[narrator] August 6th, 1945.
Almost three months after victory
over Nazi Germany was declared.
American forces remain locked in deadly combat with the Japanese.
[explosions]
In the Pacific, the war is far from over.
[explosions]
Newly sworn in President, Harry S. Truman,
is desperate for an end to the bloody conflict
that has seen tens of thousands of Americans killed.
Keen to avoid an all‐out American invasion
of the Japanese islands, he will make a decision
that will force a Japanese surrender
and change the course of history.
Truman gives authorisation for an American B‐29 bomber,
the Enola Gay, to drop America's
latest development in deadly warfare...
[loud explosion]
...the atomic bomb.
The first bomb flattens five square miles
of the city of Hiroshima,
killing some 80,000 civilians immediately.
‐[explosion] ‐ Just three days later,
another bomb is dropped on Nagasaki,
instantly killing 50,000 people.
It brings about an end to the Second World War
and ushers in a devastating new chapter in world history.
‐[loud explosion] ‐[music intensifies]
So, who were the real winners of the race to victory?
[theme music]
[slides clicking]
[explosions]
[bombs hiss]
As the war entered its sixth year,
the Allies could sense imminent victory.
By the beginning of 1945,
both the Soviet and the Western Allied armies
were on the verge of crossing
into the weakening Nazi heartlands.
To Churchill, however, the political situation
that was shaping up behind the scenes
was of far greater concern,
as he watched the Red Army's irresistible march
through Eastern Europe.
Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia
lay in the Soviet shadow,
and Poland, though liberated from the Germans,
had merely exchanged
one despotic conqueror for another.
Churchill had been pressing both Roosevelt and Stalin
for another Big Three conference,
not only to agree on the conduct
of the final push to defeat Hitler,
but also to work out what to do with the Axis powers
and indeed, the whole of Europe, once victory was secured.
In doing so, they would lay the foundations
for a conflict that would shape the rest
of the 20th century: the Cold War.
[rocket roars]
[Warren] The relationship between the big three
by 1945 had changed dramatically.
Joseph Stalin increasingly believed
that the West were sort of very slow
in building the second front intentionally,
to let the Soviets pay the price
for winning Europe, in terms of men.
And this frustrated him significantly.
Roosevelt still suspected Churchill
of increasingly imperial ambitions,
and Churchill became increasingly paranoid
that he was being left out by Stalin and Roosevelt.
What had been a good working relationship
between all three, and quite a close friendship
between Roosevelt and Churchill,
was really starting to come unbound.
[Martin] I don't think one should underestimate
the equality of the power
that the Big Three bring to the Yalta Conference.
The American Armed Forces
are now fighting a massive naval war
against the Japanese in the Pacific,
which they're on the verge of winning, of course.
They have a massive strategic bomber force
based in Britain and in Italy,
which is pounding the Third Reich,
and American forces are heavily engaged
on the ground in Europe
and performing now very effectively.
The Soviet Union and its forces
have moved into the neighbouring countries
and driven the Germans out of Romania,
out of Bulgaria...
They've now occupied most of Poland,
so both the Soviet Union and the United States
are doing very, very well.
As far as Britain is concerned,
Britain is fully engaged in the war.
It cannot devote any more power to the war.
[narrator] The seaside resort of Yalta
on the Crimean Peninsula, was chosen by Stalin
as the place to meet Roosevelt and Churchill.
In February 1945, the Big Three travelled
to the city on the Black Sea coast,
thousands of miles from both the UK and the U. S.,
but a mere train ride from Moscow.
Churchill famously said:
"We could not have found a worse place for a meeting
if we had spent ten years looking for it,"
nicknaming it "the Riviera of Hades."
Ironically, having demanded the conference be held in Yalta
as his doctor had banned him from travelling long distances,
Stalin was the only one of the Big Three
not plagued by illness.
Churchill had developed a fever while travelling to Yalta
and was confined to bed aboard his plane,
while Roosevelt was endangering his own ailing health
by travelling thousands of miles
by boat and plane to the conference.
[Andrew] Roosevelt's health
had obviously affected him for a long time.
He'd had polio since he was a young man,
and he was in a wheelchair.
In terms of the way that he conducted the war,
it only really started to affect him
towards the end of the war,
towards the final year of his life
when he was clearly sick.
You can see the photos,
especially of the Big Three at Yalta
at the end of the war,
when Roosevelt is clearly not at the top of his game.
[Martin] His doctors had told him
that he has congestive heart disease.
He's being treated with Digitalis,
which is why he looked so grey and ill,
because it has that effect,
so it's his medication that's making him look so ill.
There's much controversy
about Roosevelt's behaviour at Yalta,
but it's very difficult when one looks at the records
to see any difference.
On issues that matter to him, he is sharp.
On issues that don't matter to him,
he can't be bothered.
But that was always Roosevelt's way.
[narrator] Perhaps sensing he had not much time left,
Roosevelt was determined to secure his vision
for the post‐war world.
Stalin came to Yalta with clear aims
to maintain the deep security zone
conquered by the Red Army in Eastern Europe,
to assert his country's position as a great power,
and to ensure that Germany
would never be able to attack Russia.
Stalin now had the upper hand.
Having been at the mercy of the Nazis
for most of the war,
his military fortunes had turned.
His forces had driven back the Germans
in Poland, Bulgaria and Romania
and were now within 50 miles of Berlin.
[explosions]
[bomb explodes]
[Peter] Stalin wanted to keep tight control
over the eastern European countries,
over the now satellite states of the Soviet Union,
because he'd learnt the lesson of Operation Barbarossa,
and that is that he needed to have buffer states
to stop any future invasion
reaching anywhere near Leningrad or Moscow again.
He was also keenly aware
that the environment had now changed.
This was the start of the Cold War.
He was increasingly distrustful of the Allies in 1945,
so he wants to cement his gains in Eastern Europe.
Millions and millions of people
have died in the struggle against Germany,
and for Stalin, he felt he needed a reward.
And that was the countries of Eastern Europe.
[narrator] Roosevelt's main priority,
on the other hand, was to gain a firm commitment
that the Soviet Union would now enter the war in Asia
to exert further pressure on the Japanese,
as the conflict there was showing no signs of abating.
[Andrew] Roosevelt and his military commanders
are very worried about the loss of life
in attacking the Japanese mainland.
And the reason for that is because they know
that the Japanese fighters
are willing to go to extreme measures
in order to defend their territory.
Of course, the reason that they know this
is that they've been conducting
a long‐term struggle against Japan,
the island hopping.
The U. S. takes enormous losses in this campaign,
and they're worried that if they attack
the Japanese mainland, that they will simply dig in,
be stuck in a very long struggle,
which will lead to enormous loss of life.
[narrator] Stalin agreed that Soviet forces
would join America in the war against Japan
within two or three months after Germany's surrender.
But in return, the Soviet Union demanded control
of the Japanese territory it had lost
in the Russo‐Japanese war of 1905.
[tense music]
Roosevelt's other priority
was his newly envisaged United Nations.
And he was hoping France and China
would join the Big Three at the helm.
In particular he wanted to tie Stalin and the Soviet Union
to the idea of an international body
committed to maintaining peace and prosperity
in the post‐war world.
For Churchill,
the most important business of Yalta
was the future of Poland and whether he could snatch
at least a shred of democratic freedom
for its people.
In doing this, he might just be able
to save them from Stalin's grasp.
But Stalin took a hard line,
pointing out that Germany had twice used Poland
as a corridor through which to invade Russia.
He announced that the Soviet Union
would not return Polish territory
that it had annexed in 1939,
and would not bow to the demands
of the Polish government in exile
based in London.
[Martin] It had become clear by the middle of the war anyway,
that Stalin was determined to do two things with Poland.
One was to regain control of the eastern part of Poland
that had been Russian territory
and he regarded as part of Ukraine and Belarus,
and shift Poland westwards by giving it German territory.
But also, he was determined that Poland should have
what he called a friendly government.
And the only likely Polish government
to be friendly to the Soviet Union
was a Communist government.
[narrator] The only one of Churchill's objectives
at Yalta to which Stalin agreed
was to allow representatives
from other Polish political parties
into the communist‐dominated
provisional government in Poland,
and to sanction free elections.
[Martin] Because the Polish government in London
would not shift on the frontier,
Stalin decided that, essentially,
they were anti‐Soviet.
He was probably right about that.
So he begins building up his own Polish government
of Polish communists.
And that, I think, becomes the prime concern.
Particularly for the British
who had close connections, of course, to the Poles in London.
There were Poles fighting in the British Armed Forces.
Poland had been one of Britain's most solid allies
through the Second World War
and Britain afterward had gone to war to protect
the integrity of Poland at the beginning,
so was deeply concerned about that.
[narrator] Stalin was now playing hardball.
Throughout the negotiations, Roosevelt seemed to be trying
to distance himself from Churchill
whenever he could
as a way of reaching out to Stalin.
The dogged Churchill, on the other hand,
did not share Roosevelt's optimistic view of Stalin,
and was increasingly frustrated
by the ailing American president's desire
to pacify the soviet leader.
t
that trying to maintain good relations
with a Communist was like "wooing a crocodile.
When it opens its mouth, you cannot tell
whether it is trying to smile, or preparing to eat you up."
He knew that if Hitler was to be finally beaten,
the Soviet Union and its tyrannical leader
had to be indulged.
But he also knew that the new post‐war world order
would sweep away the final remnant
of the British empire he held so dear.
1945 effectively signalled
the end of the Churchillian view of history,
the Churchillian view of the world,
which held Britain and its empire
as fixed and symbiotic to the other.
You could just tell that Britain's hold
over its empire had greatly diminished.
And this really affected the ability of Britain
to sway political discussions.
And it affected Churchill specifically
as well between the Big Three.
[narrator] Wider power struggles aside,
the division of post‐war Germany was the main problem
discussed at the conference.
The Big Three agreed that it would be divided
into four post‐war occupation zones,
controlled by American, British, French and Soviet forces.
Stalin agreed to include France
in the post‐war governing of Germany,
but only if France's zone of occupation
was taken from the American and British areas of control.
Berlin, although deep within the Soviet zone,
would be divided into the same quartet
of occupation zones.
A Roosevelt‐inspired Declaration of Liberated Europe
was drawn up which pledged to help countries
freed from the Nazis resolve their post‐war political
and economic problems by democratic means.
The Soviets promised to allow free elections
in all territories in Eastern Europe
that had been liberated from the Nazis.
The Initial reaction to the Yalta agreements
was celebratory, giving hope that the spirit
of the U. S.‐Soviet wartime cooperation
would continue long into the post‐war period.
It did not take long, however,
for intelligence to filter back to the British and Americans
that Stalin was not keeping his promises.
The Provisional Government of the Republic of Poland,
also known as the Lublin Committee,
had been seized by Soviet‐sympathetic communists,
with all other democratic forces in the country stamped out.
I don't think there was really strong indications
that Stalin would keep his promises.
It was a mistake for Roosevelt
to put as much trust in Stalin as he did.
It was quite clear from May, 1945,
that Soviet troops were going to suppress
any type of democratic movement in Poland,
and that they were intent
on installing their communist regime.
[Iwan] What Roosevelt fundamentally decided
was that it had to be accepted
that the Soviets would dominate Eastern Europe,
at least in the short term.
But Roosevelt's ultimate hope was that he would be able
to win Stalin over to a more cooperative arrangement
as time passed.
[narrator] Before the Big Three met in Yalta
they were already engaged in a bitter dash
to seize German territory.
Hitler's forces were crumbling,
and the Allies were moving towards Germany
in a race to claim
the biggest prize of all: Berlin.
[explosions]
The conquest would involve a multi‐pronged approach.
British and American forces would make separate advances
through Germany from the west,
while Soviet troops approached Berlin from the east.
The pivotal part of their advance
was crossing and conquering the mighty Rhine.
Over 700 miles long, the river represented
the last natural defensive barrier
to the German heartland.
In anticipation of Allied forces getting that far,
Hitler had ordered the bridges across the river
to be destroyed.
[Sir Mike] The Americans first crossed it somewhere,
Remagen, I think. Almost by good luck,
found a railway bridge unblown.
[narrator] The U. S. capture
of one of the last bridges still standing,
Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen, on the 7th of March, 1945,
thwarted Hitler's plans
and proved to be a turning point
in the advance into Germany.
Before the bridge finally collapsed ten days later,
the Americans had managed to get 25,000 troops
accompanied by tanks, artillery pieces,
and trucks, across the river into the German heartland.
U. S. General George S. Patton had been instructed
to wait until the following day for the main Allied assault,
but had defied orders by crossing
on the night of 22nd March, 1945.
This was the first crossing of the Rhine by boat
by an invading army
since Napoleon Bonaparte's crossing in 1805.
Patton's troops quietly slipped across the river,
surprising the German defenders in complete darkness.
By the 25th March,
Patton's troops were rapidly approaching Frankfurt,
German resistance now dissolving in their path.
e
to beat the British to the other side of the Rhine.
His commanding officer, General Omar Bradley,
claimed at the time that Patton said,
"I want the world to know that the Third Army made it
before Monty starts across."
The British had been planning
their own crossing further North.
Codenamed Operation Plunder,
Montgomery's crossing of the Rhine
was the largest river assault in the history of warfare.
[Sir Mike] A very big set piece airborne
and river crossing operation,
where 30‐40 miles northwest of Dusseldorf...
did a very big operation.
There was no real doubt about the end at this point.
[narrator] The attack started with an aerial bombardment
of the town of Wesel.
On the night of the 23rd of March,
troops began to cross the river
in landing craft and amphibious vehicles,
and did not stop until the next day.
[Jonathan] Amphibious vehicles, DUKWs,
and all other sorts of cars that could float, landing craft.
They had to drop paratroopers
on the far bank of the Rhine as well.
Huge firepower deployed to suppress
the German defenders.
Really it was more like a sea crossing
than a river crossing, and very effective.
[narrator] On the 24th of March, an airborne assault
was launched codenamed Operation Varsity,
dropping the British 6th
and American 17th Airborne Divisions
further east of the Rhine.
The next day Britain's Prime Minister
crossed the Rhine in a landing craft,
stepping onto the eastern bank of the river.
The bulldog leader had now set foot for the first time
in the heartland of Hitler's Germany.
By the end of March, the Allies had conquered
the mighty river.
Now the path to Berlin was wide open.
[Sir Mike] Once the Rhine was crossed,
that last bastion,
natural bastion of German territory,
north Germany is quite flat open.
Certainly then, there wasn't a lot
to... physically to stop the Allies.
[narrator] There was, however, a tragic event
that brought a sudden end to The Big Three,
as the world had known them.
[sombre music]
[narrator] On the 12th of April, after many years of ill health,
63‐year‐old Franklin Delano Roosevelt
suffered a brain haemorrhage.
The longest serving President in American history,
the man who had lifted his country
from the turmoil of the Great Depression
to become the world's preeminent industrial and military power,
was dead.
[Iwan] Roosevelt had been wheelchair‐bound
since contracting polio in 1921, so he had spent
all his presidency living with that disability.
But during the war, the advancement of his age,
the greater pressures of the job,
the fact that he was a very heavy smoker,
and a regular, if moderate, imbiber of cocktails,
meant his health deteriorated
from about late 1943 onwards.
The deterioration was probably precipitated
by the difficulties of travel
to the Tehran Conference to meet Churchill.
He suffers cardiac problems, his blood pressure is huge,
and he requires long periods of rest.
And the final challenge he faced
was going to Yalta in early 1945,
and that left him exhausted
and he would die shortly afterwards.
[narrator] Churchill could not attend Roosevelt's funeral,
but penned a note to his wife Eleanor.
"I feel so deeply for you all.
As for myself, I have lost a dear and cherished friendship
which was forged in the fire of war."
Stalin, who suspected that Roosevelt had been poisoned,
also wrote a heartfelt letter speaking of a genuine friendship
that had helped propel the Soviet Union
to imminent victory.
For a generation of Americans,
for whom Roosevelt had been a guiding light
and voice of hope for over a decade,
his death was a devastating blow.
[Liesl] He was smart, he knew what he was doing.
He kept going, and to be a President
for that amount of time that he was,
and it has never happened again.
He was there during a very hard time
and he was having a very hard time
with his physical self, so you got to love him.
I think a lot of people were very sad when he died.
[solemn music]
[narrator] The relatively low‐key Vice President,
Harry S. Truman, a one‐time haberdasher,
was quickly sworn in as President
on the very same day Roosevelt died,
to direct America's war effort.
As the world mourned the death of Roosevelt,
the race to Berlin continued unabated.
The Western Allies were seemingly unstoppable,
but on the other side of Germany,
Soviet troops were also making steady progress
across the country,
brutally quashing any German resistance.
The Russians and the Americans eventually met up
at the town of Torgau on the River Elbe
on the 25th of April, just 85 miles from Berlin.
As Allied troops shook hands on the riverbank,
their respective armies had effectively cut Germany in two.
The moment, which came to be known
as the Meeting on the Elbe,
portended the end of the war in Europe.
A jubilant Churchill declared:
"We meet in true and victorious comradeship
and with inflexible resolve
to fulfil our purpose and our duty.
Let all march forward upon the foe."
Truman, who had been sworn in as president
less than two weeks before, welcomed the news:
"This is not the hour of final victory in Europe,
but the hour draws near,
the hour for which all the American people,
all the British people and all the Soviet people
have toiled and prayed so long."
Stalin's approach was a little more cautious:
"Our task and our duty
are to complete the destruction of the enemy.
The Red Army will fulfil to the end this task
and this duty to our people
and to all freedom‐loving peoples."
The race was now well and truly on
to get to Berlin first.
To speed up his campaign, he split the command
of the Berlin operation between Marshall Zhukov in the centre
and Marshall Konev in the south.
Stalin, the master manipulator
and a sly practitioner of "divide and rule,"
had effectively triggered a race
between his two most senior commanders.
Stalin encouraged the race to Berlin
between Konev and Zhukov because he saw it
as imperative to capture the city
before the Allied powers did.
He knew that the German army was about to be defeated,
and he knew that the struggle was going to change
and develop into what we know as the Cold War.
And capturing Berlin
was kind of the first victory in that.
[narrator] Not only would capturing Berlin
have symbolic significance,
it was also rumoured to house the German nuclear programme.
The Germans definitely had a nuclear programme going on
in the Second World War. We absolutely knew that,
and there are files now declassified which confirm that.
And at the very end of the war Hitler's top scientists,
his top nuclear scientists,
were brought initially to Britain
before they then went to America.
to get his handste
on the German nuclear research centre,
the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, before the Americans got there.
And after Germany's surrender, the Soviet Union did indeed
requisition equipment, materials and personnel.
Stalin knew about the German military programme
through his intelligence operatives.
The Soviets had their own nuclear programme
called Operation Borodino,
but this was lagging behind the Americans.
So another reason why Stalin
was so intent on capturing Berlin
was to take as much information
about the German nuclear programme as possible.
They targeted the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute
in particular.
Importantly, they managed to seize
three tonnes of uranium oxide, and this was critical
to kind of kickstarting of their own atomic programme.
[narrator] The uranium oxide allowed them to start working
on their first nuclear weapon,
triggering the start of the nuclear arms race
that would define the Cold War.
[explosion]
By mid‐April 1945, the Red Army was on the outskirts of Berlin.
The final attack of nearly six years of war in Europe
commenced on the 16th April when the Soviet forces
began a mighty artillery barrage.
More than a million shells were fired
against German positions west of the river Oder.
Soviet fronts attacked Berlin from the east and south,
while a third overran German forces
positioned north of Berlin.
Around two and a half million Soviet troops
descended on the city.
The Battle of Berlin had well and truly begun.
On the 20th of April, 1945, Hitler's 56th birthday,
Zhukov's forces advanced from the east,
while Konev's forces
advanced towards the southern suburbs of Berlin.
The Soviet bombardment was so immense
that in Berlin's eastern suburbs
houses shook and pictures fell from walls.
Even now, the Germans defended desperately.
There was confusion all around.
According to one Russian veteran,
Soviet artillery was fired without proper guidance,
killing scores of Red Army soldiers.
Over the next 12 days,
the Red Army gradually took the entire city,
over‐running and destroying
the historic seat of German power,
the Reichstag.
[explosions]
[Sir Mike] This is the capital, the heartland of the darkness
that was Nazi Germany.
This said they have been defeated unarguably:
"We are in Berlin."
"We", of course, being the Red Army.
So, it was hugely symbolic
but equally, well, strategic significance.
That said: "This ghastly regime is over. It's dead."
[narrator] On 28th of April 1945, in Italy,
Mussolini and his mistress were shot
and their bodies strung up for all to see.
Two days later, determined not to suffer the same fate,
Hitler committed suicide in his bunker,
having ordered that his body be burned
so as not to be to be claimed by the Allies.
Even then, it took another two days
for the Germans to finally surrender.
More than 80,000 Soviet soldiers
had died trying to capture the city.
Stalin's hunger to get to Berlin ahead of the Western Allies
undoubtedly led to poor decision making
and an excessive loss of Soviet lives.
The battle for Berlin had brought to an end
one of the bloodiest wars in European history.
[Peter] There were lots
of German troops within the city,
many civilians, and the Russian troops,
the Red Army, had been sent by Stalin
at an accelerated pace with orders to capture the city
as quickly as possible.
So, this did lead to lots of brutal fighting
and it was a bloody end to the Second World War.
And the darker side of that conflict
is the atrocities of war crimes which were carried out
by Red Army soldiers,
particularly the mass rape
of perhaps up to two million women.
Something which the Russian government,
and the Soviet government, in later decades
denied had happened at all.
[narrator] The Russians had won the race to Berlin.
The red flag of the Soviet Union waved
above the battered and beleaguered Reichstag,
but for all the Allied forces, it was mission accomplished.
On the 7th of May, at his headquarters in Reims,
north‐eastern France,
Supreme Allied Commander General Eisenhower accepted
the unconditional surrender of all German forces.
Stalin, however, wanted his own ceremony,
and demanded another one in Berlin.
So the next day, on the 8th of May,
the ceremony was repeated,
and a further document was signed.
An exhausted but euphoric Europe
finally celebrated VE Day
‐on the 8th of May. ‐[cheers]
[Rudi in Dutch] It was wonderful.
We went to England
to kick the Germans out of Europe
with the Allied troops.
And it had worked, and that felt fantastic.
And then when you come back home
after you have kicked the Germans out,
and you see all those Dutch people
out in the street celebrating, it feels wonderful.
[narrator] But in deference to his U. S. ally,
Winston Churchill was quick to remind them
the world war wasn't over yet.
We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing,
but let us not forget for a moment
the toils and efforts that lie ahead.
Japan, with all her treachery and greed, remains unsubdued.
The injuries she has inflicted on Great Britain,
the United States, and other countries,
and her detestable cruelties,
call for justice and retribution.
We must now devote all our strength and resources
to the completion of our task, both at home and abroad.
[narrator] The war in the Pacific
was very much alive.
To bring about the final conclusion
of one of the bloodiest wars in human history,
the leaders of the Grand Alliance
would have to meet one last time.
The Potsdam Conference
began in July 1945,
principally to determine the borders
and reconstruction of post‐war Europe.
But it proved impossible to reach a consensus.
The U. S. saw Potsdam as an opportunity
to try and secure Soviet commitment
in the war against Japan.
While Stalin's main objective
was to obtain enormous economic reparations from Germany
as compensation for the destruction wrought
by the Nazis in the Soviet Union.
It was also a very different negotiating team
to the one that sat around the table
at their last meeting in Yalta.
The wily, patrician Roosevelt had been replaced
by the altogether more blunt and parochial Harry S. Truman.
And halfway through the two‐week conference,
Churchill's Conservative Party lost the general election
and, to Stalin's astonishment,
he was almost immediately replaced
at the negotiating table
by Labour leader Clement Attlee.
The only member of the Big Three that remained
was Stalin himself,
giving him considerable advantage.
[Warren] It's inconceivable to Joseph Stalin
that in this moment Winston Churchill
could be kicked out of office.
There's a famous cartoon of him going to Yalta
and Clement Attlee carrying his bags,
and then, going back to Yalta,
and he's having to carry Clement Attlee's bags.
It does affect Britain's status, I think.
And it certainly affects Churchill's.
It's one of the most unexpected things,
at least by our political commentators at the time,
at least, that Churchill lost the July 1945 election
and did not just lose, the Conservatives were trounced.
The electorate was seen as being very grateful
to Mr. Churchill, the war leader,
but they did not want Mr. Churchill,
the peacetime leader,
and instead wanted to have Labour,
which was seen as more geared to a peacetime existence
than the Conservatives under Winston Churchill.
[narrator] But the world was about to get a massive jolt.
On the 16th of July, 1945, in a remote desert location
near Alamogordo, New Mexico,
the Americans detonated the first atomic bomb.
[explosion]
The Trinity Test was the culmination
of four years' work by the Manhattan Project
to weaponize nuclear power.
They had succeeded,
and in doing so, ushered in the Atomic Age.
Roosevelt keeps the existence or the development
of the atomic bomb a secret
from his vice president, Harry Truman.
So, Truman actually only finds out
about the atomic bomb
when he becomes president in April of 1945.
It tells you something about Roosevelt's attitudes
to those who are even immediately around him.
His vice president did not know
one of the most important military secrets of the war.
[Jonathan] Pretty much as soon as they finished the atom bomb
and were sure that it would work,
they sent it off to drop it on Japan.
They were in a hurry to finish the war
as quick as possible.
Would they have dropped it on Germany
if Germany had still been fighting in August 1945?
I suspect so, but we'll never know.
[narrator] Truman now felt he held the winning hand
and lost no time in informing Stalin
that the United States possessed
"a new weapon of special destructive force,"
with which to bring Japan's resistance
to a juddering halt.
He did not at this stage
specify that it was the atomic bomb.
Stalin already knew about the project
from his spies in the West.
But he gave little away when he was told.
What the bomb would mean for the outcome of the war
would soon become apparent when Britain and the U. S.
threatened the Japanese
with "prompt and utter destruction"
if they did not immediately surrender unconditionally.
The Pacific war raged on, and casualties from the battles
at Iwo Jima and Okinawa
were some of the highest of the war.
[explosions]
American military planners
feared the prospect of invading Japan.
The Japanese army had millions of troops
and was ready to use many more millions of civilian conscripts
in the defence of their home islands.
The experience from Okinawa,
where civilians committed suicide instead of surrendering,
meant the loss of life amongst the Japanese population
would be horrific.
The Japanese had shown themselves,
in defence particularly,
where they've been for some while,
to be fanatical.
They simply would not surrender.
You had to kill each and every one.
And I think the concern
was that Japan will only be defeated
when occupied by the Allies
and here, obviously, the United States.
But to do that is going to cost the lives of so many GIs
because of this fanaticism, refusal to surrender
by Japanese troops.
And so it would have weighed very heavily
on presidential minds.
They were trying to equip schoolchildren
with bamboo spears to go and fight the Americans
when they landed. I mean, it's just asking
for mass murder. It was crazy.
t Harry S. Truman
was informed that the atomic bomb test
had been successful in New Mexico,
he calculated that this monstrous weapon
might be used to defeat Japan
in a way less costly to U. S. lives
than a conventional invasion of the Japanese homeland.
[Sir Mike] Well, you can see
what went through Roosevelt and then Truman's mind.
The potential cost to the United States
in casualties, if nothing else, which would have been involved
with an invasion and occupation of Japan.
Is this something that equates? Is there an advantage?
I mean, these are dreadful decisions.
[narrator] On the 6th of August, 1945,
an American B‐29 bomber,
the Enola Gay, dropped the world's first atomic bomb
over the city of Hiroshima.
Instantly the city was levelled,
and some 80,000 people were killed.
That figure doubled within the year
from burns and radiation effects from the bomb.
On the 9th of August a second bomb was dropped
over the Japanese city of Nagasaki,
with a similar death toll.
The impact was cataclysmic and unlike anything experienced
in the history of warfare.
A day before the Nagasaki bombing
on the 8th of August,
the Soviet Union had finally declared war against Japan.
On the 10th of August, the Japanese government
issued a statement agreeing to accept
the surrender terms of the Potsdam Declaration
on the understanding that the emperor's position
as a sovereign ruler would not be prejudiced.
The Allies granted Japan's request,
and on the 15th of August
the Emperor Hirohito urged his people
to accept the decision to surrender.
[sombre music]
The fighting was over.
‐[vibrant music] ‐[cheers]
After nearly six years of war,
the Allies had finally achieved their goal
with a full and comprehensive defeat
of their enemy on all fronts.
But it had come at a huge cost,
and the world would never be the same again.
As mushroom clouds rose above Japan,
the world stood witness to the creation
of a new, terrifying Atomic Age.
[Jonathan] The atom bomb, and particularly the possession
by both the Americans and the Soviets
of nuclear weapons,
created a whole new way
of doing business in international politics
for the next 50 years.
There was a theory that one of the reasons
the Americans dropped the bomb on Japan
was precisely to show the Soviets
that they had this thing.
To cow them into being a bit more pliant.
If that's the case, it didn't work.
It has to be said. The Russians, as we know,
were already working on their own bomb
and, indeed, stealing the plans for the American one,
and therefore were able to catch up pretty quickly.
[narrator] A new Europe would have to be forged
in the long shadow of a Nuclear Arms Race
and the threat of "mutually assured destruction."
[theme music]
[narrator] So who had won the race to victory?
Certainly not Great Britain.
Britain had gone into war in 1939
as a great world power, but it left 1945
as a very diminished one and faced great privations,
great destruction, a great loss of men
and women, and people, as well as resources.
And it almost permanently handicapped Britain's ability
to assert itself on the world stage.
[narrator] Many say the Americans
were the outright winners of the race,
bearing in mind they had asserted themselves
as a global superpower for the first time.
[Warren] I think the victory
was probably the greatest for the Americans.
America made quite a lot of profit out of it
in terms of becoming the global power
to take up what had been the role of Britain
as a sort of guarantor for,
kind of, Western ideas and liberal ideas.
And so I think there's a real victor
in the Second World War in the United States.
[narrator] But in terms of territory gained,
Stalin was the clear winner.
At the end of the Second World War,
Communist parties seized the governments of Bulgaria,
Romania, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia
and Eastern Germany, buffer states
for the Soviet Union
that lay beyond what Churchill called "The Iron Curtain."
Stalin and the Soviet Union emerge as a superpower.
And this was a remarkable turnaround
from the 1920s, when this had been
a predominately peasant country with a backwards industry.
He'd defeated one of the most advanced
capitalist countries in the world, Nazi Germany,
and they rivalled the United States,
so this was a huge turnaround for the Soviet Union.
Really, this was the height of Soviet influence.
[narrator] Despite the massive losses
and destruction of Soviet cities,
the war had enabled Stalin to sit side‐by‐side
with his democratically‐elected, ideological enemies,
and to be seen and recognized by all as a world statesman.
Stalin entered the war as the world's ogre,
despised by the West and deeply feared and mistrusted
by all except his nearest cronies,
who depended on him for their lives and positions.
He left the stage of World War II
as an undisputed world statesman,
respected by his international colleagues
and loved and revered by his people.
[cheers]
If any one leader can be said to have won the race to victory,
it was Joseph Stalin.
[theme music]