Hitler's 1941 Invasion of Russia | Part 3: The Motherland Calls!

*transcript is auto-generated and may contain errors*

Hello, and welcome back to Anthology of Heroes, the podcast where we explore the most pivotal
moments of history through the eyes of those who lived it.
Anthology of Heroes is part of the Evergreen podcast network.
I'm your host, Elliot Gates, and you've just dropped into Part 3 of a four-part series
on Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's ill-fated invasion of the USSR back in 1941.
Did you know that by the end of Hitler's life he was throwing down a literal cocktail
of drugs each day, cocaine eye drops, adrenaline, chamomile enemas, cultured E. coli, and methamphetamine,
just to name a few?
Is it any wonder that by this point he was beginning to lose his grip on reality?
In our last two episodes we started in the 1930s, watching as Germany and the USSR cosied
up to each other, getting to the point where the dictators were even sending each other
birthday messages.
But on June 22, 1941, Hitler pulled the rug out from Stalin, launching the biggest land
invasion in world history, four million men and thousands of tanks charged over the border
between two states, catching their leader, Joseph Stalin, completely by surprise.
Through the episode we saw the first few catastrophic engagements as the underprepared Red Army
floundered against the elite German army, known as the Wehrmacht.
We went into detail about Hitler's twisted ideology behind the war, his insistence on
racial purity, and his eventual plans for the territory of Russia that was to be incorporated
into his greater German Reich.
We followed Stalin's spiralling depression.
As a dictator struggled to pull himself together, he categorically forbade any retreat, leading
to the disastrous fall of Kiev, one of the key cities of the USSR.
Stalin finally began to listen to his advisors, and one of them, Giorgi Zhukov, quickly proved
his worth, successfully defending the capital as the biting Russian winter froze the Wehrmacht
in their tracks, less than 100km from Moscow.
As the advance slowed, we observed Hitler turning inward.
Disregarding the advice of his generals, he pushed the Wehrmacht deeper into the frigid
Russian interior, their tanks falling to bits and their soldiers freezing, veteran commanders
like Franz Halder and Fodor Von Bock found themselves at odds with the Fuhrer, leading
to the resignation of many experienced commanders as the Fuhrer looked to surround himself with
yes men.
We left the episode in late 1941, as Zhukov's energetic counter-attack had pushed the Germans
back for the first time since the invasion began.
Soviet bombers dropped leaflets to their citizens and soldiers about the valiant triumph of
Moscow, and the people, desperate for some good news, tearfully clutched the papers close
to their chest, the first good news they'd had since June.
Moscow and the USSR were saved, for now.
In this episode, oil is the word of the day.
With the horrific winter of 1941 behind them, the Wehrmacht will be coming out swinging.
Stalin and his Stavka were ready for round two in Moscow, but Hitler had other ideas.
The Wehrmacht were in desperate need of oil to keep their tanks going.
Germany didn't have any oil fields of its own, and after the advance on Moscow they
were running on empty.
So instead of heading to the capital like Stalin expected him to, Hitler changes direction
and sends the Wehrmacht south to the Caucasus, the mountainous region that makes up modern
Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia.
In this little pocket were some of the richest oil fields in the world.
If the Wehrmacht could take them, it solved their fuel shortage and created one for Stalin.
Barely recovered from 1941, the Red Army will need to scramble to reorganize once they
realize Moscow is not the real target.
In this episode, we're going to see a drug-addicted Hitler turn further inward.
Throwing out veteran commanders one after the other, the Fuhrer will take direct control
of the army, further reducing the autonomy of his field marshals.
In desperate search of men loyal only to him, a bookish staff officer named Frederick
Paulus will be thrust into the limelight.
While over on the Russian side, a gold-toothed peasant general who has men called the Stone,
will be commanded to hold the line no matter what.
This episode is where Hitler and the Wehrmacht really begin to unravel.
With America entering the war, the possibility of victory begins to slip through Hitler's
fingers and that makes him desperate.
His complicated maneuvers and shifting priorities frustrate everyone on the battlefield, as
the Fuhrer sits in a stagnant bunker, shifting red flags around the map.
So let's get into it.
Was Folly Part 3 The Motherland Calls
On the 5th of April 1942, Adolf Hitler's personal plane touched down in the little
city of Poltava, occupied Ukraine.
Stepping off the tarmac into the breezy spring air, the Fuhrer felt reborn.
Determined to put the setbacks of late 1941 behind him, he came to the occupied territory
with a plan tucked under his arm.
Folly able to contain himself, he impatiently sat through a rendition of Swan Lake that
had been organised in his honour, performed by Polish dancers who had been kept alive,
especially for the occasion.
It had been four months since the Wehrmacht's failure to capture Moscow, four months since
the German army had been pushed back for the first time since the war began.
To the German public, Hitler wrote the setback down to an early and unexpectedly severe winter,
something no one could have seen coming.
And while the weather did play a role in the setback, it was his overconfidence that
bore the greater burden of responsibility.
And that overconfidence had not dissipated with the new year.
Although Moscow survived, Hitler was sure that his invasion had crippled the Russian
state beyond recovery.
What was needed was one more big attack, one more push, and the rotting frame of Bolshevism
would collapse.
The great gambler had always trusted his instincts, and he felt this at his core.
The failure to take Moscow was a setback, but a recoverable one.
But that was easy for him to say.
To the German army, it was a different story.
They'd spent the cold December waiting the season out, in the snow.
The elite Wehrmacht army, which had proudly entered Russia in pristine uniforms singing
marching songs, had devolved into fragmented groups of men, who spent their winter gathered
around a burning oil barrel or in some peasants' hut.
Only harried by Russian probing attacks, there were numerous calls to retreat, even just
a little, but Hitler would have none of it.
Instead of issuing them with winter uniforms, he sent them a condescending leaflet that
educated them how to keep warm in the snow.
Here's an extract, quote.
The lower part of the abdomen should be especially protected from the cold, by the application
of newspaper sheets between the sweater and the undershirt.
Put some felt, a handkerchief, crumpled newspaper, or a forage cap with underlining beneath your
helmet while you wear it.
You can make armlets from old socks.
Thanks to regular airdrops from the Luftwaffe, the German Air Force, the Wehrmacht had survived
the Russian winter, although they were worse for wear.
But there was some silver lining.
In the early months of the year, as the winter frost began to thaw, Stalin had launched a
preemptive counterattack in the south.
It was a dismal failure.
Inexperienced troops and overbearing commanders led to the capture of hundreds of thousands
of Red Army prisoners.
The failure of the operation was a bucket of cold water to Stalin's optimism that the
Germans were as good as dead.
One Soviet soldier noted that it was almost as if the Fascists had been hibernating over
winter and their offensive had woken them back up.
So as the 1942 campaign season began, the Red Army was cautious of the Wehrmacht, while
the Wehrmacht believed the Red Army had learnt nothing from the slaughter of 1941.
All across Europe and down into North Africa, the German Army was stretched thin, but its
grip was still firm.
All of Central Europe, apart from Switzerland and Southern France, were pacified.
Northern Europe, apart from Sweden, was conquered.
Their Italian allies held most of the Balkans, and down in North Africa, the coastline was
still theirs.
Hitler had all his chips at the table, and he'd taken many from other big players.
If he was to cash them in right now, like many advised him to, Germany could exit the
war with an enormously enlarged territory.
Liebensraum, his idea of a greater German Reich, could reach its tendrils into France,
up to Denmark, down into the Balkans, and who knows, maybe Stalin would even give up
Kiev.
The Reich's enormous army could ensure the land would not be retaken, and his new world
order could begin.
But it wasn't enough.
Hundreds of kilometres away from the frontline in a centrally heated bunker, the broken tanks
and complaints of soldiers seemed a world away.
Increasingly detached from the real world, it seemed to Hitler that everything was so
close, and that he was so near to complete victory, he couldn't stop now.
Why couldn't his witless field marshal see that?
However, the events on the Eastern Front were not unfolding in a vacuum.
Since December 1941, Hitler's nominal ally, the Japanese, had bombed Pearl Harbour, an
important American strategic base in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
The bombing had dragged the USA into the war, and ended the Führer's hopes of Japan invading
Russia from the East.
The USA was the sleeping giant of the 1940s, an industrial powerhouse that Hitler wanted
to keep out of the war.
The fact that Japan barely even informed Hitler before the attack showed that the relationship
between the two countries had deteriorated.
In truth, since Barbarossa had began, Hitler had sidelined everything else.
The war in the East had taken so much of the Führer's attention that he neglected all
other fronts of war.
North Africa particularly was left with a skeleton crew to defend the coastline from
the British.
Erwin Rommel, the so-called Desert Fox, had petitioned Hitler over and over for more troops.
He insisted that with just a few divisions he could push the British out of Africa for
good, but Hitler's response to him was the same one he gave to every other front.
Not until Russia is defeated.
Now as the Führer entered the old administrative building at Poltova, the pressure to close
off the Eastern Theatre of War was greater than ever before.
As they took their seats around the table, Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda and
one of Hitler's closest disciples, noted that their dear Führer looked aged, grey,
and bloated.
With sweaty palms, his field marshals, old and new, listened as the fidgety Adolf Hitler
unrolled the map and explained the new plan.
Put simply, Operation Case Blue was a change in direction, from North to South.
Instead of attempting to retake Moscow or Leningrad, the army would pivot and swing
South toward the Caucasus.
The Caucasus were a little mountainous region on the southern flank of the USSR, today making
up Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia.
The region was, and still is, full of minerals, crops, but most importantly, oil.
About 80% of the USSR's oil came from this region alone.
The Wehrmacht was desperately low on oil.
And because the army was so reliant on mechanised units, you know, cars, tanks, trucks, the need
for oil was prioritised above everything else.
If the Wehrmacht could seize the oil fields around Baku, the capital city of modern Azerbaijan,
their oil problems would be solved and Stalin's would begin.
It wasn't just a direction that was to change, though.
Case Blue would be much more hierarchical than Operation Barbarossa.
Traditional German or Prussian battle plans usually set an objective and let the field
marshals achieve it in any way they saw fit.
Case Blue was more like a lengthy, complicated instruction manual, a how-to guide that the
all-knowing Fuhrer had dictated and handed out to his underlings.
And the more they learned about it, the more the commanders realised they'd had their
wings clipped.
Case Blue seemed like a step back in time to the Napoleonic era of warfare.
You go here, then you wait here, then this person goes here, then you advance, then you
stop.
General Wallamount expressed privately how many field marshals felt as they cast their
eyes over the plan, quote.
It was long and repetitive.
It jumbled up operational instructions and universally known strategic principles.
In general, it was unclear, and in detail, it was complicated.
This was no walk in the park.
To reach the Caucasus, the Wehrmacht, which, as we've mentioned, were chronically low
on fuel, needed to travel 800 kilometres or 500 miles from their nearest command centre.
We are getting into some extreme distances here.
Prior to the invasion, the Wehrmacht quartermaster theorised that the German army could advance
500 to 800 kilometres, or 310 to 500 miles, into Russia before communications really
broke down.
By now, they'd already passed that distance, and just like he'd said, communications and
supplies were stretched like a rubber band ready to snap.
The first objective for Case Blue was the southern city of Varens, where the Russian
hero Peter the Great constructed the very first fleet hundreds of years ago.
Attacking Varens was intended to fool Stalin into believing that an attack on Moscow was
swinging up from the south, and once he took the bait and reinforced the city, the Wehrmacht
would swing south again into the Caucasus, taking and fortifying the Black Sea city
of Astrakhan.
Astrakhan was a northern gateway to the oil fields, and once taken, the overstretched
German army could be resupplied by sea instead of land.
In terms of Soviet resistance, Hitler wanted to repeat the success they'd had with mass
encirclement.
The Panzers were to blaze ahead and pinch off the armies, just as they'd done back
at Kiev.
Once the oil fields were taken and their armies had surrendered, Stalin would be well and
truly on the back foot, and the Germans could be home in time for Christmas.
As Hitler finished the explanation, there were quizzical looks around the room.
Everyone had the same question.
How?
After the disastrous end to 1941, how could Hitler propose to push deeper into the USSR?
The front line was a jagged mess with bubbles jutting out in all directions.
Stretching from Crimea to Leningrad, the front was about 2,700 kilometres, or 1,680 miles,
north to the south.
When the Wehrmacht were already stretched then, if they met the objectives of Case Blue,
that front line would grow to 4,100 kilometres, or 2,550 miles long.
That is almost the distance of the USA coast to coast.
And it wasn't like fighting had died down in the north.
Leningrad was still under siege, and Zhukov's spirited counterattacks were coming day and
night.
Since the invasion began, the Wehrmacht casualty figures were topping 1 million men.
So where would the personnel for this campaign come from?
While it was true there were a limited number of pure-blooded Aryan soldiers, there was a
deep well of Allied soldiers that Hitler could call upon.
During the early days of Operation Barbarossa, Hungarian, Italian, Romanian and Finnish
soldiers were left to more rudimentary duties, but that would now have to change.
These soldiers would now march alongside the Wehrmacht in front line combat.
With this announcement, you could almost hear the collective groaning of every Wehrmacht
soldier on the Eastern Front.
Hitler was well aware that German staff officers viewed one German formation as equal in power
to one Italian division.
Generally speaking, German soldiers were contemptuous of Allied troops.
And while some of this was good old fashioned Nazi racism, it was definitely true that
Wehrmacht soldiers were a cut above.
The average German soldier had better training, better leadership and better equipment than
any of their allies, apart from perhaps the Finnish soldiers.
The Führer sympathised, the situation wasn't ideal but it was the way things had to be.
The final count for Operation Case Blue was one million German soldiers and about 300,000
Allied troops.
As the Führer stood to leave, he emphasised the need for complete secrecy regarding the
plan.
He handed out a copy of the plan to each of the Field Marshals, instructing them that
the documents should never leave headquarters nor should they ever be flown anywhere at
risk of being shot down.
His Field Marshals stood to attention.
They may not have liked it but this was the Führer's will.
With a sea kyle, Case Blue was finalised.
The Führer had a good reason for strict orders around secrecy.
About a year back, a German pilot had crash landed in Belgium while carrying with him
secret plans for Case Yellow, a secret Nazi plan to invade Belgium.
And Hitler wanted to ensure nothing like this happened again.
But just a few weeks after the briefing, Major Reichel tucked the plans for Case Blue under
his arm as he flew reconnaissance over the front and as luck would have it, he was shot
down.
By the afternoon, the highly classified plans for Operation Case Blue on the desk of Joseph
Stalin.
But Hitler would get another lucky break after Stalin decided that the plan was a ruse.
Stalin had fallen for a bit of a double bluff because while the documents that sat on his
desk were legitimate, a few weeks earlier he'd got his hands on another Nazi plan,
Operation Kremlin, a renewed German march on Moscow.
Operation Kremlin was completely bogus.
Operation Case Blue was real.
Unfortunately, Stalin picked wrongly.
Sure that Hitler would again try for Moscow, Stalin and the Stavka, it wasn't just Stalin
this time, disregarded Case Blue and redoubled the defences around Moscow.
On the 28th of June, Operation Case Blue began.
Just as they did in Operation Barbarossa, the Wehrmacht coordinated the start of the attack
to the precision of a mechanical watch.
Most of the Red Army sat around the Moscow front, waiting, but in the south it was like
Barbarossa all over again.
The Panzer Division's advance with impunity, what little Soviet resistance they found melted
away.
The Russian army had improved since 1941, but it was still rudimentary, and toe to toe it
stood little chance against the Wehrmacht.
We've got to remember these guys were really starting from scratch after Stalin's purges,
and predictably the southern front unraveled quickly.
Cases of desertion skyrocketed.
Across the collapsing front, 100-200 Red Army soldiers defected to the German side each
day.
That's almost an entire division lost per month.
And the Germans were really clever with this, they'd airdrop these little pamphlets that
had almost like coupons the Russian soldiers could tear out that would say something like,
tear off and keep this pass.
Upon coming over to our side, present it, legal crossing will save your life.
These things looked really official and despite being forbidden, many Russian soldiers held
on to them, just in case.
Once night fell came and the trenches went quiet, soldiers who were deserted earlier
that day would call out to their old comrades.
Broadcaster over loudspeaker, imagine hearing this from your close friend, quote.
Private Seraga Kamlemnoy, a soldier of the first company of the 1st Battalion of the
673rd Rifle Regiment is speaking.
Greetings, Warnock.
Listen up, dear friend, and pass along my message to the whole company.
The Germans received me just as they said they would.
I am warm and my belly is full.
Come on, friend, leave your crummy life and come over to the Germans.
They're decent people, not like our foul-mouthed officers.
They're giving us French chocolate, Dutch cheese and Danish ham to eat.
Imagine sitting in your filthy trench with a bowl of lumpy gruel served with a side of
abuse from your company commissar as you listen to that.
By July 4th, the Wehrmacht had reached the Don River.
As he surveyed the calm, glistening river, General Hoth, who hadn't liked Operation
Case Blue from the start, wrote to Chief of Staff Franz Halder, noting, quote.
Maybe Hitler was right.
The Russians are finished.
For the Red Army soldiers that lay in the trenches listening to the tempting voices
of their former comrades, the pressure to run was stronger than ever before.
One soldier talks about the feeling that goes through you when you had to advance
from your own trench, quote.
Time strangely slows down and moves in fits and starts.
At the last moment, I managed to catch a sight of the bright sky and the Earth's
wonderful field before me, clenching my teeth, now no longer thinking of anything as if I
switched off my mind, I rise up slightly in my burrow.
The inexorable power of the call of duty instantly forces me out of my trench.
So many of these soldiers speak about this, this sense of duty.
But we've got to remember, this wasn't duty to Stalin, the man that had forced them
to the front, or to the NKVD who had imprisoned their family members.
It was duty to their countrymen, their wives, sisters, brothers, and fathers.
One soldier remembers a conversation in the mess hall.
After presumably throwing back a few glasses of vodka, he expressed a feeling many frontline
soldiers had as he asked another soldier, quote.
I'm curious, what sort of motherland are you planning to defend?
The one that betrayed our fathers and mothers?
For me, it will be the most exquisite, magnificent day when I can strike dead just one commissar.
They're just dogs that aren't even fit for damnation.
No kind, sir, I'm going to battle for different reasons.
I'll be fighting against the foreigners who have laid their hands on Russian soil and
who rape our women and girls.
My Cossack grandfather and Cossack father were always a source of support for the fatherland
and for the Tsar.
So for the fatherland, I'll never be afraid to lay down my life.
Regardless of men like this, the front was collapsing.
Historians are really split as to whether the stream of retreating men was sanctioned
by the Stavka or whether it was just a mass rout.
After the war, the official government line for this manoeuvre was called a quote, elastic
defence, a strategic withdrawal that had been planned all along.
I mean, maybe, but knowing Stalin, could you see him okaying a strategy with the word elastic
in it?
The man was about as elastic as a steel bar.
Whatever the case, and this may surprise you, the Russian retreat was terrible news for
the Germans.
Think about it, the entire point of case blue was to encircle and eliminate Soviet forces
so they could take the oil fields unopposed.
But how can you encircle an army if everyone just runs before combat begins?
The Wehrmacht had cast their fishing net deep into the ocean, pulled it to the surface
and caught precious little fish.
All that fuel, all that time, and what had they achieved?
A few more cities in the endless expanse of Russia.
But there was still hope.
The strategic city of Varens lay just ahead.
And it's about here, when the cracks in case blue really begin to surface.
Hitler was frustrated with his generals.
He had been for some time.
Though they'd made remarkable progress, he could feel the campaign season slipping
through his fingers just like last year.
These overly cautious, narrow-minded field marshals were incapable of following his
instructions to the letter like he'd told them to.
In one of his rants, he almost seemed to envy Stalin and the hold he had on his field marshals
He must command an unconditional respect.
In his own way, he is a hell of a fellow.
He knows his models, Genghis Khan and the others very well, and the scope of his industrial
planning is exceeded only by our own four-year plan.
Since the floundering start to Barbarossa, Hitler had always wanted to tighten the control
he had over his generals.
But all this comes down to ego because despite the stories he worked into his speeches, Adolf
Hitler, the soldier, had seen precious little command experience during World War I.
Adi, as it was known back then, spent the majority of his service as a runner, relaying
messages between command posts.
A luke and prudish about smutty stories that other soldiers told, Hitler was a loner and
never advanced anywhere close to the command level, so his insistence on taking personal
command was, at its core, arrogance.
The way Hitler saw it, his instructions were clear, play your role and do your part as
per the plan.
Essentially, he was telling the generals to disregard their military training.
One who either couldn't or wouldn't was Fedor von Bock.
Von Bock was a highly decorated field marshal who had fought in both Poland and France.
Since Operation Barbarossa began, he and Hitler had repeatedly butted heads on objectives,
and as his tank division pulled up to Varens, he earned the Führer's eye once again after
he was drawn into street fighting.
Clearing out the city, block by block, he lost 48 hours that the Führer considered vital
to the success of the entire operation.
Hitler was displeased at von Bock tying up his precious tanks that were badly needed
in the south.
Von Bock was...confused.
As he pointed out, Case Blue clearly specified that Varens was to be taken.
He was doing just that, so what was he doing wrong?
To clear the confusion, Hitler flew out and met von Bock in person.
In a cordial meeting, Hitler explained that the attack on Varens was a diversion to hide
their march south.
He told the field marshal that if the city could be taken easily, great, but if not,
just keep the enemy busy.
Both men thought they understood each other, but once Hitler returned to his bunker, the
day is dragged by.
Von Bock still hadn't taken the city or relinquished the panzers, and with each day,
Hitler's fury grew.
After ten days, von Bock captured Varens, but Hitler couldn't care less.
He felt that the man had deliberately disobeyed him, while von Bock believed that not only
had he followed the objective to take the city, but he'd also followed the Führer's
secondary objective of taking it quickly.
Ten days for a major city was no small feat.
Fuming in his bunker, Hitler spat fire.
What was Varens to the Reich?
Nothing.
A tiny pinpoint on a map that had drained all his manpower and fuel.
The von Bock had sabotaged him on purpose, or was too stupid to see the vision of what
they fought for.
Either way, there was no place in the Wehrmacht for him anymore.
Von Bock was fired, and the spring cleaning of senior Wehrmacht officers began in earnest.
A crucial point in the war had been reached for both sides.
With the Red Army in retreat, or route, depending on your perspective, something had to be done.
At this rate, they'd be in Siberia by Christmas.
Pacing up and down in his office, Stalin put forward the idea for a new executive order.
And as members of the Stavka Reddit, they may have exchanged a few nervous glances,
but none dead to object.
On the 29th of July, 1942, Stalin's new order was read aloud to the troops.
It was to be his most infamous command of all time.
Order 227.
Not one step back.
The order was draconian in the truest sense of the word.
From this point onwards, if you retreated, you would be shot.
As the battered ranks of the Red Army lined up to hear the new directive, one soldier
remembers seeing the colour just leave the face of the man next to him.
An extract from the order states the following, quote.
Some stupid people at the front calm themselves with talk that we can retreat further to the
east, as we have a lot of territory, a lot of ground, a lot of population, that there
will always be bread for us.
They want to justify the infamous behaviour at the front, but such talk is falsehood,
helpful only to our enemies.
The order concluded with quote, it is time to finish retreating, not one step back.
Such should now be our main slogan.
Stalin had drawn a line in the sand.
It was the final round and Russia was staggering.
If he could make his regime more terrifying than the Germans, his soldiers would have
to stand and fight.
No more routing, no more elastic defeats.
Give no ground, die where you stand.
It wasn't just an empty threat either.
From here on, each front was ordered to create so-called blocking detachments.
Battalions that literally stood behind other units with orders to shoot any men that retreated
or tried to surrender.
Penal battalions made up of convicts or cowards were forced into the most suicidal pockets
of the front.
With the blocking battalion behind them and the machine gun turrets ahead of them, the
casualty rates for these men was almost always 100%.
The common soldier was now obligated to shoot any comrade who they caught in the act of
deserting, while officers were made liable for the desertions of their soldiers.
The penalty for failing to stop a deserter was death.
The war had become so twisted at this point that once German soldiers learned about this
order, they began to provide covering fire for the Russians who were deserting their
lines.
The fate of the USSR hung in the balance, and the red shadow of Comrade Stalin now loomed
over the shoulder of every Russian conscript.
To deny the Germans' shelter, entire villages were torched, inhabitants be damned.
General Lyoshenko describes this barbaric interaction he had, quote,
We got an order from the division to burn down all villages within reach.
We were in the dugout, where I was explaining how we were to carry out this order, when
suddenly, breaking all regulations, the radio operator, a middle-aged sergeant, butted in.
Comrade Major, that's my village.
My wife and children are my sister, and all her children are there.
How can we burn them down?
They'll all die.
You mind your own business, it's for us to sort out, I told him.
That man had to go on marching, fighting, and dying for the system that had just orchestrated
that.
For Stalin, he couldn't have cared less.
A textbook psychopath, he never showed a shred of empathy.
When his own son, Yakov, was captured, the dictators' only concerns were the optics,
lamenting that he should have died rather than allowing himself to be taken prisoner.
A few weeks later, our letter from the Red Cross arrived, asking if the dictator wished
to try and secure Yakov's release.
Stalin pondered for a minute or two, and then began speaking about a different topic.
Yakov would die in that POW camp about a year later.
Already a workaholic, Stalin now barely left his office.
A Zhukov and the staff could plan their counter-offensive, he slept in two-hour bursts.
One time, his assistant took pity on him and let him nap for a bit longer.
Waking up and suddenly checking the time, Stalin was furious, and lambasted the secretary,
quote.
A philanthropist all of a sudden, huh?
Get Vasilevsky on the line, quick!
A bald philanthropist, huh?
For the dictator, there was always something that had to be done.
Through truly superhuman effort on behalf of the citizens, Stalin's migrated factories
had now churned out 4,500 tanks, 3,000 aircrafts, and 14,000 guns.
While Hitler believed every Russian division was down to their last tank or their last
bullet, more were being produced by the day, and the men using them were getting better.
Any Red Army soldier that survived 1941 had literally been baptized by fire.
Remember what we said about the 1942 army being built on the bones of the 1941 army?
Those privates that had survived Kiev or Moscow were now divisional commanders, who knew from
first-hand experience what worked and what didn't.
There was also another type of Russian soldier which really made the Germans squirm.
Hitler's traditional gender roles had women restrict to the role of housewives, nurses,
or teachers.
Not so in the USSR.
Comrades were women, just as much as men.
And while traditional frontline combat soldiers were usually men, Stalin tried and tested
many female-fronted divisions.
Perhaps the most famous were the 588th Night Bomber Regiment, better known as the Night
Witches.
This all-women regiment was the brainchild of Marina Raskova, who's sometimes called
the Russian Emilia Erhard.
Piloting ancient World War I-era biplanes the Night Witches were a bombing squad that
flew low over enemy positions.
Their wooden planes were so slow that even when the German fighter planes were idling
they were still too fast to shoot them.
In the dead of night, the pilots would kill their engine and glide over the target silently.
The only indication they were coming was the faint sound of their engine which sounded
like sweeping broomsticks.
Back in werewolf HQ, Hitler sat, grim and agitated.
Joseph Goebbels wrote about his mentor quote,
Tragic that the Fuhrer is closing himself off from life like this and leading such a
disproportionately unhealthy existence.
He no longer gets any fresher hair, he doesn't take any kind of relaxation, he just sits
in his bunker.
The Fuhrer was not himself.
The dictator had a new physician, a quack named Theodore Morel.
Hitler had been introduced to Morel back in 1936.
Morel was a specialist in sexually transmitted diseases, which the Fuhrer had always been
terrified of.
Hitler liked magic, he always had, and Morel, who tread the line somewhere between a mystic
and medical profession, appealed to the Fuhrer.
By 1942, although the Fuhrer had all manner of highly qualified specialists by his side,
he trusted Morel above them all.
The thing was, Morel was a pig.
He stank, chewed with his mouth open, ate with his fingers, all round not a pleasant individual.
Other members of Nazi command complained about it so much that Hitler had to defend the
good doctor, saying quote, I do not employ him for his fragrance but to look after my
health.
As time went on, the Fuhrer became increasingly dependent on Morel's concoctions to keep
him going.
As his workload increased, so too did his reliance on the drugs.
Some of these were usual vitamins and minerals, but some of them certainly were not.
In the morning, skipping the coffee, the Fuhrer would pipette a few drops of cocaine and
adrenaline into his eyeballs.
After breakfast, he'd take oxycodone for pains and spasms.
Midday, he'd throw back a few pills of cultured E. coli, that's human feces, which apparently
helped his flatulence.
After lunch, at the dictator's own request, it was time for an enema of chamomile.
After that, time for a drink of orchican, a tonic of the doctor's own creation made
of cow testosterone.
As that began to wear off, he'd have a hit of pervitin, methamphetamine, to put some
spring in his step.
Maybe then it would be time for an injection of Prostachronum, which were minced up prostate
glands and seminal vessels supposedly to treat his depression.
And finally, at the end of the day, a tranquilizer to counteract everything and put him to sleep.
This is just a sample of the many medications the Fuhrer was on.
He may not have had all of them in a single day, but at any given time, up to 28 concoctions
of various stimulants, medications, narcotics, uppers, downers, aphrodisiacs were coursing
through the body of the Fuhrer.
You hear sometimes Adolf Hitler being praised for his simple diet and lifestyle.
He avoided meat, didn't smoke, didn't drink, and stayed away from caffeine, but I mean
if you're starting your day by dropping cocaine into your eyeballs, well I reckon I could
probably skip my morning coffee too.
Bouncing off the walls from Morrell's magic mix, Hitler's orders became erratic and illogical.
Robert M. Satino, writing in his book, Death of the Wehrmacht, said about this period,
quote, what happened over the course of the next few days in any other context but war
could be described as a comedy.
Holding out for that big encirclement he was praying for, Hitler commanded the Panzer
tanks in a series of circling manoeuvres, burning fuel the divisions criss-cross north,
south, east, and west.
False leads led them in one direction before doubling back, going south, and waiting for
an order to return.
When they found nothing and ran out of fuel, many tanks were forced to stop and wait for
a resupply.
This is not some scouting party, this is a colossal army poking around no man's land
looking for an army to fight.
City after city fell to the Wehrmacht but when their pants closed the net, there were
no soldiers there to catch.
Things passed on like this, stop, start, advances in multiple directions chasing ghosts.
Sitting on a nondescript plane on the edge of the known world, the Wehrmacht sat, engines
idling waiting for orders of where to go next, they had won virtually every battle and occupied
more land than any German empire before them, yet they were losing.
Why?
Was it Napoleon's curse?
The misguided belief that what worked in Western Europe would work in Russia?
Was it the difficulty of coordinating so many men over numerous objectives at once?
The reasons for the failure of Case Blue were all of these, but overall it was not a great
plan to begin with.
Too much distance, too little fuel, and too few men to occupy such a colossal frontline.
They were worn down, disobedience in the ranks were rising.
Some nights soldiers would hear a lone gunshot from a sentry post, only to find that the
sentry, left alone for a few hours, had killed himself.
The morning, field officers found graffiti on the side of their quarters, it said, quote,
We didn't want this war, we are dirty, we have lice, and want to go home.
Summer was fading, fuel was low, and when the final tally came in for the captured prisoners,
it was just above 40,000 men.
The aim of Case Blue had always been to destroy armies, not to capture territory.
So comparing this figure to the almost accidental capture of 500,000 prisoners after Kiev,
Case Blue, with its detailed instructions and complex concurrent maneuvering, had failed.
When the USA had joined the war, the Fuhrer's goal of unconditional victory had disappeared,
and now the chances of conditional victory were slipping through his fingers.
In front of the TV cameras and on radio, the Fuhrer presented the advance as an unstoppable
march, but his generals knew the truth.
They hadn't liked Case Blue from the beginning, but the belief in Hitler's mightest touch
kept them on board.
Now it was becoming clear, the great gambler's winning streak had just run out.
On the 23rd of July, 1942, the Wehrmacht hoisted the Swastika above the city of Rostov, an
important port city on the Black Sea coast.
Rostov had fallen in just five days, predominantly thanks to Brandenburg's saboteurs who had
kept bridges from being blown.
This was the furthest south the Wehrmacht had pushed, and both Russian soldiers and
Stalin were now sure the true objective of the march lay in the Caucasus, not Moscow.
It was going to be a major headache for Stalin to move the bulk of the Red Army south, but
Hitler unexpectedly came to his aid.
As the weary soldiers of the Wehrmacht lined up for breakfast the very next day, they were
told that the Fuhrer had released an important statement for them.
According to the Fuhrer, thanks to their efforts, Case Blue had now successfully been completed.
Many of these soldiers listening to this message had now spent over a year in Russia, and hopes
were high that finally this was to be their marching orders, their return home.
Instead, the announcement was met with collective groans as it continued.
According to Hitler, only a few enemy divisions had escaped encirclement and were massing
at the city of Stalingrad.
Stalingrad, Hitler continued, was important to the enemy as it enabled them to ferry reinforcements
down the Volga and into the Caucasus.
Because of this, the Wehrmacht forces would now be split in two, half would head north
to take Stalingrad, and the other half would continue south into the Caucasus as planned.
There would be no returning to Germany.
Operation Case Blue was finished, but Operation Brunswick had begun.
For these men that had done all the fighting, the announcement didn't make sense.
There had been no major battles since Case Blue began.
How could the Fuhrer say that only a few divisions escaped encirclement?
Where were the rest of the Red Army then?
Hitler knew that, like all his other plans, Operation Brunswick was a gamble.
The Red Army was not defeated, he knew it, and so did his troops.
But the war was becoming larger, Britain was growing bolder, pushing back in North Africa
and even launching probing attacks on the coastline of France.
And so preoccupied with Europe, Hitler had hugely underestimated the power of the USA.
He saw the country as a bourgeois nation corrupted by materialism, a nation commanded by a cripple
ruling a population that was, as he said, half-Judaist, half-Nikorified.
Well that very same nation was now bearing down on the Japanese who were already starting
to wobble.
Time was running out.
Since Britain, or the USA, managed to open another front and Germany hadn't secured
any oil, it was game over.
By this point in the plan, the Red Army was supposed to be destroyed.
Hitler knew that it wasn't the case, but he hoped that the earlier mass-route meant
they were as good as destroyed.
But even his own intel proved this wasn't correct.
These Caucasus cities like Tbilisi and Baku guarded some of the richest lands of the Soviet
Union.
For Hitler to just assume Stalin would not move heaven and earth to hold onto them, well
it was beyond wishful thinking.
Everything else was now out the window.
Forget the insurgenments, forget the cities, just get to the Caucasus now.
A desperate plan by an increasingly desperate and disconnected commander.
The march from Rostov to Baku was 700 miles, or 1100 kilometres.
Even if the Wehrmacht had fuel, distances like this were bonkers.
As for Stalingrad, taking it meant crossing two rivers under fire, and the elongated bend
of the city that snaked around the river meant encirclement would be impossible.
Whatever poor sap attacked it would need to clear it block by block, house by house, room
by room.
That man was to be Frederick Paulus.
If there was ever a Nazi depity, it is without a doubt Frederick Paulus.
Paulus has been involved in this story since the beginning, but up until now he worked
in the background.
Paulus was a staff officer, meaning he had no combat experience.
This is not a criticism of the man, some people's skills were just better spent in
the back office, and Paulus was one of them.
At 52 years old he'd spent the majority of his career writing plans and operations.
Even in a spare time he liked nothing more than sitting down with a cigarette and a map,
and retracing Napoleon's invasion route of Russia.
Tall, somewhat ungainly, with weak chin and high hairline, he was someone who thrived
in the background.
If situations got too stressful, a tick on the left side of his face became more pronounced,
and his irritable bowels got the best of him.
Compared to swaggering Nazi personalities like Erwin Rommel or Franz Halder, who argued
back or bent the rules, Paulus had the utmost respect for the chain of command.
Mild-mannered and dedicated, another officer described him as more of a scientist than
a general.
More important than anything else though, he had great admiration for Adolf Hitler.
And so when Hitler was clearing his cabinet of disobedient generals or doomsayers, Paulus
quickly caught his eye as someone he could trust to follow his instructions to the letter.
So the Fuhrer promoted Paulus, several times actually.
The bookish staff officer who had never commanded men before was now responsible for 360,000
lives as the new commander of the German 6th Army.
By the end of the campaign they would be known by another name, the Legion of the Damned.
Their destination, Stalingrad.
Operation Brunswick began in earnest, and the steel fist of the Wehrmacht split in two.
While Paulus' forces faced stiff resistance from the get-go, the southern army shot out
like a bullet from a gun.
A real testament of what the Wehrmacht could achieve when they had fuel, they cut through
250 kilometres or 400 miles of Russian territory like a hot knife through butter.
Brandenburger divisions raced ahead and broadcast messages on the radio in Russian, commanding
troops to withdraw.
While the Red Army soldiers pondered what to do, commandeered Soviet trucks full of German
soldiers talked their way through checkpoints and secured the rear.
By August the 9th, just 17 days after receiving the orders for Operation Brunswick, the southern
army took Mykop, a little city that bordered the sacred oil fields they needed so badly.
Finally, the Wehrmacht had oil, or did it.
Pacing back and forth in his office, Stalin was kept up to dates with regular reports of
the German advance, and he told the garrison commander at Mykop that if the city fell and
those oil fields were still functional, he'd be shot.
As you can imagine, the commander got to work pretty quickly.
By the time the Nazi engineers arrived and looked over it, it was clear no oil was coming
out of those wells for a long, long time.
The Red Army had thoroughly disabled Mykop, but the Germans were now in oil country.
Many cities not far away had vast oil reserves.
Their advance had been so thorough and their rout of the enemy so complete that for the
first time since Case Blue began, morale lifted.
If they could secure a seaport, resupply troops and fortify positions, Operation Brunswick
could well be a success.
But Paulus's advance on Stalingrad had been a different story.
From the start, he faced stiff resistance that only grew as he battled towards the city.
It seemed that Stalin had realized this city would be a linchpin, and men flooded in from
the Moscow front to bolster the defences.
Noticing the disparity between the two advances, Hitler ordered more and more support to be
directed to Paulus and his 6th Army, but it never seemed to be enough.
Dug in Russian divisions fought back with vigor.
With such easy success in the south, Hitler announced a reversal in priorities.
It was now Stalingrad, not the Caucasus, which was priority number one for the Wehrmacht.
This may not sound like a big deal, but with the Wehrmacht's middling supply of petrol,
this decision meant that the Stalingrad front would now get first dibs and the southern
army would get the rest.
It wasn't just fuel, but air support, ammunition, medical supplies, all of it.
The Caucasus would now just be another sideshow, unless the theatre of war like North Africa
or the Pacific, and the men that had just conquered my cop immediately began to fill
the pinch.
The idea of pushing and securing more oil fields seemed impossible.
The Luftwaffe and their precious air cover were gone.
In their absence, the Red Army Air Force gained their superiority and pinned down Germans
from advancing further.
For the southern army, this was to be their graveyard.
The furthest east a German army would ever advance.
Hitler's dream of following Alexander into India would never be fulfilled.
The sprint to the Caucasus really was an incredible achievement.
With almost no fuel to spare and shoestring supply lines, the field marshals really did
do the impossible.
Just like Rommel's North Africa campaign, they had come tantalisingly close to victory.
It's strange to think how much could have changed if Hitler had secured that coveted
oil.
But no doubts that if Germany had won the war, this would have been one of their greatest
achievements.
But hindsight is 20-20.
No doubt Hitler thought Stalingrad would fall quickly, and he could resume his march on
the south soon.
The writing was on the wall, as all 200,000 residents of Stalingrad rushed to their work
duties.
Into the hard, sandy earth, young women dug the outlines of anti-tank ditches.
Older women carted the earth away in wheelbarrows, and schoolchildren constructed earthen walls
around petrol tanks.
Anti-tankbinds freshly shipped from the factories in the Urals were planted and hastily covered
on the city's western axis.
All knew a storm was coming, but none could imagine the scale.
Stalingrad was a fairly new city.
The towering white apartment complexes, centralized factories, and neat outer gardens had been
a bit of a prototype for Stalin's vision of the future, a model city.
Even the name Stalingrad was new.
The city that was there prior had been renamed in honor of Comrade Stalin, because, according
to Red Army propaganda, it was at this location where Stalin turned the tide against the royalists
during the Great Revolution in 1917.
If citizens believed that, it meant they were standing on hallowed grounds, and the speakers
around the city blared propaganda that reminded them of it.
Not one step back, it is here that the Hitlerites will smash against the steel bastion of Bolshevism.
Supervising the ditch digging was Marshal Vasily Chukhov.
If there was one man suited to hold the line, it was him.
His men called him the Stone, or the Man of Iron Will.
If Chukhov told Stalin he would do something, the dictator knew what would be done, or that
Chukhov would die in the attempt.
Born in the slums of Moscow's industrial quarter, Chukhov was one of twelve.
With a flat face, slanted eyes, and a mop of dark hair, he had the stereotypical look
of a peasant.
He was a man that appreciated a stiff drink and a good laugh.
And when he heard something that tickled him just right, he threw back his head and let
out an ear-rending cackle, exposing his mouth full of golden tooth caps.
Explosive with a temper and fearless in battle, Chukhov was never afraid to put himself in
danger.
He had fought in both the Great Revolution and in Poland.
A true frontline commander, he'd been seriously wounded four times, and carried in his left
arm a medley of shrapnel that would one day kill him.
Chukhov was never one to trust the word of his subordinates when his eyes could give him
a true picture.
Later that week he insisted on personally inspecting the various defence points across
the Stalin grad front.
Because of the distance, a plane was the best way to get around.
Daring a little too close to the front line, he was shot out of the sky, but the stone
walked out of the burning inferno with nothing but a bruised forehead.
Back at HQ for dinner and Belle even mentioning this latest brush with death.
While Chukhov's energetic tours were a morale boost to the soldiers, the fact of the matter
was that the full force of the German army was now directed at this front.
The Hitler's war chest was open and parlours dug deep, the rage of the Reich.
River crossings were bloody and tenuous.
But the Luftwaffe proved their worth as they bombed out the nearby cities.
Pacing up and down in his office, Stalin took the news badly, berating Zhukov quote,
What's the matter with them?
Don't they understand that if we surrender Stalin grad, the south of the country will
be cut off from the centre and we will probably not be able to defend it?
Don't they realise that this is not only a catastrophe for Stalin grad, we will lose
our main waterway and soon our oil too?
On the 23rd of August, air raid sirens blared through the city of Stalin grad.
Comrades, an air raid warning has been sounded.
Attention comrades, an air raid warning has been activated.
Sirens had become so frequent in the city that townsfolk paid little attention or sought cover.
But this one was no false alarm.
Like a horrific swarm of birds, 600 stookers blotted out the afternoon sky.
The full might of the Wehrmacht reigned death on the city as thousands of incendiary bombs fell.
There was no strategy to the carpet bombings.
Bombs landed on civilian housing, factories, docks and everything in between.
The women and children screamed as Stalin's lily wide apartment blocks collapsed around them.
Pillowing stacks of smoke trailed up into the clear sky as the residents got their first taste of what was to come.
With virtually no men left, it was up to the women to pull children from the rubble.
Mothers cradled their children's dead bodies and one boy looked for pieces of his father in an attempt to bury him.
One German bomber, after dropping off his payload, was hit by an anti-aircraft shell
and parachuted directly down to the fire he'd just created.
Black, acrid smoke billowed out of the city, clearly visible 40 miles or 60 kilometers away.
A dark beacon showing any Russian soldier in the vicinity.
This is what awaits you at Stalingrad.
And that is where we're going to leave it for today.
Our next episode is where everything has led to the bloodiest battle in world history
where soldiers' lives were measured in hours.
The drug-addled mind of Adolf Hitler meets the cold heart of Joseph Stalin
and together transformed the city into the closest possible thing to hell on Earth.
If you've enjoyed this series, which I really hope you have,
it would be great if you could leave us a rating on Spotify or Apple podcasts.
If you want to keep up to date with our releases, sign up to our mailing list on anthologyofheroespodcast.com
and follow us on Instagram at anthologyofheroes, or one word.
Both those links are also available in the episode description.
I'd like to extend my thanks to all of our show's patrons and a big thank you particularly to our Justinian tier members.
Angus, Claudia, John, Seth, Shane, and Tom.
Thanks a lot and speak to you on the next one.