The World at War (TV Series)

Stalingrad: June 1942-February 1943 (1974)

Laurence Olivier: Self - Narrator

Quotes 

• Laurence Olivier - Narrator : Hitler wasn't worried. He thought - and the high command's own intelligence confirmed this - that the Russians had no strategic reserves left.

• Laurence Olivier - Narrator : The soldiers are calling Stalingrad the mass grave of the Wehrmacht.

• Laurence Olivier - Narrator : It was not an ordinary defeat. It was a catastrophe.

• Laurence Olivier - Narrator : On Christmas day, Radio Moscow broadcast to the Germans in Stalingrad "every seven seconds, a German soldier dies in Russia. Stalingrad is a mass grave". The ticking and the message went on all day.

• Laurence Olivier - Narrator : Another German wondered - are we really going to have to fight through another of those dreadful Russian winters?

• Laurence Olivier - Narrator : On November the eighth, Hitler made an after-dinner speech in Munich.

  Adolf Hitler : [Hitler in German]  I wanted to get to the Volga at a particular point where stands a certain town that bears the name of Stalin himself. I wanted to take the place and, you know, we've done it. We've got it really, except for a few enemy positions still holding out. Now people say 'why don't they finish the job more quickly?' well I prefer to do the job with quite small assault troops. Time is of no consequence at all.

  Laurence Olivier - Narrator : But time was creeping up on the Germans. Even before Hitler's speech, the Russian winter had begun.

• Laurence Olivier - Narrator : This was the same Sixth Army which, 2 years before, could not imagine defeat.

• Laurence Olivier - Narrator : One delivery contained some ground pepper and twelve cases of contraceptive.

• Laurence Olivier - Narrator : Only a trickle went to Stalingrad. The rest went to assembly areas north and south of the city.