The Bloodiest Battles of World War II

50 million people died over the course of World War II, and historians often cite it as the bloodiest war in human history. Tune in to learn more about World War II in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Kendis Gibson, joined by staff writer Jane mcgraf.
Hey there, Candice, Hey Jane, you're may wonder what does

(00:20):
Billy Joel have to do with World War Two? You
got me on that one. I don't think I know
that well. My personal favorite Billy Joel song is all
about Seoul. But there's one called Lennon Grad actually, and
we are going to be chatting a little bit about
bloody World War two battles today. That's almost a tongue twister,
it is. Um, So just to give you guys a

(00:42):
little bit of context on World War Two and the casualties,
a little redex on that. So World War two, um,
if you can believe, it was actually the bloodiest war
in human history, at least that we know of, and
the sounding fifty million lives were lost during the entire war,
and it's just it's it's crazy to think of about
how many people that that was. When we think about

(01:03):
the advancements and technology that accompanied the warfare and World
War Two, it's easy to understand because we're not talking
about men going and to hand to hand combat alone anymore,
we're talking about air rates and bombs. Sure, you've got
airplanes that are really advanced by this same yeah, and
you you've got um the Japanese Comma Kazi pilots that

(01:25):
we've talked about before, and a way really to kill
people without having to physically be neared them. And so
I think that that rendered soldiers a lot more ruthless
and their strikes. That's true. And we're talking about the
most powerful nations um on the planet at this time,
and of course, if you're not familiar with them, the
major access powers at the time during the World War

(01:47):
two were Germany, Italy, and Japan, and there were some
other access powers that joined them as well, but these
were the most powerful. And then the allies the opposing
forces would have been written France, the United States, and
the USSR back when we were very very tight. And then,
as we know in the course of history, we drifted
apart for a while and we're working on reparations and
things are going pretty swimmingly now. So um anyway, and

(02:10):
actually in the Soviet Union was where one of these
very bloody battles took place and So Jane and I
are each going to enlighten you guys about some dire straits,
and I'm going to start with Leningrad. So I was
listening to Billy Joel on the way to work this morning,
and I wasn't listening to Leningrad, but I listened to
that once I sat down at my desk and looking

(02:32):
at some of the lyrics. This is a profoundly sad song,
because I don't think I've ever heard it well. It
essentially tells the story of a young boy named Victor
who is alive during Leningrad, and he's a little boy,
and then when he grows up, he spent some time
giving military service, and then when he's out, he's free
to choose to do what he wants, and he wants
to become a clown because he seems so much sadness

(02:54):
in his life. He wants to do something to give
others joy. So I won't torture you by singing the song,
but I will read you some of the lyrics. Um
a child of sacrifice, a child of war, another son
who never had a father after Leningrad. And then when
we learned that he's become a clown. Uh, Billy Joel

(03:14):
tells us the greatest happiness he'd ever found was making
Russian children glad. And children lived in Leningrad, and the
Siege of Leningrad was a nine hundred day siege that
started in September nine and went all the way until
January n lenon Grad was the second largest city in Russia,

(03:35):
so it really was to the Germans advantage that they
surround the city and work their way in, and that's
exactly what they did, and they actually got a little
bit of help from the finish I think, coming from
the north. And one of the first things that the
Germans did was cut out the railroad that went to Moscow,
so no supplies were coming in for a city of

(03:56):
about three million, and of those three million, I think
nearly four hundred thousand were children. So people didn't have
very much control over what was going on. They didn't
have anything to eat, there was very little fuel as well,
so dire straits, like I said, and Hitler decided that
even though the Germans were occupying this territory, they couldn't

(04:18):
possibly care for all these people. So in order to
control the population, he wanted to downsize it. So he
ordered these massive air strikes and raids, and what's more,
the winter of January nineteen forty two was bitterly cold,
so people were dying. But because there was so much
snow and ice, you couldn't even see the corpses in

(04:40):
the street. So the number of dad didn't become a
parent really until spring came and people thought, and it's horrifying.
It is horrifying to think about it, really is, and
to think that you would be a prisoner in your
own home. You couldn't walk around in the streets for
fear that you'd be killed. And the thing is, evacuation
was available, like people could have chosen that route, but

(05:02):
a lot of people stayed instead. I think only around
five hundred thousand got out, and people who stayed behind
tried to keep their lives as normal as possible. Children
still went to school, people still stayed in the factories
producing war gear and war equipment, and they suffered essentially
on things like only a quarter of a loaf of

(05:25):
bread a day, men, women and children. And around nineteen
forty three they were able to start planning vegetable gardens
for some sustenance and open the railways back up. But
things were really rough. I think that one woman even
recounted in a pretty recent interview that when she was
a little girl lived in Leningrad. Her dad worked in
a tannery and he would bring home animal skins and

(05:45):
they would boil them and make stew from them. So
things were just really, really bad. They're finally around. The
Soviets were able to quell the attacks, and they finally
were able to fight off the Axis powers, and um,
the people of Leningrad really generated a lot of sympathy
from the Allied forces, and people in the United States

(06:07):
really looked at them as a symbol of perseverance and preservation,
and you know, those were some of the principles that
the United States was founded on. So they connered a
lot of admiration there and even today, pretty recently, just
in January, actually um Dmitri Medvedev ordered that there be
a recount of all the Soviets who died in the war,

(06:28):
because people still don't know. There's still body parts scattered everywhere,
people still missing in action and identified bodies and mass graves.
And I think that today that Russia is still grappling
with the incredible losses shows you know just how powerful
that that was, and that's just one battle and many
in the course of many throughout World War Two. That's

(06:49):
interesting you bring that up because when I was researching
for this, the article in the podcast, it surprised me
how difficult it was to find exact numbers, because I
went into it thinking, you know, this is a war
that happened in the twentieth century, um a time where
we documented by the time, we were documenting everything. You know,
we we have you know, film for goodness sake, and
and we have documents that are readily available. But the

(07:13):
the idea that we don't know how many people died,
we don't know what happened, it's just really interesting to
think about. And also you brought up the idea of evacuation,
and that made me think, like, why didn't I mean,
I'm sure some people must have had the opportunity and
didn't take it. And one writer, um I looked into
the thought that part of this had to do with
the symbolic importance of len and Grad, because lennon Grad

(07:35):
was actually the birthplace of the Russian Empire, and so
it did hold a lot of symbolic importance for them.
It did, and even in the midst of air strikes
and race, people were scurrying to hide a lot of
the museum artifacts and valuables and tuck them underground are
into very safe places that they could preserve the city's culture.
And even today Russia calls it the Great Patriotic War.

(07:57):
And I think that estimates put the number of cow
gualties between sixty one thousand and eight hundred thousand. So,
like you were saying, there's this huge range, and it
is pretty sad that we don't have a definitive number,
but thanks to add Medvedev, hopefully we'll get that. That's
really interesting. So, like you said, Candice, Lennon, Grad was
over by January and by the summer, as you might know,

(08:22):
d Day happened and if you've seen Saving Private Ryan
or the Longest Day, you know what that day is.
And the Allies came in and they invaded Normandy and
they were doing really well by this point. It was
an amazing success. They were making their way across northern
Europe there in northern France and they marched into Belgium.
So the Allies were marching through Belgium and they started
slowing down by the winter about December they weren't making

(08:46):
as much progress as they were before, and Hitler took
this opportunity to pounce. There was a major shift in
the war. Basically, Hitler was doing really well for a
couple of years, and then the Allies on both sides
of him. You have the uss are on the east
and the Allied troops invading Normandy to the west, and
he was struggling with both sides by this point by

(09:07):
and so he was like, we need to make a
last ditch effort here. If we're gonna even try to
force the Allies to make peace, we have to launch
something right now. And even his officers at this point
I thought this move was really risky. But Hitler he
didn't want to surrender, and he was really he had guts,
that's true, and he was willing to sacrifice a lot

(09:28):
of his soldiers lives for So his strategy was to
basically split the Allied troops. They were coming at him
in Belgium, and you have the U S forces in
the south region and you have the British and the
Canadians in sort of the northern part of Belgium, and
so he wanted to go in between them, and he
wanted to make a wedge in between them. And this

(09:49):
is where we get the idea of a bulge. I
think Churchill came up with the this unofficial nickname for
the Battle of the Bulge, and Dany never discussing earlier,
I don't get by it's a bulge by not I
don't love the wedge doesn't at least seems accurate. But
maybe you guys have some insight on that that you
can email us the vat those dude, please do so
that's where you get the unofficial nickname. And so Hitler

(10:11):
was really smart guy. As you probably know, he brought
in about two fifty thousand men with about a thousand
tanks and armored vehicles, and tanks were a major deal
in this battle. It's primarily known as a tank battle.
And keep this in mind that if since you're since
Hitler is uh is driving tanks through, he's gonna need
a lot of fuel as well. And this comes into
play later. So he's driving his tanks through this wedge

(10:35):
that he's trying to build, and he takes a day
that has particularly bad weather because he wants to ground
the Allied air support and so on December sixteenth, when
the weather was particularly bad, he launched this surprise attack.
And it's really important that it was a surprise because
it caught the Allies obviously off guard, and this put
him in the major, major advantage right off the bat.

(10:55):
So you've got the surprise going for him, you have
the weather going for him. And in addition to this,
this is what I found really interesting, is that he
also planted some saboteurs into into the Allied troops. They
he gave some of the English speaking German soldiers US
uniforms and he sent them in to infiltrate and sort

(11:16):
of just re havoc as much as they could in
the US forces. And they did things and just like
spreading bad information, confusing people, even switching road signs, which
I I just find it's like straight out of cartoon
or maybe like a silent movie comedy. Uh, It's just
like I didn't know people did that to send them
the other way. Um. And so the Germans were doing

(11:37):
really well, as they said. They attacked first on December sixteenth.
They drove the Allies back a few miles and they
were doing really well. Finally they got to this town
named Bestone that the Allies had occupied and the Germans
were able to surround the town and they sent in
a message. They were like, you know, surrender now. We're
definitely gonna get you, but we're gonna give you a
chance to surrender. And this American good dear General h

(12:01):
Anthony mccauliffe. He replied, now an infamous response one word
and he said nuts. And I'm not sure if I'm
giving that the red inflection, because when someone asked what
he meant, he said, go to heck and he didn't
say heck, but you get the picture. So finally the
weather cleared up, they were able to hold up with
best Stone by the way um and the Germans were
not able to take it. So the weather cleared up eventually,

(12:24):
and by December twenty six, pattent as you might know,
General Patton came with his third Army and he was
able to help protect the town of best Stone. And
then by January three, the US forces were able to
gather their supplies to launch a counter offensive. And so
by the time the Nazis were also struggling with their
supplies and fuel. They didn't have enough to to keep

(12:45):
their their tanks running, to keep their soldiers fed and
so they began retreating by about the eighth and the
sixteenth of January. One interesting point about this is that
the Battle of the Bulge features what might be the
first jet bomber raid in history, where they used jet
bombers to actually bomb a railway that was bringing supplies
to the Allies. So that's pretty interesting factoid right there.

(13:07):
So in all, the Battle of the Bulge is known
as one of the most bloody battles, at least that
Americans have ever fought. In nineteen thousand U S soldiers
lost their lives just in this battle alone, and that's
not including those who were wounded, which wounded in missing,
which were about seventy thousand. Yeah, and you explained to
me earlier that the term casualties encompasses not only the dead,

(13:29):
the injured, the sick, the missing, and the fact that
we were discussing earlier that we're not quite sure of
exact numbers even now. Right, it's so fascinating to think
too about World War Two, not just in terms of
the war, but in these many violent battles that constituted
a larger hall. And we're talking about battles that were

(13:52):
occurring in the USSR and over in Western Europe as
well as the islands over by Japan and at the
theater of war was so widespread, and it's no wonder
that today and even contemporarily back then, there were so
many books and even operas and films and and biographies
written about the people who are part of the war,

(14:14):
and figures like Churchill are so revered even today for
their strategy and kind and even just his bravado. I
think it's such a great character. You know, never never
give up, and we see why, because you can't persevere,
just like the people learning grad demonstrated and the soldiers
who fought at the Battle of the Bulb. Jane wrote

(14:35):
this article about the five bloodiest battles of World War Two,
and we have shared two of them with you, and
we're not going to tell you what the other three
are because we want you to go read the article
for yourself. So be sure to check that out on
how stuff works dot com. And if you have any
feedback for us or suggestions for future shows, give us
an email at History Podcast at how stuff works dot com.

(15:00):
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