- 09/06/2025
Created by Trotsky in 1918 during the total war, the Red Army abandoned its egalitarian and democratic ideals to repress civil revolts. Stalin, worried about the power of the army, launched a purge of officers, the beginning of the "Great Terror" of 1937-38.
The Red Army was a shadow of its former self when Germany invaded the USSR in 1941. It took all the energy of General Zhukov, Resistance and the Allies to overcome the Nazis. On its way to Berlin, the Red Army discovered the extermination camps. Germany surrendered on May 2, 1945.
The Red Army was a shadow of its former self when Germany invaded the USSR in 1941. It took all the energy of General Zhukov, Resistance and the Allies to overcome the Nazis. On its way to Berlin, the Red Army discovered the extermination camps. Germany surrendered on May 2, 1945.
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00:00On December 26, 2016, Russia was in mourning.
00:13An aeroplane carrying the Red Army Choir had crashed into the Black Sea.
00:2092 members of the choir were killed.
00:22The ensemble had been performing Revolutionary War songs and other classics for more than 80 years.
00:34The group's songs also helped keep alive the memory of the Great Patriotic War.
00:40The war in which the Red Army triumphed over Nazi Germany, at the cost of the lives of more than 10 million Soviet soldiers.
00:52The Red Army Choir
01:22June 22, 1941, marked the start of Operation Barbarossa, the codename for Hitler's secret plan to invade the Soviet Union.
01:34Three and a half million Wehrmacht soldiers attacked the Soviet Union.
01:39The Soviet military command was caught completely off guard.
01:48Paralysed by the events, General Semyon Timoshenko did not dare to wake Stalin.
01:54Instead, he sent his deputy, General Georgi Zhukov.
01:58On the other end of the line, Joseph Stalin gave the order, bring the Politburo to the Kremlin.
02:08Faced with danger, Stalin reacted predictably, with repression.
02:12He ordered members of the top leadership arrested, then shot, for having failed to prevent the German offensive.
02:22To better manage the troops, Stalin assigned members of the secret police, or NKVD, to each military unit.
02:30The official line was that this would boost the morale of the troops.
02:42In reality, however, NKVD members were tasked with reporting any misconduct, no matter how minor.
02:50The goal was to purge the ranks of everything, from treason to defeatism.
02:58The Soviet Union had already seen this kind of thing in its short history.
03:04Something similar happened during the civil war that broke out after the October Revolution.
03:20When civil war broke out in November 1918, Vladimir Lenin appointed Lev Davidovich Bronstein,
03:29better known by his revolutionary nom de guerre Leon Trotsky, as war commissioner.
03:35Trotsky had no military experience, but had demonstrated great talent for organisational work.
03:41His task was a Herculean one.
03:43He was to conquer the Tsar's armies, and at the same time defeat the international coalition that had united against the young communist state.
03:52To do this, Trotsky had to create an army as quickly as possible.
03:57Workers and peasants populated the ranks of the Red Army.
04:01But now the thinking went, they should be replaced by volunteers, in order to create an armed people.
04:08Free from rank and high command, the new army's officers would be democratically elected.
04:13In the following two months, however, only 150,000 men reported to recruiting officers.
04:20That was far too few.
04:28Trotsky understood that the revolutionaries' goals could not be upheld under such conditions.
04:36A compulsory general mobilisation was ordered.
04:43But the new recruits had no military experience.
04:48Who would train them?
04:51Trotsky turned to former officers from the Tsarist era, men with experience of military leadership.
04:58Stalin didn't approve.
04:59The newly appointed people's commissar believed it was a mistake to entrust the security of the revolutionary regime to its enemies, no matter how dire the need.
05:12They found a compromise.
05:16So-called political commissars were appointed to oversee the officers who dated from the Tsarist era.
05:23Their job was to keep things in check.
05:25Trotsky wrote,
05:28No army can be built without reprisals.
05:34Masses of people cannot be led to their deaths, if the military command lacks the power to punish disobedience with the penalty of death.
05:43But the soldiers were starving and ill-equipped.
05:58Despite the risks, they deserted by the hundreds of thousands.
06:03Meanwhile, all across the country, the Red Army's assaults terrified the population.
06:08The white terror of the Tsarist army had been replaced by Red Army terror.
06:16Villagers were burned or razed to the ground.
06:19Summary executions and mass rape was the order of the day.
06:23The youngest women were rounded up and sexually assaulted.
06:29So-called procurement detachments were formed to feed the soldiers.
06:34They stole grain, so the peasants rose up against them.
06:45In October 1920, there was an uprising in Tambov, some 400 kilometres south of Moscow.
07:01Local residents lynched a procurement detachment.
07:12Lenin wanted to crush the uprising.
07:15He assigned the task to a former Tsarist officer, Mikhail Tukachevsky.
07:21The young soldier had already proven himself in the brutal suppression of the Kronstadt sailors' uprising.
07:31Dubbed the Red Napoleon, Tukachevsky was given free reign by Lenin.
07:37He dealt the peasant uprising in Tambov a bloody defeat.
07:42The Red Army's war was waged not only against an enemy army, but against its own people.
07:47Tukachevsky's orders were unrelentingly harsh.
07:53Daily Order No. 171 decreed,
07:57Any citizen who refuses to give his name will be shot immediately and without trial.
08:03The elders of any bandit family will be shot immediately and without trial.
08:08The officer ordered poison gas grenades to be fired at the peasants.
08:20Families seen as rebellious were deported to Siberia.
08:27Others were interned in concentration camps run by the Red Army.
08:32In 1922, the Sovietisation of Tambov was complete.
08:40The Civil War had ended.
08:45It was trial by fire for an entire generation of soldiers and their officers.
08:50The Civil War turned the whole country into a military camp, General Zhukov recalled.
08:58One result was that the entire national economy could now be geared towards military goals.
09:06But when the Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union on June 22nd, 1941,
09:12the country proved to be weak and unprepared.
09:15In the first days of the invasion, the Wehrmacht advanced on three fronts simultaneously.
09:23They broke through all Soviet lines of defence.
09:33In the first week of the war, a Soviet soldier died every two seconds.
09:39200,000 were killed in combat.
09:42More than 100,000 were taken prisoner.
10:00On June 28th, 1941, Minsk, the capital of Belarus, fell into the hands of the Germans.
10:08Day after day, the Wehrmacht continued its advance.
10:20In Moscow, Stalin opined to his right-hand man, Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov,
10:27Lenin left us a great legacy, and we, as his successors, have squandered it all.
10:35Stalin knew better than anyone that the Red Army was only a shadow of its former self.
10:41It was Stalin himself who had decimated its ranks.
10:44In 1935, Mikhail Tukhachevsky, the former Tsarist officer who had pacified Tambov,
11:01was made a Marshal of the Soviet Union, in addition to serving as Deputy Commissar of Defence.
11:07Revered by his soldiers, he turned the Red Army into one of the best armies in the world.
11:16But he was vocal about the danger he believed Hitler posed.
11:20Stalin saw Tukhachevsky as an obstruction to his plans for a peace treaty with Germany.
11:26Stalin had to silence him.
11:28This meant getting rid of the Marshal's allies.
11:39On June 11th, 1937, Tukhachevsky and eight other senior commanders were arrested and sentenced to death.
11:47They were executed the same night.
11:52This was just the prelude.
11:54In the purges that followed, within the ranks of the military,
11:59four out of five Red Army Marshals,
12:0114 of its 16 Army commanders,
12:04and 16 political commissars,
12:07followed Tukhachevsky to the grave.
12:15The Red Army Choir, founded in 1928,
12:18symbol of the revolution, was also not spared.
12:24In total, 55,000 of the Soviet Army's 80,000 officers
12:30are believed to have fallen victim to the purges,
12:34which continued until March 1939.
12:41To replace senior military officers who disappeared in the Great Terror,
12:46nearly 1,000 young officers were promoted to general in 1940.
12:51On July 3rd, 1941,
13:00two weeks after the German invasion,
13:03Stalin addressed Soviet citizens on all radio channels.
13:10To make up for the army's losses,
13:13Stalin announced a general mobilisation.
13:15All Soviet citizens of fighting age,
13:19men and women alike,
13:20were to report to the recruiting officers.
13:27A country that espoused gender equality from the start,
13:31now sent between 500,000 and 1 million women to the front.
13:35The women served as nurses, cooks, radio operators and mechanics,
13:40but also as tank soldiers and naval gunners.
13:43When they joined the army,
13:48young women like Maria Morozova
13:50entered a world made by men for men.
13:53When he saw us,
13:58the commander got angry and shouted,
14:01now I have to take care of girls too.
14:04What kind of ballet troupe is this?
14:06This is war,
14:07not a dance recital.
14:09He insulted us saying that.
14:12Who did he think we were?
14:15We had come to wage war.
14:17By autumn 1941,
14:35the Red Army was in retreat on all fronts.
14:38Stalin was primarily responsible for these military defeats.
14:48Despite the army's weak position,
14:50he ordered counter-offensives.
14:52He obstructed the work of the generals
14:55and replaced them constantly.
14:57He was obsessed with the idea of tracking down traitors.
15:00Shortages were felt everywhere.
15:09In his memoirs,
15:11General Georgi Zhukov wrote,
15:13Incredible as it may seem,
15:16we had to beg for ammunition.
15:19According to our orders,
15:20we were only allowed to use
15:21a maximum of two cartridges per day,
15:25even though we were in the middle of a battle.
15:27For the Soviet soldiers,
15:42the situation seemed hopeless.
15:46They surrendered to the enemy in droves.
15:49By late September 1941,
16:12more than two million Soviet soldiers
16:15were in German captivity.
16:19Red Army soldiers were regarded
16:36as less than human
16:37in the eyes of the Nazis.
16:39They were imprisoned in appalling conditions.
16:42Many starved to death.
16:45Beginning in mid-July 1941,
16:47the SS started to come to the camps.
16:51There, they selected people
16:52who the Nazis deemed
16:53undesirable elements.
16:55Jews, communists,
16:57and intellectuals
16:58were systematically executed.
16:59In mid-October 1941,
17:19the Germans were 200 kilometres
17:21from Moscow.
17:22The city was holding its breath.
17:25Winter came early that year,
17:34which gave the Soviets
17:35some breathing room.
17:38Stalin used the opportunity
17:39to burnish his image.
17:41On November 7th, 1941,
17:44the anniversary of the revolution,
17:46he organised a big parade.
17:47And the Russian army.
17:51Ladies and gentlemen,
17:52Красной флотцам,
17:54you will see the whole world
17:55as an advisable to destroy
17:58the army of the German army.
18:02A great and all-resist mission
18:05has been photographed.
18:07Be sure there are still
18:07that you are part of.
18:09Patriotism, an almost forgotten feeling, now had Soviet citizens firmly in its grip
18:26and helped restore them with hope. Philosophy student Grigori Pomeranz recalled,
18:32My heart was full of joy. It throbbed violently. Everyone felt all the hearts of others pounding
18:39as well. My mind seemed to turn off. The collective will took over.
18:51On November 15th, 1941, the Wehrmacht arrived at the gates of Moscow, only 20 kilometres
18:57from the Kremlin.
18:58But ice and snow slowed the German advance. At night, temperatures dropped to minus 30
19:12degrees Celsius.
19:13Oil froze inside engines. The Luftwaffe planes could no longer take off. Supplies were running
19:25low.
19:26The Wehrmacht lacked everything from fuel to gloves.
19:38On December 1st, 1941, Zhukov said in a telephone conversation with Stalin...
19:44The enemy is exhausted.
19:49Three days later, he launched his counter-offensive. His army looked thin. Infantrymen, artillery
19:56and a handful of tanks.
20:17To hide the weakness of his troops, Zhukov relied on a military gambit.
20:22He wrote,
20:26We have encircled the Germans in a pincer movement around the capital. At Stalingrad, we will repeat
20:33our strategy, and the Germans will again fall into our trap.
20:42Zhukov's strategy unsettled the Germans.
20:45For the first time, the Red Army discovered the carnage the Nazis had left behind.
20:56They found evidence of summary executions.
20:59Soviet soldiers shot on the spot, and forests of hanged men.
21:04Soviet soldiers who defected to the enemy were considered traitors.
21:20Anyone recaptured by the Red Army was summarily shot.
21:23The fascists tried to attack the city.
21:33It was not released.
21:35Under the violent attacks of the brave warriors of the Red Army,
21:40the violent Hitler's plan of the environment and taking place of Moscow
21:44was gone.
21:46Zhukov became a national hero overnight.
22:00He was regarded as the saviour of Moscow.
22:05The Soviet victory revived the propaganda machine.
22:11Cinema films and newsreels urged the Soviet citizenry to unite behind their army.
22:16War movies glorified soldiers' courage.
22:29Boris Vasilyev, who had been left disabled by the explosion of a mine, could hardly believe it.
22:38War films show soldiers rushing into battle and shouting,
22:44for the fatherland, for Stalin.
22:49In reality, on the front lines, I heard mostly, son of a b****.
23:05Soldiers and their families stayed in touch by writing letters.
23:0845,500 wagon loads of wartime correspondence were transported across the Soviet Union every day.
23:16But the post office was also a linchpin of propaganda.
23:29In Daniel Alshitsa's unit, an officer who was called Father Schnitov by his men wrote a glowing letter to his parents.
23:37The recruits' behaviour is always exemplary, and their fight is heroic.
23:46When confronted about this, he replied,
23:49Every mother's own son must be the best soldier of all.
23:52The letters sent by the soldiers' families to the front were censored by NKVD.
24:04The secret police wanted to make sure to keep troops in the dark about problems at home.
24:10This included news of shortages, refugees who had to sleep on the floor,
24:14or even the death of a cousin or neighbour.
24:16On January 6th, 1942, following the victory in Moscow, Stalin launched a daring move.
24:46He ordered five million soldiers to conduct ten counter-offensives along the entire front.
24:59All of these counter-offensives ended in failure.
25:16Living conditions for soldiers continued to deteriorate.
25:24When it came to supplies, vodka deliveries took priority over food.
25:33Exhausted from battles and the freezing cold winter,
25:37the soldiers suffered from diseases and malnutrition.
25:40Many became infested with lice.
25:43The soldiers knew that if they were captured, they would be charged with treason.
25:52And anyone who was released risked execution or imprisonment in a gulag.
25:57That's why some of them, including generals,
26:00preferred to place themselves at the service of the enemy.
26:03They were betting on a German victory.
26:05General Andrei Vlasov, the hero of the Battle of Moscow,
26:15was captured in July 1942.
26:18It was an important coup for the Germans.
26:21They managed to turn the Soviet general
26:24and put him in command of the Russian Liberation Army, the ROA.
26:29It was made up of Soviet prisoners of war.
26:31Vlasov's men were called Vlasovtsi.
26:48They also included volunteer Russian, Ukrainian and Baltic units
26:52and performed the most menial tasks.
26:55They guarded ghettos and extermination camps
27:03and were assigned to Einsatzgruppen,
27:05the mobile killing units who took part in the genocide of the Jews.
27:09By summer 1942, the Germans were at the gates of Stalingrad.
27:35Named after the supreme leader,
27:39the city was situated at both a railroad and a river junction.
27:43If Hitler were to succeed in capturing the city,
27:46he would be able to cut off the Red Army's supply of fuel and war materials.
27:50General Friedrich Paulus's 6th Army began advancing steadily into the city.
28:11Despite the weakness of the Soviet troops,
28:17one man stood like a bulwark against the advance of the Wehrmacht,
28:22Lieutenant General Vasily Chuikov, commander of the 62nd Army.
28:27He was a veteran of the Spanish Civil War and had experience in street combat.
28:33He took charge of organising the resistance.
28:36He was a veteran of the Soviet Union and was a veteran of the Soviet Union and was a veteran of the Soviet Union.
28:41Chuikov kept his soldiers supplied with ammunition.
28:45He formed commandos to ambush the Germans through the sewers.
28:55Vasily Chuikov turned infantry soldiers into snipers.
28:59By late September 1942, the German advance had stalled.
29:24Who would emerge the victor?
29:29Stalin ordered Chuikov to provide a report on the situation.
29:45Under Chuikov's command, Soviet forces attacked the weakest point of the German front line,
29:50the Romanian army, which had allied itself with the Third Reich.
29:54Zhukov's plan, codenamed Operation Uranus, was to encircle the 6th Army in Stalingrad and thus cut it off from supplies.
30:10On January 31st, 1943, Friedrich Paulus, who had since been promoted to field marshal, surrendered to the Soviets.
30:18Despite heavy losses, the Red Army was victorious.
30:31The Red Army was victorious.
30:35Journalist Alexander Wert summarized the general mood.
30:42Everyone was seized by a deep national pride.
30:47Finally, it was clear that all our sacrifices and suffering had not been in vain.
31:05With the memory of the Civil War gradually fading, the Great Patriotic War was becoming a new rallying point.
31:15The Red Army's victory in the Battle of Kursk on August 23, 1943, was a turning point.
31:23After that, they stopped losing ground.
31:27They liberated one city after another on the march to Berlin.
31:33The Red Army Choir helped boost the troops' morale.
31:38The musical ensemble had performed on all fronts since the beginning of the war.
31:44All told, the Red Army Choir had performed nearly 1,500 shows in the trenches, in military hospitals, under the hail of bombs.
32:07The Red Army Choir
32:16Alexander Alexandrov was the Red Army Choir's founder and conductor.
32:32On March 15, 1944, a song he composed was chosen by Stalin to be the national anthem of the Soviet Union.
32:41As the Red Army continued its advance on Berlin, Stalin issued a new decree that embodied the Soviet approach.
32:56It could be summed up in one sentence. Go after the enemy wherever he is weak.
33:15However, he is weak.
33:26On January 27th, 1945, the Soviets arrived at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
33:52Army gunner Ivan Sorokopud recalled,
33:56We knew that it was a camp, similar to the one in Majdanek, which our division had already seen.
34:04As we passed through the gate, we saw a dozen living skeletons.
34:10They could barely move. A foul stench emanated from them.
34:22After half an hour, we returned to our truck.
34:26No one was able to speak a single sentence.
34:30We could only curse the Nazis.
34:34What disgusting scum!
34:36On February 4th, 1945, Joseph Stalin, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Franklin D. Roosevelt met at Yalta to make plans for the post-war period.
34:56This meeting set out, in broad strokes, the German zones of occupation, future European spheres of influence and the establishment of the United Nations.
35:08Stalin wanted to get out ahead of his allies and be the first to arrive in Berlin.
35:14The Red Army continued its advance into Germany.
35:30Their motto? Crush the German racists' pride.
35:36The Red Army looted and carried out rapes on a massive scale.
35:46Between January and July 1945, some two million German women were raped.
35:52Leonid Rabichev never forgot the women locked up in a village church.
36:13Five of our tanks drove right up to the church and chased away the guards.
36:21The soldiers entered the church and the rapes began.
36:26The noise could be heard everywhere.
36:29All the soldiers joined in.
36:32Someone came up with the idea of throwing women who had lost consciousness from the top of the church tower.
36:40This all went on for three or four hours.
36:46On April 16, 1945, the Red Army reached Berlin, before the Americans.
37:05On April 24, Marshal Ivan Konev carried out a pincer movement attack on the city from the south.
37:15At the same time, Commander-in-Chief Zhukov took the suburbs of Berlin from the north.
37:21Street fighting raged across the city.
37:33German resistance was fierce and desperate.
37:36For the last of the Third Reich's fighters, no retreat was possible.
37:55Pockets of resistance continued to hold out.
37:58But in less than a week, the outcome had become clear.
38:05On April 30, Zhukov reached the heart of the German capital.
38:09Hitler committed suicide in his bunker the same day.
38:30Pavel Winnick, an infantryman from Odessa, was fighting in Berlin when he learned that the war was over.
38:37Early in the morning, there was absolute silence.
38:43What was going on?
38:45Suddenly we received a message over our radio.
38:48It came from headquarters.
38:50German troops have surrendered in Berlin.
38:54Cease your fire.
38:56It was May 2, 1945.
39:02We all started screaming for joy.
39:05Crying and shooting into the air.
39:07Evgeny Hadei, a young photographer for the TASS, the official news agency of the Soviet Union, took the iconic picture that would come to represent the TASS.
39:36The Red Army's victory.
39:39Two soldiers raised the red flag atop the Reichstag.
39:49Hadei sent his photo to Moscow.
39:51It was returned immediately.
39:53One of the soldiers was reaching up to steady his comrade.
39:57On his wrists, two watches are clearly visible, bearing witness to the Red Army's looting.
40:09Hadei retouched the negative, making one of the wristwatchers disappear.
40:14The photo was seen around the world.
40:18On June 24, 1945, victory celebrations were held in Moscow's Red Square.
40:24Marshal Zhukov was the centre of attention.
40:33Surrounded by his troops, he galloped in astride a grey stallion, a gift from Stalin.
40:39But Georgi Zhukov's star was already on the wane.
40:47Stalin would not tolerate any rivals.
40:50For Stalin, the true hero of this victory could only be one person.
40:55Stalin.
40:58In an echo of Tsarist times, the battalions laid the flags of the defeated at the feet of their leader.
41:05Stalin.
41:16Emerging from its brutal origins and a conflict that would remain a gaping wound for a long time to come,
41:22the Red Army could now hold its head high.
41:28But the chaotic post-war world that was already taking shape would pose new challenges.
41:33The Red Army would not emerge victorious.
42:03thus the
42:10to be in the palace...
42:13...
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