The WW2 Truth Russia Wanted to Keep Secret 

"Never interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake".

Thank you for sharing 🤗🙏🇺🇲

Russian military success always goes hand in hand with mountains of their dead.

Thanks. Interesting and informative. German historians have been saying this for years. I remember Paul Carrell's books on the War in the East discussing this in the 1960's when I was a small boy.

I really appreciate your videos. They are well done. One suggestion- the inclusion off occasional maps would be helpful.

It's amazing that we have all the film footage from the heat of battle from all sides. The cameramen really deserve some credit for their bravery and professionalism.

Thanks again for shining a light on this nearly forgotten/misremembered event!

Your war videos are awesome as always. May I give you some constructive criticism? Please include maps of the battlefield along with arrows of attack and lines of defense. That way, we can better relate to the battle and how the two sides interacted during the event. Thank you.

Thanks for sharing another great story on an often overlooked piece of eastern front history ❤

Thanks for sharing this story about Operation Mars. I wasn’t familiar with it so it’s time to do some additional homework!

Always the best content and the narration!

The ghosts of Caesar, Alexander the Great, and Napoleon observed a military parade in Red square. Caesar said if I had Soviet planes I could conquer the world. Alexander said if I had Soviet tanks I'd be invincible. Napoleon said if I had Pravda the world would've never heard about Waterloo.

Thank you for telling this story. It would have been even better with some maps to back up your narrative.

Another great presentation of the history of WW2 combat. Dark Docs is quickly becoming me favorite source of historical view. Thank you for your hard work and I look forward to more. BTW the narrating voice is easy on the ear and straight forward with little pause for criticism that could deviate from the topic.

Great, a chapter I knew nothing about. Your research, analysis and objectivity make for an inspiring and satisfying experiemce, thank you.

impressed that most the video clips appear to match the time frame and situation discussed in the video...a rarity for some of the video's by dark docs or related channels

You cannot describe a battle without a map.

In hindsight it is not always easy to understand 'intent', but 'outcomes' are rather easier to identify.

I'm loving these ~10 minute history snippets. If World History wasn't a 2 hour class, I would have payed attention in school!

Love all the kv1 footage, 10/10, would ride

Günther von Kluge was an interesting person to read about.

I like your stuff, respect

The one thing Russia had that Germany didn't was a massive manpower advantage.

Bitter experiences. One does not learn experiences one learns lessons.

After reading the title to this, all I could think is "it could be ANYTHING" . The red's have done so many horrible and unspeaking things that the list is SO much longer than I wish it was.

David M. Glantz's deeply researched book Zhukov's Greatest Defeat came out in 1999 on this campaign. Incredible book w/minute maps on the actions down often to company level.

Thank you and God bless you for properly pronouncing the name of the seventh planet. 🙏

Numbers alone don't win wars but, it does help that the opposing forces have to put so much into fighting the numbers that resources lag in other locations.

thank you for your awesome efforts!

RU-vid needs to take the scam commercial down about the "$5,200 Healthcare Stimulus " Don't be dumb & give a third party website your SS#

David glantz had a neat book about this, I read it around a decade ago, called "zhukovs greatest defeat"

I would love to see some stories about the current Soviet bungles in Ukraine. Seems like they have't lost their (lack of) touch. Great to have such detailed analysis of what is now the distant past. It would be perhaps more meaningful to detail the fresh "darkness" that we are immersed in now.

i’m high as balls rn watching this at work on my break and this shit is so intense my brotha god damn these videos are sick love them

Excellent narrative of real events uncovering Soviet tomfoolery.

The casualty numbers are staggering

You always do a great vid after watching one its binge time with lots of bowls watching from Scotland peace and love to all

Balck and the 11th Panzer Division saved so many German forces. He thwarted the Russians at every stage on the Chir River.

Informative video on a controversial battle. The looses suffered by the Soviet Union in both men and machinery. This was a battle that went down in history as a German victory.💪🏻🙏🏻✨

What that through paper clip effectively regrouped arguably and never went away

Russians unwilling to face the truth? ....and the beat goes on......

Mars was the Red Army's first real attempt at Movement warfare in an attempt to counter the Whermachts Advances

For those wondering, most of the footage in this video is from the 1941 documentary, "Moscow Strikes Back".

For those wondering like I was, Rzhev is located West of Moscow, roughly in center between Moscow and the border with Belarus. Also, it's spelled Rzhev.

This footage is incredible

I've been reading Glantz's Stalingrad trilogy for a year (it's SO dry). The Germans won just about every encounter but for Stalingrad, yet that one loss cost the war. IMHO, Germany went to war against an empty shell that solidified once the German "bias" was determined. Better the Devil you know then the one you don't and both Stalin and Hitler were devils.

how to be a marksman: shoot first... anything you hit call it the target

Model was an excellent General that no one has heard of...

Love your vids bro

This perfectly illustrates the difference between having Paulus in charge and not having Paulus in charge.

Love your channel, usually watch each all the way through but RU-vid content is increasingly getting run over by annoying RU-vid commercials. When their adds cut in, i close the tab. From the theme song from MASH, "...and you can do the same thing if you please."

These operations, from a Russian perspective, were actually insignificant if it hadn't been for the massive amounts of lend-lease aid they got from the USA, mainly food, fuel and trucks. Without it, they would have "lost" or forced to make peace anyway, with or without Zhukov or anyone else.

No matter what , you had to get ivan to come out and play .

I like these videos because they are like…bite sized morsels. Just the right length and amount of info.

I'm so glad that you discover The Secret.

So 30,000 Germans against 1,300,000 fresh Russians troops. I'ld be embarrassed too.

Man you just gotta love a bit of dark docs perfect to put on in the evening after work spot on bruv

Interesting to hear about it. A correction: the term is "thorn in the side" not on the side

Repeat after me "Any loss is a feint to draw out the enemy, or blah blah blah" The more things change... Seeing information on the other end of the war is always enlightening. Thanks for catching the spelling error @nedludd7622

Rzhev. aka The Meatgrinder Some German Soldiers had to cry, watching Soviet prisoner battalions getting blown up, after being forced to walk hand in hand, to clear German minefields. When they ran out of men, the Soviets send in cows. Try to fully deplete German ammo, was a simple tactic to gain advantage, by sending in wave after wave. Because the Soviets constantly kept attacking at Rzhev, the Germans were not able to send reinforcements to Stalingrad. While also putting extreme pressure on German east front logistics. Logistics that were already facing huge troubles, because of constant Partisan sabotages and attacks, on trains, railways, depots etc., far behind the frontline. The poem "I'm killed near Rzhev" was written by the famous poet A. T. Twardovsky in 1945-46. It has a tragic real basis. I WAS KILLED NEAR RZHEV I was killed near Rzhev In a nameless bog, In fifth company, On the Left flank, In a cruel air raid I didn’t hear explosions And did not see the flash Down to an abyss from a cliff No start, no end And in this whole world To the end of its days - Neither patches, nor badges From my tunic you’ll find I am where the blind roots Seek for food in the dark I am where the rye waves On a hill in the dust I am where the cockerel cries In the dew of the dawn I am where your cars Tear the air on highways Where - small stalk to small stalk - River’s weaving its grass Where for the remembrance Even my mother won’t come In a bitter year’s summer I was killed. And for me Neither news nor bulletins Will come after this day Would you, the living, count How long before that For the first time in front news They named Stalingrad The front burned without stopping Like a scab on the flesh I was killed and I don’t know Is Rzhev ours at last? Have ours held their ground There, on the Middle Don? This was the month of horror Everything was at stake Could it be that by autumn He already took Don? And he broke through to Volga Riding onto its bank? No, it’s not true! That mission He could never complete. No way I say, no! Even for the dead It would be too terrible to hear Even the dead and voiceless Have one last single joy We have fallen for the Motherland But it’s finally saved. Our eyes have faded Out is the flame of our hearts And up there, at roll calls They are not calling us. We’re like bumps or stones Even darker and dumber. Our memory eternal - Who is jealous to it? Our ashes are rightfully Owned by black earth Our eternal glory Is of little delight. We shall not wear our Battle awards This is all for you, the living, We have just one last joy That we didn’t fight in vain For our Motherland Let our voice be inaudible You’ve got to know it now. And you had to, my brothers, Stand fast like a wall For the curse of the dead Is a terrible wrath We are forever given This bitter right And it is forever ours This bitter right In the summer of forty-two I was buried without a grave Everything what came later Was taken by the death All, what has been for many So clear and common But then may it all be In accord with our belief Brothers, maybe you didn’t Lose the Don battlefield only And were dying in battles Fighting behind Moscow And in steppes behind Volga Dug your trenches in haste And in battles you marched To the limits of Europe For us it would suffice To know for sure There was that last inch On the road of war - That very last inch: If it is abandoned, There’s nowhere to put The foot that had stepped behind And you drove the enemy Back to the West May it be so, my brethren And Smolensk’s now ours And you’re crushing the enemy On the other front, And maybe it’s the border Your are nearing now? May it be… Let the holy oath’s Words be fulfilled : For Berlin, if you remember Was named near Moscow Brothers, who now trample The stronghold of enemy land If the dead and the fallen Could only cry! If only victory salvoes could Resurrect us for an instant, Us, deaf and numb, Us, who rest in eternity O, my faithful comrades, Only then at this war Your limitless happiness You would realise! In this happiness there is Our inalienable part, Our, severed by the death, Faith and hatred and passion. All is ours! We did not cheat, In this cruel fight, We have given all ours And left nothing to ourselves Everything is bequeathed to you For all time, not for a term And this mental voice of ours Is no reproach to the living. For we had no distinction In this war at all: Those living and those fallen - We were all equal. And no one of the living Is indebted to us Those, who took up the colours From us on the run Only to fall one step later For the holy cause, For the Soviet power, Like all of us. I was killed at Rzhev, And he - somewhere near Moscow… Where are you, warriors, where, Is there anyone alive?! In the million-large cities In the villages, at family homes? At the military garrisons, On a foreign land? Ah, does it really matter If it’s foreign or ours If it’s snow-covered or blossoming… I bequeath you to live - What more can I do? I bequeath you to be happy In your life over there And to serve your Motherland With honour for long. When in sorrow - be proud, Do not bend down your head When rejoicing - don’t boast In the victory hour. And to safeguard, brothers, this victory, The happiness of yours, - In the memory of your warrior-brother Who has fallen for it.

Why no maps? At least, maps would improve the understanding of how operations developed. Instead, only unrelated images to the Operation Mars are shown.

Almost unbelievable how the Red Army could take such horrendous losses, yet still eventually gain the strategic advantage. What a horrific war.

It’s all mind over matter….the Russian generals don’t mind and their soldiers don’t matter…..the same in Ukraine today…😂

Thanks. More info than I've had other than just a name

In war the truth is the first causality

That picture with the guy on his skis depicts a German guy as he has a Schmeisser around his neck.

But what do you say to this: Just discovered it in Anthony Beevor's book. "Although Zhukov was responsible for supervising this operation as a Stavka representative, he devoted far more time to planning Uranus than Mars. Zhukov spent the first nineteen days in Moscow, just eight and a half days on the Kalinin sector of the front, and no fewer than fifty-two days on the Stalingrad axis. This alone indicates that Mars was an ancillary operation, despite its deployment of six armies."

Outstanding video and presentation.

The first I've learned about Mars...thank you for the research put.into this..

Cheers man,

Good One. Thanks.

This was already published in 1994 by Viktor Suvorov in "Tyen Pobeby" - "Zhukov: The Shadow of Victory", five years before Glance while it was still classified.

I watch all your channels and I enjoy your content. Mars was the God of War tracing to Ancient Greece

Russian's don't lose,they just change the story 🤫

A so big Soviet Russian offensive was no diversion, that's for sure. They failed, big time, but tried to conseal it afterwards. Classic behavior from them.

Minor pronunciation correction: The Marshal's name is pronounced not Zu-kov, but ZHu-kov.

The Rzhev salient was defended by all German troops. Does that tell you something?

Love your videos very informative and clarity thank you

dark thinking - yet the nature of attrition warfare means giving up more of your forces in order to 'wear down' your opponent something that the Russians and Soviets fully understand

Regardless of the controversy, the conclusions clearly show the ultimate success at Stalingrad.

WW2 Truth Russia Wanted to Keep Secret - without massive loses in the allied delivery of material (mostly from the US) to Murmansk, it is questionable if the Red Army would have been able to continue fighting.

This is not entirely correct. Rzhev meat grinder was a series of battles that started in January 1942 and lasted for 15 months. Operation Mars, which was one of the Rzhev battles, lasted all but a month starting in November 1942 and with some justification can be considered a diversionary operation, particularly that it ended with German victory.

Well the name of the assault says it all.

The videos are great. One thing that can make them even better is by making sure that word pronunciations are correct, such as Uranus, typically pronounced with a long a.

There are teams of people who look for the fallen. The Russians didn't care about their own dead. They were left were they fell.

The Russians always fight in an Eastern state manner with mass armies, completely immune to the loss of their own human lives. Experiences from WW1, the Finnish Winter War, Stalingrad, Ukraine etc. show how to overwhelm the enemy like ants often with only small arms. A very costly tactic that is only possible in the absence of journalists and a free press that can analyze and report on the outcome of the battles.

A fine video (although I find the breathless voice of the narrator annoying) on a battle I had known nothing about. Here are two reports on it, both of which agree with this Dark Docs take, one Russian, the second the Glantz book on which the video is based: ####################################### The Rzhev Slaughterhouse: The Red Army's Forgotten 15-Month Campaign Against Army Group Center, 1942-1943 Paperback - March 22, 2016 by Svetlana Gerasimova (Author), Stuart Britton (Translator) Historians consider the Battle of Rzhev "one of the bloodiest in the history of the Great Patriotic War" and "Zhukov's greatest defeat". Veterans called this colossal battle, which continued for a total of 15 months, "the Rzhev slaughterhouse" or "the Massacre", while the German generals named this city "the cornerstone of the Eastern Front" and "the gateway to Berlin". By their territorial scale, number of participating troops, length and casualties, the military operations in the area of the Rzhev - Viaz'ma salient are not only comparable to the Stalingrad battle, but to a great extent surpass it. The total losses of the Red Army around Rzhev amounted to 2,000,000 men; the Wehrmacht's total losses are still unknown precisely to the present day. Why was one of the greatest battles of the Second World War consigned to oblivion in the Soviet Union? Why were the forces of the German Army Group Center in the Rzhev - Viaz'ma salient not encircled and destroyed? Whose fault is it that the German forces were able to withdraw from a pocket that was never fully sealed? Indeed, are there justifications for blaming this "lost victory" on G.K. Zhukov? In this book, which has been recognized in Russia as one of the best domestic studies of the Rzhev battle, answers to all these questions have been given. The author, Svetlana Gerasimova, has lived and worked amidst the still extant signs of this colossal battle, the tens of thousands of unmarked graves and the now silent bunkers and pillboxes, and has dedicated herself to the study of its history. ###################################### Zhukov's Greatest Defeat: The Red Army's Epic Disaster in Operation Mars, 1942 (Modern War Studies) Paperback - Illustrated, April 28, 1999 by David M. Glantz (Author) One of the least-known stories of World War II, Operation Mars was an epic military disaster. Designed to dislodge the German Army from its position west of Moscow, Mars cost the Soviets an estimated 335,000 dead, missing, and wounded men and over 1,600 tanks. But in Russian history books, it was a battle that never happened-a historical debacle sacrificed to Stalin's postwar censorship. David Glantz now offers the first definitive account of this forgotten catastrophe, revealing the key players and detailing the major events of Operation Mars. Using neglected sources in both German and Russian archives, he reconstructs the historical context of Mars and reviews the entire operation from High Command to platoon level. Orchestrated and led by Marshal Georgi Kostantinovich Zhukov, one of the Soviet Union's great military heroes, the twin operations Mars and Uranus formed the centerpiece of Soviet strategic efforts in the fall of 1942. Launched in tandem with Operation Uranus, the successful counteroffensive at Stalingrad, Mars proved a monumental setback. Fought in bad weather and on impossible terrain, the ambitious offensive faltered despite spectacular initial success in some sectors: Zhukov kept sending in more troops and tanks only to see them decimated by the entrenched Germans. Illuminating the painful progress of Operation Mars with vivid battle scenes and numerous maps and illustrations, Glantz presents Mars as a major failure of Zhukov's renowned command. Yet, both during and after the war, that failure was masked from public view by the successful Stalingrad operation, thus eliminating any stain from Zhukov's public image as a hero of the Great Patriotic War. For three grueling weeks, Operation Mars was one of the most tragic and agonizing episodes in Soviet military history. Glantz's reconstruction of that failed offensive fills a major gap in our knowledge of World War II, even as it raises important questions about the reputations of national military heroes.

history is written by the victor

Good video. Tho, it's lacking maps. Even a rudimentary map, with the area and approximate troops placement, would help so much when visualizing a battle.

I have a suggestion for another dark series... Dark Research and Dark Investigations.... Dark Research being focused on hidden and unknown research projects, doctors, and subjects while Dark Investigations focusing on strange and bizare investigations into local legends and lore and unsolved mysterious police/investigator reports. Let me know what you think or if this sounds a bit too much like the what youve got already

Good video, but it lacks a map to show army movement

Shocking

There should be a rule whenever a country goes to war the People who decide that should be the first on the Frontlines on both sides.

My understanding was that the Germans eventually withdrew, of their own accord, from Rzhev, in order to shorten the line, and to create reserves. But this happened *before* the operation that surrounded the Germans at Stalingrad, and it was thus withdrawal that allowed the Soviets to transfer the necessary forces to the Stalingrad theater.

Was US lend lease a factor yet in this stage of the war?

Interesting choice of words. An "ambitious Soviet THRUST" was called Uranus

Operation Uranus, the ambitious soviet thrust...

Interesting, when describing tanks destroyed you showed an image at like the 12:15 minute mark. It is a photo of a destroyed M-4 Sherman medium tank. I wonder what the Russians thought about the M-4 Sherman?

So OP. Mars was Zugov's greatest failure while Uranus was his greatest success?

I had no idea, "border wars",, ya learn something every day. I thought U referred to the Kamchatka pennisula, wrong again Carole, lol.

Why does the German defense of the Regev salient remind me of the Soviet defense of the Kursk salient?