at many casualties stalingrad? 1.2 million. they arep center -- fighting for their lives and they are doing it successfully. what happens? the risk offensive, we know about that. back on the defensive fighting. ofober 1940 three to march 1944, heavy fighting. to illustrate how much fighting, david just produced a book. how many pages? 950. 1944, -- it to june of when we get to june of 1944, what did the germans understand? notink it is fair to say, reading history backward but understanding in the context of its own time, a lot of german officers might have felt soviets havesay, material superiority. they have been fighting for their lives for 2.5 years. maybe that breed the degree of arrogance. it is important context. here we are. of 1944, what did the germans understand to be the soviets strategic conception? i put the question mark up there because they do not know. do, whathat commanders could they be thinking? the german plan reflects german military thinking. on the first day, the germans built a point of concentration a

talk earlier about stalingrad and the sacrifices and it i5 stalingrad and the sacrifices and it is throughrussians made huge sacrifices and the documentation i work on talks about the wholesale slaughter ofjew in an annihilation programme but also there were russians and poles and there was intense human suffering and how we talk about that without rewriting. the difficult situation we are in. to keep talking about revisionism and the fact that you know as a historian, new sources come to light even now and had to be taken account of. when i was going up and learning history and a passion for history you almost thought you lived in a bubble that knew everything about the second world war. of course now decades later there is still new material coming out and just when we think there was nothing more we could possibly understand and particularly with the holocaust, i am working on new documentation about what the allies do and why they could or couldn't do anything about it, whether they did anything about it, whether they did anything about it, whether they did anything about it, so lots o

another stalingrad unit was the 44th division.t was filled with raw recruits up and down and showed it in its first encounters in combat. the same might be said of the 94th division. if the commander was hard-core, one of the last to fly out of the stalingrad pocket before the last german airfield was overrun by the soviets, and he did so against his will, practically had to be dragged into the plane. the quality manpower simply was not there. i think anyone is capable of being trained as a soldier, but these were men who had been hardly trained and were rushed into the field. in all these cases, should also recall another thing. these divisions consisting of only six fighting battalions. that is three regiments, to battalions of peace. it's infantry battalions who hold the line and do most of the fighting. german divisions could usually make impact, the initial fight would be fairly even. once both sides had worn each other down, german divisions tended to fade away in the hard fighting. my point, in terms of combat power, fresh

and fell to defeat in stalingrad, the bloodiest battle in history. >> he had an objectivity when he wouldee what was going on and how to move pieces on the chess board. on the other hand he was a murder sociopath. he would kill anyone for any reason if it worked to his advantage. he operated in a completely different moral framework than either churchill or roosevelt. >> bret: but churchill and f.d.r. knew they still needed stalin on their side. ♪ ♪ a lot of folks ask me why their dishwasher doesn't get everything clean. i tell them, it may be your detergent... that's why more dishwasher brands recommend cascade platinum... ...with the soaking, scrubbing and rinsing built right in. for sparkling-clean dishes, the first time. cascade platinum. and now for their service to the community, we present limu emu & doug with this key to the city. [ applause ] it's an honor to tell you that liberty mutual customizes your car insurance so you only pay for what you need. and now we need to get back to work. [ applause and band playing ] only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. libert

her second number and boys were killed in the battle of stalingrad. third husband was sent away to boo log and disappeared. she was a common people in the 50s and was sent away with her people. by khrushchev. and then she ended her life handing out sandwiches in front of the russian parliament building. she had personally experienced every single event of soviet history, and it was one of those burning moments that you see history right in front of you. >> so what happened next? >> so i came home and i saw that american culture had changed. i grew up -- i went to ojai school a place in pennsylvania and when i left it was a waspy town where people were green pants and deck ties. and when i came back i had the first anthropology, the store anthropology i never thought a story named after academic discipline would come to pennsylvania. so new culture in coming to and it became the first book. >> one is you write that? >> that came out in 2000. >> the theme was? >> there was peoples with 60s values in 90s money. so basically i came home and i looked at th

the turning point in world war ii was the battles of kursk and the battles of stalingrad. those battles were larger than the entire western front of world war ii. the russians lost over 20 million people and the germans, my people, lost about five to 6 million people. the loss was the largest in the history of military warfare. that is fake history. you see these people going on tv, talking about d-day, d-day, d-day, in particular, is very nice lady, martha maccallum, reading all the text. i am quite sure she did not know anything about military history. i could be wrong, but i know you know, i have seen you on tv. >> and we have talked before, you called and made that point before as well. i appreciate you calling in this morning on the 30th anniversary of the fall of the berlin wall. carl calling in on that line we set aside for german-americans this morning. it is (202) 748-8002, is that number. phone lines are split regionally. (202) 748-8000 if you live in the eastern or central time zones. (202) 748-8001 if you live in the mountain or pacific time zones. hope you joi