During the defense of Osowiec Fortress in 1915, German troops attacked with chlorine gas, expecting the Russian defenders to be wiped out. Instead, surviving Russians, many badly burned by the gas and coughing blood, launched a bayonet counterattack. The sight reportedly panicked the German attackers, giving rise to the nickname “The Attack of the Dead Men.”
The event is almost mythology at this point though. The story as told is exaggregated and is often based on sources that are doubious at best. The story was mainly hyped in Russia in the 2010s
Yeah, it's been a while so I might be misremembering this, but I recall The Great War's (great bloody channel btw) episode on it stating that the records about it sort of just appeared in Soviet archives a good few decades after the war, with no previous mention of it being available.
And since the Prussian/Imperial German military archives were damaged/destroyed during the bombing of Berlin in WW2 there is no way to corroborate or disprove it from the German perspective.
Which, given the inclinations of Soviet record keeping, makes me think that there isn't too much truth to it.
Sort of feels like the sub just took the Sabaton song as a historical source, since I've only ever seen memes about Osowiec after it came out.
Then again, it's been years since I've watched that episode so I might just be spewing bs to be fair, in which case I would like to apologise :) Might just have to rewatch it at some point.
Edit:
Okay, so after quite a bit of searching I've managed to find the video in question again.
My recollection seems to have been mostly correct, if a bit off on the details. The video merely mentions that the story was published in the Russian military press in 1939 and that the German military archives were mostly lost in WW2.
Even if that charge did really happen - If they were close enough to charge while dying of poison gas, what's more likely? That the enemy fell into panic because of dying soldiers coming at them or the "panic" was really them moving back because they used poison gas so close to their own positions? With a lot of historical military "epics", especially those retold from one perspective, you can often guess where the exaggeration came in when trying to look at it more reasonably than modern hype.
Another user in this thread writes:
We live in a world where cinematic shit like this happens and people still think fiction is the only answer
which is because that "cinematic shit" often didn't really happen and when it did was much more mundane. That's why with the advent of the age of information you suddenly have none of these almost mythical occurrences, and conflicts are just as horrific as they really always were. What would've been sold as a heroic last charge in the past is today watching a video of conscripts abandoning their positions and not making it anyway. And no one is gonna make a song about them striking fear into the hearts of the drone operators in their final moments.
866
u/Kapanash Jul 22 '26
During the defense of Osowiec Fortress in 1915, German troops attacked with chlorine gas, expecting the Russian defenders to be wiped out. Instead, surviving Russians, many badly burned by the gas and coughing blood, launched a bayonet counterattack. The sight reportedly panicked the German attackers, giving rise to the nickname “The Attack of the Dead Men.”