User Reviews

This is another strong record of key historical events during the twentieth century.

The narrative captures the momentum very much in favour of Germany before the winter months started to turn the tide.

Lots of key points are covered such as the condition of the Soviet military prior to the invasion, particularly in relation to the purge of its command structure. Plus the effect of the freezing conditions, environment, and sheer size of Russia as the German advance ground to a halt. Everything is presented within an excellent historical and political context.

As ever with 'The World At War' there are notable interviews. This episode includes Albert Speer. However, it is unfortunately one-sided due to the time the documentary was made.

This episode includes important archive footage strongly edited to feature Lawrence Olivier's great narration. The imagery of bodies on the field of battle are incredibly saddening and powerful, reminding reminding you of the violent, destructive nature of the human race.

It's a 9.5/10 for me but I round upwards.

In Mein Kamph, Hitler writes "When we think of territory, we must think of Russia. Destiny itself points the way there." In this sentence, he sets the stage for the biggest land battle in history: Operation Barbarossa. In this World at War episode, the series analyzes the reasons why Nazi Germany invaded the USSR and how Hitler's delusions of thinking it was possible to conquer russia came back to haunt him. The episode goes over how germany and the soviets signed a non-aggression pact with each other, which was a huge shock to the whole world at the time. Nazism and communism were bitter enemies, and all of a sudden, Stalin was standing idly by while Hitler smashed into poland and france in the early stages of the war. This agreement was never meant to last very long, as the german military knew that Stalin would eventually throw the truce away and attack europe with russia's enormous army. Despite the USSR being by far the world's largest country, it was badly prepared for war with Hitler. 90% of its commanding officers had been killed in Stalin's brutal purges throughout the 1930s, and as a result, the red army had barely any competent leadership. It did however have thousands and thousands of armored vehicles, much more than germany (albeit they were older and less powerful). The soviet foreign minister Molotov visits Berlin shortly before Hitler attacks russia in a vain attempt to make sure relations between the two powers stay under control. Shortly before dawn on June 22, 1941, the wehrmacht finally attacks russia. Despite taking on a country many times the size of germany, Barbarossa proceeds like clockwork for Hitler at first. Taken by surprise, huge swaths of soviet troops are cut off and surrounded, and most of the soviet air force is shredded before it can get airborne. Thousands of antiquated russian tanks are blown up by german anti tank guns, and it seems like nothing can stop Hitler's advance. In spite of how good it's looking for germany right now, even they realize that russian manpower seems endless. The red army does not have much in the way of advanced weapons, but it seems to have more soldiers than the germans have bullets. Around mid october, the first signs of germany's impending defeat start to appear: it begins snowing. At that very moment, every german soldier knew he was totally unprepared for what was about to happen. The wehrmacht had no winter clothing, and with temperatures plunging as low as the negative 40s, they suffered horribly. Many german commanders preferred waiting until winter was over to continue the invasion, but Hitler wouldn't listen. By early december, his leading tank formations were just 19 miles from Red Square. Some units said they could see the domes of the Kremlin sparkling in the distance. Right when it looked like germany might seize Moscow after all, General Zhukov, one of the most esteemed soviet generals of the war, counterattacked with his siberian divisions. The german forces were shocked at the ferocity of an attack by an enemy they thought was close to being defeated, and were forced to fall back. This is how they would spend almost the entire rest of the war, giving up all the ground they had gained because of a relentless soviet advance. Like every other episode in this incredible series, Barbarossa is filled with historically important information that will always be relevant. In my opinion, it might be the best episode of the whole show since this event basically decided the outcome of ww2. Hitler took on russia because he actually thought he could win, but as with Napoleon over a century before, the unimaginable vastness and cold of the nation stopped him in his tracks, and he was beaten by the people he once called subhumans. Alongside the riveting combat footage we've come to associate with World at War, we also get to hear some surprising things, such as how the nazis were actually welcomed as liberators in some eastern european areas, especially ukraine, where anti russian sentiment was everywhere. It also says how basically all of germany's oil came from one area in romania called ploesti, which is just kind of baffling to me. Overall, I think this episode stands with the best World at War has to offer, since it explains the details behind arguably the most important event of the whole war.

Following the May 1940 fall of France, Nazi Germany was at the height of its power, with Adolf Hitler, about to turn his powerful Wehrmacht against Britain, also contemplating an attack on the Soviet Union in the fall of 1940. That operation, code-named Barbarossa, would not be launched until June 1941, but when it was, it would become, as "The World at War" narrator Laurence Olivier intones at the start of "Barbarossa (June-December 1941)," "the battle that was to decide the Second World War."

So opens the fifth installment of this groundbreaking 26-part documentary that must have been a revelation to viewers watching its initial broadcast and remains an invaluable lesson about World War Two today.

The Cold War effectively effaced the role and stature of the Soviet Union as a crucial ally against the Nazi conquest of Europe, but writer-producer Peter Batty delivers an intricate yet clear and compelling narrative of the background and initial consequences of the largest and bloodiest campaign of World War Two, one that stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea and claimed millions of lives, yet because the communist Soviet Union had been the mortal enemy of the "free world" during the subsequent Cold War, it is a campaign about which many are still largely unaware. "Barbarossa" vividly redresses this oversight.

German interviewee General Walter Warlimont notes that, for once, Hitler's generals were able to dissuade him from launching the proposed fall 1940 attack because of the harsh winter sure to ensue. Albert Speer, the Nazis' Minister of Armaments and War Production, explains that the Soviets' failure to defeat Finland in the 1939 Winter War (detailed in the second installment "Distant War") bared their military weakness to Hitler, who had always believed that Germany's quest for "lebensraum," "living space," lay in the vast reaches of Russia, rich in resources--and in potential slave laborers as the eastern Slavic peoples were considered "untermenschen," "sub-humans," by Nazi Aryan racial standards.

The sole Russian interviewee, rocket scientist Grigori Tokaty, who had defected to Britain in 1947, affirms that the purges conducted by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in the 1930s literally decapitated Russia's military leadership, but the Finnish campaign and the growing evidence that, despite the August 1939 non-aggression treaty signed between Germany and Russia, the Nazis would inevitably turn against them spurred the strengthening of Soviet forces.

Paul Schmidt, Hitler's interpreter, relates how Soviet Minister for Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov, who had negotiated the treaty with Germany, arrived in Berlin in November 1940 to confront Hitler about the possibility of an invasion, a belief that had been bolstered by the September 1940 Tripartite Pact Germany signed with Italy and Japan, cementing them as the Axis Powers pledged to provide one another mutual military support.

This prompted the Soviet Union to annex the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania as well as portions of Romania to form a bulwark against Nazi Germany. Ironically, however, as recounted by Averell Harriman, President Franklin Roosevelt's special representative to Britain, warnings by Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill that Hitler's attack was imminent were disbelieved by Stalin, convinced that they were trying to trick him, a perception Tokaty confirms.

Thus the stage was set for Germany's Operation Barbarossa in mid-1941, but Soviet intrigues in the Balkans prodded Hitler to invade first Yugoslavia, then Greece, starting in May. Although the invasions were successful, they prompted a five-week delay in the invasion of the Soviet Union that, as "Barbarossa" turns toward its second half, would have dire consequences for Hitler and Nazi Germany.

As edited by Peter Lee-Thompson, the footage of the German invasion of Russia and especially footage of the Soviet home front presents an illuminating, often bracing and poignant tableau of scenes rarely seen by Western viewers because of the de facto censoring during the Cold War.

Also vivid and sometimes haunting are the recollections of several unnamed German military survivors describing the conditions of the invasion. The Wehrmacht, split into three enormous groups, charged eastward toward Leningrad, Moscow, and Kiev, catching Soviet forces unawares. This resulted in the mass slaughter of Russian troops as the Germans, yet to be defeated, boldly drove forward more than a thousand miles, encircling Leningrad and coming within sight of Moscow, its citizens digging defensive fortifications yet certain of their eventual capture; however, Stalin's refusal to evacuate, as many Muscovites had done, heartens the Red Army bracing for battle.

But Hitler's delay in launching the invasion proves bitterly fatal as the brutal Russian winter besets German forces that even in good weather, and good military fortune, were already beginning to despair of "the melancholy" of the utter vastness of Russia's western steppes. Now the German survivors bemoan the "disconsolate" frozen landscape. However, their woes are just beginning. Taking charge of the defense of Moscow is General Georgy Zhukov, who masterminds a counteroffensive comprising 40 divisions of Siberian troops skilled in winter warfare as Nazi Germany feels its first true reversal of fortune, one that marked future misery for Hitler's invading forces attempting to conquer Russia.

With Carl Davis's incidental music accenting discreetly beneath the sobering black-and-white footage highlighting this insightful, unblinking portrait of a crucial yet overlooked campaign, "Barbarossa" is an essential installment of "The World at War."

REVIEWER'S NOTE: What makes a review "helpful"? Every reader of course decides that for themselves. For me, a review is helpful if it explains why the reviewer liked or disliked the work or why they thought it was good or not good. Whether I agree with the reviewer's conclusion is irrelevant. "Helpful" reviews tell me how and why the reviewer came to their conclusion, not what that conclusion may be. Differences of opinion are inevitable. I don't need "confirmation bias" for my own conclusions. Do you?