Battle of Stalingrad, Part 2

Professor Philip Nash continues his excellent analysis of the famous Battle of Stalingrad. The grim complications in the details of the history of this battle give us perfect insight into the nature of warfare during this period. Dr. Nash finishes up by explaining how the Battle of Stalingrad fits into the larger period of late 1943-1943, when the war started to turn against the Axis powers. Episode 567.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:13):
Hello, everyone, it's Professor Buzzkill, busting myths, taking names. You
know what's so great about being me is that I
have the best historian friends in the world. And we
were on the line with Professor Phil Nash last week
talking about the Battle of Stalingrad in what became the
first part of that episode, and here we are today
back again to talk about part two. Because it's such

(00:35):
a huge it needed to be broken down into two
pieces in order to really understand what's going on. Remember,
we don't give you the History Channel version of everything here.
We give you the much better version of everything here.
So Professor Nash, thank you so much for coming back
on the show.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
I'm happy to be here as always.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
Well, it is an amazing battle. You left us with
a great cliffhanger. First of all, before the cliffhanger, we
learned it. Know, Hitler just screws this up six ways
for Sunday. But then you talked about at the end
all of that screwing up and winter setting in creates
a great opportunity for the Soviets dot dot dot. So
let's talk about that great opportunity. German concentration on Stalingrad

(01:17):
creates that opportunity which they were taking advantage of. And
how were they doing that right?

Speaker 3 (01:22):
How did they do that? Basically, the Germans have basically
created this opening for the Soviets. Basically, remember that there's
a bend in the German line. So the German line
roughly comes from northwest to southeast along the Don River
sort of north of Stalingrad. At Stalingrad it takes a
bend I don't know, maybe one hundred and twenty degrees.

(01:42):
I guess it turns in due south. So basically and
Stalingrad is that is at the tip. And then you've
got your flanks defended by far weaker Axis forces mainly Romanians,
but also Italians and Hungarians. I mean, not taking anything
away from the Soviets, but it's sort of been given
to you on a platter. If you are building up
forces that you can counterattack with, you really could easily

(02:05):
attack on the German or the Axis flanks, break through
and surround all the German forces that are in Stalingrad.
So that's what the Soviets do. They plan what's called
Operation Uranus. They start planning in mid September.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
It spelled its planet and named of the planet.

Speaker 3 (02:22):
Yeah, this in this period, the German the Russians have
a whole bunch of operations. There's an Operation Mars, there's
an Operation Saturn, and there's Operation Urinus. So it's a
counter attack. And basically here's like I said, Stalin is
getting better at the warlord thing. He lets his new
deputy commander in chief, General Georgy Jukov, one of the
great he's basically the Eisenhower of the Soviets, if I

(02:43):
can put it that way. He's probably their number one
military commander of the war. Is very very gifted, very
very tough. He takes charge on the stalin Grad front,
and Stalin doesn't interfere very much with him. And what
Stalin is doing his he's slowly letting merit rather than cronyism,
determine who gets seenior slots. And one of the reasons
the Soviets have had disasters up until this point on

(03:03):
all fronts, by the way, is some of the best
Soviet commanders in the late nineteen thirties were purged, either
killed or sent to the Gulag, and the people who
survived were often his cronies. And these are some of
the people in senior positions in nineteen forty one or
early in nineteen forty two, and they don't do a
very good job because they're cronies. They're a TOAs so
Stalin is getting away from that basically and by putting
people like Zhukov in charge in senior command slots, so

(03:26):
they plan to attack on the flanks and basically encircle
the German force in Stalingrad. The Germans miss this totally.
This is yet another massive German intelligence fail. We've seen
this elsewhere in World War Two. I've talked about in
other shows. German intelligence often not very good. They miss
the Soviet build up, partly because they believe that Soviets,

(03:47):
the Soviet manpower has been used up. Hitler loves to
believe this based on very little evidence. They believe that
the Soviets are by the way, and they are. The
Soviets have enough forces. They are also building up opposite
Army Group Center, the German Army Groups Center outside Moscow,
so the Germans think maybe if the German it's the
Soviets attack, it's going to be there. The Soviets are
also relying on and becoming much better at what they

(04:08):
call Muskrovka, which is basically deception.

Speaker 1 (04:11):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (04:11):
So they're very careful as they build up for this
counter offensive. They are very good about camouflaging their forces.
They do a lot of movement at night so they
can't be spotted by German aircraft. That's a certain point.
They build bridges across the dawn and the bridges are
about a foot below the surface of the water, so
that you can't see the bridges very easily from the air.

Speaker 1 (04:32):
This is amazing to me. It's amazing to me they
were able to do that.

Speaker 3 (04:35):
Like sort of like like elegantly simple sort of thing
I would never think of. It's pretty clever, right because
it's shallow enough that you can still drive a vehicle
across it.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
Oh well, yeah, that's true, yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:45):
Right, but you wouldn't see it, wouldn't see it from
the air. So there's a lot of deception camouflage build
up at night. They know, they move forces into place
and the camouflage them so the Germans don't notice anything
is happening. And the Germans also for all these reasons,
feel like they don't need to fear counter They don't
think the Soviets are capable basically of doing this, that
they don't have the forces and they're not preparing anything, any.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
Big attack on our flanks.

Speaker 3 (05:08):
It's even worse for the Germans, which they may not
have noticed at the outset, is that they had failed
to establish their line firmly on the dawn the entire
stretch to the northwest of Stalingrad. In other words, there
were places where the Soviets still had bridgeheads. From earlier
in the campaign. The Soviets had bridgeheads on the west
side of the Don River, so in other words, they

(05:29):
don't have to cross the river at certain points in
order to counter attack. So it's even worse for the
Axis than you might think. So really really well set
up for a Soviet counter offensive, which they Operation Uranus,
is launched on the nineteenth of November, and as you
pointed out, this is right when the winter is setting
in the temperatures are plummeting. The Soviets are still much

(05:49):
much better equipped than the Germans when it comes to
winter warfare. The Germans. It's not as bad as late
nineteen forty one, but the Germans still don't have all
the proper winter equipment for line boots and stuff like that, hats,
that sort of stuff. The Soviets attack on the nineteenth
and then the twentieth of September, two phases, first in
the north and in the south, with over a million men.
They have over eight hundred tanks available for this. And

(06:12):
I should point this out because this is an interesting
point made by some of the most recent scholarship, is
that already in this part of the war in the East,
Allied particularly American lend Lease, is playing an enormous role
in making this happening. The Soviets were loathed to admit
this at the time and even afterwards, but we have
a much clearer picture now. Is that already in the

(06:34):
fall of nineteen forty two, the Americans in the British
are prioritizing the rushing of supplies to their Soviet allies,
including lots and lots of armored vehicles, airplanes, trucks and jeeps.
In particular, this is when you start to see Soviet
officers tooling around in American jeeps Studabaker trucks. This is
going to allow the Soviets to do this deep and

(06:56):
very quick penetration that's going to bring them great success.
So it's a double envelopment from the northwest of Stalingrad
and the south of Stalingrad. Total surprise is achieved immediate
deep penetrations. The Romanians in some cases fight rather well,
but they're basically stomped on, they're pushed aside, they're spread
too thin, and they're too ill equipped. I'll give you

(07:16):
one example of this. Sorry, The Romanian infantry divisions had
basically six modern anti tank guns per division.

Speaker 1 (07:23):
Six up against all these six.

Speaker 3 (07:27):
Anti tank guns is what you would want, like in
a battalion with like eight hundred guys, not what you'd
want in a division with twelve or fifteen thousand guys.
In other words, that's essentially like having none at all.
And remember a lot of these Soviet tanks crashing towards
you are t thirty fours. They're probably the best medium
main battle tank of World War two. And most of

(07:49):
the Remainian forces have these little thirty seven millimeter anti
tank guns, which are essentially pop guns.

Speaker 2 (07:54):
You know, their.

Speaker 3 (07:55):
Shells were bounced right off, and so the Romanians are
quickly overrun. The Soviet pincers link up, so the one
from the northwest and the one from the south. The
pincers link up at kalach In the German rear four
days later.

Speaker 1 (08:09):
That's super fast.

Speaker 3 (08:11):
Super fast, I mean so fast that the Germans basically
don't even have time to react properly. Now, by the way,
they couldn't react properly anyway, because they had, like I said,
they only had weak reserve forces in the back. The
lucky German forces and access forces are the ones that
are swept aside and pushed to the west. In other words,
they're not trapped in the pocket. Those are the lucky
axis forces. When the Soviets completed the encirclement, they figured

(08:32):
they had bag about eighty thousand axis forces. The actual
number turns out to be closer to three hundred thousand.

Speaker 1 (08:40):
Wow, that's a huge difference.

Speaker 3 (08:41):
It's an enormous number. And that, by the way, another indication.
You know, your average army in World War Two is
probably around one hundred thousand men. That gives you an
idea of how supersized the sixth Army was. It's about
twenty two divisions give or take that three hundred thousand,
and it depends how you count, but roughly it's about
two hundred and ten thousand German troops. The rest are

(09:02):
Axis so Romanians or even there's even like a Slovakian regiment,
and about fifty thousand heaves often overlooked chivs, the hells viliga.
These are former Soviet prisoners of war who are working
for the Germans, usually in like labor, in a labor capacity.
Fifty thousand of them are trapped in the pocket. And
these are the people who are really, shall we say,

(09:23):
dreading their futures right right, right right, because they've done
what I would argue is the logical thing, right Their
alternative was to die, and like most Soviet prisoners of
war died of starvation and exposure, they were given the
choice basically, we'll feed you, but you work for us.
And so they're fifty thousand of them trapped in the pocket.
There are also a few thousand Red Army prisoners of
war that the Germans have captured in Stalingrad. They're the
really unfortunate ones because basically, when the supplies start to

(09:46):
run low, the Germans are not going to feed them,
and they're going to be liberated by the Soviets, and
they're going to be like weighing eighty pounds each and
this it's going to fire this fire up the Red
Army soldiers even more so, these three hundred thousand axis
forces and HEVs are trapped in a football shaped pocket
that's about forty miles long from east to west and
twenty five miles wide north to south.

Speaker 2 (10:06):
So it's not a small pocket. It's pretty big.

Speaker 3 (10:08):
And it's anchored in Stalingrad on its eastern tip, if
people can visualize that. So they're still the Germans are
still in the city on the river. They still control
most of the city. But then there's all this empty
area out of the back, which makes out the rest
of the football, the football shaped pocket.

Speaker 1 (10:21):
So the how did the German high command react to this?

Speaker 3 (10:24):
Fon Paulus, the commander of sixth Army, who's now trapped
with his army in this pocket, he asks for permission
to break out, and there's a lot of speculation maybe
a more clever or forceful commander would have maybe on
his own authority, broken out or I don't know, taken
charge more firmly. Fon Palas asks Hitler if he can
break out, which would have been possible in the first

(10:45):
couple of weeks. Hitler refuses, and Hitler basic says, we
will rescue you, We'll come to you. Basically, we'll break
through the ring that's around you and liberate you that
way and re establish a front. The commander of what's
of the new German Army Group Dawn, who's the b
brilliant German general Eric von Manstein. He's one of the
best German generals in the war. I think consensus would agree.

(11:05):
He also agrees with Hitler Fon Palace doesn't have to
break out. We can break into him. We can relieve
him by breaking through the ring. And von Einnstein he's
another one of these very slippery characters. After the war,
he lies about this huh. After the war, he's trying
to clean up his reputation and he basically says, oh,
I didn't think we could rescue them. Yeah, dude, at
the time, you did. And that's part of the problem.

(11:26):
That's part of the German thinking. The other part of
the German thinking is we'll build an air bridge.

Speaker 1 (11:30):
Yeah, Now, this is fascinating, it is.

Speaker 3 (11:33):
It's super important that, in other words, we have this
army that's trapped behind enemy lines. We can fly supplies
to them with transport aircraft and bombers. We'll build an
air bridge. And here our good friend Herman Goering head
of the Luftwaffe. He basically, without even looking into it,
basically assures the fearer, look, we can keep them supplied
by air. And one of the reason that he said

(11:54):
this isn't this where the Germans sort of played themselves.
Basically Earlier in nineteen forty two, much farther north in
the Soviet Union, there was another German pocket trapped behind
Soviet lines and they had successfully supplied it by air.
This is called the Demyansk Pocket. People can look it up.
This was south of Leningrad earlier in nineteen forty two.
But it's apples and oranges. This was a small, far

(12:15):
smaller trapped force. It was supplied for a far shorter
amount of time than Stalingrad's going to need, and there
was much less Soviet opposition in the air. And by
the way, still significant losses were sustained in keeping this
army alive and in breaking it out. Basically, but it's
unfortunate for the Germans at this point because it basically
plays into the hands of Adam Hitler, who is completely

(12:37):
averse to giving up a single square inch of territory
under any circumstances. It's one of the reasons the Germans
lose World War Two, and campaign after campaign, you saw
this in North Africa. You see it over and over
again where Hitler says stand and fight, and the Germans,
rather than doing it tactical withdrawal, they get creamed. So
Hitler's like, basically, we will supply you by air, sit tight,

(12:57):
We'll arrange a rescue force that will break into the outside.
That's the idea, big picture. One of the problems with this,
and one of the reasons that doesn't work, is that
this is another we talked about in other shows. It's
another great example of what Paul Kennedy once called imperial overstretch.
Now there was the Germans have established an empire that
is too big for them to defend and they end
up playe whack a mole. So the timing is crucial, right,

(13:19):
this is September nineteenth to twenty third is when the
army in Stalingrad is surrounded. This is right after Rommel
has been defeated at l a Lamin and is retreating
very quickly toward the west and Allied forces land in
Operation Torch. We did a show on this in the
Evasion of Northwest Africa. So at this very moment, November

(13:40):
into December nineteen forty two, significant German forces are being
sent into Tunisia with the help of hundreds of transport aircraft.
All of these ground and air forces might have been
used on the Eastern Front to retrieve the situation at Stalingrad,
but they weren't available because the Germans are trying to
do too much with two little Those forces that might

(14:02):
have saved Fumpoulis and his army were not available. And
so together this refusal to let Fumpalace break out in
the early days of the encirclement, and this idea that oh,
we'll supply them by air, together, these two ideas seal
the fate of the sixth Army.

Speaker 1 (14:16):
Okay, so no, why is that? Why do they seal
the fate of the sixth Army?

Speaker 3 (14:20):
One big reason is the air lift turns out to
be totally inadequate for the task. They're not enough transport aircraft.
Terrible weather. You mentioned the winter. There are some of
these German airfields outside the pocket that are basically loading
up and servicing these transport aircraft. They're operating out in
the open in basically blizzard conditions. If you can imagine
like a major airfield where all the aircrew and the

(14:41):
pilots and everyone are living in tents and it's like
ten below outside. You know, can you imagine trying to
serve service and aircraft with you know, big heavy mittens
on for example, and no aircraft hangers, so you got
terrible weather, not enough transport aircraft. The Soviets are clever.
They very quickly. You know, they've got the sixth Army surrounded.
They deploy around the sixth Army, very very dense anti

(15:02):
aircraft forces. Transport aircraft, especially as they get close to
the pocket. They have to fly low and they're very,
very slow. These junkers JU fifty two transport aircraft. The
Germans rely so heavily on. They're very slow. So in
other words, they're sitting ducks for Soviet anti aircraft. A
lot of them are blasted out of the sky and
never make it. The numbers are not encouraging the sixth Army.

(15:23):
It is calculated needed about seven hundred and fifty tons
of supplies a day a day, wow a day to
continue fighting. Right, that's fuel, that's ammunition, that's food. The
average over the length of this encirclement, the average they
get is about one hundred and five tons, and I
want to say I forget the numbers. The Yeah, the

(15:44):
best single day I think isn't even half of seven
hundred and fifty. So there are supplies that get through,
but not nearly enough. And by the way, if you
unless people think that the German military is somehow this
marvel of efficiency, there are some unbelievably stupid dis decisions
Made've seen stories of transport aircraft landing inside the pocket

(16:04):
and they pull out all the crates and they open
the crates and they find condoms and my o their favorite.
They find huge shipment of condiments like salt and pepper.

Speaker 1 (16:14):
Oh yeah, you don't need boots or artillery shells, you
need ketchess.

Speaker 3 (16:18):
I mean it's almost like you've got these clerks their
clipboards and they're like, well, we got a supply an army,
so it means they need everything on this list, so
let's just send it all, you know, and the air
the plane that has rations might get shot down and
the one with the condoms.

Speaker 2 (16:32):
Might make it through. Pretty ridiculous.

Speaker 3 (16:34):
So the Germans do organize a relief operation under on Manstein.
It's an operation called Winter Storm Vinta Givetar in German.
It's launched on the twelfth of December, so more or
less a month after the encirclement has begun. This counter offensive.
Tell me if you've ever heard this story before, it begins, well,
at first, yeah, it makes good progress on its way

(16:57):
towards Stalingrad. There's a point where the troops raptain Stalingrad
can actually hear the guns in the distance, but this
force is too small. The Soviets counter attack further west
in Operation Little Saturn, which actually comes close to or
threatens to encircle this relief column, and so it has
to be called off. Winter Storm is called off on

(17:17):
Christmas Eve, so it didn't quite last two weeks. And
at that point the sixth Army is doomed because no
one's coming to rescue you. And by this point you
are not in a position to break out yourself. Now
Hindsight's twenty twenty. Had von Paulus been ordered to break
out at the same time you had an attempt to

(17:38):
relieve him from the outside, who knows. Maybe that would
have worked if it had been organized a little more quickly.
But after almost a month I have to wonder about
any effort on the part of font Poulas to break out,
because by this point his army wasn't mobile anymore, they
didn't have enough fuel. They had already started to eat
their horses because the lack of rations, and by the way,
I didn't realize this at the time of the encirclement,

(18:01):
a lot of the horses of six Army were being
kept a couple like one hundred miles to the west.
In other words, they weren't in the pocket. So already
by early December, I would argue that the mobility of
the sixth Army and thus its ability to break out,
was extremely limited, so it's possible that an attempt to
break out wouldn't have worked. In any case, I would
argue was certainly worth worth a risk compared to what

(18:23):
the alternative is going to be. As you might imagine,
since I already mentioned people are eating horses, the conditions
inside the kessel or the cauldron as the Germans call it,
steadily worsen. Rations are cut and cut again for several weeks.
Your average German infantrymen he might get a slice of
bread and a hunk of cold horse meat for the
entire day. So these people, they start to lose immense

(18:45):
amounts of weight, they start to get sick. There are
points where there's not even enough fuel for them to
melt snow so they have water to drink. The rat
population inside the pocket explodes because there's so many dead
horses and dead bodies for the rats to chew on,
So the rats are all over the place and getting
bigger and fatter. All the German troops suffer immense lice infestations.

Speaker 2 (19:07):
M M. And I don't want to get.

Speaker 3 (19:09):
Too graphic, but I've read stories of, you know, a
wounded German soldier being brought into a field hospital inside
the pocket, and the first thing the doctors do is
they basically scrape off the lice with a spatula and
throw it in the fire. So miserable conditions. You have
a dysentery, you've got jaundice, you've got frostbite, all the
things you might expect in this sort of situation. Horrible

(19:29):
stories of surgeons or medics unwrapping the bandages from a
wounded hand or foot and the toes or fingers coming
off with the bandage because a frostbite. You know, let's
keep in mind that this is no picnic for the
Red Army either, Right, even with proper equipment, you're still
fighting outside in winter. You know, this is this is

(19:49):
a horrible life. But at least outside the Pocket, in
the Red Army, you're properly equipped and you're properly fed.

Speaker 1 (19:55):
Yeah yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (19:56):
Germans don't have those luxuries, and German German soldiers really
start to start to waste away. There are cases where
German soldiers are so hungry they start to hallucinate. Oh,
which that's not going to make your very effective soldier.
I mean, in a way, the amazing thing is how
well the sixth Army hangs on in the face of
these horrible conditions. The only good news into December through

(20:16):
December for the Germans is that the Soviets have ringed
the Pocket with seven armies. And in hindsight, you could
argue that maybe the Soviets shouldn't have devoted so many
forces to trying to eliminate the Pocket, but rather should
just should have contained the pocket, knowing that it's going
to starve itself out anyway, and then divert more forces
to your offensive that's now progressing further west. That I'm

(20:41):
just saying that from my standpoint that might have been
a better idea. In any case, the good news for
the Germans is that the sixth Army, in being surrounded,
is tying down massive Soviet forces, several armies, and so
this relieves pressure on other parts of the Germans as
they try to unwind the rest of this campaign. So,
for example, the Germans don't start to withdraw Army Group A,
which is still down in the foothills of the Causes.

(21:02):
They don't start withdrawing it until December thirty first, which
I would argue is amazingly late, and they are able
to escape with most of it. And that's partly because
they don't face overwhelming Soviet force, because so much Soviet
force is encircling the six Army back in Staalingrad, if
that makes sense to people, right, So the rest of
the German situation actually is not that bad, and it's

(21:25):
partly because and the Germans understand this, by the way,
that's one of the reasons why even after winter Storm
fails Operation winter Storm fails, the Germans want the sixth
Army not to surrender because they know that it's tying
down all these Soviet forces and so they can get
the rest of their act together.

Speaker 1 (21:40):
So how are the German troops handling this? Do we
know what the German troops were thinking?

Speaker 2 (21:47):
We do, especially these days. We have a lot of
their letters. Now.

Speaker 3 (21:50):
First of all, I forget the number. I want to
say about thirty five thousand Germans were evacuated by air
from the pocket.

Speaker 2 (21:57):
Mostly ounded.

Speaker 3 (22:00):
There are people who knew Stalingrad firsthand who do survive,
so there are thousands of them. We also have a
lot of letters that were sent from the pocket out
on you know it Basically a transport plane comes in,
unloads its cargo and picks up things like wounded and mail.
So we have some of their letters. Although it's interesting
in this regard. One of the most famous works along
these lines is a book called Last Letters from Stalingrad,

(22:22):
was published in German in nineteen fifties, published in English
in nineteen fifty six, has very moving letters from some
of these trapped German soldiers in Stalingrad. And today we
know that this book is pretty likely a forgery. Ah,
And so I mean I would like to go and
look back at some earlier histories of World War Two
that I'm sure rely on this book.

Speaker 2 (22:40):
Yeah, And it's like, yeah, no, not really.

Speaker 3 (22:43):
The real letters we have are generally pretty pathetic, as
you might imagine, We have all sorts of evidence that
as you might imagine, that to keep their hopes up,
a lot of Germans in the pocket that start to
spread rumors that, oh, the relief force is basically right
down the road, that they're going to send some s
s panzer division. They're going to break out, They're going
to break in no time, right, you basically wishful thinking.
There's a lot of adding these letters, like clinging to

(23:05):
the last bit of hope that a rescue is still coming.
These troops have to spend an unbelievably sad Christmas in
the ruins of Stalingrad, right, And they're in freezing bunkers
and basements. They're thinking of home, obviously, and more and
more of them are slowly realizing that they're probably never
going to see home again.

Speaker 1 (23:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (23:20):
What we also see in the letters, and this fits
into some earlier things we've said in other shows, you
see a lot of ideological commitment in these letters.

Speaker 1 (23:28):
Now this is fascinating because at this point you're writing
a letter basically you don't have much time and you
don't have much space. But you're writing a letter and
it includes ideological commitment to the Nazi thing.

Speaker 2 (23:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (23:41):
In other words, you're writing to your loved ones. You
don't know if they're going to get this letter. Yeah,
it may be the last letter you're able to write
to them, and in it you're going to say stuff like, yeah,
things are really horrible here, but I'm doing my part
to save Germany and the furor and because you know,
I believe in the cause. I mean, the sort of
stuff that you might think is like know, written by
German propaganda or by some you know that is made

(24:04):
up or whatever that's forged, but it's not so. And this,
I mean, we had did a whole show about kleean
Wehrmacht myth right, the idea that the German army was
a political and it was just nationalists and they were
anti Nazi or non Nazi or whatever. Once again, if
you look at these letters, there's there's all sorts of indications.
I think the whole book has been written about this
by Omer Bartov, all sorts of indications that these even

(24:25):
though they they may there's a little voice in your
head that says, basically, you're being sacrificed for no good reason.
The more powerful voice in their head says, this is
worth it, that my sacrifice is for a great cause,
that Nazi Germany and our beloved fear Adlf Hitler we
will prevail, and it's all good.

Speaker 2 (24:41):
Yeah. And so it's it's really interesting in that regard.

Speaker 1 (24:44):
And this is all happen, All this ideology has all
been built up in less than ten years, basically because
Hitler doesn't take power till thirty three, and this is
forty this is forty two, forty three. This is amazing,
how strong that that ideology commitment?

Speaker 3 (25:00):
Yeah, and also keep I mean, it's a really good
point you make, and just a build on a little
bit more. Keep in mind that you know, if you're
a nineteen year old fighting in Stalingrad, you were ten
when Hitler came to power, exactly exactly, and so you
maybe you served in the Hitler youth. You've been indoctrinated,
you've been educated in a Nazified educational system. I would
put it this way, we should be surprised if we

(25:21):
didn't see a lot of ideological commitment in these letters,
right right, right, right, And get I think that aspect
often gets overlooked. Right the focus on the letters and
the way the letters are used. In a lot of
history focuses on sort of the human element, like how
sad this is? Yeah, you know that they're trapped in
this pathetic situation. But only recently have people like Omar
bartav been paying attention to the ideological aspect of this.

Speaker 1 (25:42):
Okay, So that's the end of forty two. So what
happens in the new year forty three?

Speaker 3 (25:46):
As we turned into the new year? So January seventh,
the Soviet commander who's now in charge. He's the commander
of the Dawn Front, and the Soviets they don't call
them army groups, they call them fronts, but it's the
same thing. The commander of the Dawn Front is a
general by name of Constantin Rokasovski, one of the top
Soviet leaders of the war. He's going to be one
of the people who's on the defeat of Germany nineteen

(26:07):
forty five. Real interesting story. This is someone who is
purged by Stalin nineteen thirty seven. Wow, he was considered disloyal.
He was sent to prison. I think it was only
a fluke, only because of a fluke that he was
not executed. He was released in nineteen forty and by
the time you get to nineteen forty two, the Soviets
had this great shortage of good generals, and so he's
back in a very senior position. He's now given the

(26:30):
job of crushing the pocket at Stalingrad January seventh, he
asks for Poulos's surrender. He basically says, look, you all
are doomed, you're cut off, you're weak. We can stop
the bloodshed right now. You'll be treated well. That was
a lie, but you'll be treated well if you' all surrender.
On Palas asks Hitler again, like can't I surrender? Hitler refuses,
So Rokasovski launches what's called Operation Ring, not a terribly

(26:54):
innovative name, but there you go. Operation Ring is launched
on January tenth, basically from west to eastic because you know,
the Germans defending the pocket on the west side, they're
basically out and open. It's open terrain, it's not built up,
it's in winter. The Germans in some cases couldn't even
dig proper fox holes because the ground is frozen solid.
So the German defenses in the west are are super weak,

(27:15):
and so that's where the Soviets attack, they make very
rapid progress. Germans are physically really not in a position
to defend very well. They do their best, but you know,
they're so low on ammunition. There are all sorts of
cases where the German defensive line they wait. You know,
there's this old saying, wait until you see the whites
of their eyes. Yeah, back in the old days when
weapons were inaccurate. Well, weapons are more accurate now, but

(27:36):
this is what the Germans are doing too, is they
want to make every shot count, so they wait until
almost too late, until the Soviets are right up on
them when they before they open fire, which they would
never do right unless they were just completely strapped when
it comes to ammunition. So there's increase in there. There's
some really pathetic scenes in the Pocket. After January tenth,
the major German airfield, the German controlled airfield inside the

(27:57):
Pocket is called Pitomnik, and there are increasingly desperate scenes
as you might imagine at this airfield. The German military
police they struggle to control the crowds of wounded and
stragglers who are desperate to get on what, for all
they know, might be the last plane out.

Speaker 1 (28:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:12):
Yeah, there are.

Speaker 3 (28:13):
Even cases where an aircraft is all buttoned up, its
engines are revved. It starts taxing down the runway and
soldiers grab onto the outside of the plane and then
the plane goes into the air and then one by
one the soldiers drop off to their deaths. You know,
you got to be pretty desperate to grab onto the
outside of an airplane, but that does happen. And you know,

(28:34):
there are all sorts of people who, you know, basically
do whatever they can to get on one of these airplanes.
And by the way, some of these airplanes don't make
it out. Yeah, some of these are airplanes. They get
airborne and the people who are on the airfield watch
as it pulls off in the distance and then is
immediately shot down and crashes and burns right outside the pocket.
So it's lots and lots of sad scenes from the
German standpoint. So between the sixteenth and the twenty second

(28:57):
of January, the last German held airfield in the pocket
fell to the Soviets, and you know, the Germans are
increasingly pushed back toward the east into Solingrad itself, so
the pocket has collapsed from west to east. And then
the Luftwaffe is reduced basically to dropping parachute canisters.

Speaker 1 (29:17):
Now, these are parachute canisters of supplies.

Speaker 3 (29:19):
Of supplies, correct, These are quite large and heavy. You
push it out of the plane, has a parachute which
slows it down, and it hits the ground and you
hope that it arrived intact. The problem with that is,
you know, it's winter, it's very windy, you're not that
accurate from the air, you don't know exactly where the
front line is, and so not surprisingly, a lot of
these supplies, as far as we know, fall into the

(29:40):
hands of the Red Army and not into the hands
of the sixth Army, the German sixth Army. Now, by
the way, it wouldn't have mattered anyway. You know, this
was going to be a fraction of the fraction of
what they were getting when they had the airfields. But
it's just sort of this sort of another pathetic last gasp.
By January twenty fifth, if people want to date, by
January twenty fifth, the Germans are driven back into the

(30:01):
city city of Stalingrad itself, and pretty quickly the Soviets
breakthrough in the middle and then the Germans are separated
into two pockets. A northern pocket and a southern pocket.
Paulus on that day again asks Hitler permission to surrender.
He is again denied. January thirtieth, Fon Palis notifies Hitler basically,
we are ours from collapse, like we were down to

(30:24):
our last our last last ammunition, last food, last personnel,
et cetera. Hitler responds by giving out a series of promotions,
including promoting Fump Paulus to field marshal. Oh yeah, I mean,
if that sounds odd, which it certainly does. For example,
what has von Palas done to deserve this promotion to
the high By the way, field marshal is the highest

(30:45):
rank in the German army, that's like general of the
army or whatever. Anyway, it's some not very subtle messaging
on Hitler's part. Hitler and Fonpaulis, and everyone knows that
in the history of the German Army, going back to
the days of Prussia, that no field marshal had every surrendered.
Ah yeah, okay, And so essentially it's an invitation to

(31:08):
form Powalas to commit suicide. Yikes, because the belief, certainly
Hitler certainly believed it that no field marshal, no self
respecting Field Marshal should ever surrender that that would be
a that would be a stain on the record of
the German army. And so it's like I said, it's
essentially an invitation to suicide. Thump Powlis declines its invitation,
he surrenders. So he was in the southern pocket. His

(31:29):
command post was in the basement of a department store,
and he surrendered the Southern pocket on thirty first of January.
The Northern pocket lasts a few days after that and
surrenders on February second. And so now the battle is over.

Speaker 1 (31:45):
Well, the battle's over. But you know, one of the
things we hear about this battle is that the human
toll was so massive. So what was the human toll
of the battle?

Speaker 3 (31:55):
Yeah, yeah, the human toll is huge. The figures vary
quite a bit, as you might imagine, for the whole battle.
So let's say, counting for the battle for the city,
counting between August nineteen forty two and February nineteen forty three,
there were probably about five hundred thousand Axis dead. So
remember it's not just Germans, it's also Croatians and Italians
and Roumanians in particular, and all Hungarians. About half a

(32:17):
million access dead, probably around a million Soviet dead. Wow,
that's military deads. That's an enormous toll by any measure
for a single battle. I mean, that's the kind of
thing that puts Stalingrad up at the top ranks of
battles in terms of human losses. Seen it for the
civilian deaths in Stalingrad remembers that the civilians were there
for the battle. Many some could get away, some couldn't.

(32:39):
Most I think most couldn't. About forty thousand civilians died.
And just to put that in perspective, you know, that's
roughly the same death toll from the Firestorm and Hamburg
Operation Gomorra July August nineteen forty three, right when the
RAF and the US Army Air Force bombed Hamburg so
heavily for six days.

Speaker 2 (32:58):
It's about the same toll.

Speaker 3 (32:59):
I forget what the toll is for the whole blitz,
but I think it's also comparable there in terms of
civilian loss of life the blitz in Britain. That is
so obviously they're also massive losses in equipment, right, tanks, aircraft, etc.
Those far more readily replaced by the Soviets than by
the Germans. So that's an additional problem for the Germans

(33:19):
and apart for the massive manpower losses.

Speaker 1 (33:21):
Okay, then what happens to those who were captured by
the Soviets captured by the Red Army?

Speaker 3 (33:27):
Right, Van Powis is not the only person who surrenders
the sixth Army surrender. I think it's about ninety one
thousand German prisoners of war fall into Soviet hands. As
you might imagine, they are not treated very well, and
they're not in very good shape to begin with. Remember,
a lot of these people are essentially starving. A lot
of these people are basically emaciated. Rex some of them,
you know, lost forty fifty pounds. So they are forced

(33:50):
to march. Remember this is in the dead of a
Russian winter. They're forced to march, a lot of them.
Some of them are put to work. Some of them
are put to work clearing the rubble in Stalingrat and
cleaning up in the city. Some are loaded on a
transports and transported to prisoner of war camps farther east,
including in Siberia. Of those ninety one thousand, about five
thousand survived the war and Here's what always blows me

(34:13):
away is that the last of those five thousand were
only released in nineteen fifty five.

Speaker 1 (34:19):
Yes, we did another show on this with another historian.
It just astounding, just astounding.

Speaker 3 (34:25):
I mean, that's pretty rare in history, that is, as
far as I'm aware, where POWs from a war are
released only ten years after the end of that war.
And this was the result of an agreement between the
Soviets and the West Germans. So, yeah, nineteen fifty five.
There were a lot of wounded Germans obviously who could
not be evacuated, who were also captured. A lot of
them were just shot on the spot, which is the

(34:47):
sort of thing the Germans did all the time as
well when they came across wounded Soviets. Right, we talked
about this, right, the nature of the nature of the
fighting in the Eastern Front is so brutal.

Speaker 2 (34:55):
The heav's right.

Speaker 3 (34:56):
These are the Soviet former Soviet prisoners of war who
had been working for the Germ and some of them
I didn't know this. Some of them had actually been
fighting alongside the Germans in Stallingrad, which you can understand
considering their situation. They know what happens to them if
they get taken alive. Yeah, oh yeah, and some of
them were. And typically they were taken out and shot.
Sometimes they were interrogated or tortured first and then shot,

(35:17):
or I think some of them were also sent to camps,
to labor camps. Obviously they were considered to be traders
by the Soviets. And the most interesting thing to me
from some of the recent evidence, by recent, I mean
maybe last twenty years. We have Soviet records now, so
remember the last formal surrender of Germans in the pocket
is February second, nineteen forty three. After February second, according

(35:39):
to Soviet records, another eleven thousand German troops fought on
inside Stalingrad in small groups.

Speaker 2 (35:46):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (35:46):
Yeah, When I learned that, I'm like, what, like seriously
for how long? Oh well, at least a month in
some cases. According to the Soviet records, they didn't complete
the mopping up until early March nineteen forty three, which
is something we had no idea about for a long
long time. And you know, you can speculate. We don't know. Obviously,
I don't think any of them survived, but ideological commitment,

(36:09):
maybe a dread of capture or both. You know, I
think a lot of them, a lot of them had
essentially drunk the Nazi kool aid, and you know, the
message seemed to be, we fight to the death. When
we're trapped, you save the last bullet for yourself, and
so you just keep fighting. And you know, the NKVD
they had their hands full with some of these small
units or small groups of soldiers who just fought to
the death.

Speaker 1 (36:29):
Okay, then what happened with the military situation after the battle.

Speaker 3 (36:34):
Remember the rest of the Germans in Operation Blew, like
Army Group A and the Caucasus, they withdrew themselves pretty effectively,
pretty successfully. They fall back up into the sort of
eastern Ukraine, right to the west of the Don River,
certainly the Soviets themselves. By February, their advance toward the

(36:57):
west has become overextended. Von Manstein, the German commander. Now
he gets some permission to have some tactical retreats, which
remember is not Adolf Hitler's thing. He also gets some
pretty serious reinforcements and then he counterattacks. So this is
February March nineteen forty three, and the Germans essentially restored
there's another battle for Kharkov. The Germans ess essentially re

(37:21):
established the line, the start line of Blue, sort of
along the Myos River. Okay, so they just turn Ukraine
Eastern Ukraine. Yeah, eastern Ukraine, or I forget where the
border is. It could be technically in southern Russia.

Speaker 2 (37:34):
But yeah.

Speaker 3 (37:34):
So it's basically that that point where the Sea of
Azov juts furthest up into the northeast, basically from that
point north and then there is this bulge around Kersk
that's a new and that's going to lead to the
last German offensive the following year. Speaking of which the
Germans do have enough combat power to manage one last offensive.
It's even more limited than Blue. This is the one

(37:55):
in July nineteen forty three Operation Citadel, big German offensive
that failed miserably. With that exception, and like I said,
that is a much more limited attack with a much
more limited goal. Basically, the Germans have lost the initiative
after Stalingrad and the balance of forces on the Eastern
Front is now way out of whack. And this is

(38:16):
true if you look at manpower, certainly, if you look
at production, and certainly if you look at the rapidly
increasing rate of the arrival of lend lease aid from
the United States and the United Kingdom.

Speaker 1 (38:32):
Yeah, we forget that American len lease material would to
Russia as well.

Speaker 3 (38:36):
Absolute well, yeah, and enormous quantities. And this is I've
been reading a recent book. I think it's called Stalin's War.
Maybe we can put that on the bookshelf as well.
It goes into great detail about how crucial lend lease
aid was not only to the Soviet war effort, but
even as early as the Battle of Stalingrad. And basically,
you know, the Soviets they're a real difficult ally. We

(38:58):
talked about this in other shows. They are concremelyre incredibly demanding. Yeah,
they want everything yesterday, and they show no stal In particular,
shows no regard for any difficulties that might be involved
in supplying lend lea's aid or what might be causing
a particular hold up. They want more, they want more,
they want more, and then they will never acknowledge its
importance in his role. And this is true long after

(39:20):
World War Two.

Speaker 1 (39:20):
Yeah, you see this in Russian and propaganda after the war.
It's all we did it.

Speaker 3 (39:24):
All on absolutely, we did all by ourselves. And you know, occasionally,
like I think in Dzhukov's memoirs he acknowledges the role
of lend lease. But you know, now we essentially have
as historians, we have all the receipts in this case,
literally the receipts, and the amount of materiel that was
going to the Soviet Union was immense. And for example,
think about Operation Urinus. How big those breakthroughs were and

(39:47):
how fast they accomplished. The encirclement of sixth Army. That's
partly because of the Red Army's mobility, and the Red
Army is mobile largely because of lend lease aid things
like jeeps stew to Baker trucks and things like that. Yeah,
the Soviets, certainly, it's the nature of their regime. The
Soviets are not typically open to acknowledging this sort of thing,

(40:07):
but its historians we have to acknowledge it. And by
the way, the amount of especially in nineteen forty three,
is just going to skyrocket.

Speaker 1 (40:13):
Yeah, they're not gonna says thanks to the capitalists, we
help win this battle, correct.

Speaker 2 (40:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (40:19):
In fact, the American military attache in Moscow during the war.
After the war, he wrote a book called Strange Alliance,
which I think is just an awesome title and really
does capture some of this. By the time you get
to the battles of nineteen forty four, Soviet power is
going to be overwhelming, and it's you know, it's not
entirely because Lenley's The Soviet Soviets themselves are doing great

(40:41):
things with their industry, don't get me wrong, and might
even have won on their own. But the victory over
the Germans at Stalingrad and thereafter is greatly accelerated, I'll
put it that way, by the arrival of increasing amounts
of lend lease of all kinds, you know, everything from
locomotives to spam and millions of leather boots and things
like that. So, as you might imagine, this battle has

(41:03):
enormous effects on morale.

Speaker 2 (41:05):
Uh huh.

Speaker 3 (41:06):
The Germans realize, certainly, German civilians do, and we have
information about this. The German civilians learned about this battle
and basically the spin of the regime and Gribbles's propaganda machine,
that spin didn't work, and German soldiers, German civilians really
for the first time start to realize that we are beatable,

(41:27):
that we're not invincible and that we may actually lose
this war, you know. And like I said, the propaganda
spin and includes things like the Nazi spin on Stalingrad.
It was essentially we had to sacrifice the sixth Army
so that Germany might live. They even drew the parallel
to sort of the Spartans at Thermopylae.

Speaker 2 (41:45):
Oh wow.

Speaker 3 (41:46):
So in other words, I mean, they're doing their best
to spin this into something that was worthwhile and meaningful,
but they basically fail. Yeah, and when it comes to morale,
the reverse is also true that Soviets certainly never pour
in this scale. Realize, wow, you know what, we can
beat these guys. Yeah, you know, the invincible Wehrmacht is
not invincible. That we when we do things right, we

(42:08):
can destroy them. And yes, the Red Army is still
suffering monstrous casualties, but they are improving across the board.
And we talked about this in another episode. All I'll
say it again, it's not just about numbers. That is
sort of an unfortunate Western stereotype that the Soviets just
overwhelmed the Germans.

Speaker 2 (42:29):
You know, it's we.

Speaker 3 (42:30):
Talked about this too. It's it's a parallel to the
to the one take on the American Civil War that
Grant beat Lee not because he was a good general,
but he just sort of, you just sort of drowned
Lee in superior numbers and superior firepower, and that that's
not true at all. Yes, the Red Army is numerically superior,
but they also have superior weapons in a lot of ways,
like the thirty four tank. But they're also improving in tactics.

(42:53):
They're improving in their coordination of combined arms, right, having
all your different branches like your armor and your infantry
and your areor air power and your artillery working together.
They're improving in what's called C cubed eye, which you're
not going to go into depth. Basically it stands for command, control,
communications and intelligence. They're improving in all those branches. It's

(43:14):
not just about numbers. And you see this in Operation Uranus,
you see this in the Battle Stalingrad. More broadly, i'll
put it very simply, probably overly simply, but an important
aspect when it comes to morale and a lawn and
esprit de corp. When it comes to military affairs, one
basic question is are you in the other guy's head? Oh?

Speaker 1 (43:32):
Okay, that's an interesting way to put it.

Speaker 3 (43:33):
Yeah, I mean, are you in the other guy's head?
And I'll use the Civil War analogy. You know, early
in the Civil War in the East, in the Eastern Theater,
Robert E. Lee had gotten into the heads of a
lot of Union soldiers and Union commanders.

Speaker 1 (43:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (43:44):
Or look at North Africa, Irwin Rommel had gotten into
the heads of a lot of Commonwealth commanders.

Speaker 2 (43:50):
Yeah. On the Eastern Front before Stalingrad.

Speaker 3 (43:53):
I'm putting this this is an oversimplification, but I think
there's something to it. Before Stalingrad, I would say that
the Germans are in the Soviets heads. Ah, yeah, And
after Stalingrad, I think the Soviets are increasingly in the
Germans heads.

Speaker 1 (44:05):
And that, if that makes sense, not insignificant at all.

Speaker 3 (44:08):
Absolutely not no, because there's more to warfare than just numbers. Yeah,
and there's more to warfare than just firepower.

Speaker 1 (44:15):
Well, professor, you know, at the very beginning of episode one,
the first part of the Stalingrad series, I said, you know,
we often think of this as the most important battle
of the war, the turning point of the war, et cetera,
et cetera, et cetera. And then you've throughout these two
shows have what we call in the history game, complicated

(44:37):
that notion in a good way. You know, you've showed,
you've shown how complicated it is, and we have to
talk about it in more detail and more context. But really,
what part does this play in the turning of the war?
I suppose is my final final question.

Speaker 3 (44:54):
Obviously it's difficult, and I guess you could say this
is sort of a cop out. It's a difficult to
weigh things in terms of the relative magnitude. You know,
for example, I mean, if you look at the scale
of the battle, Stalingrad is much much bigger than say
L L A.

Speaker 2 (45:10):
Main.

Speaker 3 (45:10):
But I mean if you look at the German defeat
in North Africa more broadly, which is happening at roughly
the same time. If you look at what we talked
about this in the Operation Torch episode, if you look
at the toll on the Germans when they surrender in
Tunisia in May nineteen forty three, you know, Gebels call
that a second Stalingrad. So that's actually comparable. And my

(45:31):
point is is to put you know, it is too
I'll put it this way. It's too simple to say
the German defeat of Stalingrad was the turning point in
the war period. I don't think you can say that
it may be the turning point in the war in
the Eastern Front, which makes it important enough by a mile.
But I'd say look at chronology, look at the timing.
You know, World War Two lasts to be upon how

(45:52):
you count six years, eight years in a relatively brief
chunk of that period. So I'm talking November nineteen forty
two to May nineteen forty three, and the war in Europe.
Look what happens. Ramo is defeated at l Lamin. Operation
Torch is launched, what eleven days before Uranus. So the

(46:14):
timing for the Germans is horrible. And we talked about this, right,
Hitler decides to reinforce North Africa turns out a daily
and a dollar short on a massive scale, and that
means troops and transport aircraft that could be helping out
the sixth Army are going to North Africa. Right, the
Germans are spread spread too thin. So Operation Torch the
seizure of Allied North Africa. I mean that's May nineteen

(46:34):
forty three when that's completed. That's just a few months
after the German defeat as Stalingrad. And then also finally,
let's not forget the definitive defeat of the U boats
in the Atlantic. Yeah, also May nineteen forty three. So
I would say all these things together, and once again
you can argue that it's a cop out, like you're
just throwing them together, right, you know, add these elements
and stir, you know, you know, so I realized it.

(46:57):
In terms of precise causality, it may sound like a
cop but I think in the broader scheme, all the
major ways in which the war is turning against the
Germans happens at roughly the same time. They're basically losing
on all fronts, including by the way, the front in
the air right operation of Gomorra, you know, the flattening

(47:17):
or the incineration of Hamburg. That's July nineteen forty three.
So in a relatively brief period, the Germans are going
to find it increasingly difficult to play this game of
whack a mole, which, like I said, they're spread too thin.
They can't, they can't, you know, they call off their
curs offensive. I think I mentioned this in another episode
July nineteen forty three. They call off their curse offensive.
Why they have to rush more divisions to Italy because

(47:40):
the Allies have invaded Sicily almost exactly the same time
Operation Husky, So the Germans are constantly moving things around.
They don't have enough stuff. And I'll say one other
thing about this, and about Stalingrad in particular, in this
I think will get a little more a little more specific,
which is to say, the Soviet ricktryd Stalingrad helps determine
the sh shape of the end of the war in

(48:02):
that it's gonna help bring the Soviets into Eastern Europe
faster or faster right and earlier than they would have otherwise.
I mean, I mean, obviously it's a counterfactual game. But
imagine a Soviet defeat at Stalingrad, or they don't have
the massive victory at Stalingrad, maybe they don't advance as
far west as they do in nineteen forty three and

(48:22):
forty four. Maybe then the Western Allies basically beat them
to Berlin. I mean, those are all conceivable scenarios without
a major victory at Stalingrad. When it happens, you know,
that has implications in some ways we're still dealing with today.
Right The fact that the Soviet Union is brought into
Eastern Europe. And you know, it's one of the great
moral tragedies and moral complications in World War Two is

(48:45):
that to defeat Hitler, you know, to save half of Europe,
we have to sacrifice the other half, basically where they
swap a Nazi dictatorship for Communist dictatorship. That's really really sad. So,
I mean, there's no doubting this is a massive victory,
brilliant achievement for the army, a huge, huge boost for
the Allied war effort in Europe in general. But once again,
let's not forget just came at an enormous cost.

Speaker 1 (49:08):
Yeah, the cost is really really terrible. And I'd like
to point listeners to a show we did a few
years ago called Why was World War Two So Bad?
In which you talked about in depth the number of casualties,
especially the civilian casualties, and how they were spread around
the globe, to remind ourselves that, you know, the heroism
is extremely important and should be celebrated because it's stopped

(49:31):
you know, bigger evils, but the death toll is just,
oh yeah, stratospheric.

Speaker 2 (49:36):
And just to put this in perspective. Once again.

Speaker 3 (49:37):
I mean, let's say the Soviets lose a million military
dead in the Battle of Stalingrad. That's more military dead
on the Soviet side and the Battle of Stalingrad than
the United Kingdom and the United States lost in the
entire war combined.

Speaker 1 (49:52):
Yeah, that's astounding.

Speaker 3 (49:54):
So I mean that right there. And once again, I
am not I'm pleased, but don't misunderstand me. I am
not somehow BELI the lean the contributions and sacrifices of
Americans and Britons and Commonwealth people from all over the world.
I'm not at all doing that. I'm just saying that
this puts it in perspective, right, this is a single,
big battle where this yes, it's a huge victory, but

(50:15):
it comes at an enormous cost to the Soviet Union.

Speaker 1 (50:18):
Well, there you have a Buzzkillers once again, complications are
all part of history and all essential part of history.
We can't oversimplify. So let me just thank Professor Nash
for coming back on the show to finish up the
Stalingrad episode. You are most welcome and please go to
pressor buzzkill dot com. Do everything you need to do there,
sign up for our newsletter, support us on Patreon, look

(50:41):
at the Buzzkill bookshelf, and we will talk to all
of you next week.