World War II in Colour Hitler Strikes East (2009– ) Online

This is no place to review the eastern front so I'll just sketch it in. In 1941 the dictator Stalin was stupid in the way that most paranoids are stupid, mistaking their own beliefs for facts. So it came as a surprise to him when Hitler invaded without warning, using the Blitzkrieg tactics that had proved so successful in the west. And at first it was successful too.

But Hitler was also a dictator and equally deluded. He had a war going on with England in the west but abandoned it to commit Germany, roughly the size of Missouri, to a war with a country the size of Russia, with its massive manpower and industry. The USSR was "a rotten house", declared Hitler, and one had only to kick in the door to bring it all tumbling down.

He divided his army into three group. One was sent north to besiege Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) and was largely forgotten. One was sent through the center of Russia and got within thirty miles of Moscow before being stopped, as much by the weather as by resistance. The third army was sent south towards the oil field near the Caucasus Mountains but got no farther because Hitler diverted the army into an attack on Stalingrad (now Volgograd).

Hitler's order was unwise and partly motivated by his desire to conquer a city bearing the name of his hated enemy. It was a meatgrinder. (See Antony Beevor's book, "Stalingrad," which describes the battle in painful detail.) Stalin was stupid at the beginning of the conflict but he learned as the war progressed, in contrast to Hitler, who believed that war meant nothing but advances. Further, the Soviet Union had begun producing weapons that were the equal of any the Germans had, and sometimes better. The Russian T-34 was the best medium tank in the war. The Soviet Air Force was also producing excellent fighters and ground attack aircraft in vast numbers.

Hitler lost an entire army at Stalingrad due to orders like "retreat not one millimeter." Stalin didn't issue such orders to his men. Any troops retreating without orders were summarily executed on the spot.

During my childhood, in the middle of the Cold War, we never heard much about either the battles or the materièl used on the Russian front. Americans wouldn't have been sure who to root for. The Germans had once been enemies but were now friends, whereas the Soviets had once been friends but were now enemies.

This is a decent doc, up to the standards set by other episodes. There are no talking heads, just a few maps and combat footage. Guidance is provided by the sonorous and confident voice of Robert Powell. Each program is brief, but that's to be expected in a 45-minute program.