Stalingrad: June 1942-February 1943
- Episode aired Jan 2, 1974
- 52m
IMDb RATING
9.0/10
488
YOUR RATING
The mid-war German situation in Southern Russia resulting in the German defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad.The mid-war German situation in Southern Russia resulting in the German defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad.The mid-war German situation in Southern Russia resulting in the German defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad.
Photos
Andrey Yeryomenko
- Self
- (archive footage)
Hermann Göring
- Self - C-in-C Luftwaffe
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
Franz Halder
- Self - Hitler's Chief of Staff
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
Adolf Hitler
- Self - Führer und Reichskanzler
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
Friedrich Paulus
- Self - Commander, 6th Army Group
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
Mikhail Shumilov
- Self - Commander, 7th Guards Army
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
Nikolay Voronov
- Self - Interrogated Paulus when Surrendering
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
Kurt Zeitzler
- Self - Hitler's Chief of Staff
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
- Director
- Writer
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThis is the only episode of the series that does not feature any interviews.
- Quotes
Laurence Olivier - Narrator: Hitler wasn't worried. He thought - and the high command's own intelligence confirmed this - that the Russians had no strategic reserves left.
Featured review
Mechanized Mass Slaughter That Changed History
Given the near-universal acknowledgement that the Battle of Stalingrad was the single most decisive event of World War Two, it is fitting that the nearly six-month campaign that resulted in a catastrophic defeat for Nazi Germany is accorded its own episode in the masterful 26-part British documentary series "The World at War."
This is doubly so considering that the Cold War, in which the Allies' erstwhile partner the Soviet Union quickly became the mortal enemy of the West, suppressed general awareness, let alone understanding, of its significance, particularly to Russians forced to repel invaders determined to subjugate them and loot their natural resources, including the oil fields in the Caucasus that were one of the central objectives of Hitler's attack on Stalingrad, along a battle front that ran from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea.
In addition, "Stalingrad: June 1942-February 1943" is the only "The World at War" installment with no interviewees (a point another user reviewer misstated). This leaves Laurence Oliver to narrate Jerome Kuehl's efficient if elliptical script, which provides the only verbal descriptions of the events while incorporating excerpts from the diary of German soldier Wilhelm Hoffmann and an uncredited, rather poetic, citation from the journal of a German Lieutenant Weiner.
Kuehl pens a solid, at times evocative, chronology although he doesn't fully explain Stalingrad's strategic significance as a vital industrial hub that commanded control of the Volga River. Furthermore, he supplies only a brief synopsis of the German advances toward Rostov, then southward to the Caucasian oil fields, necessary because Stalingrad (now Volgograd) lies northeast of both and was thus not directly in the path of the massive German forces. Finally, Kuehl's narrative favors subtleties that readers can detect but listeners often do not.
Compensating for these shortcomings is the cache of German and Russian archival footage, a fair deal of it in color and all of it artfully edited by Beryl Wilkins, that provides its own stark, powerful eloquence. Having lost a million men in the 1941 Soviet campaign, German dictator Adolf Hitler decided to split Russia in two with a southern offensive targeting Rostov and Stalingrad. Color footage opens "Stalingrad" and depicts German forces preparing for the offensive, then surging forth against seemingly little Russian opposition, pushing Soviet forces across the Don River, west of Stalingrad, by the end of July, although a Soviet stand at Kalach proved to be a portent.
With Hungarian, Italian, and Romanian forces shoring up the German flanks, the Sixth Army under the command of General Friedrich Paulus advanced on Stalingrad in August 1942. (Narrating Kuehl's script, Olivier repeatedly and incorrectly states Paulus's name as "von Paulus.") The Luftwaffe bombed Stalingrad nearly into rubble, but in those ruins Red Army troops lay in wait for the German invaders; as Hoffmann's diary recounts, a giant grain elevator defended by fifty Russian soldiers held out for days, emblematic of the devastating urban warfare that marked this epic battle with its horrendous loss of life.
Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin did not order the evacuation of Stalingrad; thus, rare Soviet footage shows civilians pitching in to shore up the city's defenses, overseen by Lieutenant General Vasily Chuikov, as Muscovites had done against the German advance the previous year (depicted in the fifth episode "Barbarossa"). By November, Nazi German forces controlled ninety percent of Stalingrad, by now an obsession with Hitler, who in September 1942 had dismissed General Franz Halder, chief of staff of the army high command, in favor of General Kurt Zeitzler as Halder had failed to supply "National Socialist ardor rather than professional ability." Then the Russian winter struck. And so did the massed Red Army forces that counterattacked under Operation Uranus.
This was the turning point within the turning point of the European theater. Crossing both the Don and Volga Rivers, Soviet armies executed a pincers operation that encircled a quarter of a million men of the German Sixth Army so quickly that Soviet camera crews were unable to capture it on film; a re-enactment was later staged for propaganda purposes (one that recalls battle scenes legendary Russian director Sergei Eisenstein had filmed for his 1938 movie "Alexander Nevsky"). Having wrested control of the skies from the Luftwaffe, the Soviet air force stymied German attempts to resupply the Sixth Army by air.
After a rescue mission mounted by General Erich von Manstein to establish an escape corridor for the Sixth Army failed, Paulus, whose forces were trapped in a hopeless situation, requested permission to surrender, per the terms offered by the Soviets, on January 22, 1943. Hitler refused the request, his "National Socialist ardor" manifesting into a psychosis that would persist until his death. Eight days later, Hitler displayed this delusional thinking by issuing a passel of promotions to the starving, desperate Sixth Army personnel, making Paulus a field marshal. No German field marshal had ever been captured, with the implication, which Kuehl's too-subtle script doesn't convey effectively, that Paulus should commit suicide rather than surrender.
Tasked with carrying the narrative weight of "Stalingrad," Olivier acquits himself respectably as Carl Davis emphasizes the emotion of the moment with incidental music that is tasteful and sympathetic without resorting to cliché or melodrama. But the real star of "Stalingrad" is the archival film footage that can be bracing, poignant, and at times revelatory, a sober reminder of mechanized mass slaughter that changed the course of history.
REVIEWER'S NOTE: What makes a review "helpful"? Every reader of course decides that for themselves. For me, a review is helpful if it explains why the reviewer liked or disliked the work or why they thought it was good or not good. Whether I agree with the reviewer's conclusion is irrelevant. "Helpful" reviews tell me how and why the reviewer came to their conclusion, not what that conclusion may be. Differences of opinion are inevitable. I don't need "confirmation bias" for my own conclusions. Do you?
This is doubly so considering that the Cold War, in which the Allies' erstwhile partner the Soviet Union quickly became the mortal enemy of the West, suppressed general awareness, let alone understanding, of its significance, particularly to Russians forced to repel invaders determined to subjugate them and loot their natural resources, including the oil fields in the Caucasus that were one of the central objectives of Hitler's attack on Stalingrad, along a battle front that ran from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea.
In addition, "Stalingrad: June 1942-February 1943" is the only "The World at War" installment with no interviewees (a point another user reviewer misstated). This leaves Laurence Oliver to narrate Jerome Kuehl's efficient if elliptical script, which provides the only verbal descriptions of the events while incorporating excerpts from the diary of German soldier Wilhelm Hoffmann and an uncredited, rather poetic, citation from the journal of a German Lieutenant Weiner.
Kuehl pens a solid, at times evocative, chronology although he doesn't fully explain Stalingrad's strategic significance as a vital industrial hub that commanded control of the Volga River. Furthermore, he supplies only a brief synopsis of the German advances toward Rostov, then southward to the Caucasian oil fields, necessary because Stalingrad (now Volgograd) lies northeast of both and was thus not directly in the path of the massive German forces. Finally, Kuehl's narrative favors subtleties that readers can detect but listeners often do not.
Compensating for these shortcomings is the cache of German and Russian archival footage, a fair deal of it in color and all of it artfully edited by Beryl Wilkins, that provides its own stark, powerful eloquence. Having lost a million men in the 1941 Soviet campaign, German dictator Adolf Hitler decided to split Russia in two with a southern offensive targeting Rostov and Stalingrad. Color footage opens "Stalingrad" and depicts German forces preparing for the offensive, then surging forth against seemingly little Russian opposition, pushing Soviet forces across the Don River, west of Stalingrad, by the end of July, although a Soviet stand at Kalach proved to be a portent.
With Hungarian, Italian, and Romanian forces shoring up the German flanks, the Sixth Army under the command of General Friedrich Paulus advanced on Stalingrad in August 1942. (Narrating Kuehl's script, Olivier repeatedly and incorrectly states Paulus's name as "von Paulus.") The Luftwaffe bombed Stalingrad nearly into rubble, but in those ruins Red Army troops lay in wait for the German invaders; as Hoffmann's diary recounts, a giant grain elevator defended by fifty Russian soldiers held out for days, emblematic of the devastating urban warfare that marked this epic battle with its horrendous loss of life.
Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin did not order the evacuation of Stalingrad; thus, rare Soviet footage shows civilians pitching in to shore up the city's defenses, overseen by Lieutenant General Vasily Chuikov, as Muscovites had done against the German advance the previous year (depicted in the fifth episode "Barbarossa"). By November, Nazi German forces controlled ninety percent of Stalingrad, by now an obsession with Hitler, who in September 1942 had dismissed General Franz Halder, chief of staff of the army high command, in favor of General Kurt Zeitzler as Halder had failed to supply "National Socialist ardor rather than professional ability." Then the Russian winter struck. And so did the massed Red Army forces that counterattacked under Operation Uranus.
This was the turning point within the turning point of the European theater. Crossing both the Don and Volga Rivers, Soviet armies executed a pincers operation that encircled a quarter of a million men of the German Sixth Army so quickly that Soviet camera crews were unable to capture it on film; a re-enactment was later staged for propaganda purposes (one that recalls battle scenes legendary Russian director Sergei Eisenstein had filmed for his 1938 movie "Alexander Nevsky"). Having wrested control of the skies from the Luftwaffe, the Soviet air force stymied German attempts to resupply the Sixth Army by air.
After a rescue mission mounted by General Erich von Manstein to establish an escape corridor for the Sixth Army failed, Paulus, whose forces were trapped in a hopeless situation, requested permission to surrender, per the terms offered by the Soviets, on January 22, 1943. Hitler refused the request, his "National Socialist ardor" manifesting into a psychosis that would persist until his death. Eight days later, Hitler displayed this delusional thinking by issuing a passel of promotions to the starving, desperate Sixth Army personnel, making Paulus a field marshal. No German field marshal had ever been captured, with the implication, which Kuehl's too-subtle script doesn't convey effectively, that Paulus should commit suicide rather than surrender.
Tasked with carrying the narrative weight of "Stalingrad," Olivier acquits himself respectably as Carl Davis emphasizes the emotion of the moment with incidental music that is tasteful and sympathetic without resorting to cliché or melodrama. But the real star of "Stalingrad" is the archival film footage that can be bracing, poignant, and at times revelatory, a sober reminder of mechanized mass slaughter that changed the course of history.
REVIEWER'S NOTE: What makes a review "helpful"? Every reader of course decides that for themselves. For me, a review is helpful if it explains why the reviewer liked or disliked the work or why they thought it was good or not good. Whether I agree with the reviewer's conclusion is irrelevant. "Helpful" reviews tell me how and why the reviewer came to their conclusion, not what that conclusion may be. Differences of opinion are inevitable. I don't need "confirmation bias" for my own conclusions. Do you?
- darryl-tahirali
- Sep 7, 2023
- Permalink
Details
- Release date
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- See more company credits at IMDbPro
- Runtime52 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1
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What is the Spanish language plot outline for Stalingrad: June 1942-February 1943 (1974)?
Answer