Our history is no more than
a series of incredible events.
Every one of us can influence its course.
(upbeat music)
The most infinite decimal of our decisions
can influence the future of humanity.
To know the past is to foresee the future.
June 6, 1944, Omaha Beach, Normandy.
The remains of tanks lie in witness to the tragedy.
The landing of Anglo-American troops has been repelled.
This day will be marked in the annals in the Third Reich
as the day the allies lost Europe.
Since the Battle of Kurst and the defeat
of several Soviet Armies, Nazi Germany has managed
to impose an armistice on Stalin.
Two million soldiers have thus been removed
from the Eastern Front and have strengthened
the garrisons of the Atlantic wall to prevent
any possible invasions.
Today, incapable of battling the German Army,
the allies are no longer able to defeat the Nazis.
Europe is in Hitler's hands.
But none of that ever happened.
In 1943, a small grain of sand, thwarted the Germans' plans
and upset the balance of forces in the second World War.
June 22nd, 1941, beginning of the Barbarossa Operation.
The Third Reich invades the USSR.
Spring of 1943, the Soviets decide to fortify
the cursed region.
And to wait for the attack of the German Army.
April 30th, 1945, after almost four years
of merciless struggles, the Red Army battles
the last offenders of the Third Reich in Berlin.
These three intimately related events
are the key moments in the Second World War
and the fall of the Third Reich.
East Prussia, June 23, 1941.
General Adolf Hitler's headquarters.
Arriving at night, the fuhrer enters the vast network
of bunkers known as the Wolf's Layer for the first time.
Protected by two meters of reinforced concrete
and a battalion of elite soldiers,
the fuhrer personally supervises the progress of his plans.
The night before, he sent out the German war machine
with the goal of conquering the USSR.
Code name, Operation Barbarossa.
The soil of the great Russian plains
trembles under the weight of armor divisions.
The countryside echoes with the sound
of the German Army boots, the Wehrmacht.
3,800,000 and 3,800 tanks are on the move.
This is the biggest military invasion in history.
Their missions, invade the Soviet territory.
Destroy the Red Army.
Take Moscow, and take down the USSR.
All before the start of winter.
The attack plan is simple.
Supported by aerial forces and armor divisions,
the spearhead of the attack must pierce the enemy lines
at two points, and then converge behind the enemy lines.
The Soviet forces find themselves isolated,
stuck in a huge trap.
Then they are taken out, one by one.
Led by competent officers, backed by omnipresent
protection from the skies, radio communication,
and solid combat experience, the Third Reich armies
crush the Soviet defenses.
The Red Army is distraught.
Victims of the great Stalinist purges.
Its commanders are poorly prepared,
and its strategy is obsolete.
Soviet tanks are obliterated by German canons.
Soldiers are mowed down during suicidal charges.
Planes are destroyed on the ground,
even before the enter flight.
The losses are dreadful.
Nothing can stop the German machine.
Minsk falls in one week.
July 10th, the Third Reich soldiers reach Smolensk
and cross the Dnieper.
September 16th, the Germans manage to complete
the largest military encirclement in history.
In Kiev, the Soviets suffer over 600,000 losses.
The USSR is on its knees.
At the end of December, it has lost three million men.
But faced with the desperate resistance
of the Soviet troops, the attacks begin to slow down
and have less impact.
After traveling 650 kilometers across Russian territory,
the Wehrmacht, bogged down by the muddy October torrents.
By the time the Panzer's Divisions finally reach Moscow,
the first snowflakes have already arrived.
Winter, the faithful Russian ally, enters the battle.
Welcome to the memory of humanity.
Every historical event, regardless of how small
is recorded and connected.
You only need to change on to upset all the others.
Here we're able to control time.
Analyze and compare billions of events
in order to rewrite history in infinite ways.
For example, let's go back to 1812 and compare
the Barbarossa Operation with the Russian Campaign
led by Napoleon Bonaparte.
Napoleon, at the head of a massive army for its time,
storms the Russian plains to topple the Tsar.
His objective, reach and take over Moscow before winter.
The Emperor looks for confrontation.
He wants to fight a big battle, but the Russian Army,
when faced with the French troops, refuses to fight.
Retreats and burns all possible resources along the way.
The Great Army, deprived of food, arrives in Moscow
suffering from starvation.
Forced to make the difficult return in the middle
of the Russian winter, only a few 10s of thousands
from the original 650,000 men lived to see their home again.
Will winter be more gentle with the Third Reich Army?
January 31, 1943, Stalingrad.
Field Marshall Paulus, commander of the sixth German Army
surrenders to the Russian troops.
After five months of bitter urban conflicts,
street by street, house by house,
he is forced to face the facts.
Surrounded, dying from cold and hunger,
his men are no longer able to hold the city.
Stalingrad, the city that bears the name of a sworn enemy,
Stalin, will never be conquered.
For Hitler, the failure to achieve this important,
symbolic goal is a tough setback.
For the Wehrmacht, the loss of over 250,000 men
is a crushing defeat.
One year earlier, the German Army was only
eight kilometers from Moscow when it was
pushed back by the Red Army.
(men shouting)
But even more than the Soviet assaults,
it was winter with temperatures dropping
to minus 30 degrees, that vanquished the German troops.
From there, the German Armies retreat
and struggle to gather enough forces
to resume the offensive against an increasingly
strong Red Army.
Officers recruited from the ranks,
joined the flight to breath new life
into the Soviet troops.
Battalions of tanks, massed produced in the
distant factories of Ural, begin arriving at the front.
The soldiers, at home in the bitter cold,
are now equipped with additional weapons,
stand up to the German troops.
Balance is reestablished.
The Barbarossa Operation is just a distant memory.
After Stalingrad, the Red Army confidentially launches
several offenses, but the Wehrmacht,
no longer subdued by winter, is once again invincible.
Soviet losses are staggering.
Hitler develops a new plan.
A powerful attack designed to lacerate the Red Army
and reduce the front lines.
It is Operation Citadel.
It takes place around the city of Kursk,
where numerous Soviet troops are almost surrounded
by the German forces, forming a salient on the front line.
The goal, gamble on the effects of speed and surprise.
Isolate the Soviet Armies using wide, encircling movements,
then tighten the vice on the survivors.
50 divisions, 900,000 men
and 2,700 combat vehicles are assembled.
Prudently, Hitler delays the date
of the attack several times.
He is waiting for the imminent arrival of his new tanks.
The Panther and the Tiger.
Modern and devastating beasts of war,
which give the advantages of superior technology
to his armies.
Initially planned for May first,
the primary attack finally takes place on July fifth,
two months late.
Two months of breathing room for the Red Army,
which uses this time to prepare counter measures.
Marshall Zhukov, at the head of the Soviet Armies,
anticipates the imminent offenses on Kursk.
And entrenches himself on devising a solid plan of defense.
A pivotal decision.
(men shouting)
First, he will stop the German attack.
Then, he will initiate a counter attack
with all his available troops.
Stop, then strike.
For the first time since the beginning of the conflict,
the Soviet Union is ready.
We are now at a point of divergence.
A point of divergence is a key moment,
a crossroads in our history where our world
can swing from one side to the other.
The Soviet General staff arrive at the front,
and decide to prepare for the German offensive.
300,000 civilians are recruited to dig
thousands of kilometers of trenches
and antique tank ditches.
Several fortified lines of defense are put in place.
One million mines, around 3,000 per square kilometer
are spread across the front.
Millions of cannons, howitzers and armored
vehicles are gathered.
Simultaneously, fake airfields and artillery positions
are built to trick the German Aerial Forces.
And entire divisions of tanks are concealed
in the thick forest.
If the Soviets had settled for classical defense techniques,
it is almost certain that they would have been
wiped out by the German troops.
And Operation Citadel would have been a definitive success.
The outcome of World War Two
would have been tragically modified.
(upbeat music)
The night of July 5th, 1943,
Operation Citadel begins.
Two o'clock in the morning, the German divisions
are silently preparing.
(speaking foreign language)
Following General Von Manstein's plan,
the troops, which are divided into two groups,
plan to simultaneously attack from the north and the south.
Then join forces in surrounding the Soviets
at Kursk in four days time.
Two pinchers of a thousand scorpion.
Before long, taking advantage of the darkness,
they initiate the surprise attack.
(men shouting)
Suddenly, illuminated the night sky,
more than 1,000 Soviet cannons release a flood of fire
on the German positions.
The message is clear.
The Red Army is aware of the attack,
and they are ready to fight back.
At dawn, engines spew black smoke
and nature starts to tremble.
The mighty Panzers are moving towards their goal.
These tanks, weighing several dozens of tons,
are iron fists, weapons of devastation.
In their wake, the infantry is there to occupy the ground
and take care of survivors.
Above the armor turrets, the sky is streaked
by Luftwaffe of fighter squadrons.
In front of them, the tank leaders soon see
the first Soviet line of defense.
But every stretch of the path has been riddled with mines,
so the plains quickly become a death trap.
The Panzers cannot move 50 meters
without risking the loss of its crawlers,
or being caught in the crossfires of the cannons.
Hundreds of Katyushas, later called Stalin's organs,
fire a bevy of rockets on the German formations.
The Soviet tanks, instead of engaging in a doomed
face to face battle, are transformed into bunkers.
All but the turrets are buried under ground.
(gunshots firing)
From their trenches, the Russian soldiers
have access to all of their available weapons.
Though many soldiers end up buried alive
underneath the Panzer tanks.
Others run right to the tanks and attack them
with Molotov cocktails.
The infantry no longer charges in successive waves
as in 1941.
Instead, each line retreats successively,
from position to position, covering each other.
The Citadel is stalled.
In the evening of the seventh day,
the Third Reich Armies have painfully advanced
30 kilometers, which is very far from their original goal.
Despite the massive support of the Air Force,
even the Panzer SS Division struggles to advance.
Still, the German generals are convinced
that the Soviets are on the brink of surrendering.
The Russian losses have been terrible,
and soon Kursk will be theirs.
But they are unaware of the incredible number
of reserve soldiers and tanks
waiting to assist the Red Army.
Two assault tanks, two different strategies.
The Soviet T-34 is cheap, massed produced
and known for overpowering the maximum number of enemies.
Rustic and easy to use, its weight, power,
armament ratio, makes it a versatile and formidable tank.
Over the course of the conflict, Soviet factories
produce nearly 50,000 of these vehicles.
In comparison, the German Tiger tank is an engineering
masterpiece and a monster with fierce and firepower.
Equipped with the famous 88 millimeter
high velocity cannon, and a thick armor
that makes it almost invulnerable to the T-34.
However, its 57 tons are a handicap to this mastodon.
Because of its complex and resource heavy design,
only 1,347 units manage to leave the assembly lines.
At Kursk, the Germans only have 146 Tigers
lined up in front of countless T-34's.
An army of David's against a handful of Goliath's.
July 12th, in Prochorowka,
the Fifth Guard Army faces the SS Panzer Division.
The effective range of the Soviet guns is 500 meters.
A Tiger can destroy targets from a distance
of two kilometers.
The Russian tank leaders don't have a choice.
They march their machines straight towards
the German mastodons.
Firing shell after shell with immaculate precision,
the Panzers shred the T-34s.
When faced with the Tigers, the Soviet Army uses
its greatest advantage, its numbers.
At the price of horrendous body counts,
braving a deluge of fire, the Russian troops charge
at full speed towards the heavy German tanks.
Steel against steel.
A fight of titans.
The ambitious German strategy evolves
into a furious one on one battle between assault tanks.
The battlefield is thrown into indescribable chaos
where each tank team fights alone
in the midst of smoke and flames,
while surrounded by enemies.
Close range shots are fired from the cannons.
Steel plates are torn from the flanks of the tanks
and shredded turrets are thrown into the air.
At the end of the day, the Germans are masters of the field,
but short on men, equipment and ammunition.
So they are no longer able to attack.
The next day, Hitler decides to stop the attack.
The coursed defenders hold their ground.
To the north and the south,
the massive counterattacks from the Soviet Reserve Army
overwhelm the Panzers.
Zhukov moves on to phase two.
Th Wehrmacht, exhausted, no longer has the strength
to fight back.
In a few days, all the hard worn ground is lost
and returned to the hands of Soviets.
During the months that follow, the German retreat
from the Eastern Front.
Germany has lost the upper hand.
Act or react.
In military terms, having the initiative in combat
means imposing your movements and timing
on the adversary who has no choice but to react.
When dealing with a front of several thousand kilometers,
losing the initiative means not knowing
when or where the enemy will attack.
This forces you to stretch your resources
and weaken your overall position.
In 1940, during the Battle of France,
the Franco-English Forces find themselves
under the constant pressure of German Divisions,
who maintain the initiative from the beginning
to the end of the campaign.
The victory at Kursk, gives the initiative to the Red Army.
The Soviets will skillfully exploit this advantage.
(soft music)
Berlin, April 30th, 1945.
The last German soldiers who are still able to fight
prepare for a final battle.
Earlier that day, they learned that the fuhrer,
Adolf Hitler, was dead.
At the foot of Reichstag, the seat of Parliament
and symbol of the Third Reich, they put their last
pieces of artillery into play.
They do not expect any pity from the Red Army soldiers
who can overtake them at any moment.
The strong army, which four years earlier,
had swept over the Soviet Union is no longer capable
of stopping the Russian steamroller.
Since the defeat of Operation Citadel in Kursk,
the Wehrmacht has done nothing but retreat.
The initiative has passed, definitively, into Soviet hands.
The Germans had kept fighting for two more years,
at a terrible price, just to delay the inevitable.
(grunting)
The fate of the Eastern Front had already been decided
long before the Americans and the English land in Normandy.
The Red Army, growing stronger day by day,
supported by an efficient industry,
and an almost inexhaustible pool of men,
launch offensive after offensive and take back
all the territory that had been lost in 1941.
No line of defense is able to prevent
the Soviet Armies from entering the Reich's sacred soil
and besieging its capital, Berlin.
May 9th, 1945, after over five years of war,
World War Two ends in Europe.
The Soviet Union, conqueror of the Third Reich Armies,
sacrificed over 25 million lives on the alter of freedom.
Germany, vanquished, will see its territory
occupied by the allies and then sliced in half.
Divided, it will be at the heart of a new conflict,
The Cold War.
But that is another story.
In July 1943, 80% of German forces
are on the Eastern Front, fighting the Soviets.
20 million soldiers enlisted in the Wehrmacht
encountered at one moment or another,
the hell of the Russian front.
Four million Germans died in combat there.
From 1941 to 1945, we can estimate that 80%
of the Wehrmacht trusses happened on the Eastern Front
when facing the Red Army.
For the German Generals, the Russians were an even
bigger threat than the Anglo-Americans on the Western Front.
The Soviet Union, at the cost of millions of soldiers' lives
broke the back of the Third Reich.
And that was well before the allied landings
in Normandy in 1944.
Still, nowadays, the United States is praised
as the great victors of the Second World War.
In the darkest hours of the conflict,
soldiers on both sides, Germans and Russians,
descended upon local civilians,
committing numerous war crimes.
The image we have today of the victors
of World War Two is far from the much darker
and less glorious reality.
The truth is also a victim of war,
as often the victors impose their version of it.
But one thing is certain, obeying the blind orders
of a totalitarian regime, millions of Russian soldiers
were sacrificed without reservation
in the pursuit of victory.
Without them, the Third Reich would have won the war.
(intense music)