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The footage for today is the first part of a collection of reels that were taken by a war correspondent embedded with the 20. Motorized Infantry Division. The material has not been neither edited, nor censored and gives an excellent first hand look at what the soldiers were actually experiencing during the campaign in Russia.
I’ll introduce the collection as we see the motorized infantry pass and then we’ll take a look at a blueprint of the reconnaissance vehicle SDKFZ 222 and talk about it’s specs. Next we’ll see see a prisoner of war camp and talk openly about what’s going on. Our next stop will be a German field hospital and then a nearby field cemetery. We’ll be taken to the location where a battle had just taken place and finally see as a nearby village razed to the ground.
This is special footage and we’ll be seeing a lot more from the collection in the future so remember to subscribe to the channel.
The astonishing collection has a total runtime of 569 minutes. It contains footage from Army Groups North, Center and South up through 1942. Here we’re looking at the 20. Motorized Infantry Division advancing in the last week of June in 1941. The 20. was part of Army Group Center under Generalfeldmarschall von Bock which was tasked with eventually taking Moscow. That this infantry division was motorized made it special because it was one of only 15 in existence at the time. To be honest the German army was an overwhelmingly horse-drawn and foot soldiered army.
Having taking part in the quick capture of the city of Brest-Litovsk the division is seen here advancing as one of the pinchers east towards, and then around, the city of Bialystock where huge Soviet formations would be surrounded and annihilated.
The Panzer Spähwagen SDKFZ 222 was a lightly armored reconnoissance vehicle. It had a crew of three and had a top speed of 80 kmh on the road, that’s 50 mph. On the usually well kept roads of western Europe the vehicle performed well and had an operational range of 300 km, however off road, especially in deep Russian mud, it often had problems getting bogged down.
It had a length of 4.8 m (15’9”) a width of 1.95 m (6’5”) :
The metal mesh screen on the top was meant to protect from grenades being tossed in but it also tended to hinder the crew from being able to easily operate its weapons.
On the 1941 version A, that we see here, the front armor was 14.5 mm think (.6”) and sides of the vehicle had 8 mm, (.3”). On the top, rear and bottom there was only 5 mm (.2”) of protection. The 1942 model B version increased the frontal armor to 30 mm which is about 1” and put in a more powerful engine.
Here we are looking at a makeshift internment camp for captured soviet soldiers. Its actually no more than a cleared ravine with no sanitation, no structures to offer cover and not even a place for the prisoners to sit down.
The internees have obviously not had enough to eat and fight for the meager scraps of bread being thrown into the hoard individually by their captors.
A small group of women and old men have shown up to the scene hoping to somehow be able to improve the condition of the captured Russians. They are eventually allowed to throw the food that they have brought to the crowd.
These are powerful scenes and I’m interested reading about what you think. Write that in the comment section below, but please remember to be respectful. Let’s see if we can get a discussion on the historical significance going.
Now we’ll take a look a field hospital that’s treating the soldiers that were injured in the recent battle. The cameraman is intent on showing how well camouflaged everything is. The officers make the rounds checking on their injured soldiers and showing them that they are interested in their well being.
And finally here we can see the battlefield with all the remnants of the destroyed Soviet vehicles. We can see women from the nearby village carrying poles which are being used as stretchers to carry away the dead Russian soldiers.
Before continuing on with their advance towards Bialystock the village is burnt to the ground.
