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Russian
00:00:09
At 04:26 am on September 1, 1939, Junkers
dropped their first bombs on Polish territory.00:00:18
Five minutes later the old Kaiser-era German battleship called
Schleswig-Holstein, supposedly performing a "friendly visit"00:00:27
in the port of Gdansk, opened fire on a Polish army base. Soon
German bombs rained down on Warsaw, Krakow, and Lodz.00:00:36
And at 5 am the borders of Poland heard the deafening roar
of tank engines — the Wehrmacht went on the offensive. 00:00:44
World War II had begun.00:00:59
No one expected things to go the
way they did in the following months. 00:01:03
European military analysts at the time
tended to underestimate the power of Germany,00:01:07
thinking it was completely undermined by the
Treaty of Versailles and the Great Depression. 00:01:11
And at the same time, everyone was
inclined to overestimate Poland.00:01:15
The Polish Army was considered the fourth strongest army in
Europe, and everyone assumed that Poland would be a tough nut00:01:22
to crack for Germany. The Poles themselves thought so too.
The Polish General Staff plans for a war with Germany 00:01:28
were based on an assumption that the Germans could be
stopped at the border; they even planned that in this case00:01:34
they would launch an offensive in Eastern Prussia,
which was cut off from the rest of Germany.00:01:38
However, this did not work out. And this is the first example
of how generals were preparing for a war of the past.00:01:46
The fact is, the Germans applied a new, yet
unseen method of warfare against Poland.00:01:51
The method we now know as blitzkrieg — "lightning war". The real
innovation was the use of mobile units — tanks and aircraft —00:02:00
and how they work together. During World War I, the
declaration of war meant the start of troop deployment.00:02:06
So what happened during World War II? At the end of
August 1939, when many still held hope there would be no war, 00:02:13
there were 2000 planes, nearly 3000 tanks, 57 divisions —
about a million and a half soldiers total on the Polish border.00:02:22
Opposing them were approximately a million Poles,
but with significantly fewer tanks and planes.00:02:27
In the months before the war, Poland mobilized reservists.
Covertly, so as not to provoke Hitler.00:02:32
But new recruits often lack experience and skills,
and some don’t even have rifles.00:02:41
The offensive begins. Now we will talk
about the stages of the blitzkrieg,00:02:45
but keep in mind that all German troops entered the battle
almost simultaneously, within a few hours of each other.00:02:51
So. First stage. Aviation. The Luftwaffe drops bombs on Polish
airfields. Then German bombs fall on the sleeping cities.00:03:00
The result — destroyed airfields, roads, and bridges.
The population is demoralized.00:03:06
The second stage. Paratroopers land behind the Poles.
These troops take control of key infrastructure,00:03:13
which seriously disrupts
communication and army control.00:03:18
Third stage. Wehrmacht ground troops cross the border and
invade from the north — from Pomerania and East Prussia, 00:03:25
from the west — from East Germany, and from the
south — from the Czech Republic and Slovakia. 00:03:30
Army Group North advances with two armies. The 4th Army
strikes from Pomerania in a southeasterly direction.00:03:36
Its left flank connects with the right flank
of the 3rd Army, advancing from East Prussia.00:03:42
As a result, the part of the Polish army that had been
defending in the northwest is blockaded from the south.00:03:49
After several days of resistance, the Poles in the cauldron
lay down their arms. At around the same time,00:03:56
the 3rd Army overcame a heavily fortified section
of Polish defenses near the town of Mlawa.00:04:02
This battle will go down in Polish history as
an example of persistent and heroic struggle.00:04:08
The four-day breakthrough of the Mlawa fortification
comes at a great cost to the German units.00:04:14
After this battle, both armies continued
their assault on Warsaw from the north.00:04:20
Army Group South is conducting an
offensive with the forces of three armies.00:04:24
The 8th and 10th Armies from Silesia advanced
on Warsaw from the west and southwest.00:04:30
From the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the
14th Army advances northward in a broad front.00:04:35
Apart from the fact that the opposing forces were not equal,
there is another reason why the Germans are advancing00:04:40
so quickly towards the capital. The reality is
that the ground offensive was also very unusual.00:04:46
The Germans are not looking for battle. Tanks and infantry
(placed in trucks and armored vehicles) break through the Polish00:04:53
front and rush past the stunned Poles with a roar.
The advancing German units head deep into Poland.00:05:01
The Polish units, concentrated near the border, remain surrounded.
They are deprived of food, water and ammunition.00:05:09
All the while, bombs continue to fall on their positions.
And then the second echelon troops begin to advance.00:05:16
One after another, the Germans destroy the ‘cauldrons’
the demoralized Polish troops end up in.00:05:21
Moreover, it becomes obvious as the offensive progresses
that Poland is an ideal theater for a blitzkrieg.00:05:29
It has flat terrain with no natural barriers. In addition,
the Polish general staff had been preparing for decades00:05:34
to repel an attack from the USSR, so the western
border was not reinforced.00:05:41
The result — the Polish front is broken almost immediately.
German troops rush into the country from the north, south,00:05:50
and west simultaneously, sweeping away the ineffective defenses,
severing connections between individual Polish units.00:05:57
But the capital had not yet been taken; at that point, Poles and
the world still had hope that Hitler would be halted in Poland.00:06:06
But this hope was fading
with every passing minute.00:06:09
The Polish air force was, for the most
part, destroyed on the airfields.00:06:14
The German air fleet supported the advancement of tanks
from the skies, also finding time for devastating bombing00:06:21
runs on Warsaw, Lodz, Dęblin, and Sandomierz. The Polish army,
though formally considered the fourth strongest in Europe,00:06:28
was in reality inferior to the German army. Poles lacked
modern tanks, and only had one motorized brigade.00:06:36
A large part of the Polish army was composed of cavalry troops,
trained to fight like they did in 1920 against00:06:42
Budyonny's Red cavalry, not against
German motorized forces.00:06:48
At the same time it is worth noting that the image
of Polish lancers attacking German tanks with sabers,00:06:56
found in some unscientific sources, is a myth. In reality,
Polish lancers usually dismounted and tried to fight Wehrmacht00:07:05
tanks like ordinary infantry, with grenades and guns, by September
5th Polish Marshal Rydz-Śmigły ordered the retreat of all armies00:07:16
behind the Vistula river, establishing
defenses on the Narew-Vistula-San line.00:07:20
Most Polish units, pursued by the enemy, rush eastward.
On September 6, the Polish government left the capital. 00:07:29
ADS00:09:12
During the first days of the war, a desperate resistance
to the invaders was performed by the garrison protecting00:09:18
the military depot on the Westerplatte Peninsula near Danzig, for
an entire week the Poles, completely surrounded and lacking any00:09:25
heavy weaponry, held their defenses against German troops.
It was not until September 7 that they surrendered.00:09:35
Interestingly, this event became a symbol for both sides. For the
Nazis, it meant that there was no longer any trace of Polish 00:09:43
presence in the German Danzig. For the Poles, it meant that
their army was capable of fighting back against the aggressor.00:09:51
At this time, the Wehrmacht's 10th Army was approaching
Warsaw from the south-west with its main forces.00:09:57
On September 8, one of its divisions attempted
to take the Polish capital, but was rebuffed. 00:10:03
The heroic defense of Warsaw begins. By September 10,
the capital was almost completely surrounded.00:10:11
The troops in the city were not enough to defend it.
So the Warsaw Volunteer Brigade is formed from civilians,00:10:19
and over six thousand men join. In response, the
Luftwaffe rains thousands of bombs on to the city. 00:10:26
On September 27 alone, 1,150 sorties were made. On
September 28, after defending for 20 days, Warsaw surrendered.00:10:58
As we remember, the secret protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop
Pact stated that the eastern part of Poland would go to the USSR.00:11:05
So on September 17, the Red Army
crossed the Soviet-Polish border.00:11:11
The Polish offensive, or as it was called during Soviet times,
the Red Army's liberation march into Poland had begun.00:11:18
The official pretext was the need to protect the inhabitants
of Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia. 00:11:24
In reality, Stalin was eager to get the territories that he
had been promised, before Hitler's army got there. 00:11:30
Berlin didn’t even beat around the bush, but said directly:
if you do not occupy your territories, new independent 00:11:37
states may arise there. Obviously — this part was not
stated openly — under the leadership of the Reich. 00:11:45
Seventeen days passed between the German
attack on Poland and the invasion of the Red Army.00:11:50
There are several reasons why Stalin did not
order the army to move into Poland earlier. 00:11:57
Firstly, he did not want to look like a party to the conflict —
the war between Germany and Poland is one story,00:12:02
and our actions to protect Western
Ukraine and Western Belorussia is another.00:12:08
Second, and maybe even more importantly, Stalin, like many
other world leaders, did not expect it to end so quickly.00:12:17
The Polish army, on paper, was supposed to stand up to
the Wehrmacht, and the hostilities should have dragged00:12:22
on for many months. But quickly it became
clear that events were unfolding rapidly.00:12:29
On September 5, the partial mobilization of the Red Army began,
and by the morning of September 7 large training00:12:37
camps were launched. Basically, this
was preparation for the invasion.00:12:42
At 3 am on September 17, a note was read to the Polish
ambassador in Moscow — no, not about the start of the war,00:12:48
the march on Poland was never called a war. The note said
that the Red Army had been ordered to cross the border00:12:55
and place the lives and property of the population of Western
Ukraine and Western Belorussia under protection, supposedly00:13:01
abandoned by the Polish government.00:13:11
No organized resistance was offered to the Red Army.
All combat-ready Polish units had long since00:13:17
moved westward and towards Warsaw. Only a few
frontier guards defended the border with the USSR. 00:13:26
In addition, the Polish Supreme Commander Marshal
Rydz-Śmigły gave an order not to fight the Soviets,00:13:34
but instead to retreat into Hungary and Romania — he knew
that there was no chance they could hold out longer than00:13:41
a few days anyway. For the Poles, the Red Army's attack came
as a surprise: no one knew then about the existence of a secret00:13:49
protocol between the USSR and Germany.00:13:54
On the ground, the Soviet troops were met by cells of the
Communist Party of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus,00:14:00
which the USSR had been creating and supplying (with weapons,
too) right after the peace was signed with Poland in 1921.00:14:09
But some fierce fighting also took place. It is important to note this.
When we talk about the German attack on the USSR,00:14:18
we often recall the non-aggression pact, which Hitler broke.
But such a pact existed between the Soviet Union and Poland.00:14:28
It was signed in 1932, and two years later
it was extended until the end of 1945.00:14:35
But neither this document, nor several other international
conventions prevented Stalin from sending troops00:14:43
to a neighboring country to take the territories
he was owed under his treaty with the Nazis.00:14:51
To explain the reason for the invasion to the general public,
it was officially stated that Poland as a state no longer existed,00:14:59
and therefore all previous agreements were void.00:15:03
"The Polish patchwork state, built on oppression, on the
robbery of national minorities, has shown its non-viability,00:15:11
its internal insolvency, and has
collapsed like a house of cards.”00:15:18
But it’s worth noting the Polish state still resisted when this was
said. For example, the president of the country, Ignacy Moscicki,00:15:26
only left Poland on the evening of September 17,
after the invasion by the Red00:15:31
Army, when it became clear that a two-front
war had begun. Warsaw was fighting still. 00:15:39
On September 19 an important event occurred: Soviet
and German units met for the first time on the line of separation 00:15:46
marked in the secret protocol
of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. 00:15:50
On September 22, the Soviet and German armies
met in Brest — the place where the Brest Fortress stood,00:15:57
which would later become one of the symbols of resistance
against the Nazis at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War.00:16:02
Kombrig Krivoshein and General Guderian
warmly greeted each other.00:16:08
The Soviet soldiers talked with the Germans in a friendly manner.
In the evening the German troops00:16:13
marched triumphantly through the city and left,
handing over power to the Soviet administration.00:16:19
Some Russian historians and politicians deny the fact that
a joint parade took place in Brest. But the fact remains.00:16:27
One may not call those events a parade, or even
a celebratory march, but sources record a breakfast00:16:35
with Guderian and Krivoshein, during which toasts
were raised to the Wehrmacht and the Red Army.00:16:41
And besides Brest, the Soviet and German
military commanders acted in a coherent manner,00:16:47
coordinating their decisions to avoid
confusion and accidental exchanges of fire.00:16:55
On September 28, the Soviet-German Boundary
and Friendship Treaty was signed in Moscow, 00:17:01
which assumed a complete
liquidation of the Polish state.00:17:05
The eastern lands of Poland (present-day Western Ukraine
and Western Belarus) were ceded to the USSR, 00:17:11
the Vilna region (present-day Vilnius) to Lithuania,
northern Poland with Poznan, Gdańsk,00:17:17
and Plock to Germany, and a "governor-generalship"
was established around Krakow and Warsaw, 00:17:23
with a German protectorate status
(marked on Soviet maps as "German sphere of interest").00:17:30
The USSR and Germany agreed
to fight against the Polish partisans together. 00:17:35
The international reaction to the Soviet
invasion of Poland was rather restrained.00:17:40
At a meeting of the British Cabinet of Ministers,
it was decided that the Anglo-Polish treaty provided00:17:47
an obligation to defend Poland only in the event of German
aggression, so there was no reason to declare war on the USSR.00:17:55
Winston Churchill, who had already been appointed
head of the Admiralty, stated the following:00:18:01
“That the Russian armies should stand on this line was clearly
necessary for the safety of Russia against the Nazi menace.00:18:09
At any rate, the line is there, and an Eastern Front has been
created which Nazi Germany does not dare assail.”00:18:19
When the former Polish territories became a part of the USSR,
in two years they had gone through the same process00:18:24
as the other republics had over twenty years.
This primarily means dekulakization, collectivization00:18:31
(the forced association of peasants into collective farms),
and the destruction of class enemies.00:18:37
In Marxist theory, class enemies were the bourgeoisie, and
as far as the lands of Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia00:18:43
were concerned, this became
a struggle against the Poles.00:18:46
Compared to Ukrainians and Belarussians,
they were more prosperous and successful.00:18:51
They were called "pans", the word became
virtually synonymous with bourgeois.00:18:55
Soviet propaganda constantly used
the term "pan-Poland" in a negative meaning. 00:19:01
The fate of many Poles in the territories
seized by the Soviet Union was tragic.00:19:07
A small village in Smolensk Oblast of Russia is
often remembered as an example. It is called Katyn.00:19:26
Here, in the Warsaw Citadel in the center
of the Polish capital, the Katyn Museum is located.00:19:32
It's quite unusual: the main exhibits here are things that
were found at the sites where Polish officers were shot.00:19:40
Broken glasses. Aluminum spoon.
A coin. A button. A streetcar ticket.00:19:46
Ordinary things that surround us every day become symbolic
tombstones. They are silent witnesses of this terrible crime.00:19:58
About half a million Poles were taken prisoner by
the Soviets in September 1939 — many Polish units,00:20:05
under orders from their commanders, were
retreating to the east and surrendering to the Soviets,00:20:10
preferring them to the Germans.
Most were sent home almost immediately,00:20:15
but about one hundred and thirty thousand former
Polish military men ended up in NKVD camps.00:20:22
Also sent to the camps were more than a thousand
former Polish officers who were arrested by the NKVD00:20:28
in the territories that were ceded to the USSR. The camps
were catastrophically crowded, so the POWs continued00:20:36
to be released or handed over to the Germans. By October,
about forty thousand people remained in Soviet camps.00:20:45
They were distributed over five camps. Officers were
held in the Lugansk and Kaluga regions, police and00:20:52
gendarmes were sent to the Ostashkov camp on the Seliger, and
privates and non-commissioned officers were used for forced labor.00:21:00
They built the Novograd-Volynski-Lvov road
and mined iron ore in the Krivoy Rog basin.00:21:08
Of course, the main issue was the officers and gendarmes,
class enemies. They were set to be shot by firing squad.00:21:17
In March of 1940 Lavrenty Beria, head of the NKVD, proposed
"to review the cases of former Polish officers, officials,00:21:24
landlords, policemen, scouts, gendarmes, siege and prisoners with
the application to them of the highest measure of punishment —00:21:32
firing squad". On the assumption that they are all hardened,
incorrigible enemies of Soviet power, the note stated.00:21:43
Stalin approved Beria's proposal. This decision,
besides Stalin’s signature, was also signed by Voroshilov,00:21:49
Moloto, and Mikoyan, and on the side
a secretary wrote: "Kalinin for, Kaganovich for”.00:21:56
I am listing these names to remind you once again that these
men had sentenced thousands of Polish officers collectively,00:22:05
without any trial, simply for the fact
they belonged to this category.00:22:09
The spring of 1940 marked the beginning of the process
of sending POWs from NKVD camps to firing ranges.00:22:16
In all, twenty-two thousand Polish officers and gendarmes were
shot. Poles were shot in the Ostashkovsky camp near Tver,00:22:25
in Kozelsk in the Kaluga Oblast, in Kurapaty near Minsk, at the
Bykownya polygon in Kiev, and in the prisons of Kharkov.00:22:35
The regional NKVD departments received
groups of 500 people and shot them immediately,00:22:41
either in the prison buildings or at special ranges.00:22:45
Browning and Walther pistols were used:
the Soviet Nagans overheated from being fired too often.00:22:53
The prisoners themselves were sure that they were going
to be released, so they made no attempts at escape or revolt.00:23:02
At the same time, the families of the executed
were also subjected to repression:00:23:06
they were deported from Eastern Poland to Kazakhstan.
The most famous episode is, of course, Katyn.00:23:17
In 1940, in a forest near Smolensk, more than four thousand
Polish prisoners were shot, including 14 generals.00:23:27
The executed officers were not just regular military
personnel, but also people of peaceful professions,00:23:32
drafted into the army after the war broke out:
university professors, doctors, and engineers.00:23:38
After the German attack on the Soviet Union, the USSR and the
Polish government-in-exile established diplomatic relations —00:23:45
they had become allies in a
struggle against a common enemy.00:23:49
As a gesture of goodwill, amnesty was
declared for Polish prisoners of war.00:23:53
But almost all of them, as we now know, had already been
executed. But that did not stop Stalin from openly lying to the head00:24:00
of the Polish government, Sikorski, that all the prisoners
had been released and he did not know where they had gone.00:24:07
Perhaps they escaped to Manchuria.00:24:13
The Katyn burial ground was discovered in
1943 by the German occupation administration. 00:24:19
This circumstance ruled out any possibility that a
calm and impartial study of the situation could be held.00:24:26
The first investigation of what happened was carried out by a
commission that included representatives of Germany and its allies.00:24:33
Hitler's propaganda focused on this episode,
as it could show the USSR as barbarians,00:24:38
worsening relations between the USSR and its allies.00:24:42
The Soviet authorities denied any involvement in the execution
of the Poles at Katyn, and offered their own version —00:24:47
that the Germans seized the NKVD camp
and shot the imprisoned Poles.00:24:51
Since the shooting was carried out using Browning
and Walther pistols, there were many German-made00:24:58
shell casings and cartridges at the firing ranges, which
the Soviet side claimed as irrefutable evidence of the Nazis'00:25:01
involvement in those events. But later it was proved that similar
weapons were used at other NKVD firing ranges, including Butovo.00:25:11
When the Smolensk region was liberated from
the Nazis, the USSR set up a special commission00:25:15
"to establish and investigate the circumstances of the executions
in the Katyn Forest of POW Polish officers by the Nazi invaders”.00:25:23
Its goal, obviously, was not to establish the truth, but rather
to falsify the evidence to shift the blame onto the Nazis.00:25:31
For many decades Moscow denied
responsibility for the executions of the Poles.00:25:35
Soviet representatives tried to add the Katyn
massacre to the verdict at the Nuremberg trial, 00:25:41
but the tribunal didn’t do that,
citing lack of evidence.00:25:45
Only during perestroika were documents declassified, indicating
that the executions had indeed been organized by the NKVD.00:25:53
In 1991, Pyotr Soprunenko, who headed the
NKVD Directorate of Prisoners of War in 1939-1940,00:25:59
also confessed to organizing the executions.00:26:02
Soprunenko was absolved of responsibility
due to remorse, old age, and poor health.00:26:08
Back then, in the early 1990s, the Military Prosecutor's
Office launched an investigation into the Katyn tragedy.00:26:13
In 2004, the case was closed. And later, the Russian
government stated that the initiation of such a case was illegal. 00:26:20
However, the Katyn memorial, founded
in 1998, has not been closed yet.00:26:26
But the Polish flag, which had always
flown over this tragic place, was lowered.00:26:34
In 1941, after Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union, when the
USSR joined the anti-Hitler coalition, most of the Polish officers00:26:43
that had survived in Soviet captivity at the time
chose to join the British forces in North Africa.00:26:48
As a result, there was such a shortage of command staff in the
Polish Army formed in the USSR, that Ukrainians and Belarusians00:26:55
with Polish surnames were often appointed.00:26:59
But back to 1939. On October 2nd, the last Polish
garrison fell on the Hel peninsula north of Gdansk,00:27:08
and by October 6 fighting had ceased across Poland.
But Poland did not capitulate.00:27:14
The Polish government evacuated to Romania
and then to London and continued their war.00:27:19
A new Polish army began to form from among Polish migrants in
France, and would continue to fight against Germany.00:27:37
Let's move from Poland to France, to the Maginot Line.
Just 2 days after the German invasion, on September 3,00:27:44
the country stood up for its ally and declared
war on Hitler. So did Great Britain.00:28:03
The policy of appeasement was finally a thing of the past.
However, this did not change anything to any real degree.00:28:10
The Allied troops never came
to the aid of the Poles. Why not?00:28:15
In a previous video I told you that the British and French
societies did not want war and were afraid of it.00:28:22
Unlike Germany, or the Soviet Union, in Britain and France the
people were not bombarded with militaristic propaganda,00:28:30
and were not prepared to die for their country. On the contrary,
the prevailing image was that of a senseless00:28:37
and merciless slaughter of WWI, during which
European culture was self-destructing.00:28:53
The same was expected of the coming war.00:28:56
The potential World War was feared in the same
manner that we now fear nuclear war —00:29:00
as something that might lead to Armageddon.
In reality, it's quite normal to be afraid of such things.00:29:06
Not wanting war, death, and destruction is natural,
and in other situations it would even be good00:29:12
that governments hold this position. But in the face
of an aggressive, militaristic Germany,00:29:17
all this turned into a weakness. World War I showed
that fortresses isolated from each other are pretty useless.00:29:28
They quickly run out of ammunition and food,
and their defenders die not from enemy bullets,00:29:36
but from hunger and poor sanitary conditions. Therefore,
military thought went towards creating a lot of fortifications,00:29:43
combined into a single system — defensive lines. So that in
the case of an enemy attack, it faced not a single fortress,00:29:50
but a whole group of fortifications that could
support each other during the siege.00:29:58
During the First World War, in 1916, the Hindenburg Line was
formed — as the name suggests, the Germans built it.00:30:06
But because the fortifications were built in a hurry and alongside
the fighting, the Hindenburg Line was not impregnable.00:30:14
In 1917, British troops broke through
it, and in 1918, it was captured.00:30:21
The time between the wars
is the heyday of defensive lines.00:30:24
The Mannerheim Line in Finland, the Siegfried Line
in Germany, the Molotov and Stalin lines in the USSR.00:30:31
Even Czechoslovakia had its own line,
Behnes, named after the president at the time.00:30:36
The most well-known and biggest was the Maginot Line. 5600
pillboxes, 70 bunkers, 500 artillery and infantry blocks, dugouts,00:30:47
casemates, observation points. It was the
most modern defense line in the world,00:30:55
built in accordance with the latest
science and technology at the time.00:30:59
There were multilevel underground forts
with lifts, towers, hospitals, and power plants.00:31:06
The forts even had its own narrow-gauge railroad,
to provide supplies and transport troops quickly.00:31:15
During the First World War, a line like this would practically
guarantee victory, which was why France did not spare any funds00:31:22
for its construction. $1 billion in 1930's
money was spent, which is a lot.00:31:28
For several years, half of the country's defense
budget was used to build the Maginot Line.00:31:34
The permanent garrison numbered 300,000 men.
The Maginot Line was meant to protect the rich eastern regions00:31:42
of France from being captured by the Germans.
In the ten eastern provinces,00:31:46
60% of French steel was smelted, and most of the
zinc and almost all copper was produced there too.00:31:52
The main coal mines in the country were also there.
Finally, this was where Alsace and Lorraine were,00:31:57
gained through hard work during World War I,
so it was necessary to protect them at all costs.00:32:05
And the plan of the French military leaders is clear
even now, almost a hundred years after it failed. 00:32:14
They needed to secure important industrial regions.
Of course, everyone understood that the Wehrmacht could bypass00:32:20
the line and enter from the north, through Belgium.
That was where the German army had struck in World War I. 00:32:26
But as long as the Maginot Line protected the eastern provinces of
France, the army would always have resources to keep fighting.00:32:35
In addition, troops could strike German territory from behind
the fortifications, threatening to encircle the Germans.00:32:42
Most importantly, the impregnable Maginot Line would
force the Germans to attack further north,00:32:47
where the Belgian, British, and, of course, French armies
awaited them. All in all, the plan made perfect sense.00:32:55
Not surprisingly, the French
leadership financed its implementation.00:33:00
The only problem was — while the French were building
walls, the Germans were developing completely00:33:05
new approaches to modern warfare. As a result, the Maginot
Line proved virtually useless from a military standpoint,00:33:12
as we shall see later.00:33:15
By 1939, the fortification line had been extended in Alsace and
Lorraine, along the entire border with Germany and Luxembourg.00:33:24
In turn, on the German side, the Siegfried Line, over there,
was built along the border with France during Hitler’s reign.00:33:32
Not as monumental as the
French one, but still very impressive.00:33:37
The French army of course tried to invade
Germany to help Poland in early September.00:33:42
40 French divisions began an offensive on the Saar River,
advanced about 30 km deep into Germany towards Saarbrücken,00:33:51
and then ran into the Siegfried Line fortifications... and that was it.
The so-called "strange war" had begun — when war was declared,00:34:01
but no military action was taking place. The French command
decided not to send its troops to be massacred by pillboxes and00:34:10
minefields, things were limited to occupying a few dozen square
kilometers of German land for a month, until October 16,00:34:16
when Wehrmacht units returning from Poland
knocked the French back behind the border.00:34:23
And it turned out that, although in September 1939 the
Allies had an almost three-fold numerical advantage,00:34:29
the order to attack was
not given. The moment was lost.00:34:35
The fortification lines could have been bypassed through
Belgium, as it had been done during World War I,00:34:41
except that Belgian King Leopold
had proclaimed neutrality and,00:34:46
to avoid giving Germany an excuse to invade,
refused to allow Allied troops onto his territory.00:34:53
As a result, the left wing of the Allied army spent the
cold winter building defenses on the French border,00:35:00
even though everyone knew that they would
leave these positions and move into Belgium00:35:04
as soon as the Germans
approached from that side.00:35:07
And the right wing on the border with Germany continued
to hang out in the fortifications of the Maginot Line,00:35:12
waiting for who knows what. Some military
action continued in the air and at sea.00:35:20
On September 4, British aircraft made their first air raid on the
German military port of Wilhelmshaven, on the North Sea.00:35:29
The raid was terribly organized, 12 bombers were lost and
72 pilots killed, but that was not even the main issue.00:35:37
The very fact of bombings on German territory
caused a heated debate in the British Parliament.00:35:44
Wouldn't it be a violation of the rules of war,
to bomb civilian targets? And factories?00:35:50
And if British citizens own shares in those factories? Then what?
Yes, after the level of ferocity for which World War II will be00:36:01
remembered, such conversations seem ridiculous,
but in the first months of the war everyone attempted00:36:07
to save face and follow the rules. Eventually, British
commanders forbade any bombing on German territories,00:36:15
allowing only "truth raids" — meaning, they didn’t drop
bombs on Germany, but leaflets exposing Hitler's regime.00:36:23
During the first six months of the war, 18 million
leaflets were dropped on Germany, but the Germans,00:36:31
ecstatic from their victories, simply ignored them.
But there was fighting on the sea.00:36:36
Hitler's navy — the Kriegsmarine — began a submarine war.00:36:40
Dozens of German submarines terrorized
the maritime communications of the allies.00:36:45
They became so impudent, that on October 14th a German
submarine sailed straight into the main naval port of Great Britain,00:36:53
Scapa Flow, and sank the British battleship Royal Oak right there.
German surface ships also entered the Atlantic Ocean.00:37:02
On December 17, 1939, near the coast of Uruguay,
the British fleet was able to pursue a German squadron00:37:09
and sink the newest Graf Spee battleship. Western historiography
often refers to this battle as the Allies' first victory in the war,00:37:18
but at the time it did not matter that much. While ships
chased each other across the Atlantic and politicians00:37:25
in London thought about what to do, British and French
soldiers sat in the trenches. It was truly a "strange war,"00:37:33
with not a single bullet flying between the warring parties.
The months spent in the trenches of the Maginot Line, where00:37:40
instead of heroic feats on the battlefield, the soldiers
were only faced with boredom and mundanity,00:37:45
burned away their desire to fight. French philosopher
Jean-Paul Sartre, mobilized in the army, wrote in his diary:00:37:55
November 26, 1939 : "At first everyone was eager to fight,
but now they are dying of boredom." February 20, 1940: 00:38:08
"The war machine idles. Yesterday a sergeant with a mad gleam
in his eye told me: 'I think everything will settle down soon,00:38:17
Britain will make concessions’”.
The French soldiers were less and less willing to fight.00:38:34
Meanwhile, another war broke out in eastern Europe.
Only this time Germany wasn’t the aggressor, but the USSR. 00:38:43
Soviet-Finnish relations in the 1930s
were developing relatively calmly.00:38:47
Despite the fact that in the Soviet Union there was
talk about the need for a revolution in Finland,00:38:51
and Finnish nationalists wanted to annex
Karelia, no one seriously considered any of it.00:38:57
The situation changed by the end of the 1930s,
when it became clear that a new war was coming. 00:39:03
The Soviet leadership began to consider the
need to protect Leningrad, which was located just 00:39:08
a few dozen kilometers from the border. The best solution,
from the point of view of Stalin, would be to establish00:39:15
Soviet control over the entrance to the Gulf of Finland,
by placing the Soviet military bases in Estonia and Finland.00:39:23
These countries were to be in the Soviet sphere of influence
according to the secret protocol in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.00:39:30
The first step toward this goal was a series of ultimatums,
issued by the Soviet government to the neighboring00:39:36
countries in the fall of 1939.00:39:38
The USSR demanded that Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Finland
allow Soviet military bases to be installed on their territory,00:39:46
otherwise invasion would take place. The Estonian, Latvian, and
Lithuanian authorities accepted Stalin's ultimatum and stationed00:39:53
Soviet troops on their territory.
However, this did not save them.00:39:57
Soon, in the summer of 1940, threatened
by Soviet bayonets, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania00:40:03
held pseudo-elections to the "People's Parliaments",
which, of course, led to the victory of local Communists.00:40:11
The new Communist governments
immediately asked for membership in the USSR,00:40:16
and these requests were immediately granted.
So, by 1940, the USSR had annexed three Baltic republics.00:40:25
The same was planned for Finland.00:40:30
Finland rejected the Pact of Mutual Assistance draft
in line with the Baltic model, proposed by the USSR.00:40:37
Then, in September 1939, the Finnish government recieved
an ultimatum — exchange the Karelian isthmus and Vyborg 00:40:45
(back then called Viipuri, the second largest city in Finland)
for territory in Karelia. Larger, but almost unpopulated.00:40:55
The Finns, realizing that the forces are unequal,
were prepared to make certain concessions.00:41:00
For example, to transfer some islands in the Gulf
of Finland to the Soviet Union and to move the border00:41:05
line 15 kilometers deeper into the Karelian Isthmus.
But the Soviet leadership did not agree to any compromises,00:41:11
they were looking for a reason to start the war.
It became clear that negotiations would lead nowhere.00:41:16
So Stalin ordered the preparations for the invasion of Finland.
Finland's main hope was the Mannerheim Line,00:41:25
an analog to the Maginot Line, a system of trenches, fortifications
and forest barriers — barriers made from fallen trees — 00:41:33
on the Karelian Isthmus. A few words should be said
about the man in whose honor the line was named. 00:41:39
Carl Gustav Mannerheim was born in 1867.
At that time Finland was part of the Russian Empire.00:41:47
And Mannerheim made a brilliant career in the Russian army.
He took part in the Russo-Japanese war and the First World War, 00:41:55
and by 1917 he rose to the rank of
lieutenant-general. After the Bolshevik coup,00:42:00
Mannerheim went to his native Finland to lead the fight for its
independence, successfully, becoming a national hero and,00:42:08
de facto, the shadow leader of his country in the process.
In the 1930 he headed the Finnish Defense Committee,00:42:15
preparing for a future war against the Soviet Union.
At his initiative the defensive line was finished,00:42:21
having started construction
after Finland declared independence. 00:42:26
The Mannerheim line stretched 130 kilometers,
from Lake Ladoga to the Gulf of Finland.00:42:32
It consisted of three fortification lines, surrounded
by trenches, bunkers, and machine gun nests.00:42:43
But the strength of the Mannerheim line was
greatly exaggerated by contemporaries and historians.00:42:49
The Marshal himself was quite critical of it in his memoirs:
"The defensive line existed, of course, but it consisted00:42:56
of rare permanent machine-gun nests and two dozen
new pillboxes, built at my suggestion, between them trenches.00:43:07
Yes, there was a defensive line, but its strength was
the result of the fortitude and courage of our soldiers,00:43:14
not the result of the strength of the actual buildings”
Even with the Mannerheim Line accounted for, 00:43:20
the forces were obscenely unequal. The Finnish army was much
weaker. At the start of the war the Finns only had 64 tanks,00:43:29
mostly French Renaults and British
Vickers light tanks, and just 270 planes.00:43:35
The population of Finland was fifty times less than
the population of the USSR, only 3.6 million people00:43:43
(less than the amount of soldiers in The Red Army).00:43:46
On November 26 1939 a Soviet frontier post near the village of
Majnilo in the Leningrad region was hit by artillery fire.00:43:55
Four Soviet frontier guards were killed, nine more
were wounded. It was most likely a Soviet provocation,00:44:01
although we still do not know exactly who opened fire. Events then
unfolded in the same way as they did in Poland in September.00:44:08
On November 30 at 9:20 am
Soviet planes began bombing Helsinki. 00:44:12
Official Soviet propaganda claimed that the Soviet planes were
"dropping humanitarian aid to starving Finnish proletarians”.00:44:18
So the Finns sarcastically started calling Soviet
bombs "Molotov breadbaskets" or "Molotov baskets”.00:44:27
At the same time Soviet troops crossed the border into Finland.
Twelve Soviet divisions — over two hundred thousand men in all,00:44:34
supported by six hundred tanks — struck in
twelve locations at once. Soviet Commissar00:44:40
of Defense Kliment Voroshilov planned to take
Vyborg on the 4th day of the war, Helsinki on the 7th.00:44:45
The government of the "Democratic Republic
of Finland'', headed by old Bolshevik Otto Willy Kuusinen, 00:44:50
was established in Teriuki (now Zelenogorsk,
a distant suburb of St. Petersburg),00:44:54
the first major city in Finland to be occupied by Soviet troops.
Kuusinen's government immediately announced the start of the00:45:05
revolution in Finland, and asked the Soviet Union for help
against "White Finns", meaning, the Finnish government.00:45:11
A "Finnish People's Army" — Finnish Communists
and Soviet Karelians — was formed.00:45:19
It was no longer an issue of tearing off a piece of Finland, but of
completely overthrowing the "capitalist government" in the country,00:45:27
establishing socialism, and possibly
incorporating the territory into the USSR.00:45:32
But things didn't go as planned.00:45:36
On November 30, the very first day of the war,
Marshal Mannerheim was appointed Commander-in-Chief 00:45:42
of the Finnish army, under his leadership, the troops
were able to repel the first blow of the Red Army,00:45:49
and hold fast against its offensive for several months.
The Finns had resorted to scorched earth tactics,00:45:53
evacuating all inhabitants of the bordering regions
behind the Mannerheim line even before war broke out.00:46:03
All the settlements on the border were burned,
and the famous Kolosjoki nickel mines 00:46:10
(now the town of Nickel in the Murmansk region) were blown up.00:46:15
Now there was nowhere for Soviet troops
to get supplies in the borderlands. 00:46:20
Only winter, snow, woods, and mines awaited them.
The Soviet troops faced the hell that is war in snow-covered taiga.00:46:30
The Finns attacked in small groups,
swooping in from the forest before disappearing.00:46:36
Tanks and other vehicles were forced to move in
narrow columns between lakes, forests, and swamps.00:46:45
Although the Finns had little artillery, and even less anti-tank
weapons, the Soviets acted in such an inept manner,00:46:55
that the Finns managed to scatter tank
columns with rifle and submachine gun fire.00:47:02
Flying platoons of Finnish skiers in camouflage cloaks
approached the Soviet troops stealthily, getting very close, 00:47:09
and could destroy an entire company,
if not more, with a single platoon.00:47:15
The Finns called their tactic of ambushing Soviet
columns "motti," i.e. "chopping wood," for good reason.00:47:23
A common technique was to hit the first and the
last car in the Soviet column going through a forest.00:47:30
This was done using the most primitive means, mainly bottles
filled with gasoline with a fuse. Such bottles were dubbed00:47:41
"cocktails for Molotov" by the Finnish press, later shortened to
"Molotov cocktails", a name they’re still known by today.00:47:52
The column would halt after the first and last vehicles
were hit, and then the Finns would shoot, before taking00:47:59
undamaged tanks for themselves. The Soviet tank losses were so
substantial, that Finland tripled its tank forces during the war,00:48:12
and in the Great Patriotic War the Finns would fight
almost exclusively using trophy Soviet BT-7 tanks.00:48:21
There is another point worth noting here.
We consider the Winter War with the knowledge that Finland00:48:26
will enter the war on the side of Germany in 1941, becoming
one of the Axis countries. But in 1939 everything looked different.00:48:37
In Great Britain and France, and in neutral countries,
like the USA, the war was perceived as the USSR,00:48:45
Hitler's ally, attacking Finland, repeating the thing
Germany and the USSR had done earlier in Poland. 00:48:52
For its aggression against Finland the USSR was
even expelled from the League of Nations.00:48:56
Finland, on the other hand, was perceived as a
country that was potentially close to the Allies. 00:49:02
The option of sending Anglo-French troops to Finland to
open a new front in Europe was seriously considered.00:49:11
French General Maxime Weygand made such a
proposal to the Allied command, and it was approved. 00:49:19
In France, the formation of an expeditionary corps
of French and Polish soldiers began to aid Finland. 00:49:26
The British command began preparing a bombing raid on the oil
fields of Baku. It should be noted that at this moment the USSR00:49:34
was one step away from fully entering
World War II as Germany’s ally. 00:49:40
But in the end, the help to Finland was
limited to sending arms and supplies. 00:49:46
And Stalin, meanwhile, drew conclusions
from the failure of the December offensive. 00:49:51
The People's Commissar of Defense was fired,
with Semyon Timoshenko taking Voroshilov’s place. 00:49:56
The number of Soviet troops on the front line was increased
to 600,000 people — a sixth of the Finnish population,00:50:03
including women and children. New tanks,
including several experimental KV-2 heavy tanks,00:50:13
designed to break through fortifications,
were sent to the Karelian Isthmus.00:50:18
On February 11, 1940 the Red Army started a new offensive.
This time, at the cost of enormous losses Soviet troops managed00:50:27
to break through Finnish defenses. In no small part due to
the fact that at this point Finland had literally run out of men00:50:34
in the regular army, and by the end of the war it was practically
impossible to fill the gaps in the front, even with cadets.00:50:41
By the beginning of March, the Mannerheim line
fortifications were finally broken. Soon Vyborg fell.00:50:48
But Stalin did not dare to finish Finland off. Firstly,
the Red Army was thoroughly exhausted. 00:50:54
Secondly, there was a serious risk of Britain
and France entering the war on the side of Finland, 00:50:59
which would have led to huge issues. On March 12,
a peace treaty was signed in Moscow.00:51:05
Of course, the question of a "Finnish Democratic Republic"
was no longer on the table.00:51:09
The Soviet Union got Vyborg, the northern shores of
Lake Ladoga, the Rybachy peninsula on the Kola Peninsula,00:51:15
and Finland also allowed the Soviet Union to lease a military
base on the Hanko peninsula in the Gulf of Finland for 25 years.00:51:23
A "Karelian-Finnish USSR" was created from Karelia
and Vyborg, headed by the very same Kuusinen. 00:51:42
The war cost the Soviet people very dearly. The number
of dead soldiers is estimated at about 150,000 people, 00:51:49
with up to 200,000 more wounded and frostbitten.
Such losses were disproportionate to the final result 00:51:57
and the territories conquered. And Finland, which until
that point took a more or less neutral attitude to the USSR,00:52:04
became its enemy. In 1941, Finnish troops fought on
the side of Hitler, taking part in the siege of Leningrad.00:52:12
None of this would have happened if not for Stalin's
adventurous decision to invade Finland two years earlier. 00:52:18
The Finnish War, which had been on the periphery of World
War II, had dealt a significant blow to the USSR’s image. 00:52:24
The world saw that a tiny European country, Finland, was able to
inflict serious damage and almost defeat the giant that is the USSR.00:52:33
The defeats of the Red Army were widely reported
in the press, and Europe came to the conclusion00:52:37
that the Soviet Union was not as strong as it seemed,
Stalin's troops, despite their numbers, were weak00:52:44
and not capable of fighting in a real war,
and that Red commanders were incompetent.00:52:50
Based on this assessment of the Red
Army, Hitler prepared his march on the East.00:52:55
What no one realized was that the Soviet military
leadership was able to adapt to this new reality. 00:53:01
At the end of the Winter War, the
Red Army would start to change.00:53:05
The troops would receive new equipment,
primarily T-34 and KV tanks, new types of artillery,00:53:12
and new types of small arms. The Soviet troops
will be prepared for war in winter conditions.00:53:18
All this will play a hugely important role when
the war eventually comes to Soviet soil. 00:53:34
Bundestag In December 1939, here in Berlin,
like in many other cities in Germany,00:53:41
people were celebrating Christmas, preparing to greet the
new year, 1940, which was set to be even more successful.00:53:49
Adolf Hitler's popularity skyrocketed. After he
came to power, he managed to throw off the humiliating00:53:57
shackles of the Versailles Treaty, restore Germany's military
might, rebuild the army and navy, and create an air force,00:54:04
all in just six years. Without a single drop of blood
he annexed Austria and the Sudetes for the Reich.00:54:09
And finally, in just a month, troops defeated the Polish army,
took Warsaw, and regained the lands lost during World War I.00:54:19
Yes, somewhere out there, behind the Maginot Line, France
is hiding out, and over the English Channel is Great Britain.00:54:25
But they do not risk a direct confrontation with Hitler. And
now, having dealt with Poland and negotiated with Stalin,00:54:33
Hitler has ensured calm in the east, and will soon
surely deal with these sworn enemies as well.00:54:40
Surely many people here, in Berlin, in December 1939,
raised a celebratory toast to the health of the Führer,00:54:47
who was leading Germany from victory to victory. 00:54:50
And a year later there will be even more occasions for such
celebration. Let's talk about them in the next video.Description:
Утром 1 сентября 1939 года началась Вторая мировая война. Как произошёл раздел Польши, зачем СССР напал на Финляндию и что такое война без единого выстрела — обсудим в 3 серии нашего документального проекта. == Реклама == Flowwow — быстрая доставка цветов и подарков: https://flowwow.com/s/PEACE Промокод PEACE даёт скидку 10% до конца ноября. 2Vtzqwtbb36 _________________________ Часть 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgOcFQhOqgg Часть 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6t3dC_pnXB4 Часть 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPNeNEa6jeI Часть 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AgOJy2MaDI Часть 6: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiBuGMWDxy0 Часть 7: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oazmN083FzA Часть 8: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ucI9R5qL8A Часть 9: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvV03rTzwZI Часть 10: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBaC3dR37rs Часть 11: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3ZqylnUz7o Часть 12: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7b9gJqr0n40 Часть 13: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOF2hTWVgNQ Часть 14: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zVMqj9Xwh8 Часть 15: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0IGuu5OSCo _________________________ Поддержать канал: USDT (TRC20) TVLqmTPafduGyhBNpVhJCCJtvbqiA3ANxT USDT (ERC20) 0x0d41cc54fc089e96b3271467483d31a5e9d17940 BTC 3C4Xp9NMSsybwG1p9YENDbbuott4voPsFH ETH 0x0d41cc54fc089e96b3271467483d31a5e9d17940 Patreon (если вы не в России): https://www.patreon.com/join/maximkatz Boosty (если вы в России): https://boosty.to/max_katz Оформить спонсорство: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUGfDbfRIx51kJGGHIFo8Rw/join _________________________ Подпишись: www.youtube.com/channel/UCUGfDbfRIx51kJGGHIFo8Rw?sub_confirmation=1 Книга «История новой России | Максим Кац»: https://shop.maxkatz.ru/-p445952767 Тот самый свитер: https://shop.maxkatz.ru/%D0%A1%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%82%D0%B5%D1%80-%D1%81-%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BC%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%8F%D0%BC%D0%B8-p310507600 Обложки на холсте: https://shop.maxkatz.ru/ Купить книгу «100 советов мэру»: https://shop.city4people.ru/ Подкаст: https://katz.buzzsprout.com/ (а также на всех популярных платформах) Подписывайтесь на мои социальные сети: Твиттер: https://twitter.com/max_katz Телеграм-канал: https://t.me/maximkatz Инстаграм: https://www.facebook.com/unsupportedbrowser Фейсбук: https://www.facebook.com/unsupportedbrowser По вопросам рекламы пишите на [email protected] 00:00 ВСТУПЛЕНИЕ 01:00 НАПАДЕНИЕ НА ПОЛЬШУ 10:48 СОВЕТСКОЕ ВТОРЖЕНИЕ В ПОЛЬШУ 19:15 КАТЫНСКАЯ ТРАГЕДИЯ 27:30 СТРАННАЯ ВОЙНА 38:27 ЗИМНЯЯ ВОЙНА 53:24 ЗАКЛЮЧЕНИЕ
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How can I download "Начало войны | Германия вторгается в Польшу | СССР — в Финляндию | История Второй мировой (Eng sub)" video to my phone?
You can download a video to your smartphone using the website or the PWA application UDL Lite. It is also possible to send a download link via QR code using the UDL Helper extension.
How can I download an audio track (music) to MP3 "Начало войны | Германия вторгается в Польшу | СССР — в Финляндию | История Второй мировой (Eng sub)"?
The most convenient way is to use the UDL Client program, which supports converting video to MP3 format. In some cases, MP3 can also be downloaded through the UDL Helper extension.
How can I save a frame from a video "Начало войны | Германия вторгается в Польшу | СССР — в Финляндию | История Второй мировой (Eng sub)"?
This feature is available in the UDL Helper extension. Make sure that "Show the video snapshot button" is checked in the settings. A camera icon should appear in the lower right corner of the player to the left of the "Settings" icon. When you click on it, the current frame from the video will be saved to your computer in JPEG format.
What's the price of all this stuff?
It costs nothing. Our services are absolutely free for all users. There are no PRO subscriptions, no restrictions on the number or maximum length of downloaded videos.