The World at War s01e11 Episode Script
Red Star: The Soviet Union (1941 - 1943)
No country, no people, it suffered in such a way during the war as the Soviet Union.
In none another place the memories of the war remain so alive e so deep.
The German invasion it brought one such catastrophe, that it seemed, the principle, that no Nation would support.
Only in the wall Leningrad, that it lasted two years more than, more human beings had died of what British and American during all the war.
However, it was here that Hitler fell down.
The Russian people faced the possibility of the death.
it won it to e.
We waited the victory.
We knew that it had to arrive.
E we waited that the difficulties passed.
The World in War Red star Soviet Union 1941 - 1943 Kharkov under German occupation, 1942.
Hitler writes in "Mein Kampf": The colossal empire of the East he is mature for the dissolution, e the end of the domination it mistreats in Russia it will be also the end of Russia while State.
The Soviet system it would go to be demolido.
But it had more.
It was in the Russia that Hitler it would go to find the "Lebensraum", new territory stops the German settling.
The Soviets would be treated as mere natives in the German colonial empire.
Its cities germanized or would completely be arrasadas.
They would be selling, peasants, created domestic servants, workers.
The Communists and the intellectuals they had been exterminados.
The lesser signal of challenge it resulted in the immediate retaliation.
The occupants were hard.
Very hard.
Especially in the zones where the resistant ones were active.
In the Ukraine, forest fires for the Nazistas before the population to obtain to run away.
In a city, Pisk, close to Kiev, that completely it was arrasada, the babies had played in the fogueira.
Before the war, the regions, now busy for the Germans, they had produced almost 3/4 of the coal and iron of the country, e almost all the sugar.
In the Fall of 1941, the Germans controlled that one that is the industrial center and agriculturist of the Soviet Union.
The invaders had discovered that the Russians had attemped to destroy everything what they had left stops backwards.
The cities had been set on fire e the harvests in its redor they had burnt.
In the Fall, the Germans already had advanced a thousand kilometers through calcined land.
In some Republics of the Baltic sea, that they had only been annexed to the Soviet Union in the previous year, the Germans well had been received for the local nationalists.
In some parts of the Ukraine, the peasants made the offers traditional of bread and salt.
The bodies of the nationalists died for the Soviet security they were brought and loaded for the streets.
During brief moments, it seemed that these busy nations they could be made use to join it the Nazistas.
The Communists were hunted.
E, in all the places that the Nazistas occupied, the collect of Jews was initiated.
In the way of the Germans, Russia seemed to be yielding.
Stalin ordered to arrest and to execute the commander of the Front Occidental person, as well as its staff.
Monuments of the Soviet construction, until the barrage of Dnieper, symbol of the "Quinquenais Plans", they had been destroyed e abandoned.
The locomotives had been destroyed, although they were very necessary, therefore an evacuation was initiated that, in the end, it would save Russia e would modify the course of the war.
using 18000 trains, with more than a million of workers for the security of the East e of the Urais Mounts.
A witness affirmed: "Age as if the land oscillated, e everything what he was human and mechanic went of the west for the east.
" When we arrive did not have plants.
It had only warehouses where they kept the material.
We start to empty the warehouses and to clean the land in lathe.
Trabalhavamos up to 14 hours per day.
In wild places, without food and sleeping, the Russians had reconstructed a new industry of war that it escaped to the reach of the Nazistas.
When we empty the warehouses, the machinery arrived.
Where before it had warehouses, we construct a new plant.
In contrast of the Germans, the Russians had entered in total war since the first minute.
Any pair of hands it served to set in motion the machines, therefore the men were enlisted for the war ocidente.
The war work it left all extenuados.
the 1115 working hours for day, minimum rations, the concern with the husband or the son who was in the Front, the exhaustion that if became a permanent illness.
But, for the cameras, they seemed livened up and definitive.
The Germans were almost entering in Leningrad, the second bigger city of Russia capital e of the Revolution.
The workers had received weapons.
Coming back to the days of the Revolution, the leaders of Leningrad they had encouraged to all the city to fight.
Without trainings, they had marched to face panzers, well close to the chimneys of its plants.
It was lost chance to remove the not-combatants of Leningrad.
In any way, the majority of the families it preferred to be.
My husband obtained two places in an airplane e asked for to me to go with it e to take my baby, but I refused.
It could not go and leave my mother and my mother-in-law here in the surrounded city.
It said to it to lead lady of age with it e I was in Leningrad with my mother and my baby.
In September, the wall German closed itself.
More than 2,5 million people they had been imprisoned in the city.
Between them, 400 a thousand children.
The only linking of Leningrad with Russia it was for the Ladoga lake.
The greater was initiated wall of all the times.
It was when Stalin intervined.
Voroshilov Marshal, in the command of Leningrad, he was dismissed.
In its place it was marshal Georgi Zhukov, that one would come to become of great commanders of the war.
Its advising one was the implacable and smart Andrei Zhdanov, the leader of the Party Communist in Leningrad.
Leningrad felt in little time the determination of the new commands.
Except of the city, Zhukov threatened to kill who ran away.
Inside of the city, the security it hunted spies and defeatists.
The men of Zhdanov had finished with the food wastefulness, mobilizing the whole world to defend the city.
All the great building they had been mined, for the case of the Germans to enter in the city.
But the German attempt to take Leningrad of assault failed.
Berlin commanded: "The Führer decided to erase of the face of the planet the city of Petersburgo.
It does not have reasons for the existence of this great city.
" The inhabitants of Leningrad they would be bombed e would die of hunger.
Day after day, they arrived the bombers.
The artillerymen German saw the towers of Leningrad.
The projectiles obtained to reach all the quarters, all the streets.
The Ladoga lake continued to be the only breach in the enemy wall.
When it froze, was constructed a road in the ice to make to pass abastecimentos.
The trucks fell in the ice or they were destroyed by airplanes.
The ice road did not allow that much thing entered e did not allow that almost nobody left, thus keeping Leningrad to the side of the starvation.
Everything was finishing.
The electricity and the cars had stopped.
In the blackout and intense cold of the Winter of the north of Russia, already it did not have heating nor electric light.
The workers, way unconscious for the hunger, they kept the plants functioning, exactly when the bombs already they had destroyed the roofs.
Tanks of rude steel and without painting left the onward plant.
The bread was now done with garbage, ration for cattle, serragem.
The people ate soap, oil of linhaça and estuque.
The owners of house and the children they only had right the 130 gram of this "bread" per day.
Frozen and quiet, Leningrad opposed to die it.
The libraries remained open.
The people were felt inspired in the new "literature of the blockade".
The poetry was a great force.
It kept us livings creature.
What they say of Leningrad It is truth, The tears had frozen In the eyes of the people.
Already we do not cry, therefore none Tear erases the flame of the hatred.
E the hatred is the only way.
It is the guarantee of the life The cure of pain, The force that joins in them, It heats in them and the guide.
The end of November, December e had January been the worse ones.
First, because he was cold, they were 40ºC negative.
E started to feel it hunger.
The people had started to die of hunger and cold.
The wall continued.
It had few ways of to reply against the Germans.
An age with the weapons of the ships of war imprisoned in the port.
In land, small groups penetrated in German trenches.
They cut the supplying lines, they captured prisoners e collected information.
They went in the houses of the colaboracionistas and judged them there exactly.
January of 1942: they died about 4 a thousand people in Leningrad every day.
When it went in the store to receive the ration for the family, if it passed for two bodies in the gone one, when it came back had four.
Except of the wall, the Russians fought to loosen the German blockade e to speed up the slow columns that they passed for the frozen lake.
But it did not have any great one offensive to break the wall, not even air support.
The men and the equipment they were with priority in Moscow.
The Spring brought new fears.
The mortal cold softened e the melted snow disclosed thousand of corpses in the streets.
A campaign was launched to clean the city.
It did not have any epidemic.
Now the frozen road it started to melt.
Although the difficulties continued before the lake being navigable, the feeling in Leningrad she was reliable.
When the sun started to shine, we start to clean and to wash, because already we had water.
We start to feel us normal another time.
The Chamber of the city placed some trains in functioning.
We receive the trains as an old friend who returned.
I remember to have beaten palms when vi the trains.
The survivors felt themselves strong, the rations had been increased.
Groups of young volunteers went of house in house helping families that, during the Winter, almost they had lost contact with the exterior.
The children who must have before been evacuated eight months they were led of boat through the Ladoga lake.
The boats brought troops and the ammunition to relieve the exaustos men that they were in trenches.
Leningrad started to look like itself more with a military base.
The worse one of the wall had finished.
Although the bombings they continued, now it made sensible to fix the estragos.
Turf was collected to serve of fuel in the following Winter.
Pupils and professors of Botany they had helped to plant vegetables in each open space.
The Germans who occupied the prairies of the Ukraine they were not worried about food.
During 50 years, the expansionistas German turn this region as the end of the dependence of Germany of the maritime importations.
General Manstein said: A great part of the population it will have that to pass hunger.
It swims, not to be a false one humanity sensation, it must be given to the population, not to be that they are to the service of the German Wehrmacht.
In Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine, the plans to conquer the nationalists, with promises of a government puppet anti-Soviet, they had been never materialize.
They had been side ranks for the army and the SS.
The reality was.
to work for the Germans or the deportation for the Reich.
Each city learned the price to defy the authority.
In Moscow, at the beginning of 1942, it had confidence in the future.
The fights of the Winter had disclosed that the Germans were not more invincible of what Napoleão is.
But the Russians found that they were supporting the pack of the war against the fascism alone and Ocidente did not make the sufficient.
When Stalin started to ask for people for one second front, the people had fast joined themselves to the manifestations of support.
Molotov, the Minister of the Foreign affairses, it heard of the occidental diplomats how much they admired heroísmo of the Red Army, but one second front still it was impracticable.
Stalin did not believe.
Stalin was to the front of an army that each time became implacable greater and.
But the Russians did not dissimulate to be immune to pain.
Sets of ten of thousand of people they knew this poem of color: Wait for me, and I will return, But it waits very.
Wait until if fulling of penalty While you see rain yellow.
Wait until the winds To sweep snows.
Wait in the suffocating heat.
Wait until the others to give up When to forget Yesterday.
It waits exactly that they do not arrive Letters of far for you.
Wait exactly when the others They will be tired to wait.
Wait exactly when my mother E my son to think that I died.
E when the friends if to seat Drinking in my memory.
Wait, and you do not hurry yourself to also drink In my memory.
Wait, therefore I will return, Defying each death.
E leaves those that had not waited To say that I had luck.
They never will understand That, in the way of the death, You, and its wait, They had saved me.
But you and I will know As I survived.
It was because you waited for me As plus it made nobody it.
Still more disasters were come close.
In May, the Germans had defeated the offensive Russian close to Kharkov.
When the Red Army advanced, panzers had encircled the flanks.
The Soviet commanders had asked for to withdraw before being late.
But Stalin, ignoring the advice, forbade them.
The German wall was closed.
The majority of the men of the three Russian armies it was forced to put down the weapons.
During the war, more than five million Russian soldiers had been made prisoners.
They had survived less than two million.
Mainly for the British, the Russians were now "our gallants Soviet allies".
But, the principle, the aid alone it could arrive through the Arctic, for the convoys of ships that if they directed the Murmansk and Arcangel, through the deadly zone watched for the submarines, airplanes and German warships.
In July of 1942, this convoy of ships lost 80% of its ships.
But the courage of the sailors British did not obtain that the convoys of ships supplied the gigantic Russian necessities.
The defeat was fought, but it did not have victory signals.
It was the moment of the bitter resistance, the time to support the disillusion and the loss.
Long ago it seems possible that the soldiers German they were only companionable uniform workers.
Now the Soviet writers words of hatred pronounced.
We obtain to support everything: The plague, the hunger and the death.
But we do not obtain To support the Germans.
We do not obtain to support These imbeciles of esbugalhados eyes That they look at with disdain Everything what he is Russian.
We do not obtain to live while These lesmas green will be alive.
Today it does not have books.
Today it does not have stars in the sky.
Today it has only one thought: To kill the Germans.
To kill them it all E to embed them in the ground.
Then, we will be able to go to sleep.
Then, we will be able to think again About the life, books.
In the women and the happiness.
We go to kill them it all, But quickly Or they will go to profane all Russia and to torture and to kill more millions.
To the measure that the Soviet soldiers advanced, they discovered what the Germans they had made the civilians.
The churches had been fulled again.
The priests had been invited to pray for Russia, to raise the patriotism of the believers.
The icons again were adored.
The public campaign the favor ateísmo it was forgotten.
The Germans had killed Jews and Communists.
They had killed the suspicious one to support the resistant ones.
They had killed the hostages.
After the battles, during the withdrawal, they killed, simply.
To the north, the Russians prepared themselves to attack the German wall Leningrad.
While they waited, informers had brought notice of the surrender of the armies Germans in Estalingrado.
The army and the people turn the brightness the victory in the end of the tunnel.
Now they knew that they would go to be successful.
In Leningrad, the relieved troops they had breached the defenses.
They had opened a route for land.
The blockade of 16 months finishes.
But the wall was not broken.
Germans and Finnish they continued in the city.
It was a so good sensation that nor I obtain to describe it.
I was in the house of the neighbor, we kiss in them and we said: "Now we go to survive, it has an exit.
" In 15 days it was constructed an way-of-iron for the breach.
The food and the fuel had started to enter in Leningrad.
The symbols of the old Russian honor they had been returned to the Army, as they had been returned to the Church.
The propaganda joined Lenin the Alexander Nevsky.
The hero of century XVIII, Suvorov.
Heroes of the Red Cavalry, huge ghosts that supported the avengers of the Soviet native land.
The insignias of an army traditional and professional they had been restored.
Of Great-Britain they had been imported gallons of gold.
The commissioners politicians they had lost status.
The years of it purges they had been forgotten.
Each Soviet citizen felt part of a common fight.
Some people say that it was the cruelty fascist that it lead the resistance in the busy Ukraine and other lands.
Not.
I find that the resistance something was inevitable.
The Soviet people in the rear it could not be remained the part of the fight.
In 1941, behind aircraft marshalling areas, they had started to form itself groups of resistant.
To the beginning they did not have weapons, they had grown slowly.
The German deportations had compelled thousand of people to run away for the forests where if they had joined to the resistant ones.
Soon, the resistant ones they had become a great army that it operated against the lines of communication of the enemy.
The penalty for colaboracionistas it was the death.
The simple suspicion of affection for the enemy, it took entire groups as the "Germans of the Volga" e the "Tartars of the Crimeia" to be deported for Central Asia.
For the individual collaborators it did not have mercy.
When the prisoners German they were shown in Leningrad, the people reached an enemy that she was to its reach.
In estepes of Soviet Asia, in the new plants and mines of Siberia, the desperate effort more of production of the modern times it was reaching the climax.
Russia had been apanhada with obsolete airplanes, inadequate for the air support.
Now, the plants produced for month nine a thousand modern airplanes.
In 1943, the military production it exceeded, finally, the German.
Above all, because of the tanks.
In 1943, the plants had constructed 24 a thousand tanks.
More than what any another weapon, it was the tank, in special the T-34, that it gained the battle of the Eastern Front.
With the American wagons that they arrived of the Pérsia, this chain of tank it arrived at the aircraft marshalling areas.
The Russians knew that, in July of 1943, the Germans would launch again an offensive one of great extension.
Also they knew that it would have place in Kursk.
They had that to remain itself firm.
Then, the Red Army, now the biggest force seen in war, it would go to counterattack.
The Germans had planned to arrive the Kursk, in the hope to finish with the enormous Soviet armies e later arriving Moscow.
They had brought 70 divisions, almost a million of men, with the new Tiger tanks e Ferdinand cannons.
Hitler intended to advance in May, but it had delays in the production e in the accumulation of reserves.
The weeks had passed.
When the Germans had been chemical preparations for the attack, the Russians already were to the wait.
We were prepared, what more than ready for the attack of Hitler.
We knew that we had tank enough to hinder the fascists to destroy our defenses.
The recognition patrols they had captured prisoners.
For them, we knew that the troops of Hitler they planned to initiate the attack to 2h30 of the morning of 5 of July.
Demons the notice to the troops.
The commander is in the comment rank.
The soldiers are in trenches and the enemy attacks tomorrow.
They can imagine what it passes for its head.
It had 100 tanks more than to each kilometer.
When the tanks if dislocate, all the land trembles.
E the weapons go off, but soldier remains seated.
The Soviet airplanes they take off of dawn to destroy the bombers Germans who wait in the tracks.
The Germans had kept the established one.
In the morning of 5 of July, divisions of panzers had advanced.
In Kursk, the greater happened battle of tanks of History.
In the north, 16 the German troops cover km in five days and stop, with 50 a thousand decreases e In the south, a battle still more vast, the Russian defense suffered one breaks throughout 32 km, but the Germans were exaustos.
In day 15 of July, Hitler it cancelled the offensive one against Kursk.
The Red Army counterattacked.
Under bombing, the combat engineers they had taken the shortcut of the German defense.
The tanks had advanced for the breach with the troops walking its side.
These were the new Russian soldiers, very different of masses defeated in 1941.
The clothes were puídas, but the weapons were clean.
They were hard and they pursued the enemy to fight body-the-body.
They were smart, trained to survive of the land and to cross rivers without support.
If it did not have boats, a bank or a trunk served.
They fought without right license or payment, but the moral age fierce and raised.
In military terms, it was Kursk that it decided the end of the war.
When the supreme German effort it failed, started the Soviet victory.
At the beginning, the fight to capture the German positions were hard and slow.
But, after nine days, Red army recaptured the lost land in last the offensive German.
The Germans had withdrawn, destroying everything to its ticket.
But now they were under the attack constant of the Soviets.
The Luftwaffe had lost the control of the airspace.
Suddenly, the busy cities of Russia they were fulled of tank that they were dislocated for ocidente.
After two years, the conquerors beat in withdrawal.
The Germans continued in the outskirts of Leningrad.
The city continued to be bombed.
The wall alone was broken in January of the following year.
The force of Russia, as a compressed gigantic spring until the o has limited, it was now to free itself.
The first cities they had been freed.
In day 5 of August of 1943, Orël and Belgorod had been freed.
In each city, the ones that had died in the battle they had been embedded.
You do not call me, father.
You do not look for to me.
You do not call me Nor you desire my return.
We are in an unknown way The fire and the blood had erased the route.
We fly, in the wings of lightning, More not to unseam the sword.
All we tumble in battle, More not to come back.
Will have one reencontro? I do not know it.
I only know that we must To continue to fight.
We are supreme of sand in the Infinite E never more we will see the light.
Good bye, my son, Good bye, my conscience.
My youth and my consolation, My only son.
That this farewell is the end Of the vast solitude, Therefore nobody does not more only have.
There you will remain For all always Far from the light and of air.
Your death will not be counted.
Not counted and not attenuated the death, more not to revive, For all always A youngster of 18 years.
Good bye, then.
No convoy arrives of this region With or without schedule, No airplane can arrive there.
Good bye, my son, Therefore miracles do not happen.
E, in this world, The dreams are not become fullfilled.
Good bye.
I will dream of you When ages baby, Walking for the land With strong steps.
For the land where already as much They were embedded.
This song, my son, It arrived at the end.
In Moscow, Stalin announced: Today, to the 24 hours of day 5 of August, the capital of our country, Moscow, it will go to greet the brave troops that they had freed Orël and Belgorod.
Perpetual glory to the heroes that they had tumbled in battle fighting for the freedom of our country! Death to the invaders German! In November, Kiev was freed.
Russia was salute, for the soldiers and the people.
But in the land, without to arrive to see the peace,
In none another place the memories of the war remain so alive e so deep.
The German invasion it brought one such catastrophe, that it seemed, the principle, that no Nation would support.
Only in the wall Leningrad, that it lasted two years more than, more human beings had died of what British and American during all the war.
However, it was here that Hitler fell down.
The Russian people faced the possibility of the death.
it won it to e.
We waited the victory.
We knew that it had to arrive.
E we waited that the difficulties passed.
The World in War Red star Soviet Union 1941 - 1943 Kharkov under German occupation, 1942.
Hitler writes in "Mein Kampf": The colossal empire of the East he is mature for the dissolution, e the end of the domination it mistreats in Russia it will be also the end of Russia while State.
The Soviet system it would go to be demolido.
But it had more.
It was in the Russia that Hitler it would go to find the "Lebensraum", new territory stops the German settling.
The Soviets would be treated as mere natives in the German colonial empire.
Its cities germanized or would completely be arrasadas.
They would be selling, peasants, created domestic servants, workers.
The Communists and the intellectuals they had been exterminados.
The lesser signal of challenge it resulted in the immediate retaliation.
The occupants were hard.
Very hard.
Especially in the zones where the resistant ones were active.
In the Ukraine, forest fires for the Nazistas before the population to obtain to run away.
In a city, Pisk, close to Kiev, that completely it was arrasada, the babies had played in the fogueira.
Before the war, the regions, now busy for the Germans, they had produced almost 3/4 of the coal and iron of the country, e almost all the sugar.
In the Fall of 1941, the Germans controlled that one that is the industrial center and agriculturist of the Soviet Union.
The invaders had discovered that the Russians had attemped to destroy everything what they had left stops backwards.
The cities had been set on fire e the harvests in its redor they had burnt.
In the Fall, the Germans already had advanced a thousand kilometers through calcined land.
In some Republics of the Baltic sea, that they had only been annexed to the Soviet Union in the previous year, the Germans well had been received for the local nationalists.
In some parts of the Ukraine, the peasants made the offers traditional of bread and salt.
The bodies of the nationalists died for the Soviet security they were brought and loaded for the streets.
During brief moments, it seemed that these busy nations they could be made use to join it the Nazistas.
The Communists were hunted.
E, in all the places that the Nazistas occupied, the collect of Jews was initiated.
In the way of the Germans, Russia seemed to be yielding.
Stalin ordered to arrest and to execute the commander of the Front Occidental person, as well as its staff.
Monuments of the Soviet construction, until the barrage of Dnieper, symbol of the "Quinquenais Plans", they had been destroyed e abandoned.
The locomotives had been destroyed, although they were very necessary, therefore an evacuation was initiated that, in the end, it would save Russia e would modify the course of the war.
using 18000 trains, with more than a million of workers for the security of the East e of the Urais Mounts.
A witness affirmed: "Age as if the land oscillated, e everything what he was human and mechanic went of the west for the east.
" When we arrive did not have plants.
It had only warehouses where they kept the material.
We start to empty the warehouses and to clean the land in lathe.
Trabalhavamos up to 14 hours per day.
In wild places, without food and sleeping, the Russians had reconstructed a new industry of war that it escaped to the reach of the Nazistas.
When we empty the warehouses, the machinery arrived.
Where before it had warehouses, we construct a new plant.
In contrast of the Germans, the Russians had entered in total war since the first minute.
Any pair of hands it served to set in motion the machines, therefore the men were enlisted for the war ocidente.
The war work it left all extenuados.
the 1115 working hours for day, minimum rations, the concern with the husband or the son who was in the Front, the exhaustion that if became a permanent illness.
But, for the cameras, they seemed livened up and definitive.
The Germans were almost entering in Leningrad, the second bigger city of Russia capital e of the Revolution.
The workers had received weapons.
Coming back to the days of the Revolution, the leaders of Leningrad they had encouraged to all the city to fight.
Without trainings, they had marched to face panzers, well close to the chimneys of its plants.
It was lost chance to remove the not-combatants of Leningrad.
In any way, the majority of the families it preferred to be.
My husband obtained two places in an airplane e asked for to me to go with it e to take my baby, but I refused.
It could not go and leave my mother and my mother-in-law here in the surrounded city.
It said to it to lead lady of age with it e I was in Leningrad with my mother and my baby.
In September, the wall German closed itself.
More than 2,5 million people they had been imprisoned in the city.
Between them, 400 a thousand children.
The only linking of Leningrad with Russia it was for the Ladoga lake.
The greater was initiated wall of all the times.
It was when Stalin intervined.
Voroshilov Marshal, in the command of Leningrad, he was dismissed.
In its place it was marshal Georgi Zhukov, that one would come to become of great commanders of the war.
Its advising one was the implacable and smart Andrei Zhdanov, the leader of the Party Communist in Leningrad.
Leningrad felt in little time the determination of the new commands.
Except of the city, Zhukov threatened to kill who ran away.
Inside of the city, the security it hunted spies and defeatists.
The men of Zhdanov had finished with the food wastefulness, mobilizing the whole world to defend the city.
All the great building they had been mined, for the case of the Germans to enter in the city.
But the German attempt to take Leningrad of assault failed.
Berlin commanded: "The Führer decided to erase of the face of the planet the city of Petersburgo.
It does not have reasons for the existence of this great city.
" The inhabitants of Leningrad they would be bombed e would die of hunger.
Day after day, they arrived the bombers.
The artillerymen German saw the towers of Leningrad.
The projectiles obtained to reach all the quarters, all the streets.
The Ladoga lake continued to be the only breach in the enemy wall.
When it froze, was constructed a road in the ice to make to pass abastecimentos.
The trucks fell in the ice or they were destroyed by airplanes.
The ice road did not allow that much thing entered e did not allow that almost nobody left, thus keeping Leningrad to the side of the starvation.
Everything was finishing.
The electricity and the cars had stopped.
In the blackout and intense cold of the Winter of the north of Russia, already it did not have heating nor electric light.
The workers, way unconscious for the hunger, they kept the plants functioning, exactly when the bombs already they had destroyed the roofs.
Tanks of rude steel and without painting left the onward plant.
The bread was now done with garbage, ration for cattle, serragem.
The people ate soap, oil of linhaça and estuque.
The owners of house and the children they only had right the 130 gram of this "bread" per day.
Frozen and quiet, Leningrad opposed to die it.
The libraries remained open.
The people were felt inspired in the new "literature of the blockade".
The poetry was a great force.
It kept us livings creature.
What they say of Leningrad It is truth, The tears had frozen In the eyes of the people.
Already we do not cry, therefore none Tear erases the flame of the hatred.
E the hatred is the only way.
It is the guarantee of the life The cure of pain, The force that joins in them, It heats in them and the guide.
The end of November, December e had January been the worse ones.
First, because he was cold, they were 40ºC negative.
E started to feel it hunger.
The people had started to die of hunger and cold.
The wall continued.
It had few ways of to reply against the Germans.
An age with the weapons of the ships of war imprisoned in the port.
In land, small groups penetrated in German trenches.
They cut the supplying lines, they captured prisoners e collected information.
They went in the houses of the colaboracionistas and judged them there exactly.
January of 1942: they died about 4 a thousand people in Leningrad every day.
When it went in the store to receive the ration for the family, if it passed for two bodies in the gone one, when it came back had four.
Except of the wall, the Russians fought to loosen the German blockade e to speed up the slow columns that they passed for the frozen lake.
But it did not have any great one offensive to break the wall, not even air support.
The men and the equipment they were with priority in Moscow.
The Spring brought new fears.
The mortal cold softened e the melted snow disclosed thousand of corpses in the streets.
A campaign was launched to clean the city.
It did not have any epidemic.
Now the frozen road it started to melt.
Although the difficulties continued before the lake being navigable, the feeling in Leningrad she was reliable.
When the sun started to shine, we start to clean and to wash, because already we had water.
We start to feel us normal another time.
The Chamber of the city placed some trains in functioning.
We receive the trains as an old friend who returned.
I remember to have beaten palms when vi the trains.
The survivors felt themselves strong, the rations had been increased.
Groups of young volunteers went of house in house helping families that, during the Winter, almost they had lost contact with the exterior.
The children who must have before been evacuated eight months they were led of boat through the Ladoga lake.
The boats brought troops and the ammunition to relieve the exaustos men that they were in trenches.
Leningrad started to look like itself more with a military base.
The worse one of the wall had finished.
Although the bombings they continued, now it made sensible to fix the estragos.
Turf was collected to serve of fuel in the following Winter.
Pupils and professors of Botany they had helped to plant vegetables in each open space.
The Germans who occupied the prairies of the Ukraine they were not worried about food.
During 50 years, the expansionistas German turn this region as the end of the dependence of Germany of the maritime importations.
General Manstein said: A great part of the population it will have that to pass hunger.
It swims, not to be a false one humanity sensation, it must be given to the population, not to be that they are to the service of the German Wehrmacht.
In Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine, the plans to conquer the nationalists, with promises of a government puppet anti-Soviet, they had been never materialize.
They had been side ranks for the army and the SS.
The reality was.
to work for the Germans or the deportation for the Reich.
Each city learned the price to defy the authority.
In Moscow, at the beginning of 1942, it had confidence in the future.
The fights of the Winter had disclosed that the Germans were not more invincible of what Napoleão is.
But the Russians found that they were supporting the pack of the war against the fascism alone and Ocidente did not make the sufficient.
When Stalin started to ask for people for one second front, the people had fast joined themselves to the manifestations of support.
Molotov, the Minister of the Foreign affairses, it heard of the occidental diplomats how much they admired heroísmo of the Red Army, but one second front still it was impracticable.
Stalin did not believe.
Stalin was to the front of an army that each time became implacable greater and.
But the Russians did not dissimulate to be immune to pain.
Sets of ten of thousand of people they knew this poem of color: Wait for me, and I will return, But it waits very.
Wait until if fulling of penalty While you see rain yellow.
Wait until the winds To sweep snows.
Wait in the suffocating heat.
Wait until the others to give up When to forget Yesterday.
It waits exactly that they do not arrive Letters of far for you.
Wait exactly when the others They will be tired to wait.
Wait exactly when my mother E my son to think that I died.
E when the friends if to seat Drinking in my memory.
Wait, and you do not hurry yourself to also drink In my memory.
Wait, therefore I will return, Defying each death.
E leaves those that had not waited To say that I had luck.
They never will understand That, in the way of the death, You, and its wait, They had saved me.
But you and I will know As I survived.
It was because you waited for me As plus it made nobody it.
Still more disasters were come close.
In May, the Germans had defeated the offensive Russian close to Kharkov.
When the Red Army advanced, panzers had encircled the flanks.
The Soviet commanders had asked for to withdraw before being late.
But Stalin, ignoring the advice, forbade them.
The German wall was closed.
The majority of the men of the three Russian armies it was forced to put down the weapons.
During the war, more than five million Russian soldiers had been made prisoners.
They had survived less than two million.
Mainly for the British, the Russians were now "our gallants Soviet allies".
But, the principle, the aid alone it could arrive through the Arctic, for the convoys of ships that if they directed the Murmansk and Arcangel, through the deadly zone watched for the submarines, airplanes and German warships.
In July of 1942, this convoy of ships lost 80% of its ships.
But the courage of the sailors British did not obtain that the convoys of ships supplied the gigantic Russian necessities.
The defeat was fought, but it did not have victory signals.
It was the moment of the bitter resistance, the time to support the disillusion and the loss.
Long ago it seems possible that the soldiers German they were only companionable uniform workers.
Now the Soviet writers words of hatred pronounced.
We obtain to support everything: The plague, the hunger and the death.
But we do not obtain To support the Germans.
We do not obtain to support These imbeciles of esbugalhados eyes That they look at with disdain Everything what he is Russian.
We do not obtain to live while These lesmas green will be alive.
Today it does not have books.
Today it does not have stars in the sky.
Today it has only one thought: To kill the Germans.
To kill them it all E to embed them in the ground.
Then, we will be able to go to sleep.
Then, we will be able to think again About the life, books.
In the women and the happiness.
We go to kill them it all, But quickly Or they will go to profane all Russia and to torture and to kill more millions.
To the measure that the Soviet soldiers advanced, they discovered what the Germans they had made the civilians.
The churches had been fulled again.
The priests had been invited to pray for Russia, to raise the patriotism of the believers.
The icons again were adored.
The public campaign the favor ateísmo it was forgotten.
The Germans had killed Jews and Communists.
They had killed the suspicious one to support the resistant ones.
They had killed the hostages.
After the battles, during the withdrawal, they killed, simply.
To the north, the Russians prepared themselves to attack the German wall Leningrad.
While they waited, informers had brought notice of the surrender of the armies Germans in Estalingrado.
The army and the people turn the brightness the victory in the end of the tunnel.
Now they knew that they would go to be successful.
In Leningrad, the relieved troops they had breached the defenses.
They had opened a route for land.
The blockade of 16 months finishes.
But the wall was not broken.
Germans and Finnish they continued in the city.
It was a so good sensation that nor I obtain to describe it.
I was in the house of the neighbor, we kiss in them and we said: "Now we go to survive, it has an exit.
" In 15 days it was constructed an way-of-iron for the breach.
The food and the fuel had started to enter in Leningrad.
The symbols of the old Russian honor they had been returned to the Army, as they had been returned to the Church.
The propaganda joined Lenin the Alexander Nevsky.
The hero of century XVIII, Suvorov.
Heroes of the Red Cavalry, huge ghosts that supported the avengers of the Soviet native land.
The insignias of an army traditional and professional they had been restored.
Of Great-Britain they had been imported gallons of gold.
The commissioners politicians they had lost status.
The years of it purges they had been forgotten.
Each Soviet citizen felt part of a common fight.
Some people say that it was the cruelty fascist that it lead the resistance in the busy Ukraine and other lands.
Not.
I find that the resistance something was inevitable.
The Soviet people in the rear it could not be remained the part of the fight.
In 1941, behind aircraft marshalling areas, they had started to form itself groups of resistant.
To the beginning they did not have weapons, they had grown slowly.
The German deportations had compelled thousand of people to run away for the forests where if they had joined to the resistant ones.
Soon, the resistant ones they had become a great army that it operated against the lines of communication of the enemy.
The penalty for colaboracionistas it was the death.
The simple suspicion of affection for the enemy, it took entire groups as the "Germans of the Volga" e the "Tartars of the Crimeia" to be deported for Central Asia.
For the individual collaborators it did not have mercy.
When the prisoners German they were shown in Leningrad, the people reached an enemy that she was to its reach.
In estepes of Soviet Asia, in the new plants and mines of Siberia, the desperate effort more of production of the modern times it was reaching the climax.
Russia had been apanhada with obsolete airplanes, inadequate for the air support.
Now, the plants produced for month nine a thousand modern airplanes.
In 1943, the military production it exceeded, finally, the German.
Above all, because of the tanks.
In 1943, the plants had constructed 24 a thousand tanks.
More than what any another weapon, it was the tank, in special the T-34, that it gained the battle of the Eastern Front.
With the American wagons that they arrived of the Pérsia, this chain of tank it arrived at the aircraft marshalling areas.
The Russians knew that, in July of 1943, the Germans would launch again an offensive one of great extension.
Also they knew that it would have place in Kursk.
They had that to remain itself firm.
Then, the Red Army, now the biggest force seen in war, it would go to counterattack.
The Germans had planned to arrive the Kursk, in the hope to finish with the enormous Soviet armies e later arriving Moscow.
They had brought 70 divisions, almost a million of men, with the new Tiger tanks e Ferdinand cannons.
Hitler intended to advance in May, but it had delays in the production e in the accumulation of reserves.
The weeks had passed.
When the Germans had been chemical preparations for the attack, the Russians already were to the wait.
We were prepared, what more than ready for the attack of Hitler.
We knew that we had tank enough to hinder the fascists to destroy our defenses.
The recognition patrols they had captured prisoners.
For them, we knew that the troops of Hitler they planned to initiate the attack to 2h30 of the morning of 5 of July.
Demons the notice to the troops.
The commander is in the comment rank.
The soldiers are in trenches and the enemy attacks tomorrow.
They can imagine what it passes for its head.
It had 100 tanks more than to each kilometer.
When the tanks if dislocate, all the land trembles.
E the weapons go off, but soldier remains seated.
The Soviet airplanes they take off of dawn to destroy the bombers Germans who wait in the tracks.
The Germans had kept the established one.
In the morning of 5 of July, divisions of panzers had advanced.
In Kursk, the greater happened battle of tanks of History.
In the north, 16 the German troops cover km in five days and stop, with 50 a thousand decreases e In the south, a battle still more vast, the Russian defense suffered one breaks throughout 32 km, but the Germans were exaustos.
In day 15 of July, Hitler it cancelled the offensive one against Kursk.
The Red Army counterattacked.
Under bombing, the combat engineers they had taken the shortcut of the German defense.
The tanks had advanced for the breach with the troops walking its side.
These were the new Russian soldiers, very different of masses defeated in 1941.
The clothes were puídas, but the weapons were clean.
They were hard and they pursued the enemy to fight body-the-body.
They were smart, trained to survive of the land and to cross rivers without support.
If it did not have boats, a bank or a trunk served.
They fought without right license or payment, but the moral age fierce and raised.
In military terms, it was Kursk that it decided the end of the war.
When the supreme German effort it failed, started the Soviet victory.
At the beginning, the fight to capture the German positions were hard and slow.
But, after nine days, Red army recaptured the lost land in last the offensive German.
The Germans had withdrawn, destroying everything to its ticket.
But now they were under the attack constant of the Soviets.
The Luftwaffe had lost the control of the airspace.
Suddenly, the busy cities of Russia they were fulled of tank that they were dislocated for ocidente.
After two years, the conquerors beat in withdrawal.
The Germans continued in the outskirts of Leningrad.
The city continued to be bombed.
The wall alone was broken in January of the following year.
The force of Russia, as a compressed gigantic spring until the o has limited, it was now to free itself.
The first cities they had been freed.
In day 5 of August of 1943, Orël and Belgorod had been freed.
In each city, the ones that had died in the battle they had been embedded.
You do not call me, father.
You do not look for to me.
You do not call me Nor you desire my return.
We are in an unknown way The fire and the blood had erased the route.
We fly, in the wings of lightning, More not to unseam the sword.
All we tumble in battle, More not to come back.
Will have one reencontro? I do not know it.
I only know that we must To continue to fight.
We are supreme of sand in the Infinite E never more we will see the light.
Good bye, my son, Good bye, my conscience.
My youth and my consolation, My only son.
That this farewell is the end Of the vast solitude, Therefore nobody does not more only have.
There you will remain For all always Far from the light and of air.
Your death will not be counted.
Not counted and not attenuated the death, more not to revive, For all always A youngster of 18 years.
Good bye, then.
No convoy arrives of this region With or without schedule, No airplane can arrive there.
Good bye, my son, Therefore miracles do not happen.
E, in this world, The dreams are not become fullfilled.
Good bye.
I will dream of you When ages baby, Walking for the land With strong steps.
For the land where already as much They were embedded.
This song, my son, It arrived at the end.
In Moscow, Stalin announced: Today, to the 24 hours of day 5 of August, the capital of our country, Moscow, it will go to greet the brave troops that they had freed Orël and Belgorod.
Perpetual glory to the heroes that they had tumbled in battle fighting for the freedom of our country! Death to the invaders German! In November, Kiev was freed.
Russia was salute, for the soldiers and the people.
But in the land, without to arrive to see the peace,