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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm editor Kendis Gibson, joined by staff writer Jane mcgraf.

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Speaker 1: Hey there, Candice, Hey Jane, you're may wonder what does

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Speaker 1: Billy Joel have to do with World War Two? You

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Speaker 1: got me on that one. I don't think I know

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Speaker 1: that well. My personal favorite Billy Joel song is all

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Speaker 1: about Seoul. But there's one called Lennon Grad actually, and

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Speaker 1: we are going to be chatting a little bit about

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Speaker 1: bloody World War two battles today. That's almost a tongue twister,

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Speaker 1: it is. Um, So just to give you guys a

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Speaker 1: little bit of context on World War Two and the casualties,

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Speaker 1: a little redex on that. So World War two, um,

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Speaker 1: if you can believe, it was actually the bloodiest war

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Speaker 1: in human history, at least that we know of, and

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Speaker 1: the sounding fifty million lives were lost during the entire war,

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Speaker 1: and it's just it's it's crazy to think of about

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Speaker 1: how many people that that was. When we think about

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Speaker 1: the advancements and technology that accompanied the warfare and World

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Speaker 1: War Two, it's easy to understand because we're not talking

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Speaker 1: about men going and to hand to hand combat alone anymore,

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Speaker 1: we're talking about air rates and bombs. Sure, you've got

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Speaker 1: airplanes that are really advanced by this same yeah, and

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Speaker 1: you you've got um the Japanese Comma Kazi pilots that

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Speaker 1: we've talked about before, and a way really to kill

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Speaker 1: people without having to physically be neared them. And so

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Speaker 1: I think that that rendered soldiers a lot more ruthless

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Speaker 1: and their strikes. That's true. And we're talking about the

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Speaker 1: most powerful nations um on the planet at this time,

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Speaker 1: and of course, if you're not familiar with them, the

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Speaker 1: major access powers at the time during the World War

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Speaker 1: two were Germany, Italy, and Japan, and there were some

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Speaker 1: other access powers that joined them as well, but these

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Speaker 1: were the most powerful. And then the allies the opposing

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Speaker 1: forces would have been written France, the United States, and

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Speaker 1: the USSR back when we were very very tight. And then,

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Speaker 1: as we know in the course of history, we drifted

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Speaker 1: apart for a while and we're working on reparations and

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Speaker 1: things are going pretty swimmingly now. So um anyway, and

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Speaker 1: actually in the Soviet Union was where one of these

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Speaker 1: very bloody battles took place and So Jane and I

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Speaker 1: are each going to enlighten you guys about some dire straits,

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Speaker 1: and I'm going to start with Leningrad. So I was

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Speaker 1: listening to Billy Joel on the way to work this morning,

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Speaker 1: and I wasn't listening to Leningrad, but I listened to

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Speaker 1: that once I sat down at my desk and looking

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Speaker 1: at some of the lyrics. This is a profoundly sad song,

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Speaker 1: because I don't think I've ever heard it well. It

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Speaker 1: essentially tells the story of a young boy named Victor

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Speaker 1: who is alive during Leningrad, and he's a little boy,

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Speaker 1: and then when he grows up, he spent some time

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Speaker 1: giving military service, and then when he's out, he's free

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Speaker 1: to choose to do what he wants, and he wants

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Speaker 1: to become a clown because he seems so much sadness

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Speaker 1: in his life. He wants to do something to give

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Speaker 1: others joy. So I won't torture you by singing the song,

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Speaker 1: but I will read you some of the lyrics. Um

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Speaker 1: a child of sacrifice, a child of war, another son

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Speaker 1: who never had a father after Leningrad. And then when

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Speaker 1: we learned that he's become a clown. Uh, Billy Joel

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Speaker 1: tells us the greatest happiness he'd ever found was making

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Speaker 1: Russian children glad. And children lived in Leningrad, and the

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Speaker 1: Siege of Leningrad was a nine hundred day siege that

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Speaker 1: started in September nine and went all the way until

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Speaker 1: January n lenon Grad was the second largest city in Russia,

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Speaker 1: so it really was to the Germans advantage that they

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Speaker 1: surround the city and work their way in, and that's

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Speaker 1: exactly what they did, and they actually got a little

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Speaker 1: bit of help from the finish I think, coming from

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Speaker 1: the north. And one of the first things that the

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Speaker 1: Germans did was cut out the railroad that went to Moscow,

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Speaker 1: so no supplies were coming in for a city of

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Speaker 1: about three million, and of those three million, I think

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Speaker 1: nearly four hundred thousand were children. So people didn't have

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Speaker 1: very much control over what was going on. They didn't

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Speaker 1: have anything to eat, there was very little fuel as well,

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Speaker 1: so dire straits, like I said, and Hitler decided that

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Speaker 1: even though the Germans were occupying this territory, they couldn't

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Speaker 1: possibly care for all these people. So in order to

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Speaker 1: control the population, he wanted to downsize it. So he

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Speaker 1: ordered these massive air strikes and raids, and what's more,

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Speaker 1: the winter of January nineteen forty two was bitterly cold,

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Speaker 1: so people were dying. But because there was so much

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Speaker 1: snow and ice, you couldn't even see the corpses in

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Speaker 1: the street. So the number of dad didn't become a

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Speaker 1: parent really until spring came and people thought, and it's horrifying.

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Speaker 1: It is horrifying to think about it, really is, and

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Speaker 1: to think that you would be a prisoner in your

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Speaker 1: own home. You couldn't walk around in the streets for

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Speaker 1: fear that you'd be killed. And the thing is, evacuation

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Speaker 1: was available, like people could have chosen that route, but

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Speaker 1: a lot of people stayed instead. I think only around

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Speaker 1: five hundred thousand got out, and people who stayed behind

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Speaker 1: tried to keep their lives as normal as possible. Children

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Speaker 1: still went to school, people still stayed in the factories

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Speaker 1: producing war gear and war equipment, and they suffered essentially

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Speaker 1: on things like only a quarter of a loaf of

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Speaker 1: bread a day, men, women and children. And around nineteen

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Speaker 1: forty three they were able to start planning vegetable gardens

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Speaker 1: for some sustenance and open the railways back up. But

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Speaker 1: things were really rough. I think that one woman even

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Speaker 1: recounted in a pretty recent interview that when she was

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Speaker 1: a little girl lived in Leningrad. Her dad worked in

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Speaker 1: a tannery and he would bring home animal skins and

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Speaker 1: they would boil them and make stew from them. So

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Speaker 1: things were just really, really bad. They're finally around. The

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Speaker 1: Soviets were able to quell the attacks, and they finally

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Speaker 1: were able to fight off the Axis powers, and um,

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Speaker 1: the people of Leningrad really generated a lot of sympathy

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Speaker 1: from the Allied forces, and people in the United States

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Speaker 1: really looked at them as a symbol of perseverance and preservation,

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Speaker 1: and you know, those were some of the principles that

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Speaker 1: the United States was founded on. So they connered a

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Speaker 1: lot of admiration there and even today, pretty recently, just

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Speaker 1: in January, actually um Dmitri Medvedev ordered that there be

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Speaker 1: a recount of all the Soviets who died in the war,

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Speaker 1: because people still don't know. There's still body parts scattered everywhere,

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Speaker 1: people still missing in action and identified bodies and mass graves.

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Speaker 1: And I think that today that Russia is still grappling

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Speaker 1: with the incredible losses shows you know just how powerful

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Speaker 1: that that was, and that's just one battle and many

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Speaker 1: in the course of many throughout World War Two. That's

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Speaker 1: interesting you bring that up because when I was researching

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Speaker 1: for this, the article in the podcast, it surprised me

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Speaker 1: how difficult it was to find exact numbers, because I

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Speaker 1: went into it thinking, you know, this is a war

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Speaker 1: that happened in the twentieth century, um a time where

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Speaker 1: we documented by the time, we were documenting everything. You know,

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Speaker 1: we we have you know, film for goodness sake, and

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Speaker 1: and we have documents that are readily available. But the

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Speaker 1: the idea that we don't know how many people died,

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Speaker 1: we don't know what happened, it's just really interesting to

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Speaker 1: think about. And also you brought up the idea of evacuation,

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Speaker 1: and that made me think, like, why didn't I mean,

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Speaker 1: I'm sure some people must have had the opportunity and

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Speaker 1: didn't take it. And one writer, um I looked into

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Speaker 1: the thought that part of this had to do with

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Speaker 1: the symbolic importance of len and Grad, because lennon Grad

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Speaker 1: was actually the birthplace of the Russian Empire, and so

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Speaker 1: it did hold a lot of symbolic importance for them.

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Speaker 1: It did, and even in the midst of air strikes

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Speaker 1: and race, people were scurrying to hide a lot of

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Speaker 1: the museum artifacts and valuables and tuck them underground are

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Speaker 1: into very safe places that they could preserve the city's culture.

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Speaker 1: And even today Russia calls it the Great Patriotic War.

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Speaker 1: And I think that estimates put the number of cow

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Speaker 1: gualties between sixty one thousand and eight hundred thousand. So,

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Speaker 1: like you were saying, there's this huge range, and it

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Speaker 1: is pretty sad that we don't have a definitive number,

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Speaker 1: but thanks to add Medvedev, hopefully we'll get that. That's

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Speaker 1: really interesting. So, like you said, Candice, Lennon, Grad was

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Speaker 1: over by January and by the summer, as you might know,

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Speaker 1: d Day happened and if you've seen Saving Private Ryan

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Speaker 1: or the Longest Day, you know what that day is.

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Speaker 1: And the Allies came in and they invaded Normandy and

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Speaker 1: they were doing really well by this point. It was

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Speaker 1: an amazing success. They were making their way across northern

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Speaker 1: Europe there in northern France and they marched into Belgium.

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Speaker 1: So the Allies were marching through Belgium and they started

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Speaker 1: slowing down by the winter about December they weren't making

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Speaker 1: as much progress as they were before, and Hitler took

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Speaker 1: this opportunity to pounce. There was a major shift in

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Speaker 1: the war. Basically, Hitler was doing really well for a

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Speaker 1: couple of years, and then the Allies on both sides

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Speaker 1: of him. You have the uss are on the east

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Speaker 1: and the Allied troops invading Normandy to the west, and

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Speaker 1: he was struggling with both sides by this point by

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Speaker 1: and so he was like, we need to make a

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Speaker 1: last ditch effort here. If we're gonna even try to

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Speaker 1: force the Allies to make peace, we have to launch

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Speaker 1: something right now. And even his officers at this point

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Speaker 1: I thought this move was really risky. But Hitler he

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Speaker 1: didn't want to surrender, and he was really he had guts,

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Speaker 1: that's true, and he was willing to sacrifice a lot

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Speaker 1: of his soldiers lives for So his strategy was to

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Speaker 1: basically split the Allied troops. They were coming at him

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Speaker 1: in Belgium, and you have the U S forces in

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Speaker 1: the south region and you have the British and the

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Speaker 1: Canadians in sort of the northern part of Belgium, and

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Speaker 1: so he wanted to go in between them, and he

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Speaker 1: wanted to make a wedge in between them. And this

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Speaker 1: is where we get the idea of a bulge. I

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Speaker 1: think Churchill came up with the this unofficial nickname for

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Speaker 1: the Battle of the Bulge, and Dany never discussing earlier,

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Speaker 1: I don't get by it's a bulge by not I

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Speaker 1: don't love the wedge doesn't at least seems accurate. But

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Speaker 1: maybe you guys have some insight on that that you

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Speaker 1: can email us the vat those dude, please do so

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Speaker 1: that's where you get the unofficial nickname. And so Hitler

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Speaker 1: was really smart guy. As you probably know, he brought

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Speaker 1: in about two fifty thousand men with about a thousand

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Speaker 1: tanks and armored vehicles, and tanks were a major deal

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Speaker 1: in this battle. It's primarily known as a tank battle.

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Speaker 1: And keep this in mind that if since you're since

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Speaker 1: Hitler is uh is driving tanks through, he's gonna need

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Speaker 1: a lot of fuel as well. And this comes into

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Speaker 1: play later. So he's driving his tanks through this wedge

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Speaker 1: that he's trying to build, and he takes a day

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Speaker 1: that has particularly bad weather because he wants to ground

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Speaker 1: the Allied air support and so on December sixteenth, when

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Speaker 1: the weather was particularly bad, he launched this surprise attack.

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Speaker 1: And it's really important that it was a surprise because

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Speaker 1: it caught the Allies obviously off guard, and this put

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Speaker 1: him in the major, major advantage right off the bat.

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Speaker 1: So you've got the surprise going for him, you have

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Speaker 1: the weather going for him. And in addition to this,

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Speaker 1: this is what I found really interesting, is that he

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Speaker 1: also planted some saboteurs into into the Allied troops. They

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Speaker 1: he gave some of the English speaking German soldiers US

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Speaker 1: uniforms and he sent them in to infiltrate and sort

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Speaker 1: of just re havoc as much as they could in

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Speaker 1: the US forces. And they did things and just like

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Speaker 1: spreading bad information, confusing people, even switching road signs, which

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Speaker 1: I I just find it's like straight out of cartoon

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Speaker 1: or maybe like a silent movie comedy. Uh, It's just

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Speaker 1: like I didn't know people did that to send them

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Speaker 1: the other way. Um. And so the Germans were doing

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Speaker 1: really well, as they said. They attacked first on December sixteenth.

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Speaker 1: They drove the Allies back a few miles and they

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Speaker 1: were doing really well. Finally they got to this town

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Speaker 1: named Bestone that the Allies had occupied and the Germans

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Speaker 1: were able to surround the town and they sent in

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Speaker 1: a message. They were like, you know, surrender now. We're

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Speaker 1: definitely gonna get you, but we're gonna give you a

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Speaker 1: chance to surrender. And this American good dear General h

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Speaker 1: Anthony mccauliffe. He replied, now an infamous response one word

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Speaker 1: and he said nuts. And I'm not sure if I'm

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Speaker 1: giving that the red inflection, because when someone asked what

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Speaker 1: he meant, he said, go to heck and he didn't

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Speaker 1: say heck, but you get the picture. So finally the

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Speaker 1: weather cleared up, they were able to hold up with

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Speaker 1: best Stone by the way um and the Germans were

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Speaker 1: not able to take it. So the weather cleared up eventually,

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Speaker 1: and by December twenty six, pattent as you might know,

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Speaker 1: General Patton came with his third Army and he was

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Speaker 1: able to help protect the town of best Stone. And

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Speaker 1: then by January three, the US forces were able to

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Speaker 1: gather their supplies to launch a counter offensive. And so

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Speaker 1: by the time the Nazis were also struggling with their

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Speaker 1: supplies and fuel. They didn't have enough to to keep

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Speaker 1: their their tanks running, to keep their soldiers fed and

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Speaker 1: so they began retreating by about the eighth and the

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Speaker 1: sixteenth of January. One interesting point about this is that

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Speaker 1: the Battle of the Bulge features what might be the

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Speaker 1: first jet bomber raid in history, where they used jet

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Speaker 1: bombers to actually bomb a railway that was bringing supplies

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Speaker 1: to the Allies. So that's pretty interesting factoid right there.

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Speaker 1: So in all, the Battle of the Bulge is known

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Speaker 1: as one of the most bloody battles, at least that

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Speaker 1: Americans have ever fought. In nineteen thousand U S soldiers

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Speaker 1: lost their lives just in this battle alone, and that's

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Speaker 1: not including those who were wounded, which wounded in missing,

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Speaker 1: which were about seventy thousand. Yeah, and you explained to

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Speaker 1: me earlier that the term casualties encompasses not only the dead,

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Speaker 1: the injured, the sick, the missing, and the fact that

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Speaker 1: we were discussing earlier that we're not quite sure of

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Speaker 1: exact numbers even now. Right, it's so fascinating to think

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Speaker 1: too about World War Two, not just in terms of

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Speaker 1: the war, but in these many violent battles that constituted

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Speaker 1: a larger hall. And we're talking about battles that were

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Speaker 1: occurring in the USSR and over in Western Europe as

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Speaker 1: well as the islands over by Japan and at the

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Speaker 1: theater of war was so widespread, and it's no wonder

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Speaker 1: that today and even contemporarily back then, there were so

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Speaker 1: many books and even operas and films and and biographies

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Speaker 1: written about the people who are part of the war,

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Speaker 1: and figures like Churchill are so revered even today for

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Speaker 1: their strategy and kind and even just his bravado. I

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Speaker 1: think it's such a great character. You know, never never

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Speaker 1: give up, and we see why, because you can't persevere,

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Speaker 1: just like the people learning grad demonstrated and the soldiers

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Speaker 1: who fought at the Battle of the Bulb. Jane wrote

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Speaker 1: this article about the five bloodiest battles of World War Two,

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Speaker 1: and we have shared two of them with you, and

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Speaker 1: we're not going to tell you what the other three

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Speaker 1: are because we want you to go read the article

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Speaker 1: for yourself. So be sure to check that out on

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Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. And if you have any

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Speaker 1: feedback for us or suggestions for future shows, give us

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Speaker 1: an email at History Podcast at how stuff works dot com.

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Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit

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Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. M