1941 and Germany invades an unprepared Soviet Union, General Heiz Guderian leading the panzer charge. Guderian, one of the founders of Blitzkrieg, was well liked by his men and was often to be found at the front -- "Fast Heinz" was his nickname. He was no Nazi but an ardent anti-communist whose doubts about the operation were stilled after the initial successes and by Hitler's insistence that the USSR was a rotten house ready for the doors to be kicked in.
The men of course had been told that Stalin was about to invade German territory. This is always the case. War is always started by the other guy, which is why we no longer have a "Department of War," just a "Defense Department." Operation Barbarossa preceded according to plan and the Wehrmacht wiped the floor with the Russian Air Force and Army -- some units of which were under contradictory orders to both hold fast and to retreat. It was chaos. It seemed a matter of weeks before the Germans took most of Russia.
But then resistance stiffened. Casualties mounted, equipment wore out, and progress chugged along more slowly. The German general staff were all for taking Moscow and thus Russia, but Hitler realized that the war wouldn't be won just by taking the capital. Napoleon had done that and lost. So the German forces were divided into three groups, with the Southern group taking the country's breadbasket -- the Ukraine -- and heading towards the oil fields. The film doesn't say so but Hitler's racism blew it here. Many Ukranians were happy to be liberated from the yoke of Stalin and the Wehrmacht was greeted as liberators until they began treating the Ukraine as a conquered territory and a source of slave labor. Of three and a half million Russian prisoners, the majority died of starvation or illness.
The Russian winter descended on the Wehrmacht, earlier and colder than usual. Panzer troops still wore shoes, not boots. One gun crew froze to death at its position, a block of ice. During the height of the Cold War, a historian explained to me how crude Soviet weapons were. Kalashnikov's were made of stamped metal, not machined, so that stupid peasants could manufacture and assemble them. The parts were so loosely assembled that the weapons rattled when they were carried. Their inventor later claimed that they were deliberately imprecise. And they worked under any conditions. Breach rusty? A good kick makes the AK-47 serviceable again. The finely machined German equipment froze easily. Airplane engines refused to start without being heated by a fire. The Russian counterattack was devastating. The Wehrmacht blew up their vehicles and fled for the woods. Hitler's order was to "retreat not one millimeter" and when General Guderian adjusted his lines to improve his defense, he was sacked.
Much of the program is devoted to the Wehrmacht at war. That's okay. That was why the Wehrmacht existed. But I wish more attention had been paid to what might be called extracurricular activities. For instance, unless otherwise ordered, the German soldiers in Paris were required to be on their best behavior in public places. They were ordered to be polite and even forbidden to smoke. When the Allies retook Paris, it was a shock for many French citizens to see Americans lying drunk on the streets.
In any case, by 1943 the Battle for Stalingrad had come along and been lost. And if things for the Wehrmacht had gotten bad before, they were now to get worse -- much worse. It's chilling to hear these old men speak about the nightmares that haunted them for the rest of their lives -- reliving combat, hearing the clanking of tank treads. Today we call it PTSD. It didn't have a good name then. But it was real enough to wreck Audie Murphy's life.
The men of course had been told that Stalin was about to invade German territory. This is always the case. War is always started by the other guy, which is why we no longer have a "Department of War," just a "Defense Department." Operation Barbarossa preceded according to plan and the Wehrmacht wiped the floor with the Russian Air Force and Army -- some units of which were under contradictory orders to both hold fast and to retreat. It was chaos. It seemed a matter of weeks before the Germans took most of Russia.
But then resistance stiffened. Casualties mounted, equipment wore out, and progress chugged along more slowly. The German general staff were all for taking Moscow and thus Russia, but Hitler realized that the war wouldn't be won just by taking the capital. Napoleon had done that and lost. So the German forces were divided into three groups, with the Southern group taking the country's breadbasket -- the Ukraine -- and heading towards the oil fields. The film doesn't say so but Hitler's racism blew it here. Many Ukranians were happy to be liberated from the yoke of Stalin and the Wehrmacht was greeted as liberators until they began treating the Ukraine as a conquered territory and a source of slave labor. Of three and a half million Russian prisoners, the majority died of starvation or illness.
The Russian winter descended on the Wehrmacht, earlier and colder than usual. Panzer troops still wore shoes, not boots. One gun crew froze to death at its position, a block of ice. During the height of the Cold War, a historian explained to me how crude Soviet weapons were. Kalashnikov's were made of stamped metal, not machined, so that stupid peasants could manufacture and assemble them. The parts were so loosely assembled that the weapons rattled when they were carried. Their inventor later claimed that they were deliberately imprecise. And they worked under any conditions. Breach rusty? A good kick makes the AK-47 serviceable again. The finely machined German equipment froze easily. Airplane engines refused to start without being heated by a fire. The Russian counterattack was devastating. The Wehrmacht blew up their vehicles and fled for the woods. Hitler's order was to "retreat not one millimeter" and when General Guderian adjusted his lines to improve his defense, he was sacked.
Much of the program is devoted to the Wehrmacht at war. That's okay. That was why the Wehrmacht existed. But I wish more attention had been paid to what might be called extracurricular activities. For instance, unless otherwise ordered, the German soldiers in Paris were required to be on their best behavior in public places. They were ordered to be polite and even forbidden to smoke. When the Allies retook Paris, it was a shock for many French citizens to see Americans lying drunk on the streets.
In any case, by 1943 the Battle for Stalingrad had come along and been lost. And if things for the Wehrmacht had gotten bad before, they were now to get worse -- much worse. It's chilling to hear these old men speak about the nightmares that haunted them for the rest of their lives -- reliving combat, hearing the clanking of tank treads. Today we call it PTSD. It didn't have a good name then. But it was real enough to wreck Audie Murphy's life.