Barbarossa: June-December 1941
- Episode aired Nov 28, 1973
- 52m
After dominating southeastern Europe through force or intrigue, Germany begins Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union.After dominating southeastern Europe through force or intrigue, Germany begins Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union.After dominating southeastern Europe through force or intrigue, Germany begins Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union.
Photos
- Self - German High Command
- (as General Warlimont)
- Self - British Embassy, Moscow 1941
- (as Sir John Russell)
- Self - Prime Minister of Yugoslavia
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
- Self - C-in-C, Luftwaffe
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
- Self - Führer und Reichskanzler
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
- Self - Bulgaria
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
- Self - Romania
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
- Self - Foreign Minister
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
- Self - Yugoslavia Acting Head of State
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
- Self - Secretary General
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
- Self - Red Army General
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaFootage showing Hitler's triumphant journey across Germany is accompanied by the song "Wenn die soldaten", a German march that was actually written in the late 19th century, and famously sung by Marlene Dietrich. Although unconnected with the Nazi cause, the song has been identified with it in other films. In the TV Movie "Hitler's S.S.: Portrait in Evil" (1985), the song plays over scenes of SS officers mobilizing on the eve of "The Night of Long Knives", the infamous 1934 purge of the Sturmabteilung.
- Quotes
Self - German High Command: Hitler wanted to attack Russia already in the fall of 1940, and let himself, for once, be persuaded that it would be impossible to go to war at that late time on account of the weather in Russia, and for the reason that it would urgent and necessary to enforce the German army as well as the German air force, before entering into this new campaign.
So opens the fifth installment of this groundbreaking 26-part documentary that must have been a revelation to viewers watching its initial broadcast and remains an invaluable lesson about World War Two today.
The Cold War effectively effaced the role and stature of the Soviet Union as a crucial ally against the Nazi conquest of Europe, but writer-producer Peter Batty delivers an intricate yet clear and compelling narrative of the background and initial consequences of the largest and bloodiest campaign of World War Two, one that stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea and claimed millions of lives, yet because the communist Soviet Union had been the mortal enemy of the "free world" during the subsequent Cold War, it is a campaign about which many are still largely unaware. "Barbarossa" vividly redresses this oversight.
German interviewee General Walter Warlimont notes that, for once, Hitler's generals were able to dissuade him from launching the proposed fall 1940 attack because of the harsh winter sure to ensue. Albert Speer, the Nazis' Minister of Armaments and War Production, explains that the Soviets' failure to defeat Finland in the 1939 Winter War (detailed in the second installment "Distant War") bared their military weakness to Hitler, who had always believed that Germany's quest for "lebensraum," "living space," lay in the vast reaches of Russia, rich in resources--and in potential slave laborers as the eastern Slavic peoples were considered "untermenschen," "sub-humans," by Nazi Aryan racial standards.
The sole Russian interviewee, rocket scientist Grigori Tokaty, who had defected to Britain in 1947, affirms that the purges conducted by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in the 1930s literally decapitated Russia's military leadership, but the Finnish campaign and the growing evidence that, despite the August 1939 non-aggression treaty signed between Germany and Russia, the Nazis would inevitably turn against them spurred the strengthening of Soviet forces.
Paul Schmidt, Hitler's interpreter, relates how Soviet Minister for Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov, who had negotiated the treaty with Germany, arrived in Berlin in November 1940 to confront Hitler about the possibility of an invasion, a belief that had been bolstered by the September 1940 Tripartite Pact Germany signed with Italy and Japan, cementing them as the Axis Powers pledged to provide one another mutual military support.
This prompted the Soviet Union to annex the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania as well as portions of Romania to form a bulwark against Nazi Germany. Ironically, however, as recounted by Averell Harriman, President Franklin Roosevelt's special representative to Britain, warnings by Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill that Hitler's attack was imminent were disbelieved by Stalin, convinced that they were trying to trick him, a perception Tokaty confirms.
Thus the stage was set for Germany's Operation Barbarossa in mid-1941, but Soviet intrigues in the Balkans prodded Hitler to invade first Yugoslavia, then Greece, starting in May. Although the invasions were successful, they prompted a five-week delay in the invasion of the Soviet Union that, as "Barbarossa" turns toward its second half, would have dire consequences for Hitler and Nazi Germany.
As edited by Peter Lee-Thompson, the footage of the German invasion of Russia and especially footage of the Soviet home front presents an illuminating, often bracing and poignant tableau of scenes rarely seen by Western viewers because of the de facto censoring during the Cold War.
Also vivid and sometimes haunting are the recollections of several unnamed German military survivors describing the conditions of the invasion. The Wehrmacht, split into three enormous groups, charged eastward toward Leningrad, Moscow, and Kiev, catching Soviet forces unawares. This resulted in the mass slaughter of Russian troops as the Germans, yet to be defeated, boldly drove forward more than a thousand miles, encircling Leningrad and coming within sight of Moscow, its citizens digging defensive fortifications yet certain of their eventual capture; however, Stalin's refusal to evacuate, as many Muscovites had done, heartens the Red Army bracing for battle.
But Hitler's delay in launching the invasion proves bitterly fatal as the brutal Russian winter besets German forces that even in good weather, and good military fortune, were already beginning to despair of "the melancholy" of the utter vastness of Russia's western steppes. Now the German survivors bemoan the "disconsolate" frozen landscape. However, their woes are just beginning. Taking charge of the defense of Moscow is General Georgy Zhukov, who masterminds a counteroffensive comprising 40 divisions of Siberian troops skilled in winter warfare as Nazi Germany feels its first true reversal of fortune, one that marked future misery for Hitler's invading forces attempting to conquer Russia.
With Carl Davis's incidental music accenting discreetly beneath the sobering black-and-white footage highlighting this insightful, unblinking portrait of a crucial yet overlooked campaign, "Barbarossa" is an essential installment of "The World at War."
REVIEWER'S NOTE: What makes a review "helpful"? Every reader of course decides that for themselves. For me, a review is helpful if it explains why the reviewer liked or disliked the work or why they thought it was good or not good. Whether I agree with the reviewer's conclusion is irrelevant. "Helpful" reviews tell me how and why the reviewer came to their conclusion, not what that conclusion may be. Differences of opinion are inevitable. I don't need "confirmation bias" for my own conclusions. Do you?
- darryl-tahirali
- Aug 5, 2023
Details
- Runtime52 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1