S1E27: Not One Step Back - The Battle of Stalingrad

Stalingrad isn’t a battle you “learn” once and move on from. It’s a crash course in what happens when ideology, ego, and logistics collide inside a real city full of real people. We start with the uneasy lead-up: Hitler and Stalin’s temporary non-aggression pact, the betrayal of Operation Barbarossa, and the blitzkrieg logic that worked until distance, weather, and supply lines started to bite.

From there, we go ground level. The Luftwaffe’s opening bombardment doesn’t just damage Stalingrad, it reshapes it into a jagged maze where tanks bog down and every building becomes a fortress. We talk about Stalin’s resolve, civilians trapped in the blast zone, and why urban warfare turns into something uniquely vicious: “hug the enemy” tactics, Rattenkrieg close-quarters fighting, and a battlefield where snipers and rubble dictate who lives through the next hour.

The war flips when Operation Uranus hits. We break down the encirclement, the collapse of supplies, the winter conditions that freeze fuel and bodies, and the slow grind that reduces an army to hunger, disease, and desperation. We also zoom out to the bigger historical question: why Stalingrad marks the moment Nazi Germany stops advancing and starts retreating all the way back to Berlin, and why the Eastern Front deserves more attention when we talk about who actually broke Germany’s war machine.

If this hit you, subscribe, share the episode with a friend, and leave a review. What part of Stalingrad do you think most people still misunderstand?

Transcript

Disclaimer And Listener Warning

SPEAKER_01 0:15

Before we begin today's episode, we would like to share a quick disclaimer. The views, opinions, and statements expressed by the hosts and guests on this podcast are their own personal views and are provided in their own capacity. All content is editorial, opinion-based, and intended for entertainment purposes only. Listener discretion is advised.

Meet The Hosts And The Topic

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Hey everybody, welcome back to a new episode of Yeah, you see you infected. You infected my brain because you said the black curtain goose.

SPEAKER_03 0:54

The black curtain goose.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

Welcome back to the to the black curtain society. To the silly goose society. Whatever we are. Welcome back. I'm Angie. This is Kyle. And yeah, we are going back in history today, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:11

All right. Listen, I'm just gonna I'm gonna level with y'all. It it ain't gonna be pretty. It it ain't it ain't fun history. It ain't pretty history. Um I I don't I don't I don't know. I don't know what it is or why it is, but you know how like women just like notoriously just obsessed with like murder podcasts and shit.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:38

And then how like the the thing on on the interwebs was just like, hey, the Roman Empire and like dudes and people, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:45

My Roman Empire for whatever reason is World War II.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 1:50

And my World War II Roman Empire specifically is today's topic.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

And I'm really I just I'm really interested in it too, because I feel like this what we're gonna talk about today is something that like we touch on it in like school in history and you know, like throughout just kind of life. You you know of this event, you know that this happened because it's you know, but like the intricacies and everything. So I'm I'm really excited to see what I learned today because I know that like you're obsessed about it.

SPEAKER_04 2:32

My you're gonna you're gonna have you're gonna have a personal factual opinion. It is single-handedly the the most important event in bare minimum the the European front in World War II. I don't know if it's necessarily of the entire war. There could be debate between the European and the Pacific front in in Europe. This is the most important event, more than D-Day. This is more important than D-Day. Hands down. So do me a favor.

A Hellscape Called Stalingrad

SPEAKER_04 3:16

Picture this. I knew you were gonna do it.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

I knew you were gonna do it.

SPEAKER_04 3:20

Soviet Russia. August, 1942. Soviet Soviet Russia, yeah. Soviet Union, Russia, 1942. There's a pile of rubble about 30 miles wide, 30 miles in diameter. There's rats running around that are visibly quite quite plump and fat, then fatter than any normal rat should be, from feasting upon endless corpses.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

Alrighty.

SPEAKER_04 3:55

Not in August, but in the later years, so cold, bodies literally froze where they were. Standing up, froze in two buildings, two fixtures, and were just there, suspended in time until the thaw. The life expectancy of a soldier less than twenty-four hours. The Battle of Stalingrad is hands down the most important moment in the European front in World War II.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

Let's begin.

Hitler And Stalin’s Fragile Pact

SPEAKER_04 4:38

Well, before we get to that one, it there's a teeny bit of backstory of why it got why it it I guess why it was so important, why the city was so important. So Germany was being a big balls tough guy, dickhead. Surprise there in the 30s. Well, idealistically, there could not be any two people that were further on the spectrum of their beliefs and their ideals than fucking Hitler and Stalin, then Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Felt that communism was literally the worst, even more, even more than um the Jewish population. He felt that communism was more evil than the Jewish population.

SPEAKER_00 5:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 5:27

Which was dumbfounding to me. Anywho, so needless to say, the world was completely blown away when Russia and Germany in 39, 38, 39, they signed a non-aggression pact with one another. I want to attack you, you don't attack me. We're not exactly allies, but we're just we kind of want the same thing, which means is to like fuck up Poland and like every other country, but like we're not gonna attack each other, but we're let's just like we're not friends. Anyhow.

SPEAKER_01 6:00

Yeah, kind of like what is it like the enemy of my enemy is my friend?

SPEAKER_04 6:04

Kinda, but like they didn't see Poland as like their enemies. It's just that like we they just wanted it. It's not that they had anything specifically against Poland, it just seems that like that's one of the countries that definitely saw the worst of it. Yeah, that that's a whole other episode, just Poland alone. Germany wanted it because they felt everyone was inferior and they felt that just what they what's called Leibniz Rom, what they needed for to excel the Aryan race, was exactly Leibniz from Living Room, which is just all of it. And they felt for whatever reason there was a high concentration of the bad people in Poland, and then the Soviet Union lost a lot of Poland and other things in World War I and blah blah blah. So kind of an enemy of my enemy thing. Either way, 1939, they signed a nine aggression pact with each other, and the world's like, what the fuck is going on? Fast forward to June of 1941, in the event that everyone saw coming but just didn't give a flying fuck when it happened.

Operation Barbarossa And Blitzkrieg

SPEAKER_04 7:10

Operation Babarossa. The largest land invasion in history to this day. Germany breaks the pact and invades the Soviet Union. We're talking four million troops. Legitimate four million soldiers are moving on about three thousand kilometers.

SPEAKER_00 7:34

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 7:35

Yeah. 3,000 kilometer wide front. Four million troops are invading the Soviet Union. That's a that's a lot of fucking people.

SPEAKER_01 7:43

That is I can't even fathom. I can't even fathom what that looks like.

SPEAKER_04 7:47

You know, like gets worse.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 7:50

That's like I said, and that's so it's that wasn't just the German troops. That was that was just the Axis. So you're talking the, you know, the the German, Italian, Hungarian, all of them invading into Russia. The largest and what the Germany's biggest strength, their secret weapon throughout all of World War II was Blitzkrieg, Lightning Warfare. So they're gonna hit you, they're gonna hit you with the Air Force first, they're gonna shake everything up, then they're gonna send in all the armor, then they're gonna send in the infantry first, and it's just speed speeds as fast as you fucking can. Before you know the door is kicked in, they're already out the back door. Insane fast. So four million troops are moving at literally breakneck speed. Into the model. So as they're doing that in June. They're pushing into as far as they can into Russia. They're going, they're going, they're going, they're taking just they're just just kicking the shit out of Russia because they weren't ready for it. They were already, though Russia had the numbers, they did not have the technology or the firepower that Germany did. So that's how they were able to get the shit kicked out of them so quick. Like, yeah, we yeah, they they are they outnumbered them like 20 to 1. Like the Russians outnumbered the Germans like 20 to 1 or 25 to 1, some insane fucking number like that one. But like, you know, have you seen 20 guys with 10 rifles try to take out a tank? Germany had tanks. Germany had very good tanks. So, you know, eventually technology is gonna outweigh your numbers.

SPEAKER_01 9:25

Right, right.

SPEAKER_04 9:26

So, as they're doing that one, Russia's biggest ally is the fucking weather. So by December, December of 1941, the um, whatch called, the the the German advance is is slowed, is slowed down drastically. This is because they've been going at balls of the wall for six straight months, and they've like I said, they've been kicking ass and taking names all the way through, but then they get to Moscow, and Moscow, that was that was the first time that they, okay, we can't go up there, but now we're gonna kind of reposition our troops. They're just they're dug in too deep at Moscow at the capital. We gotta move around another way. Well, now they've held them out for X amount of months, now it's getting cold. Now they're running out of some resources, their supply lines are getting longer. It takes longer to get food, ammunition, oil, fresh troops, blah, blah, blah. So, but the biggest thing we're running out of was oil, because they didn't have any there. And the farther north you get, so the farther away from like the Middle East and the southern areas are like that one, the less and less oil there is. So they were like, okay, we are running dangerously low. We need to go get some. So down in um uh the area of uh Baku in um Azerbaijan, down there, uh about what's the Pazak found? Like the Caspian Sea or in that area.

SPEAKER_02 10:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 10:46

Um massive oil fields. And it's like, okay, we need to go down, we need to go down

Oil, Ego, And Why Stalingrad

SPEAKER_04 10:50

to the Caucus uh through the Caucasus Mountains and get the fucking oil. So as we're going there, some dipshit looks at the fucking map and is like, hey, hey, hey, what's the name of the what's the name of the Russian guy with the with the mustache that we don't like? His name is Stalin. Cool. You know he's got a fucking city named after him? Huh? Yeah, look, right right fucking there. Well, is it on the way? I mean, kinda. Like, we gotta go south. To like the east is where Stalingrad is. So, like, we need the oil, but also at the same time, though, wouldn't it be kind of funny if like we completely took over this town with his name on it? It's the only town with his name on it. I think we should fucking do that. And he was like, Yeah, I think it's a great fucking idea. It was not a good idea. Spoiler alert. All seriousness, all seriousness. The taking of Stalingrad had very there was some strategic value to do it because it was an industrial city. It was like think back in like the 19. You know, actually, yeah, right around the same time. Right on the same time. Stalingrad and Detroit were very, very similar. They were incredibly industrialized. There was an insane amount of factories there. Almost all of Russia's like the their biggest tank factories, weapons factories, their plane filled, everything was built pretty much in Stalingrad. They moved a lot of their factories as everything was happening. They kept moving their factories further and further east away from the fronts.

SPEAKER_01 12:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 12:26

But there was still a massive amount of them in Stalingrad. So yes, there is some strategic value to do that because that if they take that out, like you're talking about 40% of the of the highest production factories. You you've you've taken them out. That's a massive fucking blow. But it wasn't they they needed oil. 100%. The main thing should have been to go just immediately send everything you could, throw the fucking kitchen sink down there to get the oil, and then just move up the Volga River through Stalingraus, literally cut through it. And that's how you take it. It would have been so much easier because you would have had more fucking oil and you could have secured more supply lines because you it just that was the idea. That should have been the fucking plan. But what is dipshit fucking do? Is luckily for us, splits his army in two. And he sends his stronger of the force, actually, into Stalingrad. His main reason why is because it was it was all ego. It was because it it it had his name, it it bore his name. See, only that's the main reason why he was so fucking dogmatic about taking it, was because it was the name, and the reason why it was renamed Stalingrad is because during the Russian Revolution, uh Stalin fought very hard there, like the big victory for the everything there and in World War I and a bunch of like that one happened there. So it's like I love the city, I'm gonna name it after myself. Other than that, not a whole lot of massive importance to it. It's all ego and vanity for the most part. So he sends his strongest, most of his strongest units that he has at the time, right ahead to Stalingrad, as he sends a slightly weaker force, mainly of um Romanian and Italian forces, he sends down to secure the oil fields.

SPEAKER_00 14:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 14:19

Um we'll jump ahead of ourselves a little bit. Uh they don't get the oil. Because he sent the weaker of the forces down there, and guess what? There were stronger defenses guarding the fucking oil. Who'd have thought. Fucking idiot. Anyhow. Doing this, he puts um a rather intelligent general, we'll say. He wasn't necessarily he didn't have a lot of ambition. Friedrich Paulus. He didn't have a whole lot of ambition. He wasn't like a okay, you you couldn't leave him to his own devices because he's just gonna kind of like he knows what he's good at and he can't really like switch things up, and he's very good at what he does. But he he you can't give him something, it has to be by the book, how he does it, and he's gonna he's gonna follow his orders literally to the end. He will not okay, defy the orders and do this one as to where another one of the biggest successes for just Blitzkrieg as the whole is the fact that okay, you need to wait for this and that and the other thing. And the guy who pretty much invented that goes, No, fuck you, we got the momentum, we're gonna capitalize on this one. That was not Palace's style, but he was a very, very good general. So he sends him. What he prefers to do is long-range intimidation. He knew that they had the artillery, they had the guns, they had the tanks, they had they were scary as fuck. And that's exactly what he that's that's what he did. That's how he used the overwhelming force is You don't need to worry about fighting them so close if you can take them out, you know, a mile and a half away. So everything is getting set. He's designing his battle plans and whatnot. And another one of the pompous constant fucking Nazi Germany, um, he decides this is what we're gonna do. August 23rd, 1942.

The Luftwaffe Levels The City

SPEAKER_04 16:14

The official first day of the Battle of Stalingrad. Over 600 aircraft from the Luftwaffe drop over a thousand tons of bombs on the city. So that one more time.

SPEAKER_01 16:31

That's a lot. That's a lot.

SPEAKER_04 16:34

It says over, so we'll even round it down. Six hundred aircraft, six hundred bombers dropped a thousand tons of bombs on a city roughly 30 miles, 30 miles in size, which is a good thirty miles. That's a big that's a that's a pretty big city. It's not just the main city itself, so so 30 miles of it. They consider the cities like um like uh counties in uh in the United States. So it's not just that one. So Stalingrad is the main city, but think of it kind of like Stalingrad county's about 30 miles around, but still 1,000 tons of bombs are dropped on the fucking city, the main city itself. So like downtown. Picture downtown, 600 bombs fucking bombing downtown. That's a lot.

SPEAKER_01 17:29

Yeah, I mean, and it it it's hard to believe that anything was left.

SPEAKER_04 17:33

That's the fun thing. There really wasn't. It it is the um it is the largest, it is the largest bombing that happened on the in on the European front. And remember the the famed blitz that happened in the UK, the bombing of London that went on for like two months. It was like 60 days straight. Did not see as many bombs dropped.

SPEAKER_00 18:01

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 18:02

One fucking day. Not even one day, eighteen hours. In eighteen hours, they dropped that many bombs in one wave. Jesus. That's how bad he wanted this fucking city. I was like, you didn't take it, you decimated it. Anyhow.

SPEAKER_01 18:19

Yeah, I mean, that's kind of like, you know, Daenerys burning, you know, the whole King's Landing down. Like just Exactly, you know, like there's nothing left. Are you gonna be the king of ashes?

SPEAKER_04 18:32

Exactly. And that's what's insane, but still, not until they were all out. And we're just, I mean, we're talking like the city was completely leveled. Like I said, picture a pile of rubble 30 miles, 30 miles around. That's exactly what happened. It was completely it it's apocalyptic. It's it is post-apocalyptic. Did you ever seen? Um fires are because most of the buildings were wooden structures or they're still wooden buildings, and there was a lot of agriculture on the outsides of it. You're talking about fires that burned for months on end. Months on end, some of these buildings and blocks and whatever. So half of the buildings actually burned to the burned to the ground. Because what they would do is they would drop, um, they would drop uh what the hell? Like um they would drop AT bombs, so high explosive bombs. So big bombs that go boom, blow the roofs off and blow the doors away, everything like that one, and they would, and then the half the bombs would be that, and they would wait about 30 or 40 seconds and they would drop um incendiary bombs.

SPEAKER_00 19:28

Oh man. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 19:30

Blowing the roofs off and then dropping firebombs in the fucking buildings. It was insane. Jeez. Um just that alone. Just that alone. Um it's actually leading up to it. So they saw that the troops were moving

No Step Back And Civilians Trapped

SPEAKER_04 19:45

to Stalingrad. They knew that they were, so they kind of knew that they were coming. They just didn't know when. So preparations were being made to fortify the city and so on and so forth. Stalin called for his um not one step back policy um to harden resolve, stiffen resolve. So civilians were not allowed to leave. So yeah, school was suspended and so on and so forth. Men, women, children, they're digging ditches, setting up anti-tank traps, and fortifying the city to get ready when the soldiers get there to defend themselves and so on and so forth. So there's still an insane amount of civilians. Um in that first bombing alone, that first 18 hours, 40,000 Soviets are killed.

SPEAKER_00 20:27

Oh, mainly civilians.

SPEAKER_04 20:29

That is, we were talking the first 18 hours of this five-month-long w battle. 40,000 people are killed.

SPEAKER_00 20:38

Good lord.

SPEAKER_04 20:41

Yeah. That's just the army, the 6th Panzer Division, the German army, isn't even there yet. That's just the Air Force. The army's not even shooting yet. Not a single round has been fired by the fucking Panzers yet. Wow. And you're talking absolute hellscape. And exactly that. Like I said, he, you know, General Palace operates off of long distance, long-range engagements. So he's gonna hit you with artillery, he's gonna send in tanks, um, everything to just scare the shit out of you for you to run away. Anything that goes boom from really far away, he's fucking using it. The um the infamous German 88mm um really, really came into it. This is when it was really first tested. Um, it hadn't been putting onto a King Tiger tank yet, or a Panther tank yet, but yeah, they took an anti-aircraft weapon and they turned it into an anti-tank weapon. That's a big fucking bullet.

SPEAKER_00 21:41

Yeah, Jesus.

SPEAKER_04 21:43

Yeah, you can you can level about half a city block with one round, and he's putting it on tanks.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

My god. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 21:51

Um, and exactly at that, it's just the Russians are just doing what they can to defend, all the while, as they're retreating back from Kiev and Moscow. And everything's fun and stuff. But as they're retreating back to Stalingrad, they are doing um they are enacting scorched earth because they knew that the Germans were going to be what they do when they take over an area, not only do they set their own supply lines, but you know, they're also living off the land. That's what you have to do because they're moving so fast ahead of their supplies, you have to take what resources you can. So, you know, they're taking the the all the crops and the the livestock and everything they can. Well, on the way out, you know, Stalin is telling them, okay, everyone fall back to Stalingrad to get rid of fortified. As you're doing that, destroy everything you have. Burn your crops, destroy your homes, kill your animals, absolutely everything. Do not give them one single thing.

SPEAKER_01 22:37

Oh, Lord.

SPEAKER_04 22:38

For them to, for them to um for the Germans to use. It is better for you to completely lose it. It is it is rather it be destroyed than in the hands of the Germans, is how they felt. Destroy everything on your way back.

SPEAKER_01 22:51

Quick question. Do do you know um like what was the population size you know to begin with? You know, so 40,000 died on the first.

SPEAKER_04 23:03

Stalingrad?

SPEAKER_01 23:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 23:05

In the entire, like we said, like the like the county, not just the city alone, because the city was it's a good sized city, um, but it definitely does not hold 850,000 people. You're talking about a mass population of over the area that is labeled as Stalingrad, the county, if you will, as as we we'll just refer to it as. Okay. 850,000 people.

SPEAKER_00 23:28

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 23:29

Remember that number because that's what I learned. What were we talking about a little bit earlier?

SPEAKER_01 23:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 23:34

That's what I learned today. That is civilians. That is not one soldier, that is civilians. That is men, women, children. They work their nine to fives. That is not soldiers from either side. That is not German soldiers, that is not Russian soldiers, that is civilians only lived there.

SPEAKER_01 23:53

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 23:53

And and we will get to that in a minute. Yeah. That literally turned my stomach.

SPEAKER_01 23:58

I'm just trying to like picture, you know, like what was the population? You take out 40,000, like in the first few hours. Like this is setting up to be absolutely just devastating.

SPEAKER_04 24:15

Yeah. That's the first thing that's the first few hours. 40,000 people. The number is it's it's it's sickening larger than that by the end of it. Um exactly that. So now they're falling back from whatever they can from all the way through to the main actual city that sits on the river Volga. Now that's another bit of a strategic bit. Why Stalingrad was there was that bit to take it, was because it sat on Essentially the Russian Mississippi, if you will. The Volga River is an incredibly important river. It's directly into the Caspian Sea at the at its southernmost tip, where you're getting the oil and all the other type of international resources, a massive trade area. And it just rides up the Volga to the, you know, to Stalingrad, where that's the same thing. So in there to that one, on the ships, onto it, down the river they go, out to the rest of the front. So there is, like I said, there was some strategic importance to take it, but it shouldn't have been. You were dangerously low on resources. You needed to secure more resources before you tried that. And there was only about 10 million easier ways to take the city. As opposed to just blow it all up and then head first into the fucking wall with it, right?

SPEAKER_01 25:25

Right.

SPEAKER_04 25:27

So that is from

Rattenkrieg And Fighting At Arm’s Length

SPEAKER_04 25:30

That's for August. So the end of the summer there. So now we're moving into September, the early fall of 1942. The advancing of the Blitzkrieg stops almost dead in its track because the Luftwaffe has decimated the city to absolute oblivion. There's rubbles, there's craters. You cannot move the tanks. There's zero mobility. Very, very little mobility. So you can't move your heavy armor through. Um the infantry has so that so you can't go straight to so now they're gonna advance from the south and kind of work up the railways because there's massive railway systems that go throughout the entire city. Same like same thing, just as important as the river was, the railway system there. The Germans have now taken the railway system, they pulled a total Obi-Wan Kenobi, and they've taken the high ground. So there actually was this kind of like a big hill, if you would, almost in the dead center of the city, of the town. And from that, you could see everything for miles around. Kind of like that Pride Rock moment in Lion King. You just everything like that, you can see everything around. The Germans now controlled that, and they were setting that up as like their artillery base. So from there they can see past Stalingrad. And if you're setting up your artillery, you can just pinpoint, okay, drop shells there, drop shells there, there are commands there, there this is there, and you just you had that over, like you saw everything. It was literally it was fish in a fucking barrel. Fish in a goddamn barrel at that point.

SPEAKER_00 26:55

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 26:57

Um but as this whole thing is going on, the one thing that yes, the Germans had the firepower, the Russians had the numbers, and a a disgustingly expendable amount of people. I mean millions upon millions of people. You know, Russia had a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01 27:17

Yeah, I mean it's a much larger country.

SPEAKER_04 27:20

And the the nationalism, the the patriotism of the nationalism that Stalin has had enacted, even even from back when uh Babarassa happened in June the year before. It was that, you know, it's it's you you fight for the motherland, everything is for the motherland. Zero surrender. You cannot surrender, you cannot this one. It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees. You will die before anything is lost, and if not, you're taking at least 10 Germans with you. It doesn't fucking matter, kind of thing. So they just fought and they defended so goddamn ferociously. They actually had it instilled in their mind. I forgot what the actual phrase was, but it was like, there's nothing beyond the Volga. This is the last ditch effort. If if we lose the Volga, that's it. There's the mountains, and then it's just open fields. That's the last of the important, and then the rest, it's just resources and it's oil and it's farming. There is nothing past this. And um, so he was so it had to be defended to the actual last man, to the last bullet. No questions asked. So it was just ingrained and instilled into their minds like that. So Germans have the firepower. It's really cliche. They did not have the same fucking spirit that the Russians did. Was it out of fear? Was it the wrong way of doing it? Absolutely. But they had the fucking spirit to just the brutality to ensue over the next months. Uh yeah. So Stalin, actually, to this, I still don't know who is in charge of the Russian army. The Russian resistance at this point. Uh up until this point, I should say. Don't know who it was. I just know that he moves one of his best generals. Um General Choikev. He sends him there. Choikev is Russian patent, if you will, if you know anything about George Patton.

SPEAKER_00 29:19

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:21

Um fucking brutal. Absolutely. Oh, dude. I mean he's one of those guys. He can make the tough decisions. He's ruthless. He's he's like I said, he's he's brutal in that way. He has no problem with, okay, we need to stop them. How are we gonna do it? Well, there's a tank ahead. How many tanks do they have? They have one tank. Well, they can't kill us all. Go get it and just go. He didn't care how many of his men he lost, sort of say. He he knew what had to be done. That being said, though, the reason why he another one of the reasons why he was one of the best generals is because he did genuinely care about his soldiers. He was one of the very few generals that kept his lines and his command in the shit, on the front lines. So he didn't like, okay, the battle's happening in Stalingrad, I'm gonna be in Moscow giving the orders. No, no, no. He was there. This man was in the trenches giving his orders. He he didn't rely on the intel. His own two eyes were his intel. I can see where the enemy is. It's this, that, and the other, so on and so forth. So you want to talk about a fucking set of balls on a general.

SPEAKER_00 30:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 30:29

The man in charge. He is on the fucking front lines and looking, he so he knows about the troop movements and he knows how to move the troops, but he can he can see the fucking way the Germans are reacting. Um But he he was as much as he cared for his men, he knew what had to be done for Russia. So that's why he had no problem with making the, you know, sending, essentially sending, you know, 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 troops to their deaths, as long as the objective was, you know, as long as the objective was complete, as long as there's still at least one Russian living. I see this as an absolute win. Um but yeah, just just his moral just the morale alone that he did. So everyone was kind of like, dude, this is either really bad or this is really important, or both, because if this guy's here, holy shit. Like, this is the guy who defended Moscow. He was moved from Moscow. The reason why Moscow didn't fall was because he was there.

SPEAKER_01 31:24

Yeah. Yeah. So when you move somebody like that to a different yeah, it's people are gonna take notice. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 31:31

He was on their fronts like that when he is, he's worked with he he was the advers, he's been the adversary of, he's been on the opposite side of the battlefield um from Palace a couple of times up to this point, too. Because they're from Moscow, when it was done, they defended, he was also moved to the other parts. Oh god, if I I don't think it was the Battle of Kursk or whatever. No, because Service One Kursk. But the same thing. He was a part of some of the forces that were told to retreat back to Stalingrad. So he saw how Paulus operated. So he literally was on the tails of him and you know, ahead of him. So he knew how he worked, he knew how he operated. So he goes, okay, he likes to do this, that, and the other thing. Well, he's here. He's not gonna get any of that. He knew that he operated all he needed speed, he needed mobility, and he needed space. We're in a Bondat city, he is getting none of that. He's gonna have no space to operate. He won't be able to use his big guns, or he can't move his his tanks in because the town is completely destroyed. He can't use his artillery because he's gonna be they won't use their artillery or use the air force because in danger of you know killing their own men. And so because of all that one, their mobility is there. So there is zero space. He um it was um what the hell was it? Um it it came to be known as the uh hug the enemy. You should not be any farther than a grenades throw away, a knife throw out, like exactly that one they used tanks, bullets, bombs, you know, clubs, sharpened, sharpened shovels as weaponries, literally anything you can to kill the enemy. You did. We're talking an absolute brutal, dirty type of warfare. You the we're they are the Germans are on you know floor eight of this building, the Russians are on floor seven. Or they're on their fighting floors above each other, rooms across hallways from each other. It is incredibly close quarters. Um and that's and that's exactly what it is. He just kept throwing them into the meat grinder. And uh the Germans came to call it the Rattenkrieg or the uh the Rats War because it was exactly that, it was just a it was a dirty, it was a virile, it was vermin type of warfare. Plenty of um plenty of friends and colleagues, other people I've spoken to in this life and past ones, um, who have been in the armed forces. Uh they all say a fairly similar thing about urban warfare. Um, you don't fucking want that, buddy. Arguably the only thing worse than the arguably the only thing worse than urban warfare is jungle warfare. The only thing worse. And that's what Stalingrad was. It was a major metropolitan area, if you will. And you want to talk about a sniper's wet dream.

SPEAKER_01 34:27

I can only imagine. Wow.

SPEAKER_04 34:29

Is not only urban warfare, but bombed out a decimated rubble heap landscape. And that was that was another one of the big important weapons that the Russians had. This is where um Lady Death actually got her start.

SPEAKER_01 34:46

Oh, okay. Yeah, I was gonna ask about that, but I I also wanted to ask very quickly, um, so were the how do I want to ask this? Um okay, in in the in, you know, like this this close quarters, are the Germans like going after just soldiers, or are they they don't give a flying fuck? They're just civilians. Anybody that's a Russian man, woman, child, soldier, they're killing, or is it, you know, like they don't they don't give a damn about war crimes at this point?

SPEAKER_04 35:28

No, very, very few of them um did, specifically when it came to the Russians. The Russians were seen as the main, like I said, the the you know, the they were seen as the main thing. It's uh the only good Russian is a dead Russian, essentially. You know, they they saw them as the uh the intermensch or the uh uh underhuman, subhuman. They were lesser, so it didn't really count as killing. It was like just doing the right thing, you know? So they weren't not all German soldiers were Nazis, per se. So it's it it's tough to say that there's a 50-50. I would say probably there was just as many not um indiscriminately killing civilians as there were that were indiscriminately killing civilians because there was just that part of like it was instilled into the Russian brain that if there's nothing past Don Grad, we have to literally do everything we have to. It was just instilled into a lot of the German brains that it was like Russians are not people.

SPEAKER_00 36:32

So do what you want. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 36:35

It's completely up to you. So it oh it's it's I'd give it about a 50-50 shot. Some of them did, some of them didn't. Um, but for the most part, I mean, but at the same time though there was a lot more combative um civilians than non-combatants.

SPEAKER_01 36:54

So Well yeah, and that's what I was just thinking, like, because if you're dealing with the the army, I mean, you know, this the the military action, you know, back and forth. But then when when the when the citizens are also partaking, I mean you're you I think everyone was in kind of like a tough spot because you're you know, not that I'm saying any one side was better than the other or the right side or you know, whatever. I'm not taking up for the Germans, but like yeah, if you have you know 40,000 civilians that's joint, you're gonna have to take out the civilians. So it's kind of like they were not in a good spot to be making those decisions.

SPEAKER_03 37:45

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:46

To not not harm the civilians. But yeah, that's that's yeah, exactly. Just like a lot of people.

SPEAKER_04 37:55

This is without a doubt there will be quite a couple of episodes that I can assume where we kind of spent a little bit lesser on the US and you know, on the Allies as well. But there's just it was very common practice to just kill civilians in their droves. Maybe not personally, but like that's just you know, there was a lot of area bombing or carpet bombing, as you were as you recall it, the allies did.

SPEAKER_01 38:17

Casualties, yeah, board, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 38:19

It is what it happens, you know, it's it's war. So which is one of the main reasons why um that's another one of the main reasons why, you know, soldiers, veterans, people talk about just how horrible that urban warfare is, is because a lot of the times there is still an insane amount of civilians there. But at the same time, though, there's a lot of civilians that are just you know, they're a wolf in sheep's clothing. You know, you you've heard and seen stories in movies, yeah, documentaries, whatnot about the war in the Middle East where there's like a kid, next thing you know, the kid turns the corner, pulls out an AK-47, and shoots a couple soldiers. Like, and now you're gonna be second guessing every single kid that you see. So, like Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:57

Or the women, the women that have the you know body, I don't know what you call them, body bombs on, you know, and they're like body bombs.

SPEAKER_04 39:04

There's there's yeah, there's uh the suicide vests, all that kind of shit. So it's the exact same thing. So yeah, like you said, we're not rooting for the Germans here, but like, yeah, there's maybe there's a kid just like walking down the street next to you know that kid pulls out a fucking grenade and blows up a tank. Like they're gonna, you know, they're gonna kind of judge the next kid they say.

SPEAKER_01 39:19

Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's it's yeah, it's not pretty, not at all.

SPEAKER_04 39:23

So so there is definitely uh the a type of thing, like I said, you know, we're definitely not rooting for the Germans or defending the Germans here at this point, but you need to understand on a personal level that there is a massive psychological toll that is taken on urban warfare and something such a such a dangerous um enemy. But then also, same thing, in defense of the Russians, they saw how fucking brutal in in the occupied areas, specifically in Russia, in what so like in Paris and people that Germans saw as close to them, their occupies of Paris and France, and even Belgium and other parts of um you know Europe, they were very different how they were occupying um Poland, Latvia, Scandinavia, all this they because they saw them as subhumans, they saw them as literal like they they did not see them as humans.

SPEAKER_00 40:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 40:20

So they so they were just like, fuck it, they literally die. Why should I give a shit how they die or whatever the hell it is, or just how why am I going to hold anything back if I know what the alternative is? So yeah. It got uh Christ, did it get bad. Anywho, so now that's moving

Women Fighters And A City Nearly Lost

SPEAKER_04 40:46

from there. A little bit later in the fall. We're moving to October here. The Germans have about 80 to 90 percent of Stalingrad under their control. There's just a a narrow bit literally right along, probably only about two miles off of the coast of the river, is the only thing that the Russians have under their control. The Germans have, like I said, they've beaten them down to an insane nothing. But even that, that the Russians just will not give up.

SPEAKER_02 41:19

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_04 41:20

Will not give up. It's like there's over a million women who volunteered to fight. So they're so they're so when the Germans see that one, the Germans would never even entertain the idea of a woman doing anything to the only thing the women were allowed to do to help with the war effort was to just have as many children as possible and to have their good homes in. Like they couldn't even work in factories, you know what I mean? Yeah, so the fact that they're now fighting them on the battlefronts, they're like, what the f that's that's mind fucking them beyond belief. Like these people really are fucking savages. So that alone, just encountering women on the battlefield to a German is fucking with his brain.

SPEAKER_00 42:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 42:02

And not only that, once again, going back to the little sniper thing. Of the million women there, almost uh let's see, three quarters of them. So was that 700 750,000 were in um combative roles, were we're in um active combat roles. That's a lot. Yeah, so main mainly snipers and um combat addicts. It's insane.

SPEAKER_00 42:31

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 42:32

Yeah, so that's so for now it comes to November

Winter Warfare Breaks The Germans

SPEAKER_04 42:40

and the winter shows up a little early there. Once again, the Russians ace up its sleeve is the winter. It's so fucking cold. People joke about it being cold in Russia, but you have no fucking clue how cold it gets in Russia. We're talking legit average temperature, minus 30 degrees. That's fucking cold. Gas freezes, oil freezes at that temperature frostbite within seconds at the temperature. Your hand will literally stick to your metal gun if you just for a sec, any exposed flesh touches metal, it is instantly frozen to it. Jesus. That is fucking cold.

SPEAKER_00 43:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 43:25

The Russians, what's left of them, they actually have a fair amount of you know, experience with dealing with this cold. So they're they're outfitted for it, they have clothing for it, they have other additives to their oil, to their fuel, too. They know how to deal with this weather. The Germans don't. So that really slows them down. They don't know what the fuck they're doing, it's so goddamn cold. They were hoping to already be literally on their way over the mountains at this point. They were expecting it to take six to eight weeks at the most. That was their worst case. Scenario was eight weeks to take Stalingrad. We are now at the like nine or ten week, somewhere around there. Yeah, we started in August. Yeah, August, November, you're at, yeah. Started in August, we're now in November. Whatever, however many weeks that is.

SPEAKER_00 44:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 44:19

Um, yeah, no, but same thing. The further they get into Russia, the thinner their supply lines get, the farther they have to ship all the stuff. And like I said, they're not ready for that cold. And so it's it's taking longer and longer to get their supplies to resupply their army that is now running low on supplies. Because they didn't go with the fucking oil like they should have the dump bastards. Anyhow.

Operation Uranus Encircles The Sixth Army

SPEAKER_04 44:43

November 19th is the day the war in Europe completely flipped upside down. Um, Operation Uran is enacted by the Russians. A massive scale counteroffensive. 1.5 to 2.5 million men of a counterattack are now coming from the north and the south of Stalingrad. So they're going in a pincer move. Listen, you can't beat them, join them. Just do exactly what they do. So that's got the that's a guy they just they um started committing um blitzkrieg using uh blitzkrieg tactics against the Germans. So they're doing a pincer move, they are bombing shit out of them, they were developing new planes, new aircraft, new bombs, bigger bombs, faster tanks, bigger tanks, drunk, and they just beat the fuck out of the Germans. So as their the main force was driving through, the main German force was driving through Stalingrad. On the flanks and in the rear, they have the Romanians, the Italians, all their other little allies from around there. They don't exactly have the same exact toys that Germany has. So they are, I guess, for lack of a better term, a bit weaker. Um Grand Marshal Um Zhukov has been planning this September. So when they sent in Choikov, they knew that he was the man to fuck to hold on. His orders were to do not give up Stalingrad. You have X amount of time. We'll be there in two months' time. So we'll be there in six to eight weeks' time. You need to literally, if you if you are the last person, you god damn it, you better fucking hold on as long as you can. Fight, fight, fight, do not give up whatsoever. This is the plan is this counteroffensive.

SPEAKER_00 46:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 46:41

So that's why they moved him in there because they knew he could make those decisions, he could fight as ferocious as he did to withstand until they can actually do their double double envelopment movements. And yeah, to just kind of long story short, that one it it it it just yeah. Remember the Battle of the Bastards? What they didn't what Jon Snow shouldn't have done exactly what he did. So all his forces went forward, and then Ramsey was able to completely encircle him.

SPEAKER_00 47:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 47:13

It's exactly what happened to the Germans. Think of them as Jon Snow at that point. They pushed too far forward, and then they went on their total flanks, and they cut they literally cut right through them. They, like I said, they had like a million men on each side, completely around them. You know, we're talking massive, massive scales, like hundreds of miles around. And then they just slowly but surely um creep in. They've completely cut off the Germans from their supply lines. The supplies they are getting in are now non-existent. They've sent them packing. They're now running, those forces are now running back, or they're dead. And now they're just moving in and in and in on this now cut off and beginning to starve and panic German force within the city. And exactly that, and they're just giving them the fucking boots. Just working their, just working their way through. We're talking about rest fully rested, trained, fresh troops, Russian troops. And this is when it starts to get just. This is when it starts to get ugly, believe it or not. It wasn't even ugly before. It was brutal then. No, it was brutal then. It's it gets ugly now. So we get to this weird stalemate. Yes, they are insanely outnumbered, but it's still like a 49-51 split between firepower. The German resources, ammo, and all that fun shit is dwindling. But they still have bigger, stronger guns.

SPEAKER_02 48:49

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_04 48:51

And the first thing that's gonna start running out is the food and those supplies. So there's more than enough ammunition, there's not enough food and supplies like that to go out. I'm talking we're also talking basic toiletries, too. They're running out of. So, like, cleaning supplies, medicine, it's something that you know think about, but like also like where you're going to the bathroom, where you're leaving, where you saw it so like you're you know, your latrine, your toilet paper, all that other kind of fun stuff. They're running out of all that kind of fun stuff. So now disease is just disease and illness is wild spread. And there's nothing to counteract that or stop that. So men are literally fighting with like horrendous trench foot. They're in the middle of a fight, they're in the middle of firefights, and there's been reports of like limbs just falling off because of like gangrene and shit like that. And like horrendous trench foot and these other ridiculous flush-eating bacteria.

SPEAKER_01 49:45

Yeah, I'm just thinking of the smell right now. Oh yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 49:49

That's one thing I try not to think about what this place actually smelled and looked like. Yeah, um, we are it's just I mean, and it's just also what the Russians have too. You were talking constant, around the clock bombardments and shellings. So there's just non-stop around the clock artilleries and rockets and rounds and explosions happening on the Germans. The Germans get zero rest. They have them in a constant volley. So they have like, okay, so when the forces in the north, the forces in the north are gonna fire um on every odd hour, let's say. And then you know, they're gonna shoot for like an hour, an hour and a half, and then the south is gonna go, and then the north, and then the south, and then the south. So it is a non-stop volley and barrage of artillery shells and explosions happening on the German positions. So there is zero rest.

SPEAKER_01 50:42

Just that the mental anguish, like the the you know, no sleep, no comfortability, the conditions, like all of that, like I don't know how to do it. Yeah, yeah. Like all of that, like how how do they even have the will to keep fighting? It you know, it's it just seems like eventually they would wave the white flag and say, okay, we're done.

SPEAKER_04 51:12

But they couldn't because it was just they absolutely will not. So it gets this bad. And you know, Palace is like, dude, someone's gotta come in and fucking someone's gotta come in and save us. And they're like, no, you gotta try to like kind of stiffen it up, gauge your defenses, and then you gotta break out. No one can come in and get you. You gotta try and break out. They did try to, so actually, um, Eric von Manstein, the man who essentially came up with um Blitzkrieg, he was like, I can get in there, I can get him out. No, you can't, bud. He couldn't. He he made it about halfway, he made it about halfway into the lines. Um wasn't even within sights of Stalingrad, and he got his shit kicked in and he had to say, I'm turning around heading back to Germany. Um yeah, so just just the mental stress that's going on to these, that's going on these soldiers. Um, is insane. Now they are completely out of food and water. Um and you can't really Okay, so now we're gonna try to get water from the Volga and so on and so forth. The because you could not use the water systems that were in the city. Here's how much death happened inside of that city. The plumbing was completely contaminated.

SPEAKER_00 52:28

Oh.

SPEAKER_04 52:29

The water literally ran red with blood. You turned the faucet on, blood would come out of the fucking faucet.

SPEAKER_01 52:36

Oh shit.

SPEAKER_04 52:37

That's how much death happened in this city. That's another little tidbit that I love. I only assume that, yeah, something like

Starvation, Disease, And Airlift Failure

SPEAKER_04 52:45

that one. Like plumbing and electric and shit like that is kind of, you know, goes by the wayside.

SPEAKER_02 52:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 52:49

But it still worked. There are some of the pumps that still worked. It was there was just so many bodies. Everything was tainted and contaminated. Wow. Yeah. Now they don't have food. So when they ran out of food, they killed and ate the horses.

SPEAKER_00 53:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 53:11

We ran out of horses. We gotta kill and eat the dogs.

SPEAKER_01 53:17

When they ran out of dogs.

SPEAKER_04 53:19

They ran out of dogs. They would actually take leather boots, belts, any leather they could find, and they would boil it down. For those of you who don't know, leather is flesh from an animal.

SPEAKER_00 53:38

Right.

SPEAKER_04 53:39

So there is actual low level, yes. There is very low levels of nutritional value in leather. They were literally eating leather boots, glue, because glue was an animal product back then in the 40s. So Elmore's glue was literally made from beef tallow. It was it was that's that's why there's the cow on. So these men were literally eating glue and leather.

SPEAKER_01 54:06

Oh, well, you know, at least they please tell me.

SPEAKER_04 54:10

Did they come reports?

SPEAKER_01 54:12

Yeah, I was gonna say we're gonna get there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 54:15

Yep, they did. They absolutely did.

SPEAKER_00 54:21

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 54:22

Yeah, that's how that's how desperate things got for the for the Germans, the superhuman Germans have been reduced down to cannibalism.

SPEAKER_01 54:34

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 54:36

Yeah, not a whole lot, but one is too many. One report, yeah, one too many.

SPEAKER_01 54:41

One is one too many, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 54:43

Yeah, but no, it wasn't just one report. It is, like I said, so just the the absolute mental toll that has been taken on them at this point. Like I said, now that like they're completely cut off and done. They're starving. Dysentery, cannibalism, suicide, you name it. They are the the most all the worst parts of the Bible is what they've been reduced to.

SPEAKER_00 55:04

Jesus.

SPEAKER_04 55:06

And it's December. Still got almost two more months of them holding out. Not much more happens. Um, they had refrigeration. It's just it's just that until there's nothing. Because even because even still with just that, the Russians couldn't advance to more same thing because of the winter, because same thing, they the fear of hurting their own troops. And for what was the bits of the German that still had you know the actual fighting portion to them, yeah, they could still put up a decent fight because they had really big fucking guns. Um, just to kind of put into perspective, that an air uh um the detachment of the army that size for the Germans needed roughly 200 tons of food. Just food, no other supplies, food a day. Herman Göring in the Luftwaffe, he with his overinflated ego, tells I can the Luftwaffe can fly the food in, they can fly the supplies in, and we will save what's left of the army. Um they're only able to get about roughly 10 tons within like two days, two or three days. They need 200 a day. They're getting 10 in two.

SPEAKER_00 56:30

Wow. Wow just not a lot. No.

SPEAKER_04 56:33

So it's just yeah, so it just keeps getting worse and worse and worse for the for the Germans in that one. And time and time again, the general's like, dude, can we surrender? This is my men are not only my men dying, but my men are eating each other. Can we surrender? No, you cannot surrender. Not that Germany does not surrender. We do not surrender to the inferior races. You it you are forbidden.

SPEAKER_01 56:59

Yeah, inferior meaning what meaning, you know, meanwhile, you're you're literally getting your ass kicked in every way possible.

SPEAKER_04 57:07

My men are eating boots and each other in the army and that we're facing is the inferior.

SPEAKER_01 57:14

Yeah, yeah. Had the hubris, wow.

SPEAKER_04 57:17

Yeah. And the the the best thing that once again, not cheering for them, not rooting for them, anything like that, but the best thing that the Germans had in World War II was their confidence and their strength and their can-do attitude. Um, their biggest problem was their egos.

SPEAKER_00 57:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 57:42

That's a million percent what it was. It was like, we could do this, you don't can't, you can't do that, and blah, blah, blah. So they thought they were so fucked, their pride, they thought they were so fucking superior that they could not, they could not grasp the fact that these inferior untermensch could amass such a counteroffensive and put up such resolve and whatnot. And so that's just they were like, no, you do not, you do not surrender to Slavs. You do not whatsoever. To the point where Hitler's last throw of the dice to um hope that this will kind of inspire um Paulus to keep fighting to the last man, or he'll just say, fuck it, and he'll kill himself. In German history, no field marshal has ever Surrendered. Ever. Field Marshal is arguably one of the highest, if not the highest rank you can receive in the German army until you become like a part of like the inner circle, if you will, right? So he is promoted to uh whatch it called in um early on in January of 1943. Uh telegram comes through, you know, that you know, a wire comes through to one of the runners, the runners brings to General Palace, and it's

Paulus Refuses Suicide And Surrenders

SPEAKER_04 59:02

exactly that one. He goes, You have been promoted to field marshal. And the first things he says when he reads it, apparently, as it goes down in history sayings that he reads it, and he just said he just his simple reply to it is I'm not going to kill myself. I'm a Christian. And then he crumples the paper up, he threw it away, and he immediately told the runner to um hang a white flag outside and surrender to the Russians.

SPEAKER_00 59:28

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_04 59:29

And on the next, yeah, on the next day, he surrendered to the next day he surrendered to the um to the Russians. With what was left. He goes, I I I can't do this anymore. Like I said, so many people, he just he didn't move, he didn't he he wouldn't take initiative to do what he was supposed to do to save his men, protect his men, do the right thing for his men. Yeah. And inevitably led them to that. So out of the 300 and um out of the 330 to 350 German soldiers that started the attack for the Battle of Stalingrad, 91,000 were left to surrender.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:10

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:12

Of the 91,000, less than 5,000 of them will return to Germany after years in captivity and everything is done, the war's over, the trials are over, so on and so forth. By like the s the sixties, the seventies, they were allowed less than four, less than five thousand out of three hundred and thirty to three hundred and fifty thousand return to Germany.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:39

Wow.

unknown 1:00:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:46

But it should stop there.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:53

It just, it just yeah, it it's that's that's insane. I'm just trying to like the unfathomable portion of it. The insane thing about it was that is the not only was it the first, but it was the only time you saw not just the Germans be defeated so fucking colossally on such a massive scale, but the depths of that, the starvation, the hunger, the the the borderline ferleness they resorted to. You never saw that. This was the fucking this was the like like this was the fucking the mutts nuts at this point, fucking Germany in World War II. Like the fucking powerhouse that they were.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:41

Like being reduced down to such primal instincts. Yeah, it's it's the fact they were dying of starvation, that is insane. Like for for for the arm the the such strong superhuman attack force that they were to be dying of fucking starvation is insane.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:04

And um it's not just didn't you wasn't is I know you've like quoted the statistic, but like and I think you said it at the top of this that the life expectancy was 24 hours.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:20

Yes, just under 24 hours. There's like 22, 23 hours, the life expectancy daily of any soldier, both sides.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:30

Wow. That it just it it's so it's so huge. It's hard, it's hard to wrap your mind around

Casualty Math And Civilian Erasure

SPEAKER_01 1:02:40

that many people to begin with, and then that much loss.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:46

Like Oh, we're going to the numbers. We're going to the numbers now. That's the same thing. All right, hit me with the numbers.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:51

So Russian soldiers, army. Well over a million casualties. Now, when we say casualties, that means um dead, wounded, missing.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:06

So not necessarily dead, but still. But it's still w well over the about three-quarters of these numbers are dead. So you so you take that number.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:19

You take that number, you divide, like I said, you take three-quarters of it, that's death. The other quarter, you can put two excuse me. Um wounded or missing, or um captured, kind of a thing. So a million Russian soldiers. That's a lot of fucking people. Like they did because I guess it was to the point of like how poor Russia was at that point and how insane they were. They're worth plenty of times. Have you ever seen the movie Enemy at the Gates? It's a very overdramatized Hollywood version of the Battle of Stalingrad. Like it's not even that's mainly a movie about some of the propaganda stories that were. Because this, at least I accepted, was an actual Russian sharpshooter, and so on and so forth. And actually, um, oh god, oh god, why is it why is it? Why am I drawing a blank on the actress's name? She played Evie in the Mummy.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:14

Um Rachel Weiss.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:16

That's it. Yes. So she's in that movie too. So her character, that woman did not exist, but her character in that one is loosely based off of Lady Death.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:25

So the so it's kind of historical fiction. The movie's kind of historical fiction. There's some parts, so Basilly's I's death and Ed Harris. What's Ed Harris playing a fucking Nazi sniper? Doesn't matter. Those two people existed. And there that that was the the most infamous or famous um sniper battles that happened back and forth was between those two people. But at the same time, though, there's a lot of propaganda on both sides. So they just kind of went off of some of the stories. So uh don't use it for historical accuracy. But it's a pretty decent movie. Anyhow. Um Axis forces, not just German. German was from 330 to 350,000, but total access forces, so that's Germany, Italian, Romanian, the latter. 800,000 casualties. 800,000 casualties.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:15

What about civilian?

SPEAKER_04 1:05:18

This is this is the big one.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:22

Oh no.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:23

Remember how many we said in that area of Stalingrad? Like I said, it wasn't it's not just the city.

unknown 1:05:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:30

All of the area over the encompassing of the Battle of Stalingrad. There was eight hundred and fifty thousand civilians. That's not one soldier. They did not count any soldier from either side of the battle.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:48

So like eight hundred thousand, only fifty fifty civilians made it.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:54

Out of the eight hundred and fifty thousand, you think fifty thousand made it?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:58

Maybe. I I you know what? It probably none. I I'm gonna say none.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:04

The civilian population was reduced to fifteen hundred people. Oh eight hundred and fifty thousand men, women, and children, all innocent, reduced to fifteen hundred.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:21

Oh man, that's sickening.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:24

Now that is now that's once again, that's just an estimate because they don't know how many people left, you know, like evacuated, snuck their way out and through. They just know that at the very beginning of the battle, roughly 850,000 people. By the time the end of the battle, the people who still say yes, I reside in Stalingrad. I'm a civilian of Stalingrad. There was fifth 1,500 people.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:54

Damn. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:57

Yeah. It is. Oof. And that's just that's the number that I learned that completely blew my mind. I did not like you, you know when it comes, specifically when it comes to World War II, specifically when it comes to Soviet um Soviet Union. There was a lot of civilians caught in the middle there.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:19

Yeah. So many civilians.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:20

So many civilians caught in the fucking middle there.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:23

Um, specifically Okanagas.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:27

And these people, you know, like you you drive it down to like humanity, right? Just to the human. These these were people that you're you're born, you can't you can't help where you're born. You know, you're born into a country and you're just trying to make a living. You're just trying to go to work, you're just trying to put food on the table, raise your family, have a nice little life in the bit of the world that you happen to be born in. And you're caught in all of that. You know, like you just think of like what that feels like and what the hellscape that they went through in that. It's it's I don't know, it's just it's so hard to think. It's just so hard to put yourself there and to think about. But like, yeah, yeah, you just you know, all I just World War II was so I mean, just there were so many, so many instances, so many battles, so many things happened in that whole time period, and there were just so many people that just were living innocent lives, just trying to trying to live a human existence on this planet. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Just like the horrendous things that happened. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:02

The two things in in more recent I you can't say recently because it happened in World War II, but two instances that are more recently coming to light of, you know, because you know, the United States always prides itself, no, we never did area bombing, we pride ourselves in precision military targets, so on and so forth. Meanwhile, as they did area bombing, carpet bombing to just, you know, they literally we used to call it worker de housing, is the bombings of Hamburg and Dresden. And just we're not even gonna, like I said, those will be later episodes. We could talk about those if you still want to. But just Google them. If you haven't heard of them or the atrocities that happened to them, both of those, zero military targets in both of those, those were strictly civilian targets. And both of those cities were wiped off the face of the earth.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:52

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:53

But yeah, Stalingrad, there was so there was just so much death, so much inconceivable amount of death that happened inside of Stalingrad to this day. It

Aftermath, Remains, And Buried Survivors

SPEAKER_04 1:10:03

is 2026 to this day. I forget what the I forget what the city is called now. It's not called Stalingrad anymore, but the area there's like new development is done, new buildings are erected, stuff is done, because there's kids just playing in the forest and just digging holes and whatnot, and they're coming across remains. They're still coming across bodies from the Battle of Stalingrad.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:24

Wow. In 2026. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:27

Yeah. There was it wasn't just that one, but a lot of the civilian deaths came from just the bombing itself. Not just the actual from the explosions and actually killing the bombings, but because of being trapped under the rubble. There's a this is another insane one too that I I couldn't believe my fucking eyes when I read this. Um there were so many people that were trapped, you know, in the, you know, under the debris, in the basements of their own homes, in the tunnel systems, in the sewers, in the subway stations, all that kind of shit. Um for months and months on end. They were hiding there. There's no food, there's no water, there's no heat, there's nothing like that one. So not only those people dying of starvation, but oh but same things you want to talk about, like they some of them actually started to like I guess they they became deformed. Their bodies were reverting. So people were literally living in the sewers for months and months on end. With so much was going on. Those people snapped. So the fact that they became so weak they became mute. They completely it's not that they just stopped speaking, they lost the ability to. Completely lost the ability to, you know, from the malnutrition that the pigment of their skin went away because they hadn't been at they hadn't seen sunlight in months. What this was five, six months this battle went on for? They hadn't seen daylight for five or six months. They've been living in the fucking sewers this entire time. They their hair was falling out. So it's not trying to make light of sense, but like in the beginning of Return of the King, when you're starting to see like Smeagol turn into Gollum.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:05

That's what these people were literally turning into.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:08

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:09

They were literally turning into creatures like this one. There's there's plenty of people when they did the different researches of okay, what was the cause of death and so on and so forth? Some of these people when the well these people suffocated because it's oh, but this and the other thing, there was that one. It goes like, so the fact that when some of the bombs went off because the just because of the the spaces they were in were so small, when the the backdraft happened from the shock wave, the oxygen was literally sucked out of the room and their lungs collapsed.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:37

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:38

Um you're talking about something like that one, the fact that they were in such small confined spaces when the bombs went off there by the force alone, because just the weight was confined, you know, force and sound bounces off everything, reverberates, and then just doubles and triples and quadruples until it just completely dissipates to nothing. People's people were literally being like folded in half from the shockwaves in such small spaces. Oh yeah. It it just yeah carnage instruction in an in an unimaginable level.

Why Stalingrad Is The Turning Point

SPEAKER_04 1:13:07

But the reason why I feel it's the it's such the the most important battle, the most important part of World War II, at least at least in Europe, this was the farthest Germany got from this from this forward, they were in full retreat back to Germany at this point. They made zero advances since. They absolutely they were literally from that moment on, from January of 1943 until April of 45, Russia was kicking them in the ass all the way back to Berlin. They saw zero advances from then on out. It was they were almost full-scale retreat on the way back. No more moving east. It they only moved back west. The literal turning point. The Americans never stepped foot in Berlin. It was the Russians that did. I would say the Russians won the European front in World War II.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:10

The Russians defeated Germany, not the United States. The United States, you know, the United States and Britain and everybody else. Yes, I'm not saying they didn't do anything, you know, but they get I feel they get a little bit more credit than they should. Or at least I feel the Russians don't get enough credit for what they did.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:33

I mean, kudos. Kudos to them.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:36

You know, I mean You feel a little dirty given like given props to Soviet Russia, given just fucking Joseph Stalin. Now, just I need that to be very fucking clear to our listeners. I'm not putting this man as a hero.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:49

No, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:50

Any sense of it. We were talking Hitler was worse than him by a fucking fraction.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:58

Yeah, but but if, you know, I mean, just think of if the Germans had been successful, like what would what would our global would look like, you know, like if they advanced from there, like I said, they would have completely taken Russia out.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:17

Russia would have been completely taken out, would have been wiped from the face of the earth. And then the United States would have had to do and not only that, but you want to talk about everything past that was just all the resources and raw materials, and I'm talking, you're talking iron, you're talking coal, you're talking oil beyond measure, the food, the agriculture that they had in there was no army. Like I said, the most the the the biggest of their factories was left there in Stalingrad, and still in that area, the western areas of Russia. You kept going east and it's just it's just open field. It is open fucking season on you. Not only that, but then if you go far enough east, you have Japan that's fucking kicking the shit out of them too.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:56

So which they weren't allied with the Germans, so they would just bolster the ranks from there. Yeah. Yeah, no. If Stalin I I think if Stalingrad was not a victory, there's i i it's it's unimaginable. I I don't know how the Allies could have won. I do not know how the Allies genuinely could have won if Stalingrad didn't happen. Because I said he would have immediately gotten all the resources he needed. All the resources he needed. So even if they did lose Germany, he could have just kept moving. He could have moved everything a little bit further away and then just regained his strength and then pushed back.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:34

Million percent. Million percent. D-Day would have been D-Day wouldn't have happened because he would have been way too strong. He would have been way too strong. D-Day still D-Day still didn't happen for another what 18 months at this point. Yeah. June 44, we're talking about this. This was the end of January 43.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:51

He still had a year and six months.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:57

Yeah, you know, and what it what I'm thinking about, and I don't know the timeline here. I don't know if it happened before or after, but you know that the the there's the story about, you know, there was there was a blockade that was that was happening in a was it a French um pilot that was fly you know flew over and was like, hey, we got this situation down here.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:22

And he was like way before, way before it was before it was before Dunkirk. It was it was well we're we're talking 40 We're talking 1940, 1941 was when that happened.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:38

And none of this would have happened.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:40

None of this would have happened. You're you're talking six million Jewish men, women, and children would have still had their lives. You're talking an additional uh two million gypsies, seven million Russians and others. Yeah. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 1:17:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:55

What what would have, you know what could have happened if that like exactly if that one if that bit of the army, because that was the bulk of the force, that was the bulk of the German armor. That was the biggest thing. The most important thing was their tanks was the Panzers. And if that French reconnaissance plane was believed and they bombed the armor to Kingdom Come, Germany would have been bombed back to the Stone Age.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:19

Yeah. It's amazing. It's amazing. Um but yeah, I think I think there's like there's just there's

What History Warns Us About Today

SPEAKER_01 1:18:29

so much. There's so much about World War II that's I think it's it's interesting in it. I think, you know, not to get you know philosoph political or philosophical or anything, but I think it's important to have these type of conversations because we don't we don't want to see this repeated. We don't we don't need another like global event like this to happen in because it only gets worse. It only gets worse. Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:05

They thought World War I was the war to end all wars, and meaning in the same thing with the the absolute Oh God, I literally get sick to my stomach thinking about World War I because it was right at that the old world and the new world. I can't imagine atrocities that was seen and done then. But I think the difference between those was just the industrial size, the scale, the speed of what was able to be done in World War II. So I I don't even want to think about what can be done nowadays.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:33

Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, yeah, it's just like you think you think the atrocities were bad when, you know, men were going at it, you know, men in power were going at it with each other. Like it only gets worse from there. And and the capabilities and the things that exist in our world today. Like, I think you have to look back to the past to talk about it and you know, just say, my God, we cannot repeat this. We cannot repeat this. People are just trying to, people are just trying to make it and live and put food on the table and gas in their cars, and and and that's true on every single, every single country, every single place. People are just trying to live and have a life for their families, for you know, just carve out a little something while you're granted your 70, 80 years on this planet, whatever it is.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:42

You know, like they always always some shrimp dick fucker with a chip on his shoulder.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:48

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Come on, men. Men do better.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:54

It's just the I think I think what it is, it's the one thing, not to get philosophical and corny and cheesy, but that's what I'm also looking at the time right now. But the the uh I think what it is so much about World War II that sounds fucked up to say that why it fascinates me is that like humans are this uh this disgustingly complex creatures. We we are capable of the Renaissance. There's art, there's beauty, there's there's there's books like Dungeon Crawler Carl, there's movies like Project Hail Mary, there's there's banana splits, there's chocolate chip cookies, there's music, there's we're capable of such the most amazing things in the world. But then at the drop of a hat, essentially.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:47

Such despicable, unimaginable, horrific things.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:56

It's just it's it's it it blows my mind.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:00

Absolutely blows my mind. Like I said, and this is still this is still nothing compared to some of the other shit that there that you know that happened that happened in these years.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:13

Yeah, human history is just fraught. I think, you know, when we recorded with Mark, you know, we we were talking, and I think it was on that episode we made the joke, um, you know, like if you if you believe in the history, you know, the the facts and the the events of the Bible, you know, we made it to four people on four humans, and there was a murder.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:37

And we and we realized one had to go.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:40

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:41

We made it to four, and we realized nope, four's a crowd.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:45

And it's just like I just can't like you, like you said, you said it perfectly. Humans are capable of so much beauty and so much, you know, just I mean we we can look into the cosmos, you know, we can see like I don't know, it just I could I could go on forever. Like we are we are on this little tiny marble in infinite space and and people are just like barbaric, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:28

Yeah, yeah.

Closing Banter And 50th Episode Thanks

SPEAKER_04 1:23:33

So thanks for joining us. It's such a fantastic episode.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:37

Yeah, yeah. Thanks. I I know this this is a little bit of a heavier um heavier episode, but you know, I mean, that's part of these are part of the conversations that we have. And you know, like we goof around and we think about it.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:53

I don't know about you. I'm 100% sober.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:57

Imagine if we want, oh imagine if we did a drunk history. Dude, don't get me started. Don't get me started.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:04

Don't yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:06

Don't get me started. I'll start talking about ancient. I'll start talking about fucking Punic Wars. I'll start talking about fucking Hannibal. You kidding me? Don't get me started on that one.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:14

I'll start talking about the Battle of Can I So, you know, yeah, we'll have to think about that because there may be a there may be a little uh thing happening later on in this year where the two silly gooses are in the same I don't know, pond, farm.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:36

We we ain't gonna talk about that.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:38

We could do a drunk history then. One of us has to be sober, though.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:45

Mark.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:48

Somebody has to be the designated yeah. Yeah. That that may be the thing that that has to happen is uh a drunk history moment. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:03

Listen to your fucks. This is what happened, okay? Clisten. But you get all those fucking elephants that went across the goddamn alps. No one was fucking expecting it.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:14

Oh, but yeah, yeah. So, you know, we we have a lot of laughs. We in in we do this in our, you know, personal conversations that you all never get to hear. This is exactly how it goes. We are cracking jokes and then we're, you know, just deep diving into the thing.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:33

Hey, you want to really fucked up.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:35

Yeah. Yeah, you want to talk about war?

SPEAKER_04 1:25:41

So the new the new book of Dr. Crawford, this and the other thing about Minecraft this and I'm making a lighthouse and a giant dill or something like that. So the Battle of Dresden. The firebombs of Tokyo. They'll creep fades.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:55

Hey, listen, I am very proud of the lighthouse that I built in Minecraft. That is eventually. Yeah, you'll see it eventually. But yeah, I'm I'm pretty, pretty proud of it. Like it looks good.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:09

Let the records show that our time right now. I'm gonna say less than 60 minutes of that was my material this time.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:20

I know.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:22

Get rid of it. Maybe somewhere somewhere between I'll say like 15, 65 minutes of that.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:28

Yeah.

unknown 1:26:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:31

Eventually we'll get our episodes maybe back down to an hour, but you know, I think this it yeah, we were just talking about this. Like it, you're we have these conversations and you're on such a momentum. It it it's it pains me to like have to cut out so much of it, and then it just some of the stuff that we say won't make any sense. So um sorry that our episodes are getting a little long, but it's just fucking go with it.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:02

Go back a Soviet Russian in 1939.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:07

But thanks for listening. If you made it this far, we do appreciate this. We hope that this educated. I know I felt like I learned a lot of stuff that I didn't know. I hope that you feel the same way. I really do. I I I think this was a fascinating subject to talk about. I know Kano, you've been wanting to talk about this for a long time.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:28

I don't know why. I think I need do I need more therapy? Do I need more medicine?

SPEAKER_01 1:27:32

No, no, I think it's just it is interesting. It is, it is like it's interesting. Just like I think, you know, like I think like the paranormal stuff is like interesting, and and I could go on for ages talking about different cases and you know what could be happening. This is this is your this is your special field of interest. So but it's interesting. Interesting. So these are one of my trains. Yeah. World War II are your trains.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:07

It's my trains. It's my Roman Empire trains.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:10

Yeah. Yeah. Um, be sure to tell your friends about us. This is officially our 50th um episode.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:20

Hooray.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:21

Hooray. We made it to 50. And we're not going to stop uh until we've reached like, you know, the one step back. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:31

Not the one step back, comrade.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:33

Yeah. We're just gonna keep on going. So thank you. Thank you for all your support over these 50 episodes. Uh, thank you for just all of the comments, all of the support. We appreciate you guys, and uh we'll see we'll catch you next week. Bye.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:53

Honk comrade.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:58

Oh god, that made me choke.