Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 4 - The House Built Out of Dead Nazis

Episode Date: August 14, 2018

On this episode of the Lions Led by Donkeys we talk about Sergeant Yakov Pavlov and his Soviet House of Death during the Battle of Stalingrad. Nick chugs Vodka to keep his horrible illness at bay long enough to record, we decide that the glorious Soviet Union would never lie in battle reports, and come to the conclusion that the Wermach was little more than Star Trek Red Shirts at this point of the war. Follow the Podcast on twitter Follow Joe on Twitter Follow Nick on Twitter

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe and that is my glorious comrade Nick. And if you couldn't tell from our intro, we are talking about Soviet Russia today. More exactly, we're talking about World War II Soviet Russia and the Battle of Stalingrad. And the best Russia. It is. The glorious Soviet Socialist Republic of. And we were talking about the house that Pavlov built. If you guys haven't heard the story, it's pretty insane. It's fucking insane.

And it doesn't actually make a whole lot of sense. So, today's story brings us back to World War II, to the horrible Eastern Front, and if that wasn't depressing enough, we're going to focus on the Battle of Stalingrad, a battle that would include nearly 2.2 million personnel at its peak, killer women around 2 million people, and if that wasn't depressing enough, we're going to focus on the Battle of Stalingrad, a battle that would include nearly 2.2 million personnel at its peak, kill or wound around 2 million people, and is considered one of the largest and most bloodiest battles in the history of warfare entirely.

So it's not going to be as happy and cheerful as last week's. No. But if we get names wrong, we're going to try. We'll do our best. We're going to try. Because, you know, Russian names, backward R's, weird shit going on. And we did read Pavlov's biography, or his memoir, rather. That is all entirely in Russian.

So we read it via Google Translate, and it is not the way to read anything ever. Because it sounded like Pavlov had a pretty mean brain uh injury at stalingrad or google translate works like shit yeah he probably he probably had like a baker's dozens of fucking brain injuries um even before then yeah um so we're going to talk about a small part of that battle which is pavlov's house which we were talking about which isn't a house it's actually an apartment building but yeah four story apartment building normal shitty gray depressing soviet block house um a part where a soviet sergeant named yakov pavlov and a single platoon of the motherland's glorious soldiers held a single apartment building and inflicted so many casualties on the attacking german forces

that according to vasily chuikov the commander of thend Army, the army that held on to Stalingrad by its guts, that the Germans actually lost more men assaulting Pavlov's house than they did taking the whole of France. Now, we should also go on record that Chuikov is a fucking liar, and none of this is verifiable. But we'll get to that. We're going to touch on that a little bit later. They're known for propaganda shit.

Like, this was in the fucking newspapers they would never books the people's proletariat would never lie nick that's true they did have a sickle and a hammer so that's pretty sweet yeah they they definitely would never sorry vibrating uh they would definitely never lie to make themselves look better like they certainly did not photoshop off a whole bunch of watches that dude had on his wrist and when he's raising the flag on the right stock that he pulled off the dead germans anyway bringing it back around uh the battle of stalingrad began on 23 august 1942 on the outskirts of the city that the badly led and badly and even worse organized soviet red army tried in vain to keep the germans bay. By September 12th, the Red Army had retreated back in the city, leaving over 200,000 casualties behind them, and Stalin was pretty fucking pissed.

And at this point, it should be noted that Stalingrad was even more important of a city. It was a decent foothold in between two rivers, but it was a side piece to trying to take the Baku oil fields. And it was pretty much nothing but a dick measuring competition between Hitler and Stalin. So probably the most bloody dick measuring contest in human history. Usually people measure their dicks in the bathroom, but not for a city. These guys just chewed through two million people instead. So the situation is incredibly desperate for the Red army and the soviet nation as a whole the city of stalingrad owed little um in the sense of being strategically

important little more than a position between the volga and don rivers and a side act the germany really wanted which was the caucas oil fields it was important because who the city was named after though and that person was a fucking lunatic just prior to the german push on stalingrad stalin issued general order number 227 famously known as the not one step back order uh which all but forbade retreat withdrawal under punishment of death uh this actually goes into a lot of why pavlov didn't pull back from the house the house is important um but you couldn't didn't pull back from the house the house is important um but you couldn't withdraw without approval from hire and those approvals simply didn't exist like if you asked to withdraw they

would just be like no well they're not there so obviously yeah but there were like fucking other cool houses they could have gone to i think there were like 14 or 15. But they just were playing fucking house hunters, Stalingrad edition. Yeah. Also, fucking, we should point out Nick is getting over some horrible throat infestation and sounds terrible right now.

So that's the horrible sound. Terrible. That's what the noises are. Oh yeah. Um, I feel like shit. Yeah. Barracks rats will do that to you.

so the not one step back order, which all but forbade or treat, which all in punishment of death. It also put in place barrier troops made up of NKVD, who would stay behind the advance of the army. Their weapons pointed at their own men's back. If you've ever seen the movie Enemy at the Gates, which is a highly recommended documentary, obviously, you know what these dudes can do. Though outright machine gunning their treating of soldiers as rare. It certainly happened. In the beginning parts of the

Eastern Front, and in Leningrad, and some parts of Stalingrad, the NKVD and the political commissars would actually whip up civilians and levy them. You were playing fucking Rome Total War, and you sat up some levy

spearmen. Except that was the myth that came up. There wasn't enough rifles to go around. playing fucking Rome Total War and you sat up some like levee spearman except that was the myth that came up there wasn't enough rifles to go around generally speaking there was but when the political dudes whipped up these levees they just like go forth and that was when the barrier troops actually shot people from

time to time and when people didn't have enough rifles and they were attacking German lines it's fucking fists full of stalin's rage and that's pretty much it sickles in the back of their mind that's all you need uh when you when you have marks in your heart that's what you need to defeat fascism not rifles oh yeah i mean that's only slightly better than a mosin-nagant anyway a moist fucking garbage rod um uh barrier troops end up being little more than your run-of-the-mill shit bags before very long because they are barely functional at best the main reason was any smart commander

even soviet commanders who at this point have been purged you know over and over again uh wouldn't farm out a soldier that was useful to sit in the rear and possibly shoot their own people uh one of the sources we use which is a really good book i recommend catherine meredal's ivan's war didn't really speak highly of these soldiers they said a few officers were keen to spare their men for service in the blocking units or the barrier troops uh they knew the value of a man patrol yeah cbp on it uh they they knew the value of a man who handled his weapons well which i mean at this point the war the sovi Soviets were churning through so many fucking conscripts. Having a soldier that survived more than one engagement with the Germans

was a fucking godsend. So the new formations created by Stalin's edict were stuffed full of individuals who could not fight, including invalids, the simple mind, of course, officers with special friends. They were like, hey, hook me up with the sweet position or you can keep me away from the fucking Nazis and not die. And, you know, officers are special friends. They're like, hey, hook me up with the sweet position or you can keep me away from the fucking Nazis and not die. And, you know, we can be buddies.

So there you go. Hardly the terrifying force shown at the aforementioned documentary, Enemy at the Gates. Instead, they were drooling mongoloids barely able to function or rich kids just trying to escape frontline combat duty. Anyway, what were you going to say? Oh, fucking Germans always talked about uh the russians having not gonna say really good sharpshooters but fairly decent sharpshooters

i think a lot of that has to do with this battle um there were so many snipers uh you know doing their office work in the stalling great area and a lot of those has to do with propaganda too, but because the snipers, I mean, I deployed, snipers are fucking terrifying. You know where the enemy is going to be for the most part. He's going to square up with you. He's going to shoot at you with a rifle. You can shoot back. And someone starts popping rounds at you from a distance

and people just start dropping. You can't see where it's coming from. It's fucking demoralizing. And that's why they became such a great propaganda tool cat and mouse game they played yeah and especially for normal soldiers and which i solidly consider my i consider myself a normal soldier at best um i consider myself an okay yeah i'm the world i'm the world's most okayest tanker um you know i wasn't going to be able to shoot back with any effectiveness when i was dismounted at a sniper and that was with you know a modern combat rifle and these dudes were using

the mosin-nagantz are using were pressed during world war one yeah so you know they not to mention their training was probably just reading the communist manifesto getting screamed at by stalin you know god rest his soul the glorious comrade stalin um but you know so they they weren't the best soldiers when it came to countering snipers um another part of that order was to eliminate the mood of retreat from soldiers which is a phrase that covers can cover quite a bit um one of the ways to do that it was decided was to not allow the civilian populace of Stalingrad to leave the city. Oh, yeah. But what they did do was withdraw all the food stores from Stalingrad just in case they lost, the Germans wouldn't have anything.

Part of their squirt-shrift policy. Squirt-shrift motherfucker. Yeah. So the soldiers defending Stalingrad had tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of civilians who were hunkered down with them all starting to death and right you know i'm sure that the vast majority of the soldiers fighting in sagrad weren't from the area i mean the soviet union is fucking huge um like my family fought uh in world war ii on the german side because we're armenian and um they had absolutely

nothing in common with russian people they didn't even speak the same language. But, you know, when you stuff them in a basement full of fucking unarmed civilians who are crying, you're going to stay on your ground. Not to mention if you do retreat, you will be lined up against wall shot. Yeah, that's where the civilians were in Pavlov's house too. Yeah, the basement. The basement, yeah. So that gave the soldiers reason to fight for what was effectively a little bit more than a pile of rubble full of dead bodies within a couple months by august 1942 the germans had pushed the fractured

red army all the way back into the tiny slivers of land pushed up against the west bank of the volga river on the other side of the volga was the soviet resupply the training and artillery positions so you can imagine how much the soviets wanted to hold the of theupply, the training, and artillery positions. So you can imagine how much the Soviets wanted to hold of the opposite side of the river through anything they could because once the Germans took a hold of that beach, I mean, riverbank, beach, whatever, they're fucked. They wouldn't be able to resupply anything, not to mention what's stopping the Germans from coming across it.

I mean, it would be suicide, sure. Cold water? Yeah. I mean, it would be suicide, sure. Cold water? Yeah. I mean, it would be rough, sure, but the Soviets have been making that crossing for months with fresh people and materials. But daylight crossings of the Volga, like they showed in Enemy at the Gates, would have been suicide.

Instead, every night, convoys of boats would cross under withering artillery and Stuka dive bombings to attempt to pour reinforcements and supplies into the dying city so i mean the night crossings weren't much better but right they were better than just waltzing across that was effectively a fucking free fire zone two-stepping across yeah well let me get in these giant goddamn barges and just hopefully nobody sits gets us fucking uh the movie stalingrad they show a crossing but they're on fucking like basically a wooden plank that rose sat on during the titanic sinking yeah and then fucking rowing away at the volga going towards stalingrad and by the way that movie is insane yes you need to watch it yeah that movie i i mean it's a russian

movie about about the soviet union and if you've ever watched any movies like they have one about afghanistan that is actually pretty solid like it shows how awful their military was during afghanistan but you know they during the great patriotic war i'm pretty sure there's some fucking law in place where you can't shit talk the red army during that time but um the stalingrad movie is pretty much a gritty redo of 300 except it's a whole bunch of screaming slobs the russian leonidas go into battle slow-mo and everything trench knife and one fucking shovel and the other you can watch it at length on youtube but i mean there's there's literally one point they bust out storming trenches with karate's and e-tools which sorry e-tool means shovel basically yeah it's it's fucking and one point a german general gets stabbed in the dick

which is probably my favorite part oh he grabs a fucking boot night yeah fucking no spoilers i already spoiled it but the german gets stabbed in the dick which i i feel like is the proper death for any nazis just to get dick-stabbed repeatedly by an angry Russian. Yeah, a bald one, too. Yeah. Probably a Nazi, too. Could have been. Skinhead?

They're pretty huge over there now. Yeah, they are. Yeah. Anyway, back to Stalingrad. In late September, Pavlov led a reconnaissance mission of about a platoon, which a platoon at that time isn't the normal 30-ish soldiers we're used to. It's like 40 or 50 people.

Into the city and to secure the only remaining apartment blocks in the area as everything else had pretty much been turned into dust from constant shelling. The apartment overlooked the symbolically important 9th January Square, which commemorated the Imperial Russian Guard's violent crushing of a peasant rebellion in 1905.

The city center. But if you haven't seen any pictures from Stalingrad in 1942, fucking thriving. Yeah. Looks great. And the barrier on the opposite side was the river, but the city was effectively split in half. It had a clear view for a kilometer in every direction and uh defended a key section of the river that like i said before they were desperate to hold on to not only could it uh stop any german push for that

part of the volga it was a perfect position to sit on top and call in artillery strikes which was desperately needed for the russians to at this point, this is far before the Russian giant flanking maneuver is going to end up surrounding Paulus' army. So this is probably a desperate zone. At this time, Germans held about 90% of Stalingrad, which is fucking insane. And it would have made far more sense to just withdraw. But the Soviets decided that, nope.

No, they got to measure dicks. Yeah. Remember? Yeah. Well, the proletariat's dick is immeasurably large. That's true. I don't know how people measure dicks, but I used to measure it with toilet rolls.

Toilet rolls? Yeah, because that's the only thing laying around. I'm not going to use a shampoo bottle. That's too fucking huge. What? Didn't they measure dicks with a shampoo bottle in a movie? No, that was Rescue Me. Yeah. Didn't they measure dicks with a shampoo puddle in a movie? No, that was Rescue Me. Yeah.

He lined up a shampoo puddle with a dick and marked it with a permanent marker. Good ruler. Yeah. Because I don't have one sitting in a fucking bathroom. I have a toilet roll. No. And if I don't have one bigger than a toilet roll, cool. Noted.

That's now a thing that everybody knows. You're welcome. Pavlov's house now. Yeah back to pavlov's dick um pavlov ordered the apartment fortified um with mines barbed wire and intersecting fields of fire that covered all the approaches machine guns and every floors and um and every floor and uh he was smart enough to know like i'm sure at this point most red army soldiers who survived a couple days in Stalingrad knew that the tanks of the main gun could only traverse so high and depress so low. So he personally sat on top with what is known as a PTRS anti-tank rifle. And the PTRS anti-tank rifle is just a giant piece of shit. It was by far, it was far from the best anti-tank weapon at the time

it was rushed into the field after the red army lost pretty much all its effective anti-tank measures during their panicked retreat and faced the german invasion from operation barbarossa it was effectively a giant hunting rifle oh fucking huge elephant gun yeah it was like the fucking tanks yeah It was the Russian way to fix a problem was just to build a bigger one. Yeah. I think I...

No, wait. The PIAT was shit. The PIAT was terrible and it dislocated people's shoulders. I think I'd rather take the fucking PTRS than have them

thinking about it. At least nobody noted that the PTRS actively wounded them while firing it. No, and you know what? The Finns put fucking skids on it so it looked cool as shit. The Finns would put skins on it. Skids. you know what? The Finns put fucking skids on it so it looked cool as shit.

The Finns would put skins on it. Skids. That's what I said. You said skins. Skins? Same thing. That'd be kind of cool too. It'd terrify you. Yeah. Blood of the internet. I covered my anti-tank rifle with the skin of your tank crews. Fuck with me. So this rifle was

only effective, best case scenario, out to about 100 meters uh firing at the top of the tank uh as you can imagine this is insanely hard to do at 100 meters and um the tank's effective range is much further away than 100 meters right um which is exactly what pavlov's roof gunners knew so um they would hold their fire until the tanks got stupidly close and fire about 25 fucking meters. Well, I know a lot of tactics in World War II had to do

with, let's use these tanks as cover. Sure. I get that. Which sounds great, but when you have shitty tanks or maybe overlooking buildings that are overlooking you, it's not the best idea. And any fucking tank crew, I mean, this is four dudes putting their heads together. Four or five dudes putting their heads together.

Who, I mean, the German tankers at this point are still fucking experienced. Oh, yeah. They have good, well-trained officers. They're not scraping the bottom of the barrel like they would be later. Their helmets were cool as shit. Their helmets were pretty solid. One of them was a... If any of you know of the garrison cap?

Also known as a derogatory term, we will not say. It is known as a sea hat. So they had cushion in it just in case they got a nice bumpy ride. So it looked cool as shit. Like you look fucking formal, but you could also fuck shit up. Yeah. And that's really while their uniform...

I mean, they had a fucking actual fashion designer come up with their uniform. Oh, yeah, you basically had a dress uniform while fighting in combat, as the Germans had it, which the Americans had in the 30s, but then we switched over to the wool and HBT type uniforms, which were later

turned into the 43. We'll get into that later. All's I know is in Battlefield 5, because their boots are not the same, unfucking playable. Five fucking uniforms are terrible, but I will still play because it looks cool as shit. It looks cool as shit, but the uniforms look like

shit. This is completely off topic, but this is a series of games that I once ramped a Mark V British tank in World War I up a horse and shot down a plane. So historical accuracy is not your strong point. No, it's not, but it should be.

God damn it. That's why things like Arma exist. Anyway, bring it back around. ARMA does suck. A little fun fact about the PTRS is these vintage anti-tank rifles are somehow still in use. Today, in the Donbass against the Ukrainian army in the Ukrainian Civil War. Which is kind of fucking nuts, because they were considered pieces of shit in the 40s. fucking nuts because they were considered pieces of shit in the 40s um this is including like vintage ammo like from the like probably peeling back old fucking soviet red armor

yeah fucking uh sardine cans yeah like yeah because i have surplus uh 30 on 6 ammo for my grand i had a surplus shitty soviet stamped uh black wolf armor for my garbage rod before i sold it um i don't recommend doing that that thing almost exploded in my hands anyway back on topic pavlov then had his meg did a communication trench all the way back to the vulgar river it's not really measured how far this is but it is far enough where this would take a long amount of time and i mean around the clock 24 hour trench digging while undoubtedly under uh sniper and artillery fire not fun once the fortifications were in place uh pavlov's between which had which had been under strength by about 25 men was

reinforced to around 50 men one of those men was a 19 year old sniper known as anatoly chekhov One of those men was a 19-year-old sniper known as Anatoly Chekhov. He is really famous far past beyond this house. He ended up becoming one of the most deadly snipers in all of Stalingrad. He would actually create his own silencers for his rifles, which was unheard of at the time. And he would eventually go on to claim nearly 300 lives during Stalingrad alone. And he survived the battle. His fucking KD ratio is the shit. So he was stationed on top of the house along with Pavlov and his fucking shit cannon of an anti-tank rifle.

At this point, the battle was on. The Germans caught on pretty fast that Pavlov had dug in. The Germans caught on pretty fast that Pavlov had dug in and started dropping an artillery fire and sending in the infantry and the tanks. There was attacks every day around the clock. Each time it was beaten back, leaving a stream of dead Nazis in their wake. Now Pavlov's memoirs, which were were spotty i'll give him credit we use google translate and other sources so maybe the translation was fucked up maybe pavlov was a liar now i know that's it's a hard thing to say because i highly doubt pavlov came up with the account in the book this book was published in the soviet union during soviet times of no free press um and pavlov was a hero of the soviet union like

officially he got the award and everything um so i have no doubt he didn't actually write this um so you know his memoirs talk about being shelled constantly through the ordeal this is somewhat questioned as to what exactly he was talking about when he said shelled um because it should be noted that german divisional artillery if it was brought to baron pavlov's apartment building would have fucking flattened it um this was a regular ass soviet fucking building yeah it was probably built under shady circumstances for the 40s right um it would have come down around their head and they either would have been dead under the rubble or they've been forced back to reach across the river,

or the building wouldn't have been standing at the end of the battle like it was. Yeah, this was for 58 days said, and I believe this is a myth, that during lulls of the battle, because there's never a stop in the battle, there's just lulls, so during the lulls, certain few men would go out and uh

clear firing lanes yeah they go they go over to have to like kick down stacks of dead germans right which is kind of insane now if the amount of cat to me that means there's not just so many casualties but so many casualties got up to the windows. Also, this is a four-story apartment building. Just go to the second fucking floor. Now you have a fucking cool wall that got built. Build that wall. Got to keep out the Germans with the wall.

Shit, it could have worked. We don't know. If anything, if the Germans are hiding behind a wall of their own dead, that means you're probably doing something right. Yeah, they make claims like they had to kick down stacks of dead bodies. They could have done the 300 shit, just like how they copied the whole thing. Yeah. They could have just knocked it down on the Germans. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it probably would have worked in the movie Stalingrad. So that whole thing can only mean a few things. And this is the Red Army we're talking about, so lying their ass off about soldiers' feats of bravery is totally within the bounds of reality and most likely true. My personal opinion is that the Germans did want to capture the apartment building intact. They knew, just as well as the Reds, that the apartment had a command of the entire area or i'm wrong and i'm not a fucking phd doctorate of the fucking eastern front here so that's completely possible or that this is stalingrad we're talking about

fighting was brutal and soldiers on both sides fought factory to factory house to house regardless of the importance of the area the only thing thing important is there's fucking Nazis or there's fucking commies there, and we had to go take it. I mean, the casualty rates are so high, but everything was so fucking high there. Dozens of people died fighting over kitchens from the living room. I mean, it's insane.

They had sweet granite countertops. I would have fought for that too. And especially with the housing crisis these days, they get that prime volga river space sometimes you just gotta kill some people oh yeah just full of thousands of dead red army soldiers um maybe the germans didn't know the importance of the building i doubt that um i mean this is still early in the war germans who are competent they took over half the fucking world at this

point um maybe they were just as simply assaulting his pavlov built a goddamn fortress there yeah it was labeled on their maps fortress yeah whatever the restrictions that were put on german forces attacking pavlov's position you know so let's give him some benefit benefit of the doubt let's say he was shelled best case scenario they were mortars yeah okay yeah let's say he was hit by mortars but he uses the word artillery maybe maybe google translate made it artillery but i've also seen the same you know foreign words have that thing on english where how you can mean two things in a different language where there's a formal and there's an informal thing for you like in spanish or in russian there's's a you informal and a formal way of saying it.

Shit, in French, there's a feminine and masculine way to say things. It's really weird. Same with Spanish. Yeah. I mean, let's say he was hit by artillery, which is actually mortars. Sure, I mean, these are infantry platoons

that are assaulting him. They would have a mortar team. They would have several mortar teams. And mortars aren't going to bring down a house. So let's give him the benefit of the doubt and say you got the shit mortared out of them um whatever restrictions that the germans put in place um on attacking pavlov they would end up killing a lot of policies met uh field marshal polis the commander of the germans once he couldn't afford to throw away and at no point of the battle was any attempt made to just level the goddamn thing like i said i mean these are platoons of tanks um they could have just

cannon that shit into rubble if they didn't according to palace on memoirs which are all in russian had to be read like using google translate like we went like we said um the germans were either totally brain dead or fucking red shirts from Star Trek just bumbling into crossfire. I mean, it's stupid. They were the worst soldiers to ever take over the majority of Europe somehow. Pavlov tells stories about machine gunning waves of German soldiers who, I don't know, just marching towards a damn fucking house, bumbling towards enemy fire. I don't want to think how the fucking machine gunners felt in the house. They were like, these guys took over half the fucking machine gunners felt in the house they were like these guys took over half the

fucking country like what the fuck not only did they fucking sweep through western Europe they stormed through all of Russia at this point and Pavlov says he individually as in by his god damn self sat up on top of that roof and took out a dozen fucking tanks

the anti-tank rifle the most insane part is he said he waited until they were 25 meters away or less before shooting at the tank's top turret armor, which is the only place this rifle's going to work. If that doesn't seem like it's far away, it's because it isn't. The equals are about to be about 80 fucking feet in freedom units.

And these tanks were so goddamn close to Pavlov, they could have been going for a fucking first down. And like, Pavlov and it should be noted the tanks could not have traversed up there and shot him. But they all have tank commanders with machine guns. They all are supposed to have supporting

infantry that could have shot him. Or, crazy fucking thing, don't get within 20 goddamn meters of the fucking building that's killing thousands of Germans apparently. Just stay away from the house of death let's just sit back and launch cannon rounds at the roof maybe take up the fucking first floor i don't know this is either full-on soviet propaganda horseshit or

the germans sent the special olympics tank crews on this particular mission like no tankers is fucking stupid and i was a tank, and I'm not that fucking smart. There's no way that there's 12 of them that stupid. That's the

cumulative fucking tanker is there. Let's give Paloff the benefit of the doubt and say he did get half of what

he got. He got six tanks. You would think the collective brain trust around 24 battle

hardened tankers would say, I don't know, use your fucking cannon and stay away from the giant torrent of death coming from the house. brain trust around 24 battle-hardened tankers who say, I don't know, use your fucking cannon and stay away from the giant torrent of death coming from the house. I'd imagine the first two tanks would have gotten the idea. Oh, fuck.

Yeah, normally when someone pops up from these anti-tank rifles, not to mention it's going through the turret armor, I'm assuming it's blowing their ammo, setting the whole tank up like a fucking torch. That's going to let everybody know, like, oh, yeah, they have something. We need to stay back and figure out what it is. Not just, well right that's gonna let everybody know like oh yeah they have a they have something we need to stay back and figure out what it is not just well that's weird that normally tanks normally just don't randomly explode like that normally works what the fuck yeah also how terrible are these german fucking infantry commanders just bumbling towards pavlov's guns like something out of world war one they spend a better part of two months tripping over their own

dicks in the land minesines, barbed wire, and machine guns that they knew were there. And waves. Like, it's not like they got ambushed by this fucking house. No. They knew it was there, and they planned an attack on it. Yeah, and Pavlov, like, fucking put up, like, wood boards on the windows, like, that would do something, and, like, fuck it. Yeah, it turned

into a fucking Nazi version of Duck Hunt. It's stupid. And just like we said uh pavlov notes that in between fighting you have to kick down piles of dead germans um over the course of about 58 days the the exact amount of time is up for debate because the beginning time and the ending time changes depending on whose story that you read um the germans just kept on coming day and night the attacks only ceased in the germs that pull back and hit the house where Pavlov described as artillery. But like we said, we think it's probably mortars.

Pavlov's men would run down to the basement where dozens of civilians were hiding until the barrage would cease and the attacks would just begin again. Now, if you remember earlier how the Germans supposedly lost more soldiers attacking Pavlov than they did assaulting Paris, France.

Well, we actually have the Uber Commando der Wehrmacht or the OKW's reports on losses during 1940. It can be roughly calculated that the Wehrmacht lost about 1,000 and 2,000 soldiers taking Paris. I know I talked a lot of shit about Pavlov's memoirs, but I can actually see these numbers being kind of realistic for the time.

If the Germans lost more than 2,000 soldiers assaulting one random apartment building in stalingrad would that have been any more unbelievable than the rest of the brutal losses in that fucking battle i mean they there were so many people getting just slaughtered oh yeah um stalingrad was a goddamn meat grinder where soldiers fought hand-to-hand combat for the control of everything under this under stalingrad like there was a there was a point in time where they assaulted a tank factory and the red soldiers defending the tank factory and the germans were fighting and in the meantime civilians are still fucking building tanks in the middle of all of it and they're just rolling off the assembly line right into battle with people who built the tanks crewing the tanks like they just it was just a whole different level of giving a fuck i wish i had that much fucks well i mean

it's motivating to know that if you don't have enough fucks they'll be supplied for you and if they're not supplied you will just die it's true i mean you're either going to get shot by your government or you can get shot by the germans because surrender wasn't much of an option, you're a dirty slob and you're subhuman. It's true. I mean, you're going to die regardless. You might as well take one of those blonde-headed fucks with you. Oh, man. Building tanks must be a cool installment, though, at the time.

Imagine how, like, uncomplicated building a T-34 must have been. Where, like, you could just, like, throw them together and just roll it off the fucking line. I'm pretty sure I have a ratchet set that can put one together. And there's no way those guns were fucking zeroed or boresighted. It's impossible if they're just rolling off the factory. Where did they get the fucking ammo from? I'm pretty sure they were just trying to run them over. I wouldn't be surprised

if they were unarmed. No target? Fuck it. Yeah. I like how you went cholo with the russian tank driver yeah i can't do a russian from time to time but i've been drinking a little bit so what do we call it well we're just drinking vodka to moscow mule glasses like we're special it's they're not moscow mules the only thing that makes them moscow mules is the cup and the vodka and the vodka sucks too so in comparison pavlov lost about 25 men um or a half of his platoon before the glorious soldiers

of the motherland finally crossed the volca and reinforced the air with an entire division at which point the germans finally tapped out and pulled back from the battle. Pavlov was lauded with awards in his heroic defense of the apartment. He was awarded with the Hero of the Soviet Union, the Order of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution, two Orders of the Red Star, and the

Champion of Communism Award. If those names don't sound ridiculous, it's because they were, and I made up that last one, and you didn't even notice. I mean, I fucking love the last one, and you didn't even notice. I mean... I fucking love the last one. Champion of communism. Fucking mad man of Marx.

I'd have a fucking sweet belt with a hammer and sickle on it. Spinning. I'm pretty sure they're just part of their universe. Fucking the spinners of the people. He would drop sick beats, but those weren't authorized and strictly controlled it's true he was promoted to the rank of star sheena which is equal to that of a sergeant major and survived the war uh he ended up joining the communist party since apparently he wasn't already a member i just assumed that was mandatory um and he was elected the Supreme Soviet three times before finally dying in Novigrad in 1981.

And... He was only like 60-something. Yeah, he was in his early 60s. Yeah, he probably thought he looked real fly with all this shit on though. Dude, there's pictures of him and I'm probably going to post them to the Twitter, so pay attention to that. I'm probably going to post him to the Twitter, so pay attention to that. His uniform looks like the Banana Republic uniform from the movie The Dictator. Where Sacha Baron Cohen has medals going down to his fucking belly button.

Except all of his are real. Except for the champion. Except the champion of communism award, which I regret to... Maybe there'll be a podcast award. We'll give it out to people. You're the champion of communism. I'm pretty sure there's going to be a healthy dose of people who think this is a communist podcast. In which case, it is. And you're part of the problem.

Hail Satan. Wrong religion. I like Satan. Alright. Well, this is America, so hail satan i guess the guys the last podcast and left can get away with saying hail satan a lot so um and they're popular so that is the story of the house that pavlov built out of the bones of stupid germans um sturdy bones yeah and actually a part of the house still stands today

as a monument I mean it's not like the whole house like some people claim it's like a corner of the house but but at the end of the battle

it was still resembling a house honestly it's probably what it looked like just a corner and the Germans were like how the fuck yeah

at the end of the battle it just looked like part of Detroit people would have fucking moved in hipsters would have fucking moved in. Hipsters would have bought it. Elked up a Starbucks next door.

All the free range Germans outside. So, yeah, you can follow us on Twitter. The podcast on Twitter at lions underscore buy. Follow me on Twitter, jcast99. Follow Nick at Twitter at nickcasm1 all right um as you can tell i've been if you follow us on twitter we've been posting stupid historical facts and uh actually taking suggestions someone already did suggest us something and it sounded fucking hilarious so we're probably gonna end up doing it more than likely yeah so feel free to suggest anything you want.

Like and share us. Rate us on iTunes since I hear that's a big thing and it doesn't really seem like anybody's doing it. But I would rather you not rate us than give us a bad one. Is that wrong? No. I think I tried rating us and I completely forgot and just continued to watch YouTube

and all that other good stuff so I probably should do that I feel like rating your own podcast is like jerking off into your own mouth you didn't really get the second base you just did it to yourself there's nothing wrong with that this is America I guess it's a good source of protein it is it's a fantastic source

it's sterile and I like the taste I eat fucking pineapples. It tastes great. Alright guys, so that's all. See you next time.