Battle of Russia - Part I

• "History knows no greater display of courage than that shown by the people of Soviet Russia." - Henry Stimson
• "This is a film about a people who shattered the legend of German invicibility"
• 1242 - German knights invaded Russia and threatened capital Novgorod
• 1704 - Charles I of Sweden invaded Russia
• 1812 - Napoleon invaded Russia
• 1914 - Kaiser Wilhelm invaded Russia
• map - Ukraine and Crimea
• "Why have all these attempts been made to conquer Russia?"
• map - 1/6 of the earth's surface - 9 million square miles - the sun never sets
• rich in raw materials, 1/4 world's lumber, coal, 55% world's oil, iron, farms, 1/3 world's wheat
• "Russia is also people" -193 million people "of every race, color, creed" speaking 100 languages, including famous Cossack horsemen, the Ukrainians from southwest breadbasket, and Modavians and Bessarabians, and the Armenians and Georgians of the Caucusus, Uzbeks from Kazak frontier, or Mongols and Tartars, the Laplanders of far north
• modern capital of Moscow, "housewives or postal clerks, musicians or ballerinas, " - "all have one thing in common, love of their soil"
• map -" That is Russia." - Three reasons why every conquerer has tried: size, raw materials, manpower
• now, new threat of conquest by Nazi Germany
• 1934 - Russia joined League of Nations
• map - Manchuria, Ethiopia, Poland
• map-Germans turned west
• map - preliminary steps - Hungary had rich fields of grain, bauxite for planes, army - Rumania had oil, men, slave labor and canon fodder
• map - both had Russian frontiers - Bulgaria did have bases on Med. Sea
• Admiral Horthy of Hungary, young King Michael of Rumania and Hitler's puppet Gen. Antonescu, and King Boris of Bulgaria allowed German occupation
• March 1941 - German armies occupied 3 countries
• map - left Greece and Yugoslavia, but "Hitler's stooge" Mussolini failed to conquer
• map - Greeks drove Italians back after Mussolini's troops tried to cross Albania border, and Greeks invaded Albania

CHAPTER 1 - Air Attack

• April 6 - at dawn Germany bombed Yugoslavia
• map - Germans and Italians launched coordinated attack from all sides of Yugoslavia
• map - "war on Greece also began on April 6"
• by end of April, swastika flew over Athens - "The conquest of the Balkans was now complete"
• Russian industry converted to war goods, army grew and trained for the "titanic struggle"
• map - "Russians had built a buffer" to protect themselves
• German attack began on broad front with 2 million men toward Leningrad in north, Moscow in center by von Bock and captured Smolensk July 17, Ukraine in south
• "then a strange thing happened" - "came up against a country that did not submit"
• map - 500,000 square miles had fallen to the invaders
• "Let's try to analyze it" - two strategies came face to face
• German wedge and trap strategy
• map - German strategies in Poland, France, Balkans used blitzkrieg to break through
• Russian defense-in-depth strategy
• map - deeper the Germans advanced, the stronger the foe
• Russians kept main army intact, used cities as strongholds, "the more a city was bombed, the more it became impassable to the Germany army"
• "Odessa" was the scene of heroic siege of two months - "Sevastopol" an 8-month defense inch-by inch, "each street, street-by-street, each house, house-by-house, each room, room-by-room"
• "June 22, 1941" - Russian people grim and determined - total war
• "scorched earth" as Russians "surrendered to the flames but not to the invaders"
• "this is the guerilla army, this is the scorched earth, this is the Red army"
• map - these are the reasons why Germans stopped at Moscow
• fresh reserves of the Red army marched in the streets of Moscow singing
• end title - part 2 next
• V for victory

CHAPTER 2 - Battle of Russia

• starts part II - one minute review of part 1
• "Fighter Command ready, Bomber Command ready, parachutists ready, infantry ready"
• "Now it was the Germans turn to fight for their lives. Now for the first time it was the German army that retreated."
• montage of Russian people scenes
• Germans destroyed home of Tchaikowsky "the piano concerto, the 5th Symphony, the 6th Symphony" that had been an inspiration for the Russian people - home of Tolstoy - Russian dead frozen in snow - "these are the children" who were victims of Nazi mass murder - hangings
• "Blood for Blood, Death for Death"
• map - Germans were pushed back from Moscow and the Russians "shattered whole legend of Nazi invincibility"
• Another factor shattered the legend - northern city of Leningrad today, called Petrograd before
• montage of air raid sirens, German bombers, antiaircraft guns
• "Finally the morning comes and the people of Leningrad dig themselves out from the ruins. They seem very similar here to the people of London, Rotterdam, Warsaw"
• map - Nazis surround city and began 17-month siege of Leningrad
• cold, hard winter became an ally - 30 degrees below zero
• workers got 8 oz bread per day, others got half that - women workers cleared rubble
• "Germans decided to shell them into surrender"
• map - Leningrad between Lake Lagoda and Baltic - 100 miles of ice connected the besieged city with far shore - new lake highway opened on ice for trucks

CHAPTER 3 - Troops by Train

• Railroad track laid across frozen lake, and Red Army launched counterattacks, "driving them inch-by-inch back from the city's outskirts"
• "and then spring came" and the ice began to melt - "for the first time in months the trollies ran" - "this was life again, life for the Leningrad children, life for the Russian WACs and WAVs" and for the Russian sailors who went to the ballet
• "people win wars"
• "summer 1942" - new posters greet help from Allies, supplies arriving in ports
• German strength concentrated on Caucasus
• map - Baku on the Caspian, Germans needed to control northern railroads and hub of Stalingrad on the Volga
• map - Germans could control flow of supplies
• The Volga is "the vital artery "

CHAPTER 4 - Long March

• map - German attack on Kerch peninsula, Sevastopol, controlled Crimea, next German attack was to the Don Riverand to northern Caucasus
• 2 barriers - mountains and determination of people of Caucasus
• German orders - "Stalingrad must be captured"
• Germans began to enter city but "would meet a fiery fury of which they had never known"
• "every inch of the city was a strategic point and defended as such"
• Russian sniper kills running German
• "Battle of the Streets" continued - as November dawned, the Russians "inch-by-inch were regaining" their city
• tickertape brought news - British and Americans in North Africa
• [end of film cut off in middle of map]