in the cold war period didn't improve things. Sources have become much more reliable after archives were opened following the collapse of the USSR. Plus, the German narrative was finally viewed with an appropriate level of scepticism. Glad that Indy & team did a special about this!
Soviet Storm: WW2 in the East, perhaps? Thats a good one, and I also watched that in school.
Well I thought I was getting terrific value from my Patreon subscription with just the regular episodes, but these specials along with Spies and Ties, War on the Homefront and the War Against Humanity just take the value to another level all together. Can't thank the Time Ghost team enough. Cheers!
I gave the like immediately upon clicking on the video, and would like to give another ten likes after watching it to the end... What a splendid, completely unbiased, and still WOH-level touching narrative about both strategic happenings and the extent of human suffering in this tragical battle... every history buff interested in the Eastern front that speaks just a bit of Russian (as well as every Russian schoolchild, I guess) knows well the monumental and yet tragically beautiful poem "Ya ubit podo Rzhevom (I was killed before Rzhev)"... The poem's lyrics were going through my head while watching this episode, and tears started to well in my eyes... Thank you Timegohost for this emotional experience. Cheers from Slovenia!
I want to thank you and all the Time Ghost crew for creating these specials. It is great to see episodes covering campaigns like the Kokoda Track and Rzhev in detail like this. They really help. I hope you will be able to do more of these when time permits to cover some of the less well-known battles of World War 2. Keep up the fantastic work, but please don't suffer a nervous breakdown doing it!
The animations and explanations are simply superb! When viewing many different battlefields every week, it is easy to become ignorant of the sheer scale of individual engagements.
Thanks :)
Thank you for covering Rzhev battles ! A clearly forgotten battle of the Eatern Front
Belov was quite a man! It took no less than seven German divisions to fail to capture him. Halder writes: "The episode cause many humorous remarks at the time and the motorized troops which had taken part in the operations became the butt of those jokes. I admire General Belov as a soldier and I was secretly glad he escaped. It was said he was received with all honors in Moscow and rightly so."
As stupid as it might sound, I developed a respect for the horrific experience of the Rzhev Meatgrinder from the Men at War video game series. It's an RTS where you (usually) play as the Red Army fighting off Barbarossa, and they had several missions based on Rzhev as well as the entire eastern front in general. I remember that they were extremely bloody, chaotic, destructive missions, and I feel like in that sense they represented Rzhev very well.
Такой классный канал. Русскоязычные ребята, кто смотрит этот канал, если кто хорошо владеет английским, сделайте русские субтитры. Такой контент нужно распространять максимально широко.
I love that you are doing recaps! Those of us who are watching you week by week can sometimes lose the bigger picture of what's happening on particular fronts
Love day-by-day recap. A very welcoming addition to the series.
Thank you so much for these recaps indie, I’m still playing catch up while you are trudging through the last couple months of the war and the beginnings of Korea, this makes it so much easier to catch up on missed content since it’s all in one spot!
My grandfather's older brother fell sometime in the late summer of 1942 at Rzhev. Thus my father never got to know this uncle. Neither did he know another one who survived the war, but was killed in a senseless fight after it...
Thanks!
Another good episode Indy. You nail these battles and speak wonderfully, always keeping us engaged. I’d recommend, eventually, having a special episode on the partisans and their operations between ‘41 and ‘42. The movie Defiance brought a lot of western attention to this somewhat forgotten front but it was critical in the war.
This is the best content on RUclips. Ever. Like it's not even close.
so good
Thank you for this. I specifically requested this content a few weeks ago. Thanks to Ian as well.
Glad you enjoyed!
Thank you for this brilliantly done summary covering something you couldn't do in the main weekly episodes and that while people mentioned it in the comments was really unknown to me. Thank you again. Keep up the good work crew.
Thankyou for this. If nothing else it is a memorial to all those soldiers who died in these horrendous battles.
Now I did realize, how long and big was this battle from Rzhev. So many deads, so litle gains, R.I.P
I do understand the policy of not covering individual battles, especially when it comes to getting bogged down in some of the more "famous" ones. However I do like these specials that help contextualize important historical battles as part of a broader topic. Thanks for making the exceptions when they're needed, I think it's a positive step even when it gets messy.
This isnt a battle, its an entire campaign made up of several operations with dozens of battles. Calling this a battle is like saying the WW1 western front was just the Battle of Verdun or Operation Blue just the "Battle of Stalingrad".
Remember this is 1/3 of the entire eastern front with thousands of km of front line. Its just called Rzevh meat grinder because that city was a key asset (and because the soviets tried to cover this slaughter up post war)
@@noobster4779 The soviets did not cover this battle. There are many small memorials built by the soviets after the war, search teams have always worked there, at school we studied a lot of literary works about this battle. Rzhev was unlucky that the Battle for Stalingrad took place at the same time with him, which was more successful, so all attention went to Stalingrad.
just discovered this channel. super cool!!! I really appreciate your work!
Hi Indy, I had not seen any of your videos for about 2 years
Great content and presentation as usual
As always, thank you so very much for your video.
In addition, in talking with FB friends and family yesterday (December 7th, a day...) a friend shared your Pearl Harbor "Minute by Minute" video (ty), which I'll soon be watching (I want to wait till I can binge it), and we talked about how excited we are about the "minute by minute" you'll be doing for D-Day.
it's interesting that the northern front in the summer of 1942 was just a stalemate until November
It's less of a plain stalemate and more of an intense game of salient chess, with attacks and counterattacks and attacks repurposed into counterattacks... that ultimately ends in a stalemate.
@@gargravarr2 Calling it chess is perhaps too kind. I have always pictured it more like a comedy sketch of both sides trying to plug all holes in their sinking boat while they try to poke holes in the others boat.
Hi Indy
Another awesome recap..
Its nice to have these kind of videos.
Awaitng more like this..
1942 is decisive year..
Thanks..
I love how it's the third 'we do not do specials about individual battles' in a week. Keep them coming though jm not complaining.
Well I have to start by saying that I love your show and every week you do an awesome and humongous job to bring us some of the best historical content here on youtube but I have to ask (SPOILER ALERT) are you going to cover the retreat of the 8th Italian army, along with german, romanian and hurgarian forces, and their hellish march back to friendly lines? I know that it might seems an underrated topic and for sure the literature on it is largely in Italian but my great grandfather was there in the Alpini armycorps and was captured during this episode and unfortunately perished during captivity. Here in Italy it is an event that is well known and truly changed the perspective that Italians had in the war with consequences even after the war but I would like to that this event to be better known also by a bigger audience. Thank you again in any case and keep up the awesome work.
Ps: sorry for any mistakes
I LOVE IT. Positive, good format and informative.
(No sad miserable music, awesome.)
So interesting, very good maps... and nice vest :)
Thank you Indy and crew!
I was killed near Rzhev
In a nameless bog,
In fifth company,
On the Left flank,
In a cruel air raid
I didn’t hear explosions
And did not see the flash
Down to an abyss from a cliff
No start, no end
And in this whole world
To the end of its days -
Neither patches, nor badges
From my tunic you’ll find
the poem of our great war poet Tvardovskiy. thank you!
These extra detail videos are good.
That is one of the most frightening descriptions of modern warfare I've ever heard. Just horrific. advancing into that ! Pretty glad I wasn't there . 💛👊
I would love to hear about the action in and around the Volkhov swamps. That seemed like one of the worst places to have to fight a battle in. In fact I would love to see a special on all the different brutal places/ weather to fight a battle.
I love these specials, but I do understand you have got a life outside of this. Great work as usual.
The question of the price is a tricky one, because we must not only consider the direct price of the offensive, but also the alternatives. Going full defensive might've saved a huge amount of lives, or it might've led to Derfflinger or Whirlwind actually happening, in which case instead of 5-to-1 casualties and a deadlocked frontline we could be looking at 10-to-1 casualties and huge exploitable holes in the Soviet defences. Giving away strategic initiative can be incredibly disastrous.
extremely well done! the personal soldier commentary is heartbreaking....
Thank you for producing a special episode about this particular battle.
Not a battle, a frontline.
This includes dozens of battles and is only called a "battle" do to the lack of better terms. Calling it a battle is the same a reducing the entire southern front of Fall Blau to only Stalingrad or saying the north africa campaign was just the Battle of El Alamein.
You guys are killin it every video
I really like these new videos. Please keep them coming.
These are quite nice overviews, even as I do follow the posts on the Instagram. Maybe it's the animations, but it puts these battles more into perspective
Their Instagram information is not to be missed! I recommended as it has some solid level of detail, and it is truly updated daily.
i love this indy´s popular opening phrase: "as you know, we don´t do special episodes about individual battles, however..."
...and i love these episodes about individual battles even more.
Мой дед убит в бою под Ржевом
В году тяжёлом, сорок первом.
Он за Отчизну воевал,
Он ей и кровь, и жизнь отдал.
My Dad waded in on June 6, 1944 in Normandy. Indirectly, your grandfather helped my father.
Great stuff - I don't use Instagram, so I'm happy to see this content here.
This recaps are great
Nearly pooped my pants when you said the Kalinin front was to cross the volga at 6:55. I was like, that's a hell of a redeployment to the south!
Never realised the volga was so long
longest river in europe
Great video Indy!
I read about a battle of Yelnia that was a similar meat grinder that occured in the summer of 1941. A future episode perhaps?
I think Yelnya was covered week by week episodes last year. Though contrary to Rzhev Soviets met their objectives by capturing Yelnya.
@@auguststorm2037 I'll have to look back. Thanks for the suggestion.
The little texture on this tie gives it a nice added touch. Colours work nicely, too. 3/5
Enjoyed your video so I gave it a Thumbs Up
Excellent always you make the hard to describe a Vocal discord thats enlightening and factual thankyou
I appreciate this, Indy.
It's insane to me to think that something as brutal and vital to the war as the Rzhev Salient battles largely faded into semi-obscurity before being covered in a lot greater detail following the opening of the Soviet archives in 2015. I'm glad to see that Rzhev is getting coverage here (especially as I deleted all my social media when it was contributing towards a worsened mental state of mine), even if Stalingrad still takes up the majority of the focus at this point in the war (as has been the case in the pop history depiction of WWII for decades).
Keep up the good work. I hope that you'll do something similar on the military situation in the CBI theatre, as it has been far too long since any coverage of that area (and how Joseph Stilwell keeps laying the groundwork for sabotaged US relations with the Chinese Nationalists and communists) since it seems to have been largely overshadowed by the US efforts in the South Pacific. Perhaps you have a Vera Lynn up your sleeves for the future to show that the men of the CBI theatre aren't the forgotten front? c:
Once again, keep up the great work and thanks for doing these extra recap episodes!
Sounds like The Great War all over again. Thank you for the recap!!
Glad you liked it
Rzev at last! I was confused why is not mentioned. Also why there is no coverage of Leningrad front?
This is a great channel!
Love your content and learning about history, but not interested in signing up for multiple new social media platforms. I appreciate these recap videos even if they're after the fact
an excellent presentation as usual your cover sketch for this episode was most enlightening
I didn't know that Tom Selleck was in the Soviet army
fantastic work !!!!!!
I'm glad Rhzev is getting a close look. I believe army group center gets overlooked a lot in 1942 in history because of Stalingrad.
Anyone else notice that guy at 2:13 just drop like a rock out of the sky? That looks like it hurt lol
and then get draged across the snow by his own chutte
i was always wondering what was goin on outside the stalingrad front.. wow
Gorbachevsy's description of the battle is a truely stunning narrative of war. I think I would have been one of those vomiting.
I thought I was a WWII buff until I started watching this series. I'm learning so much!
Going down the humble valley of a Dunning-Kruger diagram. Good for you.
Enjoying every minute of it.
I am learning what my grandparent's generation did.
It is incredible.
I wonder if the rzhev situation resembled great war style trench warfare. the ratio of casualties per ground covered certainly resembles the ones in the western front
It somewhat did, but in general, the distances to cover were longer, and cover was far more scarce. The Soviets often had to attack over entire kilometres of open ground, with the Germans being able to see them (and hit them) from hundreds of metres away. For them, it was basically a turkey shoot.
To make the situation even worse, the Red Army in this period attacked in echelons. This meant that while the front echelon was attacking, the other echelons were some distance behind the front, assembling for the attack. The Germans often abused this fact by shelling the second or third echelon, so many Soviet soldiers died long before they even made it to combat.
The Germans suffered in their own ways however. The Soviets assembled an impressive arsenal of artillery in the area, including Katyushas, as well as the dreaded B-4 203 mm super-heavy artillery guns. So while German losses were lower, the numbers of shell-shocked soldiers were staggering.
@@jirkazalabak1514 I think echelons tactics were ok. If you look at how breakthrough tactics evolved during the war they were shifting from "line" tactics where the majority of battalions were put in a single line to more echeloned tactics ere first line of assault could consist of less than a half battalions. The problem was that infantry lacked assault group tactics, and german artillery was not suppressed. Later in the war when the soviets properly employed assault groups tactics and their artillery was strong enough to suppress german artillery, they achieved many decisive victories using the same echelon tactic.
@@glebovskimalcovich207 From what I understand, the problem was that the echelons were not spaced out enough. Therefore, when the Germans opened fire on the first echelon, the far end of the target zone was already hitting the next one. Also, the attacks were often ordered without any major recoinassance, and the coordination between the different formations was rather poor, mostly due to inexperienced officers. This lead to units often attacking without support, or attacking over open ground even when it wasn´t necessary.
Later in the war, the Germans were firmly on the defensive, with most of their divisions being outright unable to conduct any operations besides static defense. In the battles around Rzhev, the Germans were saved several times only by the timely deployment of reserves by Walter Model, who was considered a genius of defensive warfare. Later on, this wasn´t possible anymore, as there simply weren´t enough reserves available to intercept every Soviet breakthrough. The better training and more experience did play a role, but even then, the losses were still pretty bad compared to other armies.
I know why? you guys have had to step up your game! It's getting to complicated and too long so you need to do updates and to individual battles! I applaud you for your interest to show these because you leave unanswered questions!
I'm going to love 43 and 44 and the finally is going to be at least 45 minutes to an hour! Good luck with the new studio!
I thank you should release all that here, too. you can do a live news narrative voice and make the slideshows and clips look like live tv broadcast back then
It’s a shame we have never had a series or move production that details these insanely massive battles in the eastern front, like a saving private Ryan for Stalingrad or Rzhev.
I wonder what other special episodes this channel will make.
Loved this one! I think the biggest impact of the summer Rhez battles was the decision to send most reinforcements to Army group center instead of south (specially army group B) during the critical months of August and September. This may have prevented Paulus to conque Stalingrad at a time Stavka was not 100% positive Fall Blau was the only German offensive.
Is thos filmed on a greenscreen or just different lighting? Indy looks a bit unconncected to the background..
I love these videos where you don't cover a specific battle. I would love to err see a lot less of these excellent battle videos.
2:13 This guy f**cked his Knees bad. There is a reason he didn't hop up and pull down his chute
I, for one, have no problem with slight side-tracks to specific battles. With a war this huge and dispersed around the globe, especially at this time frame, special episodes about battles are a necessity.
05:59 I'm terribly sorry, but that town called "Ostashkov" :)
So good
Thoughts listening to this episode, "Well thank God that's over"
Thoughts hearing there is another episode, "Mother of God"
I feel like, "Meatgrinder," could be another WWII sub-series.
Day by day videos 👍
Well done!
Great vids
Wait did this all happen in the summer? And that is some hell of a qoute by Boris Gorbachevsky.