The "Battle for Moscow" began 80 years ago in October. The Wehrmacht tried to take Moscow. The film tells the story of a fateful year - Moscow 1941, when the survival of the Soviet capital was on the knife's edge - when the war front approached ever more threatening. The film tells from a perspective from which the epochal drama has never been seen: a chorus of voices from Moscow, official and private statements recorded in letters, statements, but above all diary entries. They reflect everyday Moscow life in the last months of peace and in the first months of the war. Experiences, feelings, moods, hopes and expectations, worries, fears and fears. Diaries provide valuable historical evidence Private notes and letters in the Soviet Union were often destroyed by their authors or by family members. For fear of searches, arrests, confiscation or theft. Anyone who wrote made himself suspicious. The few diaries that have survived to this day are all the more valuable. Amazing historical and psychological evidence. A wealth of observations, thoughts and reflections, often of high narrative quality. What was it like in Moscow when preparations for the Barbarossa company were in full swing in Berlin? How did the city respond to the news of the German attack on June 22nd? And the days after that - with the enemy bombing raids and vague reports from the front? And how was it in the Soviet metropolis on October 16, when the situation at the front seemed hopeless and it was said: "Save yourself, who can"? Until finally, on November 7th, Stalin appeared before the people with a persistent speech. The Soviet counter-offensive began a month later.

Moskau 1941 - Stimmen am Abgrund

Stalingrad - Stimmen aus Ruinen

It was one of the great crimes of the Second World War: from 1941 to 1944, a total of 872 days, the siege and starvation of Leningrad by the German Wehrmacht on Hitler's orders lasted. Over a million people fell victim to the blockade, most of them dying of hunger. Countless of these starving people wrote diaries with the last of their strength, and cameramen filmed in the paralyzed city. Evidence from the hell of the siege, many of the film recordings, but above all the written memories on which this documentary on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the liberation is based, remained under lock and key after the war. The voices of those who had suffered through this terrible time should not be heard by anyone, because they did not fit the pathos of the Leningrad heroic song that was officially sung. Most of the recordings come from women. The writers feared neither the enemy nor the Communist Party or Stalin, who often proved incompetent in providing for the population.