Won in 14 Days What Halder's Diary Shows About Barbarossa

On July 3, 1941, the chief of the German Army's General Staff wrote in his diary that the campaign against Russia had been won in fourteen days. Five months later the German army was retreating from Moscow. This documentary follows Operation Barbarossa through Franz Halder's own diary entries, from Directive No. 21 to Hitler taking command in December 1941, and asks how the men who planned it could be so sure and so wrong. 0:00 - Won in fourteen days 2:19 - Directive No. 21 4:51 - Counting the Red Army 6:19 - The largest force ever sent 7:52 - 22 June: the Białystok and Minsk pockets 10:12 - Smolensk 13:07 - Losses and the supply strain 15:11 - August: the plan runs out of time 17:10 - Moscow or Kiev? 19:52 - Guderian at Hitler's headquarters 21:09 - The Kiev encirclement 23:07 - September: the war will last into 1942 24:53 - Vyazma and Bryansk 26:20 - Snow, mud and the road to Moscow 28:16 - Orsha, November 1941 30:40 - Halder's 23 November assessment 32:15 - The Soviet counteroffensive 34:06 - Hitler takes command Topics: Directive No. 21 and the plan to destroy the Red Army west of the Dnieper, German intelligence estimates of Soviet strength, the Białystok–Minsk and Smolensk encirclements, German losses and the strain on supply, the August entry "we have already counted 360" divisions, the Moscow-or-Kiev dispute, the Kiev encirclement, Operation Typhoon at Vyazma and Bryansk, the autumn mud, the Orsha conference, Halder's assessment of 23 November, the Soviet counteroffensive of 5–6 December and the dismissal of Brauchitsch. Chapters below. If you want more history told from the documents, subscribe.