Russia's War: Blood Upon the Snow (1997) s01e07 Episode Script
The Citadel
1 [Woman singing.]
[Ominous music.]
NARRATOR: March, 1943.
The Red Army's great victory at Stalingrad has lit a beacon of hope for the Soviet people.
The tide of war is turning.
At last, Stalin's troops begin the long drive west.
Even the very young are swept up in a new wave of popular determination.
For these children, orphaned by war, the Soviet motherland is their only parent.
When the time comes, they are prepared to stand and fight alongside their fellow countrymen and defend her to the last.
Their childhood dreams, sacrificed at the altar of war, these boys yearn only to join the victorious troops they idolize.
What can they know of the dull, squalid reality that is frontline existence, punctuated only by moments of terror and horror? Little boys, no more than 8 or 9 years old, flock to new military schools all over the Soviet Union.
Like the Alexander Suvorov Academy, named after Catherine the Great's favorite general.
Here they are groomed for battle, schooled in military drill, spoon-fed the ideal of patriotic self-sacrifice.
These boys are lucky.
This war will be over before they're big enough to wield machine guns or steer tanks into enemy fire.
But time and age are not on the side of these recruits.
Though they have fought and survived the Battle of Stalingrad, their commanders can permit them no rest.
Instead, they must struggle on through the late-winter blizzards, instruments of their Supreme Commander's lust for glory.
Stalin has sampled victory at Stalingrad, and he wants to taste it again.
He cares nothing for the lives of ordinary soldiers.
He is bent only on burnishing his name with the luster reserved for history's mightiest warlords.
From early February, Stalin orders new offensives all along the southern fronts.
The Red Army drives deep into Nazi-held territories, fighting exhaustion, cold, mud.
And in the skies, the protective umbrella of the Red Air Force, beating back Luftwaffe resistance and pounding German troop positions.
Inch by inch, the infantry advances reclaiming lands devastated by retreating Germans, rescuing communities shattered by the agonies of occupation.
Now it is safe to come out of hiding, and there is work to be done in the newly liberated lands.
Children must be fed.
And they must be schooled, taught something of life among the ruins.
[Bell tolls.]
But for older children, the call to war is irresistible.
At the Red Navy's Northern Fleet school, some cadets already wear battle decorations.
Soviet youth is champing at the bit, signaling its readiness for the fight against Germany.
30 years on, their boyish enthusiasm barely dimmed, survivors revisit the school.
INTERPRETER 1: Right here.
This is where the entrance was, where the stone is.
This is the first.
This is the second.
This is it.
This is it.
INTERPRETER 2: This is the entrance.
Yes, this is the entrance to the dugout, to the first one.
INTERPRETER 3: It's all been cleared away now.
INTERPRETER 2: Really brings back memories.
INTERPRETER 3: It certainly does.
INTERPRETER 1: Doesn't seem all those years ago.
INTERPRETER 3: I know.
It seems more like yesterday.
INTERPRETER 1: This is where the dugout starts, and this is the entrance to the dugout.
This is where we had a sort of parade ground, the stones in a kind of path.
INTERPRETER 3: Even the parade ground's overgrown.
You know, the one where we used to drill in front of the dugouts.
We nearly didn't find it because it was overgrown with trees.
[Train whistle blows.]
NARRATOR: Red Army recruits board their trains for the front in the spring of 1943.
They are destined to take part in one of history's bloodiest battles.
Russian author Bulat Okudzhava was among them.
[Speaking Russian.]
INTERPRETER: We were on our way to the front for the first time.
I was shivering all over, and I couldn't get any sleep on the troop train.
I couldn't sleep because I was on my way to fight at the front.
They issued us with a carbine leash as well as a uniform.
So I had a carbine and an ammunition belt.
Everyone was asleep, but I couldn't sleep.
Finally, the train stopped somewhere in the middle of the night, and I climbed out of my carriage, out of the cattle track, and started to walk the length of it up and down with my carbine at the ready, although nobody had given me an order to do this.
Later, I was stopped and told to go on and get some sleep, but I couldn't.
I had to play the part of a real soldier.
[Laughs.]
NARRATOR: He is not alone.
Many share his anxiety and anticipation.
They all realize the Red Army is being built up for a massive offensive.
Former paratrooper, Konstantin Vanshenkin.
INTERPRETER: The army was getting younger, and with each year, the interval between drafts got shorter and shorter.
For example, I was called up in year 10 at school, just after the second term, because I'd just turned 17.
And, of course, you know, the younger they were, the more likely they were to die at the front.
They were completely ill-prepared for it, physically and in every way.
Of course, they were full of so-called spirit.
They had that in abundance.
But they were gradually getting younger and younger.
NARRATOR: En masse recruitment is not the only sign that some great confrontation is surely coming.
As the Red Army's manpower mushrooms, an enormous national effort is mounted to provide it with weapons and supplies.
The mass transfer of Soviet industrial assets from the war-torn west to safe locations east of the Urals, begun in 1941, is almost complete by the start of 1943.
It has been an epic achievement, enabling Soviet heavy industry to reach stupendous production targets.
As conscription drains the labor force, women fill more and more vital factory jobs.
Their one all-important priority weapons production.
And Stalin's iron hand ensures unprecedented growth in output.
Gulag prisoners are used to build new factories, and conscripted laborers, sometimes working 20-hour shifts, know that to be caught slacking for just one minute can mean a whole year's imprisonment under Stalin's law.
By now, the Soviet war machine is producing weapons of the highest quality.
Summer's approach finds massed fleets of modern Shturmovik ground-attack planes and Petlyakov bombers ready for action.
Along with thousands of the highly successful T34 and KV tanks, now modified for maximum efficiency and versatility.
The same desperate race to prepare is underway in Germany, where much is expected of two new heavy tanks the fearsome Panthers and Tigers.
Both are being rushed into service for action in the east.
German aircraft output is stepped up, though the Luftwaffe is denied new designs in favor of rapid production.
And as Hitler orders the German people to a new total war footing, almost a million workers are transferred into the army.
But Hitler dare not focus on a single theater of war.
Germany must have defenses against Anglo-American bombing attacks.
It needs submarines for the desperate battle in progress across the world's sea lanes.
And Germany must send troops to bolster its faltering allies.
The Führer knows that if his stretched forces are to defeat the Red Army in 1943, they must attack quickly before it can recover from the losses of the winter.
Hitler's strategy is simple and optimistic.
In a two-pronged attack, he plans to destroy the Soviet position around Kursk, on the map, a great bulge 130 miles long and 100 miles deep at the center of the Eastern Front.
The people of the steppe around Kursk inhabit a natural granary, a prize contested by successive invaders through the centuries.
Mongols, Napoleon's armies, White Russians all have fought for this land.
It is an obvious target for a German offensive.
As the snows melt in the spring of 1943, Hitler expects to seize the grain fields and to eliminate any possibility of a Red Army attack.
But Stalin's fierce determination to increase the strength of the Red Army and its supply lines means that the Wehrmacht now faces a formidable foe.
Moscow in April.
Intelligence is flooding into the Kremlin from the Kursk sector.
Coordinated by Deputy Chief of Staff Antonov, it gives an increasingly accurate picture of German intentions.
For Stalin's general staff, this is a rare opportunity for finesse.
They plan to contain the German offensive by constructing deep defenses stretching tens of miles behind the front and then to crush the Wehrmacht with massive Red Army counterattacks.
At first, Stalin instinctively rejects this strategy.
As usual, he demands an immediate offensive.
But Deputy Supreme Commander Zhukov and Red Army Chief of Staff Vasilievsky advise against it.
And as he is at last learning to do, Stalin heeds the counsel of his best generals.
Soviet units are ordered to dig in and defend Kursk, amassed to draw the Wehrmacht into a trap.
And so now two gigantic armies are converging, led by men who hold the destinies of huge empires in their hands.
On the German side, Field Marshal Kluge commands forces allocated for the northern pincer.
The dauntless Manstein will control the southern offensive.
On the Soviet side, Rokossovsky leads the northern sector.
And Stalin appoints General Vatutin to lead the southern defense.
The vital reserve army group reinforcing them both is entrusted to Konev.
The blueprints for battle have been laid down.
Now it is a matter of waiting.
And waiting.
And waiting.
Weeks pass.
Soviet soldiers lie in their trenches, expecting attack at any time.
Tense days.
But at least the Red Army's fledgling formations are granted time to learn crucial battle skills.
[Speaking Russian.]
INTERPRETER: Of course it was frightening, because we were in reserve for so long.
Let's work it out.
February, March, April, May.
So for four to five months.
We didn't even know how to use a rifle.
But while we're in reserve, the old hands taught us everything about weapons, light and heavy machine guns and so on and submachine guns.
Well, it was very frightening, but war is war.
NARRATOR: April, May, June.
Hitler can only fume as his attack is repeatedly postponed because the new tanks are not ready.
But every delay is a military blessing for the Soviet Union.
And now, as early summer warms the steppes, Soviet troops at Kursk receive another kind of blessing, the Kursk Madonna, discovered by a 13th-century peasant in the roots of a tree.
For seven centuries, according to local legend, the Madonna stood guard over the region and its people, protecting them from harm.
A monastery was built on the site of the tree, an important shrine.
In 1917, the monastery and its Madonna fell victim to a revolution with no use for icons or religious worship.
The Madonna was lost and its home taken over by the NKVD, who turned it into a holiday camp.
But in 1943, as the hour of decision approaches, custom and religion are revived under the stress of war, and a copy of the Madonna is presented to Rokossovsky's troops, a symbol of shared struggle, of ancient glories beyond even Stalin's power to purloin, a talisman to ease the burden of their deadly waiting game.
But now, as the armies swelter in high summer, the waiting is almost over.
The greatest tank battle of all time is about to begin.
The 4th of July.
A Soviet raiding party brings vital news.
Under interrogation, a German prisoner gives full details of the Wehrmacht's plans.
The German offensive, Operation Citadel, will begin that night.
The tension reaches a new climax now.
Every unit on both sides is at the peak of readiness, and a deathly quiet falls over the front lines.
Word of the planned attack is rushed to Stalin.
But still the gigantic armies wait.
With 3,500 tanks and 19,000 guns at their backs, 1.
3 million Soviet troops hold their breath.
Across the lines, a million German troops can call on 2,700 tanks, 10,000 guns.
Yet on the eve of battle, as Rokossovsky's memoirs tell, this vast array is so quiet that a dripping tap sounds like an alarm bell.
[Dripping.]
[Explosions and shots.]
Until, at midnight, the unnatural calm is ruptured by a massive Soviet artillery strike.
As the ground shakes and the cauldron of Kursk comes at last to the boil, Soviet shells and rockets disrupt final German preparations, and Operation Citadel suffers one last delay.
[Explosions and shots.]
It is an ill omen for the Panzer armies.
Their best units are eventually on the attack by morning.
But Soviet resurgence has been underestimated by the German high command.
Reinforcements are already rushing to threatened areas, and the confident German advance soon becomes a crawl.
For almost a week, Soviet tanks confront German in an awesome clash of armor.
[Dramatic music.]
The battle's epicenters are searing furnaces, engulfing millions of men, women, and boys in a hideous bedlam of noise, dust, and death.
[Speaking Russian.]
INTERPRETER: There was so much shrapnel.
It was a battle with millions of bombs and shells and so much shrapnel.
There's still a lot of it there.
Disarmed mines and shells, that sort of thing.
You know what I mean.
On the 5th and 6th of July, our division was very much in the thick of things.
We lost 2,500 men in just two days.
We all finally pulled back to the village of Berezovets to be reinforced.
But only on the 12th did we go back into the attack.
[Explosions.]
NARRATOR: And above the nightmare on the ground, the air fleets do battle.
Almost 3,000 Soviet war planes and some 2,000 German machines, dealing sudden death to ground forces.
And to each other.
[Planes rumble.]
[Shots.]
The 12th of July.
A great barrage of Katyusha rockets and artillery announces counter offenses by four more Soviet armies sweeping around the rear of the battered German divisions.
[Cannon shots and explosions.]
[Whistle blows.]
The battle that follows is another massive infantry struggle.
And every available Soviet aircraft is called upon to help drive the Luftwaffe from the skies.
[Shots fired.]
[Bombs whir.]
But above all, it is another cataclysmic clash of tanks.
This is the day of the tank.
The land war between Germany and the Soviet Union is the definitive armored conflict in human history, and Kursk its appalling climax.
Germany's vaunted Panthers and Tigers are the most powerful tanks in the world, but they are relatively few.
Though the fighting is, if anything, even more intense in this second stage of the battle, Soviet T34s and KVs remain masters of the battlefield.
On the 13th of July, Hitler abandons hopes of a quick victory at Kursk and German offensive operations are halted.
The Führer's eastern commanders are instructed to hold the Red Army at bay, but it is too late.
The trap is closing.
The Wehrmacht can only retreat.
It leaves behind the mangled debris of war, battle zones littered with charred and broken tanks and the bodies of hundreds of thousands of men.
For survivors of this savage inferno, shattered, shell-shocked, stunned by the horrors they have witnessed, there can be no joy.
[Screaming and breaking.]
On the 5th of August, Soviet forces retake the cities of Orel and Belgorod.
It is the climax to a stunning victory.
Citizens pour from their homes to welcome the liberators, and victory celebrations throng the streets.
In Moscow, triumphant artillery salutes announce the city's liberation and the Red Army's decisive defeat of the invaders.
The world must be told of Stalin's victories, although they belong, in truth, to the whole Soviet people.
The dictator's glory has been bought with the blood of ordinary men and ordinary women, like Leningrad's female firefighters performing full-time rescue work in the besieged city.
Like the antiaircraft gunners at their stations all over the western Soviet Union.
Or like Anna Kovalyova, bomb-disposal expert credited with single-handedly disarming 42 bombs.
For Anna Kovalyova and her comrades in home-defense units, there is little enough time for relaxation.
[Tranquil music plays.]
[Singing in Russian.]
NARRATOR: And even fewer moments of peace for Soviet women in frontline roles.
Ground crew, medical personnel, and drivers like Yelena lvanova.
[Speaking Russian.]
INTERPRETER: I was passing the conscription office, and an officer was sitting on the windowsill.
His son was at the kindergarten where I worked, and he said, "lvanova, are you going to join up?" And I said, "Yes, I'll join up.
" He was laughing, and so was I.
And he said, "I'm not joking.
I'm being serious.
" And so I said, "I'll join up.
" I went to the conscription office, and they said, "Get yourself ready for the Army.
" And at lunchtime, they sent us off.
REPORTER: To be trained as a driver? INTERPRETER: Yes.
And almost the whole time, I used to drive air crews to and from the mess.
If there were no vehicles available, then I'd be put on to transport the bombs to the planes.
REPORTER: On the 1.
5- Ton truck? INTERPRETER: Yes.
And I used to paint the bombs with any other girls who were free.
One day, we'd paint the bombs sky blue.
And on another day, with stripes like a tiger.
They always had some sort of camouflage.
Every day, the girls who drove the tractors used to level the ground to make it easier for the planes to land and take off.
NARRATOR: 50 years on, she can still handle a Jeep.
These stories have their parallels in the West, but Soviet women are also expected to play a full part in combat operations.
These are the pilots of the Marina Raskova night-bomber squadron.
Their old wooden U-2 biplanes are slow and fragile, known as "oil stoves.
" But they are stable and quiet, ideal for precision low-level attack.
The regiment is successful enough to earn a German nickname the "night witches.
" [Speaking Russian.]
INTERPRETER: We flew without parachutes, so of course people were burned alive along with their planes.
But our spirits never dropped, and no one questioned why we were there.
I myself succeeded in completing 852 military missions during the entire war.
And I'll never forget flying in the Kuban, because it was there that we lost more pilots than anywhere else.
I flew up to the target and delivered my bombs.
There were explosions, and shells were bursting everywhere, which meant we'd hit the warehouse.
But at that moment, five searchlights switched on.
Then, night fighters entered the fray, guns blazing.
The enemy threw everything at us that night, and four complete crews were killed in one mission.
That was our heaviest loss of the whole war.
In one night, so many pilots.
NARRATOR: As the autumn unfolds, the Red Army will bury many more dead heroes.
This is the funeral of Mariya Oktyabrskaya.
She raised public subscriptions to buy a tank and volunteered for training as its driver.
Killed in action near Smolensk, she's given a hero's send-off.
[Shots fired.]
Kiev, so long enslaved by Nazi occupation, beckons the Red Army now.
And so it must resume the long road west, into Ukraine to the mighty Dnieper River and beyond.
And as they sweep towards the western borders, there are many more victims of Hitler's tyranny to be freed.
Terrible proofs of his genocidal madness to be unveiled, like the bodies of Ukrainian miners tossed down shafts for refusing to cooperate with the German regime.
[Russian voice-over speakers.]
Soviet authorities broadcast details of Nazi crimes to fan the flames of hatred against the invader.
[Speaking Russian.]
NARRATOR: But there is so much grief, and the occupied lands have seen so much senseless slaughter that these people need no advertisement of their tragedy beyond their own simple memorial.
[Choir harmonizing.]
[Choir picks up intensity.]
It is a song to inspire a whirlwind of Red Army revenge as it strikes now against the mighty barrier of the Dnieper River.
[Explosions.]
The first troops to reach the river are easy targets for the Luftwaffe.
And the Dnieper could delay the Red Army for months, as the Rhine will later hold the British Army in the west.
Witnesses will describe it as a river of blood, bloated with the corpses of drowned soldiers.
[Bombs whir.]
The battle is most intense north and south of Kiev itself, where German defenders hold commanding heights on the west bank.
But the Red Army is permitted no hesitation.
As German air strength dwindles, Soviet troops swarm out of the water, charging from their beachheads up the hill and into the viper's nest.
[Shots and explosions.]
They are across the length of the river before the Wehrmacht is able to secure its defenses.
But they pay a high price for their courage.
Of the 11,000 wartime soldiers awarded the USSR's highest battle honor, Hero of the Soviet Union, almost half win their medal at the Dnieper.
Now, once more, the Red Army is in pursuit of a retreating enemy and racing towards the year's climactic conquest, towards Kiev, capital of Ukraine.
As winter draws near, Stalin sees Kiev as the crowning glory of his fabulously successful year.
He wants the city at any cost.
And he wants it before the 7th of November, anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.
Both sides pay a huge price for the satisfaction of Stalin's whim.
More than half a million soldiers and citizens die in the battle for the city.
Vatutin's tanks enter Kiev on the 6th of November, just one day before Stalin's deadline.
It is a battered prize, a scene of appalling devastation to rank with the worst bombing atrocities in the West a city in ruins.
[Wind blows.]
On the evening of the 6th, 700 miles away in Moscow, artillery rings out in triumph once more.
[Shots fired.]
And that same night, Stalin delivers his annual anniversary address to the nation.
[Speaking Russian.]
INTERPRETER: In honor of the 26th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, a report is to be presented by Comrade Stalin, Chairman of the State Defense Committee.
[Cheers and applause.]
NARRATOR: He will speak, as usual, from the Kremlin Palace, and his entrance is carefully staged.
[Cheers and applause.]
He remains out of sight at the back of the podium.
The applause must reach a frenzied crescendo before he will step out in front of his people.
[Applause continues.]
Stained with the blood of countless Soviet soldiers and citizens, Stalin assumes the mantle of victorious warlord for the first time.
[Applause continues.]
He is no orator, no Churchill or Hitler.
In rough Georgian tones, he will grind out the few words he needs.
But he oozes power.
[Applause continues.]
[Speaking Russian.]
INTERPRETER: Comrades, all the peoples of the Soviet Union are now celebrating the 26th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution.
For the third time, our country celebrates the anniversary of its People's Revolution in this, the third year of the Great Patriotic War.
The year that has passed since the last anniversary has been the turning point in the Patriotic War.
It is the turning point because this year the Red Army, for the first time in the whole war, has managed to put into effect a major summer offensive against the German forces in which the German troops, under the heavy onslaught of our armies, were forced to withdraw at speed from the territories which they had seized.
At times, to avoid encirclement, they have had to retreat so fast that they have left behind them on the battlefield vast amounts of equipment, ammunition, wounded officers and men.
So, the success of our summer campaign in the second half of this year can be seen as the continuation and completion of our winter campaign at the beginning of this year.
Now that the Red Army has followed the success of its winter campaign with a powerful blow against the German forces in the summer, we can consider dead and buried the old myth that the Red Army is not capable of carrying out successful offensives in summertime.
NARRATOR: Stalin talks of victories and armies, but never of victims or people.
He gives no thought to those he calls "the little cogs in the mechanism," the men and women whose blood has paid for his victories.
They know that a chasm separates them from the dictator.
[Speaking Russian.]
INTERPRETER: I don't remember us talking about Stalin at all in the trenches, in the lulls between fighting.
At meetings, of course, they used to shout slogans.
But I don't remember soldiers talking about him among themselves.
He was somewhere up there, the leader, the celestial being, unapproachable.
And of course, if anyone asked me, I would say completely sincerely that he was a genius, that he was our leader, and that he would lead us to victory.
That used to happen.
But he had no place in the normal run of things.
We used to talk about our pasts, about bread, about potatoes, and whatever else we could get our hands on, or how to grab a couple of moments of sleep.
NARRATOR: Raised to new heights at home, Stalin's reputation has also soared on the international stage.
In Britain, they have forged a sword, a gift to the victor of Stalingrad from King George.
Yet one dark deed could still undermine Stalin's newfound global status.
Earlier, in 1943, at Katyn Forest near Smolensk, German-occupying authorities had unearthed the mass graves of 20,000 Polish officers.
International observers were invited to support Berlin's claim that the murders were carried out by the NKVD, but Stalin had reacted furiously, denying any link with the massacres.
Posterity will reveal that he is steeped in the blood of these helpless victims.
But when Allied leaders meet in Tehran, Churchill and Roosevelt must swallow their doubts and suspicions.
They can only back their most important ally in the face of outraged protest from exiled Poles.
And so Stalin is spared the backlash he fears from the atrocities at Katyn.
His sword is presented, and Stalin stands as an undisputed world leader, backed by the most powerful army ever seen.
[Indistinct talking.]
Now, as he accepts the laurels for Kursk and the Dnieper, Stalin can insist that the Allies open a second front in Europe next year.
[Cheering.]
And now he can turn all his energies to the vengeful crusade that has fueled his spectacular regeneration to the total destruction of his arch-enemy in Berlin.
But as Stalin's year of rebirth comes to an end, what of the little cogs whose willing partnership has granted him glory? For them, the struggle continues, and winter snows bring no more than a pause for rest and reflection.
[Distant explosions.]
[Music plays.]
Their song, a lament from the dugouts, speaks of future battles and future loss.
[Singing in Russian.]
"A tiny flame still flickers in the campfire here.
And for every glowing ember, I have shed a tear.
As I cower in this dugout, an accordion softly cries, singing of your smile and the color of your eyes.
As wind whispers through the bushes, it seems to speak your name.
And from snow-white fields near Moscow, my love is mixed with pain.
I long to hear your own voice, and for you to hear mine, telling you how desperately I miss you all the time.
" [Singing in Russian.]
[Ominous music.]
NARRATOR: March, 1943.
The Red Army's great victory at Stalingrad has lit a beacon of hope for the Soviet people.
The tide of war is turning.
At last, Stalin's troops begin the long drive west.
Even the very young are swept up in a new wave of popular determination.
For these children, orphaned by war, the Soviet motherland is their only parent.
When the time comes, they are prepared to stand and fight alongside their fellow countrymen and defend her to the last.
Their childhood dreams, sacrificed at the altar of war, these boys yearn only to join the victorious troops they idolize.
What can they know of the dull, squalid reality that is frontline existence, punctuated only by moments of terror and horror? Little boys, no more than 8 or 9 years old, flock to new military schools all over the Soviet Union.
Like the Alexander Suvorov Academy, named after Catherine the Great's favorite general.
Here they are groomed for battle, schooled in military drill, spoon-fed the ideal of patriotic self-sacrifice.
These boys are lucky.
This war will be over before they're big enough to wield machine guns or steer tanks into enemy fire.
But time and age are not on the side of these recruits.
Though they have fought and survived the Battle of Stalingrad, their commanders can permit them no rest.
Instead, they must struggle on through the late-winter blizzards, instruments of their Supreme Commander's lust for glory.
Stalin has sampled victory at Stalingrad, and he wants to taste it again.
He cares nothing for the lives of ordinary soldiers.
He is bent only on burnishing his name with the luster reserved for history's mightiest warlords.
From early February, Stalin orders new offensives all along the southern fronts.
The Red Army drives deep into Nazi-held territories, fighting exhaustion, cold, mud.
And in the skies, the protective umbrella of the Red Air Force, beating back Luftwaffe resistance and pounding German troop positions.
Inch by inch, the infantry advances reclaiming lands devastated by retreating Germans, rescuing communities shattered by the agonies of occupation.
Now it is safe to come out of hiding, and there is work to be done in the newly liberated lands.
Children must be fed.
And they must be schooled, taught something of life among the ruins.
[Bell tolls.]
But for older children, the call to war is irresistible.
At the Red Navy's Northern Fleet school, some cadets already wear battle decorations.
Soviet youth is champing at the bit, signaling its readiness for the fight against Germany.
30 years on, their boyish enthusiasm barely dimmed, survivors revisit the school.
INTERPRETER 1: Right here.
This is where the entrance was, where the stone is.
This is the first.
This is the second.
This is it.
This is it.
INTERPRETER 2: This is the entrance.
Yes, this is the entrance to the dugout, to the first one.
INTERPRETER 3: It's all been cleared away now.
INTERPRETER 2: Really brings back memories.
INTERPRETER 3: It certainly does.
INTERPRETER 1: Doesn't seem all those years ago.
INTERPRETER 3: I know.
It seems more like yesterday.
INTERPRETER 1: This is where the dugout starts, and this is the entrance to the dugout.
This is where we had a sort of parade ground, the stones in a kind of path.
INTERPRETER 3: Even the parade ground's overgrown.
You know, the one where we used to drill in front of the dugouts.
We nearly didn't find it because it was overgrown with trees.
[Train whistle blows.]
NARRATOR: Red Army recruits board their trains for the front in the spring of 1943.
They are destined to take part in one of history's bloodiest battles.
Russian author Bulat Okudzhava was among them.
[Speaking Russian.]
INTERPRETER: We were on our way to the front for the first time.
I was shivering all over, and I couldn't get any sleep on the troop train.
I couldn't sleep because I was on my way to fight at the front.
They issued us with a carbine leash as well as a uniform.
So I had a carbine and an ammunition belt.
Everyone was asleep, but I couldn't sleep.
Finally, the train stopped somewhere in the middle of the night, and I climbed out of my carriage, out of the cattle track, and started to walk the length of it up and down with my carbine at the ready, although nobody had given me an order to do this.
Later, I was stopped and told to go on and get some sleep, but I couldn't.
I had to play the part of a real soldier.
[Laughs.]
NARRATOR: He is not alone.
Many share his anxiety and anticipation.
They all realize the Red Army is being built up for a massive offensive.
Former paratrooper, Konstantin Vanshenkin.
INTERPRETER: The army was getting younger, and with each year, the interval between drafts got shorter and shorter.
For example, I was called up in year 10 at school, just after the second term, because I'd just turned 17.
And, of course, you know, the younger they were, the more likely they were to die at the front.
They were completely ill-prepared for it, physically and in every way.
Of course, they were full of so-called spirit.
They had that in abundance.
But they were gradually getting younger and younger.
NARRATOR: En masse recruitment is not the only sign that some great confrontation is surely coming.
As the Red Army's manpower mushrooms, an enormous national effort is mounted to provide it with weapons and supplies.
The mass transfer of Soviet industrial assets from the war-torn west to safe locations east of the Urals, begun in 1941, is almost complete by the start of 1943.
It has been an epic achievement, enabling Soviet heavy industry to reach stupendous production targets.
As conscription drains the labor force, women fill more and more vital factory jobs.
Their one all-important priority weapons production.
And Stalin's iron hand ensures unprecedented growth in output.
Gulag prisoners are used to build new factories, and conscripted laborers, sometimes working 20-hour shifts, know that to be caught slacking for just one minute can mean a whole year's imprisonment under Stalin's law.
By now, the Soviet war machine is producing weapons of the highest quality.
Summer's approach finds massed fleets of modern Shturmovik ground-attack planes and Petlyakov bombers ready for action.
Along with thousands of the highly successful T34 and KV tanks, now modified for maximum efficiency and versatility.
The same desperate race to prepare is underway in Germany, where much is expected of two new heavy tanks the fearsome Panthers and Tigers.
Both are being rushed into service for action in the east.
German aircraft output is stepped up, though the Luftwaffe is denied new designs in favor of rapid production.
And as Hitler orders the German people to a new total war footing, almost a million workers are transferred into the army.
But Hitler dare not focus on a single theater of war.
Germany must have defenses against Anglo-American bombing attacks.
It needs submarines for the desperate battle in progress across the world's sea lanes.
And Germany must send troops to bolster its faltering allies.
The Führer knows that if his stretched forces are to defeat the Red Army in 1943, they must attack quickly before it can recover from the losses of the winter.
Hitler's strategy is simple and optimistic.
In a two-pronged attack, he plans to destroy the Soviet position around Kursk, on the map, a great bulge 130 miles long and 100 miles deep at the center of the Eastern Front.
The people of the steppe around Kursk inhabit a natural granary, a prize contested by successive invaders through the centuries.
Mongols, Napoleon's armies, White Russians all have fought for this land.
It is an obvious target for a German offensive.
As the snows melt in the spring of 1943, Hitler expects to seize the grain fields and to eliminate any possibility of a Red Army attack.
But Stalin's fierce determination to increase the strength of the Red Army and its supply lines means that the Wehrmacht now faces a formidable foe.
Moscow in April.
Intelligence is flooding into the Kremlin from the Kursk sector.
Coordinated by Deputy Chief of Staff Antonov, it gives an increasingly accurate picture of German intentions.
For Stalin's general staff, this is a rare opportunity for finesse.
They plan to contain the German offensive by constructing deep defenses stretching tens of miles behind the front and then to crush the Wehrmacht with massive Red Army counterattacks.
At first, Stalin instinctively rejects this strategy.
As usual, he demands an immediate offensive.
But Deputy Supreme Commander Zhukov and Red Army Chief of Staff Vasilievsky advise against it.
And as he is at last learning to do, Stalin heeds the counsel of his best generals.
Soviet units are ordered to dig in and defend Kursk, amassed to draw the Wehrmacht into a trap.
And so now two gigantic armies are converging, led by men who hold the destinies of huge empires in their hands.
On the German side, Field Marshal Kluge commands forces allocated for the northern pincer.
The dauntless Manstein will control the southern offensive.
On the Soviet side, Rokossovsky leads the northern sector.
And Stalin appoints General Vatutin to lead the southern defense.
The vital reserve army group reinforcing them both is entrusted to Konev.
The blueprints for battle have been laid down.
Now it is a matter of waiting.
And waiting.
And waiting.
Weeks pass.
Soviet soldiers lie in their trenches, expecting attack at any time.
Tense days.
But at least the Red Army's fledgling formations are granted time to learn crucial battle skills.
[Speaking Russian.]
INTERPRETER: Of course it was frightening, because we were in reserve for so long.
Let's work it out.
February, March, April, May.
So for four to five months.
We didn't even know how to use a rifle.
But while we're in reserve, the old hands taught us everything about weapons, light and heavy machine guns and so on and submachine guns.
Well, it was very frightening, but war is war.
NARRATOR: April, May, June.
Hitler can only fume as his attack is repeatedly postponed because the new tanks are not ready.
But every delay is a military blessing for the Soviet Union.
And now, as early summer warms the steppes, Soviet troops at Kursk receive another kind of blessing, the Kursk Madonna, discovered by a 13th-century peasant in the roots of a tree.
For seven centuries, according to local legend, the Madonna stood guard over the region and its people, protecting them from harm.
A monastery was built on the site of the tree, an important shrine.
In 1917, the monastery and its Madonna fell victim to a revolution with no use for icons or religious worship.
The Madonna was lost and its home taken over by the NKVD, who turned it into a holiday camp.
But in 1943, as the hour of decision approaches, custom and religion are revived under the stress of war, and a copy of the Madonna is presented to Rokossovsky's troops, a symbol of shared struggle, of ancient glories beyond even Stalin's power to purloin, a talisman to ease the burden of their deadly waiting game.
But now, as the armies swelter in high summer, the waiting is almost over.
The greatest tank battle of all time is about to begin.
The 4th of July.
A Soviet raiding party brings vital news.
Under interrogation, a German prisoner gives full details of the Wehrmacht's plans.
The German offensive, Operation Citadel, will begin that night.
The tension reaches a new climax now.
Every unit on both sides is at the peak of readiness, and a deathly quiet falls over the front lines.
Word of the planned attack is rushed to Stalin.
But still the gigantic armies wait.
With 3,500 tanks and 19,000 guns at their backs, 1.
3 million Soviet troops hold their breath.
Across the lines, a million German troops can call on 2,700 tanks, 10,000 guns.
Yet on the eve of battle, as Rokossovsky's memoirs tell, this vast array is so quiet that a dripping tap sounds like an alarm bell.
[Dripping.]
[Explosions and shots.]
Until, at midnight, the unnatural calm is ruptured by a massive Soviet artillery strike.
As the ground shakes and the cauldron of Kursk comes at last to the boil, Soviet shells and rockets disrupt final German preparations, and Operation Citadel suffers one last delay.
[Explosions and shots.]
It is an ill omen for the Panzer armies.
Their best units are eventually on the attack by morning.
But Soviet resurgence has been underestimated by the German high command.
Reinforcements are already rushing to threatened areas, and the confident German advance soon becomes a crawl.
For almost a week, Soviet tanks confront German in an awesome clash of armor.
[Dramatic music.]
The battle's epicenters are searing furnaces, engulfing millions of men, women, and boys in a hideous bedlam of noise, dust, and death.
[Speaking Russian.]
INTERPRETER: There was so much shrapnel.
It was a battle with millions of bombs and shells and so much shrapnel.
There's still a lot of it there.
Disarmed mines and shells, that sort of thing.
You know what I mean.
On the 5th and 6th of July, our division was very much in the thick of things.
We lost 2,500 men in just two days.
We all finally pulled back to the village of Berezovets to be reinforced.
But only on the 12th did we go back into the attack.
[Explosions.]
NARRATOR: And above the nightmare on the ground, the air fleets do battle.
Almost 3,000 Soviet war planes and some 2,000 German machines, dealing sudden death to ground forces.
And to each other.
[Planes rumble.]
[Shots.]
The 12th of July.
A great barrage of Katyusha rockets and artillery announces counter offenses by four more Soviet armies sweeping around the rear of the battered German divisions.
[Cannon shots and explosions.]
[Whistle blows.]
The battle that follows is another massive infantry struggle.
And every available Soviet aircraft is called upon to help drive the Luftwaffe from the skies.
[Shots fired.]
[Bombs whir.]
But above all, it is another cataclysmic clash of tanks.
This is the day of the tank.
The land war between Germany and the Soviet Union is the definitive armored conflict in human history, and Kursk its appalling climax.
Germany's vaunted Panthers and Tigers are the most powerful tanks in the world, but they are relatively few.
Though the fighting is, if anything, even more intense in this second stage of the battle, Soviet T34s and KVs remain masters of the battlefield.
On the 13th of July, Hitler abandons hopes of a quick victory at Kursk and German offensive operations are halted.
The Führer's eastern commanders are instructed to hold the Red Army at bay, but it is too late.
The trap is closing.
The Wehrmacht can only retreat.
It leaves behind the mangled debris of war, battle zones littered with charred and broken tanks and the bodies of hundreds of thousands of men.
For survivors of this savage inferno, shattered, shell-shocked, stunned by the horrors they have witnessed, there can be no joy.
[Screaming and breaking.]
On the 5th of August, Soviet forces retake the cities of Orel and Belgorod.
It is the climax to a stunning victory.
Citizens pour from their homes to welcome the liberators, and victory celebrations throng the streets.
In Moscow, triumphant artillery salutes announce the city's liberation and the Red Army's decisive defeat of the invaders.
The world must be told of Stalin's victories, although they belong, in truth, to the whole Soviet people.
The dictator's glory has been bought with the blood of ordinary men and ordinary women, like Leningrad's female firefighters performing full-time rescue work in the besieged city.
Like the antiaircraft gunners at their stations all over the western Soviet Union.
Or like Anna Kovalyova, bomb-disposal expert credited with single-handedly disarming 42 bombs.
For Anna Kovalyova and her comrades in home-defense units, there is little enough time for relaxation.
[Tranquil music plays.]
[Singing in Russian.]
NARRATOR: And even fewer moments of peace for Soviet women in frontline roles.
Ground crew, medical personnel, and drivers like Yelena lvanova.
[Speaking Russian.]
INTERPRETER: I was passing the conscription office, and an officer was sitting on the windowsill.
His son was at the kindergarten where I worked, and he said, "lvanova, are you going to join up?" And I said, "Yes, I'll join up.
" He was laughing, and so was I.
And he said, "I'm not joking.
I'm being serious.
" And so I said, "I'll join up.
" I went to the conscription office, and they said, "Get yourself ready for the Army.
" And at lunchtime, they sent us off.
REPORTER: To be trained as a driver? INTERPRETER: Yes.
And almost the whole time, I used to drive air crews to and from the mess.
If there were no vehicles available, then I'd be put on to transport the bombs to the planes.
REPORTER: On the 1.
5- Ton truck? INTERPRETER: Yes.
And I used to paint the bombs with any other girls who were free.
One day, we'd paint the bombs sky blue.
And on another day, with stripes like a tiger.
They always had some sort of camouflage.
Every day, the girls who drove the tractors used to level the ground to make it easier for the planes to land and take off.
NARRATOR: 50 years on, she can still handle a Jeep.
These stories have their parallels in the West, but Soviet women are also expected to play a full part in combat operations.
These are the pilots of the Marina Raskova night-bomber squadron.
Their old wooden U-2 biplanes are slow and fragile, known as "oil stoves.
" But they are stable and quiet, ideal for precision low-level attack.
The regiment is successful enough to earn a German nickname the "night witches.
" [Speaking Russian.]
INTERPRETER: We flew without parachutes, so of course people were burned alive along with their planes.
But our spirits never dropped, and no one questioned why we were there.
I myself succeeded in completing 852 military missions during the entire war.
And I'll never forget flying in the Kuban, because it was there that we lost more pilots than anywhere else.
I flew up to the target and delivered my bombs.
There were explosions, and shells were bursting everywhere, which meant we'd hit the warehouse.
But at that moment, five searchlights switched on.
Then, night fighters entered the fray, guns blazing.
The enemy threw everything at us that night, and four complete crews were killed in one mission.
That was our heaviest loss of the whole war.
In one night, so many pilots.
NARRATOR: As the autumn unfolds, the Red Army will bury many more dead heroes.
This is the funeral of Mariya Oktyabrskaya.
She raised public subscriptions to buy a tank and volunteered for training as its driver.
Killed in action near Smolensk, she's given a hero's send-off.
[Shots fired.]
Kiev, so long enslaved by Nazi occupation, beckons the Red Army now.
And so it must resume the long road west, into Ukraine to the mighty Dnieper River and beyond.
And as they sweep towards the western borders, there are many more victims of Hitler's tyranny to be freed.
Terrible proofs of his genocidal madness to be unveiled, like the bodies of Ukrainian miners tossed down shafts for refusing to cooperate with the German regime.
[Russian voice-over speakers.]
Soviet authorities broadcast details of Nazi crimes to fan the flames of hatred against the invader.
[Speaking Russian.]
NARRATOR: But there is so much grief, and the occupied lands have seen so much senseless slaughter that these people need no advertisement of their tragedy beyond their own simple memorial.
[Choir harmonizing.]
[Choir picks up intensity.]
It is a song to inspire a whirlwind of Red Army revenge as it strikes now against the mighty barrier of the Dnieper River.
[Explosions.]
The first troops to reach the river are easy targets for the Luftwaffe.
And the Dnieper could delay the Red Army for months, as the Rhine will later hold the British Army in the west.
Witnesses will describe it as a river of blood, bloated with the corpses of drowned soldiers.
[Bombs whir.]
The battle is most intense north and south of Kiev itself, where German defenders hold commanding heights on the west bank.
But the Red Army is permitted no hesitation.
As German air strength dwindles, Soviet troops swarm out of the water, charging from their beachheads up the hill and into the viper's nest.
[Shots and explosions.]
They are across the length of the river before the Wehrmacht is able to secure its defenses.
But they pay a high price for their courage.
Of the 11,000 wartime soldiers awarded the USSR's highest battle honor, Hero of the Soviet Union, almost half win their medal at the Dnieper.
Now, once more, the Red Army is in pursuit of a retreating enemy and racing towards the year's climactic conquest, towards Kiev, capital of Ukraine.
As winter draws near, Stalin sees Kiev as the crowning glory of his fabulously successful year.
He wants the city at any cost.
And he wants it before the 7th of November, anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.
Both sides pay a huge price for the satisfaction of Stalin's whim.
More than half a million soldiers and citizens die in the battle for the city.
Vatutin's tanks enter Kiev on the 6th of November, just one day before Stalin's deadline.
It is a battered prize, a scene of appalling devastation to rank with the worst bombing atrocities in the West a city in ruins.
[Wind blows.]
On the evening of the 6th, 700 miles away in Moscow, artillery rings out in triumph once more.
[Shots fired.]
And that same night, Stalin delivers his annual anniversary address to the nation.
[Speaking Russian.]
INTERPRETER: In honor of the 26th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, a report is to be presented by Comrade Stalin, Chairman of the State Defense Committee.
[Cheers and applause.]
NARRATOR: He will speak, as usual, from the Kremlin Palace, and his entrance is carefully staged.
[Cheers and applause.]
He remains out of sight at the back of the podium.
The applause must reach a frenzied crescendo before he will step out in front of his people.
[Applause continues.]
Stained with the blood of countless Soviet soldiers and citizens, Stalin assumes the mantle of victorious warlord for the first time.
[Applause continues.]
He is no orator, no Churchill or Hitler.
In rough Georgian tones, he will grind out the few words he needs.
But he oozes power.
[Applause continues.]
[Speaking Russian.]
INTERPRETER: Comrades, all the peoples of the Soviet Union are now celebrating the 26th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution.
For the third time, our country celebrates the anniversary of its People's Revolution in this, the third year of the Great Patriotic War.
The year that has passed since the last anniversary has been the turning point in the Patriotic War.
It is the turning point because this year the Red Army, for the first time in the whole war, has managed to put into effect a major summer offensive against the German forces in which the German troops, under the heavy onslaught of our armies, were forced to withdraw at speed from the territories which they had seized.
At times, to avoid encirclement, they have had to retreat so fast that they have left behind them on the battlefield vast amounts of equipment, ammunition, wounded officers and men.
So, the success of our summer campaign in the second half of this year can be seen as the continuation and completion of our winter campaign at the beginning of this year.
Now that the Red Army has followed the success of its winter campaign with a powerful blow against the German forces in the summer, we can consider dead and buried the old myth that the Red Army is not capable of carrying out successful offensives in summertime.
NARRATOR: Stalin talks of victories and armies, but never of victims or people.
He gives no thought to those he calls "the little cogs in the mechanism," the men and women whose blood has paid for his victories.
They know that a chasm separates them from the dictator.
[Speaking Russian.]
INTERPRETER: I don't remember us talking about Stalin at all in the trenches, in the lulls between fighting.
At meetings, of course, they used to shout slogans.
But I don't remember soldiers talking about him among themselves.
He was somewhere up there, the leader, the celestial being, unapproachable.
And of course, if anyone asked me, I would say completely sincerely that he was a genius, that he was our leader, and that he would lead us to victory.
That used to happen.
But he had no place in the normal run of things.
We used to talk about our pasts, about bread, about potatoes, and whatever else we could get our hands on, or how to grab a couple of moments of sleep.
NARRATOR: Raised to new heights at home, Stalin's reputation has also soared on the international stage.
In Britain, they have forged a sword, a gift to the victor of Stalingrad from King George.
Yet one dark deed could still undermine Stalin's newfound global status.
Earlier, in 1943, at Katyn Forest near Smolensk, German-occupying authorities had unearthed the mass graves of 20,000 Polish officers.
International observers were invited to support Berlin's claim that the murders were carried out by the NKVD, but Stalin had reacted furiously, denying any link with the massacres.
Posterity will reveal that he is steeped in the blood of these helpless victims.
But when Allied leaders meet in Tehran, Churchill and Roosevelt must swallow their doubts and suspicions.
They can only back their most important ally in the face of outraged protest from exiled Poles.
And so Stalin is spared the backlash he fears from the atrocities at Katyn.
His sword is presented, and Stalin stands as an undisputed world leader, backed by the most powerful army ever seen.
[Indistinct talking.]
Now, as he accepts the laurels for Kursk and the Dnieper, Stalin can insist that the Allies open a second front in Europe next year.
[Cheering.]
And now he can turn all his energies to the vengeful crusade that has fueled his spectacular regeneration to the total destruction of his arch-enemy in Berlin.
But as Stalin's year of rebirth comes to an end, what of the little cogs whose willing partnership has granted him glory? For them, the struggle continues, and winter snows bring no more than a pause for rest and reflection.
[Distant explosions.]
[Music plays.]
Their song, a lament from the dugouts, speaks of future battles and future loss.
[Singing in Russian.]
"A tiny flame still flickers in the campfire here.
And for every glowing ember, I have shed a tear.
As I cower in this dugout, an accordion softly cries, singing of your smile and the color of your eyes.
As wind whispers through the bushes, it seems to speak your name.
And from snow-white fields near Moscow, my love is mixed with pain.
I long to hear your own voice, and for you to hear mine, telling you how desperately I miss you all the time.
" [Singing in Russian.]