I Woke Up and Our Allies Were Gone | Carpathians, 1944 | Ep. 3

On the morning of August 24, 1944, a German machine gunner in the Eastern Carpathians walked over to the Romanian trenches for coffee, as he did every morning. They were empty. On the parapet, under a stone, lay a note in German from a friend: "Good luck." SUPPORT THE CHANNEL: BUY ME A COFFEE - buymeacoffee.com/documentaries JOIN TO PATREON - https://www.patreon.com/ShadowsOfConflicts The night before, Romania had left the war. Overnight, hundreds of thousands of men who had fought beside the Germans for three years were on the other side. This episode follows the summer of 1944 through the eyes of one soldier of the German 3rd Mountain Division: the quiet weeks beside the Romanians, the morning the alliance broke, a ridge lost in a single day, a town that changed hands without a shot, a meeting on a mountain pass, and the long columns of Transylvanian Saxons leaving homes their families had lived in for eight hundred years. ▶ Part of a series following one machine gunner from Nikopol to the end of the war. Watch in order: Ep. 1 — Nikopol: The Last Men on the East Bank: https://youtu.be/33LWN2eiPaw Ep. 2 — The Razdelnaya Pocket: https://youtu.be/0Yr64v6Al_8 ABOUT THIS SERIES Franz Moser and his comrades are composite characters, created to represent the soldiers of the German 3rd Mountain Division in the Eastern Carpathians. The battles, dates, places and conditions are historical. This is not a celebration of the Wehrmacht or the war it fought. It is an attempt to show what that war was like for the men inside it, and what it did to everyone around them. PRIMARY SOURCES - Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, Freiburg — BArch RH 28-3: records of the 3. Gebirgs-Division - U.S. National Archives (NARA), captured German records, Microfilm T-315 (Divisions), T-314 (Corps), T-312 (Armies), T-311 (Army Groups): https://www.archives.gov/research/captured-german-records/microfilmed-in-virginia.html - Proclamation of King Michael I to the Country, broadcast 23 August 1944, 22:00; printed in Universul, 24 August 1944. Full text (Romanian), Radio Free Europe: https://romania.europalibera.org/a/august-1944-faptele-personajele-principale-urmarile-contextul/33075648.html - King Michael I, interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 6 May 2005 - Armistice Agreement with Rumania, Moscow, 12 September 1944 — Avalon Project, Yale Law School: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/wwii/rumania.asp - Foreign Relations of the United States, 1944, Vol. IV — U.S. State Department, Office of the Historian: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1944v04/ch2subch1 - Dokumentation der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ost-Mitteleuropa, Vol. III: Das Schicksal der Deutschen in Rumänien (1957). English edition: The Fate of the Germans in Rumania (1961). Eyewitness reports, including the evacuation of Northern Transylvania - Red Army operational documents, Central Archive of the Russian Ministry of Defence (TsAMO), via Pamyat Naroda: https://pamyat-naroda.ru - Paul Klatt, Die 3. Gebirgs-Division 1939–1945 (Podzun). Divisional history by the division's commander from July 1944; a veteran's account, read with care FURTHER READING - Karl-Heinz Frieser et al., Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, Vol. 8: Die Ostfront 1943/44 (Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2007). Official history by the German Armed Forces' Military History Research Office - Mark Axworthy, Cornel Scafeș and Cristian Crăciunoiu, Third Axis, Fourth Ally: Romanian Armed Forces in the European War, 1941–1945 (Arms and Armour Press, 1995) #WW2 #EasternFront #History #Romania1944 #Carpathians Support this channel to gain access to the following benefits: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZppEeAm8fLVIwCD-5-3VPw/join Music By: 'Decoherence' by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au