History of One Hero (RU Server Video)

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Hello everyone,

as a part of the “Remember Everything” series of videos, WG RU makes interviews with soldiers (not only tankers), who survived WW2 and are willing to share their experiences. Naturally, these videos are… let’s say written with Russian audience in mind, but nevertheless, they are very interesting.

In this video, Ismagil Nigmatovich Galiullin (quite an unusual name), former tank driver in WW2 tells the story of him becoming a tank driver and of defeating a Tiger tank by ramming it. There are English subtitles, you can enable those.

 

42 thoughts on “History of One Hero (RU Server Video)”

  1. Could he be wrong about driving a T-44? I thought those tanks didn’t see action in the war. I guess he switched to a T-34 before ramming the Tiger.

      • It’s at 2.27, where the English sub-titles say T-44. Is that accurate, is that what this gentleman says in Russian?

        Wikipedia is pretty clear that the T-44 did not see service on the Eastern Front in WWII (although it did against the Japanese for the last 3 days on the Western Front). This is what is written on the wikipedia entry;

        “The T-44 was issued to three tank brigades mustered on 15 September 1944 for training purposes, but these formations (6th Guards, 33rd Guards, and 63rd Guards Tank Brigades[18]) were re-equipped with T-34-85 tanks prior to entering the Battle of Berlin and Prague Offensive”

        • I heard him say “tritset-chetverka”.Which is a nickname for the T-34.I’d assume it’s a mis-translation.

          • He said сорок четверка (44). Subtitle translation is correct.
            “The T-44 was issued to three tank brigades mustered on 15 September 1944 for training purposes, but these formations (6th Guards, 33rd Guards, and 63rd Guards Tank Brigades[18]) were re-equipped with T-34-85 tanks prior to entering the Battle of Berlin and Prague Offensive”
            I guess this explains it. He was indeed in a T-44 and then his brigade was reequipped with T-34-85.

  2. great, another post about stronk-russian-shitty tanks and their vodka-skilled-drivers. SS, you must be in love with the ex-soviet peasants army.

    • They same people who freed europe from the Nazis. Americans did only a major incursion after SSSR was already in front of Warsaw in 1944. So we can thank those vodka skilled drivers that we live in nazi free europe. But then again not in the case if you are a supporter of either Hitler or Bandera. Perhaps you would like more holocaust too?

        • Actually yes, and many people here who remember those times wish we would never had revolution and capitalism in here. Not just a few, but it’s like majority of the old people. It’s mostly the young people who never met any Russians who hates and blames them because that is what they were thought in schools after the Iron Curtain fell. You would be surprised what many people here really think. For that, you would have to actually talk with them personally, not to read the media or internet forums, where those opinions are suppressed.

          • I guess it depends, but in my country there is a general hatred for the soviets among people of all ages. Interesting enough, I don’t notice such a hate for the Nazis.

            • The reason is that your country (probably Romania) was axis (German) ally and was probably spared mass killings done by Germans (examples: territory of SSSR, Yugoslavia (killings of whole villages, not to mention Jasenovac), Extermination camps in Germany etc etc. Only ones that suffered under axis rule in Romania were the Jews. Similar sentiments can be observed in some other countries that were in axis alliance at the time. A lot of Croats (even Bosnian Croats) have a positive view about Germany while this view is not shared by the Serbs from Serbia (or Bosnia) who suffered much more under the direct German rule (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kragujevac_massacre).

        • Political debates are definitely not my thing, yet… the western allies supported the Soviets and all, but after the war they quickly realized that they just chose the lesser evil, key word “evil”.

          • There is nothing noble in what US did. The so called “help” was all being paid for. It was done not to protect Soviets from Germany but to let them kill each other as more as they can. Here is the Truman’s quote:
            “If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don’t want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances. Neither of them thinks anything of their pledged word.”
            http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Harry_S._Truman

            But be aware. There is no good in games of empires. US are as evil as any other empire is/was. I wont even bother to look for arguments. Internet is full of them. Latin America suffered a lot in 20th century thanks to US.

        • I would rather be “freed” by the red army than to perish in the Sobibor. I would rather live in Saddam Iraq (or Gadaffi’s Libya) then to enjoy civil war that both countries are now engulfed in (thanks to US meddling).

          • Well I live in Romania and I was born in 1993, 4 years after the revolution. Even if I have not experienced the period before ’89 my parents, uncles, grandparents and so on did. The thing is that Romania is a kind of special case of communism because they were ”liberated ” from the Nazis in WWII (didn’t actually need liberation but moving on ) and occupied it for some time for let’s say preemptive purposes. Then they left and then came Nicolae Ceausescu who ,although a communist at heart, ceased the connection to the USSR, but we still were fucking isolated from the rest (even other commie countries, because logic thinking/sarcasm)
            Then came an iron rule which lasted quite some time, with free elections ( the one you would expect : Vote for Ceausescu or Ceausescu- pick one). If you were not some secret police collaborator then your life would have been shit, permanently on the lookout for your stupid neighbors who where snitching the shit out of you if you talked bad about how great the regime was.

            Everything ended when we (as a nation) shot the bastard along with his wife( another precious plum) , conducted by a shooting platoon of 4 men, who emptied all 4 clips – yeah, that’s how much we loved them both. Some people today still miss the times because they got a free home( not doing shit for it) and constantly working with the Secret Police.That is the reason people in my country miss the communist regime, because the ones that do were scum and just invaded privacy and got rewarded for it (but then again, in commie world your privacy is our privacy :) ).

            So no, the Russians brought only poverty and despair ( and some good things also like the teaching system and constructions and stuff) but overall it was bad.

    • This “evil bloody russians” defeated about 70% of the all troops of the Third Reich and some Italian and Romanian armies who fought on the Eastern Front.

      • *these evil bloody SOVIETS.

        Please, I know that you are all very proud of what your great-grandfathers did, but you, as an individual, do not have the slightest thing to do with that.

        In fact, you do this entire “wooo we are the Nazi killers” thing just because your country today is, in fact, shittier than let’s say Germany and is generally considered to be not a super power any more. And if you would stop saying this, you and your people would feel like the “bad guys” you actually are today. That’s why you keep saying it, right?
        Also seems to be your one and only argument against “you russians are evil for wanting to take over Europe”.

        And this, my friend, is also why the term “russian bias” exists.

        • We’re talking about history, not about the present time.

          And in this case it is not a question of pride. It’s about facts, no more.

          I can see how much butthurt feel Poles and Romanians from Russian actions in the past. Very funny, nothing personal.

        • I will not pretend i understood everything what you wanted to say in your reply but i will try to answer on few things i did understood.

          Now you want to say that the whole SSSR (and Russian) patriotic feeling is based on what? On feeling of inferiority? Just a reminder for possible cause of this feeling. SSSR lost 27 million people during the what they call a great patriotic war. This was a matter of survival for the whole country. 1/2 of the country was devastated, huge amount of people lost their lives fighting for it. Now that is the main reason they are so proud in fighting Nazis. Without them Germans would be still killing Jews and other sub humans (slavs, gypsies and others) in huge numbers creating, what they call, a lebensraum.
          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum

          Speaking about evil Russia, MUCH MORE evil things were done by US than by SSSR (or Russia) since the WW2. I wont give you any argument but if you want i can provide you in detail information on this but beware, this is going to be HUGE.
          Just let me give you small example. SSSR wanted to get out of east Germany after the war. They asked Adenauer for him (Germany) to stay independent if they leave the country. Adenaur refused and the East and West Germany were created. SSSR did the same in Austria. Austria accepted and stayed out of NATO. SSSR kept the promise and they retreated. Nowdays Russian and Austria still have a warm political and economical relationship without any bad feelings while US base are still in Germany and other parts of Europe. So who is here the occupier and evil guy?

          • Oh, man, fuck I did it again.

            You win russians, as well as the next war that your current behaviour will cause.

            Just one thing: Explain me why you eastern states are so proud of yourselves, in the TL;DR version please.

            I’ll give you something you and your outstanding patriotism will get hard on: I hate the former communist states because they are very patriotic while still being considered to be the worst places to live in Europe.

            • I wont spend too much time on you anymore because you are just too young/dumb/inflexible to understand it.

              It is impossible for me to be a Russian patriot since Russia is not my mother/fatherland.

              So you would like to live in Greece instead, which is much better than the ex “communist” countries. Most of the communist countries is a capitalist for at least 20+ years and yet some of them have worse situation than it was 20 years ago with huge unemployment, much worse medical system, being less paid, having housing problem. But some of them are getting (and are much) better than Portugal or Greece which were never been communist countries.
              So your logic is flawed and your (dis)information is garbage.

              • Of course the ex-commies are better than Greece ;) Whose logic is flawed, tell me please. Oh, and, calling the opponent in an argument is never a wise choice, especially in my case, since I do not have any experiences in political debates…By the way, you wrote only SOME ex-commies are gettimg better than Greece and Portugal, so the majority is still shit, worse shit than 20 years ago. Deal with it, brother. And yes, I would like to live in Greece since I visited that country often…at least I’d rather live there than in Romania for example.

                • Romania stopped being a “communist” country 26 years ago which is a LOOONG time. In that time, while being in capitalism, you did not improve much. So is this a mistake of communist system or current rulling elite and people themselves.
                  Remember that Germany recovered from being devastated in ww2 much faster than you did from “communism”. So if they could do it how come Romania can’t considering it had much favorable position of not being devastated (remember also that Germany had to pay compensation for WW2)?
                  Still blame the “communism” only or some light is coming into dark areas of your tunnel vision?

  3. Before any idiot begin with the russian this russian that or soviet, vodka etc… This is about tanks, and tankers not political shit. Damn haters

      • He enlisted not because he particuarly liked the Soviet Union, but because he wanted to defend his fellow people from Nazi Germany, who would kill many others. I would also place my money on the fact that he didn’t volunteer, but was drafted.

  5. LOL, Russians like to pretend, they did something heroic, when in fact, they didn`t. It’s the same as 60 yo morons, which wasn`t even born at 1945, wear various combination of medals and pose as veterans on 9th of may.

    • Not everyone is aware that towards the end of great patriotic war (remember, in Russia people still believe there was no war in Europe before 1941) soviet army more and more depended on conscripts from “friendly soviet nations” as arian slavic manpower became more and more exhausted. I remember my grandparents telling stories, that the soldiers who pillaged “liberated” countries had mostly asian features (except for the officers).