Operation Barbarossa: One Man's War (Part 7)

How were young men like Wilhelm Prüller radicalised by Nazi propaganda and ideology? What did troops think of the invasion of the USSR? When did the soldiers think the campaign would be over, and why? Join Al Murray and James Holland for part 7 of this titanic new series on the brutal Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, and how mistakes by warmongers on both sides led to untold tragedies on the Eastern Front during WW2. Start your free trial at ⁠patreon.com/wehaveways⁠ and unlock exclusive content and more. Enjoy livestreams, early access, ad-free listening, bonus episodes, and a weekly newsletter packed with book deals and behind-the-scenes insights. Get your ticket for We Have Ways Fest 6 here! Get your WHW Merch here! Visit refundclub.co.uk/whw. Refund Club is a trading style of Sandsford Law Limited, authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA no. 8008114). Checking is free. A fee is payable only if your claim is successful. Eligibility: car finance taken out in the UK between 2007 and 2021. The average claim is around £829 per agreement; this is an average and not a guarantee of the amount you will receive. You can also claim yourself for free by contacting your lender or the Financial Ombudsman Service. A Goalhanger Production Produced by James Regan Editor: Charlie Rodwell Assistant Producer: Alfie Norris Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Social: @WeHaveWaysPod Social Producer: Harry Balden Email: [email protected] Membership Club: patreon.com/wehaveways Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 2:28Speaker 00

  We heard at six that Germany, Romania, and Finland are, as of today, at war with Russia. Some of us simply gave to the astonishment. Some took it with equanimity. Others are horrified. Personally, I think it's a good thing that we face the fight squarely and save our children from having to do it. For this reason, in the long run, it will have proved impossible for two such great nations, lying right next to each other, and with such completely different ways of life, to exist side by side in peace and understanding. The fight between communism, which is rotting so many peoples, and national socialism was bound to come. And the Fuhrer will know what he's doing. Above all, I'm sure it'll end well.

• 3:10Speaker 00

  That is Unteroffizier Wilhelm Pruler writing in his diary on the 22nd of June 1941. A fateful day. So, welcome to We Have Ways of Making You Talk with me, Al Murray, and James Holland, and our Barbarossa series. And this is episode seven of this series. A one man's war and what we thought we'd do, zoom away from the big picture that we've been offering you in the last six episodes. The chaps on maps, the giant arrows groping deeper into the Russian Soviet heartland. And look at what it's like being one fellow in the middle of this incredibly dramatic story.

• 3:49Speaker 03

  So Wilhelm Pruler, spoiler alert, did survive the war and had written this diary for his wife, Henny. So rather than, I mean, he did write letters to her as well, but he kept a diary as a sort of daily record of what was going on. By the way, we're recording this in the middle of the heatwave. And in my newly insulated office in my barn, there is no breeze, no air conditioning, and I am broilingly hot. So if I'm dabbing my bride, please, please forgive me. But that's good, because what we really want to do is get a feeling what it was like in the Soviet steppe in the summer of 1941.

• 4:24Speaker 00

  Yes, just be grateful you're not in a Panzer 3, with the steel warming up and basically cooking you gently as you proceed across the steppe.

• 4:33Speaker 03

  I'm always thankful for the lack of Panzer 3s. But Pruler handed over his diary, which he'd kept and which survived with him in the war. He lost it a couple of times, recovered it a couple of times in the late 1950s, by which time he was still wedded to the cause and unapologetic, but also an alcoholic, you know, traumatised by his experience during the war and by what had happened to Germany. And it's an incredibly moving story because, you know, at the time of the invasion, he's the 1A, which is the General Staff Officer of the 2nd Battalion of the 11th Schutz Regiment, which is the rifle regiment, which is part

• 5:18Speaker 03

  of the 9th Panzer Division. And 9th Panzer is part of the 14 Motorized Corps under General Gustav Anton von Wietersheim, and part of Army Group South heading into Ukraine. And Wietersheim, incidentally, had also had a motorized corps during the Blitzkrieg in the invasion of France and the Low Countries, part of Army Group A that was coming through the Ardennes. And they were the motorized corps that were following up behind Reinhardt and Hert and Guderian. So he's still got a motorized corps because they don't have enough Panzer divisions. So they do have Panzers, but they're mainly just a mechanised, armoured force. They are also part of Panzer Group 1, which is the only Panzer force in Army

• 6:00Speaker 03

  Group South, and the only bona fide Panzer Division, that is the 9th Panzer Division, which is in that group. And joining them in 14 Corps are the 1st SS Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler and the 5th SS Division Viking. So these are both Waffen SS divisions, so they're incredibly well equipped. But they're not Panzer divisions, they're not particularly well trained, I think it's fair to say. You know, they're first and foremost motorised infantry rather than Panzer. And so it really, I think, underlines just how few tanks really are for Barbarossa. I mean, the bulk, as we've already seen in this series, are with

• 6:41Speaker 03

  Army Group Centre, rather than Army Group South or Army Group North. But a bit on Wilhelm Pruler. So he's an Austrian. He's born in Vienna on the 14th of January 1916. His background is working class. His father's a typesetter, who then has to give up his job because of lead poisoning and become a casual labourer. I mean, you know, these are the kind of sort of health and safety issues that we just don't have to deal with today, obviously. The family's Catholic, reasonably devout. Pruler joins the Hitler Youth aged 11, and by 17 is a member of the Nazi Party in Austria, and then becomes a member of the SS. You know, for him, the Nazis are very much offering a renewal of pride and identity. But of course

• 7:26Speaker 03

  also, it's equal opportunities in the Nazis. So, you know, this gives you an opportunity to rise up from your working class roots. You know, there's nothing if not equal opportunities for those who kind of buy into the Nazi schtick and get into the Nazi way. I mean, that's the truth of it.

• 7:42Speaker 00

  And also, because they're bound in Austria, if you're really into it, you're going to be more into it, aren't you, is the thing. I think that's one of the notable things about Austrian Nazis, is that because there's an attempt to keep the lid on it, these people are further radicalised. So he emigrates to Germany, you know, he follows his Nazi star, as it were, to Munich.

• 8:02Speaker 03

  Follows the drug, doesn't he?

• 8:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, to Munich. Exactly. And only returns to Austria.

• 8:06Speaker 03

  But where else are you going to go?

• 8:07Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, you're going to go, you're going to go, exactly. You're going to go to the source, aren't you, in Munich? But, and he returns to Austria after the Anschluss. You know, there's so many people like this, aren't there? And he does feel, he does feel very much on this course, doesn't he? Right from when he's a child. It's extraordinary, really. And then he's a district manager for Kraf der Freude, which is a state-run leisure organisation, with 350 Reichsmarks a month. Yeah.

• 8:33Speaker 03

  It's an outside Lido. It's kind of, you know, an artistic centre. There's sports, there's hiking, there's all that kind of stuff. He's got a little office. He's swanning around. You know, he's getting 350 Reichsmarks a month, which is a lot more than most people.

• 8:47Speaker 00

  And he's getting a chauffeur-driven car at his disposal. He's clearly feeling the main man, isn't he?

• 8:51Speaker 03

  Yeah. You know, he's puffed up, he's got his Nazi kit on, he's got his black uniform and his boots and what have you. And now he's got a bit of money in his back pocket and a chauffeur-driven car. And he can marry his childhood sweetheart, anyway. But then, which I think is really, really weird, he's then drafted into the Wehrmacht on the 1st December 1938, despite being in the SS. So he doesn't go into the Waffen SS or remain in the Algemein SS. And why? He doesn't mention this in his diary, doesn't say it. He serves in Poland, in France, and the Balkans, by which time he's an NCO.

• 9:21Speaker 00

  Yes, he is a dedicated Nazi. But that's the tenor in which Barbarossa is being prosecuted, isn't it? It's the truth. And with that, of course, he's vehemently anti-communist. Because, you know, in the cocktail of Nazism, anti-communism is a very, very strong ingredient, isn't it? He's going for that thing that, yes, they're saving Europe. They're saving Europe and in fact the world from being overrun by communism, which also means Jews. It's the thing to remember. In Nazism, when people say one thing, they mean everything all at once, don't they? Is the truth, you know? And he doesn't like the Versailles Treaty because he's Austrian, doesn't like what happened to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, blah, blah, blah. And he says, "It is no longer a fight of the Reich against its old enemies,

• 10:05Speaker 00

  but a war of Weltanschläge, a war of truth against untruth, a war between Teutons and the Jews. Thus the Teutons of this most respected continent on earth engage in a war to the death with plutocracy, allied with the murderers of the East."

• 10:18Speaker 03

  It's amazing, isn't it, how, you know, he's a young, impressionable man. It's just incredible how completely he is swallowing the Nazi lines and the Nazi propaganda. He is all in on this. And he clearly profoundly believes it. You know, he thinks it's good. And the amazing thing about him is that his diary is full of sort of really horrible lines, but it's also full of, you know, shows him to be a tender fellow. You know, he has his friendships, he has his wife who he clearly adores, you know, he's a doting father. You know, he's not an entirely bad man. But his head has been turned by this horrible ideology, which, you know, obviously today

• 11:00Speaker 03

  we find extremely disturbing. But this is, this is what makes it so fascinating, I think, reading and following these people, because they are fundamentally the same people. It's just, and, and their response to the situations which they find themselves, certainly in terms of combat and stuff, is, is not entirely incompatible with, with pretty much anyone else who's seeing, seeing service. You know, he's, he's clearly a dedicated, loyal and courageous soldier. You know, and his writings for someone who, who's been brought up working class is incredibly articulate. You know, his, his observations are incredibly acute. And as I say, he seems quite likeable until he starts, you know, out, out comes the bile.

• 11:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, the ideology, well, it's, it's the power of ideology, isn't it? It's the, it's the interesting thing, isn't it? But we're not even on to the banality of evil territory here, are we? Because I often think, people resort to that so they don't have to explain what's going on here. And it just shows, it shows actually what, what, how powerful ideology is, and how, how you can be a guy who loves his kids, but also desperately want to murder Jewish people or whatever, or what, or whatever, you know, um, it, it, or Russians or whoever, yeah, or communists, which of course covers all. Um, so, um, I mean, at the time of the invasion, the, um, um, for the launch Barbarossa, Ninth Panzer Division is in Upper Silesia, which is southeast of Warsaw. Um, so in the northern grouping

• 12:24Speaker 00

  of Army Group Centre, and they set off towards the border in a column, because, in a motorized column.

• 12:28Speaker 03

  Yes, because just, just to remind everyone, because Army Group Centre has been divided into two. It's, it's got this huge front, frontage, and the northern grouping, which is the main grouping, is, is the main thrust. And then the southern grouping is more of a defensive one, which also had the Romanians, if you remember. And that is really more just to stop the, the, the Red Army bursting through and going the other direction, basically. So he's in this northern group, he's in the thrusting, surging group.

• 12:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, their mechanized infantry is the thing to remember. So in Czestochow and in other larger towns too, the Jews are herded together in a particular part of the town, like our former Judengas in Vienna. When they go out, they, man or woman, have to wear a white armband with the blue star of Zion on it. That's the way it should be for the whole world. So straight away, um, uh, they're at it. It's amazing. He says, looking down for the truck he's in, the people seem very depressed. I mean, well, that's not, that's no surprise.

• 13:20Speaker 03

  No shit, Sherlock.

• 13:21Speaker 00

  They're, they're walking with heads down, huge queues for bread and milk. And by 1:45 in the afternoon, they reach Denver near the border and camp in woods. There's no drinking water, there's just a slimy pond. And no, no new maps are issued, so they're all a bit disheartened, because they think, they, they think they're getting going and then there's no new maps, so it can't be. Then late, and then late in the evening, they get 10 enormous parcels of maps of Russia, of the Soviet Union. So what a job, oh well, I didn't get any sleep last night, I might as well stay up tonight, too. So basically, because he's, because he's a staff officer, here comes the planning, basically, and he's, he's got to get to, get to work.

• 14:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, so he's, he's the one A, so he's, he's like the sort of number one desk wall, really. Although it has to be said that in a Schutz regiment, in a, in a motorized rifle regiment like this, this is not like being a staff officer in the US Army or the British Army, where you're kind of, to a certain extent, sort of sat behind with your spectacles, uh, you know, behind a typewriter. No, no, no. Grushka is in the frontline all the time, because absolutely built into these better units, these better divisions, and the Panzer Divisions, like Ninth Panzer Division, is the idea that all the officers have to lead from the front. You know, this is why they have such particularly catastrophic losses in, in their offices, because they are all doing what they've been trained to

• 14:41Speaker 03

  do, which is charge into the guns. And so, as we will discover, he's going to get plenty of action in the, in the days and weeks to come. But anyway, uh, um, three days in to the campaign, campaign, they're still waiting for their marching orders. And again, I think this speaks volumes of the scale of this, the lack of roads, the, the, the gridlock, which frankly is being repeated from Casioello, from the invasion of the Low Countries. I mean, this is like von Wiedersheim's, um, motorized corps in the Ardennes, where they were back of the bus, and they were having all manner of gridlock. And this is exactly what is, is happening here. And, and, you know, Prula, for, for one, is not happy. It's

• 15:25Speaker 03

  boring, there's nothing to do, and, and he wants to be part of the great victory. They, they're all absolutely imbued with, with confidence, and, and that this is all going to turn out brilliantly. The early reports suggest that, you know, they're overrunning everything, um, the enemy are fleeing, and they don't want to, don't want to miss out.

• 15:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:46Speaker 03

  And there's nothing to do, and there's nothing to buy, because there's no bread, there's no wine, they haven't got any money, um, there's no cigarettes in this part of eastern Poland, because it's completely impoverished by the kind of horrendous last 30 years, which they've tried to exist. Uh, and of course, because they've been overrun by Germany and then, then the Soviet Union in Poland, um, they do get some cigarettes, but, but only by trading them for eggs. You know, and it's, it, there's a sort of tone of resentment here, but of course, it's hardly the Poles' fault. I mean, that's occupation for you, right?

• 16:15Speaker 00

  Well, particularly by, by the Germans. So it's not until, um, uh, 1800 hours, on the 27th of June, which is a Friday, they're told, they're told to be ready, and they finally move out at, at 2100 hours. And, um, I mean, I love this. He's, he's annoyed because Minsk has already been taken, and a thousand Soviet planes have been destroyed. He feels, basically, he wants, he wants a piece of the action, doesn't he? And he's, he's feeling frustrated that they aren't, they aren't in on the kill. That's about a quarter of all their veritable machines. Isn't it natural that we can barely wait to go on into action? After all, we want to accomplish something big in this, our greatest and most important fight. So rather than thinking, well, thank good, thank goodness I haven't

• 16:58Speaker 00

  been shot at yet, he's full of, uh, you know, what Monty would call binge, isn't he?

• 17:03Speaker 03

  Yes, big time.

• 17:04Speaker 00

  And inevitably, obviously, they, they set off late, because you always set off late. Um, no one, no one leaves on time. And they're marching through the villages.

• 17:14Speaker 03

  No one does, ever.

• 17:15Speaker 00

  No, no one ever leaves on time. No one's ever left, no one's ever left their start line on time. Um, and they march through villages, um, that have been smashed up by the fighting from 1930 line. And he says, as we went through Bill Goy, the only thing you could say was that used to be Bill Goy.

• 17:29Speaker 03

  It's quite droll, isn't it? I mean, you know, that, I mean, that's quite a good line, isn't it?

• 17:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's good enough, but it's also like, well, who did that? It's a great mystery, isn't there? Often, often in this stuff.

• 17:38Speaker 03

  Well, that would have been the Soviet Union.

• 17:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, places need saving for the Soviet Union, because they've been smashed up by it. Hmm. Anyway.

• 17:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, so they're still driving towards the border on Sunday, the 29th of June, and, and that's when the news reaches them of yet more successes. Forty thousand POWs, they hear, 4,107 enemy planes, all getting very precise, 600 artillery pieces have been captured, you know, and they're, and they're just clearly giddy with the excitement of it all. And then finally, at 9:30 PM, they cross the border into what had been Ukraine. And they come across border defences, and not least an impressive anti-tank ditch, then several burned out villages. Miserable looking prisons of war, uh, Red Army prisons of war march past, and progress is slow, he says, you know, we're going at a meter a time. The

• 18:27Speaker 03

  roads are awful, the congestion terrible. Rather Ruska, they're ordered to halt for the night. And it's 3 AM by the time Prula gets his head down. Uh, and it's just, you know, it's clear, it's not at all how we imagined this was going to be. And then Monday, the 30th of June, he's up again at 5:45 AM. And I think one of the things that's, that's, you know, so that's less than three hours later. And I think one of the things that really comes across in this, is we, we touched in the last episode, I think, we, we were talking about immense strain these men are being put under, and how much is being expected? You know, they're just round the clock. And here you see this firsthand. I mean, I mean,

• 19:10Speaker 03

  you just can't keep this up at this pace, physically. There isn't puritan tablets being handed out willy-nilly by this stage.

• 19:16Speaker 00

  Yeah. He says, the road is the worst imaginable, deep sand, and then huge craters right across the whole road, and this mile after mile. So the, the, the poor quality of the Soviet roads is also a further embrogence, isn't it?

• 19:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it sounds very like the roads in southwest Berkshire.

• 19:35Speaker 00

  He says his eyes ache from looking at so many vehicles, one after the other for as far as he can see. And they reach the town of Buzhsk in the afternoon and Russians are being hauled out of houses, disgusting creatures, he calls them.

• 19:47Speaker 03

  I mean, this is awful, isn't it? Because these are, these are impoverished peasants who the Germans have turned out and they're like hauling people out of their homes and, and, and all he can call them is disgusting creature. He is utterly revolted by their poverty and, and appalled by their poverty. And so, you know, he, he is looking at them in the same way that a medieval knight would look upon a kind of, you know, a medieval servant. You, you know, as absolute un- to mention, these are the lowest of the low, that they're so backward that they're not really deserving of being compared in the same sentence as human beings. I mean, that, that, that is how he, he sees it.

• 20:26Speaker 00

  Yes, and there's some Soviet troops are surrendering, including one of them who's a woman who's wounded and Prula can't get his head around this because she's, she's not a nurse, she's a soldier.

• 20:35Speaker 03

  You know, she's not a, a housefrau, what's going on? Vay isn't she at home looking after Zakinda?

• 20:39Speaker 00

  And also there are Ukrainians who are, who are showering them with flowers and there are triumphal arches at the entrance to the villages with signs in Russian and German saying, the Ukrainian people's thank their liberators, the brave German army, high Adolf Hitler. So they're, they're encountering, he's encountering lots of things all at once here, isn't he? Like how, how squalid and poor parts of, uh, the Soviet Union are, that the Red Army is using women to fight. So that's a like another, that's another like thing from an alien culture, isn't it?

• 21:06Speaker 03

  How low can they stay?

• 21:07Speaker 00

  And then Ukrainians, Ukrainians, I mean, you know, hedging their bets as much as anything else by, by, by welcoming them on their arrival. You know, he's having his worldview proved to him, isn't he? By some of this.

• 21:19Speaker 03

  But, but he's also completely shocked by what he sees. I, I mean, this is about as far removed as cosmopolitan sophisticated Vienna as, as you could ever expect. And, and, and, you know, it, it is, I, I don't know, it, it's like sort of Captain Cook arriving on a island in the Pacific or something, you know, he just, he just cannot get his head around this sort of huge difference in standard of living and way of life. He's up against it early the next day, isn't he?

• 21:49Speaker 00

  Yes, out of the sack at 2am, really they're saying no rest for the weary applies to us. So, and they actually go into action that day. So it, you know, he's been careful what you wish for, he's going to get it. Prula marvels at the sight of 40 Panzers moving up, the infantry step off at 7:30 in the morning, anti-tank guns are in position, um, uh, uh, which gives the, which gives them a lot of confidence, then the infantry just mount and they follow as the tanks crash through and they burst through the front line of Soviet defences, but at the second line they meet enemy tanks, but they're not anything to worry about. And he says, the Russians aren't up to our anti-tank guns nor to our tanks. Then they move up later as the road and ditches are jammed full of knocked out enemy tanks. So it's gone, that first encounter's gone, has gone well.

• 22:32Speaker 03

  Absolutely on the nose, exactly as he predicted, as their confidence suggested it would and all the rest of it. You know, and, and it's absolutely clear that at this stage, you know, here we are at the very beginning of July, 1941, there's absolutely nothing that can dent his confidence or his profound and deep rooted belief in, in German military superiority. But the shock of what he sees, and, and this is a man, he's seen plenty of action already. I mean, you know, he's just hot footed it from the Balkans for example, where, you know, he was in Greece in, in April and here he is in June, it's over the Union. Uh, and, and he says, you know, of these sights.

• 23:09Speaker 00

  There are hideous sights inside of the tanks. One man without a head, another sliced in two, the brains plastered over the walls, revolting. So the, the viscera of war is getting to him. Um, and they, but they press on, they reach their third target using firepower and tactical air support. And he sees, sees one enemy tank on fire, um, ram into a house, destroying it and eventually halting in the middle of a second house. So, so he's getting, he's getting the action he wants and they, they advance on towards Sasov and enemy tanks appear from all sides, but these are knocked out as well. And then later that day, Prula is ordered to head back to the rear and bring up the reserves, um, which must be because their own casualties are mounting and it's time

• 23:54Speaker 00

  to take the pressure off the forward companies.

• 23:55Speaker 03

  Yes, so he has quite the escapade because he beetles off in his Kubelwagen at, at, at 80 kilometer meters per hour. So what's that, 50 miles an hour? So beetling along and, and by a little village, um, there's a small road and, which is joining his road from the left and he sees a Russian tank coming down towards it and he just thinks, oh my God, I'm absolutely stuffed, you know, it's, it's, they're converging and he's got no hand grenades, he's got no rifle, no, no nothing, he hasn't got an MP40 or anything. And if the tank sees them, he's toast. So he's got this split second to make his mind up about what to do. And so he just goes straight off the road into the ditch, rolling the car and, and flinging them out so they're flat on their faces in the cool grass, but, but he and the guy he's with are okay.

• 24:39Speaker 03

  Ever so slowly, ever so gingerly, he raises his head and sees the tank, but it just rumbles on straight past them without, without seeing them. He can't get the vehicle back on the road, but he can see seven companies lorries at the far end of the village, which is where he's trying to get to. So he thinks, well, there's nothing for it, I'm just going to dash across this field. But no sooner they started running than another tank is heading straight for them. So shots are fired and crash into the seven company trucks.

• 25:08Speaker 00

  He says, dreadful roar now, stumbling, crawling, we move on far too slowly for me.

• 25:13Speaker 03

  But they do reach the company lines, you know, they, they get there. Clearly there's an utter chaos there because they've, they've, um, you know, just come under fire, but an anti-tank gun has hastily moved into positions and turns on the two Russian tanks and, and opens fire and the tanks then very, very quickly pull back and, uh, and out of the way. So having delivered his message for the men, he's given a motorcycle, a sidecar and together they head back again, you know, overtaking transports, driving up the line. And after a kilometer, bullets start singing past his head, but he, he does manage to make it back and reports that his mission is accomplished.

• 25:50Speaker 00

  Now learn that we almost suffered a bad defeat. The eighth company penetrated the woods in front of us, about 100 meters and received terrible infantry fire, partly from sharp shooters in the trees and partly from marvelously camouflaged machine guns. The company lost 80 men, the chief is badly wounded. Those who got back told the most revolting stories you could possibly imagine. The wounded camaraderie were worked over by the Russians with their gun barrels until they were dead. Many people saw this, only the Russians can be that bestial. That's what they are anyway, beasts. No other soldiers, the whole wide world could act like such beasts.

• 26:24Speaker 03

  He's had his fill for the day, hasn't he? I mean, you know, this is my point, he may be 1A, but he's not out of the action. And anyway, they attack again that evening, the, the wood they're assaulting, in which eight company has been assaulting and which has had all these, these terrible casualties. Um, it's a massive tracer and explosions as their artillery opens up. I mean, and he, he just thinks no one can possibly survive. And although he's a company 1A, he still has to join in leading seven companies attack with the company commander, you know, and, and because as we were talking earlier on, you know, his, his CEO is imbued with that spirit that you've got to leave from the front. But obviously attacking woods, even if it's following on artillery barrage at dusk is about as bad as it gets because you can't see very far and you don't know what's coming

• 27:09Speaker 03

  and the airbus caused splinters to the wood, which can be deadly. And suddenly it's dark and suddenly it's quiet and Prula senses, just senses the enemy's withdrawn, you know, there's a few occasional rifle cracks ring out and then they discover some Russians in a ditch.

• 27:28Speaker 00

  But once we hurl hand grenades at them and they disappear. They cleared the woods and then they get back into their vehicles and then orders come to move on at 5:30 in the morning onwards to Tornopol. So it's relent, it's relentless, isn't it? It's completely relentless.

• 27:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, so just to, just to go back to the start of this day, he's out of the sack at 2am. So what, what's this? This is now after midnight and then up again at 5:30. I mean, how long can you, can you keep this going? I mean, it's, it's, it's crazy how much they're expecting of these guys, isn't it?

• 28:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, it is, it is.

• 28:05Speaker 03

  So Wednesday, the 2nd of July, 1941. Onwards to Tornepol. Their own artillery is already fixed in the hills around the town. And Pruler stands behind a house at the edge of the town with the CEO and his aide de camp. And they watch, there's the gunfire rains down, the shells hurtling in and explosions and so on. And he writes a great little sequence here.

• 28:27Speaker 00

  You simply cannot imagine, Henny, what the concentrated fire of a reinforced motor battalion means. You think the world's at an end, the sundering roar of guns, the shots bursting as they land, the trails of traces from the fleck, the burning houses in the town increased by the tracey shells of our artillery. It's frightful and beautiful. It would be quite understandable if the Russians in Tornepol went out of their minds today. That's very good, isn't it?

• 28:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, it is good. So they enter the town and the CEO is just standing up in his Kubelwagen urging the men on. And Pruler sits beside him with his carbine on his lap. They fire a few rounds into the attics, but the, but the noise is so great. It's hard to know if anyone's firing at them because you know, you can just imagine it, can't you? You're going down this narrow street, you've got this rumble of Kubelwagons and trucks and artillery and Panzers and so on. They then halt at the centre of town and sixth company passed through them because they're seven company, combing the streets and then they follow and set off again. So it's like this sort of leapfrogging through, through the town. And the next stop is, is the bridge on the, on the far side. And they're tracked enemy fire and then realise it's coming from the railway line.

• 29:34Speaker 03

  So a Soviet armoured train with 40 tanks loaded on it is about to depart. I mean, it's come in, it's part of, you remember there was all those, you know, they're moving up all that, that machinery and material for their own invasion, which is due to start on the 25th of July. And this is part of that, but then they're now hastily beetling backwards again. And two self-propelled guns move forward and start firing at it. And they just go methodically down the line, shooting at each loading tank until the entire train is shot to pieces and burning. I mean, we've kind of seen that scene in movies, haven't we?

• 30:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 30:11Speaker 03

  I mean, you can, you can just picture it.

• 30:13Speaker 00

  Yeah. Then the men rush across the bridge one by one. They overtake at a hundred kph temple. Stupatis is on the bridge, firing his machine pistol and a Russian two metres off gets blank in the stomach and kills Stupatis. Both of them were with me, all doing my time as a recruit. It's always the best funds to get it. So this is bit, this is bitter fighting, isn't it? For all the like, for all the advancing.

• 30:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:36Speaker 00

  And all the sort of massive leaps forward. It's costly, isn't it? We've told that story in the large of Barbarossa, but here it is in the intimate, isn't it? That, that no matter how fast they go, they're wearing themselves out and they're attriting. And they clear the town, but then they're shelled in turn and Pruler lies flat and hopes for the best. He says, what do you think about at such a moment? As far as my orders allow me, I think of everything, of you as a children, home of our parents, a future, my profession. Everything spins round in your head at once till all I think of is this. If only I come through it alive. And then it starts to rain and he hates the rain.

• 31:11Speaker 03

  And that's a very, I think that's a very human and natural response, isn't it? To this situation, you know, he's, it's, it's really noticeable that there's a tone shift here. The, the kind of over excited, kind of, I just want to get at the enemy kind of chat that, that's been kicked into the long grass. This is awful reality because for all the fighting he's seen in France, for all the fighting he's seen in the Balkans, this is on a different scale already.

• 31:38Speaker 00

  It's war without end is what it is because there doesn't seem to be a moment where the Soviets are going to topple. It's, it's, it, you know, with, with France by now, you know, at, at least a week into it, the direction of travel was evident, wasn't it? Whereas this seems to be an unending thing. You know, the ideology can get you so far, can fuel you up and paper over the cracks. But it, when it encounters reality, it's no substitute for thinking about your children and your home and your parents. He's not lying flat thinking, well, at least this means that we're going to save Europe from Bolshevism. He's not thinking that, is he? That, that bromide, that bromide.

• 32:13Speaker 03

  Not anymore.

• 32:13Speaker 00

  Doesn't work. We'll take a break here and then we'll come back.

• 32:16Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 32:17Speaker 00

  We'll come back with more of Pruler and as July rolls out ahead of him. See you in a tick.

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• 33:48Speaker 00

  Welcome back to We Have Ways to Make You Talk with me, Al Murray and James Holland. And episode seven of our, of our Barbarossa series, One Man's War. And we're looking at Unteroffizier Wilhelm Pruler.

• 33:59Speaker 03

  He started to rain and, and one of the things I think is interesting is that when we think of the Soviet campaign, I think we just think of it sort of relentlessly baking hot summer and dust. And we think of the rain coming in the autumn and then you think of the kind of the snow and the freezing conditions, you know, later on in the year. But you don't really associate these opening stages with rain. But, but it's amazing how much it is, it is raining at this time. And we're only on, by the way, the third of July, 1941, not even two weeks into the, into the campaign at this stage.

• 34:30Speaker 00

  Yes, 10 days, 10, 11 days, yeah.

• 34:32Speaker 03

  Pruler is full of admiration for the company commander, you know, and, and his, his ability to, and willingness to lead from the front. And he's also convinced it makes them win more quickly. He believes they're more sort of tactically agile, but obviously it's incredibly dangerous. And, and the loss of officers particularly is already really bad. And this goes back to your point you were making earlier on, which is, is yes, they're winning, but they're, they're being attrited all the time. They're taking on casualties all the time. And they're experiencing exactly what the spearheads are experiencing in Army Group Centre. This is an advance of roads rather than of vast swathes of territory.

• 35:14Speaker 03

  And it's really important to make that distinction because these roll barns, as they call them, the, these routes that have been mapped out, these roads, that's your only means of going from A to B. You can't, you can't just drive a truck or, or, you know, across a marsh or across an open field. You know, you have to use these roads. But such is the vastness of the distances that you can't also just fan out and secure all the territory. So you've got these little fingers. It's like a sort of exaggerated 30 corps before Arnhem. You know, you've got this finger deep into the, into enemy territory. And it's not really cutting it is the truth.

• 35:49Speaker 00

  Well, and the roads are no good. He says, the whole war takes place more or less on the road. Without securing the landline to the left or right of the road, we move along and reach the appointed goals. How many Russians must be cruising around the country still? Well, there it is. Jim, if he can spot it, why can't OKH and OKW, right?

• 36:06Speaker 03

  Because they're miles behind.

• 36:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:08Speaker 03

  Because they're looking at maps and they're looking at what they've done in the past. And they're thinking of France and the Balkans and, you know, and it's just, it's just different. And because they've hubristically not counted enough into, or not factored enough into their plans, the vast expanse of this territory and this landscape and, and it's very, very primitive infrastructure. And how difficult it is to actually take territory. Anyway, they push on ever, ever onwards. And the next time is Camionka. And, and here they surprise the Red Army Cavalry, which gets shot up by their flak guns. You know, it's complete carnage. And, and again, you know, he, he's horrified by what he sees.

• 36:47Speaker 00

  Horses and men lying about in vile disorder. You can see one of the Russians trying to raise himself up and then his strength ebbs away and he collapses like a sack. It's frightful.

• 36:56Speaker 03

  And, and, and some enemy tanks are spotted up ahead and, and someone yells out for the, for the pack, the anti-tank guns to come forward. Pruler grabs a motorcycle and tears to the rear like a fire engine to bring up the anti-tank guns. And then the column made worse by blackened and knocked out enemy vehicles hinders the speed, of course. So he, he's having to dodge and weave and all the rest of it and, and go through potholes and past knocked out vehicles and tanks and so on. And by the time he eventually gets back to the regimental headquarters, the enemy tanks have gone. And actually the pack, the anti-tank guns are no longer needed. And when he gets back, he hears what's happened. And apparently the tank just drives straight on past them with troops on top, including women soldiers.

• 37:38Speaker 03

  I mean, we've constantly throughout the war, you hear this is where someone's just wound up in the wrong position. And they just think, oh my God, what am I going to do? They just, they, they just carry on. The Russian tank commander shot their own ordnance officer with a pistol before the entire tank was inevitably then destroyed. And Pruler goes past the wreckage a little bit later.

• 38:00Speaker 00

  It was completely burned out. Some of the women completely nude and roasted were lying beside the tank. Awful. All along the whole road of approach, you see Russians have been mashed up by lorries or tanks. If you look at one of them, you can't believe that it was ever a human being. An arm there, a head there, half a foot somewhere else, squashed brains, mashed ribs. Horrible.

• 38:20Speaker 03

  You know, it's, it's, it's roadkill, right? And then it starts raining again and quickly the road turns to mud. And I just want to point out that that is Thursday, the third of July that he's talking about. You know, so we're, we're, we're two weeks in, that's it. So then it's Friday, the fourth of July, and they find a house to shelter him, but it's squalid and stinks. And Pruler can't bring himself to enter because it's just so horrible and impoverished and ghastly. And, and they pause for the day and then move off at 7pm. And he's managed to fill his canteen with some alcohol, which he prefers to water tea or coffee.

• 38:55Speaker 00

  Righto.

• 38:55Speaker 03

  Because.

• 38:56Speaker 00

  It clenches the thirst better, Jim.

• 38:58Speaker 03

  Or does it just dull the horror a little bit? I would suggest perhaps the latter. They stop at another town and the company headquarters is, is set up in a large house. And there's rumours of, of Russian atrocities are rife.

• 39:11Speaker 00

  Yeah. And not only do we harm not a hair of a Russian's head, but our stupid men are so soft-hearted that they turn around the next minute and give these criminal riffraff cigarettes. It's not people we're fighting against here, but simply animals. So he's managed to gee up his ideology again there. The men are seeing the Russians as people perhaps, but the officers are. Pruler himself has managed to sort of, he's managed to grab hold of his Nazism with both hands there. He's also struck by how many, what he calls Asiatic faces there are among the dead. Dead women in uniform as well, which must have really been mind blowing.

• 39:44Speaker 03

  He's obsessed by it.

• 39:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, these criminals, these criminals stop at absolutely nothing. I mean, this is, are we the bad guys, Mitchell and Webb stuff, isn't it really?

• 39:53Speaker 03

  Are we the baddies? These criminals will stop at absolutely nothing. I mean, again, this is just, you know, he's right on the money, isn't he, on the nose of Nazi ideology there. I mean, and you can see him, can't you? You can picture him taking this all in horrified by the violence and carnage of it all and all it's seeing and convincing himself that the people they're up against are not normal human beings, they're not equal human beings like them, they are subspecies that frankly, the world is better off without. And that is helping him to justify the kind of awfulness of what he's seeing, I think. I think that that's what's going through. Do you think that's bad?

• 40:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, I do. And I think the fact that at the moment the Germans are winning is also underlining that they're the master race here, that the people they're fighting are lower creatures because they're winning, because they're winning apparently so sort of relentlessly. I think it's interesting because it comes and goes, doesn't it? When he was, when he was, when he was in danger, he wasn't thinking, ha ha, you know, we're overpowering our racial inferiors. He was thinking about his wife and his children. So it comes around and goes around, doesn't it? How ideologically is. So they set up a regimental battle headquarters in a Red Army military hospital and they find 10 dead Russians in one room. Then they get news that they're going to be relieved by the SS and, and he thinks, you know, a rest would be nice, but then again, we've only just been going, we've only been going a couple of weeks. And because the hospital stinks,

• 41:15Speaker 00

  he decides to sleep outside and wishes for just one night where he could get a decent night's sleep. I mean, that's the eternal story of the soldier though, isn't it? The infantry. By two o'clock in the morning, it's, he gets, finally gets his head down and then he's up again at six. And it's after all, after so many nights like that, it's, it's not enough, is it?

• 41:32Speaker 03

  It's not enough. And, and they are just expecting too much of these guys. And they, they off they go again and they're, you know, the relentless march forward continues. And this time it's to Proskurov. And just, just put yourself in his shoes and just think how far you've already come.

• 41:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:48Speaker 03

  You know, from your start point in Upper Silesia in southeast Poland to here. And you just think, oh my God, you know, how far are we? You know, we're so far in here. And yet ahead of you is, you know, effectively infinity.

• 42:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes.

• 42:04Speaker 03

  I know. It's just completely relentless.

• 42:06Speaker 00

  Yes, they're advancing into the void essentially. The advance goes very slowly. Numerous obstacles keep slowing down our charge. You can't really call that we're on a road. It's better than this in the Tainist Hamlet in Germany. And we're marching on a main road. The road's muddy because as you said, Jim, there's been some rain and it's bad enough to sink up to the knees, but in the middle of the road, there's also dust.

• 42:27Speaker 03

  On the shoulders, on the edges. Every vehicle is, is just covered by this impenetrable cloud of dust. Again, you can manage it. You just imagine, I mean, these are roads which are designed for once in a blue moon, a small car. You know, think of Model T or something. I mean, but a Soviet version, but horse and cart, but you know, mules and, and horse drawn vehicles. Suddenly you've got thousands of vehicles. And just think of the dust cloud and then think of the mud when it starts raining and how that, the churn of those, those wheels on those roads. And then you think of battle damage, you know, shell holes and what have you. And you think of old, just potholes that haven't been, been cleared

• 43:09Speaker 03

  up and repaired. And suddenly you're getting a, a fairly clear picture of the conditions in which they're operating and they push forward under a protection umbrella of machine guns and mortars. And when they discover enemy foxholes, everyone just shouts and then hurls grenades. And mostly the Russians try and flee, but as they do say, they're just cut down.

• 43:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:33Speaker 03

  Anyway, here we are finally on Monday, the 7th of July, you know, where they're about to launch a big attack on the Stalin line, line south. And this kicks off again really early, 5:30 in the morning, two infantry companies with the 33rd Armored Regiment in support. And the enemy are dug in ahead of them. The ground is muddy from yet more rain and slowly the Panzers swing into position.

• 43:55Speaker 00

  Everyone's in a fever of excitement. The Vavir always are before an attack. Our cheeks glowing, our eyes sparkling, our hearts beating faster. And our thoughts concentrated on one thing, to get them, to destroy them. And then suddenly, he remembers that it's his daughter's birthday. So he has to push these thoughts aside. No matter how g'd up you are for destroying the Russians, if it's your daughter's birthday, you know, what are you, what are you gonna do? 140 Panzers move off at quarter past five that morning. The Russians will soon be ready to shit, Pruler writes. But his Kubelwagen gets stuck in the mud and he's brought, but he's brought dispatch riders with him for that exact contingency. And they crawl into a cornfield with the company pennant aloft.

• 44:38Speaker 03

  And suddenly it's like, you know, zip of bullets going across, across the top. Because of course, you know, that attracts enemy, enemy, enemy snipers and shooters and so on. But, but they have to do this because it's a guide to the following companies. And Pruler gets his orders to move and weave through the woods. So he's got his MP40s at the, you know, 40 are the ready, his machine pistol and, and ready. And they head up, up a hill and they get fired on and bullets are whistling over their heads. And Pruler can't see how they're ever going to reach the top, but you know, orders their orders and, and he says.

• 45:13Speaker 00

  We must go up. We must throw the Russians out.

• 45:16Speaker 03

  So they crawl forward and it, yeah. And in times some Panzers come forward to help and, and then they, the infantry follow up behind. And this is great because the tanks are, are giving them the protection that they need. And this does the trick and they blast the positions and then allow the infantry to get so close that they can lob grenades. And then the Panzers go over the foxholes and the trenches of the Russians and grind their tracks over the trenches. But it still doesn't kill all the Red Army troops, even though Pruler thinks they'd have been turned into soup, as he writes it. And instead they're still firing and throwing grenades. And at this point, Leighton and Kleiner Hassebruch drops next to him, shot in the belly. And Leighton and Zern stays

• 45:59Speaker 03

  with him until he dies, you know, cradling his, his dying friend in his arms. And now they're creeping up to each foxhole, hurling grenades and then finishing off with pistols and rifles. Cause this is, you know, deeply close quarter stuff. And some enemy put their hands up, but the Germans are not in the mood for mercy. So they just cut them down. And this is largely because one Russian shot a comrade having surrendered. So they're not going to take that, you know, follow that trick again. They clear the hill and count 135 dead Russians. They've lost just 11 men. Pruler is walking between Zern and Leighton and Kuhn, who are both hit. Kuhn with a stream of blood gushing from his mouth,

• 46:42Speaker 03

  Zern with a, with a splinter in the arm. But Pruler miraculously is completely untouched.

• 46:48Speaker 00

  Good God. Gosh. And then not long after that, a second wave of shelling begins and he flings himself into the mud in a ditch and feels himself lifted up and slammed back again by the, by the concussions. I've had a few seconds, then I feel all my bones from head to foot, which front soldier wouldn't have. And when I see that nothing hurts and don't feel any warm trickles anywhere, I take off like a shot. I jump and run as fast as my legs will carry me to battle headquarters. That later that afternoon, they resume the attack at around six, about half past four, 16:30 and they've won the day. It's a success. While they're cleaning up the cornfield, we find some Russians still there who won't give up. So there's no way out but to mose them down.

• 47:26Speaker 03

  It's brutal.

• 47:27Speaker 00

  It is absolutely brutal. And the officers, as you pointed out, the officers are really, I mean, we've seen there, the officers are taking, taking it on the chin, aren't they? For the, for the, for this campaign, all these, all these friends being killed around them.

• 47:40Speaker 03

  But remember, you know, nine Panzer is the only Panzer division in this corps. I mean, you know, that is it. There's hardly any. So, so we're only up to Tuesday, the 8th of July, 1941. I mean, you know, this is, this is not yet three weeks. And all night they're in the open. And then at 8:00 AM, they march off to Proskurov, a larger town than, than those they've overrun so far. And they're there for a few days. And then on Friday, the 11th of July, seeds of doubt are starting to, to creep in.

• 48:10Speaker 00

  When I see, even at this time of year, how our vehicles are, after it's rained a little, can barely make the grade. I just can't imagine how it would be in autumn when the rainy period really settles in. We're fighting a solid mass of dirt outwardly and inwardly.

• 48:25Speaker 03

  You know, as I say, those doubts are starting to creep in. They're starting to realise that perhaps they've bitten off a little bit more than they can chew. Anyway, they advance again. And this time on the, on the first asphalted road, which is a cause for a huge celebration, although it then stops after 35 kilometres. So what's that? That's not quite, that's like 19 miles, isn't it? They reach a village in the early hours, Sudilkov, and he sleeps upright in his Kubelwagen, as he, as he often does these days. And then Saturday, the 12th of July, 1941, it's a gorgeous day, but then the Soviet bombers come over. Hang on a minute, haven't we destroyed all of those? The village is a wreck. The Russians have been occupying the school with posters and propaganda all

• 49:09Speaker 03

  over the place. And all the windows are shattered and he's, you know, he's horrified by what he sees. Sunday, 13th of July, 1941, off they go again. Yet more rain, yet more long muddy roads. It stops after an hour, by which time they're all soaked. And at Polonja, a Viennese infantry regiment turns in next to them and marches alongside him, prompting all sorts of homesick pangs.

• 49:35Speaker 00

  No wonders that my thoughts turn to my beloved Vienna and that I had a great wave of homesickness for you and the children. That I thought of our beautiful buildings, of Schonbrunn castles, the Pradas, rings, the clean squares. And here we are, marching on the world's most impossible roads, driving these beasts before us.

• 49:53Speaker 03

  Two days later, they're in Skavila and he's shocked to see emaciated Ukrainians pillaging ruined homes. Like, he says, they're like ants clearing out everything on their skinny backs. He's never seen such poverty or, or, or lack of civilisation. And he's, and he really is clearly incredibly shocked by how low the living standard is. Which obviously unquestionably adds fuel to the fire of German superiority. You know, again, he's thinking of Schonbrunn Castle, isn't he?

• 50:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:25Speaker 03

  Gorgeous Vienna, et cetera, et cetera. And here he is in this sort of godforsaken corner of, of western Ukraine, southwestern Ukraine. And at this point, they're relieved by an SS division. So this would either be the Liebestandarte or the Viking. And he's told they'll have a bit of peace and quiet for a few days, but he doesn't believe it for a minute.

• 50:43Speaker 00

  There's no one thinking of rest. The road to victory, to destruction, to the complete annihilation of the Bolsheviks is still a long run. So he's getting the message, isn't he? That this is gonna go on and on. Come the 18th of July, 1941, they're still paused at Skvira, when he's told he's been awarded the Iron Cross Second Class. And he's the first in the regiment to have been awarded it since the start of the campaign. And he's absolutely, he's pleased as punch, isn't he?

• 51:11Speaker 03

  You know, it's a ceremony and everyone cheers him and, and you know, he gets the medal put onto his chest and blah, blah.

• 51:17Speaker 00

  Lovely.

• 51:17Speaker 03

  But off again on the 20th of July. But before they leave, a prisoner is brought before them who is just 13 years old. Pruder just, you know, who's hard enough to get his head around female soldiers. But a 13 year old, you know, and of course, you wait. I mean, you won't be quite so shocked by 1945, chum, I can tell you. But anyway, he's still in a state of shock about how, just how awful the Soviet Union is. And, and his impression had been one of, of model factories, of model prisons, of model houses, model farms, et cetera. You know, that is what he understood communism to be.

• 51:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And he says, "You didn't hear much about the poor crushed peoples themselves. Only is that they were poor, really poor in every senses of word. Peasant houses with straw roofs which look more like dog huts, ragged, dirty, animal-like people. Roads which are either messies of sand or other, because it rains all the time, molasses of mud. The towns versed and the versed provincial backwoods nested home. And despite all this, the land is so incredibly rich, as far as the eye can see, wheat and cornfields without end. What's behind it all?" So, well, I mean, he concludes and realizes that the Soviets are enslaved by the regime, by whipping commissars, that the paradise of communism is nothing but lies and bluffing. And he says, "The paradise of workers was nothing but a conglomeration of hunger and

• 52:43Speaker 00

  misery, murder and mass imprisonment, slavery and torture. We shall crush them, so help us God."

• 52:48Speaker 03

  But Wilhelm, what about the Nazis?

• 52:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. I mean, come on. Hold on, mate.

• 52:54Speaker 03

  Can you, can you not see the irony in what you're saying here? I mean, clearly not, this is the point.

• 52:58Speaker 00

  Well, and the plan after all is to starve out this part of the world, isn't it? And give it to Germans. So, so what's the difference?

• 53:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, so look after it and bring asphalted roads and turn them into, into autobots. Yeah. Anyway, 24th of July, 1941, they're given a briefing at regimental headquarters by Colonel to update them on the general situation. And as we shall discover in the next episode, by the 24th of July, you know, things are in crisis mode, certainly in Army Group Centre. And in their immediate area, they have six divisions in action, they're told. They're in the process of a major encirclement of Soviet troops in Ukraine. And it's estimated that one or two more Russian armies will have to capitulate within the next few days. The Red Army, the Colonel tells them, has overall lost 100 divisions. And this means they've already lost to all intents and purposes. You know, the war is, is all but over.

• 53:49Speaker 03

  And this sort of rhetoric is being repeated all along the, the front, the German front at this time. "The best troops have been overrun in the, this is the Red Army's best troops in, in the border battles and the vast losses of men and material gigantic and completely irreplaceable." That's what they're told. "They're now just sending ill-trend masses which won't be up to much." So in other words, it's in the bag. That's, that's the message.

• 54:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, "I reckon that the Russian campaign will be over by the middle of September", he says. I mean, goodness me.

• 54:21Speaker 03

  He's talked to his mates and that's what they've decided.

• 54:23Speaker 00

  Exactly. Well, his mates are still alive. I mean, and it rains over the next few days, then clears at the beginning of August. And he's appalled and shocked by the villages and towns, but he loves the landscape, vast fields of wheat and sunflowers. He loves watching the sunflowers turn their heads with the sun. He says, "You can't imagine what a happy feeling it is to see such a country, Henny. As far as eyes can see, fields, corn, wheat, field after field. This is great country we are capturing for our children. This earth, this wealth, it's simply wonderful."

• 54:52Speaker 03

  You know, he's entirely in keeping with most human beings that they're not straight lines, you know, that they're not entirely consistent all the time, you know? What you're thinking on, on the 24th of July is not what you're thinking on the 3rd of July. You know, they've just had this inspiring speech saying, you know, we've got them on the run, we've almost done it, we're almost winning. So he's now, and they're poor, so he's caught up on his feet and all he can see is these beautiful fields forever. And he's suddenly thinking, yeah, actually I can see how this is all gonna work. I can see why we would want this and I can see, you know, what, what an amazing potential this country has. If only we could get rid of these, these impoverished dogs. I mean, that's.

• 55:27Speaker 00

  That's it.

• 55:28Speaker 03

  That's the tone of it. Anyway, they don't, they don't move a huge amount for a few days because at this point, this is a point, as we shall discover in our next episode, where there's a, there's a major realignment going on in, in the entire strategy for Barbarossa. So it's not until the 4th of August, 1941, that he's, that he's in, in action again. And this time it's a big battle for Turnovka. It's a victory again and his battalion alone captures more than 3,000 enemy plus a mass of booty. But he's also had several lucky escapes. Houtman Sartorius is shot through the head, standing where Pruder had been just moments before. Then just before Turnovka, they paused on a, on a rise and went forward.

• 56:13Speaker 03

  And Pruder was shocked to see Russian vehicles as far as he could see, albeit heading backwards, bugging out of the town. But, but there's still a lot of them and, you know, they've been led to believe that this was a death rose. So he's then ordered to go and find the commander of the 33rd Panzer Regiment. And moments later, Shoba was also killed where Pruder had just been standing, talking to their battalion, see ya. So he's having one lucky shave after another. And that evening, they finally reach Turnovka.

• 56:41Speaker 00

  Yeah. And he says, "The place is full of Russians and prisoners tell us that there are supposedly two generals in the place. At 2,200, I lie down, dog tired on some straw. It was a terrible day, but again, luck was with me. How long will I last?" By this time, they've suffered 350 losses in the battalion, so a third of their combat strength, more than a third, which would, which would, in, in the current money, render them combat ineffective, wouldn't it? In the current, the modern reckoning. So they're winning, but they're not winning enough. And maybe they're winning a bit too much at the same time. They're not winning enough and they're winning too much. And so our next episode will be the last in this series.

• 57:22Speaker 03

  Yes, we're gonna leave Wilhelm Pruder there for the time being.

• 57:25Speaker 00

  And as Jim intimated, but we're gonna return to what's happening in Army Group Centre and the efforts close to the Smolensk Pocket.

• 57:32Speaker 03

  This series will get us up to the beginning of, of August, 1941. And then later on this year, we'll, we'll return to Barbarossa and of course, Operation Typhoon and the encirclement of Kiev and the, and the march on Moscow and all the rest of it. And Leningrad, the start of the siege of Leningrad. This period up to the beginning of, of August, this is really where the seeds of the failure in the Eastern Front are sown. And really where you can sort of chart the failure of Barbarossa at this, at a stage which I think is much earlier than most people would, would consider. I mean, as we've been going through this and as will be absolutely come clear in our last episode in this series, this, you know, we're talking about biting off more than you can chew.

• 58:15Speaker 03

  It's just, it's an absolute mess, is all I can say.

• 58:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But essentially, don't do it, you know? Don't do it. Don't invade, don't invade the Soviet Union. Don't do it. No matter how compelling the reasons seem to be, don't do it. Don't do it. It won't work. Anyway, there's our, there's your TLDR for this, for this series. If you'd like to hear of these, of course, without the adverts, or an all-in-one, did it just lump? In fact, if what you need to do is get to that episode eight right now, then become a Patreon, join the We Have Ways of Making You Talk Patreon, become a member. And there's loads of other stuff behind the paywall. There's audiobooks, there's ticket offers, there's merch, there's live cast with me and Jim. And we will see you in Smolensk in our next episode. Cheerio.

• 59:04Speaker 03

  Cheerio.