Russia's War: Blood Upon the Snow (1997) s01e06 Episode Script
The Cauldron Boils
1 [Woman singing.]
[Ominous music.]
[Speaking German.]
NARRATOR: May, 1942.
As the spring campaigning season opens, the Red Army's victories of late 1941 seem suddenly meaningless, and Hitler's damaged confidence receives a massive boost.
The hasty Soviet attack in the south against Kharkov is swallowed up by a German counteroffensive.
Hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops are captured, destined for Nazi prison camps.
These are losses the Red Army can ill afford.
Because Kharkov will become the springboard for Hitler's own summer assault on the Caucasus.
The Führer is confident now, certain that the Wehrmacht can seize the vital oil centers of Grozny and Baku.
And from late June, his armies sweep south into mountain country.
But Stalin has concentrated Red Army reserves to protect Moscow, and the offensive takes it by surprise.
It is hurled into hasty retreat, seeking refuge in the hills, able only to sabotage the precious oil fields it leaves behind.
And as German units advance, there are some who greet them as liberators, entrusting nationalist dreams to these new masters.
They will learn the tragic truth soon enough.
But as it retreats and regroups, the Red Army becomes stronger and more coherent.
And the rolling thunder of the Panzers, at first unstoppable, is silenced by stubborn defense on the only road through the mountains to Baku.
But though the great refineries are still working for the Soviet people, a new peril looms.
Two smaller German armies have been advancing slowly east towards the industrial city of Stalingrad.
As Hitler's ambitions are thwarted further south, he sees a chance to cut all links between Moscow and the Caucasus.
The city on the Volga becomes his new prime target.
The vaunted German Sixth Army, conqueror of Paris in 1940, spearheads the drive, and again the Red Army tumbles back.
For Soviet soldiers, this could so easily be the end.
Even Stalin's son has been captured, and his image on propaganda leaflets adds credence to German claims of imminent victory.
But Stalin will tolerate no more rapid retreats, and on the brink of catastrophe, he resorts, as always, to terror.
Stalin's secret Order Number 227, issued under his signature in late July, 1942.
This notorious document makes any unauthorized retreat punishable by death.
"Not one step back.
" Stalin means it literally.
And this unique footage shows NKVD troops putting his edict into practice.
They're known as blocking units.
Deployed just behind the troops, they pass instant sentence on any who disobey Order 227.
And the blocking troops themselves? In Stalin's world, almost anybody can become a law enforcer young and old conscripts, national minorities, NKVD personnel.
And some blocking units can boast an extraordinary collection of talents.
Anna Bugrimova, on the left, fought with them and knew them well.
[Speaking Russian.]
INTERPRETER: The troops went into battle.
We were following them.
We were about 500 meters behind them.
No one could turn and run back.
If someone did, he would be shot on the spot by our blocking units or arrested by the special division of NKVD.
I had the carbine.
And then my friends got a pistol for me, and I threw away the carbine.
These Siberians were quite old.
Our blocking unit was made up of Siberians, former convicts who had robbed banks and large factories.
They were serious criminals, but they treated me well.
NARRATOR: Appropriate purveyors of Stalin's bitter medicine, enforcing the Supreme Commander's will without hesitation or mercy.
And Stalin has introduced another grim aid to discipline penal battalions.
Each of these convicts must serve in the penal unit for three months, not a day more, but for many, that will be too long.
Even petty transgressors pilferers, shirkers, anyone who upsets an officer have reason to fear the Red Army's field tribunals.
Guilty is always their favorite verdict.
And the inevitable transfer to penal service is virtually a death sentence.
They are the first thrown into every hopeless fight, the first to face every deadly firestorm.
Yet, they often fight well and with rare commitment.
Soldiers with something to prove, terrified, of course, but desperate to wipe away the stigma of their misdoings.
A battle wound is enough to earn release.
But each casualty is carefully examined by security officers in case the damage should be self-inflicted or the work of blocking units.
The genuinely wounded will find the forgiving words "atoned with his own blood" added to their records.
And the dead are granted the same consolation, though in life they are expendable.
True cannon fodder, their combat achievements with penal units are ignored by official records.
That policy still outrages former Red Air Force pilot, Artyom Anfinogenov.
INTERPRETER: The pilots from the penal squadrons were sent on the most dangerous missions, most important of all, river crossings, which were fundamental in deciding the outcome of Stalingrad, then to attack airfields and large concentrations of tanks, the three types of missions that the penal squadrons were sent on.
But they were given no official recognition for these combat missions.
Normally, a pilot would carry out a combat mission, and normally, for each one, he would get a credit.
For ground-attack squadrons, it was the number of combat missions that you undertook that was important.
Fighter pilots would get a credit for every dogfight and enemy aircraft shot down.
But ground-attack pilots would get a credit for every combat mission, and this would all count towards the pilot's war record.
But the penal squadrons were not credited with their combat missions, so you would fly, you would fight, you would hit the Germans, but you would not get credit for it until you were eventually wounded or until the commander might eventually judge that you had served your term.
NARRATOR: And for any pilot in action, the first wound is usually the last.
They may be forgiven for thinking that capture is the safest way out of this war.
But though it is merciless, arbitrary, and utterly dehumanizing, Stalin's program of unbending oppression does galvanize the Red Army.
Suren Mirzoyan was a commando with the 62nd Army defending Stalingrad.
INTERPRETER: Some people think that Order 227 was a criminal order.
No! It was vital to the country's defense.
It was an important, galvanizing factor.
If there hadn't been that order, those in retreat who'd already got used to falling back would have continued.
But where could they go? Stalin was right when he said that beyond the Volga there was nowhere further for us to retreat.
One time, when they tried to capture one of our commanders, he stood up in the trench, just stood there in the trench, and showed them what he had.
He was a soldier.
But he was surrounded.
He was out of ammunition, grenades, everything, because he had spent it all.
So he got up, and in an act of supreme defiance, he pulled down his trousers and said, "Here, come and take this prisoner!" NARRATOR: But defiance alone will not keep the enemy out of Stalingrad.
By late August, they are at the Volga to the north, and the city is all but surrounded.
Hitler is proclaiming a great triumph of arms.
German victory medals have been struck.
And at first, Stalingrad seems there for the taking.
But this is Stalin's city, the very symbol of his personal prestige, and that is something even women and children are expected to defend.
[Speaking Russian.]
INTERPRETER: So we went across the Volga to Krasnaya Sloboda, right opposite the place we're standing now.
We'd only been there a few days, and then suddenly this local policeman started making regular calls on us and demanding that my father and I go back to Stalingrad at once.
He claimed that my father was spreading unnecessary panic, saying, "You're a coward and panic-spreader.
You have no right to be here, and you should return back to Stalingrad immediately.
" NARRATOR: The 62nd Army is not yet deployed in the city, and only a single blue-coated NKVD division takes the field against the first attacking Panzers.
At its side, workers from the local tractor factory, armed with abundant defiance but with very little else.
[Speaking Russian.]
INTERPRETER: When we got to the front line, this tank with no turret went past us a few times.
It was driven by a man from the factory.
In his patriotic fervor, he hadn't had time to put a turret on.
And he had no cannon, either, only a machine gun.
But our tractor-factory man was determined to defend the motherland with caterpillar tracks and a machine gun alone.
But the Luftwaffe cares nothing for such heroics.
During the last week of August, it launches a campaign of terror bombing.
For the first time, it attempts the systematic destruction, sector by sector, of a Soviet city.
Wave after wave of aircraft swoop over Stalingrad.
Factories, homes, women and children they are all targets.
For five days and nights the onslaught rages, turning the city into a gigantic bonfire.
And when the thunder finally abates, 50,000 lay dead.
Three times as many are injured, victims of Hitler's Luftwaffe, but also of the brutal regime that forced so many of them to remain.
Their home has become a chaos of charred and mangled ruins.
Yet, for Stalingrad citizens, the real nightmare is only just beginning because now the Wehrmacht is moving in to claim the rubble for its own.
As they inch through the suburbs, German troops surely expect a rapid conquest.
Instead, they are entering a savage killing ground for a duel to the death that will rank among the most terrible in human experience.
For at their approach, the ruins spring to furious life.
Soviet soldiers and citizens do not even contemplate surrender.
A thousand desperate battles erupt on the streets, and a wild labyrinth of constantly shifting front lines swamps the city.
Soon even the identification flags will not be enough.
German bombers cannot hope to distinguish friend from foe as the inferno takes complete hold of Stalingrad.
The front line might be a house, an alley, a tramline or a wall.
And every street is a minefield, virtually impossible for tanks or big guns.
Soviet soldiers, denied air and artillery support, must fight eyeball-to-eyeball, lives hanging on their wits, their battle skills, and their cunning.
[Speaking Russian.]
Former Red Army marksman Vassily Zaitsev.
INTERPRETER: The fascist snipers used to come here to give the other Germans covering fire when they came to get water from that small spring.
The Volga was only a stone's throw away, but the Nazis were dying of thirst.
So that is how this snipers duel flared up.
All in all, it went on for three days.
But it ended with victory for us in some five seconds.
The fascists would come to the duel well prepared.
He'd already taken out two of my snipers.
Then with the help of a couple of others, I finally managed to pick him off.
I would never have guessed what kind of big shot had flown to Stalingrad, but when we dragged him out, we found he'd been the head of the Berlin sniper school.
NARRATOR: But there is heroism beyond the black arts of trench warfare.
This house is defended by a single platoon of Stalin's gladiators, Sergeant Pavlov's platoon.
Completely surrounded by Germans, Pavlov's men hold this vital strong point until relief comes 59 days later, long enough for one woman, one among many crowded into the cellar, to give birth amid the orgy of death that is Stalingrad that autumn.
INTERPRETER: The streets were littered with dead women and children, their dismembered bodies burnt or half-burnt.
That produced a very strong effect on us.
We fought like wild animals for every house, every piece of land.
We weren't afraid of anything.
Once, after the Germans had taken a building near us, a section under the command of one of our sergeants went in and in 24 hours had stabbed the whole of their company.
And how did they do it? They slaughtered all of them with bare steel in that one night.
They took revenge and really enjoyed it.
It was as if they wanted to say to the Germans, "You decided to come here, so it's here you'll stay.
None of you will ever get back home.
" NARRATOR: Yet slowly, inevitably, the 62nd Army is giving ground.
Reinforcements are still trickling across the Volga, but as the Wehrmacht prepares to storm that slender lifeline, it can only be held at terrible cost.
Casualties are appalling, and nurses must struggle through a hail of fire to rescue them.
In the magnificent spirit of Soviet women in wartime, they dutifully risk their own lives for the lives of soldiers.
But their orders demand still more, and many perish in the act of saving priceless weapons.
The Volga crossing as reconstructed by contemporary Soviet filmmakers.
Soviet reinforcements attempting to reach the city scramble ashore, escaping from one nightmare into another.
And some days, the river runs red with their blood.
Dr.
Boris Perepechaev treated casualties at the Volga crossing.
[Speaking Russian.]
INTERPRETER: Every night, launches came over from the left bank, put down boards, unloaded fresh reinforcements, and took back the wounded.
There were so many corpses there that you just couldn't help but step on them.
The whole embankment was piled with corpses.
Sometimes there were wounded among them as well.
So occasionally, you'd be walking over these dead bodies, and one of them would suddenly let out a shout, "Watch where you're going, you clumsy oaf!" Well, with all this going on, one night I had a bit of a mental slip, though I didn't realize it at the time.
I was walking along that riverbank, and suddenly I remembered a song from the film Captain Grant's Children, and I just started to sing it.
"There, where horses tread on the corpses, where the land is painted in blood.
" People started cursing and swearing at me from all sides.
The Germans who were positioned nearby must have heard all this, because they started firing at us with their heavy machine gun.
I fell flat on the ground.
I don't know who I fell on or what I fell on, but I just fell.
I waited for a bit till the launch came, and then I left, unhurt.
NARRATOR: German forces now control most of the Stalingrad area, and Hitler is already claiming total victory.
And though Soviet defenders are giving everything, the enemy is still pushing east across the city.
General Chuikov, in command of the 62nd Army, mounts a skillful campaign, but his outnumbered troops cannot hope to stop the Wehrmacht.
And by early November, it has cut a swath across Stalingrad, splitting the 62nd Army in two.
In a last desperate gesture, Chuikov mounts assault after assault on the Mamaev Mound, a vital patch of high ground, the very hub of the battle zone.
The hill changes hands no less than eight times, as Chuikov throws everything into the fray, every soldier and anything that flies.
[Speaking Russian.]
INTERPRETER: An endless battle was going on and over Mamaev Mound.
Our troops were storming it again, and the infantry, which was climbing up, it needed air support.
When German bomber planes appeared, Khryukin, the local air-force commander, urgently called a fighter-plane squadron to chase them off and cover our infantry troops.
A squadron of seven planes I don't want to mention the squadron captain's name took off, and with an armada of German bombers flying towards them, they evaded the fighting, turned off, and flew up the Volga.
Khryukin immediately ordered the captain to be shot, and as I read later in the official report about the execution, all the other pilots were sent to the penal squadron.
I'll tell you, the aircraft losses at Stalingrad were terrible.
Just terrible.
An average air-force regiment might be at the front for a week and then cease to exist.
That gives you some idea how bad our losses were.
And the reasons Well, first and foremost, the enormous intensity and the importance of the actual struggle itself.
Ultimately, it was a question of life or death for our country and people.
On the other hand, everything was thrown into it like into a furnace, whether our regiment was ready or not.
A hole in the line had to be filled, so pilots like me made up 100 regiments consisting entirely of sergeants.
I was a sergeant, you understand.
100 regiments of sergeants were given crash training just before the war.
80% of them were at Stalingrad.
One fine day, just after we had finished the summer course at the pilot-training camp in the Urals near Perm, they drew up all graduated pilots in ranks and gave a command.
All those with names beginning with the letters "A" to "K" were to turn right and march quickly back to the barracks.
And those beginning with "L" to "Z" had to turn left and quick march to the quartermaster's stores and from there immediately go and join the infantry troops at Stalingrad.
Thus it was that they sent trained pilots off to join the infantry at Stalingrad.
And those pilots whose names began with the letters "A" to "K," with me among them, because my name is Anfinogenov, flew to the front.
So I flew to the front with a grand total of just 3 hours, 40 minutes training in all.
NARRATOR: Lydia Litvyak is a pilot with one of three female fighter groups in Stalingrad, and a good one.
10 Luftwaffe aircraft have fallen to her machine guns.
One more, and she will qualify for the ultimate accolade, Hero of the Soviet Union.
But then her lover, flying with a neighboring squadron, is killed, and, as her brother recalls, the loss destroys her.
INTERPRETER: She used to write us letters every day on funny triangle-shaped letter paper, addressed to Mother in Europe.
In the last letter, she wrote, "Mother, I dreamt that I was standing on the bank of a big, stormy river, and my beloved Alyosha was calling me from the other side.
" And Mother said, "That's it.
She is going to die.
" NARRATOR: And what of the millions of Soviet citizens away from the front line? As propaganda fixes every eye on the struggle for Stalingrad, they respond with whatever they can give their jewelry, their money, anything to help preserve the lives of husbands, brothers, and sons trapped in the inferno.
They are all part of a monumental national effort to save Stalingrad.
And at the heart of the Soviet crusade, hidden from Hitler's gaze, one of the most astonishing enterprises in the history of warfare.
Machinery and manpower from the great industrial regions of the western USSR have been snatched from the very jaws of Nazi invasion.
Now a vast migration east is under way east, beyond the Urals, where they plant explosives in the frozen ground and rebuild Soviet war production from scratch.
They work fast through the grueling winter, but the motherland's need is desperate, and many plants must begin operating before they have a roof.
By the end of the war, more than 2,000 new factories will have sprung up in Siberia, heavy industrial plants producing weapons to sustain the Red Army at the front.
But that army needs men.
And so while Hitler still keeps men away from the front for vital factory work, legions of Soviet children must rise to aid their homeland in its hour of peril.
Alongside their mothers at the lathes, they toil to complete the Siberian miracle, and the future of the Soviet Union depends on them all on the quality of the war machines they produce, on the quantity of oil they extract, and on the barges they pilot to bring it all to the crisis point on the Volga to Stalingrad.
And Stalin, for once, does not squander their endeavors.
The year's defeats have shocked him, and Marshal Zhukov finds his first counterattack proposals greeted with uncharacteristic caution.
INTERPRETER: "So, what have you thought up?" Stalin said as he came over to our map.
"What front is that?" Vasilievsky reported back, "It's a new front that needs to be opened in addition to the Don Front so that we can make a major thrust against the German grouping at Stalingrad.
The left wing of our Stalingrad Front will make a thrust towards Kalach to meet it.
" Stalin says, "But have we got enough forces for such a big operation? Perhaps we should limit it to the thrust along the Don from north to south and south to north.
" We objected to Stalin that if we were to do this, the Germans would quickly deploy their mechanized troops from Stalingrad and parry our thrust.
He said, "We need to think about our plan and calculate our forces and resources.
The main task now is to hold Stalingrad, and don't breathe a word to anyone about the plan.
" NARRATOR: Nothing must distract from the last-ditch battle still being waged inside Stalingrad.
The city has become a global obsession, dominating the world's headlines.
And now, more than ever, Stalin's prestige demands that it shall not fall.
But there is another reason to plan in stealth.
The 6th Army must be kept fully occupied in Stalingrad while the Red Army gathers in the rear, planning its revenge.
While the Soviet Union's distant allies beat paths of their own to the beleaguered city, British aid carried through the icy gauntlet of the Murmansk run or across the Iranian border.
And from the USA's Alaskan airfields, fighter aircraft fly into Siberia to aid a Red Army almost ready to launch its counterstrike.
Artillery Chief Voronov coordinates planning along with General Vatutin, leading the Southwest Front, Rokossovsky, commanding the Don Front, and Eremenko, attended, as ever, by his political shadow Khrushchev.
Their designs are overseen by Stalin's most trusted military advisers, Zhukov and Vasilievsky.
And on the 19th of November, a huge artillery barrage by the Southwest Front pierces the frost, decimating ill-prepared Romanian forces in its path.
This is Operation Uranus.
Vatutin's tanks burst through almost at once.
And Eremenko's southern wing surges forward on the next day.
The Wehrmacht, taken utterly by surprise, cannot stop them.
And as its allies collapse on the flanks, there are no reserves to stem the resurgent Red tide.
Within three days, the Southwest Front has taken Kalach, some 80 kilometers west of Stalingrad.
And on the 23rd of November, a few miles southwest of Kalach, its advance units meet up with Eremenko's forces.
Suddenly, the German 6th Army and the 4th Panzer Army, perhaps 300,000 of Hitler's finest troops, are surrounded inside Stalingrad.
The hunter has been captured by his prey.
An astonished Hitler summons Manstein, his troubleshooter, to Stalingrad.
His sharp troops will breach the Soviet ring surrounding the city and secure the prize Hitler's already promised to the German people.
Two Soviet armies, the 51st and 2nd Guards, are rushed to meet Manstein's relief force and stop it dead in its tracks.
Former Artillery Sergeant Rasporkin was with the guards.
INTERPRETER: Three army corps of around 400,000 soldiers were immediately dispatched by foot.
We set up our field guns as soon as we got there without even digging in.
It just wasn't possible to dig in.
There was no time.
Tanks were breaking through our infantry lines.
I think attitudes and conditions on both sides became more and more inhuman and extreme.
For example, there were some marines who had been killed and then crushed into the earth by the same tanks that had already annihilated them.
What could they possibly hope to gain by crushing them if they were already dead? NARRATOR: The guards pay a high price for stopping Manstein.
Almost two thirds of the army is killed or wounded.
And even faced by Germany's fearsome new Tiger tanks, they fight like the elite units they are.
INTERPRETER: There were times in the tank attacks and artillery barrages when I couldn't keep my teeth together for days on end.
They were chattering so much from fear.
Yes, from fear, my teeth were chattering, and there was no way I could stop them.
On one occasion, for two days, no less.
And when I knocked out a Tiger in Gromoslavka, near Stalingrad, I was so deafened, I lost my power of speech.
We did not need blocking units there, because the guards, they never stepped back.
And as far as I remember, our 2nd Guards Army didn't step back once.
NARRATOR: There will be no relief now for German troops in Stalingrad.
Hitler calls them his champions, but his orders, no escape and no surrender, condemn them to death.
And now GÃring offers comfort to the Reich's besieged heroes.
His Luftwaffe will fly 500 tons of supplies per day into the Stalingrad pocket.
The Luftwaffe tries, but the Red Army brings up extra A.
A.
Batteries, and the lumbering German transports are blown out of the sky in their hundreds.
Soon, even quotas of 50 tons per day cannot be met.
And as the Red Army closes the ring around Stalingrad, advancing cautiously through the snow, taking time to bring up heavy artillery and air support German defenders, shivering in the ruins, are told to fight on, sustained only by glib promises of ultimate victory, along with a little advice from the Führer how to dig a hole in the snow.
Primitive diagrams that almost mock these grizzled veterans in their desperation.
And for frostbite, the Führer recommends a bag over the face.
Yet, like Soviet troops before them, they entertain no thought of surrender.
And as they in turn cling to every bloodstained remnant of the city, icebound apocalypse returns to Stalingrad.
German regimental commander Steidl "The infantry has been living among corpses for the last few weeks.
Corpses on the right.
Corpses on the left.
Corpses next to you.
Corpses under you.
And your rifle.
" INTERPRETER: If a bullet is fired from 100 to 150 meters, it won't go through a frozen body.
So we just piled them up and then rested behind them and took cover.
NARRATOR: For ordinary soldiers on both sides, this is the ghastly climax to a long, dark journey.
INTERPRETER: We even used frozen bodies like stones or locks, throwing them under the wheels of a vehicle if it got bogged down.
The vehicles would then get the necessary traction and move on without a hitch.
Why did we do it? Because they On one occasion, we took back a village.
It was beyond the Don.
The locals there told us how many people had been burned alive by the Germans.
They had put all the young people together in a barn, covered it with dry hay, and burned 30 or 40 of them.
So we thought, "If you burn people alive, we will kill you, we will destroy you.
" There could be no doubt that these sort of atrocities took place.
You know, they did it absolutely without any fear of God.
Yes, it's true.
When a vehicle was stuck, we put one of their corpses under it.
I did it.
We all did it.
And do you know why? Because when I was in that barn and saw the half-burnt bodies, I was so furious.
I said, "See what they've done with our own people, our own Don Cossacks.
" And I swore I would pay them back, although it may have been in a different kind.
But that incident with the vehicle really happened, and I'll never forget it.
NARRATOR: Yes, there is hatred of the invader in Stalingrad.
And it burns ever deeper as Soviet troops uncover evidence of Nazi methods.
This camp held 2,000 of their captured comrades, and by the time it is liberated, only 20 are still alive.
And survivors tell of brutal maltreatment, of grotesque medical experiments.
Is it any wonder they thirst for vengeance? In the heart of the cauldron, Hitler's gladiators know now that they are doomed.
And so, betrayed, they evacuate a few casualties on the last plane out of Stalingrad.
And with it go their last words to families, lovers, friends.
"You should forget it, Marguerite, and do it right away.
I know you want me beside you, not only as a husband and a lover, but as a pianist.
Marguerite, you should know the whole truth.
I don't have my hands anymore, not since December.
The little finger is missing on my left hand, but even worse, frostbite took the middle three fingers on my right hand.
I can only just about hold a mug using the two fingers I have left.
And I have become rather helpless.
You don't understand how important these things are until you lose them.
The only thing I can still do properly is shoot using my little finger.
And I can't shoot all my life, right? So my hands are useless.
Do you feel better now that you know the whole truth?" Ordinary victims resigned to their fates abandoned in Hades, so that their Führer might save face.
And when a Soviet proposal of terms passed across the Romanian sector offers them a chance for honorable surrender, Hitler snatches away the hope.
His stark order, "Fight to the last bullet.
" But though they fight on, the bullets are running out, and the Red Army is still coming at them.
By late January, they're being overwhelmed, and whole regiments are giving up the hopeless struggle.
But as official cameraman Orlyankin discovers, every house in Stalingrad is still a potential death trap.
[Speaking Russian.]
INTERPRETER: On the front where the 13th Rodimtsev Division was fighting, there was a house, a basement to be more precise, where the Germans were hiding and sniping at us.
If they saw one of our lads, they would immediately shoot him.
Well, what happened was this.
Suddenly one of these Fritzes came running out with a white shirt and runs towards us along the basement windows.
So the Fritzes were surrendering like Antioch.
And so our boys moved slowly into the open from out of their trenches and shelters because of the white flag.
And at that moment, just as I was about to start filming, they opened up with a terrifying burst of machine-gun and submachine-gun fire coming from almost all the windows of the building, and our lads, who had only broken cover in order to take these POWs.
That was a law, you see.
If they surrendered, we had to accept them.
And so our soldiers started falling, some dead, some wounded, some just trying to avoid the bullets.
NARRATOR: Finally, on February the 2nd, the last German troops fighting in Stalingrad surrender.
After five long months, a battle that began almost by accident is over.
But 6th Army commander Paulus is not among them.
Historian and wartime intelligence officer Lev Bezymensky.
[Speaking Russian.]
INTERPRETER: When they started to bring in the first captured generals, no one in our reconnaissance unit was 100% sure whether Paulus was alive or dead.
There was a possibility that he might have been rescued at the last moment.
In theory, it would have been possible to get him out of Stalingrad, but in practice, no.
So I became a human bug.
You see, in those days, we did not have the technical listening equipment we have now.
So yours truly was put in a German uniform and made to bunk down in the same prison dormitory as the captured German generals.
I had to listen to what they were saying, especially in case one of them started talking about Paulus.
I lay there with my face to the wall because I was afraid they might have recognized me.
You see, I had dealt with them when they had first been captured.
So I just lay there and listened.
Suddenly I heard them talking about him, although they didn't use his name specifically.
There's a German title, "Ober," which means "commander in chief.
" They were saying that the Ober had said something and that he was here and that he was still here.
So I concluded that Paulus was still in Stalingrad.
NARRATOR: And when Paulus, instructed by Hitler to kill himself, is captured in the basement of a city store, Stalin uses him as Hitler had done for propaganda.
But though he is berated before the world's press, Paulus tells no bitter tales of treachery, just name, rank, and serial number.
Along with their commander, some 91,000 German survivors have surrendered.
They have all been Hitler's victims, and now they are destined to suffer at Stalin's hands.
For the dictators, roles have been reversed since Kharkov.
Now, as Hitler counts the massive cost of his obsession with Stalin's city, the Soviet leader gloats over pictures of captured generals.
But if Stalin, like his enemy, believes that film is the key to posterity's blessing, he is wrong.
The Wehrmacht will never again trespass so far to the east, and the victory marks a turning point in the fortunes of the Soviet Union.
But the great monument by the Volga belongs not to men of destiny, nor to tyrants, but to ordinary men and women.
She is the motherland.
But she is a mother, too.
Her cry is victory but also passionate grief for her children, for the gladiators, hurled by uncaring despots into the abyss of Stalingrad.
[Ominous music.]
[Speaking German.]
NARRATOR: May, 1942.
As the spring campaigning season opens, the Red Army's victories of late 1941 seem suddenly meaningless, and Hitler's damaged confidence receives a massive boost.
The hasty Soviet attack in the south against Kharkov is swallowed up by a German counteroffensive.
Hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops are captured, destined for Nazi prison camps.
These are losses the Red Army can ill afford.
Because Kharkov will become the springboard for Hitler's own summer assault on the Caucasus.
The Führer is confident now, certain that the Wehrmacht can seize the vital oil centers of Grozny and Baku.
And from late June, his armies sweep south into mountain country.
But Stalin has concentrated Red Army reserves to protect Moscow, and the offensive takes it by surprise.
It is hurled into hasty retreat, seeking refuge in the hills, able only to sabotage the precious oil fields it leaves behind.
And as German units advance, there are some who greet them as liberators, entrusting nationalist dreams to these new masters.
They will learn the tragic truth soon enough.
But as it retreats and regroups, the Red Army becomes stronger and more coherent.
And the rolling thunder of the Panzers, at first unstoppable, is silenced by stubborn defense on the only road through the mountains to Baku.
But though the great refineries are still working for the Soviet people, a new peril looms.
Two smaller German armies have been advancing slowly east towards the industrial city of Stalingrad.
As Hitler's ambitions are thwarted further south, he sees a chance to cut all links between Moscow and the Caucasus.
The city on the Volga becomes his new prime target.
The vaunted German Sixth Army, conqueror of Paris in 1940, spearheads the drive, and again the Red Army tumbles back.
For Soviet soldiers, this could so easily be the end.
Even Stalin's son has been captured, and his image on propaganda leaflets adds credence to German claims of imminent victory.
But Stalin will tolerate no more rapid retreats, and on the brink of catastrophe, he resorts, as always, to terror.
Stalin's secret Order Number 227, issued under his signature in late July, 1942.
This notorious document makes any unauthorized retreat punishable by death.
"Not one step back.
" Stalin means it literally.
And this unique footage shows NKVD troops putting his edict into practice.
They're known as blocking units.
Deployed just behind the troops, they pass instant sentence on any who disobey Order 227.
And the blocking troops themselves? In Stalin's world, almost anybody can become a law enforcer young and old conscripts, national minorities, NKVD personnel.
And some blocking units can boast an extraordinary collection of talents.
Anna Bugrimova, on the left, fought with them and knew them well.
[Speaking Russian.]
INTERPRETER: The troops went into battle.
We were following them.
We were about 500 meters behind them.
No one could turn and run back.
If someone did, he would be shot on the spot by our blocking units or arrested by the special division of NKVD.
I had the carbine.
And then my friends got a pistol for me, and I threw away the carbine.
These Siberians were quite old.
Our blocking unit was made up of Siberians, former convicts who had robbed banks and large factories.
They were serious criminals, but they treated me well.
NARRATOR: Appropriate purveyors of Stalin's bitter medicine, enforcing the Supreme Commander's will without hesitation or mercy.
And Stalin has introduced another grim aid to discipline penal battalions.
Each of these convicts must serve in the penal unit for three months, not a day more, but for many, that will be too long.
Even petty transgressors pilferers, shirkers, anyone who upsets an officer have reason to fear the Red Army's field tribunals.
Guilty is always their favorite verdict.
And the inevitable transfer to penal service is virtually a death sentence.
They are the first thrown into every hopeless fight, the first to face every deadly firestorm.
Yet, they often fight well and with rare commitment.
Soldiers with something to prove, terrified, of course, but desperate to wipe away the stigma of their misdoings.
A battle wound is enough to earn release.
But each casualty is carefully examined by security officers in case the damage should be self-inflicted or the work of blocking units.
The genuinely wounded will find the forgiving words "atoned with his own blood" added to their records.
And the dead are granted the same consolation, though in life they are expendable.
True cannon fodder, their combat achievements with penal units are ignored by official records.
That policy still outrages former Red Air Force pilot, Artyom Anfinogenov.
INTERPRETER: The pilots from the penal squadrons were sent on the most dangerous missions, most important of all, river crossings, which were fundamental in deciding the outcome of Stalingrad, then to attack airfields and large concentrations of tanks, the three types of missions that the penal squadrons were sent on.
But they were given no official recognition for these combat missions.
Normally, a pilot would carry out a combat mission, and normally, for each one, he would get a credit.
For ground-attack squadrons, it was the number of combat missions that you undertook that was important.
Fighter pilots would get a credit for every dogfight and enemy aircraft shot down.
But ground-attack pilots would get a credit for every combat mission, and this would all count towards the pilot's war record.
But the penal squadrons were not credited with their combat missions, so you would fly, you would fight, you would hit the Germans, but you would not get credit for it until you were eventually wounded or until the commander might eventually judge that you had served your term.
NARRATOR: And for any pilot in action, the first wound is usually the last.
They may be forgiven for thinking that capture is the safest way out of this war.
But though it is merciless, arbitrary, and utterly dehumanizing, Stalin's program of unbending oppression does galvanize the Red Army.
Suren Mirzoyan was a commando with the 62nd Army defending Stalingrad.
INTERPRETER: Some people think that Order 227 was a criminal order.
No! It was vital to the country's defense.
It was an important, galvanizing factor.
If there hadn't been that order, those in retreat who'd already got used to falling back would have continued.
But where could they go? Stalin was right when he said that beyond the Volga there was nowhere further for us to retreat.
One time, when they tried to capture one of our commanders, he stood up in the trench, just stood there in the trench, and showed them what he had.
He was a soldier.
But he was surrounded.
He was out of ammunition, grenades, everything, because he had spent it all.
So he got up, and in an act of supreme defiance, he pulled down his trousers and said, "Here, come and take this prisoner!" NARRATOR: But defiance alone will not keep the enemy out of Stalingrad.
By late August, they are at the Volga to the north, and the city is all but surrounded.
Hitler is proclaiming a great triumph of arms.
German victory medals have been struck.
And at first, Stalingrad seems there for the taking.
But this is Stalin's city, the very symbol of his personal prestige, and that is something even women and children are expected to defend.
[Speaking Russian.]
INTERPRETER: So we went across the Volga to Krasnaya Sloboda, right opposite the place we're standing now.
We'd only been there a few days, and then suddenly this local policeman started making regular calls on us and demanding that my father and I go back to Stalingrad at once.
He claimed that my father was spreading unnecessary panic, saying, "You're a coward and panic-spreader.
You have no right to be here, and you should return back to Stalingrad immediately.
" NARRATOR: The 62nd Army is not yet deployed in the city, and only a single blue-coated NKVD division takes the field against the first attacking Panzers.
At its side, workers from the local tractor factory, armed with abundant defiance but with very little else.
[Speaking Russian.]
INTERPRETER: When we got to the front line, this tank with no turret went past us a few times.
It was driven by a man from the factory.
In his patriotic fervor, he hadn't had time to put a turret on.
And he had no cannon, either, only a machine gun.
But our tractor-factory man was determined to defend the motherland with caterpillar tracks and a machine gun alone.
But the Luftwaffe cares nothing for such heroics.
During the last week of August, it launches a campaign of terror bombing.
For the first time, it attempts the systematic destruction, sector by sector, of a Soviet city.
Wave after wave of aircraft swoop over Stalingrad.
Factories, homes, women and children they are all targets.
For five days and nights the onslaught rages, turning the city into a gigantic bonfire.
And when the thunder finally abates, 50,000 lay dead.
Three times as many are injured, victims of Hitler's Luftwaffe, but also of the brutal regime that forced so many of them to remain.
Their home has become a chaos of charred and mangled ruins.
Yet, for Stalingrad citizens, the real nightmare is only just beginning because now the Wehrmacht is moving in to claim the rubble for its own.
As they inch through the suburbs, German troops surely expect a rapid conquest.
Instead, they are entering a savage killing ground for a duel to the death that will rank among the most terrible in human experience.
For at their approach, the ruins spring to furious life.
Soviet soldiers and citizens do not even contemplate surrender.
A thousand desperate battles erupt on the streets, and a wild labyrinth of constantly shifting front lines swamps the city.
Soon even the identification flags will not be enough.
German bombers cannot hope to distinguish friend from foe as the inferno takes complete hold of Stalingrad.
The front line might be a house, an alley, a tramline or a wall.
And every street is a minefield, virtually impossible for tanks or big guns.
Soviet soldiers, denied air and artillery support, must fight eyeball-to-eyeball, lives hanging on their wits, their battle skills, and their cunning.
[Speaking Russian.]
Former Red Army marksman Vassily Zaitsev.
INTERPRETER: The fascist snipers used to come here to give the other Germans covering fire when they came to get water from that small spring.
The Volga was only a stone's throw away, but the Nazis were dying of thirst.
So that is how this snipers duel flared up.
All in all, it went on for three days.
But it ended with victory for us in some five seconds.
The fascists would come to the duel well prepared.
He'd already taken out two of my snipers.
Then with the help of a couple of others, I finally managed to pick him off.
I would never have guessed what kind of big shot had flown to Stalingrad, but when we dragged him out, we found he'd been the head of the Berlin sniper school.
NARRATOR: But there is heroism beyond the black arts of trench warfare.
This house is defended by a single platoon of Stalin's gladiators, Sergeant Pavlov's platoon.
Completely surrounded by Germans, Pavlov's men hold this vital strong point until relief comes 59 days later, long enough for one woman, one among many crowded into the cellar, to give birth amid the orgy of death that is Stalingrad that autumn.
INTERPRETER: The streets were littered with dead women and children, their dismembered bodies burnt or half-burnt.
That produced a very strong effect on us.
We fought like wild animals for every house, every piece of land.
We weren't afraid of anything.
Once, after the Germans had taken a building near us, a section under the command of one of our sergeants went in and in 24 hours had stabbed the whole of their company.
And how did they do it? They slaughtered all of them with bare steel in that one night.
They took revenge and really enjoyed it.
It was as if they wanted to say to the Germans, "You decided to come here, so it's here you'll stay.
None of you will ever get back home.
" NARRATOR: Yet slowly, inevitably, the 62nd Army is giving ground.
Reinforcements are still trickling across the Volga, but as the Wehrmacht prepares to storm that slender lifeline, it can only be held at terrible cost.
Casualties are appalling, and nurses must struggle through a hail of fire to rescue them.
In the magnificent spirit of Soviet women in wartime, they dutifully risk their own lives for the lives of soldiers.
But their orders demand still more, and many perish in the act of saving priceless weapons.
The Volga crossing as reconstructed by contemporary Soviet filmmakers.
Soviet reinforcements attempting to reach the city scramble ashore, escaping from one nightmare into another.
And some days, the river runs red with their blood.
Dr.
Boris Perepechaev treated casualties at the Volga crossing.
[Speaking Russian.]
INTERPRETER: Every night, launches came over from the left bank, put down boards, unloaded fresh reinforcements, and took back the wounded.
There were so many corpses there that you just couldn't help but step on them.
The whole embankment was piled with corpses.
Sometimes there were wounded among them as well.
So occasionally, you'd be walking over these dead bodies, and one of them would suddenly let out a shout, "Watch where you're going, you clumsy oaf!" Well, with all this going on, one night I had a bit of a mental slip, though I didn't realize it at the time.
I was walking along that riverbank, and suddenly I remembered a song from the film Captain Grant's Children, and I just started to sing it.
"There, where horses tread on the corpses, where the land is painted in blood.
" People started cursing and swearing at me from all sides.
The Germans who were positioned nearby must have heard all this, because they started firing at us with their heavy machine gun.
I fell flat on the ground.
I don't know who I fell on or what I fell on, but I just fell.
I waited for a bit till the launch came, and then I left, unhurt.
NARRATOR: German forces now control most of the Stalingrad area, and Hitler is already claiming total victory.
And though Soviet defenders are giving everything, the enemy is still pushing east across the city.
General Chuikov, in command of the 62nd Army, mounts a skillful campaign, but his outnumbered troops cannot hope to stop the Wehrmacht.
And by early November, it has cut a swath across Stalingrad, splitting the 62nd Army in two.
In a last desperate gesture, Chuikov mounts assault after assault on the Mamaev Mound, a vital patch of high ground, the very hub of the battle zone.
The hill changes hands no less than eight times, as Chuikov throws everything into the fray, every soldier and anything that flies.
[Speaking Russian.]
INTERPRETER: An endless battle was going on and over Mamaev Mound.
Our troops were storming it again, and the infantry, which was climbing up, it needed air support.
When German bomber planes appeared, Khryukin, the local air-force commander, urgently called a fighter-plane squadron to chase them off and cover our infantry troops.
A squadron of seven planes I don't want to mention the squadron captain's name took off, and with an armada of German bombers flying towards them, they evaded the fighting, turned off, and flew up the Volga.
Khryukin immediately ordered the captain to be shot, and as I read later in the official report about the execution, all the other pilots were sent to the penal squadron.
I'll tell you, the aircraft losses at Stalingrad were terrible.
Just terrible.
An average air-force regiment might be at the front for a week and then cease to exist.
That gives you some idea how bad our losses were.
And the reasons Well, first and foremost, the enormous intensity and the importance of the actual struggle itself.
Ultimately, it was a question of life or death for our country and people.
On the other hand, everything was thrown into it like into a furnace, whether our regiment was ready or not.
A hole in the line had to be filled, so pilots like me made up 100 regiments consisting entirely of sergeants.
I was a sergeant, you understand.
100 regiments of sergeants were given crash training just before the war.
80% of them were at Stalingrad.
One fine day, just after we had finished the summer course at the pilot-training camp in the Urals near Perm, they drew up all graduated pilots in ranks and gave a command.
All those with names beginning with the letters "A" to "K" were to turn right and march quickly back to the barracks.
And those beginning with "L" to "Z" had to turn left and quick march to the quartermaster's stores and from there immediately go and join the infantry troops at Stalingrad.
Thus it was that they sent trained pilots off to join the infantry at Stalingrad.
And those pilots whose names began with the letters "A" to "K," with me among them, because my name is Anfinogenov, flew to the front.
So I flew to the front with a grand total of just 3 hours, 40 minutes training in all.
NARRATOR: Lydia Litvyak is a pilot with one of three female fighter groups in Stalingrad, and a good one.
10 Luftwaffe aircraft have fallen to her machine guns.
One more, and she will qualify for the ultimate accolade, Hero of the Soviet Union.
But then her lover, flying with a neighboring squadron, is killed, and, as her brother recalls, the loss destroys her.
INTERPRETER: She used to write us letters every day on funny triangle-shaped letter paper, addressed to Mother in Europe.
In the last letter, she wrote, "Mother, I dreamt that I was standing on the bank of a big, stormy river, and my beloved Alyosha was calling me from the other side.
" And Mother said, "That's it.
She is going to die.
" NARRATOR: And what of the millions of Soviet citizens away from the front line? As propaganda fixes every eye on the struggle for Stalingrad, they respond with whatever they can give their jewelry, their money, anything to help preserve the lives of husbands, brothers, and sons trapped in the inferno.
They are all part of a monumental national effort to save Stalingrad.
And at the heart of the Soviet crusade, hidden from Hitler's gaze, one of the most astonishing enterprises in the history of warfare.
Machinery and manpower from the great industrial regions of the western USSR have been snatched from the very jaws of Nazi invasion.
Now a vast migration east is under way east, beyond the Urals, where they plant explosives in the frozen ground and rebuild Soviet war production from scratch.
They work fast through the grueling winter, but the motherland's need is desperate, and many plants must begin operating before they have a roof.
By the end of the war, more than 2,000 new factories will have sprung up in Siberia, heavy industrial plants producing weapons to sustain the Red Army at the front.
But that army needs men.
And so while Hitler still keeps men away from the front for vital factory work, legions of Soviet children must rise to aid their homeland in its hour of peril.
Alongside their mothers at the lathes, they toil to complete the Siberian miracle, and the future of the Soviet Union depends on them all on the quality of the war machines they produce, on the quantity of oil they extract, and on the barges they pilot to bring it all to the crisis point on the Volga to Stalingrad.
And Stalin, for once, does not squander their endeavors.
The year's defeats have shocked him, and Marshal Zhukov finds his first counterattack proposals greeted with uncharacteristic caution.
INTERPRETER: "So, what have you thought up?" Stalin said as he came over to our map.
"What front is that?" Vasilievsky reported back, "It's a new front that needs to be opened in addition to the Don Front so that we can make a major thrust against the German grouping at Stalingrad.
The left wing of our Stalingrad Front will make a thrust towards Kalach to meet it.
" Stalin says, "But have we got enough forces for such a big operation? Perhaps we should limit it to the thrust along the Don from north to south and south to north.
" We objected to Stalin that if we were to do this, the Germans would quickly deploy their mechanized troops from Stalingrad and parry our thrust.
He said, "We need to think about our plan and calculate our forces and resources.
The main task now is to hold Stalingrad, and don't breathe a word to anyone about the plan.
" NARRATOR: Nothing must distract from the last-ditch battle still being waged inside Stalingrad.
The city has become a global obsession, dominating the world's headlines.
And now, more than ever, Stalin's prestige demands that it shall not fall.
But there is another reason to plan in stealth.
The 6th Army must be kept fully occupied in Stalingrad while the Red Army gathers in the rear, planning its revenge.
While the Soviet Union's distant allies beat paths of their own to the beleaguered city, British aid carried through the icy gauntlet of the Murmansk run or across the Iranian border.
And from the USA's Alaskan airfields, fighter aircraft fly into Siberia to aid a Red Army almost ready to launch its counterstrike.
Artillery Chief Voronov coordinates planning along with General Vatutin, leading the Southwest Front, Rokossovsky, commanding the Don Front, and Eremenko, attended, as ever, by his political shadow Khrushchev.
Their designs are overseen by Stalin's most trusted military advisers, Zhukov and Vasilievsky.
And on the 19th of November, a huge artillery barrage by the Southwest Front pierces the frost, decimating ill-prepared Romanian forces in its path.
This is Operation Uranus.
Vatutin's tanks burst through almost at once.
And Eremenko's southern wing surges forward on the next day.
The Wehrmacht, taken utterly by surprise, cannot stop them.
And as its allies collapse on the flanks, there are no reserves to stem the resurgent Red tide.
Within three days, the Southwest Front has taken Kalach, some 80 kilometers west of Stalingrad.
And on the 23rd of November, a few miles southwest of Kalach, its advance units meet up with Eremenko's forces.
Suddenly, the German 6th Army and the 4th Panzer Army, perhaps 300,000 of Hitler's finest troops, are surrounded inside Stalingrad.
The hunter has been captured by his prey.
An astonished Hitler summons Manstein, his troubleshooter, to Stalingrad.
His sharp troops will breach the Soviet ring surrounding the city and secure the prize Hitler's already promised to the German people.
Two Soviet armies, the 51st and 2nd Guards, are rushed to meet Manstein's relief force and stop it dead in its tracks.
Former Artillery Sergeant Rasporkin was with the guards.
INTERPRETER: Three army corps of around 400,000 soldiers were immediately dispatched by foot.
We set up our field guns as soon as we got there without even digging in.
It just wasn't possible to dig in.
There was no time.
Tanks were breaking through our infantry lines.
I think attitudes and conditions on both sides became more and more inhuman and extreme.
For example, there were some marines who had been killed and then crushed into the earth by the same tanks that had already annihilated them.
What could they possibly hope to gain by crushing them if they were already dead? NARRATOR: The guards pay a high price for stopping Manstein.
Almost two thirds of the army is killed or wounded.
And even faced by Germany's fearsome new Tiger tanks, they fight like the elite units they are.
INTERPRETER: There were times in the tank attacks and artillery barrages when I couldn't keep my teeth together for days on end.
They were chattering so much from fear.
Yes, from fear, my teeth were chattering, and there was no way I could stop them.
On one occasion, for two days, no less.
And when I knocked out a Tiger in Gromoslavka, near Stalingrad, I was so deafened, I lost my power of speech.
We did not need blocking units there, because the guards, they never stepped back.
And as far as I remember, our 2nd Guards Army didn't step back once.
NARRATOR: There will be no relief now for German troops in Stalingrad.
Hitler calls them his champions, but his orders, no escape and no surrender, condemn them to death.
And now GÃring offers comfort to the Reich's besieged heroes.
His Luftwaffe will fly 500 tons of supplies per day into the Stalingrad pocket.
The Luftwaffe tries, but the Red Army brings up extra A.
A.
Batteries, and the lumbering German transports are blown out of the sky in their hundreds.
Soon, even quotas of 50 tons per day cannot be met.
And as the Red Army closes the ring around Stalingrad, advancing cautiously through the snow, taking time to bring up heavy artillery and air support German defenders, shivering in the ruins, are told to fight on, sustained only by glib promises of ultimate victory, along with a little advice from the Führer how to dig a hole in the snow.
Primitive diagrams that almost mock these grizzled veterans in their desperation.
And for frostbite, the Führer recommends a bag over the face.
Yet, like Soviet troops before them, they entertain no thought of surrender.
And as they in turn cling to every bloodstained remnant of the city, icebound apocalypse returns to Stalingrad.
German regimental commander Steidl "The infantry has been living among corpses for the last few weeks.
Corpses on the right.
Corpses on the left.
Corpses next to you.
Corpses under you.
And your rifle.
" INTERPRETER: If a bullet is fired from 100 to 150 meters, it won't go through a frozen body.
So we just piled them up and then rested behind them and took cover.
NARRATOR: For ordinary soldiers on both sides, this is the ghastly climax to a long, dark journey.
INTERPRETER: We even used frozen bodies like stones or locks, throwing them under the wheels of a vehicle if it got bogged down.
The vehicles would then get the necessary traction and move on without a hitch.
Why did we do it? Because they On one occasion, we took back a village.
It was beyond the Don.
The locals there told us how many people had been burned alive by the Germans.
They had put all the young people together in a barn, covered it with dry hay, and burned 30 or 40 of them.
So we thought, "If you burn people alive, we will kill you, we will destroy you.
" There could be no doubt that these sort of atrocities took place.
You know, they did it absolutely without any fear of God.
Yes, it's true.
When a vehicle was stuck, we put one of their corpses under it.
I did it.
We all did it.
And do you know why? Because when I was in that barn and saw the half-burnt bodies, I was so furious.
I said, "See what they've done with our own people, our own Don Cossacks.
" And I swore I would pay them back, although it may have been in a different kind.
But that incident with the vehicle really happened, and I'll never forget it.
NARRATOR: Yes, there is hatred of the invader in Stalingrad.
And it burns ever deeper as Soviet troops uncover evidence of Nazi methods.
This camp held 2,000 of their captured comrades, and by the time it is liberated, only 20 are still alive.
And survivors tell of brutal maltreatment, of grotesque medical experiments.
Is it any wonder they thirst for vengeance? In the heart of the cauldron, Hitler's gladiators know now that they are doomed.
And so, betrayed, they evacuate a few casualties on the last plane out of Stalingrad.
And with it go their last words to families, lovers, friends.
"You should forget it, Marguerite, and do it right away.
I know you want me beside you, not only as a husband and a lover, but as a pianist.
Marguerite, you should know the whole truth.
I don't have my hands anymore, not since December.
The little finger is missing on my left hand, but even worse, frostbite took the middle three fingers on my right hand.
I can only just about hold a mug using the two fingers I have left.
And I have become rather helpless.
You don't understand how important these things are until you lose them.
The only thing I can still do properly is shoot using my little finger.
And I can't shoot all my life, right? So my hands are useless.
Do you feel better now that you know the whole truth?" Ordinary victims resigned to their fates abandoned in Hades, so that their Führer might save face.
And when a Soviet proposal of terms passed across the Romanian sector offers them a chance for honorable surrender, Hitler snatches away the hope.
His stark order, "Fight to the last bullet.
" But though they fight on, the bullets are running out, and the Red Army is still coming at them.
By late January, they're being overwhelmed, and whole regiments are giving up the hopeless struggle.
But as official cameraman Orlyankin discovers, every house in Stalingrad is still a potential death trap.
[Speaking Russian.]
INTERPRETER: On the front where the 13th Rodimtsev Division was fighting, there was a house, a basement to be more precise, where the Germans were hiding and sniping at us.
If they saw one of our lads, they would immediately shoot him.
Well, what happened was this.
Suddenly one of these Fritzes came running out with a white shirt and runs towards us along the basement windows.
So the Fritzes were surrendering like Antioch.
And so our boys moved slowly into the open from out of their trenches and shelters because of the white flag.
And at that moment, just as I was about to start filming, they opened up with a terrifying burst of machine-gun and submachine-gun fire coming from almost all the windows of the building, and our lads, who had only broken cover in order to take these POWs.
That was a law, you see.
If they surrendered, we had to accept them.
And so our soldiers started falling, some dead, some wounded, some just trying to avoid the bullets.
NARRATOR: Finally, on February the 2nd, the last German troops fighting in Stalingrad surrender.
After five long months, a battle that began almost by accident is over.
But 6th Army commander Paulus is not among them.
Historian and wartime intelligence officer Lev Bezymensky.
[Speaking Russian.]
INTERPRETER: When they started to bring in the first captured generals, no one in our reconnaissance unit was 100% sure whether Paulus was alive or dead.
There was a possibility that he might have been rescued at the last moment.
In theory, it would have been possible to get him out of Stalingrad, but in practice, no.
So I became a human bug.
You see, in those days, we did not have the technical listening equipment we have now.
So yours truly was put in a German uniform and made to bunk down in the same prison dormitory as the captured German generals.
I had to listen to what they were saying, especially in case one of them started talking about Paulus.
I lay there with my face to the wall because I was afraid they might have recognized me.
You see, I had dealt with them when they had first been captured.
So I just lay there and listened.
Suddenly I heard them talking about him, although they didn't use his name specifically.
There's a German title, "Ober," which means "commander in chief.
" They were saying that the Ober had said something and that he was here and that he was still here.
So I concluded that Paulus was still in Stalingrad.
NARRATOR: And when Paulus, instructed by Hitler to kill himself, is captured in the basement of a city store, Stalin uses him as Hitler had done for propaganda.
But though he is berated before the world's press, Paulus tells no bitter tales of treachery, just name, rank, and serial number.
Along with their commander, some 91,000 German survivors have surrendered.
They have all been Hitler's victims, and now they are destined to suffer at Stalin's hands.
For the dictators, roles have been reversed since Kharkov.
Now, as Hitler counts the massive cost of his obsession with Stalin's city, the Soviet leader gloats over pictures of captured generals.
But if Stalin, like his enemy, believes that film is the key to posterity's blessing, he is wrong.
The Wehrmacht will never again trespass so far to the east, and the victory marks a turning point in the fortunes of the Soviet Union.
But the great monument by the Volga belongs not to men of destiny, nor to tyrants, but to ordinary men and women.
She is the motherland.
But she is a mother, too.
Her cry is victory but also passionate grief for her children, for the gladiators, hurled by uncaring despots into the abyss of Stalingrad.