Saturday Matinee: Anthology of Heroes

Speaker A
There are more ways than ever to listen to history daily ad free. Listen with wondery in the Wondry app as a member of R@R.com or in Apple podcasts. Or you can get all of History Daily plus other fantastic history podcasts@intohistory.com.

let's start today's episode with a pearl of ancient wisdom. Ha ha. You fool. You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia.

Speaker D
But only slightly less well known is. This never go in against a sicilian. When death is on the line.

Speaker A
That is, of course the character Vizzini from the movie the Princess Bride, played by the late, incomparable wallace Shawna. And its very good advice, never go against a sicilian when death is on the line. And for sure dont get involved in a land war in Asia. So why did so many try? Napoleon marched east and found oblivion.

The Japanese sailed west and got mired in China. And Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, breaking another rule of warfare. Never fight on two fronts. So why did he? In Todays Saturday matinee, we feature an episode from the fantastic podcast anthology of heroes, the first in a more multi part series that attempts to explain this decision and how it almost worked, catching Joseph Stalin by surprise.

I hope you enjoy. And while you're listening, be sure to search for and follow anthology of heroes. We put a link in the show notes to make it easy for you.

History Daily is sponsored by audible. Listen, listen. You hear that? You hear that noise? No you dont, because of course there is no noise.

But I bet you started to imagine what the noise could be because listening goes hand in hand with imagining. Thats why audible is such a great place to let your imagination soar. When you listen, you can be inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, new ways of thinking. Theres more to imagine when you listen. A soaring tale of soaring cathedrals that got my imagination going was Ken Folletts classic the pillars of the earth.

As an audible member, I get to choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog. But new members can try audible free for 30 days. Visit audible.com historydaily or text history daily to 500 500. That's audible.com historydaily or text history daily to 500 500. Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds.

Speaker D
At Mint Mobile. We like to do the opposite of what big wireless does. They charge you a lot. We charge you a little. So naturally, when they announced they'd be raising their prices due to inflation, we decided to deflate our prices due to not hating you.

That's right, we're cutting the price of mint unlimited from $30 a month to just $15 a month. Give it a try@mintmobile.com. Switch $45 upfront for three months, plus taxes and fees. Promoting for new customers for limited time unlimited, more than 40gb per month slows full terms@mintmobile.com. Dot heLlo, and welcome to season six of Anthology of Heroes.

Speaker F
This show explores the most pivotal moments of history through the eyes of those who lived it. Each episode we share stories of heroism and defiance throughout world history. On average, our episodes run for about 45 minutes and are blended with sound effects and music to help immerse you in the story. Im your host, Elliot Gates, and todays episode marks the beginning of our four part series on Operation Barbarossa, the nazi codename for the invasion of Russia in 1941. In this episode, we delve into the backstory behind Operation Barbarossa from the perspective of the two most callous mass murderers in human history, Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler.

In the west, it's well understood that the USA joining the Allies in World War two was a turning point. But we often forget that Hitler's decision to launch Operation Barbarossa was just as decisive. In this episode, we're going to try and understand what made the dictator open another front when the german army was already stretched across so many others. Were going to learn why Stalin, who was famous for his paranoia, trusted the one man everyone told him not to trust. As we probe this unique relationship, the two dictators had well explore the dire situation Europe found itself in in 1940.

Faced against the unstoppable might of the Wehrmacht nazi army, Poland had fallen in 26 days, Belgium in 18. Even France, Europes mightiest power, capitulated in just six weeks. Now ruling almost all of Europe, Hitler looked east at what he saw as a feudal wasteland populated by Slavs, people he considered subhuman, barely better than Jews. On a quick note, just a warning that this episode contains brief descriptions of violence, including sexual violence, with occasional cussing included from quotes. So here we go.

Hitlers folly Operation Barbarossa part one a great gamble it's the 22 June 1941 the Kremlin, the command center of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, also known as the USSR, is in hysterics. The Moscow office is packed with people. Secretaries race across the floor with armfuls of paper, and phones ring off the hook. Generals and party members answer the calls as quickly as they can. All the calls are coming from the front, and the messages are always the same german soldiers, millions of them, are overrunning the border.

Snatching a phone from a clerk, Colonel General Pavlov puts the receiver to his ear and barks down the line. I know it has already been reported. Those at the top know better than we slamming the phone down only to have it start ringing again. The air is thick with cigarette smoke and body odorous panic is written on the face of every official. Each man tries to defer any decisions to their commanding officer.

Better their superior be blamed rather than they for whatever was about to occur. All knew that Josef Stalins memory was eternal and his vengeance legendary. The doors of the office burst open and chief of staff Georgy Zhukov pushes through the crowd, beelining towards the door at the end. Stalins office. Early that morning, Zhukov had telephoned Joseph Stalin to inform him of reports of german bombings on the border.

Roused from his slumber, Stalin answered the phone. Zhukov frantically gave him the report and requested the dictators permission to return fire against the invaders. All he heard was heavy breathing. Now, as he pushed through the door to Stalins office, Zhukov learned his reports were not isolated. He had never seen so many members of the top brass gathered in at one place.

Almost every member of the high command of the russian army was there. Minister Molotov gesticulated wildly as Marshal Shaposhnikov listened with crossed arms. A monochrome tv blared as groups of men pressed their ears against radio units, listening for hints of what was happening from foreign news channels. Blame was the word of the day. No one wanted to be left holding the bucket when Stalin's goons came knocking on their door in the middle of the night.

At the end of the office, in a haze of cigarette smoke, sat Joseph Stalin, general secretary to the communist party of the Soviet Union, as his frenzied ministers desperately searched for what to do next. The man himself said nothing, a lit cigar perhaps burning out in his ashtray. The five foot three dictator looked as if he was melting. Hunched forward in his leather desk chair. The expression on his face was one of vacant bewilderment.

The man was catatonic in the early stages of a mental breakdown. For once, Stalin had no one to blame but himself for the situation he found himself in. In the past month alone, there had been over 80 warnings of an imminent german invasion, and he'd ignored every one of them, convinced that they were the work of the dastardly english prime minister, Winston Churchill. Stalin, one of the most paranoid dictators to ever exist, had put his trust in Adolf Hitler a man who had flouted international diplomacy at every opportunity. And now his chickens had come home to roost.

Outside the Kremlin, the streets of Moscow were calm. The day was beginning like any other. In the warm summer morning. Early risers were queuing up for their bread ration, and the first factory workers had begun walking to work. The state radio warbled as the newsreader announced another superb season of crop yields.

Every man, woman and child of Moscow was completely oblivious to the fact that a few hundred miles away, the largest invasion force in world history was blaring towards them. Almost 4 million soldiers marched, biked or galloped east. Operation Barbarossa had begun. For Adolf Hitler, the initiation of the invasion had been sublime. Stalin had been completely blindsided.

Even now, as his air force, the Luftwaffe, bombed the last few russian hangars still standing, Stalin desperately phoned Berlin, hoping, praying that this invasion was the act of a rebellious general and not sanctioned by Adolf Hitler himself. After all, how could Hitler betray him? They had a deal. For Hitler, the invasion had confirmed the naivety and stupidity of the slavic race, and Joseph Stalin, the schmuck that had led them, was the biggest fool of them all.

It hadnt always been this way. Barely a year back, Stalin had felt more confident about peace with Nazi Germany than he had in years. As the german army, the Wehrmacht, mopped up the last of western Europe resistance. Stalin made the most of it, gobbling up most of the little baltic states and pushing the borders of the mighty USSR closer to central Europe. He knew the world was too preoccupied to protest ideologically.

Communism and fascism were at opposite sides of the political spectrum. Communism and Stalins specific brand of it. Bolshevism was a revolution of the working man, a classless utopia where the government distributed goods evenly, regardless of religion, race or creedde. That was the idea, anyway. Hitler's fascism was an authoritarian, hierarchical society where classes were tiered based on race, a society where the strong dominated the weak and those of impure blood were pushed out of the gene pool through government intervention.

Despite these glaring differences, throughout the 1930s, the dictators had been cozying up to each other. Numerous non aggression pacts and trade deals had worked their way through the embassies. And by 1940, Stalin was actively intervening in Red army propaganda, commanding his officers to tone down the anti nazi rhetoric that was drilled into the troops. In one instance, after flipping through the state run newspaper and seeing a negative article written about Adolf Hitler, Stalin penned a letter to the editor that said, dont irritate the Germans. Krasnaya Zavasda the name of the paper is always writing about fascists and fascism.

Stop it. Hitler shouldnt get the idea that all were doing is preparing for war with him. Later that year, the dictator stunned his ministers by personally seeing the german ambassador off at the train station. With a big smile that must have looked out of place on the face of the dictator, he walked beside the ambassador, put his arm around him and told him, we must remain friends and you must do everything to that end before waving him off as his train departed. And hitlers heartfelt letters to Stalin indicated the feeling was mutual.

He even wished him a happy birthday. Very sweet. But behind closed doors, Adolf Hitler despised the pockmarked georgian dictator. Two decades prior, Hitler had penned Mein Kampf my struggle, an autobiographical kind of manifesto where he laid out his worldview. And on Russia he said, this colossal empire in the east is ripe for dissolution.

And the end of the jewish domination of Russia will also be the end of Russia as a state. As for Bolshevism, he regarded it as a cancer of the mind. Bolshevism is the doctrine of people who are lowest in the scale of civilization. So why the niceness? Well, as well soon see.

Adolf Hitler was no mere wartime commander. He saw himself as the builder of a new world order. A thousand year Reich was the term he coined. A world where pure blooded aryan Germans stood at the top of the podium while all other races tiered somewhere below. All the wars, policies and decisions his government made were helping to set up a framework for a society that would long outlive them all.

Hitlers diplomacy with Stalin was an attempt to reorientate the USSRs political interests to turn government policy away from Europe, where Germany reigned supreme, over to the far east into China. Hitlers thousand year Reich had no interest in that part of the world. So if Stalin could be convinced to keep his nose out of Europe, then perhaps war could be avoided. But this was a pipe dream. You only need to look at the buildup of russian industry on Europes border to see where their national interests lay.

Once it became clear that Russia could not be coaxed into a complete reversal of their politics, Hitler decided that war was not a matter of if but when. But there was a problem. Europe wasn't completely subdued. Great Britain had refused to be cowed. In the 1930s it seemed that british republic opinion was shifting towards a peace deal with Germany.

But in 1940, a squat man with a sharp tongue and a quick wit was elected prime minister of Great Britain, Winston Churchill. Churchill had read mein Kampf and closely followed the increasingly barbaric laws Hitler had imposed on german Jews, Churchill categorically refused a peace deal with Hitler, who he saw as a madman who would stop at nothing in pursuit of his fanatical new world order. If Britain made peace, Europe would be ushered into a dark future where hitlers twisted ideologies would become government policy. Through pithy raw speeches that seemed to ooze valour and glory, Churchill galvanized british public opinion against any ideas of peace with Hitler. Even as bombs rained down on London, Britain's will to resist remained strong.

With a glass of sherry in one hand, a cigar in his mouth and a top hat on his head, Churchill, a man so quintessentially british, became a reoccurring subject in nazi propaganda. In early 1941, nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels told the german public exactly what to think of him. One has to see a current photograph of his face to grasp the true depravity of plutocracy. This face has not a single good characteristic. It is marked by cynicism.

The ice cold eyes are free of any emotion. This man strides over corpses to feed his blind and limitless personal egotism. The cigar butt in his mouth is the last sign of a lifestyle that has outlived its time. England will one day pay a heavy price for this man. Hitler found himself at crossroads.

With Churchill at his helm. England would not come to the negotiation table. And this was problematic because despite its small size, Britannia punched well above its weight. The last successful invasion of the British Isles was almost a thousand years ago, during the norman invasion. The british empire spans most of the world.

Her colonies gave her vast reserves of manpower and raw materials, and a trading network reached into every corner of the globe. Knowing this, Hitler decided that if an invasion of the British Isles did have to take place, he would much rather it happen last. Perhaps by then public opinion would have turned against Churchill, which meant all that was left was Russia. The USSR History Daily is sponsored by indeed this week was one of my employees four year work anniversary. She was only the second employee I ever hired back when it was just me and one other.

Speaker A
Now my little podcast production company has grown to nine employees, each one a critical piece in the puzzle. So I know that hiring the right people, people who will stick with you and grow with you is imperative. But when it comes to hiring, searching for a candidate can be hard. So dont search match with indeed with over 350 million global monthly visitors, according to indeed data, their matching engine helps you find quality candidates fast. And as a listener of this show, you'll get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility@indeed.com.

onthisday. So just go to indeed.com onthisday right now and support the show by saying, you heard about indeed on this podcast. That's indeed.com onthisday. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire you.

Need indeed. History Daily is sponsored by Greenlight. My daughter has no school, no summer camps, no vacations planned this week. My wife and I need to work. So shes pretty much left to her own devices.

But we dont want devices to be too literal. Got to manage that screen time. So we tried to provide structure, activities and chores. She likes those, actually, because shes learning to enjoy the reward of work. A lot of this is because we pay her instantaneously via Greenlight, a debit card and money app made for families.

You can send your kids instant money transfers, get real time notifications of spending, manage chores, and automate allowance. Meanwhile, your kids build financial literacy and independence by learning to earn, save, and spend wisely in an app based environment that's familiar and motivating. My daughter even asked me recently, dad, what's investing, kid? How much time do you got? Millions of parents and kids are learning about money on Greenlight, the easy, convenient way to raise financially smart kids.

Sign up for Greenlight today and get your first month free@greenlight.com. historydaily thats greenlight.com historydaily to try Greenlight for free greenlight.com historydaily in 1939, the. Fuhrer had watched gleefully as the Red army struggled to subdue its tiny neighbour, Finland, in a conflict known as the Winter War. We covered that war in our episode on Sim o Hawa. Make sure you check that one out after this.

Speaker F
Finland, a minor local power, had rebuffed the enormous russian army for many months. And though Stalin eventually gained some territory, the war was an embarrassment that highlighted the many shortcomings of the russian military structure. As Penz went to paper and Operation Barbarossa began to take shape, Hitler insisted to his war cabinet that the invasion of Russia would be a simple affair, that they, quote, need only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure would collapse. His generals, though, were not so sure. The USSR was big, I mean really big.

It was about one 6th of the earths surface. It was a totally different battlefield to what the Wehrmacht were used to working with. The key to the german armys success in western Europe had been speed. Theyd pioneered a new type of warfare, the blitzkrieg. A quick heavy punch to the jugular, designed to disable the enemy before he could hit back.

Blitzkrieg had taken Poland in 26 days, Belgium in 18, and even the mighty french republic had collapsed in just six weeks. In western Europe, this tactic had been so successful because of the short distances between countries. As the crow flies, Berlin to Paris was only 545 miles. That meant securing fuel and ammunition were not as important. And the country was rich.

Food was everywhere. But as his generals pointed out, Russia was a different story. Huge distances between villages meant logistical challenges with supplies. And the roads, I mean, what roads? Germany and France had highways.

Russia had dirt tracks that would slow things down. And then there was the elephant in the room. Napoleon's curse. Adolf Hitler and every one of his field marshals were all aware that an ill fated invasion of Russia had been the downfall of the french general. Napoleon had underestimated the scale of Russia and the bone chilling freeze.

Its winters board through blizzards and snowdrifts. Napoleons army had limped back to France, his men freezing by the thousands, their corpses left on the side of the road with no one to bury them. The experience had ruined the french general, but the Fuhrer promised that his invasion would not follow the same course. Hitler assured his generals that the war would be over in a few weeks or two months, tops. He told them that the crumbling bolshevik state would topple long before winter arrived.

And he was so sure of this that he made no provisions for winter uniforms. And finally, the day came, just before sunrise on Sunday. The 22 June 1941. Operation Barbarossa, the largest invasion in world history, began. The world will hold its breath, Hitler declared to his field marshals, while nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels justified the invasion to the german public as a pre emptive strike, a kind of get them before they get us situation.

Human imagination is insufficient to picture what would have happened if their animal hordes had flooded into Germany and the west. The Fuhrers order to the army on the night of the 22 June was an act of historic magnitude. It will probably prove the critical decision of the war. The soldiers obeying his orders are the saviors of european culture and civilization. As we get through this series, youll start to notice that the language used by Nazis when describing this war is evocative of a crusade.

And that was intentional. Hitler believed that this was a crusade, but not against religion, against something much more insidious, Bolshevism. Even the name Barbarossa was picked with purpose. It came from Frederick Barbarossa, a famous german crusader. Hitler saw Bolshevism in the same way that a 12th century crusader saw islam, a cancer that needed to be eradicated for the good of mankind.

And so, in the early morning hours, 3 million german soldiers and 1 million romanian or finnish soldiers stormed across the border that separated the territory of Germany and the USSR. The objective was pretty a lightning fast blitzkrieg sucker punch to take out the most important cities in Russia, killing the big red giant before it could get to its feet. Three separate army groups would beeline to the most important cities in the USSR. One would head to Leningrad in the north, a second would make for Kyiv in the south, and the third and largest group would make for Moscow. After the loss of these three cities, Hitler reasoned that the soviet government would collapse and Russia would be theirs.

The objectives might have been straightforward and the tactics similar to what was used in western Europe, but the optics were very different. In his biography, Mein Kampf, Hitler declares that the slavic people were incapable of self governance. They were and had always been an inferior race, destined only for hard labour. And since the bolshevik revolution had replaced the old russian government, it was now, you guessed it, Jews who were the sneaky puppet masters controlling the USSR behind the scenes. Because of this, they had to go.

In the Fuhrers new world order. The most fertile lands in western Russia would be reinhabited by german settlers who would, over generations, germanize the region. But what did that mean for the people that live there now? Hitlers solution for them was lifted in the hunger plan. As the german army advanced, it would steal all the grain and livestock and send it back to Germany on railway.

The millions of Slavs living in those regions would starve to death. The land would be depopulated, and once the war was over, german settlers would recultivate it, creating his so called Lebensraum, or Greater German Reich. For Hitler, this was more than just an invasion. It was land clearing.

Barely a few hours into the invasion, it was clear the Red army had been caught completely by surprise. Hitler was jubilant. Once the dictator started talking, no one could stop him. His mind always raced ahead, the next stage of the plan, the next step towards his thousand year Reich. Gesticulating wildly, he spoke as if Russia was already theirs, while his generals, always aware of his tendency to dream big, had to settle him back down.

Of course. Of course. He would have laughed as he shook hands and nodded rapidly. They were right. Before his thousand year Reich could take shape.

The final showdown with Bolshevism must occur on the morning of the 22 June 1941. Konstantin Malligan chief of staff of the 41st Tank Division, was up early, bumping down the road in a staff car. He and a colonel were sharing a coffee as they made their way from the polish border town of Volensky to their favorite fishing spot. Today was their day off. As they passed through the silent villages, the deep crimson sky put them in a cheery mood.

The colonel turned to Constantine and announced that he had a good feeling about the fish. Today everything was still. All of a sudden, a green, solitary flare shot up from the horizon. They both stared, wondering what it could be, before the sound of distant rumbling thunder followed. Then, out of nowhere, the world seemed to explode.

Tracer rounds zipped over their staff car as mortars began to plummet around them like hailstones. Turn back. Konstantin yelled to the driver as their car sped back to hq, 400 km north. Lazar Belkin, a recent graduate of the 56th Rifle Division stationed at Grodno, woke up to the sounds of aircrafts overhead. Unsure of what to make of it, he was calmed by his superiors, who assured him it was probably just their planes returning from a drill as they were flying east.

As he walked down the river to wash, the noise became louder. Out of nowhere, bombs began to rain down on their base. Their wooden barracks exploded into millions of wooden splinters. The silence of the early morning was gone as the groans of the dead and dying echoed through the camp. Somewhere to the south of that, Sergeant, Vladimir Usalunk rushed to meet his captain and secure a nearby bridge.

Hed spotted a group of men who seemed suspicious. They wore uniforms that were a little too clean and rode bicycles, uncommon at this part of the front. These men were Brandenburgers, german saboteurs, men with a good poker face who could speak another language. And theyd been sent behind russian lines to shoot flares above strategic targets and ensure bridges were not exploded. Calling them over, Usalinks captain asked them what they were doing.

As soon as they opened their mouth, their basic wooden russian gave them away. As they stumbled over an explanation, the captain stepped forward and yelled at him, what are you talking about, you bastard? Before pulling out his pistol and killing the saboteur on the spot. Most civilians remember it the 22 June as the USSR's darkest hour. But for many Ukrainians, Estonians, Lithuanians, and Poles, they were positively thrilled.

These territories were recent additions to the USSR. Ethnic groups were forcibly woven into the empire by Joseph Stalin when Europe was too busy with Hitler to protest. And these people, particularly the Poles and Ukrainians, were overjoyed at the sight of a swastika flag flying over their village, ukrainian babushkas cheered as german tanks rolled through the town, welcoming them with the traditional offering of bread and salt. Polish farmers fired potshots at passing russian troops and laughed as they fled from the Germans. Any ethnic Russians that lived in these places kept their heads down.

Tatiana Delyotytsky, an ethnically russian child who lived on the borders of Poland, found herself alone, picking through the rubble of her bombed out house, looking for family members. When she begged her neighbors, who were ethnic Poles, for help, they mocked her and told her her family shouldnt be there to begin with. Another Red army recruit, fresh from training, remembers marching to the front and passing a polish farmer who eyed up his patched clothing and antiquated rifles and whispered to him with a grin on his face, the Germans will annihilate you. These werent isolated incidents, either. The german tank commanders blitzing through these border towns were stunned by the reception they received.

You can see videos of this as parades and banners, women in traditional costumes performing the Nazis salute under tarpaulins that read, the liberators of Europe. From Bolshevism, sieg Heil to Adolf Hitler and his men, these people's hate for Joseph Stalin was so intense that german officers began to write to their high command, recommending that the population of these border villagers be allowed to fight alongside them. Predictably, Hitler, appalled at the idea of subhuman Slavs and Poles disgracing the Wehrmacht uniform, refused categorically. By the second day of the invasion, Stalin had accepted that this was not just some rebel general. He had finally come to terms that Adolf Hitler had deceived him.

But still he was frozen. Usually measured and observant, he sat quietly as his generals discussed what to do with every minute of delay, their losses compounded by incredible multitudes. In the first few days of the invasion, the reports filtering back to the Kremlin were staggering. When you're ready to pop the question, the last thing you want to do is second guess the ring. At blue nile.com comma, you can design a one of a kind ring with the ease and convenience of shopping online.

Speaker C
Choose your diamond and setting. When you found the one, you'll get it delivered right to your door. Go to bluenile.com and use promo code audio to get dollar 50 off your purchase of dollar 500 or more. That's code audioloonial.com for dollar 50 off your purchase Bluenile.com code audio listening on. Audible helps your imagination soar.

Speaker B
Whether you listen to stories, motivation, any genre you love, you can be inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, new ways of thinking. Maybe youll find inspiration in the incredible true story of black female mathematicians at Nassau in hidden figures or the fantasy world of throne of glass. Theres more to imagine when you listen. As an audible member, you get to choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog. New members can try audible free for 30 days.

Visit audible.com imagine or text imagine to 500 500. Thats audible.com imagine or text imagine to. 500 500 the loss of men was one thing. Stalin could live with that. But the losses in aircraft, command posts and garrisons, and above all lands was horrifying.

Speaker F
Almost the entire russian air force was gone, 96.4%, according to one source I read. In most cases, before russian pilots had even woken up, their plane was gone. The Tarnovo aircraft hangar, which was just 12 km from the border, must have seemed like a german dive bombers dream. Over 100 soviet air force planes, half of them new model russian migs, were just sitting on a barely covered slab of concrete. Within seconds, they were nothing but smoking scraps of debris.

And for the few planes that did make it off the ground, the gap in technology was so glaring that a german pilot would describe shooting russian planes out of the sky as, quote, infanticide. Russian pilots, too, were under no illusions of their planes shortcomings. One man said, our pilots feel they are corpses already when they take off. Vitaly Kilomenko, a pilot who managed to survive, said that his friends referred to the I 15 biplanes as coffins. In frustration, some brave pilots even resorted to ramming german planes as a last resort to even the playing field.

For the Red army, things werent much better. Within just five days, the Wehrmacht had pushed them back 200 miles and were closing in on Minsk, the modern capital of Belorussia. Soviet leadership was in freefall. An infinite horde of badly armed, badly led soldiers flooded back. The number of dead, missing, or injured soldiers was probably nearing half a million and rising.

For the Germans in the vanguard, the first few days had reinforced everything. The Fuhrer had told them, that the Slavs were stupid and cowardly. But why was this happening? Where were the officers relaying reports to Stalin in high command? Where was the leadership on the ground?

Simply put, there was none. In the 1930s, Stalin had gutted the upper ranks of the Red army. Paranoid about disloyalty, he purged the best and brightest from the army. Im not talking about a couple of generals and a few officers. Have a listen to these numbers.

These are the amount of soldiers Stalin had executed, imprisoned, or fined 36,671 junior officers, 403 out of 706 brigade commanders, 15 out of 16 commanders, 50 out of 57 corps commanders, 158 out of 186 divisional commanders, 401 out of 456 colonels, and at the highest level, three out of five marshals. By the time Operation Barbarossa had begun, 75% of the Red army officer corps had held their rank for less than a year. That is an enormous brain drain. And those that were still there were conditioned to avoid responsibility at all costs, lest their name be associated with a particular link in the rusty chain of command. Though hitlers racial narrative painted the failings of the russian army as a slav problem, it wasnt.

It was a Stalin problem. By the time the war started, the Red Armys structure of command was the foot soldier at the bottom, Stalin at the top, and nothing in the middle. Meanwhile, the Wehrmacht couldn't be more different. These soldiers were led by veteran nazi officers like Erich von Manstein and legendary tank commander Hans Guderian. Their officers had both theoretical knowledge and practical experience in new style mechanized warfare.

And as they raced from village to village, for many of them, the greatest concern was the lice and germs that propaganda said they could catch from slav civilians. It was easy going. The summer weather was hot, but that wasnt a problem. Officers cooled themselves with chilled champagne or a glass of cognac they bought from occupied France. If any soldiers pointed out that theyd bought no provisions for winter, their comrades would have laughed them off.

When this invasion commenced, each soldier had been instructed to operate under a new directive known as the jurisdiction order. This order barred soviet citizens from any legal or civil protections against german soldiers during occupation, be that looting of property, rape, or even murder. Hitler's official justification behind this decision was that because Stalin had refused to sign the Geneva convention, his soldiers were not protected under it. But this was just a technicality. Even if Stalin had signed it, the Fuhrer would have found a way to legitimize his war crimes.

One german officer, seeing his men descend on a helpless village like vikings in medieval Europe, was disgusted and privately wrote in his diary, this type of thing turned the Germans into a type of being which had existed only in enemy propaganda. But men like this were the minority. For the average Wehrmacht soldier, particularly the younger ones, years of Goebbels propaganda had anesthetized them into believing the slavic people were less worthy of life than rats. Once the village fell to the Wehrmacht, the locals were at the mercy of the Einsatzgruppenheid. The Einsatzgruppen were a rearguard that would tail the main Wehrmacht army and occupy the villages theyd conquered.

Their objective was to eliminate anyone who could support the old political infrastructure commissars, clerks, administrators, and specifically jews. The men of the Einsatzgruppen were gathered from intellectual backgrounds. Scholars, theologians or academics, men who were articulate enough to convince soldiers to kill unarmed civilians in cold blood. When they arrived, members of this death squad would take a census of the village, round up anyone with a lick of authority, and walk them out into the nearest forest. Professors, doctors, council members and priests were marched out and forced to dig their own graves before being murdered en masse.

The Ansatz groupen would also make use of local gangs, feeding on nationalist tendencies that were particularly strong in the baltic countries. That would encourage locals to lynch jews, which gave them Germans plausible deniability for the pogroms that followed. We know this happened because there is filmed evidence of it. Members of this squad took real delight in their work, sending home pictures of their victims to their wives and children. You can find a lot of this footage online and its really twisted stuff.

I wont go into too much detail, but I mean naked men and women in a city square being beaten with clubs and bricks, broken hands slipping in the mud, trying to get away, as members of the Einsatz group and egg the crowd on. What shocked me most about seeing this footage was how modern the cities looked and the clothes the perpetrators wore. You're not seeing people dressed in chain mail with a medieval castle behind them. They're modern times. And all these horrific acts that happened in streets that look just like any european city today by people dressed almost like us.

Man, that brings up the uncomfortable realization that this wasnt that long ago. Less than 100 years ago, people did this over in the Kremlin. The war council decided they had to tell the public what was going on. By now, even citizens half a world away knew something on the front was up. A radio announcement needed to be given, and it only made sense that Stalin should deliver it.

But the dictator categorically refused. He could not bring himself to admit his catastrophic failure to his people. So the duty fell on Minister Molotov, Stalin's number two, for party announcements. The radio in the USSR was always switched on. So all at once, almost everyone heard the wooden voice of minister Molotov crackling through the houses, streets, schools and factories.

Citizens of the Soviet Union, the soviet government and its head, comrade Stalin, have authorised me to make the following. In a speech that was a little over three minutes long, Molotov told the soviet public everything that they knew that Hitler had invaded. And with the assistance of Finns and Romanians, they marched towards Moscow. The announcement, blunt and light on detail, concluded with, our cause is just. The enemy will be beaten.

We will be victorious. As the clunk of the microphone marked the end of the recording, there was silence. 170 million people had just learned that theyd be conscripted into war. Rushed as it was, the message evoked a deep sense of patriotism that thrummed in the heart of all USSR citizens, particularly ethnic Russians. A need to protect their land, their family and their way of life.

This was real patriotism that went much deeper than any lip service they paid to the communist regime. Many of the men that began rushing to the front had family members in Stalins political prisons. His gulags, fathers, sisters, mothers, uncles. Everyone knew someone languishing in a gulag in Siberia for some minor offence committed against the regime. So imagine that, volunteering to fight for the country that had imprisoned and tortured your parents.

But it didn't matter. Now wasn't the time to air grievances against the regime. All throughout the urban centers, reservists made their way to mobilization offices. Many didn't even wait for orders. But getting the men to the front was only half the problem.

With so many conflicting reports coming in, it was near impossible to figure out where troops should be sentence. A blitzkrieg wasnt just about speed, it was about maneuverability. The motorized divisions would apply pressure on a particular front, and then when the Red army moved to reinforce that point, theyd pull back and go somewhere else. This was a nightmare for russian logistics. Trying to coordinate millions of soldiers across a thousand mile front that was shifting by the day.

The russian command were at a loss on how to deal with this. Men were now arriving at the front en masse, but they were just being thrown into the maw. For the average russian recruit with virtually no combat experience, their lives were sacrificed for absolutely no gain. Orders would come down for a division to retake a specific village. The officer in charge, who probably had a year of experience at best, might know that retaking the village was impossible.

But he wasnt going to be the one to tell his captain that. And likewise, that captain may have known that when he gave the order, the division was full of recruits with no combat experience. But he didnt want to tell the marshal that. So the order eventually landed on the rank and file soldier. And these people werent stupid.

You know, they had eyes, they could see, they knew that what they were being asked to do was suicide, but it was also suicide to resist an order. So minute after minute, day after day, these hopeless, suicidal tactics were forced upon the layman. And youve got to remember, a lot of these people were from regions like Kazakhstan or ulan Uday or even further east. Some barely spoke russian, and a good majority didnt even understand why they were there at all. One russian squad commander remembers his interaction with a confused uzbek soldier who had just arrived at the front.

Do you understand what a rifle is and what its for? Ive never really thought it over, comrade officer. Well, give it some thought now. When you go into battle, shoot at the fascists, and if they come after you, you simply cant get by without it. The rifle is your protection.

After a brief pause, he followed up. Do you know what a fascist is? The man was silent. It's not hard to see why things were so chaotic, is it? But en masse, these men fought, marched and died on scales that the Germans found positively eerie.

Wehrmacht soldiers would shoot until their machine gun chambers were red hot, mowing down wave after wave of Mendez as their bullets raked through the front line. The shabby masses of grey and brown would collapse, one man next to another, before they started on the next line. And they would just keep coming. They were killing, slaughtering on a scale that dwarfed their battles in western Europe. But from this endless wasteland, more and more and more men arrived, died, and were replaced.

One german soldier wrote about this almost surreal experience of just murdering so many people with such ease. Quote, this is crazy. We are firing with four machine guns and at least 80 carbines from secure, covered positions into the advancing horde. Our machine gun bursts rip openings in their ranks. Dead and wounded are hitting the ground all the time, but more of them are coming through the haze and we cant see them clearly.

Even the veteran nazi generals were unnerved just by how many men this nation could call up. In his diary, General Halder wrote, quote, we counted on about 200 enemy divisions. Now we have already counted 360, and this is going to be a trend. Everything about Russia. Hitler had underestimated the number, the sheer endlessness of its land, its industry, and above all, the commitment of its people.

As massacres like this became the norm, Stalins depression put his high command on edge, further hampering any efforts to shore up the front. When they spoke about the war to the dictator, the information just seemed to go in one ear and out the other. In the past, no crumb of information got past Stalin without him knowing. But now he asked and re asked his subordinates to repeat reports theyd just given him. He leant on his generals to make decisions which made them anxious.

Not used to being given so much autonomy, all were cautious not to overstep the mark, wherever that mark may be. After a day of absentminded nodding, Stalin would return to his little workhouse near the Kremlin and dawdle introspectively passing the many framed portraits of Lena. Unable to sleep at night, he would wander the halls and brush past the telephones, half expecting them to ring and announce more bad news. One night, General Rumyantsev was working late and saw the door of his office creak open, only for him to see the sad looking dictator staring at him like a spectre in the hallway. Rumyantsev quickly scrambled to his feet, awaiting an order, but Stalin said nothing and quietly walked away.

The next day, he summoned the war cabinet to his house. As Minister Molotov walked there, he prepared himself for a difficult conversation. Molotov was the closest thing Stalin had to a number two, and everyone in the war council agreed it should be him to broach this potentially dangerous topic. Molotov and the other members of the high command had observed how hamstrung field officers were for making decisions. Almost every battlefield manoeuvre needed to be routed through Stalin, and the dictator, being in such low spirits, meant that their responses were delayed, costing thousands of lives each time.

Molotov's plan was to create a new, rapid decision making authority. Stalin, of course, would be the head of it. But even still, Stalin was notoriously twitchy with power sharing. None had forgotten his purges of the last decade. Letting themselves in, Molotov and the others found the dictator slumped over in a small dining room chair, wearing the same clothes as yesterday.

His gaze firmly fixed on the floor, the dictator barely stirred until they approached him. Slowly, he looked up and asked, what have you come for? It was a strange question, because he had summoned them and seemingly forgot. But even stranger was Molotovs proposal. Once the minister had explained its function and purpose, Stalin, still looking at the floor, just said, fine.

And that was it. The decision making body would come to be known as the stavka. That same week, Stalin received further reports of the frontlines around the Ukraine collapsing. The Wehrmacht was now closing in on Kyiv, one of the most important cities in the USSR. When given the news, Stalin said nothing, as usual.

But as he and the other stab commanders exited the Kremlin, out of nowhere, he burst out with Lenin left us a great inheritance, and we, his heirs, have fucked it all up. Molotov and the others were gobsmacked but said nothing. And that is where we pull the cord for today. Stalin and the Red army were at their lowest, but the worst was yet to come. Join us on our next episode as Stalin pulls himself from his stupor and rallies the citizens of the USSR for what was almost Russias last stand.

If youve enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to give us a five star rating on whatever podcast platform you listen on. If youd like to keep up with the show, please follow us on instagram. Our account handle is at anthologyofheroes. All one word and if you'd like to get notified every time we release a new episode, sign up to our mailing list on anthologyofherospodcast.com. a huge thank you to all of our patrons, particularly our Justinian Tier, Angus, Claudia, John, Seth, Shane, and Tom.

All the best, and see you on the next one.

Speaker E
Calling on coffee drinkers if you've been trying to enhance your daily coffee routine, then quest has got your back with their brand new ice coffees, now available in two delightfully delicious flavors thatll be sure to add an extra pep in your vanilla latte and mocha latte. Quest has been on a mission to help fuel you with protein forward foods youll love. Each bottle of quest iced coffee is packed with 200 milligrams of caffeine, the same amount as two cups of regular coffee, plus 10 grams of protein per serving, to help you supercharge your day. And did I mention that they only contain 1 gram of sugar? It might just be time to cheat on your iced coffee with iced coffee.

Find Quest iced coffees on Amazon.com slash questnutrition. That's Amazon.com questnutrition.

Saturday Matinee: Anthology of Heroes

Primary Topic

Episode Summary

Main Takeaways

Episode Chapters

1: The Prelude to Invasion

2: The Hammer Falls

3: The Depths of Despair

Actionable Advice

About This Episode

People

Books

Content Warnings:

Transcript