1943-1945: Germany’s Doomed Retreat to Berlin | Russian Front | War Stories DD

foreign ER was fully aware of the absolute necessity of success at the Battle of Kursk he needed a success to re-establish the month lost in the disaster at Stalingrad [Music] it was a gamble which was not destined to succeed [Applause] [Music] in the north the effectiveness of our Russian defense limited the progress of Von Klinger’s ninth Army in the south Von manstein’s fourth Panzer Army Advanced 25 miles threatened to penetrate the varanesh front reserves from the steps front had to be

pumped into the battle to bolster The salience Defenders and prevent the fourth panzers from breaking through into Open Country they succeeded and the Germans had fallen into zhukov’s trap from now on the enemy was in Undisputed possession of the initiative having enticed the Germans into total but disastrous commitment to their armored forces the Red Army swiftly exploited their advantage even while the gargantuan tank struggle was still being bitterly contested on the 12th of July the Russians counter-attacked towards aurel which was

itself a Salient in German hands the respectable Army group Center reinforced by units from the fourth Panzer Army which had broken off its attack on cursed attempted to check the advance German Army group Center was the implacable enemy of the Red Army it had been its most implacable enemy since 1941 and it was still its most implementable in 1944 numerous attempts have been made by the red arm in the high command to destroy Army group Center and they couldn’t they tried and tried Army group Center held first absolutely and completely

even at Stalingrad by the way what is very little is known about this while zhukov was actually organizing the counter-attack at Stalingrad he was also by the way on the 25th of November 1942 organizing an attack against Army group Center he was not distracted by Stalingrad but he understood as every Soviet Commander did that the enemy was Army group Center stationed right in the center of the Soviet German front Not only was it strategically important it covered lines of communication it covered important population centers and above all

actually it covered one thing the Russians desired above all the shortest route to Germany and to Berlin you couldn’t go well you could go around you could go down but really the only way was to blast their way through and get on to the highway to Berlin so Army group Center was as a an object of vital strategic importance for the southern high command but by now the Eastern Front was not the only theater disaster for the German armies on the 10th of July Allied Forces had invaded Sicily [Music] by the 25th Mussolini had been arrested

and a provisional government set up in Italy [Music] fearing the defection of his Mediterranean Ally Hitler desperately needed to make troops available for the defense of the peninsula on August the 1st he ordered an immediate withdrawal from the oral salient by the 5th of August the provincial capitals of oral and belgarad had been liberated near Belgard the Germans attempted a counter-attack with 60 000 troops and 18 000 Hitler Youth who arrived at the front carrying flags with the ironic inscription the world belongs to us

[Music] the friended German counter-stroke succeeded in pushing back the Red Army but the Russian tide of resurgence was irresistible after clawing their way forward for 10 days the German Advance was again flung backward towards the denipper great Retreat is about to begin the all-conquering German Army which had distainfully swept aside the Russian border defenses only two years previously was now struggling to maintain a presence in the field of battle the Panzer units which had sliced the Red Army to pieces in a series of

dazzling pincer movements now flung themselves headlong at the Russians in the desperate hope of slowing their progress for the ordinary German soldiers the notion of Victory ceased to have meaning the survival of themselves and their immediate comrades became the central concern of their lives the situation 1944 for the German Army in the East looked catastrophic and was catastrophic they had lost Army group Center Army Group North was breaking up very rapidly on a group South was desperately trying to hold onto the

remnants of Soviet territory in Ukraine so it appeared that the German Army was on the run and in some respects that was true the losses were very considerable they had lost many many hundreds of thousands of men their losses in armor were considerable and I suppose speaking objectively one should argue that yes this was the end of the line but it wasn’t first of all the German commanders as opposed to Hitler decided that one way in which they had a Fighting Chance more than a Fighting Chance was would be to

adopt an elastic Mobile Defense in other words not take all these Russian blows on the chin directly but move back then there was a reasonable chance that the German Army in Eastwood a be able to survive and even more important what it would be able to do would in fact to be able to establish if you like some form of coherent defensive line certainly further to the west but against which very possibly the Red Army would throw itself and finally exhaust itself the problem was that Hitler kept giving the opposite orders

on the Russian side The Liberation of the cities and towns was proving a Bittersweet experience in RL the Soviet troops arrived to find half the town and all its bridges destroyed by the retreating Germans [Music] War population of 114 000 only 30 000 Haggard Souls survived to greet their saviors 25 000 had been sent as slaves to the labor camps at the Reich 12 000 had been murdered by their German overlords and thousands had died from disease and starvation [Music] as the German forces began to move back the partisan movement really exploded

into life partisans taught demolition procedures Wireless operating intelligence gathering and how to forge and demand official German documentation solid partisans really consisted of three elements one there were certainly or there was a well organized but very small-scale organized underground movement key members of the Communist Party and were assigned to stay behind and build up resistance groups but that was very specialized the second group were civilians who were forced out by German terrorist action their homes were burned

blown up relative shot people killed slave labor was pretending who took to their heels and hit as best they could and would perhaps organize the third part of course was as I’ve said earlier that the German Army surrounded very large numbers of Red Army troops in 1941 you had encirclements of 300 000 men not all of these men were taken personnel and gradually broke up kid were able to establish themselves as if you like small independent combat units and would either get in touch with the local population to see what could be

done or in fact a form of partisan organization was was built up very primitive but nonetheless in existence but gradually by 1944 the Soviet partisan movement had become very substantially organized and then placed and was conducting its operations more or less in coordination with the Red Army that was certainly the case as the Red Army crossed the Soviet Frontiers and then had to make use of certainly of partisans is for scouting for intelligence for support so the partisan movements passed through those several stages and

by 1944 had become I would say it was and established a very considerable feature of the Soviet War Machine besides the damage they inflicted on German troops in their morale the partisans offered hope and example to those still in the midst of Nati tyranny Zoya Cosmo demianskaya an 18 year old member of the Moscow consumer was caught setting fire to German stables in the village of pestriable although tortured she revealed nothing about her comrades to the German interrogators as she was led to the Gallows with a

placard around her neck describing her crime she turned to her German captors and proclaimed defiantly you can’t hang all 190 million of us the story of Zoya was circulated widely and she became a national heroine Zoya grew to be a symbol not only of partisan resistance but the Defiance of Russian Womanhood in the face of the most terrible adversity the necessities of the war in the East smashed through most of the remaining barriers to women’s contribution to the Soviet war effort [Applause] despite the suffering which the German

invasion had brought about the people of the Soviet Union had taken everything that the Germans could throw at them and the nation had held by now the majority of the population were willing cogs in a gigantic War Machine civilians and soldiers alike seemed to grasp a new awareness of their role in The Bitter conflict which raged all around them the mood of the retreating Germans was one of intense frustration and manic desperation each man knowing he was staring death in the face their Fury at certain death was

Unleashed towards civilians and soldiers alike the Germans had been decisively defeated but the war in the East was far from over [Music] though a strategic withdrawal to the river danipa seemed the only possible option for the Ragged German formations Hitler initially stuck to his policy of holding territory to the last man [Music] tipples one of the German Generals in the East summed up the helpless Rage of the field commanders forced to sacrifice men and material to a principle of no withdrawal which had now been elevated

to a moral necessity a series of withdrawals by adequately large steps would have worn down the Russian strength besides creating opportunities for counter-strokes when the German forces were numerous enough to make them effective the root cause of the German defeat was the way her forces were wasted in fruitless efforts and above all fruitless resistance at the wrong time and place by the 23rd of August karkov was once again in Russian Hands by the 30th Tegan Rock had fallen the capture of donbass was followed by novrosic and by the 25th

of September Smolensk had also been retaken the Waters of the danipa represented the only possibility of regrouping the decimated German divisions for the pursuing Red Army The Liberation of the towns and Villages east of the deniper continued to fill the hearts of its Soldiers with a succession of contrasting emotions scenes of Devastation and cruelty on the scale never even considered before pits full of dead children and the starved remains of whole families could only make their determination to totally Crush their

opposition complete even in Retreat the elite units of the German Army such as the gross Deutschland division managed to maintain something at their reputations by mounting a ferocious defense of the German rear but the denipper was not to prove The Refuge The Battered German troops had been promised defensive perimeter finally withdrew to The River’s Edge they found the Russians already established there goaded onward by the commanders by the atrocities they had witnessed and the prospect of sweeping the enemy from the

motherland the Russians dispatched the German rear guard and immediately prepared to continue their Pursuit between the 22nd and 30th of September the Russians had forced numerous Crossings of the 300 mile stretch of the river between the pripyat marshes and Zopa ajia further south by the 23rd of October zaparaja and melitop were taken by the Russians and the 17th Army was isolated in the Crimea reducing the dwindling strength of their Eastern forces by a further quarter of a million to the north Kiev fell on the 6th of

November threatening the northern flank of army group South defense of the danipa bend this Soviet pressure continued throughout November and December despite Von manstein’s pleas to abandon what was now a vulnerable salient Hitler remained adamant that the danipa bend was to be held at all costs by the new year 1944 the line of German resistance from the Baltic to the Black Sea had either collapsed or was suffering such Russian pressure as to make it untenable in Italy the Allies had landed on September the 3rd and were battling

their way up the peninsula back in Germany the Reich was being subjected to destruction from the air on a scale never before experienced By Any Nation when the first major blow against Hamburg thirty thousand people perished in a series of raids which left many more scarred and burned [Music] the news around Germany was tightening rapidly and the new year on the Eastern Front offered no relief from the process of strangulation by January the second the Russians had Advanced north of Kiev and were now just 18 miles from the Polish border

[Music] on the 14th of January the offensive which came to be known as The Liberation of Leningrad was launched Soviet forces smashed through the German defensive positions around the city clearing the territory southwards as far as Novgorod on the 17th of January the besieged city was finally liberated Leningrad had endured 900 days of isolation and unbelievable hardship one million people had died from the point of view of the Leningrad is the lifting of the siege of Leningrad could not really accommodate too soon

remember it was 900 days of starvation bombardment hunger death privation even now as a Russian submitter there’s a cannibalism so Russians were down to very little it was malnutrition there was fortunately there was very little disease I think many people explain that thanks to the climate it was very cold but so but nonetheless this was a city which had really suffered so dreadfully and and appallingly people were falling dead at their desks or their workshops or places at work problem with children but although many

civilians have been evacuated including civilians it was still a large Urban population so the lifting of the siege of Leningrad is also very important militarily because really what the Soviet command wanted to do and it was crucial to the Soviet command was to break the power of army Group North which in fact that was the the German Army group holding Leningrad and indeed the Western approaches of the Soviet Union and the Baltic states so releasing Leningrad and then once again striking into the rear of army Group North did two things

yes it liberated Leningrad it gave the Russians an important psychological boost but even more important it pushed this Army group away and again it gave the sub uh command access to the Baltic states which was yet another route into the West which was obviously the main direction of the Strategic strike on the 4th of March the northern flank of Von manstein’s Army group South was pierced by the first Ukrainian front under direct command of Marshall zhukov by the seventh after advancing 100 miles the Russians were stride the Warsaw

Odessa Railway line and by the 28th nicodia from the book had been captured further south the river de Nesta was crossed and clerksen at the mouth of the danipa overrun by April the red armies overstretched supply lines in the spring floods dictated an end to what was now being named the mud offensive in the Crimea however the Russians continued to attack and sevastopol was taken on the 19th of May bringing the northern shore of the Black Sea into Soviet hands once more [Music] while the Russians were threatening the

southern sector of the Eastern frontward collapse the events were unfolding of the south coast of England which would completely alter the complexion of the war in the east the long-awaited second front was about to be created until now the Allied practical support had been limited to sending vehicles to support the Russians what happened was Great Britain and the United States sent the Soviet Union during the war about 22 000 aircraft and about 12 000 tanks but when you consider the fact that the Russians produced 106

000 attacks during the war and therefore our tax supplies were roughly about some 10 though they were used actually um but I think the Russians found the tanks not very much use I mean they weren’t like the t-34 they weren’t fitted for operation conditions or you know the Eastern front but clearly the important thing from the landley’s point of view was the 400 000 vehicles that we delivered to the Red Army it made the Red Army mobile Studebakers you know the whole panoply of motor transport that that gave the

Red Army a degree of Mobility which was extremely important certainly once the Red Army started to move westwards that is after or slightly before but certainly after the Battle of kusk the Red Army was not only a an army of tank armies it was also from that point of view a highly mobile now in addition to supporting the Russians with supplies the Allies were about to make a real contribution in the field a fleet of over 5 000 vessels had been gathered together for the invasion of France 1200 Naval vessels were on hand to sweep

for mines bombarded the German Coastal defenses and protect the Invaders from airborne and Naval assault four thousand ships barges tugs and amphibious craft were available for the transportation of the two million men and their weapons which were to be landed on the northern coast of France over a two-month period thank you to Mulberry Harbors as large as medium-sized ports were to be towed across the channel in sections and constructed close to the French Shore in the air 7500 aircraft were mastered for the

direct support the early hours of the morning of the 6th of June the first Allied paratroopers were dropped behind the targeted beaches at dawn five Landing parties approached these beaches from the sea by the first week in July one million Allied soldiers had been landed while the attention of the world focused on the D-Day landing at its aftermath the Red Army launched a fresh offensive against Army group Center in Bella Russia started actually opened that attack on June 22nd 1944 which was the anniversary of the German invasion of Russia by the

way the point was not lost on lots of soldiers and many civilians so Army group Center say was a formidable mass of infantry and of armored concentrations it was it really was its extent was also very considerable it covered both in the north and moving down to the South as I said covered the key areas which the Russians wanted both for Access and also for movement and therefore it simply had to be destroyed and this involved actually a Russian plan which was really quite complex it meant first of all conducting what you might call a

limited encirclement first of all to encircle the nearest German armies and then break them up and the next stage was quite different and that happened around about well it only took them about 10 days to do this even less perhaps and then to move out with with mobile columns at high speed to conduct an even larger encirclement and what the Russians did actually towards the end of June 1944 was to repeat almost in the same place the gigantic encirclement of German soldiers which the German Army had done to the Red Army in June and July of

the destruction of army group Center moved at lightning speed most of the third Panzer Army was destroyed within a few days at the beginning of July 1944 100 000 German troops were encircled at Minsk [Music] within the week Army group Center had been effectively destroyed an incision 250 miles wide had been sliced in the German front and German casualties were estimated at three hundred thousand the Russian army now had a clear pathway to East Prussia and the Baltic the failure of the Germans to deal with

the summer offensive was emerging as a disaster on such a scale that even the debacle of Stalingrad paled in comparison the war correspondent Alexander vert reported from the Russian capital in Moscow today all hearts are filled with joy the new places now being captured by the Russians are in distant Lithuania or in Western Bella Russia division after division has been encircled and wiped out hundreds of thousands killed and about one hundred thousand taken prisoner score of generals captured is about 25.

of these 100 000 or so prisoners 57 000 were paraded throughout the streets of Moscow with their generals at their head the Germans had finally arrived in Moscow the parade was over Russian sanitation trucks disinfected the streets [Music] by the middle of July the Germans had been swept from Bella Russia and the Russians held much of Northeast Poland [Music] as they drove northwards into Lithuania Army Group North was threatened with encirclement [Music] Army Group North was a very formidable Force contained veteran battle-tested

soldiers who were extremely hard not to crack and the fighting in the north even after the liberation of Leningrad was very severe and very intensive and the Red Army made relatively slow progress coming up against opposition like that it did finally begin to break into the Baltic states bit by bit but that fighting went on largely until about March 1945 which shows you the nature of that resistance and the Very considerable importance of that Corridor which led westwards and northwestwards south of the pripyard marsh the Russians

were making faster progress Army Group North Ukraine were flung back Beyond level and Lublin by the end of the month units of the Red Army had reached the fistula and were attacking the Warsaw suburbs on the 1st of August the Polish home Army command in London anxious that the Polish Capital should not fall into the hand of the advancing Soviets ordered the Warsaw partisans to rise against their Nazi oppressors it was to prove a tragic mistake the twenty thousand insurgents held only enough ammunition for seven days

fighting by the end of the battle after two months of bitter struggle nine tenths of the city had been destroyed two hundred thousand people had been massacred and the rest deported to extermination camps the SS had organized an orgy of savagery sousing people with petrol and setting them alight gassing them in the sewers and subjecting them to a nightmare regime of torture and out of hand execution during this period the Red Army remained on the outskirts of the city Stalin was accused of standing by while this barbarous campaign of reprisal

wiped out any opposition to Russian domination of Poland on the 20th of August the Soviet Army unexpectedly launched a huge offensive against Romania which was a major issue for Hitler Hitler was obsessed with the southern flag he maintained that if it was at all possible to destroy Soviet access to the oil fields if it was possible if if you like to cut the the lifeline of the Soviet Republic then in fact the war would come quickly to an end he was intent he said actually that one of his main objectives was to seize the

oil of the Caucasus and even in 1940 that is long before the German invasion of Russia Hitler had taken great care to send a very powerful German military mission to Romania and to make absolutely sure that the remaining oil fields were heavily protected so his concern if you like for the economic potential of Southeastern Europe which obviously involved Romania it was very important and it had a political importance as well this was to show for example that this wasn’t just a German invasion of a Soviet Union it was in

fact the axis in action and if you look at the composition of the forces which invaded the Soviet Union they included Italians included slovaks they included there was a Spanish element as well later on there were Romanians there were hungarians so from that point of view it was I think if you like in Hitler’s terms a kind of multinational political uh and Military Crusade which he was was organizing and which he was intending to commit in what was his own Crusade or the elimination of what he called Jewish bolshevism

by the 23rd 20 divisions of the German sixth Army had been encircled in a giant pocket between the rivers to Nesta and fruit an action which was admired by the eminent military historian zinka who noted in executing their breakthroughs the Russians showed An Elegant in their tactical conceptions economy of force and control that did not fall short of the German’s own performance in the early War years the effect of these reverses on Hitler was catastrophic increasingly he retreated into a semi-fantasy world did not correspond to the realities of

the battlefield it seemed that he hoped to hide from the public eye until he could once again Force events to conform to the pattern he had enjoyed until 1942. so he continued to hide himself away in his headquarters embarrassed to face up to the hollowness of his boasts Hitler’s ostensible reason for shutting himself away was the demands made on him by the war in reality he was hiding from the humiliating pattern of failure the commanders in the East nevertheless had to deal with the orders of this shambling reclusive who was now a

pathetic shadow of the decisive intuitive and supremely arrogant leader who had launched Operation Barbarossa sent the Red Army of liberation nauticals and by the 31st of August Bucharest had been ended and essentially communist government was formed and Romania was compelled to ratify its 1940 loss of territory to Russia it was also forced to pay the Soviet Union a financial indemnity and use its Army to fight against its erstwhile allies the Red Army had Advanced 250 miles in 12 days in the next six days it dashed a further

200 mile to the Yugoslav border at tuanu Severin from here the Soviets launched a giant flanking maneuver against the axis Defenders of Hungary by the 24th of September the southeast Salient of Hungary had been removed the Russians had Advanced to within 100 miles of Budapest from a strategic point of view the whole of that Southeastern area was of great importance and its importance was no more dramatically demonstrated than in the summer of 1944 when Romania defected from the axis Alliance from from the German Alliance

what happened then was the whole of this this not the southern Wing but the southern front began to cave in in other words Hungary and and Romania were in many respects a strategic buttress if you like or a strategic glassy which were very important to Hitler and signs of disaffection after the defeat of destruction of Romanian armies in Stalingrad or the Hungarian armies signs of disaffection in Southeastern Europe I think we’re more than uh slightly alarming to hit I mean the realization that that if you like the structure of

his Alliance and the nature of this military organization that is in strategic terms was beginning to crumble further south the Yugoslav Capital Belgrade was liberated with the aid of the Yugoslavian resistance under Tito [Applause] Bulgaria until now at War only with Britain and the United States was pressurized by Germany into declaring war on the USSR as well four days after this declaration of the 5th of September the bulgarians surrendered further west Slovakia formerly a co-belligerent of Germany had been in a

state of upheaval since the previous year a general Uprising began in the second half of 1944 but a Russian Advance which began in September was held up in the carpathians by stiff German resistance and failed to reach Slovakia before the middle of October by then the 65 000 strong Uprising had been quelled the by now sickeningly familiar results of Nazi barbarity greeted Russian liberators and more than 200 Mass Graves had been filled with slaughtered slovaks in the north an Armistice was concluded with Finland and the Germans driven back

into Norway before climatic conditions put an end to the fighting there the Baltic states of Estonia Latvia and Lithuania were overrun and the German Army Group North isolated in the Quran peninsula by January 1945 with all German troops finally driven from the holy soil of Mother Russia and Stalin in control of the Balkans and the Baltic states the Red Army prepared for its final drive towards the gulf between June and November the German Army in the East had suffered over 1 million casualties 214 000 killed and 629

000 missing in action another approximately six hundred thousand men had been seriously wounded 1944 had proved Germany’s most disastrous year of the war in the east 106 divisions had been destroyed three more than the total number mobilized in September 1939. [Music] German intelligence estimated that in the assault on the Reich the Red Army would possess a superiority of 11 to 1 in infantry seven to one in tanks and 20 to 1 in guns yeah Hitler dismissed such estimates as Bluff on the 12th of January the Soviets

launched their expected offensive from the Vistula against the German Central front the 70 divisions of army group Center and army group a were pierced over an area of 200 miles and almost 200 divisions of the Red Army bored through the bridge by the end of the month Soviet forces reached the lower reaches of the river odor and were now only 40 miles from Berlin the remnants of army group Center had been encircled in East Prussia falling back on the ancient city of koenigsberg they pathetically attempted to carry out Hitler’s order to defend

the region to a man the Soviet tide was finally halted on the line of the river Oda and nicer in February but the limited German counter-stroke was merely postponing the inevitable a fresh Russian offensive in Hungary progressed to the borders of Austria by April the 1st and six days later the outskirts of Vienna were coming under Soviet fire Hitler was not a German he was an ostrich and this if one looks at his attitudes and his predilections his commitments and if you like his emotional drive it is towards or right Southeastern Europe to

Hungary Romania and other areas if you like it’s it’s some kind of reflection it’s almost the shadow of the Habsburg Empire which was of course crucially crucially strategically important it was politically important it was economically important but also I think it had for Hitler this emotional attraction this sense that if this entity or these entities broke up if the Bolshevik holds broke into this area then indeed that this was the final cataclysm and this spelled actual Doom to the north on April the 16th the final

thrust towards Berlin began on the first day of the assault alone 42 000 artillery pieces and mortars fired 2450 freight car loads of shows towards the German lions excited at the prospect of being the first Soviet Commander to reach Berlin opened the attack lighting the battlefield with searchlights to Blind the enemy [Music] having been treated to the capital Hitler alternated between vitriolic outbursts about betrayal and demonic Delight in the Holocaust which was descending on Germany in the words of Albert Speer he

deliberately attempted to make everything perish with him [Music] Army State and economic leaders tried to mediate Hitler’s destructiveness with varying degrees of success by the 22nd of April with Russian troops now fighting on the streets of the German Capital the insanity was about to end but the street Warfare in Berlin was bitter the threat of a Bolshevik Invasion had been hyped by the Nazi propaganda machine as the end of Germany and the German people even in the last chaotic days of the Reich there was a common joke

enjoy the war while you can the peace will be terrible [Music] on the night of the 28th of April with the Russian forces grinding ever closer to his headquarters Hitler married his mistress Ava Brown [Music] after the wedding meal he retired to write his last will and testament he defiantly reaffirmed his belief in labem’s Realm and indulged in one vitriolic attack on the Jewish race on the afternoon of the 30th of April having made his farewells he poisoned his wife and his dog and shot himself the Hitler’s bodies were burned on a

petrol-soaked pyre to be joined the following Night by Dr and Frau gerbils and their six children which they had poisoned on the same evening that Hitler committed suicide sergeants yagorov and kantaria planted the victory Banner of the Soviet flag on the reichstag at 22-500 hours it symbolized the Triumph of the Soviet Union over Nazi Germany [Music] but the cost had been horrendous by the 8th of May when the German Act of surrender was ratified at Russian headquarters in Berlin 28 million Russians one in seven of the

population had died as a direct result of the war they had died as soldiers partisans prisoners of War slaves or innocent civilians they had met their end through bombs bullets hunger torture burning and exposure less than five percent of the young people aged between 17 and 21 had survived for each of the 1418 days of the war almost 19 000 Russian people had perished the German Invaders destroyed or burned 1700 towns and more than seventy Thousand Villages and hamlets decommissioned 60 of the steel works and sixty percent of the coal mines

destroyed 65 000 kilometers of railway lines and 4100 stations 36 000 communication centers and tens of thousands of State Farms [Music] they looted and demolished forty thousand medical establishments eighty four thousand schools and forty three thousand public libraries 25 million people had been left homeless but in the end the Germans had been defeated throughout Western Europe Germans from the SS the Army and the civilian administration were put on trial for offenses committed during the Nazi occupation however the number punished and the

severity of their sentences was astonishingly limited given the massive scale of the crimes against humanity which had occurred even though the Russian government had the right to hold its own child under article 10 of the four power ordinance none took place Stalin was far more concerned about taking Vengeance on traitors to the Soviet Union some 250 000 prisoners of War now in Allied hands were Soviet citizens who had been captured in German uniform under agreements affirmed at the Yalta Conference in 1945 those accused of treason or desertion

were to be returned to their native countries for judgment those who had fought for the Germans were now forcibly repatriated some took the only Escape Route open to them and committed suicide the Soviet authorities regarded these traitors as humans scum and treated them with a barbarity which reflected their hatred [Music] another two and a quarter million Russian prisoners of War have been captured during the occupation or had surrendered on the fields of battle tragically Russian administrators seemed to view their very survival as an act of

treachery many who had lived through years of gruesome Warfare and the Savage in human degradation of the German work camps were now to spend the remainder of their time in the peel colonies of their own motherland [Music] inside Russia the pre-war status quo was rapidly re-established and strengthened The Cult of Stalin as a personalization of victory ensured that his position as dictator of an authoritarian centralized Society was unassailable the reforms and liberalizations which had occurred during the organized chaos

of the War years were gradually retracted [Applause] religious toleration a greater modicum of democratic involvement in civilian Administration and the virtues of individual and Collective initiative became incompatible with the need for the entrenched Elite to control all aspects of Social Development but none of this should detract from the awesome achievement of the Soviet people [Music] through their bravery their labor and their sacrifice they managed to Halt and eventually crush a seemingly Invincible war machine which with chilling

efficiency had conquered almost the entire Western European continent in a matter of months they annihilated a German Army which had Unleashed in its wake a regime of apocalyptic Terror tyranny which had turned vast tracts of Europe into a surreal playground of sadists and perverts the victory of the Soviet people may not have ensured an era of justice and democratic ideals but rid the world of the cancerous malignancy of national socialism which had for long periods threatened to engulf it [Music] foreign [Music]