1 00:00:36,336 --> 00:00:41,171 The Soviet Union fought and won the biggest war of the 20th century 2 00:00:42,208 --> 00:00:45,234 - a war in which more than 30 million people died. 3 00:00:48,314 --> 00:00:51,215 Close to Red Square, in a private museum 4 00:00:51,418 --> 00:00:55,149 in the General Staff headquarters, lie trophies of that war, 5 00:00:55,989 --> 00:00:58,719 snatched from an enemy which had been crushed. 6 00:01:28,488 --> 00:01:32,549 Ten million German soldiers were captured, wounded or killed. 7 00:01:33,660 --> 00:01:37,118 The scale of Germany's defeat was unprecedented in her history. 8 00:01:40,667 --> 00:01:44,728 So it's hardly surprising that Hitler's decision to invade the Soviet Union 9 00:01:44,938 --> 00:01:47,532 has come to be seen as a catastrophic mistake - 10 00:01:48,575 --> 00:01:50,270 almost the action of a madman. 11 00:01:51,344 --> 00:01:53,904 But that's not what many people thought at the time. 12 00:03:06,152 --> 00:03:10,555 Communism had always been a repugnant and dangerous ideology to the Nazis. 13 00:03:13,593 --> 00:03:15,060 And when, in the 1930s, 14 00:03:15,261 --> 00:03:18,253 the Nazis looked at the Communist regime in the Soviet Union, 15 00:03:18,998 --> 00:03:21,466 they hated and they feared what they saw. 16 00:03:44,824 --> 00:03:49,124 At the heart of this world conspiracy, as the Nazis saw it, was one man. 17 00:03:50,096 --> 00:03:51,586 Someone whose character would help shape 18 00:03:51,798 --> 00:03:53,993 and determine the course of the forthcoming war 19 00:03:55,068 --> 00:03:56,035 Joseph Stalin. 20 00:04:49,822 --> 00:04:53,087 Boris Godunov, Stalin's favourite opera. 21 00:04:53,793 --> 00:04:58,492 A story of suspicious death, intrigue and a Tzar's double-dealing. 22 00:05:45,278 --> 00:05:48,406 The Nazis watched as, beginning in 1937, 23 00:05:48,614 --> 00:05:53,677 Stalin purged the Red Army of anyone suspected of the merest hint of disloyalty. 24 00:05:54,387 --> 00:05:57,254 Seven thousand army officers were sent to the Gulag. 25 00:05:58,024 --> 00:06:01,551 Another 35,000 were expelled from the armed forces. 26 00:06:11,704 --> 00:06:15,697 ln 1939 the newly purged Red Army invaded Finland. 27 00:06:16,976 --> 00:06:19,968 The Soviets had a more than two to one advantage over the Finns, 28 00:06:20,780 --> 00:06:23,806 and the Germans took careful notice of what happened next. 29 00:07:38,458 --> 00:07:43,259 ln the summer of 1940, only months after the Soviet army had failed in Finland, 30 00:07:44,063 --> 00:07:47,123 Adolf Hitler celebrated the Nazis' conquest of France. 31 00:07:48,901 --> 00:07:52,837 But despite these ecstatic scenes, Hitler knew he still had a problem. 32 00:07:53,739 --> 00:07:55,229 Great Britain wouldn't make peace, 33 00:07:55,842 --> 00:07:59,175 and a German invasion across the English Channel remained a risky option. 34 00:08:00,546 --> 00:08:02,741 So Hitler's eyes turned to the Soviet Union. 35 00:08:03,916 --> 00:08:07,283 ln spite of signing a non-aggression pact with Stalin in 1939, 36 00:08:07,954 --> 00:08:10,946 Hitler still considered the Soviets his ideological enemy. 37 00:08:12,758 --> 00:08:15,727 By invading the Soviet Union, Hitler believed he would eliminate 38 00:08:15,928 --> 00:08:19,329 the greatest potential threat the Nazis faced on mainland Europe 39 00:08:19,932 --> 00:08:22,924 and gain living space and raw materials for the Germans. 40 00:08:24,270 --> 00:08:25,760 He thought his three-pronged attack 41 00:08:25,972 --> 00:08:28,941 would also destroy any hopes the British had that the Soviet Union 42 00:08:29,141 --> 00:08:31,109 might one day come to their aid. 43 00:08:31,978 --> 00:08:36,415 At the time, to his military planners, all this seemed perfectly logical. 44 00:09:13,753 --> 00:09:15,414 At the time this film was taken, 45 00:09:15,621 --> 00:09:19,113 during Red Army military exercises in the autumn of 1940, 46 00:09:19,492 --> 00:09:22,757 the Soviet High Command knew of German troop movements East. 47 00:09:23,863 --> 00:09:24,989 But what did it mean? 48 00:09:25,898 --> 00:09:28,560 Was the Soviet Union about to be invaded? 49 00:09:29,435 --> 00:09:30,868 Surely, Stalin felt, 50 00:09:31,237 --> 00:09:32,898 Hitler would not embark on a war against 51 00:09:33,105 --> 00:09:36,370 the Soviet Union while still fighting the British. 52 00:09:43,549 --> 00:09:45,016 ln Spring 1941 , 53 00:09:45,217 --> 00:09:48,744 some senior officers in the Red Army, including Georgy Zhukov, 54 00:09:49,021 --> 00:09:52,855 suggested one option was to mount a pre-emptive strike against the Germans. 55 00:09:53,926 --> 00:09:55,894 Stalin never approved the plan. 56 00:09:56,596 --> 00:09:58,564 He wanted to do nothing to provoke Hitler, 57 00:09:58,831 --> 00:10:01,299 and still didn't believe the Germans would risk an invasion. 58 00:10:04,270 --> 00:10:09,173 This recently declassified Soviet lntelligence report, dated June 1941 , 59 00:10:09,709 --> 00:10:12,269 predicts that the German army will attackat any moment. 60 00:10:13,245 --> 00:10:14,837 Stalin has scrawled over it: 61 00:10:15,414 --> 00:10:19,043 'Comrade Merkulov, you can send your source from the headquarters 62 00:10:19,251 --> 00:10:21,685 of the German Air Force to his fucking mother. 63 00:10:21,887 --> 00:10:24,754 He is not a source, but a dis-informant.' 64 00:10:26,292 --> 00:10:31,161 But Stalin's spies were right. The Germans were about to invade. 65 00:10:35,801 --> 00:10:38,292 An armed force of more than three million Germans 66 00:10:38,504 --> 00:10:42,634 and their allies massed along an invasion front of 1 ,800 miles. 67 00:10:46,979 --> 00:10:51,006 This bridge over the river Bug was just one of hundreds of crossing points. 68 00:10:56,088 --> 00:11:03,119 At 3.15 on the morning of June 22nd 1941 , the German invasion began. 69 00:11:30,523 --> 00:11:35,927 l enjoyed the strength of our army sending thousands of shells into the 70 00:11:36,128 --> 00:11:40,224 Russian border line defences and so on, so it was - 71 00:11:42,034 --> 00:11:46,027 - partly a great feeling also about the power being unleashed against 72 00:11:46,238 --> 00:11:48,968 the dubious and despisable enemy. 73 00:11:56,015 --> 00:11:58,643 We had been victorious in - in Yugoslavia in er, 74 00:11:58,851 --> 00:12:02,719 Norway and in France and so and so on. 75 00:12:02,922 --> 00:12:04,685 So we felt we might make it - 76 00:12:04,890 --> 00:12:06,517 - because we are experienced troops. 77 00:12:06,792 --> 00:12:09,283 We were well trained, well equipped. 78 00:12:10,496 --> 00:12:12,589 So we might make it, maybe. 79 00:13:24,270 --> 00:13:25,498 By the end of the first week 80 00:13:25,704 --> 00:13:30,801 of the invasion 150,000 Soviet soldiers were dead or severely wounded, 81 00:13:31,143 --> 00:13:34,670 and the Germans were more than 200 miles inside Soviet territory. 82 00:13:59,505 --> 00:14:02,338 The tactic of Blitzkrieg, the lightning attack, 83 00:14:02,608 --> 00:14:04,974 was the chief reason for the Germans' success. 84 00:14:05,878 --> 00:14:09,211 Conventional military theory had said that armoured attack should be in waves, 85 00:14:09,582 --> 00:14:12,574 but the Germans' tanks, artillery and Stuka dive bombers 86 00:14:12,785 --> 00:14:17,688 all focused their attacks simultaneously on one narrow point of the enemy line. 87 00:14:18,924 --> 00:14:21,358 The whole Panzer spearhead advanced swiftly 88 00:14:21,560 --> 00:14:24,393 on a front sometimes no wider than one road. 89 00:14:25,965 --> 00:14:28,525 Then the German infantry forced on through the gap 90 00:14:28,968 --> 00:14:31,732 and encircled the confused Soviet troops. 91 00:15:00,566 --> 00:15:02,431 Some Soviet troops surrendered. 92 00:15:02,835 --> 00:15:06,999 Others retreated and watched as their officers deserted them. 93 00:15:40,005 --> 00:15:44,874 ln Moscow, Stalin was at first unaware of the extent of the military disaster. 94 00:15:45,945 --> 00:15:47,674 Until he attended a meeting here, 95 00:15:47,880 --> 00:15:50,644 at the Commissariat of Defence on June 29th. 96 00:15:55,554 --> 00:15:58,318 Stalin studied the maps, heard the briefing, 97 00:15:58,757 --> 00:16:01,590 and learnt that Germans were advancing on all fronts. 98 00:16:02,494 --> 00:16:05,520 Whole Soviet armies had been encircled and destroyed. 99 00:16:06,332 --> 00:16:07,856 lt looked inevitable that Minsk, 100 00:16:08,067 --> 00:16:11,059 the capital of Belorussia, would shortly be captured. 101 00:16:11,904 --> 00:16:14,270 lt was much worse than Stalin had feared. 102 00:16:16,709 --> 00:16:19,507 Stalin stormed out of the meeting, saying: 103 00:16:19,712 --> 00:16:21,942 Lenin left us with a great legacy. 104 00:16:22,414 --> 00:16:25,349 We, his heirs, we fucked it up. 105 00:16:32,558 --> 00:16:35,322 As the rest of the world learned of the Germans' advance, 106 00:16:35,594 --> 00:16:38,324 many were pessimistic about the Soviets' chances. 107 00:16:39,331 --> 00:16:42,164 The US Secretary of the Navy wrote to President Roosevelt 108 00:16:42,368 --> 00:16:43,995 that it would take between six weeks and 109 00:16:44,203 --> 00:16:46,967 two months for Hitler to 'clean up' in Russia. 110 00:16:48,674 --> 00:16:51,700 The British War Office told the BBC not to give out the impression 111 00:16:51,910 --> 00:16:55,141 that Soviet armed resistance would last more than six weeks. 112 00:16:57,950 --> 00:17:02,546 The Soviet Union - and Stalin - seemed to be facing catastrophe. 113 00:17:13,032 --> 00:17:16,195 One of the greatest secrets concealed in Russian archives is 114 00:17:16,402 --> 00:17:18,870 whether or not at this desperate moment the Soviets 115 00:17:19,071 --> 00:17:22,199 tried to contact the Germans to negotiate peace. 116 00:17:23,776 --> 00:17:26,142 lt has long been rumoured that an approach was made, 117 00:17:26,612 --> 00:17:28,671 but no document from the Communist period 118 00:17:28,881 --> 00:17:31,076 has ever been found to confirm what happened 119 00:17:31,784 --> 00:17:32,944 - until now. 120 00:17:33,986 --> 00:17:36,011 One of the consultants for this programme recently uncovered 121 00:17:36,221 --> 00:17:38,883 a top secret report from a Soviet 122 00:17:39,091 --> 00:17:42,117 intelligence office called Pavel Sudoplatov. 123 00:17:44,196 --> 00:17:45,026 The report tells how, 124 00:17:45,230 --> 00:17:47,027 on the orders of the head of the secret police, 125 00:17:47,232 --> 00:17:51,168 Lavrenty Beria, there was a meeting held at the Aragvi, 126 00:17:51,403 --> 00:17:53,735 a Georgian restaurant in the centre of Moscow. 127 00:18:05,851 --> 00:18:08,684 Sudoplatov met the ambassador of Bulgaria, 128 00:18:09,021 --> 00:18:12,184 the country which now represented Germany in the Soviet Union. 129 00:18:16,361 --> 00:18:18,693 They met at the end of July 1941 , 130 00:18:18,964 --> 00:18:22,491 in Beria's private room, high above the main dining room. 131 00:18:23,569 --> 00:18:25,969 Sudoplatov asked the Bulgarian ambassador 132 00:18:26,171 --> 00:18:28,503 if he could find out whether Germany would make peace 133 00:18:28,807 --> 00:18:32,140 in exchange for large portions of Soviet territory. 134 00:18:33,178 --> 00:18:34,805 No one can be sure if this was a genuine attempt 135 00:18:35,013 --> 00:18:38,380 to buy the Germans off or a way of stalling for time. 136 00:18:39,852 --> 00:18:42,013 After the war, victory won, 137 00:18:42,421 --> 00:18:44,946 the very fact of the meeting was cause for shame. 138 00:18:45,991 --> 00:18:48,824 Pavel Sudoplatov, the man who ate the meal, 139 00:18:49,128 --> 00:18:50,652 was charged with treason. 140 00:18:51,497 --> 00:18:53,988 For this and other alleged crimes, 141 00:18:54,266 --> 00:18:56,894 he was sentenced to 15 years in the gulag. 142 00:19:14,753 --> 00:19:18,450 But the Germans were not about to let the Soviet Union make peace 143 00:19:19,324 --> 00:19:21,189 - even a humiliating one. 144 00:19:21,827 --> 00:19:25,456 When we made 30-40 kilometres a day we said, 145 00:19:25,664 --> 00:19:31,102 'well, we can see that our Blitzkrieg tactics still also works in Russia.' 146 00:19:31,336 --> 00:19:33,065 lt was professionalism, you see. 147 00:19:34,373 --> 00:19:35,670 We are better, you see, 148 00:19:35,874 --> 00:19:39,435 where we come we will clean that up, that was absolutely sure. 149 00:19:44,850 --> 00:19:47,444 As the avalanche of Soviet prisoners continued, 150 00:19:47,886 --> 00:19:52,755 the very sight of them confirmed in many German soldiers their own racist beliefs. 151 00:20:29,628 --> 00:20:33,655 Hitler despised the entire Slavic population of the Soviet Union 152 00:20:34,099 --> 00:20:37,227 and declared this conflict to be a 'war of annihilation'. 153 00:20:42,641 --> 00:20:45,007 But he felt a special hatred for the Jews, 154 00:20:45,510 --> 00:20:49,810 believing that Moscow was the home of a Judaeo-Bolshevist world conspiracy. 155 00:21:24,216 --> 00:21:27,117 Having joined the Hitler Youth when he was ten years old, 156 00:21:27,552 --> 00:21:31,386 Carlheinz Behnke volunteered for the Waffen SS in 1940. 157 00:23:09,688 --> 00:23:12,555 While special killing squads in the occupied territories 158 00:23:12,758 --> 00:23:15,693 were hunting down one hated enemy, the Jews, 159 00:23:16,328 --> 00:23:19,422 ordinary Germans soldiers like these were expected to cooperate 160 00:23:19,631 --> 00:23:22,099 in the elimination of the Soviet commissars, 161 00:23:22,401 --> 00:23:24,767 the political officers within each army unit. 162 00:23:28,673 --> 00:23:31,540 This infamous order calling for German soldiers 163 00:23:31,743 --> 00:23:34,234 to select and hand over Soviet commissars 164 00:23:34,446 --> 00:23:37,813 to be shot was issued before the war began. 165 00:23:40,018 --> 00:23:43,579 One of the witness signatures on the order is that of Bernhard Bechler, 166 00:23:44,122 --> 00:23:46,488 an officer in the German Army's high command. 167 00:24:20,859 --> 00:24:24,556 There were German divisions who didn't carry out the commissar order, 168 00:24:25,163 --> 00:24:26,528 but most did. 169 00:24:30,569 --> 00:24:32,230 From the beginning of the war in the East, 170 00:24:32,637 --> 00:24:33,797 the leadership of the Germany army 171 00:24:34,005 --> 00:24:36,872 was complicit in the criminal policies of the Nazis. 172 00:26:13,772 --> 00:26:15,399 Another consequence of the war 173 00:26:15,607 --> 00:26:19,099 the war was conceived was the mistreatment of the Soviet prisoners of war. 174 00:26:19,945 --> 00:26:23,346 Here being fed scraps of food by their German guards. 175 00:27:54,939 --> 00:27:58,340 This document from the Wehrmacht's economic agency for the East, 176 00:27:58,543 --> 00:28:02,138 dated May 1941 , casts light on why the German army 177 00:28:02,347 --> 00:28:04,440 didn't care about their prisoners of war. 178 00:28:05,417 --> 00:28:07,510 lt predicts that in the forthcoming war: 179 00:28:07,786 --> 00:28:10,721 Tens of millions of men will undoubtedly starve to death 180 00:28:10,989 --> 00:28:13,253 if we take away all we need from the country. 181 00:28:15,894 --> 00:28:19,557 Once the war had begun, Gring even joked: 182 00:28:20,065 --> 00:28:21,259 Things have got out of hand. 183 00:28:21,466 --> 00:28:24,435 Soviet prisoners have just eaten one of our German guards. 184 00:28:48,059 --> 00:28:51,893 But it wasn't only the Germans who were fighting a cruel and brutal war. 185 00:28:53,264 --> 00:28:54,925 Just before the Red Army retreated, 186 00:28:55,400 --> 00:28:59,302 Stalin's secret police killed many of their political prisoners. 187 00:29:04,709 --> 00:29:05,903 And on the battlefield, 188 00:29:06,177 --> 00:29:08,941 as these photographs of mutilated bodies show, 189 00:29:09,447 --> 00:29:14,043 Soviet forces were capable of venting their fury on captured German prisoners. 190 00:29:14,986 --> 00:29:17,181 lt was completely different type of war. 191 00:29:17,388 --> 00:29:19,015 This was the kind of brutality, 192 00:29:19,224 --> 00:29:20,816 doing it that way, you see, and that made - 193 00:29:21,025 --> 00:29:22,959 also that made us furious when you see your 194 00:29:23,161 --> 00:29:26,961 - your - your friend there brutally killed, and er - 195 00:29:28,967 --> 00:29:30,696 - the - the reaction was from our side that erm, 196 00:29:30,902 --> 00:29:35,635 people didn't erm, want to fall wounded into their hands and they shot themselves. 197 00:29:35,840 --> 00:29:38,866 l still remember a young officer from the - 198 00:29:39,077 --> 00:29:41,841 our infantry regiment l knew very well, 199 00:29:42,480 --> 00:29:47,816 who was left behind wounded and when we got back in our counter attack, 200 00:29:48,019 --> 00:29:50,283 he had shot himself in the meantime. 201 00:29:50,488 --> 00:29:52,979 We could have rescued him otherwise as a wounded one. 202 00:29:53,358 --> 00:29:57,556 And thereafter we decided er, that will never happen to me myself. 203 00:29:57,762 --> 00:29:59,889 We kept always the last bullet for ourselves. 204 00:30:05,203 --> 00:30:10,300 ln August 1941 ,Adolf Hitler visited the captured city of Minsk. 205 00:30:11,342 --> 00:30:13,367 ln less than two months his Nazi empire 206 00:30:13,578 --> 00:30:16,513 had expanded 400 miles into the Soviet Union. 207 00:30:17,382 --> 00:30:18,815 But problems still existed. 208 00:30:20,118 --> 00:30:22,177 German forces had advanced so far 209 00:30:22,387 --> 00:30:26,983 and so fast that there were difficulties supplying them on the bad Soviet roads. 210 00:30:27,625 --> 00:30:29,490 And Blitzkrieg as a tactic had been designed 211 00:30:29,694 --> 00:30:31,787 to conquer countries the size of France. 212 00:30:32,330 --> 00:30:34,230 Whether the same strategy would work in a country 213 00:30:34,432 --> 00:30:37,333 forty times bigger had always been a gamble. 214 00:30:39,070 --> 00:30:41,561 As Hitler studied the situation map that August, 215 00:30:42,006 --> 00:30:46,102 he saw that in places the Red Army was putting up more resistance than expected. 216 00:30:48,313 --> 00:30:51,908 West of Kiev, the German army was finding it hard going. 217 00:30:53,251 --> 00:30:55,651 So Hitler ordered his army groups to capture the city 218 00:30:55,854 --> 00:30:59,915 in a pincer movement and delayed the advance on Moscow. 219 00:31:09,901 --> 00:31:12,995 Nearly a million Soviet troops were positioned to protect 220 00:31:13,204 --> 00:31:15,172 Kiev and the surrounding area. 221 00:31:26,985 --> 00:31:30,250 But Soviet defence tactics were still extremely primitive 222 00:31:30,622 --> 00:31:32,749 and no match for German Blitzkrieg. 223 00:31:33,758 --> 00:31:37,455 These forces were simply ordered to stand fast and wait for the Germans. 224 00:31:43,868 --> 00:31:46,029 ln the face of the oncoming Panzers, 225 00:31:46,237 --> 00:31:48,000 the Soviet commanders of Kiev believed 226 00:31:48,206 --> 00:31:50,367 that they were in danger of being encircled. 227 00:31:51,442 --> 00:31:53,501 They communicated their fears to Stalin, 228 00:31:54,145 --> 00:31:57,512 in messages received by Stalin's personal telegraphist. 229 00:32:41,559 --> 00:32:44,790 Stalin's stubbornness led to more than 40 Soviet divisions 230 00:32:44,996 --> 00:32:49,729 being trapped around Kiev, many cut off by the Dnieper River. 231 00:32:55,640 --> 00:32:56,868 Six hundred and fifty thousand 232 00:32:57,075 --> 00:32:59,976 Soviet soldiers were captured at the battle of Kiev. 233 00:33:01,045 --> 00:33:03,809 lt was the largest encirclement in military history. 234 00:33:04,682 --> 00:33:07,048 The situation was desperate for the Soviet Union. 235 00:33:07,752 --> 00:33:09,617 Leningrad was surrounded, and Kiev, 236 00:33:09,821 --> 00:33:12,847 Minsk and Smolensk were now all in German hands. 237 00:33:31,009 --> 00:33:32,670 The Red Army was floundering. 238 00:33:33,678 --> 00:33:37,079 Many of its recruits were poorly equipped and badly trained. 239 00:33:42,620 --> 00:33:47,023 This propaganda archive shows each new soldier at least receiving a rifle 240 00:33:47,759 --> 00:33:49,989 - but the reality could be very different 241 00:34:23,828 --> 00:34:28,026 The town of Vyazma, just 130 miles West of Moscow, 242 00:34:28,232 --> 00:34:31,633 now stood between the German army and the Soviet capital. 243 00:34:39,110 --> 00:34:42,773 ln October 1941 , this was the site of a battle in which, 244 00:34:42,980 --> 00:34:48,008 in 12 days, 150,000 Soviet soldiers were killed. 245 00:34:49,020 --> 00:34:52,353 More dead than the British lost in the five months of the Somme. 246 00:35:05,169 --> 00:35:09,503 Out on the great plains of Vyazma stood five Soviet armies. 247 00:35:21,886 --> 00:35:25,947 Just as at Kiev, the Soviet forces were swiftly encircled. 248 00:35:33,631 --> 00:35:34,825 Desperate to escape, 249 00:35:35,299 --> 00:35:39,201 Soviet soldiers even attacked the German line without weapons. 250 00:35:40,838 --> 00:35:43,534 You see, the first line had rifles, the second line had even no rifles, 251 00:35:43,741 --> 00:35:45,072 they took the rifles from the dead. 252 00:35:45,343 --> 00:35:48,176 No German soldier would have attacked without any weapon. 253 00:35:48,679 --> 00:35:49,907 lncredible for us. 254 00:35:52,083 --> 00:35:55,450 You are destined to attack even without weapons. 255 00:35:55,853 --> 00:35:58,583 lf you are - there will be weapons of the dead. 256 00:36:47,738 --> 00:36:50,229 The German Panzer units held the high ground 257 00:36:50,575 --> 00:36:53,408 and looked down on the Soviet forces trapped in the plain. 258 00:36:53,911 --> 00:36:55,811 l saw one of these attacks coming. 259 00:36:56,013 --> 00:37:00,143 We are sitting er, on top of the hills and then - 260 00:37:00,351 --> 00:37:05,084 - like a herd of vehicles and men coming up by the thousands. 261 00:37:05,323 --> 00:37:10,693 And what - what l always say, make your blood freezing, you see. 262 00:37:10,995 --> 00:37:15,955 And then the Russians came into the ground where the creek was there, 263 00:37:16,167 --> 00:37:19,102 it was a swampy area, and then all the vehicles 264 00:37:19,303 --> 00:37:23,637 at once sunk in -in the mud, then the, you know, 265 00:37:23,841 --> 00:37:28,778 the people coming out are now like a herd of sheep coming against us, you see. 266 00:37:28,980 --> 00:37:31,574 And then, also let them come, let them get near, 267 00:37:31,782 --> 00:37:35,479 let - let them come on, you see, and then at the same time our - 268 00:37:35,686 --> 00:37:38,849 - machine guns then mowed them down. 269 00:37:39,056 --> 00:37:40,887 - They were lying then by the thousands, 270 00:37:41,092 --> 00:37:44,084 like the battlefields of the old history there. 271 00:37:55,406 --> 00:37:57,306 ln another part of the encirclement, 272 00:37:57,508 --> 00:38:01,638 some of the Soviet soldiers ran into Wolfgang Horn and his men. 273 00:38:01,946 --> 00:38:04,813 The Russians came out of the forest and - 274 00:38:05,016 --> 00:38:06,745 - the Russians were so cowardly 275 00:38:06,984 --> 00:38:11,921 that some of the crew of these tracks hovered behind the vehicle, 276 00:38:12,123 --> 00:38:14,887 took cover, and bent down forward totally, 277 00:38:15,393 --> 00:38:19,159 crouching on the - on the - on the ground and not moving at all. 278 00:38:19,430 --> 00:38:21,955 Ruki verkh, l said, Ruki verkh, raise your hands. 279 00:38:22,166 --> 00:38:24,361 And he didn't, they - they pretended to be dead, 280 00:38:25,069 --> 00:38:27,697 and we started shooting them, naturally. 281 00:38:28,139 --> 00:38:32,303 Under the impact of the bullets, they - they wavered a bit - shook a bit. 282 00:38:37,415 --> 00:38:39,042 Wolfgang Horn is still convinced 283 00:38:39,250 --> 00:38:42,219 he was right to kill those crouching Soviet soldiers. 284 00:38:44,822 --> 00:38:46,653 When they don't raise their hands, what can we do? 285 00:38:46,857 --> 00:38:49,951 You see, what can they do? You see, they might throw hand grenades, 286 00:38:50,161 --> 00:38:52,755 they might er, what can they do? 287 00:38:52,963 --> 00:38:55,193 lf they don't surrender, we shoot them. 288 00:38:55,933 --> 00:38:57,924 lt was natural for us to do, 289 00:38:58,402 --> 00:39:01,701 and we joined - several ones joined me and we naturally shot them all. 290 00:39:02,673 --> 00:39:05,369 Crouching there, cowards, they didn't deserve any better anyhow. 291 00:39:06,744 --> 00:39:07,938 That was our feeling. 292 00:39:22,226 --> 00:39:23,215 That October, 293 00:39:23,461 --> 00:39:27,557 with German soldiers winning victories at Vyazma and the nearby battle of Vyansk, 294 00:39:28,032 --> 00:39:31,365 German newspapers announced that the war was as good as won. 295 00:39:54,658 --> 00:39:58,526 The Germans had now captured nearly three million Soviet soldiers. 296 00:40:27,525 --> 00:40:29,686 The Germans pressed on towards Moscow, 297 00:40:30,227 --> 00:40:34,220 where in mid-October only 90,000 men stood defending the capital. 298 00:40:38,436 --> 00:40:42,167 Stalin called on General Zhukov to prepare the defence of Moscow, 299 00:40:42,773 --> 00:40:45,298 and told Zhukov to meet him at his dacha. 300 00:40:47,244 --> 00:40:50,475 When Zhukov arrived, he heard Stalin talking to Beria. 301 00:40:51,215 --> 00:40:54,378 ln the 1960s Zhukov confided to a military historian 302 00:40:54,585 --> 00:40:56,610 just what he had overhead Stalin saying, 303 00:40:57,288 --> 00:41:01,725 but this was not a story the Soviet people could hear until after perestroika. 304 00:41:30,654 --> 00:41:34,090 Only now, because of the discovery of the secret document dating 305 00:41:34,291 --> 00:41:38,751 the first meeting to July, is there evidence of at least two separate 306 00:41:38,963 --> 00:41:43,263 discussions within the Soviet leadership about approaching the Germans. 307 00:41:47,505 --> 00:41:51,407 Panic was growing inside Moscow as the Germans neared the city. 308 00:42:22,907 --> 00:42:25,671 Maya Berzina rushed with her three year old son 309 00:42:25,876 --> 00:42:28,470 to the city's southern port on the river Moscow. 310 00:42:40,291 --> 00:42:44,591 Crammed on board one of the last ships to leave, they fled the capital. 311 00:43:05,316 --> 00:43:06,510 Now the question was, 312 00:43:06,717 --> 00:43:09,811 would Stalin and his entourage desert Moscow too? 313 00:43:11,722 --> 00:43:14,418 Evidence that they were about to leave is provided by this recently 314 00:43:14,625 --> 00:43:21,258 declassified document signed by Stalin and dated by him 15th October 1941 . 315 00:43:22,199 --> 00:43:24,827 The state defence committee has resolved to evacuate today 316 00:43:25,035 --> 00:43:28,232 the Praesidium of the Supreme Soviet and the top levels of government. 317 00:43:28,672 --> 00:43:32,438 Comrade Stalin will leave tomorrow or later, depending on the situation. 318 00:43:36,013 --> 00:43:38,641 At Moscow's Yaroslavski railway station, 319 00:43:38,849 --> 00:43:43,013 Stalin's armoured train waited to head East towards the Ural mountains. 320 00:43:44,521 --> 00:43:46,148 On the night of October 16th, 321 00:43:46,557 --> 00:43:49,082 having been ordered to clear his office in the Kremlin, 322 00:43:49,460 --> 00:43:53,726 Nikolay Ponomariov sat on the train and waited to leave Moscow. 323 00:44:35,039 --> 00:44:36,666 But the train didn't leave. 324 00:44:37,141 --> 00:44:39,803 Stalin decided to stay and defend the capital. 325 00:44:41,845 --> 00:44:44,006 On October 19th, he ordered his secret police 326 00:44:44,214 --> 00:44:48,617 to quash the panic in Moscow - by whatever means necessary. 327 00:45:08,639 --> 00:45:13,633 Vladimir Ogryzko and his unit of secret police prevented Muscovites from fleeing. 328 00:45:15,579 --> 00:45:17,604 They stopped cars and overturned them - 329 00:45:18,115 --> 00:45:20,583 sometimes with the drivers still inside. 330 00:46:22,980 --> 00:46:27,178 As winter came, German soldiers were at the gates of Moscow. 331 00:46:28,786 --> 00:46:31,277 They had covered more ground more quickly 332 00:46:31,488 --> 00:46:32,750 and captured more prisoners 333 00:46:32,956 --> 00:46:39,361 than any army ever had before. But according to their original plan, 334 00:46:40,130 --> 00:46:42,860 by now they should already have won the war.