Episode 1 begins with a brief examination of the rationale of hatred projected by Hitler onto the Soviet-Slavic-Jewish world. Then it leaps forward, to see Hitler initiate an invasion of the USSR. In June 1941, 3.6 million Axis troops rumbled into the Soviet Union - the largest invasion force in history. They traversed the frontier as if it did not exist. The summer of 1941 resembled an armoured victory parade for Germans; soldiers cruising atop their tanks in shirtsleeves, enjoying the sun and seizing oceans of land as they went. Millions of Soviet soldiers and civilians were captured and deliberately starved, in a calculated programme to free up resources for Aryans. The mood in Berlin was sky-high and it was believed that the war could be completed in a matter of weeks or months. By October, Army Group Centre had reached the outskirts of Moscow. Yet they would tread no further. Because of a number of strategic mistakes made by Hitler himself, the Wehrmacht were left with an understrength force not quite capable of seizing Moscow, and desperately underprepared for the Winter. The rains set in; and then the snow; and then the ice. They faltered 18 miles from Red Square, occupying some of Moscow’s outlying tram stations. Moscow held firm, buying Stalin’s nation precious time to fire-up their war machine, ready to turn the tide in 1942. The release of this documentary series will mark the year WWII became the most catastrophic conflict in human history. From the 1920s a detestation of the Soviet Untermenschen had been a central part of Hitler’s ideology. A war with Soviet Russia was always a precondition for the success of his racial vision; for the flourishing of Aryan man. When Hitler did eventually invade Russia in 1941, it took the Soviets entirely by surprise - until this point, the two nations had been freely cooperating. What followed was a campaign of unparalleled barbarism, on a scale of destruction unmatched in history. The Red Army’s disastrous initial response would gradually be turned around through elemental spirit, enormous human sacrifice and strategic intuition. Some of the most famous battles in the history of warfare would pan out through this epochal struggle. Eventually, the Soviet ‘steamroller’ would turn things around, repelling the invaders, recapturing scarred, lost territory, and marching all the way to Berlin, where the Hammer and Sickle would fly from the Reichstag; the Untermensch now standing astride Hitler’s capital. The partition of Berlin would follow, setting the scene for the Cold War and 50 years of Communist domination in Eastern Europe.
Cast: Professor Professor Donald Rayfield - Queen Mary University of London & Author, Dr Klaus Schmider, Royal Academy Sandhurst & author of “Hitler’s Fatal Miscalculation, Sir Anthony Beevor,Historian & author of ‘Stalingrad’, Professor Sir Richard Evans, Cambridge University & author of ‘The Third Reich at War’, Sir Max Hastings, Historian & author of ‘All Hell Let Loose’.
Director: Lyndy Saville
Licenced through 3DD Productions by 4Digital Media Limited
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5 авг 2024
