Soviet Union vs The Third Reich: The Greatest Tank Battle in History | WWII Documentary

[music] I was running later across this bridge, a mortar man was running ahead of me, his Soviet last name was Vadim, he was carrying a slab on his shoulders and a mine hit between his back and this slab and I saw it literally a few meters from me when it exploded and his head was torn off, his head fell into the river and then he fell. I saw him even wave his hand like that, uh, that means it’s still on his hand. I remember this, it means before the war there were such Kirov wristwatches, a very large watch, the frontal armor all fell through. I have Raditsa immediately Bron e killed the shell went under the tank's mask, the gun hit the protection of this Armor fell off dangling on the tank. When I chugged, I couldn't understand anything, I was laying down with blood coming out of my nose. in '45 In the Res Chancellery This is about the same thing, he seemed fixated and after Stalingrad he hissed like a snake with hatred and threatened [music] [music] [applause] [applause] making excuses to Hitler after Moscow and Stalingrad The Wehrmacht generals were written off failures in the Russian Frost, the summer has come, driven back from the Volga, German troops are concentrating forces in the expanses of the fertile Russian Black Earth Region Kursk Belgorod eagle Voronezh no swamps or dense forests No more excuses July 10 on the hundredth day of fighting commander of the army group south field Marshal Manstein at the third scrap in the dream The ry Marshal understood that he was risking his head in the strictest secrecy, Manstein was regrouping forces and changing the direction of the main attack on Kursk not through the nearby village of Oboyan, but in a roundabout way through Prokhorovka, bypassing the position of the Red Army prepared for the defense of the Prokhorovka station was the main supply point for the Sixth Guards Army, it was there there were main fuel ammunition depots and the capture of the station actually left the troops of the Guards Army without their main depot, the effect of surprise worked on the evening of July 11 at the observation post of the Fifth Guards Tank Army near Prokhorovka, the top commanders of the Voronezh Front gathered, Vasilevsky’s representative of Stalin arrived at the OP, so I myself was present at this The captains have arrived here, a rumble can be heard, there is a battle going on, and suddenly in the distance some tanks are seen coming. Vasilevsky’s kinship is strict, they are immediately replaced by Comrade General, after all, you were given instructions to keep the arrival of our tanks as secret as possible. What is this? Tanks are visible coming. Rod took the binoculars and looked, says Comrade General. these are German tanks coming on the morning of July 12, the battle of Prokhorovka began according to the recollections of the participants. It was a real hell, you can see catfish 3 km. It’s a bright day, there’s smoke burning all around, dozens of them, or maybe hundreds of them, the Earth is burning because on Earth they harvested the wort, they built wheat, you know, the sun is burning, a friend says uh, the smell of a burnt tank, including a human one, is terrible. As they say, those who jumped out. They are fighting. Well, right under the eyes of who. What can a personal weapon, who has a shoulder blade, who has a dagger, who? What can they say near Belgorod full profile as it should be one and a half meters of depth from the parapet There and so on, and when we approached the river bank, we no longer found ourselves in a trench, but on almost almost flat terrain because the entire trench was filled with corpses and we walked practically over corpses and approached the river. Historians note that there are very few documentary film footage about those battles and cameramen Much of that descendant was filmed in newsreels and published in various albums; it was filmed in retrospect; German films and photo archives are much richer; these unique shots were taken not by professional cameramen, but by amateurs; many Wehrmacht officers had portable eight-millimeter movie cameras; relatives of the Germans who participated in the Battle of Kursk provided their Family archives especially for this film, mechanized columns are marching to the Prokhorov area, here are the German infantry in the attack, and here are the losses, the newest panther tank has been knocked out and the dead Thirty-four soldiers with crosses Such vehicles were in SS units And these are the famous tigers, the most powerful tanks of the enemy, a few more frames taken in a combat situation, a panther and a modernized T-4 tank are firing on the Prokhorovsky field, the newest self-propelled gun nashorn rhinoceros Northern phase of the Kursk Bulge On July 5, after artillery preparation and air strikes, at half past 6 am the Germans went on the offensive in the main direction of the village of Alhaji Taru, massive air strikes were carried out by dive bombers NRS 87 approximately 50 7 German owls are bombers in a ring of coma and bomb this continues for a long time in the Czech Republic And during this time their advanced units, heavy tank units, move forward, the first German attack was repulsed due to the density of anti-tank defenses and minefields, becoming within a few hours of the first day offensive, that is, by 5 o’clock in the evening on July 5, out of 45 vehicles, only 12 were in service; the rest were out of action due to mine explosions; the Germans failed to break through in their attack on the Ponyry station, which occupied an important strategic position on the Orel-Kursk railway exhausted by artillery fire and the enemy lost dozens of tanks in the minefields, including tigers and Ferdinandovna black soil apple orchards during the day in the July sky there is a lark It’s hard to imagine that in the place of these pastoral landscapes 70 years ago one of the bloodiest battles of the Great Patriotic War took place, the unprecedented Kursk in scale, the battle lasted from July 5 to August 23 and claimed hundreds of thousands of lives of soldiers of two armies, the Soviet and German, search teams are finding more and more burials here, soldiers' amulets, scars of human destinies such as coins, house keys, toys donated by them by their children before leaving for the front It’s also extremely rare to come across letters, one of the letters was found. A fighter named Oleg, his last name has not been established. Tanya, don’t worry too much, wait for me. Take care of Tanya, my little flower, he’s the only one we have before it’s too late, youth, don’t try to make money, and if I come, just thank me sincerely and we will educate them, and while it’s raining for me, it will be late, we’ll be old, we won’t be able to hunt, we won’t be able to do it Tanya, don’t forget, always wait for me, and I’ll come if I’m alive, it’s unknown whether Tanya has waited for Oleg But Vasily’s belly is definitely lucky, he’s the commander of a tank company going home SDO regrets that I couldn’t save my first tank from destruction, jump out of the tank and the faster you are, the commander You are the very first commander jumps out after the commander, the gunner is the loading mechanic Luke jumps out, and this, of course, the radius machine gunner has nowhere to jump out until the mechanic jumps out and doesn’t jump out E And so I the gunner jumps out the loader jumps out three and at this time the flames begin to burn And as the flames engulfed no one will ever jump out everyone will burn 1943 after the crushing for the first time since the beginning of the Second World War the specter of collapse arose before Germany in all its inevitability a third of the Reich the morale of the army of the population their faith in the military the power of Germany was thoroughly undermined and Prestige in the eyes of the allies was seriously undermined by Blain the Fuhrer thirsting for revenge, the turning point was to be ensured by a major offensive operation on the Kursk ledge, much was expected from new military equipment, waiting for all tanks T medium tanks T5 panther assault guns Ferdinand fighter planes FK Wolf 190a and attack aircraft Henschel 129 Although in general it was not possible to bring the total strength of the Armed Forces on the Eastern Front even to the level of 1942, by the summer of 1943 the situation at the front changed in favor of the Soviet Union by the beginning of the Battle of Kursk the overall superiority of the Red Army in this sector was such [music] [ applause] [music] even at the planning stage of the strategic offensive near Kursk, Hitler was visited by fears; he more than once complained to the chief tankman of the Wehrmacht, General Durian, that the mere thought of a future operation made him feel cold in his stomach; however, the Führ also often fell into a state of euphoria, calling the Citadel a torch for everything peace in the spring and summer, our intelligence several times named the timing of the enemy’s attack, the Germans more than once postponed the date of the attack in order to gain time for more thorough preparation, waiting for a strike to irritate the attack first, the one who attacks he obviously has an advantage because he knows when he struck, but who is defending he forced to remain in anticipation and naturally this was an additional very powerful factor and on the psyche of simply the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, the high command of headquarters and the General Staff was divided into supporters of the defensive yor rindest to meet the Germans on the defensive at that moment and then inflict losses on them to go on their own offensive were Zhukov and Vasilevsky they occupied this position back in the spring and the report of Soviet intelligence only strengthened them in this conviction; on the contrary, front commander Vatutin Zhuv howled his opinion with all frankness to Stalin, I consider it inadvisable for our troops to go on the offensive in the coming days. It would be better if we, having worn out our defenses, knock out his tanks and then introduce fresh reserves by going on a general offensive we will finally finish off the main enemy grouping, then it came to unprintable years. One of these episodes was recalled by Lieutenant Colonel Kromtsovsky, while accompanying Zhukov to the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, he involuntarily witnessed Well, not a conversation But such a fragment of a conversation between two military leaders, the Supreme Commander and his First Deputy, regarding plans childhood and maybe the veteran is exaggerating, it’s hard to say, but Zhukov stood his ground and allowed perhaps even non-printed vocabulary in the conversation. Zhukov guessed that these phrases reached the soul of his subordinate and took preventive measures against disclosure, and so Zhukov declared a civil war for the communists, established their own disciplinary charter remark warning execution you are a communist consider that you have already received a warning Zhukov’s plan remained unchanged the Germans, starting operation Citadel, planned to strike two groups of the army of the North and south In the general direction of the course to revive Inino Ami sum by the summer to significantly modernize the German ground forces, especially armored vehicles by the beginning of the Kursk of the battle, the main tank of the German parva was the Panzer. 4 modifications of the vehicle were armed with a seventy-millimeter cannon with a barrel length of 48 calibers, which made it possible to fight thirty-fours at distances of 1000-1200 m, sometimes more than thirty beads with a 76 mm cannon could fight these tanks at distances of 600 Well up to 1000 meh, with approximately equal armor protection, armor-piercing shells at that time were often of poor quality; when they hit the armor, they simply raked the armor and did not penetrate the armor. The Red Army prepared in depth [music] in echelon, carried out by engineering units; rare footage of our front-line newsreels; they preserved pictures of the simple soldier’s life the last days before the battle War is war and lunch is on schedule Smoke bikes And these are shots taken amateurishly by cameras of German officers during the respite between battles Russian Exotic village IT about what you see passes wear junk put up tents go Who in the World Cup commanders study the area of ​​​​future operations a column of troops moves to starting points everyday affairs in the front-line zone they hang Partisans Well, then you should Wash your hands and have lunch a table made from boxes of ammunition the mood is great about this excellent jump hall for the summer of forty-three The troops are receiving new equipment tank troops received the latest tiger panthers self-propelled gun Ferdinand Humel and assault tanks Brum were radically modernized vehicles of old designs The Red Army was preparing for the defense of the state line of defense to a depth of 350 km from the front line, that is, they really prepared very thoroughly and for two fronts, the central defensive phase and the Voronezh front, the Southern phase, a whole strategic reserve was created front, first the Steppe Military District, then the renamed steppe front, under the command of Konev, sappers laid minefields, the mining density turned out to be the highest in the entire war in terms of anti-tank and 1,700 anti-personnel mines per kilometer of front, the soldiers underwent intensive training, the soldiers practiced actions not only in defense but also in the offensive, we were placed in such in the place where there was a lake, they built crossings, we studied how best to do this, which means in practice we did it, and of course the most important thing was running tanks in the trenches and the tanks passed through the trenches. We were lying in these trenches, it was impossible to completely hide the concentration of a huge mass of troops, so they were not used. only the usual methods of camouflage, but also special ones aimed at disinformation of the enemy, including the use of army radio communications, they decided to say, Let's send a group of radio stations from this area to Korotoyak, 300 kilometers away, which will simulate the presence of a large military formation. And I went with this group. Well, they sent there and did a few sessions like gori were done as if they were working sloppily there you can listen to it as if a large headquarters was working the Kursk salient The northern phase defended the Central Front of General Rakosovsky The southern and southwestern part was occupied by the troops of the Voronezh Front of General Vatutin the concentration of forces on the relatively short length of the Kursk Bulge was unprecedented the task is to bleed the enemy, then go on a counter-offensive and defeat the German troops in the northern sector of Vranem in the area of ​​​​Belgorod and Kharkov. The soldiers understood what kind of enemy they would have to face in battle. The divisions of the SS troops of the Hitler Guard that stood on the southern face of the Kursk Bulge were especially dangerous, and we knew that there It 's not a joke What's in these units? First of all, the people were what kind of ryu they took only titan prepared height of at least 170 cm in the rest they took everyone, but in these we were convinced that it was really difficult to even call Naro very much under and they did not give up no, even the wounded, as they say, trying to use any means of equipment, training was carried out taking into account all the special circumstances of the nuances and subtleties that can arise in battle, even the height of the summer grass in front of the machine gun was taken into account [music] calculation typical mistakes, for example, there was not clearing sectors of fire when it grew towards the middle In the summer, the grass covered the sector of fire from the bunkers. And in general, the Loa who were prepared in defense actually shot through the fact that the most powerful group of Germans would advance in the area of ​​​​the Belgorod defensive hub. On the Voronezh Front This was the junction of the Sixth Guards Seventh Guards Army. Vatutin believed that it was here that the Germans would deliver the main blow and they will develop it in depth. Therefore, such a Belgorod Bastion was built with the Rifle Division and a strong Artillery group tightly placed in defense, so it turned out that the German Fourth Tank Army and the army group, instead of advancing shoulder to shoulder, from the first day of the operation diverged in different directions The fact is that when our division arrived it was located directly in Belgorod. This, of course, was a very unsuitable position because it is in a lowland and Belgorod stands on the high bank of the Seversky Donets and of course we suffered losses in defense because both artillery and small arms found targets in our defensive lines 5 and the Southern front of the enemy, including the elite Divisions of the Third Reich lep standard Adolf Hitler Reich and the death's head they managed to wedge deeper than others into our [music] defense The Soviet command was forced to use against them part of the strategic reserves of the Fifth Guards Army of General Rotmistrov from composition of the Steppe Front, for reasons of special secrecy, the military council was played as a gathering of commanders for the birthday of General Pavel Alekseevich turns 40 years old to call such things Well, everyone gathered, let's go, senior officers, brigade commanders and regiment commands arrived there, the tables are set, so they say, cards are laid out on the tables, here you go You have a combat order to go to the Kursk Bulge; the mood in the units was fighting; they were rushing to the front line. Even those who had just recovered from wounds sometimes had to resort to cunning; Deputy Chief of Staff of the Personnel Department of the Armored Forces Headquarters, knowing the mood to break through to the combat units at any cost for any position; asked told me Nikolay do it like this you know the disk that will be served at the headquarters of Zina from Leningrad I say of course I know so I’m terribly in love with her on the chopper your boss is very jealous he’s a man you say take her for a ride on a motorcycle to Vilis around this headquarters he will notice it will definitely definitely notice and well, it won’t hurt your face, but it will help you leave the headquarters, I thought it was an idea. And of course I did this zino for a couple of days, both on a motorcycle and in a car, I pressed myself, kissed back and forth, and suddenly, after about a day, he calls me and says, well, Orlov, you did a good job, you did a great job, now such events are starting here many company battalion commanders are out of action. Well, for any position like this, let’s go to one of the brigades. Captain Orlov ended up in the very Inferno. On their flank, the Germans concentrated 1,400 tanks and Zadok, including 200 Panthers and 100 Tigers, the most powerful tanks of that time. However, tiger There were weak points in its frontal armor that were not penetrated by Soviet tank anti-tank guns, at the same time, this vehicle was characterized by low technical reliability, most of the tigers were constantly under repair, the sides lost tens of thousands of soldiers every day, hundreds of tanks and tanks were blackened everywhere by broken and burnt-out vehicles, as is known, German tanks were equipped with gasoline engines. And most Soviet diesel engines are traditionally considered to be that a gasoline engine is more fire-hazardous. In principle, this is so when a projectile hits, the gasoline ignites faster, but according to the recollections of Soviet tank crews, if a projectile hit a diesel tank and you did not have time to understand that the tank caught fire, the diesel fuel flared up, although slower, but much hotter and subsequently it was almost impossible to leave the tank; it burned down along with the car; the gas pollution inside the tank was so high that people not only lost consciousness, but there were cases when people died from carbon monoxide, that is, in the heat of battle, a person fell unconscious and died. The southern group of Germans with the main forces was torn in the Oboyanskaya direction. This was the key to Kursk in certain sectors. The SS managed to break through the main defense line of the Voronezh Front in just one day. General Katukov's tankmen repelled the enemy attacks. Using the ambush method, using their artillery and using motorized riflemen to cover the minefields, Tuku managed to achieve a very impressive result already by July 7, the number of Bogoto Bogoto Panthers of the Germans had decreased from to the echelon of defense to detain and bleed the enemy before the introduction of reserves into battle, General Rakosovsky had a different opinion. He considered the counterattack inappropriate; the arguments were expressed openly by tank forces without a reason; and Stalin himself should be emphasized that it was Stalin himself I called Kokov and asked his opinion about the impending counterattack. Katukov explained and Stalin accepted this argumentation with his own means. That is, he told you Vatutin would call you to cancel the counterattack and with a new decision, so [music] they turned a wide space into several narrow paths on which it was impossible to turn around with all tank power in order to deliver a concentrated blow, as a result, the captain’s army attacked on July 12 in small groups, at least this can be seen from Soviet and German documents and was unable to fend off the defeat of their strike group did not happen, but nevertheless, this is sudden, as they say from the darkness July night, the appearance of a fresh Soviet tank army led them to the logical conclusion that there would be no decisive result. And yet, it was Prokhorovka who decided the fate of the battle on the southern front of the Kursk Bulge. Although our losses here turned out to be significantly higher than the loss of the enemy in the twenty-ninth corps of 200 tanks. Well, let’s say that 60% of them were out of action, of them burned out, burned out was about, well, half, and half were knocked out when it ended on July 12. It was only later that the team created such things to say, they collected data on everyone during this time, uh, we, our army lost about 350 tanks, of which about 200 were burned July 12 This was the last day of the German offensive operations in the Battle of Kursk, but essentially the Citadel operation was stopped due to the fact that Soviet troops went on the offensive on other sectors of the front, in particular the troops of the central front and its co-fronts, our Fourth Tank Army acted in the role of Taran, where included a volunteer corps formed in the Urals, in fact. It was such a popular impulse when the Urals believed that this was their formation, this was a formation that needed to be equipped in the best possible way, and even air defense forces with every corps knife and on the other side of the front very quickly found out, a rumor spread that there had appeared at the front some terrible part of the Russians armed with knives that cuts out all those who come across it on the way by August 6, Aril was liberated and on the 15th the liquidation of the Oryol group of the enemy Belgorod-Kharkov ended, the offensive operation of the Red Army began on July 2, the headquarters demanded to immediately continue the offensive, but the front commanders insisted based on the fact that success requires a regrouping of forces, replenishment with people and equipment, Stalin postponed the offensive by 8 days to the beginning of August, the Germans had 600 Bogoto tanks left in this direction, 500 vehicles were under short-term repairs and it should have ended in a matter of days around August 12, the Germans could have had a group of almost a thousand tanks, this thousand tanks could have met the blows of the Soviet tank armies of the Rumyantsev operation and how such an offensive would have ended. Now it’s hard to guess, but Zhukov hurried the front commanders with all his might, the Soviet troops went on the offensive and this blow was delivered at the right time in the right place, approximately on the date, Soviet tanks reached those points that were collection points for German repair vehicles, and these vehicles became a deadly enemy, became scrap metal, which was captured by Soviet troops. It was especially difficult for the infantry on the right bank of the Seversky Donets to counterattack; the crossing of the river was fired upon by enemy artillery interruptions in the food supply began, but we understood that we were in a difficult situation and this ration was stretched out as best we could, then a piece of sugar was sucked there during the day, or a cracker was bitten there, but they tried to help us; the planes dropped bags of crackers, but they ended up in the rivers right away. it was already impossible to take anything there, and those that fell to the ground were fractions of small things, but we divided it, which means we took it out with spoons, divided it into a cap, which means it was poured into spoons, it means we divided it and ate it. However, the general mood in our troops changed, the hunger of a different kind of fighters was felt more and more acutely [ music] head counterattack in the Belgorod area powerful Fire and air strikes were carried out by parts of the Voronezh Front the next day the troops of the neighboring Steppe Front entered the breakthrough at 6 a.m. On August 5, the 270th Guards Rifle Regiment burst into Belgorod, the city was liberated Stalin gathered members of the headquarters and asked the leadership of the General Staff question: Have they studied military history well? Obviously, having seen the puzzled faces, he explained that in the past, in honor of the Victors, bells rang throughout Holy Russia; therefore, in this case, in connection with the victory, it is necessary to conceive some kind of or create some kind of illumination, probably an expression from the article of Peter I on the same day, a Nich order was issued and a festive salute was issued in honor of the capture of Orel and [music] Belgorod. This was the first artillery salute during the Great Patriotic War [music] ahead of Kharkov, our howl dizi division of artillery breakthrough and rocket mortars. This was a fundamentally different level. military art, the schedule of Artillery training, for example, included powerful fire raids, methodical suppression of targets combined with volleys [music] Katyushas they terrified the enemy, sowed panic, the Nazis surrendered, this is what remained in the memory of the radio operator of the Tiger 503 tank of a separate battalion of unti officer Lokhman, we moved to tank and around us from the fire of the Russian artillery the earth stood on end, the entire front was encircled by flashes of shots, it seemed as if it was crawling into the Ring of Fire. I have never seen such firepower. The troops of the Steppe Front moved to Kharkov, the fighting did not stop for a day, but on August 23 the city was taken. Here are the frames taken in the first minutes of the liberation of Kharkov, residents meet the advanced columns with which Vilis, commander of the steppe front General Konev, moved, the Germans finally broke down characteristic. Senior Lieutenant Rafael Mavlyutov left in his front diary of the Guard; he managed to predict the outcome of the war long before its end during the Battle of Kursk, this is what he wrote officer in the diary on July 12, I was in the dugout of the operations department of the headquarters of the ninety- fifth Guards Division, I looked through binoculars, huge monsters with black ominous crosses on the armor were crawling at us, my veins began to shake, I realized that our life, our future depends on Whose will take it when the smoke cleared and ours went forward I understand ours took by the end of the Battle of Kursk in the German tank divisions there were an average of 30 vehicles left Operation Citadel ended in failure Hitler was going through a severe nervous crisis after the Kursk disaster he calmed down, as if he had dried up he for a long time could not find new phrases with which to agitate this regime to live on Propaganda of the Third Reich Bypassed the defeat at the Kursk Bulge of silence limited to broadcasts about battles and retreats on different sections of the front supposedly Everything is going according to plan the troops are being regrouped in general nothing special Goebbels is becoming more restrained the very spirit of propaganda is changing Well from abusive to quite constructive agitation for shock labor, propagandists of the Third Reich switch to working with the labor front. In general, this was such a total Propaganda of labor, a characteristic detail on the road to the West, in the footsteps of the retreating enemy, our soldiers found neat German cemeteries at every grave marker [music] bury after the victory on the spot temporary cemeteries to build memorials in honor of the fallen heroes of the Wehrmacht did not work out the torch of Victory, which Hitler dreamed of when developing the operation Citadel died out in July of the forty-third year, the Red Army managed to defeat the Germans for the first time in the summer in favorable weather and in ideal conditions for tank operations, if Hitler lost the battle at Stalingrad then on the Kursk Bulge he lost [music] the war [music] H [music]